The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (62 page)

“Therefore, many of us stand ready to provide you with further assistance, all of you, within reasonable limits.  For assistance beyond reasonable limits, you’ll need a consensus in The Assembly of The Just Alliance.”

“Wow.” Six marveled.  “We realize the full value of your offer, and we thank you and every other who offers us their assistance.”

“Well said, my son.” Mark nodded.  “You speak for all of us in that.”

“I for one ask for knowledge;” Six stated with a formal bow.  “And an intercession with the Triax; their gods and their people.  I wish to know all that is known about travel, navigation, and warfare in the void.  I don’t want to start working on it for another eight days, but at that point I’ll want to learn it as quickly as possible.”

“I share his request, and have no wish to delay starting work on it beyond tomorrow.” Kragorram stated.  “I am particularly interested in the Triax’s knowledge of the construction and propulsion of void-craft.  I’m glad we had the chance to design our craft in isolation, as we may have come up with different solutions, but now that I have access to it, I want their knowledge and the benefit of their experience.”

“I wish to learn from the gods and mortals who are most skilled at Shape-Shifting.” Fire stated.

“I wish to know, in full, the Prerequisites for Divinity.” Mark stated.  “All the gods are different, it seems, but there must be a set of standards that you use to decide who’s Ascended and who hasn’t.”

A moment passed, but there were no more requests.

Povon gave the dragon equivalent of a shrug.  “I think we can do everything else we want to do without the help of the gods.  Maybe you could help us get it done a little quicker, but we’re already worried about achieving things faster than we can properly manage the change, so we might as well pass on that.”

“Most excellent.” Neela stated with a smile.  “As you know, we still encourage mortals as a whole to be as self-sufficient as possible.  Your requests are reasonable, easy to fulfill, and could only be granted by the gods, for the most part.”

She addressed Fire and produced a small flat oval silver plate with several lines of text engraved on it.  “There’s an abundance of knowledge about Shape-Shifting available from mortals.  I offer you the names and addresses of the most skilled twelve.  If they cannot or will not give you the knowledge or techniques you need to fulfill your goal, whatever it may be, then call upon me again and I’ll see what we can do.”

“Thank you.” Fire said with a military bow, then accepted the plate.

“The Prerequisites for Divinity, as they’re commonly known.” Neela said as she handed another engraved silver plate to Mark.  “But the term is inaccurate.  Only some of the gods have every single one of the Prerequisites, and almost all of them have other, individual abilities that are certainly divine in magnitude, yet are not considered Prerequisites.  Often there’s been debate among the pantheon as to whether a Candidate has achieved divinity, and Glup of the Zurb is the final arbiter.  Sometimes he’ll decide when the question has barely been raised, and at other times he lets the rest reach consensus, and sometimes he lets the debate rage on until it’s obvious that no consensus will be reached before he decides.”

“Then I’d like to talk to him, if I can.” Mark said as he read the plate.  “I understand that I’ll need another god to translate for him, as well.”

“I’ll pass on your request, though no one can say whether Glup will decide to accede to it.  He wasn’t one of the gods who offered to help you.” Neela told him, then turned to Kragorram and included Six with a look.

“I’ll arrange for the gathering of the little knowledge we Kellarani have of void warfare, and arrange for a liaison with one or more of the Triax to give you what they know of it.  You’ll be contacted to arrange a time and place to meet once they’ve decided who they’ll send.

“You should understand that the techniques that the gods and the mortals of the Triax use for warfare in the void are usually very different.  We anticipate that this will be true of the Kellarani as well, so some of our gods have been learning from theirs the techniques that our mortals couldn’t use.

“Also, Commander Yazadril had already arranged for a few of his bright young officers to learn mortal void warfare from the Triax some weeks before he entered the time-bubble, and he’s actually receiving their report as we speak.

“However, many of us feel that the sessions with Yazadril’s officers didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, so we certainly do encourage you to make the attempt again.

“The Triax think very strangely, and while Yazadril’s officers were bright, it’s difficult to pick students who are talented in a field that’s new to our world.  The mathematical requirement was especially troublesome, and unexpected.  Not only did we learn that navigation in the void requires a surprisingly difficult level of mathematics in branches of the study that we haven’t yet developed on Kellaran, but the numerical system of the Triax is based on the number three, rather than ten.  Compared to our number system, when a Triax counts, it counts one, two, ten, eleven, twelve, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, one hundred, you understand?  You may want to take a while to prepare yourselves for this before you meet them, and review the report of Yazadril’s officers, in order to maximize the usefulness of the time you spend with the Triax.”

“Agreed, and thank you.” Kragorram nodded.

“I can come up with a quick spell to convert their numbers to ours and back.” Six mused.  “After we’ve reviewed the officers’ report, we’ll know what mathematics we have to review or learn.”

“Agreed.” Kragorram nodded again.

There was silence for a moment, then Fire spoke.

“May I ask how you became a goddess?”

Neela chuckled.  “Ah.  You must understand that our race developed quite quickly for a naturally developed animal, in what was a very isolated place.  The world was very empty then, and most of it was uninhabited by thinking beings.  All of it was hunted by dragons, of course, but the hunting territory of a dragon is often many hundreds or thousands of square kilometers, and they already knew how to Translocate by then, so many didn’t have a den in the territory they hunted.  So land that was included in such a territory was not always inhabited.

“So, we had almost forty thousand years of isolation, and we learned that the secret to co-existing with dragons was to make sure that there was always something easier for them to hunt than us.  So we made sure that there was always an abundance of undefended domesticated animals near us, and we defended ourselves vigorously.  Under those conditions, few dragons would bother with us.

“But eventually, they spoke of us to the unicorns, who eventually investigated us, then made contact.  Through The People of Morning, we learned of the other older intelligent races, and we learned that those races all had gods.  And we didn’t.  What we wanted most of all was a god to protect us from the dragons.  They usually took our animals rather than us, but dragon attacks were still the recurring and ongoing nightmare of our existence.

“We also learned of magic from the unicorns, but we were completely incapable of learning or using their magics.   None-the-less, based on their example, within a few decades one of us stumbled upon human magic powered by the heat of the stone rather than the light of the Source, as you say, and he became the first mage.  His name was Beenbi, and I was his student and protégé.  I became the first mage to extend my lifespan, but Beenbi died from sudden bleeding in the brain when he was only forty-seven.

“It was then thought by the unicorns and the other races that their magic came from their gods, and their gods were content to leave them with the fallacy.  So when we discovered magic, we took it as certain evidence that a god of humans had ascended from some other, unknown tribe of humans elsewhere in the world.  We rejoiced in knowing we were not alone, that there were others of us out there somewhere, and that we had our own deity, but it was all a fallacy.  He or she was known to us then as the unknown god, and though we didn’t know who we were praying to, we prayed anyway.

“I became the wisewoman and priestess of my tribe, which by then numbered over thirty thousand and had separated into sub-tribes, but we were still all in regular contact with each other.  We supposed that our deity was testing us, and that he or she would be revealed to us when were judged worthy.  So I struggled mightily for more than two thousand years to increase my wisdom, my power, the prosperity of my people, and the devoutness of my faith in my goddess, for I was secretly convinced that she was female, though I had no evidence that it was so.

“There came a day when I was meditating in a place that felt holy to me, I was holding all my power, and striving for perfection.  I had been meditating there without moving for twenty-three days.  And it just… happened.  I knew that I had changed fundamentally, and been improved dramatically, though I still didn’t realize what had happened to me.  So I called out to my goddess in a great wordless shout of joy and pleasure and fulfillment.

“I was answered by a goddess, but not the one I had expected.  Instead there appeared before me Minatif, Second Goddess of The People of Morning, a very pretty chestnut unicorn with an obvious aura of divinity.  She was there to translate for Glup of The Zurb, who had also appeared, and who promptly declared me the first goddess of humans, and disappeared.  Luckily for me, Minatif stayed and explained the truth of things to me, and often helped me as I re-established myself over the next couple of millennia.

“I wish I could explain the process of achieving divinity more exactly, but for me, it was an entirely subconscious process that happened while I was trying to empty my mind of all thought.”

“Ah.  Thank you.” Fire responded.

“You’re most welcome, and Val, yes you can all have a hug.”

Val laughed at her unspoken question being so easily perceived, then they shared the second goddess’s embrace that day.

After hugging the three children, Neela shared embraces with their parents, then gave each of the dragons a quick caress on whatever part of them was easiest to reach, with a warm smile.  They all enjoyed the experience with equal and profound pleasure.  Then she was gone.

These was a moment of silence before Povon spoke.

“I’m calling Zwak Deathbringer.” she stated, and a moment later Zwak appeared.

“You’ve requested my attention, Lord Regent?” he asked with a sardonic half smile.

“Yes.  I would rate your program for training the youth of the Sylvan between fourteen and twenty-four years of age as effective but not outstanding at preparing them for life and for war.  I would rank it as far less than satisfactory when based on the trainees’ opinions of the experience.

“Would you agree with that assessment?”

“Yes.” Zwak nodded.  “They’re being trained, they’re working within the system without causing disruptions or dissention, and none of them have lost their minds from repeated beatings since we instituted the program.  In those respects I’ve fulfilled my responsibility to our Lord here, and improved drastically on Zarkog’s system.

“It’s true that the youth don’t like it very much, but then, that’s nothing new.  Throughout our history, our parents have simply thrown their children out when they became too dangerous, usually with no more than they could carry, to face the dangers of Serminak on their own.  Most of those newly-independent youths killed each other, and many more were killed by dragons and adult Sylvan.  The time of life that our trainees are going through has always been difficult for Sylvan.

“Other than the loss of their independence, there’s no doubt that their quality of life and their life-expectancy were drastically improved under Zarkog’s system, and improved again under mine.  But they still don’t like it much, so they’re right on the edge of insubordination all the time, which is why their performance is less than that of the older Sylvan who’ve gained some focus and some pragmatism with their maturity.  Until they gain that maturity, their sense of justice is often somewhat self-centered and skewed, which makes their vows to justice less effective.

“The system only works because we have only three trainees assigned to each supervisor in squads of four, and the supervision is constant and close.  We don’t have to beat them to keep them in line like Zarkog did, simply because we watch them so closely that they can’t possibly get away with anything.  If they openly rebel they get solitary confinement with no food or water until they decide to rejoin the program with a more co-operative attitude, which never takes very long.”

“How much of your military force is committed to supervising youths at the present time?” Kragorram inquired.

“More than a quarter.” Zwak reported with a shrug.  “Thanks to Zarkog’s breeding program, there’s as many youths as adults, and even more children than that.

“I’m certain you know all this, Lord Regent.  Little has changed in our youth training program while you were in the time-bubble.”

“True, but I wanted these others to hear it, including our Lord.” Povon responded.  “Allow me to introduce The Governors of Hiliani; who will be assuming responsibility for the Sylvan youth training program under contract to our Lord…”

After formal introductions were made she continued.  “They will first present a Revealing to the trainees showing the benefits of their new systems, which they developed on Hiliani, and the trainees who wish to join the new system can do so.  We expect full voluntary compliance, based on their results on Hiliani, and rapid expansion into the adult Sylvan population shortly thereafter.

“Give us all the relevant information you have on your program, including facilities, the rosters of trainees, supervisors, and other staff, and the logistics of your supply systems.  Have the trainees gathered to watch the Revealing in one hour.”

Zwak frowned, but he passed her the information psionicly, and she immediately passed it to Karz, who passed it to his team-mates.  “May I ask the terms of their contract?” he inquired.

“We haven’t discussed it yet,” Povon admitted as she turned to the children, “But the essence of a just contract is that both parties should benefit equally.  On that basis, Mark should award you half the value of the labor, costs, and resources that we’ll save under your system, plus a payment for your improvement in the quality of our training.