We hunted out Palimpsest’s dead seed-nodes for a week, eager to gather the essence and keys to be had by killing the dormant minions and useless nodes before nature claimed them.

  The many stored beetles had begun to come out of whatever stasis they lay in when Palimpsest died. This meant that in underground caverns all across the territory around us, beetles stored in stone cavities did little more than twitch and breathe, waiting until they died of thirst or attracted underground predators.

  But with the ability to track each of the seed-nodes using materials from its paired node in Palimpsest’s main layer, we found most of them first.

  The rewards were astonishing. Tens of thousands of rank 1 keys from the small beetles, and higher-ranked keys from the thousands of greater soldiers like the longflies and the mantis hulks that we’d found. Many of the keys were [Light] and [Mana], two that had no use for my ritual but were more than useful to keep around. A huge portion were [Earth 1] or [Body 1] from the drones.

  The pale arachnids seemed to have the most to offer us, and the sheer number of them that we put down in Palimpsest’s main stronghold was staggering, accounting for half of the 300 million essence we’d collected on their own.

  The resources were much-needed. More than a thousand of us had seen our limit increase, usually by 2 or more, and with our levels approaching or exceeding 30 this meant tens of thousands of essence per level. In my case 50,000 each to level 35, then 110,000 to level 36.

  It would cost a little over a 100 million essence to keep the colony at their limit, but since almost all of the levelling elves were those who knew how to fight, it was well worth it despite the fact that we were saving for my ritual.

  Besides: the bounty of keys and essence meant that it was the preparations, not the resources, that we’d be waiting on. Seriana still had her part to do in preparing the observation spells, and I still had to prepare a massive stock of mana, coordinate all of our channels, draw the various runes that I would need to focus the spell, and hunt down something powerful enough that its blood would suffice as my carrier.

  The week of hunting had made it clear that we didn’t have enough wildhearts. When it came to the task of wholly comprehending Palimpsest and their minions, we could have used ten times the number we had. There was simply too much to analyze in how they controlled their minions en masse, how they transferred [Focus] into their spellcasters, and how they subjugated new creatures.

  We also needed wildhearts to cultivate the mana-bearing plants that I’d be using for my ritual, which grew ever closer now that Palimpsest had granted us so much essence and keys. The excess of work to do meant that I’d abandoned my plan of constructing built-in instruments for the air elementals. I’d been flying out to Palimpsest’s various mini-lairs for the past week, harvesting our enemy’s fallen, underground kingdom.

  Now that this was done, I was handling the plants. I hadn’t spent my [Bestow]s, not yet, but the skill slot I’d gotten for reaching level 35 was, at present, just filled with a simple [Plant Bond] skill. Augmented by my [Wild Bond], it was enough to give me the fine control over the various species of vine and bush that we’d been experimenting with to store and cultivate mana.

  Mirio was still incapacitated, and would be for some time. Mishlo was adamant that he should not be subject to the stress of working on anything important, and so he’d been recovering from the psychic wound inflicted by Palimpsest in the infirmary, cataloguing insects while I coordinated the wildhearts, especially the druids.

  And so I was gardening. Near the edge of our cliff overlooking a sea of mist, I tended many rows of raised beds of rich soil made by some our spellcasters with [Decay Magick] out of some of the corpses of Palimpsest’s assault. They had mixed this fertilizer with some gotten from the swamp below us, as well as some taken from the land near the forest.

  My hands knew warm, moist soil. Before me were the dark, blue-green leaves of the small, unflowered bushes each leaf ripe with primeval mana. Properly cultivated, a massive stock of the plants could suffice for my ritual. Over the course of the next week, I intended to have myself and the druids complete a gruelling round of comprehensive tests to determine which flora we’d been growing en masse.

  For the most part, anyone who needed to speak with me either did so through the bond or came to be given an audience in the garden.

  As such, Hassina came to me when the mist of the second layer had just barely begun to turn a shade of pink. Night was coming.

  She looked tired. Her braid was undone, and her hair was a long curtain of snowy white that ran down to her waist, loose strands falling in front of her eyes. Her gown, which was unenchanted, was marred with smudges of dust.

  The previous night, she’d given a concert atop the Skytusk—the first such concert she’d arranged as part of our deal with Lord Akkakesh. I’d missed it along with many of the other elves, busy as we were hunting out the last remnants of Palimpsest. Today she had spent most of the day overseeing plans to modify the interior of the mountain to better facilitate future concerts by changing it into an insulated place to store instruments, supplies, and even to house some elves.

  “I’m sorry I missed the music,” I told her.

  “So I’ve been told many times today,” she said, giving me a wan smile. “But we’ve all got work to do, now.”

  “You look tired.”

  She shrugged. “I spent too much time in the mountain. There’s was a lot to tend to once I got back. Still is.”

  I dug my hands into the soil in front of me, working it away from the roots that grew beneath one of the leafy blooms. “We can have this conversation another time, if you like.”

  If my words gave her any idea of what I wanted to talk about, it made no change in her demeanour. “I can talk now,” she said. She began rolling up her sleeves. “And I may as well help with the plants while I’m here.”

  “It’s a single process,” I said as she came to stand beside me. “Get your hands under the bloom, and push the soil away from the thickest roots—there’s usually three or four, see?”

  “Those are thick.”

  “It’s all one plant. The roots spread everywhere and grow the blooms, but the blooms can spread the roots.”

  “All right.”

  “Try to break as little of the smaller roots you see as you can,” I told her, guided by scraping my own hands through the soil beneath one of the tiny, dark-leafed plants. “You want to cut the bloom away at the roots, about this deep. But once you start, the whole plant will try to draw all the mana out of the bloom you’re taking. You want to push into its claim and keep the mana in the bloom until you sever it.”

  I gently pulled the roots under my bloom, then severed them with my knife in one clean cut. “Just like that,” I said. “Simple.”

  I left out the part where it wasn’t exactly easy. A less experienced druid would take twice as long as I had or more just to properly hold the mana in. Hassina wouldn’t of course: she was a divine spellcaster, and a good one.

  “Oh, I need a knife,” she said.

  “What? You don’t have a knife?”

  “What gave you that idea, Aziriel?”

  “You just—oh.” I scowled at her, and then we both laughed. “Hassina, you should a knife on you. It’s a highly useful tool.”

  “Yes, yes—but I don’t right now.”

  “What do you eat with when there’s no cutlery?”

  “I’m the high priest, Aziriel. There’s always cutlery.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  “I can just borrow someone’s knife.”

  I sighed, passed her my knife, then took out a longer, curved blade that I had in one of my boots to use myself. I set the bloom I’d already cut away onto the stone lip of the raised garden bed next to countless others, then began to work on another one.

  For a few seconds we were both quiet. The soft sound of our hands in the soil filled the air for a while.

  “I won’t pretend that everything I say is surely what will come to be,” I began at last. “And I won’t be coy by trying to teach you a lesson or lead you toward my conclusion,” I said. “I’m just going to tell you outright what I believe. I don’t think it will work.”

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  Hassina was quiet a moment as she regarded me. When she spoke, her words were slow, careful. “Whether I choose Luthiel’s ultimate fate or not is not the point,” she said. “The point is that whatever we do, it is done through by way of the laws that have been so carefully made, and which we hold sacred. The point is that my arguments, and anyone else’s, are heard. As long as that’s done, it will have worked.”

  She severed her blood, then set into onto the edge of the garden bed beside her. “Though you can guess, of course, that my preferred outcome is not a lenient one.”

  I smiled faintly as I looked at her. “That’s not quite what I meant,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I’m talking about the children. About tomorrow. I expect that you you’ve thought far enough ahead to have foreseen most of what I have.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Though I’ve been working hard of late, and I don’t have your seeming immunity to exhaustion to keep my mind sharp at all hours. Please, tell me what you’ve—oh—a moment—my hair….”

  She pulled one end of a lock of hair out of the dirt in front of her, then rooted around in her pocket for a length of cord to tie it back with.

  “Why is it loose?” I asked, laughing a little.

  “Oh—silly—I wanted it free to… well, to feel the wind a little better on the return trip. It was nice. And the braid is heavy enough that it sort of… lashes me unless I hold it in one hand. It’s quite weighty—but please, go on.”

  “All right,” I said. “Soon enough, I’ll complete my ritual. And if our people follow the same patterns as mortal races in the wake of vast disasters, there will be a flood of babies. If our people are properly organized around the task of bringing those children up—and we’ll see to it that we are—then the flood will only slow, never cease.”

  “I think that’s more or less what we all expect,” Hassina said.

  “How long until the young outnumber the old?” I asked. “It’s hard to say, but the exact length of time doesn’t matter. Our proportions will shift. Eventually, those of us who remember Aranar will be a negligible sliver of the population. If every single one of us raises our voices in concert, we’ll be a whisper in a hurricane. The vote will belong entirely to the young.”

  Hassina was silent as I cut away the roots of another bloom and set it aside. But I had a hard time believing that any of the high council hadn’t followed this line of thought already. Considering how the votes would go, and how to get them, was a part of our job.

  “We’re not defenseless, of course,” I continued. “As the population grows, I can call an election at the right point in time so as to have the current council re-elected for another twenty-five years and keep a hold on our power for as long as possible, but that will only be a temporary measure.”

  After a moment’s silence, Hassina said: “There can only be temporary measures.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Unless we dispense with democracy altogether, our power to decide the destiny of elvenkind will rely entirely on convincing elves who have not yet seen a century.”

  “I must say, Aziriel. I see little point in working to curtail the power of elves who have come of age.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Though I expect my reasons are… more cynical than yours.”

  Hassina looked over at me, her expression coldly curious. “Our reasons being?”

  “We old Aranians will know one another, be used to one another. Everything we’ve been through and have yet to go through will be another bond we have that they can’t share. Won’t they balk at the weight of remembering a world they’ve never seen? The pain that we show them will be ours, not theirs: I’ve seen this before. We’ll ask them to feel a loss, but we’ll possess the loss all for ourselves. We’ll burden them with trying to understand while at the same time insisting that they never fully will.”

  Gently, I ran my knife through the roots of the bloom beneath my hands, cutting it and laying it aside.

  “There will be two elvenkinds,” I said. “It will be natural for them to channel whatever resentments they have toward us, to make us the object of their frustrations. The old will be put before the young in all things. We’ll have first say, advance first, command them at every turn. Our philosophies and opinions will be treated as the raw, unvarnished facts of the world. You know.”

  Hassina was very young for a high priest. She’d earned her position on merit, but in many ways she’d dealt with a more muted version of what Mirio dealt with now.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “Whether they’re warranted or not, their frustrations will well up beneath our feet. A shift is coming, one than elvenkind has never seen before. Our people will live as mortals do, helpless to succession, always passing power forward into the hands of the young without any choice in the matter. And when this scale finally balances again, it will be because those who are unborn now have finally grown old. The Aranians, then, will be like specks of dust in a desert wind.”

  Hassina let a silence stretched between us before finally saying: “Age is no substitute for experience or skill. The old Aranians who hold every position of authority are not going use that authority faultlessly.”

  “No,” I agreed. “They’re not. Not everyone, at least.”

  “I’m not sure I see the same threat that you do, here.”

  I smiled down at the leafy blooms below us. “Hence why I said that we agreed that there was little point in trying to hold onto our power.”

  “I don’t understand. These thoughts trouble you, but you feel we should do nothing?”

  “There’s nothing we can do,” I said simply. “Nothing so significant as to stop the great shift in power, or to keep the young from folly altogether. We may as well wish we could raise a child who never makes a mistake. A lesson I have learned the hard way: one can have the fullest possible extent of dominion over another, yet still be powerless to stop them.”

  “I see,” Hassina said. “Then she added: you’re right. I’m not so cynical. But go on: tell me what you think my reasons are, what you think I’ve seen.”

  “You’re young relative to the rest of us. And you’re capable. These two things have shown you more than enough of the problems that come with our constant veneration of age.”

  “In every one of our institutions one can find old elves who do not respect experience, wisdom, or skill, but only age and age alone—it’s all they have. And I have to wonder: how much do you really know about it? There are no elves older than you, after all.”

  “Now, of all times, I think you see cause to clean up our act. Surely, it would be easier if you had a few more centuries, a few less firstborn to stand in your way—but with waves and waves of new, young elves on the horizon, we can’t wait. And there is good reason to want change. You don’t want these new elves to have to fight through what you’ve fought through ever since you were elected to your position. It’s not just unfair—it’s unwise, for all of us.”

  Hassina finished cutting the roots away from one of the blooms and set it aside, but she didn’t return to the work: instead she turned to face me, resting the hand that held my knife on the ledge of the garden.

  “You said you would speak plainly.”

  I kept my eyes on the bloom ahead of me. “A hard stand against Luthiel in the coming judgement might make you unpopular now,” I said. “But in a hundred years when the young outnumber the old, who will they turn to for leadership but she who stood in defiance of the idea that one of the firstborn could grant such lenience to another?”

  Very faintly, I saw Hassina’s jaw tremble for just a moment. She stared at me, eyes like chinks of ice.

  “Once,” she said. “When I was… younger. I thought you were above politics, somehow. I thought that you didn’t play the game, that you couldn’t be bothered, and that in you there was a rare elf who simply made her heart known and let all else fall where it would. And I loved you for it.”

  I cut the roots away from the bloom I was handling, set it aside. “Once, someone told me that you should never do anything that you feel doesn’t matter. And that as long as what you’re doing matters, incompetence is immoral. I’ve never been sure I agreed with them on either count, but here we are: politics matter too much now for me to indulge in the moral vanity of putting myself above them.”

  “And who said this to you—Luthiel?”

  “Sabina.”

  Hassina looked away and shook her head. “At this very moment,” she said. “Mirio is lying in the infirmary, struggling simply to live with his own thoughts because he willingly allowed Palimpsest to wound his very psyche in order to help us strike a devastating blow—an act which took no small amount of genius on his part.”

  She sighed. “But you know this, know all of it. You’re the one who appointed him. You have been his staunch defender. I suppose to you he is an example of an exception regarding the young, not of their potential? But the vote of elves who are seventy-five and older is not so fearsome a thing. Not if we do right by them.”

  Again she sighed, turning back to the blooms and setting to work with her hands and knife. “So yes, you see it truly. I don’t believe we should work to undermine their power, not because I think it’s pointless, but because I don’t find their power threatening. What’s more: the point is moot. Whether it will keep whatever shadow you can see from falling over us or not, we owe fairness to all. And you know—”

  She clenched her jaw, seemed to master herself, and went on. “You I don’t hate having elders, Aziriel. I don’t resent it. If you died tomorrow I’d spend the rest of my life learning from you, I’m sure.”

  She shook her head. “But when you speak of timing elections meant to keep your own power for as long as possible, you reveal that our entire democracy was only ever allowed to be as it is because those with power found it unthreatening? Now that this is not the case, you speak in terms of undermining its very spirit as if this is the natural, given solution. You make it clear that if you thought it would work, you’d have no problem doing away with the laws and systems which all of us should hold sacred.”

  Her hands moved swiftly, rigidly, scraping the dirt out from under the bloom. “It’s like you’re so fixated on cornering the coming threat you can’t even hear yourself. How is it that you can so perfectly describe how I feel, but somehow fail to see? Yes, some resentments of the youth are unavoidable. Yes, I of all people know this. But what fire will it light in their minds to know that Luthiel abandoned their parents and grandparents to die, against your orders, and suffered only the most lenient punishment possible?”

  “We need him,” I said quietly.

  “For a time,” Hassina said. “He is powerful, he is useful, he was instrumental in destroying Palimpsest. It is no easy thing, choosing a fitting punishment when any of them might also punish the colony. But all of this is precisely why the right message will be sent when he is condemned.”

  She tore one of the blooms from the soil, too rough—she’d lost focus. Both of us watched the mana that it was supposed to contain leak away into the air. Hassina leaned both hands against the ledge of the garden, her head down.

  “I’ll say it quietly,” she said, voice hard. “I’ll say it loudly, I’ll say it as many times as I need to before we carve it in stone where it belongs: not even the firstborn are above justice.”