Hoard

“I’m sorry I kept this from you, Izayaroa.”

Kaln had rarely put so much effort into his delivery, but the stakes here were far more than just maintaining his relationship with her. He made his voice a performance, but a subdued one: sincere, warm, and above all, calm. That was the crucial thing. The Entity wanted rage, pain, grief, and the dragons chomping at the bit to avenge all that Kaln had suffered, and it had worked skillfully toward that goal. Kaln could feel it churning in them, see it in their aggressive postures. Thanks to Emeralaphine, he’d thwarted the core of the Entity’s gambit by keeping himself serene, denying it the resonance of his own pain to feed the dragons’, but this struggle was ongoing.

And speaking of Emeralaphine, it was not Izayaroa who answered him.

“What, you’re only sorry to her?” the white dragon snorted.

He could feel her as keenly as he did himself. She was the calmest of the six; she’d been concentrating along with Kaln during the Entity’s grand production, and so not only understood more of what was going on here, but hadn’t had her full attention to give to its ploy.

Performance, then. Kaln kept it up, turning back to her and answering with meticulously sculpted delivery. Wryly amused, affectionate, above all countering the furious emotion crackling in the air with his own projected calm.

“Political corruption in the courts of Rhivkabat is her business, you know. And specifically, none of yours.”

“Hmph.” She stuck her nose in the air, but did so while smiling. “Yes, yes, fine, I am certainly not about to trespass upon Izayaroa’s domain. It’s not as if I have any inclination toward mortal politics, anyway.”

Bless her. Between them, they were already beginning to cool the mood.

Izayaroa stepped forward, lowering her head nearly to the floor, and extending her neck toward Kaln until she ever so gently pressed her nose against him. The merest flex of her muscles could have flung him across the vault—were he not an impervious godling, of course—but the touch was tender enough not to even push him over.

“You and I both, and others here besides, have recent cause to refrain from criticizing anyone else’s judgment, husband. Having heard all that, I can understand why you wished to put it behind you.”

“Thank you, love,” Kaln said softly, reaching up to stroke her scales.

He could feel her anger, too, keenly enough to discern its multiple flavors. Her deep, personal offense to learn of such skullduggery in the Empire she had so laboriously built to honor the spirit of law and justice. But also, empathetic pain at what Kaln had suffered, and fury at those responsible. Izayaroa, however, was control personified. Her rage was banked, stored away to be used later.

In that moment, he was more grateful even than usual for her composure. She was another moderating force exactly when he needed one most.

“So,” Vadaralshi interjected loudly, scraping her claws against the floor and lashing her tail, “what are we gonna do about these assholes?”

Naturally, it would be her. Also, now that Kaln focused on them, her siblings were equally quivering with the desire to lash out, which in both cases surprised him. Of course, having been raised on Izayaroa’s lectures, Vanimax might just be offended by lawless abuse of power in the Imperial court, and… Well, apparently he’d made more progress in befriending Pheneraxa than he’d realized. Now, both of them were physically on point as if eager to charge at someone.

“Tiavathyris,” Kaln said aloud, turning to his third wife with a deliberately, carefully gentle smile.

“The assholes in question are, as was just pointed out, within Izayaroa’s domain,” she said, turning a reproving stare upon Vadaralshi. “We will do nothing in Rhivkabat or to any citizen thereof without her blessing, which I do not expect will be forthcoming.”

“But…” Vadaralshi looked aghast, and if anything, even more angry. “But you heard what—”

“Daughter.” Tiavathyris stepped closer to her, and the younger dragon warily leaned away, but her mother only reached out with her neck to gently bump her forehead against Vadaralshi’s. “I know that you lack firsthand experience, but we have spoken on this. Anger makes a fine fuel, but a poor decision maker. Control it, for if it controls you, it will lead you consistently into disaster.”

“Wiser words were never spoken,” the Entity agreed magnanimously. “Vengeance is, as they say, a dish best served cold. I am, of course, speaking as an expert, with full respect for a fellow specialist.”

Naturally; it’d been too much to hope Kaln would be able to calm this down without active resistance from the vengeful god trying to rile it up. If anything, he was lucky to have gone that many seconds before it intervened.

He focused his attention now upon Tiavathyris, taking in the expression she turned upon the floating shadow in their midst, and also the complex layers of emotion he could sense resonating in her. Kaln was…less certain about this than with regard to the other two. However, this was about more than the vibe in the room. There were deeper forces at work, and it was at those the Entity had aimed its gambit. Rather than letting it abuse his bond with the dragons to goad them, he now chose to affirm that bond through a gentler measure: trust.

“That is true, my lady wife. There are none here and few anywhere who can speak with your expertise in the arts of war. What can you tell us about vengeance?”

For a split second the wavering form of the Entity went as still as ice, and Kaln knew he had not only scored another hit, but that it was now aware it was losing ground here.

Tiavathyris’s deep current of feeling, as usual, was too complex and nuanced for him to analyze in any great detail, but from her face alone he could see she understood more than the surface of what was happening here, and what he needed from her.

“I have little but contempt for it,” the legendary warrior dragon stated. “Izayaroa could far better explain the spirit of justice to us so I will refrain, and I would advise any here to attend her on that subject should she deign to share her wisdom. But of revenge, I will say only that it is at best wasted effort, and far too seldom is its outcome even that paltry best. It is an endless cycle of escalation and ruin. And even were all its destruction not enough, in the end…it does not even satisfy. I have seen many a warrior standing in the ashes of their well-earned retribution, seeing nothing but the further retaliation coming back upon them in the future, and feeling only hollow.”

“I’m grateful for this perspective,” Kaln murmured. “I didn’t… I wasn’t facing any of this before. Standing here, now, with it all out in the open, I finally realize the fault was mine.”

“Are you serious?” the Entity exclaimed. “Kaln! Buddy! Look, I know you like your self-deprecation, but come on, man. Nobody deserves what happened to you! Even if you were actually some kind of asshole cruising for a comeuppance, the people who harmed you were specifically unjustified. They had power over you, and used it—for personal gain at best, and honestly, in at least one case nothing but petty amusement! Kaln, you did nothing wrong.”

“Not to them,” Kaln agreed with a smile. “No, you’re right, I would never argue that point. But what I should have done at the first opportunity after I came here was to tell Izayaroa the entire story, and let her handle it. Rhivkabat has laws, and a nearly omnipotent Empress capable of enforcing them when other mechanisms fail. I…put my own feelings above the needs of justice.”

“How can you stand it?” the Entity burst out, all its normal insouciance and jocularity gone. Its shadowy form was roiling so hard it practically shimmered in the glow of the Timeglass. Kaln was struck by the thought that, inveterate deceiver though it was, he was finally seeing the god’s real feelings. There was no malice in its words, but its voice trembled with exactly what it had been trying to stir in all of them: anger, pain, and grief. “They’re out there, walking around, free as birds and happy as clams! It’s not even that they paid no price for mistreating you—no, they get to reap the rewards of power and position as the upper caste of one of the world’s richest empires! Your Lord Scribe, that vile cretin Haktria, they are laughing about what they did and how easy it was. How is it not eating you alive?”

“Because…” Kaln slowed, stopped, then smiled as the realization hit him. “Because I’ve moved on.”

“Well, bully for you,” the Entity spat. “I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to the next poor bastard to get trampled under their fancy boots.”

“This is exactly what I meant. There is recourse for exactly this kind of thing in any just society. I am at fault for not leveraging that at the very first opportunity. I was…I was just too in my own head, too concerned with myself. First with my schemes for revenge, and then with what I could do to help my family.”

He turned back to Izayaroa, who nodded and answered.

“Being a selfish and callous lover is not and cannot be against the law in any reasonable society. As your wife I despise that woman with every fiber of my being, but as Empress I cannot set the precedent of inflicting punishment out of personal dislike—that would be as grave a betrayal of the public’s trust as that which my Lord Scribe committed. You may be assured, however, I will deal with him.”

“Well, there’s that much, at least,” the Entity said bitterly.

“Carefully, and thoughtfully,” Izayaroa continued. “With an eye to the larger picture. Corruption is never the result of one person’s actions, and rarely of just the two involved in a particular illicit deal. Its roots spread like the kudzu vine’s, too numerous and deep to be pulled up. The only solution is to render the soil itself inhospitable to it. I have a great deal of work to do, it seems, to diagnose the sickness in my Empire. There must be investigation before there is punishment.”

“And you really plan to just ignore Haktria?” the Entity demanded. “You wouldn’t even have to break any of your laws to teach her the weight of her actions, you know. All it would take would be to let her know that you know, and that Kaln is important to you. Let her live out her days in the terror of knowing her Empress might, at any moment, change her mind. What could be more fitting than that?”

Izayaroa, like any politician, had an excellent poker face, but Kaln could clearly feel that idea resonate with her—in fact, studying her emotional state, he suddenly suspected she’d already thought of that before the Entity had spoken. Naturally—it was a perfect revenge, one which didn’t even violate her principles.

In fact, he rather liked the idea himself, but right now that could not be the priority. If he was to uproot the Entity’s grip on his life and that of his family, revenge as a concept must be repudiated here.

“All her life means…well, not all of mine, anymore, but that’s still way too many years to waste on the likes of Haktria,” he said, making his calm voice a deliberate counterpoint to the Entity’s agitation. “How long should I have to dwell on the worst moments of my own life? She is beneath me. I have better things to do. There’s no possible satisfaction I could hope for from retaliating against my enemies that’s half as good as the simple happiness I’ve found here in just a few days. I have people to care for, relationships to build and nurture. A home, a place I belong. Work to do, and a bright future to work toward. And it’s so much better I hardly know how to articulate it. Dwelling on revenge is just so…miserable. That might have been enough when I had nothing else in the world, but…I do, now. I’m over it.”

Kaln felt Emeralaphine very gently brush his mind with tendrils of her magic, subtle beneath that carefully woven shield protecting her from the Entity’s notice. She nudged his attention, granting him another boost to concentration from her own power. Following her direction, Kaln recognized a change in the shape of divinity that had developed around them while they’d been talking.

The weight, the indentation it made in reality, was lessened. It was weakening—or, rather than the Entity itself, the amount of sway it held here. At Emeralaphine’s mental nudge, he focused on the…they weren’t connections, exactly, but Kaln found he could conceptualize them as grooves between himself and the Entity. Not chains of magic binding them together, but a shape it had carved in the universe, inclining magic and will to flow along those channels. Encourage Kaln’s own nascent divinity to shape itself in line with the shadow’s.

As Kaln had worked to impose calm, had rejected the Entity’s entreaties for vengeance, they had grown thinner and shallower. He could see, now, just how malleable existence was to the influence of a god…or even a godling, who knew what he was doing and had Emeralaphine the White Wind to guide his hand.

“Do you know what happens to a world where everyone gets over it?” The Entity’s voice was all but openly pleading now. “Do you know what unfolds when power has no checks and no consequences? It’s worse than misery—it’s misery driven by malice. In a world that already has earthquakes and hurricanes and plagues, there are more than enough reasons for people to suffer, reasons no one can do anything about. But on top of that, people suffer by their thousands because other people, people who have power, decide that for whatever reason they want to see it! That is what the world becomes, if those who sit upon their thrones are not taught there is a price.”

“That is the role of law,” said Izayaroa. “What you suggest is only a different flavor of carnage.”

“Law upholding justice is a beautiful fantasy,” the Entity retorted. “Down here in the real world, the law is just another mechanism people use to abuse and exploit whoever they can. If the mistreated don’t retaliate, corruption is as inevitable as arithmetic!”

“You’ve helped me so much,” Kaln said quietly. “All of this, everything I’ve gained here, is thanks to you, and what you did for me. I just…I wish I could offer you anything in return. But it seems all you want is to make everything worse. I won’t throw myself back into this cycle of misery.”

The Entity’s vague shape swirled, losing its last vestiges of definition; it was no longer a man-shaped shadow, but a dark blur quivering in the air before them.

“Don’t do this, Kaln. You can still make everything right. You can make them pay.”

“I don’t care if they pay, I care about what I’ve already paid. I have my life to live.”

Those grooves in creation were thinning to almost nothing. The Entity’s will pressed against the world, trying to carve out those channels, but it was too late. Kaln was slipping from its grasp.

He could feel it even without Emeralaphine’s help, now. The luminosity within him, the rising pressure of his nascent godhead—it was like when he’d sparred with Vanimax, like when he had first turned its full force upon Atraximos. This was a pivotal moment, a point when he formed into who and what he would become.

And he would be a creature of his own creation, not the Entity’s.

“And there is that old proverb about living—”

“Don’t.” The Entity’s voice cracked like a thunderbolt, and darkness roiled throughout the room. The drakes flared their wings and bared teeth, but their elders stood in silence, experienced enough to recognize the final flailing of the defeated. “DO NOT SAY IT.”

The pressure rose in him, and Kaln committed to his choice, his path, his identity and future. He took one step forward, toward the shadow, and spoke his own truth.

“Living well is the best revenge.”

The last vestiges of the Entity’s weight upon reality thinned to nothing. Kaln’s power roared, rising in him as it leaped forward in strength, taking one great step toward its final shape. Free of the shadow’s influence.

Kaln’s shadow snapped free and pooled around his feet where it belonged, severed from the darkness hovering in the air in their midst.

And the darkness…faded.

After its final roar of warning, Kaln had expected it to lash out in fury at his defiance, but the thing diminished until it was a barely perceptible dark blur in the air.

“Why do they always get cold feet?” Its voice was totally unlike its usual upbeat cheer, or its more recent anger; it just sounded tired, and sad. “Every time, it comes to the end and goes wrong. I’m right, you know, and you have more cause to know it than most. But…one little taste of something sweet, and they lose all will to fight.”

“Always?” Emeralaphine asked sharply. “How many times have you done this? Hells uncounted, you absurd creature, have you just been running around the world empowering godlings and then losing control of them?”

“Well, mister family man, I’ll let you off with a warning,” said the Entity, its voice regaining at least a hint of its usual amusement. “Family aren’t the people you choose. Family are the people who happen to you, who it’s not so easy to get rid of…no matter how they may disappoint you. Live your life, Ar-Kaln. Live well, and don’t let anybody push you down again. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

The shadow snapped together, into a single point in the air, then disappeared from their reality with a force that caused the world itself to buckle; space distorted briefly as if viewed through a curved lens, then quickly recovered its normal shape.

With that, it was gone.

“Just so we’re all in agreement,” said Pheneraxa, “that last part was definitely a threat, right?”

“You handled that extremely well, husband,” said Emeralaphine.

“Thanks to you.” Kaln turned to her and bowed, giving her a flirtatious smile up through his lashes in the process. “Thank you, Emeralaphine. I could never have handled that without your help.”

“What? When?” Vanimax demanded. “She didn’t do anything!”

“Emeralaphine is, if not the greatest mage alive, a strong contender for the position, my son,” Izayaroa said with some asperity. “That you didn’t see her do anything means little.”

“I am pleased to assist you, husband,” the white dragon said primly. “Rarely do I deign to guide the uninitiated, but you are gratifyingly clever and quick to learn. Thanks to you I find myself beginning to recall what a pleasure it can be, to work with those of lesser expertise but agile minds. Now then! Of more immediate concern, in light of that silly thing’s parting shot, I wish to warn you an important detail about the nature of gods.”

“I’m all ears,” he promised.

“Nature appears to abhor an absolute. When it comes to gods, beings whose essential nature is to reshape reality, this manifests in certain natural principles imposing balance upon them. In the case of a particularly weak god such as that one, this balance takes the form of, in a word, invulnerability.”

“That is true, I have observed it myself,” Tiavathyris agreed. “To be clear, no deity is a simple thing to challenge, but it is counter-intuitively true that the greater gods with their legions of followers are often more vulnerable to direct opposition. With the small, singular ones, bound to nothing, floating around the world at liberty… Well, they are somewhat easier to keep out than their more powerful counterparts, but there is often nothing that can be done to meaningfully harm them.”

“I see,” Kaln murmured, frowning. “Well…not that I particularly want to harm it, anyway, but that is still valuable to know.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten to the relevant part, husband,” said Emeralaphine, arching her neck. “Remember: balance. Invincibility is one of those absolutes I just told you nature abhors—and so it, too, has a counter. Gods such as Tiavathyris describes, which I believe includes our new friend, there, are often more constrained by their divine aspects, whereas the greater gods may have more agency and freedom to act.”

“Ah,” said Pheneraxa. “So Kaln’s well-meaning attempts to persuade it were probably wasted breath, then. The tiny vengeance god can’t stop being vengeful.”

“Which is precisely my concern,” Emeralaphine continued. “That thing is more locked to patterns than most similar beings, and its pattern is based at least in part around revenge. You just repaid its help by repudiating its core value, husband. In light of its final words… I suspect we are now dealing with a true vendetta—a grudge that entity is simply not capable of laying down, even if it might wish to. It has to retaliate, just as you have to breathe.”

“Ohhh,” Vadaralshi said slowly. “So you went and scored us a nemesis. Good job, Pants.”

“Cease your pointless noisemaking, brat,” Emeralaphine said irritably, thumping her tail against the floor for emphasis. “This—assuming my hypothesis is correct—is simply that god’s nature, and not Kaln’s fault. On the contrary, his handling of it has probably spared us an even worse fate than having to fight it in the future. Remember, the core of its plan was to raise Kaln up as a dependent, subordinate god—one whose aspect includes control of dragons. The damned thing just tried to enslave all of dragonkind, beginning with us.”

“Hey, that’s right!” Vadaralshi said, putting on an outraged expression. “It can’t do that! That’s only okay when we do it!”

Tiavathyris turned a baleful look on her; Pheneraxa hid her grin under a wing, but Vanimax snorted aloud in amusement, earning a similarly grim stare from his own mother.

“She is right, though,” Izayaroa said. “For such an affront I would feel the need to retaliate, even if the shadow did not do so first. We should be mindful of Tiavathyris’s warning: the creature appears to operate through manipulation and the use of catspaws. If it attacks us, it will not be directly.”

“I am reasonably confident in our ability to contend with mortal and immortal pawns,” Tiavathyris agreed. “We must not become complacent, but considering who we are, vigilance and our own skills will fare well against any foes. With regard to the god itself, we shall have to rely upon Emeralaphine’s expertise.”

“You may rest assured I will devote myself to working out a way to deal with it,” Emeralaphine promised, stepping forward into the central space. “That will be my very next priority. In the immediate term…”

She lowered her head, pushing it forward, and gently nuzzled at Kaln, as Izayaroa had. Well, sort of; Emeralaphine was less gentle, to the point she would definitely have knocked him off his feet had his imperviousness to dragon attack not kept him upright and immobile.

“I’m proud of you, husband,” she praised. “And, with every hour I get to know you better, increasingly eager to watch you become everything you have the potential to be.”

Kaln leaned forward, spreading his arms to embrace her nose. “I’d have been lost without you, Emeralaphine. For that and many other reasons, I hope I never have to be without you again.”

He felt them approach with his mind, before he felt them pushing on him. Izayaroa and Tiavathyris both mimicked the gesture, leaning down to gently nuzzle him. Thus he found himself pleasantly squished between three enormous snouts covered in smooth, iron-hard scales. And also inundated with hot breath that smelled strikingly of molten copper.

“Oh, get a room, you four,” Vadaralshi groaned.

“They have a room,” Pheneraxa said wryly. “This one. I think I, for one, will take myself elsewhere. I should check on my princess, anyway.”

“Your princess,” Vanimax growled.

“She is now,” Pheneraxa said sweetly.

There ensued multiple aggressive hisses, someone’s claws scraping the floor, and heavy footfalls as one of them charged the other.

All three of Kaln’s wives sighed in irritation, which for him was like being inside a very hot tornado.

This…was not at all a future he had ever envisioned for himself, but now that he was here, he couldn’t imagine wanting any other.