Lillene

Merry Xmas, Happy Holidays, and may you enjoy whichever seasonal events you prefer at this time of year :-)

Enjoy!

“Long enough for a world that is awake and inhabited,” the World Shaman agreed. “So. You are, by the Empire’s standards at least, an unusual Emperor. By my standards, you are an untrained World Speaker but an oddly successful one; at least, I assume that you were awarded your other worlds for helping their World Spirits rather than conquering them?”

“Uh,” Serenity stalled on that question for a moment. Tzintkra and Lyka/Aeon were different from Earth. “Does killing the previous ruler count as conquering it? Tzintkra’s rules were strange and Stojan Aith killed all her competitors, which turned her attack on me into a leadership challenge.” Serenity snorted at Stojan Aith’s paranoia. Yes, it had worked for her for a very long time, but she’d still be alive if she hadn’t attacked him. “Or … hmm. No, I think I was actually awarded the city before she attacked. She didn’t qualify if I was there?”

Serenity reached out to Aide to see if Aide had a better memory of the circumstances, since it was a little fuzzy in Serenity’s memory. 

:I wasn’t with you when you took over Tzintkra,: Aide reminded Serenity. :I have reviewed the Necropolis’s rules, of course. I can guess what happened but I was not there.:

:Please remind me.: Serenity prompted. He wasn’t sure it was important right now, but a reminder seemed like a good idea as long as he was telling the World Shaman about himself.

:Tzintkra’s rules are old and predate the war that destroyed the surface and probably served as cover for Strojan Aith’s acquisition of a World Core fragment to use as an Affinity training aid. At that time, there were two major factions that competed for control of the planet, the Holy and the Damned. While the Holy were dominant, they changed the rules for who could become Planetary Sovereign so that the person who ruled the capital city became Sovereign. There were all sorts of checks and balances around that, but they all assumed that the planet was in a livable state; they fall apart when there are only two cities on the planet.:

Serenity blinked at the explanation. He hadn’t expected Aide to go to the far past to explain the events on Tzintkra.

:Some time after that, the Holy and the Damned fought. It was terrible, bad enough that the World Core has very little information on it. As best I can tell, Tzintkra went from a world that was alive and healthy on the surface with underground caverns filled with deep reservoirs of Death to the blasted wasteland it has for a surface today. Much of the Death that was stored below the surface is gone; Tzintkra does not know where it went directly, but the zones of Death on the surface make it clear that much of it was released to the surface. I suspect this is when Tzintkra Itself was damaged.:

Despite the amount of information Aide was passing to Serenity, Serenity knew that only a second or two had passed in the outside world; Aide was not truly speaking. Serenity didn’t think as quickly as Aide could process information, but it was still a lot faster than speaking, especially when the information came from Aide.

:After the war, what was once a split planet was a planet largely of Death, with only two cities left. The Necropolis was the old capital of the Damned, while the Shining Caverns were new, created in a pocket that never held Death to protect it from the deadly energy on the surface. Tzintkra’s World Core is now split, though it favors Death instead of Life. All of those factors mean that Necropolis is now the World’s capital and therefore the City Lord of the Necropolis is the Sovereign of Tzintkra.:

Serenity remembered what he’d learned on Berinath about the war; the dryads on Berinath were from Tzintkra and fled the “death in life” where mages of unlife controlled the not-quite-living but also not-quite-dead bodies of their puppets. Serenity considered it abhorrent and a perversion of a close relative of his Death Affinity, but he couldn’t deny it happened. Some people would do anything to get themselves power. 

It didn’t really matter how the war happened, not now and not here. It was a long time ago and far away and the only relationship with it that Serenity had was that he’d have Sovereignty shoved at him. He’d have to deal with the fallout at some point; Tzintkra wasn’t really habitable at this point. Perhaps he could make it a true haven for the undead instead of the training planet it was today, but that was a long-term goal. 

:The rules for the Necropolis were that the person with the strongest connection to Death was the City Lord. This is not a good way to choose the ruler; I suspect it dates to the time before the war when strength was needed to hold off the other side. Whatever the reason, Stojan Aith took advantage of it and slowly killed off her competitors until she took control of the city from a skilled City Lord who was not quite ruthless enough. When you came, you did not even have to challenge her to prove your strength; your connection to Death Herself meant that no one else could possibly take the Necropolis from you unless you changed the City succession rules. Stojan Aith’s attack was desperate, to hold onto what she had, but it was doomed to failure before she even started.:

That wasn’t quite how Serenity remembered it, but it lined up well enough that the differences were probably of viewpoint rather than actual fact. Serenity was pretty sure Aide had gotten his information directly from Tzintkra itself during the short visit before the rush back to Earth after his parents’ disappearance.

None of these details seemed important enough to pass along to the World Shaman right now, since none of them materially changed what he’d already said. None of them had to do with talking to worlds, either. In fact, the only thing Serenity could see as relevant was something Aide hadn’t mentioned, because it wasn’t directly about Tzintkra’s past and how he became Planetary Sovereign there. “Come to think of it, there is one other time I’ve talked to a World, though I wasn’t the one who spoke up first; Berinath was. She warned me about her dryads and said something about not understanding why her sister trusted me, but that she trusted her sister. I think she meant Tzintkra? I didn’t think Tzintkra identified as female?”

Senkovar’s expression shifted slightly, but Serenity couldn’t tell what it meant. Aide didn’t seem to know either; he could track the minute muscle movement but he didn’t add any information on its meaning to Serenity’s overlay. “You were granted no special rights, correct?”

Serenity nodded. “It was right after I arrived. I recognized Tzintkra in the sky, then Berinath replied to me. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t someone nearby who was talking out loud; she managed it so well that it actually sounded like someone speaking out loud.”

“Surprising that she’s that good,” the World Shaman muttered. “She’s young. Young as a World and even younger as an inhabited World. I wonder if one of their Tree-Speakers has learned to talk to her; that would explain a great deal.” 

The World Shaman refocused on Serenity. “How did they treat you? They respect their Forest Speakers greatly. How they might react to someone who speaks to their World I do not know.”

“It didn’t come up,” Serenity temporized as he tried to come up with a reason not to say the full truth. In the end, he couldn’t find one; it wouldn’t be difficult to find out he was a Death Mage after his fame from the Tutorial and he didn’t really care if people knew his Vital Affinity was magic instead of Life. 

It might be a good thing, really; he hated the idea of being taken for an undead. That wasn’t who he was anymore. He wasn’t the Final Reaper. That was an unfair comparison, but the dryads’ reaction certainly hadn’t made it easier to look at people making that mistake about him calmly. He didn’t mind other undead, but he wasn’t one and didn’t want to be assumed to be one.

“The opposite, if anything. They decided I was undead and offered to help return me to life.” Serenity knew he wasn’t managing to keep his feelings out of his voice. This wasn’t a topic he could talk about dispassionately; the best he could manage was controlling his anger. “They wanted to help me by returning me to life. Then they’d expect me to pay off my debt to them for the cost.” 

Serenity’s eyes blazed with the anger he felt over their interference. “I’m not undead. It wouldn’t have helped and might very well have hurt. They wouldn’t listen to me. Yes, I use Death magic, but I wasn’t part of the problem on Tzintkra and I certainly wouldn’t do what they did.” 

Serenity managed to stop himself before the words “not now” escaped. The Final Reaper might well have done quite a few of the things the Damned of Tzintkra had done. He’d destroyed worlds, after all, or at least wiped them clean of life. He wouldn’t have created puppets, though Serenity couldn’t be certain if that was more because he couldn’t, because of his morals, or because it was significantly less efficient than actually killing them and raising the corpses. Serenity suspected that the last was the most important, though his morals might well be part of the reason he’d refused to push his Concept in a direction that would allow the creation of puppets.

World Shaman Senkovar Et’Tart gave Serenity a long, searching look. Unexpectedly, his eyes glowed for a moment. It wasn’t the same blue glow as the active form of Serenity’s magesight; instead, it was a rich green. It was otherwise very similar. Serenity’s suspicion that the World Shaman was checking his Vital Affinity was confirmed by his next words. “You’re definitely not undead. I’d believe Arcane, like your World’s Core Crystal, but not Death. How could they possibly get that wrong?”

“A lot of Death-attuned mana and no Life Vital Affinity?” Serenity shrugged. It wasn’t a new problem, though he hadn’t expected to deal with it so soon after his return back in time. He’d now had to cope with it twice, though he’d been able to talk the Traa out of their mistaken assumption. “I have a very high Death Affinity. Apparently that was enough.”

“Hm. Show me your aura,” the World Shaman commanded. “Your aura control is excellent, so I haven’t had the chance to examine it.”

Serenity didn’t see any reason not to. Yes, he’d be revealing some information about himself but once again it was information that wasn’t that hard to get. He’d get the same information about the World Shaman as well. There were a couple of questions Serenity wanted answers to but hadn’t found a way to ask and his aura might well contain the answers.

Serenity felt the World Shaman’s aura meet his own aura at the midway point between them. He’d clearly been controlling his aura as well. It felt deep in a way that Serenity hadn’t really felt from most of the people since he came back in time; there was a flavor of Time that spoke of experience rather than the actual Affinity. It was clearer in the World Shaman’s aura than Serenity remembered it being for Vengeance, but that was probably his far stronger Time Affinity. It wasn’t stronger, after all, just more obvious.

Lillene

This chapter was hard to write - not because of the new information but because of how much old information there is in it. The thing is, a lot of this happened a VERY long time ago in the series, so a refresher is important, but I don’t want to get too repetitive or info-dump-y. Hopefully having Aide put the pieces together in a way that they haven’t been before with a little new info worked.