Lillene

Enjoy!

Serenity couldn’t hear what the short dryad whispered to the guards’ leader, but he could see that the dryad allowed her past him. She scurried into the room, then hurried towards the four dryad elders. Serenity noticed that she carefully avoided the tiled area, but that only made sense; whether or not it was in use, crossing a rune or ritual circle was to be avoided when possible. Even if it was safe, stepping on it could damage the setup.

The dryad was short, barely coming up to shoulder height on any of the other dryads, but she definitely seemed to be an adult. She was also quick, darting across the room at a run even when she had to dodge around the guards that had spread to cover the area behind the tiled surface. Other than that, she seemed fairly normal for the dryads, with pale green skin that was less obvious than Legion’s and deep green hair. Her hair was barely long enough to be tied behind her head. She hurried to just behind Elder Omprek, then seemed to duck behind him as if she didn’t like all the eyes that were on her. 

Serenity wanted to know what she was going to say, and this time he was close enough to hear even a whisper, at least with Aide’s assistance. It was amazing what could be done with the right software and Aide had picked up all the image and audio enhancement software he could find. He hadn’t yet adapted it all, but simple audio enhancement was just that: simple.

“Foremost, the Dreaming Tree has woken to nightmares.” Her words were quiet and breathy but understandable. “Elder Jinsa tried to soothe it, then sent me to you.”

Elder Omprek was the Foremost Elder? That seemed like it should be a surprise, but it certainly explained why the others were deferring to him even though he didn’t claim a higher position to Serenity. Serenity couldn’t be certain if that meant he was the top elder for this dome or for the dryads on Berinath as a whole, but either way he was an important figure. 

“Jinsa would not send you without more than that. What did she say the nightmare was?” Unlike the messenger, Elder Omprek did not try to keep his voice down. The first word was loud, before Aide correctly adjusted the gain. “Her exact words, if you can.”

The messenger continued to whisper, but Aide got the volume correct for her even on her first word. It was a little delayed by Aide’s processing, but by no more than a second. That seemed to be plenty of time for Aide to adjust. “She said you’d want them and made me repeat them back to her. Norn-twisted fate laughs as youth’s safety brings joy for the mother and dread from all else. Death’s kind hand can halt the trade yet the price is peace and that will not be paid.”

Serenity hated prophecies and this was the perfect example of why. He couldn’t think of anything else it could be, and like most prophecies it was so vague as to be essentially useless. It also presented itself as what would happen rather than what might happen. He couldn’t tell if the lack of useful detail was simply because most seers couldn’t look farther or if they didn’t try. They couldn’t all be cursed the way Rissa’s family had been; maybe they saw the most likely future or perhaps it was the one they wanted. He didn’t know. He just knew that every time he’d heard prophecies from anyone other than Rissa, it was useless like this.

Not that he’d heard prophecies that weren’t about his death all that often. Being the Final Reaper did mean that prophecies that foretold either his doom or the doom he would bring to others came up periodically. That might have influenced how he felt about them; all too many were self-fulfilling. The ones that weren’t were usually because he refused to let them happen.

In some of those cases, they found some other poor sap who sort of fit the prophecy’s vague words and either killed him or triggered him into destroying whoever the prophecy said would die. Serenity knew the Final Reaper wasn’t the only one who ran when they heard a prophecy. It was a good thing that he wouldn’t be on Berinath for all that long; even if the prophecy had nothing to do with him, he’d rather avoid people who believed in following prophecies.

“Even worse than usual,” Elder Omprek quietly muttered. Serenity could understand him only because of Aide’s enhancement. “Thank you for the message. I assume Elder Jinsa told you it was urgent?”

The messenger nodded rapidly. “She said it was something you needed to know immediately. She didn’t say why.”

“Tell her to come find me as soon as she has the Dreaming Tree settled down.” Elder Omprek frowned and looked down as the messenger hurried away. His next words were barely audible, even with Aide’s help. “She wouldn’t send a messenger to interrupt me before she had all the details unless she saw something that matters right now, but I don’t see what it is. We’re investigating a Death mage and possible undead to see if he can be allowed to spend time on Berinath, but that can’t be it; death’s kind hand can’t possibly be a reference to Death magic, can it?”

With those three words called out, Serenity couldn’t convince himself the prophecy was irrelevant any more, not when he was Death’s Incarnate and a Hand of Order. It was far too close, even if he didn’t understand the rest of the prophecy. While it could mean something else, the embrace of death could indeed be kind and did solve many problems, Serenity suspected those words pointed directly at him.

He wasn’t about to offer his assistance. He didn’t know enough and he didn’t feel particularly inclined to help people who were acting the way the dryads did anyway. He was only willing to jump through the hoops here because of Senkovar; he still didn’t really think of the other man as family, but he could at least call him a teacher.

Elder Omprek made a dismissive gesture with his hand, then looked at Serenity. “Please continue with the test. I am very interested in how well you do.”

Serenity might be annoyed at the hoops, but he’d agreed to at least try. He glanced at the ball, then looked again in surprise. It wasn’t the enchanted object he’d assumed; instead, it was literally a living creature. It was probably a plant of some sort, modified by the dryads to do what they wanted. 

It maintained something that looked an awful lot like a spellform with several different input points. Serenity spent a few minutes tracing the spellform around each of them; if he read it correctly, there were half a dozen things the little ball could do. Serenity wasn’t certain what it had been originally, but some creatures, including plants, did have innate abilities they essentially maintained as spellforms. If the dryads had taken one of those and convinced it to do what they wanted, it was little different than shaping a bush to the desired shape.

The individual branches were clearly flexible; they could be moved with any of several different Affinities of magic. Serenity suspected that that was one of the ways to solve the puzzle; it would take a long time and a lot of effort, but it would probably work as long as you figured out the exact configuration that would prevent it from relaxing into a smaller form. That was probably the method they expected him to use, since it was the most visible if you couldn’t directly see the spellform.

Serenity had no intention of using that method. It wasn’t the one Elder Lizven used, either; she’d given that away when she said it was easy if you knew the key to the puzzle. She might not be able to see the spellform; in fact, Serenity suspected she couldn’t. Instead, she knew where to put mana to get the puzzle-creature to respond.

Other than expanding and contracting, Serenity was fairly confident that it could change colors, transition between at least two general shapes, and be locked into a position so that you had to feed mana into a specific spot to make the branches possible to move. Serenity wondered if that was the trick Elder Ibken meant to pull; if he gave the demonstration, he could have locked it so that Serenity had to experiment with it to figure out how to unlock it.

No, that couldn’t be. Elder Ibken was the one who handed it to Elder Lizven to demonstrate, without prompting from Elder Omprek. That might well be standard to avoid that sort of messing around but it meant that he couldn’t expect to mess with the object. The only way that would happen was if Elder Lizven did it, and Serenity could tell she hadn’t. He was probably being too paranoid.

Now that he knew where to put mana, he needed to make certain he used an Affinity that would work. It was a spellform and 

The creature’s Vital Affinity was Life, unsurprisingly. It was convenient, since Serenity didn’t have the Life Affinity himself. It gave him something to compare the Affinities in the spellform to. He probably could have guessed that the most common Affinity throughout the spellform was Life even without the comparison, but it was good to be sure.

The second Affinity Serenity could see was similar, but related more to Solid. At a guess, it was a Wood affinity or something like that. The effects could probably be triggered with a range of Affinities that were related to either Life or Wood; Serenity’s Solid might even have worked if he were skilled enough. He wasn’t confident in it; his Affinity was low and he rarely practiced it. Anything he could do with Solid he generally managed by shaping the mana with Argane then adding the Solid Affinity afterwards. It was not optimal but it was far, far easier and his Arcane Affinity made it far more precise as well.

Other than Life and Wood, Serenity didn’t see any specific Affinities that would work. He was certain there were some, like Fire/Energy, that wouldn’t work well at all; others, like Light or Water might work but wouldn’t be easy. His best bet was probably Arcane.

“Are you going to try or have you given up?” 

Surprisingly enough, that wasn’t Elder Ibken. When Serenity looked up, the Elder that was leaning forward and had clearly just spoken was Elder Inchabe. She tapped her fingers on her leg impatiently. “Staring at it without doing anything isn’t going to get you anywhere. You have to work with the puzzle.”

Serenity shook his head as a grin spread across his face. Yes, he’d spent some time analyzing the puzzle; the clock Aide maintained in the corner of his vision said it had been nearly half an hour. That was far less time than any other method Serenity could think of to understand something like this, especially in the detail he’d needed to get. He was looking forward to the Elder’s surprise.

“Staring at it without doing anything? Is that what you think I’ve been doing?” Serenity shook his head again, deliberately this time. The grin only grew wider. “That’s not what I think I’ve been doing.”

Serenity reached out with his mana and Arcane Affinity and lightly tapped the input that told it to expand. It pulled a little mana from him to fuel the expansion, but it was not really very expensive. He waited until it was the same size as Elder Lizven had shown, then pulled his mana back and triggered the lock. 

As it grew, Elder Inchabe’s eyes widened and her mouth actually fell open a little. The wait was definitely worth it for that alone. 

Elder Ibken and Elder Lizven also seemed shocked, as did the three guards Serenity could see without looking away too far. Foremost Elder Omprek and World Shaman Senkovar Et’Tart were either unsurprised or hid it well. Serenity couldn’t be certain which it was for the Elder, but he suspected that Senkovar had expected exactly what Serenity had done. He’d seen Serenity use magic, after all.

Lillene

Any ideas on what the rest of the prophecy means? 

Norn-twisted fate laughs as youth’s safety brings joy for the mother and dread from all else. Death’s kind hand can halt the trade yet the price is peace and that will not be paid.