It took five days to pull the pieces together to catch Acolyte Varandaeon in a way that he wouldn’t be missed.

The best way to do that, of course, was to have it seem like everything was normal. Pick him out of his daily life, get the information, then return him. It was a plan that Serenity would never have tried on his own, but with the help of Ekari, Rourke, and Ita, it seemed possible.

It was Ita’s plan to begin with. Rourke and Ekari had each modified it a bit, but the core of the plan remained.

Five days was not enough time for Blaze to finish his task of clearing the compulsions off of Rourke, but it was enough time for him to get a good start. Rourke was far less controlled than High Priestess Karin, but that was only to be expected. Rourke was only a Priest, after all.

The fact that Blaze had found fewer compulsions on Rourke than Priest-Healer Tirina was strange, but perhaps there was something about being a Healer that made Lykandeon restrict her more. The important thing was that Rourke knew his limitations; he’d been working around them for years.

The fact that Blaze was able to loosen them enough for Rourke to talk about them openly created some surprises. Rourke wasn’t simply a Priest; he was a Priest-Inspector, in charge of the “Pillars of the Faith”; once he explained what that was, Serenity translated it as a sort of internal Inquisition. His duty was to look for Priests doing things they shouldn’t.

He was only permitted to act to handle Priests committing actions that were specifically disallowed. There was a whole complex of compulsions around that; Blaze said that untangling it would take time. Rourke knew a great many secrets that he couldn’t directly act on, but with Blaze’s help he could at least speak about them now.

Serenity had to ask about what Rourke had revealed at their first meeting. The “Separation” of novices was also handled by the Inspectorate, though they actually referred very few to “Final Separation”; Rourke admitted that while he preferred it, he only had partial control of the Inspectorate; people were people and he couldn’t control everything. The main way he was able to keep his people working in the channels he wanted with regards to Separation was that the Priest-Separators were a competing branch of the Church. He couldn’t prevent people being sent to them or the Legions, but he was able to make it as difficult as possible by taking advantage of the rift between the branches.

Rourke could also tell them the reason he’d encouraged them to avoid saying Lykandeon’s name but otherwise speak without wards as long as they were certain no one could overhear: Lykandeon was always listening, but unless you said his name, he rarely heard.

As for other observation, since their group was sponsored by High Priestess Karin, they were being treated as Priests; their observation came under Rourke’s purview. There were occasionally spells listening to the group, but they weren’t actively being watched so most of the time no one was listening at all. The few spot checks were conducted by one of Rourke’s people: Acolyte Deek.

Serenity was amused to find out that Deek’s primary responsibility was actually watching Acolyte Tinar. He wasn’t under suspicion; instead, it was apparently a secret part of the process for gaining a promotion to Priest.

Five days was also not enough time to figure out where the people hidden in the Infirmary came from. Serenity hated leaving them there since it was likely they were from Earth, but removing them was too obvious. The best they could manage was to keep an eye on them, so Ita took on that task when she wasn’t working on the plan to interrogate Acolyte Varandaeon.

Serenity and Rissa went on three tours with Acolytes Deek and Tinar during those five days. None of the locations were picked out by high Priestess Karin; instead, they were all different ‘working’ areas for the Priests of Aeon. Serenity saw many of the different tasks of a civilization in those three tours, all done by people in Priestly robes.

He also saw that none of the assistants were dressed as priests; few were even acolytes. Most, including all of the menial workers, were dressed in simple functional clothing; it was dyed in various bright colors but never the white, black, or burgundy of the Eternal Church. When Serenity asked, he found out that they were the “people of Aeon”, ordinary people who were “granted existence on Aeon by the Eternal One’s grace”. The colors they wore indicated their assigned duties.

Serenity was fairly confident they were the descendants of the people of Karit, which became Aeon when Lykandeon lifted it into the sky. Serenity still wasn’t certain how he’d managed that, but he suspected it had something to do with Lyka’s World Core.

Serenity didn’t find any more hidden Earthlings, but he did find several “off limits areas” that Ekari would investigate when she had the chance; the only one she managed to get into during the down time was the back area of a smithy. It was nothing more than a storage area for raw materials and partially-finished stuff.

On the two days without tours, Serenity read the Book of Karit then visited the Water Gardens. The first section of the Book of Karit was names; it didn’t give lineages or history or anything for the names, it simply listed them. Both Karin and Ekari appeared on the list, as did Rourke and Deek. They weren’t even particularly close to the end. Serenity watched as a name appeared in the Book; it seemed like it was kept current by the magic of the Book itself. In some sense, Karit still existed.

The second section of the Book of Karit was a chronicle of the history of the Kingdom of Karit. It was detailed enough that Serenity knew he didn’t have time to read the whole thing, so he skimmed until he found the first mention of Lykandeon. He had to work through it quickly, but he was able to piece together a rough history for the man’s rise to godhood.

Lykandeon appeared out of nowhere when he conquered a country on the northern end of the land mass that also held Karit. It wasn’t clear if he literally came from nowhere or simply hadn’t been noticed in Karit before then, but the first mention of the name was when he became the ruler of Ssilit. The Chronicler of the time simply noted the regime change without any apparent concern.

There was no mention of a Church.

Over the next forty years, references to Lykandeon and Ssilit became more common. At the end of that time was the first reference to a “strange new religion” that promised its followers Eternal Life. Oddly, there did not seem to be a link between it and Lykandeon in the mind of the Chronicler, but it was noted that the religion came from the north.

Serenity had to skip another twenty years ahead before he found the next important time: Ssilit conquered a country to its north. It seemed that they’d had issues for a very long time; if anything, it looked like the other country attacked Ssilit, but Ssilit won without too much trouble.

Thirty years after that, Lykandeon the Elder abdicated in favor of his adopted son, Lykandeon the Younger. It was reported to be a significant ceremony, but Serenity could see some odd details. The primary one was the note that the Ambassador from Karit died two weeks before the ceremony. The missive from the new Ambassador was included in its entirety; it noted that it seemed like all of the Ambassadors to Ssilit were new. Many of the old Ambassadors seemed to have died at the same time as the ambassador from Karit.

The description of Lykandeon the Younger was also identical to the description of Lykandeon during the war.

Serenity couldn’t confirm that the “abdication” was simply a way of making King Lykandeon seem younger, but it seemed likely. He wasn’t certain why that was desirable; it certainly didn’t play into the “Eternal” part of the Eternal Church.

Serenity paged through the history in the Book of Karit. He didn’t learn much about Karit itself, since that wasn’t what he was interested in, but he was able to track as Lykandeon took most of the north half of the continent over a couple hundred years. It wasn’t clear when Lykandeon took on the rest of the world, but by the time he reached Karit’s border, it was no longer Ssilit on the march.

It was the Eternal Church. Interestingly, that was the name that was used; Serenity hadn’t seen “Church of Aeons” written anywhere in the chronicle.

By then, roughly four hundred years after the first mention of Lykandeon, Karit was larger than Serenity had assumed; it wasn’t simply the scar of a lake he’d been shown. Karit covered the southern third of the continent, roughly the entire scar on Lyka’s surface, including the dead areas.

The Book of Karit detailed a long, brutal war. They were prepared for Lykandeon, but they were also alone against the Church; the presence of the Eternal Church inside their own borders didn’t help. Serenity didn’t like reading it, but he wanted to know his enemy’s capabilities so he read it anyway.

None of it was unusual. If anything, the unusual part was that there seemed to be few people over Tier Five and almost all of them were physical types; what few mages were present seemed to be Skill-based rather than properly trained. If there was a lack of proper magical training, it would explain the prevalence of physical types; they had a better chance to Tier up based on their own effort with relatively limited training, and areas with less magical knowledge tended to focus on physical training anyway.

The only green energy mentioned came near the end when the Eternal Church’s army reached Karit’s capitol. They expected to be starved out and were planning to evacuate as many as possible when the sky turned green and Karit’s barrier fell; the wall turned to rubble at the same time.

That was the last information in the hand of the Chronicler of Karit. After it were only a single note and the surrender itself.

This is the end for Karit. We have no remaining options; we have lost. Our plans to move South and continue fighting are over. We have only one trick left to use. The one they call the Eternal God is coming to accept our surrender. He has said that he wants it written into the heart of our people, the Book of Karit itself.

The heart of our people hates him. We know what he does to those he rules.

Our hatred isn’t enough, but it gives us a choice: do we harness it to resist or do we harness it to kill? I choose the second option. Resistance is futile without outside help and none is coming.

He will have to touch this Book to accept our surrender. That will be my weapon; I will turn our hatred into his death. I do not know what it will cost us, but it is all we have left.

Stranger, if you find this and read it, remember us. We are lost but we have resolved to take our enemy with us.

Princess Karin

Serenity stared at the name that signed the note. Could that possibly be Ekari’s mother? How would she have gone from a princess who hated the Church to one of its High Priestesses?

The only things that spoke in favor of that assumption were the name and the sheer number of compulsions Blaze had found on her. It was possible her daughter’s name also mattered, but surely it was more reasonable to assume that Princess Karin was a relative to High Priestess Karin rather than the same person.

On the other hand, she had called Rourke Captain and sent Serenity to find and read the Book of Karit. She was also not loyal to Lykandeon other than however much she was compelled to be.

He’d have to ask Rourke; he ought to know.

The note had resolved one major question of Serenity’s, at least: the source of the Death magic in the Tower of Broken Swords was the Book of Karit. It clearly hadn’t succeeded in its goal since Lykandeon was still alive, but it had clearly been turned into a weapon of Death.

Serenity was immune to it, of course. He wondered just how dangerous it really was. Perhaps it could still be used for its original purpose if he could remove it from the Tower.