Chapter 44 The Long Game (2.0)

Vignette - Brothers Wolf

“--and that is the story of Coyote and the night sky.”

Many stories are told. Every night in the flicking flames where scared humans huddle for warmth and comfort. There, coated in woodsmoke, hope and fear old legends come to life.

And sometimes, just sometimes. Coming to life is more than just a metaphor.

As the same story is told and retold across thousands of fires of hundreds of nights at last small marks appeared in the sky. They grew in number and size from night to night, fed by story after story. From marks they at last took form as arrows that stuck themselves into the sky. They formed a grand staircase to the ground and a thousand wise animals descended to the earth.

Wisdom.

Once given form it is no longer a possession of its creators, but of the created.

And the created were beasts of the field and forest, the rivers and ocean.

Those places were not the friends of man.

Chapter 44

“Let this, the 35th meeting of the council, come to order.” Da’s voice rang out simultaneously with the ugly crack of an essence stone gavel meeting a stone disk. “Let’s start with you Jennifer. Tell us what happened?”

Jenney did not raise her head, still after a few moments she began to speak “A ten year old boy died yesterday.” She paused for several seconds, took a deep shuddering breath and continued with a mostly stable voice. “Karl threw a rock at one of the hummingbirds in the gardens. It-” She paused for another shuddering breath “It pecked a hole in his skull. Pecked a hole right through and flew away. In plain view of a group of kids and guards. Just did it and left.” Her large frame shuddered as she stared blankly at her hands.

“I thought they were mostly harmless?” Gareth spoke carefully, attempting to hand over a handkerchief. She was too lost in her own head to notice.

“Mostly they are.” Arthur rubbed at his temples “as long as you don’t attack them they won’t attack you. They get plenty of food from nectar and scavenging dead bodies. Fresh ones don’t seem to appeal to them.”

“Do we need to put some kind of netting up then? To keep them out?” Garreth suggested.

Jenney suddenly threw her cup at the wall, shattering it and spraying its contents in a fan of alcoholic foam across the nearest surfaces. “We can’t!” She half yelled, half sobbed. “We can’t do a damn thing!” Her voice dropped back down a bit, “We need those birds to keep doing what they are doing. They fertilize the plants. Like bees used to. We can’t do without them! I warned the kids, I warned them every damn time! But they can’t stay hiding in the basement all the time. They have to be able to come up in the sunlight. To run amongst the greenery. What kind of life can we offer them if they have to stay locked underground?”

“It’s not on you Jenney.” Regi’s rumbling voice carried its own sorrow but it did not shake as he continued. “You’re right, the kids have to come out and play. They need the sun and to live a life that doesn’t resemble moles. And you did warn them. I’ve honestly goten tired of your warning speech. There is nothing you could have done here. Not. A. Thing!”

“But a child is still dead, Regi! Karl’s parents will never hear his laughter again. Never feel that joy. Only emptiness! And I have to live with that!”

“Yes. All that is true. But he ignored your warnings and the rules. We don’t live in such a nice world that he can do that without consequences. He chose to disobey and now we will all suffer for it.”

“Ten years old Regi! What are rules to a ten year old?”

“Life!” Regi roared back. He stopped and took a deep breath, “This is how we live Jenney. You can’t take this on to your own head. You are not a god to command fate. You did what you could, and then some! The rest has to be on him.”

“But-”

“NO.” Ma’s small hand reached up at a sharp angle to grasp the shoulder of her massive daughter. “No buts. There is nothing you could’ve done. Nothing you can do now, Jenney. This is just self-flagellation and we don’t have time for it. I’ll sit with you tonight and we can wish and dream and complain to the stars! But for now I need you here. Tell us the rest of it.”

Unwilling, she ground her teeth, but at last she spoke again. “The grain fields on the south side of the river are not doing very well. I was out there to look just two days ago-”

The sun blasted down, nearly unbearable for those of flesh and blood, but oh so nice for the still green oversized wheat plants that were already nearly shoulder high. Unfortunately it was nice for more than just the wheat. In the 200 yards along the river that the plot traveled, and about 30 yards wide, there were as many weeds as wheat. Everything under the sun, and a few things that hid from it, were growing with an exuberant bonanza.

Everything.

Wheat? Check!

Hemp? yep!

Horsetail? Most definitely!

Thistles? Double Check!

And dozens of other variants that she could not name. She sighed. Pulling up one of Timothy's silly little gizmos, she carefully placed a large chunk of thistle in the box and activated it at the southwestern corner of the field where she stood. Like she had been warned it removed only a portion of the thistle plant. She had placed leaves and flowers in the box and only leaves and flowers were removed, leaving the pesky roots behind. Roots, that if left alone, would regrow into the tall spiny plants again inside of a week. Reaching into the messenger bag slung over her shoulder she pulled out an older root. Not too old, merely three days or so. It was already starting to shrivel up. Placing it in the box she waved it over the field. And nothing happened.

She sighed, dropping to her knees (and breaking a few wheat plants in the process) she took out a spade and dug up the large convoluted roots of the thistle plant. Slicing them up into manageable chunks she again placed one chunk into the box and waved it over the fields. This time the expected spray of powdered plant matter matched her expectations. The corner of the larger field where she stood was now free of thistles… but only thistles.

Other attempts at finding a better magical solution stood out distinctly to her left. A five foot by five foot section of wheat without weeds… Standing dead and rotting on its stems. An attempt with a chunk of dirt and a full complete wheat plant had removed everything but dirt and wheat from the soil. But good soil was not just dirt. It had decaying plant matter, fertilizer, nutrients, water and so much more. It was not well mixed or consistent. A handful of dirt from one spot was not identical to the handful next to it. Sure, just considering it all dirt worked great for construction. If you just want to move the dirt, no one cares if a tiny portion gets left behind. That tiny portion meant life and death for growing plants.

With a small smile she began to dig up the roots of another weed, annoyed at the necessity but enjoying the feel of the earth and the sun beating down.

Then the yells and screams began. She quickly jumped to her feet and bolted from the cover of the half-grown wheat, cursing that she could not spend enough time to truly link with the fields. Expanding her senses and her protection. It was a familiar complaint, one that did not slow her steps as she broke through into the buffer zone, a set of twenty yards where the meadow grasses and wild grains were regularly clear cut to provide clean sight lines for the guards. Guards whose necessity she could not deny considering the dead but still twitching corpse of a waist high badger with its jaws death locked in a uniform cloaked upper leg.

She rushed to the knot of guards, none looking at her but instead with their eyes peeled for more. It was a lesson they had learned early. Gawk dumbly at the corpse of one beast and its litter mates might just add you to the funeral. The intervening space disappeared quickly beneath her long strides as she opened her messenger bag once again. This time for a draught of health. A potion that she had been making a depressing amount of. At least that meant it was becoming more and more effective.

Taking a second glance she substituted the flask with some bruise balm. The enchanted cloak had not been pierced by the beast's vicious bite. Instead it had, vise-like, attempted to crush the leg through the armor. Even there, the enchantments had done their job, removing much of the force from the bite and turning what would have been a crushed and mangled limb into merely a deep bruise.

A painfully deep bruise that would remind its owner to be a bit more careful in the near future. The thought was bitter in her head. The bruise balm she was rubbing into the tender flesh might just hurt more than the initial bite, yet after numerous arguments with Arthur it still had no pain killing component.

Just another day on the farm.

Goddess help us.

“No permanent injury to Barry. The pain will remind him to be a bit more careful next time.” Arthur nodded.

“It still seems barbaric, Arthur.” Jenney replied, “I could easily add something to numb the pain. No need for such machismo. Or is it sadism?”

“Sadism? I assure you Jennifer, I do not enjoy their pain. I want them to live. A bit of pain might teach him to pay attention. Attention is the difference between a few days in bed and your name on the Obelisk!”

“So you have said, many, many times Arthur. You can see I haven't added any painkillers to my mix can you not? You won! Just don’t expect me to like it.”

Da jumped in to stop that pointless, recurring argument. “So the weeds are a problem. You can’t just wave a wand and remove them, though the wand waving does make it faster. You still need to harvest at least one of each weed type each time, to really get rid of them? “

“Ya Da. It’s tedious, but still better than doing the full field by hand. That said, Timothy and Regi have been pushing me to not do even that much.”

Timothy glanced at his brother with an eyebrow raised in question. With a shrug of agreement Regi replied for both of them. “We only have so many guardians, Jenney. Just to somewhat safely send out farmers to that field, we need a good thirty to forty on guard. Out in the open. Sure, the motion wards and armor help. But it's not what you could call safe.“

He gave a small smile “The second part is that already we don’t have much for the norms to do. Not much they can participate in to feel useful. Feeling useful and valued contributes to loyalty and dramatically speeds up their awakening. I have something like seventy new guardians. They come exclusively from those who went out on resource collection missions, carried rocks for us and yes worked the grain fields. We need those kinds of jobs to allow for social mobility.” He hesitated a moment then added one other benefit. “It also gets them out where they can see how dangerous the world is. We can’t let the undercity become its own little world.”

It wasn’t a new concept. They had been arguing about it since the first dawn. Norms were third class citizens and it was rapidly getting worse. Not just in Runehold but up and down the river. Having multiple classes could cause an amazing amount of social chaos. One way to avoid that was to make sure that there was movement, both up and down the ladder.

Any who had good character and a willingness to commit their loyalty to the community could make their way upward even as far as the council. Any child who could commit themselves hard enough had a chance at self awakening. Catapulting them to the top in one fell swoop. And their family with them. Timothy shook his head. They had beat this argument to death long since. Just Jenney had lost, and she had a habit of resurrecting old losses for another try at opportune moments.

“Grain of the old style will continue to be a pain to grow. Both because of us and because of nature.” Jenney continued. “It’s not needed for feeding ourselves and frankly from what was being said before the change it’s not as healthy as the vegetable and meat diet we have now.”

Gareth Leaned forward. “Then why bother? I have heard you speak on this before but it’s still not clear. Why is grain so important?”

“History and emergencies.” Arthur responded, although both Pa and Regi looked ready to speak if he had not. “Historically, having grain allowed civilizations to flourish. It’s mostly a matter of storage and transport. Vegetables rarely travel well. They ripen regularly over a long season but they don’t keep. If you want to have a big city, you have to be able to feed it. Mostly this is done with grain harvested from surrounding hamlets being carted in. Likewise having full granaries meant that a city could survive interruptions to this supply.”

“Vegetables don’t work the same way. And despite our successes with smoking, jerky takes a massive amount of salt and still doesn’t last as long as grains can.”

Pa took up the narrative “That's why we have been allowing about half of the grains that come in every month to be sold as a luxury good. The rest we have been carefully storing down below in case of emergencies.”

Jenney hesitated, “I might have an alternative.”

They waited for a few moments, “Well go on Daughter, please. What we have isn’t working very well. If you have something better, then by all means tell us.”

She grimaced, “I don’t know if it's better.” She leaned over to grab a sack from the floor. Carefully she pulled a gigantic sunflower head from inside it. It was around three feet across and washbowl thick. “I trust you all recognize the plant? This one is not really ripe yet. The bright yellow flower petals would have shriveled up if it was. Still you can look at these immature florets and get an idea on how big the seeds are.” She pulled off one to show the old snack in its new form. Over an inch long and fairly thick about the middle. “One of your exploration groups brought this back from the meadows to the southwest. Each plant has between 1,000 and 1,400 seeds. Sure they each have a shell on them, but that's pretty easy to deal with. Just take one of Timothy’s specific shovels and put a seed in it, then harvest the seeds from a field of flowers already ground into flour.”

“That sounds fantastic! Considering your hesitation I am waiting for a but.” Gareth smiled as he reached out to snag a seed to chew on.

“You have good ears, Gareth. The ‘but’ is their food content. They are a seed not a grain. They don’t have the energy density of wheat. I’ve had some very tasty sunflower bread in the old world. It used to be a lot of work for very little flour, but you could do it. It was a favorite of those who wanted to be gluten free. For an obese society that was a great option. For a food crop in our society it's less good. The benefit is that it grows wild in large fields already from what your scouts reported. Less of a farming task and more of a ‘hike out and carry big bags of flour back’ task.”

“You just sold me, Jenney.” Arthur rumbled, “Even if it’s not as energy dense, one trip to harvest the crop and carry it back per season is safer than spending hours every day at risk. Even if we have to travel farther to do it. How long between harvests?”

“In the old world it was around three months to grow. So figure less than a month. We’ll have to observe to get the exact time period.”

Da smiled at her, “So one trip a month, without planting or weeding, for a reliable source of flour? That is wonderful Jenney! Even if it's not quite grain, it's still much better than what we have.” Regi and Arthur were nodding so hard they looked like bobbleheads. Protecting the fields had been stressing them out for a while now.

Da glanced around to see if there were any more questions before proceeding, “Alright let's move on. Regi, you had something for us as well?”

“Ya Da, it’s not anything good though. Let me tell you about what we have been seeing on resource runs into the jungle. Yesterday we headed out ---”

He glanced back at the three lines of men behind him. Two outer lines of guardians equipped with a mix of shovels and light rifles surrounded an inner core of norms with packs. It had been a very successful run so far and their backpacks were bulging with mushrooms, fruits, vines and exotic wood. All three lines were uniformly armored with hooded cloaks enchanted with protection by the large amulet Regi wore on his own chest.

All was as it should be, so far at least. Still, anyone who trusted that feeling would stay behind in this jungle for good. Maybe not on the first trip, but in time the jungle would pick off anyone who didn’t give it their full respect and attention.

“Anything on the weep?” He kept his voice quiet, but not a whisper. Whispers carried farther than a normal talking voice, something about the s’s. That was also why the original sweeps had become weep. The slang term stuck. Each of the detection devices looked like under sized brooms. The first attempt at the tool created a sphere of detection around the party. That had proved to be less than useful. Sure they knew something was there, just not where it was coming from. The newer tools had to be swung around and about to detect anything, but then they knew where to watch. It looked pretty ridiculous to use. Like a spastic housekeeper sweeping away spider webs from the ceiling. Detection wands to sweeps. Sweeps to weep. Life was weird.

Looks be damned if it keeps us all alive!

“Nothing yet Reginold.”

Regi grimaced, Tony Moreno was on the younger side for the guardians. Even if you added seven years to any adult's visible age these days.

Does seven years mostly isolated still lend to maturity? Regi wasn’t sure. Regardless, the little shit and many like him decided on their own that Regi was insufficiently respectful and they now refused to shorten his name. Unfortunately this was neither the time nor the place to argue about it.

Regi gave a pointed glance at two others with their silly little brooms. Freaking Timothy and his stupid looking tools.

He received a double negative to no surprise. He would have noticed if it had gone off. That was not the point of his questions. Just a reminder to keep sweeping. They were the first line of defense. Too many things could sneak up on a man in the thick greenery or drop down on their heads from the vast branches above. Motion wards helped, but only when they didn't surprise something vicious.

They couldn’t count just on the detectors either. They only tracked three of the most dangerous ambush predators. Cats, snakes and raptors. Three out of how many hundred? Most of which they still had not met.

Regi hoped that on this run they could keep it that way.

They loosely marched back towards the hold, all eyes peeled and heads on a swivel. The last rank even walked backwards, the arm of the next in line holding onto a loop on the back of their cloak. Even the porters were veterans at this point. Eyes raised to the branches and tree trunks above.

The jungle was much like the sea, Regi had to admit. Vast and begging to be explored. Beautiful and teeming with hidden life. Like the ocean she did not tolerate fools. Hidden swells and massive storms were waiting in the floating leaves. Hidden in the wind blown vines. He both loved and feared her as a good sailor loves and fears the sea. To journey forth on her swells to new lands made life so much more vibrant then the colorless cubicle farms of the safe landsman world.

Safe.

There’s the rub. The ocean was a filter. She sieves out men to find the competent and respectful from the fools and braggarts. Those she finds worthy may continue to ply her waves. Those she does not get to truly see her depths.

He no longer had the sea, but this jungle could hum more than a few bars of that same old song. He almost felt guilty. To be separated from his first love and choose to be satisfied by this new hussy. Shame on him!

Regi chuckled silently and pushed aside those maudlin thoughts. He needed all his attention on the here and now.

A now that exploded in flying fur, screams of pain and pulsing weapons. From under bushes and folds of ground Regi would have sworn were empty a pair of massive wolves materialized like ghosts. They charged through the thin lines, scattering people like bowling pins.

A snapping shot from an ELR took off a hind leg on one and the enchanted armored cloaks proved their worth once again as massive jaws snapped shut on an arm. On but not through.

But cloaks only provided armor where they covered skin. Snarling jaws snapped out at an unpredictable angle and shut upon an unprotected face. The pale freckled smile just barely turning to horror disappeared inside that maw even as Regi flung a lightning bolt into its flank. Anything touching the wolf would be damaged as well, but he had no time to worry about that, and Karen was already beyond help. A fact confirmed as the wolf spasmed massively flinging the body beneath his jaws about like a tether ball. It’s dying growls could not cover the resounding SNAP of a breaking neck.

His eyes jerked over to the wounded wolf and he had to watch it masticating on the broken arm. Stevens, from the red hair leaking out of the hood, was on his back beneath it struggling to keep the broken arm from becoming a severed jugular. Regie hesitated in frustration, anything he threw in could arc to Stevens or miss and hit a friendly beyond him. The wolf was nearly in the center of the column. The decision was taken out of his hands a second later as Stevens managed a nearly miraculous one handed shot up through the bulk of the wolf. It froze for a moment before collapsing its massive bulk onto the wounded man.

And then all was still. The jungle noises, gone silent at the advent of the attack, began to slowly return to life. All returned to normal, but with the addition of the moaning and groaning of the wounded and the weeping of a man who had lost his sister.

Heart heaving with excessive adrenaline, Regi took a look at the creatures as he helped several others to roll the beast off Stevens. Seven foot high at the shoulders and weighing nearly 600 pounds. Stevens was still alive beneath that bulk, but it had certainly done him no favors. Multiple cracked ribs to go with his broken arm.

He sighed and got ready for the inevitable. “Report.”

Good old reliable Sven stepped up “Four wounded, one dead, one missing.”

Regi nodded, it had been ridiculously fast, the wolves had exploded into motion inside the outer edge of the motion wards and moved in close where the danger of friendly fire had been extremely high. Wait! He turned sharply to Sven, “One missing?”

Sven gestured to the jungle side opposite the attack. Walking over Regi could see a line of deep paw prints, a foot to a foot and a half long, coming out of the jungle before disappearing back into it with slightly deeper prints.

“Paws are quite a bit larger than those others. Maybe half again as large. Smart bastard too. He waited for us to key in on the attack then slipped in from behind for his mouthful. No fight, no fuss. Motion wards are still active and he didn’t seem to care.”

Knowing it was a lost cause Regi still pulled out another small broom. This one with a human form carved into the broom head. Pulsing a bit of will down his arm he waved it gently back and forth. Other than the group of men and women around him it detected nothing.

It only picked up the living afterall.

“It’s not just a dangerous new species, Regi’s deep voice was stable but tinged with sadness and regret. “It’s that one of them showed surprising intelligence. We tracked it a bit, the big set of paws split off from the rest of the pack. Two sets waited in ambush beside the path while the third waited for them to attract our attention. It organized a distraction and it worked.”

“Animals could be clever in the old world Regi, I remember reading that polar bears would double back and ambush those tracking them. It’s clever but intelligence isn’t really the right word.” Timothy objected.

“I don’t have much in the way of evidence, Timothy, but I don’t think it’s that simple. We have magic, can myths be far behind? It felt too smart. Waiting till they were inside the wards, directing our attention one way while it killed silently and walked back out through the wards without a fuss. No, this is more than just animal instincts. More like a mythical beast.”

Timothy had to regretfully consider that. He had watched some real myths forming recently. Regi with his instincts had suggested with far less evidence something that Timothy was still not ready to commit to.

“I lost two good people. Karen and Derek. “ He sighed “There names are on the Obelisk, We will remember them.”

“We remember.” The rest of the room echoed respectfully.

A few moments of silence lingered in the air as they each thought over the other names that had been added to that stone.

“You brought back one of these wolves' bodies I trust?” Timothy asked.

“Of course, heavy damn thing.”

“I’ll try to make you a species marker later. It’ll take me a bit. A lot of other things on my plate at the moment. Unless you want to push it to the front of the list?”

Regi and Pa shared a glance before Pa began to speak. “Maybe, maybe not. Why don’t you go next. How is your little cold war with Bensen going?”

“Decent. That bastard adapts fairly quickly within certain limits. I don’t even attempt to use the original distracting fields anymore. Bensen started flooding the immediate surroundings of his worshipers with his Presence. It works surprisingly well at disrupting any delicate magical effects. The key word being delicate.” As with any arms race it hardly stopped there.

“I moved on to sparkling lights. They were a lot of fun for a while. Hey, isn’t that shiny? Look a little closer, closer, closer still. Looking up after fifteen minutes have gone by wondering what just happened. Hard to beat the classics. Hard to counter them as well. The effect was localized on the light source, not on the targets inside his Presence.” Timothy took a second to grab a mouthful of water.

“Then he countered them. He expanded his presence to fill the entire temple room.” Timothy pointed in the vague direction of the festering sore that was the temple below them. “So I aimed the sparklies at his services in Templeton. Much harder to block out when it's from the edge of the forest several football fields away. It was a bit risky to have a small group run a partial circuit of the town, but Arthur agreed with me that it was necessary. Hopefully Bensen still thinks I need those runes carved into trees to focus my magic.” He gave a half bow to the right. “Thanks for running that, Arthur. I am sorry for your wounded.”

“They will recover, and it’s worth it if you keep the clown off balance. Worth it and then some.”

“Agreed. Bensen countered the sparklies with cloth walls. Cloth we traded him, actually. Resplendent with iconography and exuberant excesses. They look amazing frankly, and it took him over a week to put it together. He took an outdoor square and made it decidedly less outdoorsy. We made a handsome profit on the sale too!”

“Then I moved to ground texture. Small patches of roughness introduced to the floor making it deeply uncomfortable and distracting when kneeling. He hasn’t managed to deal with this one yet. He will though. I am counting on it. It’s working, he is spending far more of his faith on defending against my harassment then he is getting out of the group below.” Not to mention the steady work he had been doing to that statue. It was starting to show a bit of age despite the passive restoration.

“Do you think he knows that?” Jenney asked.

“I don’t think it matters if he does. Neither his ego, nor his magic style will let him back out of the fight.”

“Then what is the point? I thought we were trying to get rid of him?” Jenney demanded.

“If he would agree, I would agree, Jenney. But since he won’t I have to settle for decreasing the amount of gas he has in the tank. Each service was storing up more and more power in the Statue. Now he has to use some of that power on maintenance. The services add to his reserves while his wildlife wards and anti disease wards take away from them. He was still making a profit.”

“Was? So now he is losing money, err belief, every month?”

“Unfortunately not, If you consider the people below vs the entire town. It's a pretty small number. I am forcing him to spend more than he gets from our malcontents but it is a small cost compared to the bulk of people he still has. He is still running in the green, just less green than before he messed with us.”

“If Regi’s fears are realized he, like us, might have to start spending more energy on defenses. Belief profits or losses aside I would like to think I am also taking up alot of his time. More of his than mine, I hope. Once I had the general tricks prepared I generally only use them the first time. Then I pawn it off on Arthur. He enjoys messing with the guy anyway.”

“That I do!” Arthur’s normally ironbound face was split by a mad grin, “If you have more tricks by all means send them my way. I have not had this much fun in years. Makes me feel like a little kid engaged in a prank war.”

The laughter did not last long, but it was a welcome change. Too much to be sad about had occurred recently. Life and love were cut short, but there was a responsibility to the living to carry on. They could not let tragedy shut them down. Laughter was a cleansing light that restored sanity and pushed back the tides of grief. Pushed back, not erased. It wouldn’t go away entirely, nor should it. Such was the cost of leadership.

“Ok, ok, I get it. You’re enjoying screwing with him and it’s working even if its not critical damage. That doesn’t seem to be enough in the long term. The man is a serious threat, what can we do about that?” Jenney was like a dog with a bone, unwilling to let it go.

Timothy held back a sigh. He had planned out a long term goal. He even started on it. He was artificially aging Bensen using his own statue as a voodoo doll. But the plot would take years to come to fruition. Maybe a decade or more. Enough time for new talents to rise up and protect the people of Templeton when he died. It was much too far out to discuss. Not to mention the needs of secrecy. If Bensen figured out he was doing this, he would find a counter. Thankfully, a belief in one's own invincibility left some rather large blind spots.

This was not going to be pleasant. Still it had to be done. “Well, his power comes from belief. If we kill all the people who believe in him then he won’t be a danger. Do you want that Jenney?”

“Of course not! Why would you even say that?”

“Then what else. Kill him personally? Would you like me to be an assassin, Jenney?” The hypocrisy burned in his belly.

“Stop it Timothy. I get it! No! I don’t want anyone to die. I just want him not to be a jerk. Is that too much to ask?”

He softened his tone, he had made his point. “Unfortunately yes, Jenney. It is too much. Crime has been a problem for all of recorded history. From ten commandments to the epic of Gilgamesh. Forcing people to change rarely works. In this case it's even worse, we can’t imprison him or penalize him for bad behavior. Without him Templeton dies and everyone in it. He holds back the beasts and disease.”

“Why would he change? Nothing motivates him to do so. Being what he is, is working! On top of that his ego, and the magic it spawns, will not let him acknowledge a mistake. If he has not made any mistakes why would he bother to change?”

“..So we let him do whatever he wants to the people who live there? And now to some of our own people?” She spoke softly, so very softly that it was barely audible.

“We do not LET him do it, Jenney,” Pa spoke to the pregnant silence. “Don’t take responsibility for others' choices. They have the freedom to choose as much as we do. Sometimes that means they choose badly. On the other hand, what we are doing now does reduce his capacity for poor behavior. We have made it cost ineffective for him to spread his religion while reducing the amount of time he has to act up. In effect keeping him too busy to misbehave.“ Mostly too busy, Timothy reflected. The absolute made him nervous. He did not want Bensens blind spots to become his own. He checked for any changes ‘religiously.’ Even in his own head that irony was almost too much.

“It’s not enough… “ She let out a sigh.

“Maybe not little sister,” Regi ground out.

“But it's what we have.”