After the End: Serenity

They didn’t finish the delve that day. Instead, they came back the next day and started from the beginning. Serenity went on every delve Rissa did for the entire time they were on Imperius, just in case.

There were no more attacks.

The celebration of Cymryn’s investiture was a series of public parades followed by something that felt almost like a fair, except with the food and drink provided by the Emperor in celebration. There were a number of ceremonies that felt vaguely religious, but the primary ritual seemed to be offering a small portion of each dish and each drink onto the Emperor’s fire by each participant as they were served. It made the fact that the Emperor provided the food even more interesting; he seemed to be farming Faith.

Serenity didn’t see anyone else who seemed to have the same doubts; instead, almost everyone seemed cheerful about the holiday and the free food. Serenity knew he probably shouldn’t be surprised; he’d seen the same sort of ritualistic offering done for food the Emperor hadn’t provided as well. It was simply the way it was done in the Empire. If the people in the capitol were a bit more serious and reliable about it, well, that made sense. They were far closer to the Emperor.

While much of the city’s population seemed to be out celebrating, many of the delvers weren’t. They stopped for food or fun either before or after a delve, and many of the delves were shorter than normal, but no one wanted to give up a delve slot. If you did that, someone else would take it and you simply wouldn’t get the rewards from the delve. Many people were willing to do a shorter run, but few actually gave up their slot and those were grabbed immediately by people who seemed to have shown up specifically for the chance.

Serenity was certain there were other people working. Everyone who was selling things the fair-goers might want was definitely working, as were the people who were serving the food and all of the priests. Serenity didn’t stop at any of the temples that were dotted around the city, but he definitely noticed that they were all busy.

At the end of the day, they were invited to a smaller party by Cymryn himself. Serenity wasn’t certain he wanted to go, but he was talked into it. By the time he’d congratulated Cymryn and stayed the couple of hours everyone else insisted was necessary, he had to admit that it wasn’t bad, at least not for a party where there were lots of people he didn’t know.

There didn’t seem to be any other delvers present, but there were quite a few theoretical mages and some of them were very happy to talk about magic with him. There was even one other mage that used spellforms; his were less advanced than Serenity’s, and he wasn’t nearly as concerned about spell spillover from a failed spell collapsing, but he had some really interesting ideas on how to fit the spellforms together and avoid Affinity interference. Serenity ended up talking until the other mages left, at which point the party was essentially over anyway. He didn’t learn anything really new, but it was an excellent refresher on some techniques for mana management he’d mostly forgotten about.

Senkovar and Blaze managed to avoid telling him they told him so. Rissa didn’t; she rubbed in the fact that he’d actually enjoyed the party at every chance she had for the next two days. She stopped just before it went from amusing to annoying.

With the party over, they were off to Eadsyt. There would be a small stop at Suratiz to return Senkovar, but that was all.

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A knock at Blaze’s door pulled his attention away from the treatise on reducing polymerization byproducts from hyper-regeneration spells with antagonistic elements contesting the relinking of injuries forcibly delinked through trauma. Blaze didn’t know why the scholars had to overcomplicate titles when there was an easier way to say it; it was about reducing the side effects of healing spells used on wounds with continuing damage from things like acids, heat, or clinging magic. Each damage source had to be handled slightly differently, which made the title even more nonsensical.

“Come on in!” Blaze called out and set the treatise to the side. It had some interesting ideas but was clearly written by someone who’d only studied the reactions in a controlled environment, such as after a delver was stabilized and out of the dungeon. It was useful for long term care but not relevant to most of the quicker healing Blaze did and he had other ways to manage long-term effects.

The door quietly clicked open and revealed World Shaman Senkovar. He stepped into the room and took a moment to look around before he found a chair and sat where he could comfortably talk to Blaze. “Do you have some time?”

Blaze nodded. “I’m just doing some reading. What do you need?”

It couldn’t be healing; Blaze knew Senkovar enough to know that he would be more direct if he needed healing. Perhaps he wanted a favor? Was there someone on Suratiz that needed help?

“You know Serenity better than I do.” Senkovar’s eyes fell to the papers in front of Blaze for a moment before he raised his gaze back to Blaze’s face. “Have I made a huge mistake by arranging for him to take Suratiz? Have I invited in something worse than the Empire without realizing it in my desire to return to ways that not even I remember?”

Blaze’s first reaction was to ask how he would know, but that was disingenuous; he knew why Senkovar was asking Blaze. Blaze wasn’t from Earth and he wasn’t a worshiper of Serenity, but he probably knew Serenity better than anyone else who had kept his independence. Who else could Senkovar trust?

Blaze leaned back in his seat. “Serenity is the only powerful man I know who truly prefers to let others find their own fates, so long as they choose it. He’s happy to give advice and teach, but he won’t stop you from doing something you truly want to even if he thinks it’s a terrible idea. He also doesn’t directly desire power, though he does want the freedom to choose what he wants to do and protect what’s his, which requires power. He’s willing to take the steps and make the sacrifices necessary for that. Does that sound like the kind of man you want running your world?”

Senkovar was silent for a long time. He stared at nothing, clearly deep in thought.

Blaze returned to his reading; Senkovar would interrupt him when the man was ready.

“He is powerful,” Senkovar finally said. “Powerful enough that, with time, he might rival the Emperor himself. I doubt he could kill him today, but in time…”

Blaze shook his head. “Give Serenity time to plan and he’d find a way, yet you will never see that happen. Not with this Emperor. So long as he doesn’t threaten Serenity or what Serenity considers his, Serenity will not deliberately act against the Empire or the Emperor. That’s not why you’re worried about his power.”

Senkovar took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he stared directly at Blaze. “He is Death Incarnate. What have I invited into my world? How will that change us all?”

Blaze didn’t remind Senkovar that he knew that when he invited Serenity in; he was certain that Senkovar was already beating himself up for that. He didn’t want to let Senkovar off the hook entirely, but at the same time he didn’t think that there was truly all that much to worry about. “If I had to guess, I’d guess that Death Affinities are about to become more common on Suratiz. Your Asura’s Trial will do that. Beyond that, I doubt there will be much effect from his Incarnate. Tell me, did you realize you met Death Herself while you were on Earth?”

Senkovar frowned. “No? I didn’t … wait, you can’t mean her.”

Blaze grinned at that. “A short, slim lady with a tremendous enthusiasm for life, a huge well of Faith, and an intense feeling that she is more dangerous than she looks if you catch her at the wrong moment? Perhaps with the surname Black?”

Blaze had encountered the phrase “fish out of water” while he was on Earth. He’d already known what it meant, but it was certainly amusing to see Senkovar do a good impression of it. “Yes, her. I know you two met.”

“Surely not,” Senkovar started. “I know who you mean, but … she felt like Serenity and was a delver. I suppose I only assumed she followed him instead of the other way around. She came to him for help!”

Blaze chuckled. He’d seen people dropped into the pool of weirdness that Serenity created around himself more than once, but it never got old. It seemed somehow especially satisfying to see the self-assured Senkovar flabbergasted. “Yes, her. I talked to her a few times about what she actually wanted. She’s trying to learn about Earth’s humanity because they’re such a large part of Serenity and she wants to understand her Incarnate. In many ways, I think that’s the best answer to your question; you elevated a man who can make Death Herself try to become something more by his own example. Is that what you want for your people?”

Blaze hadn’t realized how strongly he felt about Serenity. Maybe he should take Ita up on her offer to follow her Shameful One; he certainly felt positively enough about the man, even if Blaze wasn’t really all that much of a delver himself.

More than that, his time with Serenity and Amaia Black had taught Blaze some things about Death. His calling often meant pushing it back, but that didn’t make Death his enemy. Amaia did not care when people died and didn’t see any need for it to be hurried along. She also didn’t particularly care about the bodies of the dead; she wasn’t human enough for that. To her, a body was simply matter.

She didn’t even care about what happened to the spirits of the dead. They could be used for undead or returned to life; that didn’t matter to her. The only time she cared was if they were truly destroyed and that was hard enough to do or perhaps rare enough that all she’d said on the topic was that she “dealt with it when it happened.”

Even so, Blaze wasn’t certain he actually wanted to worship a deity. His peoples’ deity turned out to be nothing more than a greedy if powerful mad scientist. While Blaze didn’t think Serenity would ever go that way, he still couldn’t quite bring himself to actually worship the man.

Perhaps that was because he knew Serenity’s flaws as well as his virtues. Serenity needed people to keep him grounded and Rissa shouldn’t have to do it alone.

Senkovar shook his head. He didn’t seem to mean anything specific by the gesture; it seemed to be more disbelief than anything else. He rose from the chair wordlessly, but stopped right before he left the room. “I still can’t believe that girl is Death. Death shouldn’t be so happy, at least not when she isn’t surrounded by her element. The idea that she is tells me I need to think more; if Serenity had almost any other Incarnate, I’d be celebrating right now. Perhaps I should be.”