I don’t know what exactly I was expecting from Kierla’s self-appointed mission. In the worst case, maybe for the excitable Elf to have a hard time locating her comrades and come back with her head held low. Or maybe we’d even get the go-ahead to enter the campgrounds of Alveron’s troupe and finally get this side task accomplished, so we could get back to saving Rhoscara.

  I didn’t expect for one of the Elves to come to us.

  In the aftermath of Olag’s little ambush against us, I had decided to keep two lookouts up on the crow’s nest of the Ashen Bride. None of our scouts were currently ranging out ahead of us, considering I didn’t want to infringe on Alveron’s territory and spook him and his people. We still had our monster culling teams out, just because they were outright required. But it was a smaller group patrolling the edges of our wards. But somehow, our outer defenses were completely bypassed by a single, lone Elf who decided to wait patiently in the middle of a small field, off to the left of the caravan’s position. It was only thanks to the lookout's shout that we became aware of them at all.

  He was just…standing there, surrounded on all sides by wild, tall grasses, seeming to wait patiently for something.

  Or someone.

  After all, even from a distance, I recognized the tall, cloaked, and masked figure. It was no wonder he’d managed to slip through our defenses.

  I couldn’t really expect regular soldiers to keep the last Paragon of Vereden out.

  The moment I realized it was Alveron himself standing patiently out in that field, I made a snap decision. It wasn’t hard to realize just who he was waiting for. I left command of the caravan in the hands of Nyx and prepared myself to meet him. I was intending to do so alone, but, well.

  Fade was insistent. I think my familiar was a bit exasperated with me, considering just how many times I’d gotten into a fight, recently, without him by my side. I had no problem with him accompanying me, though.

  We might as well be extensions of each other.

  I hopped over the railing of the ship with my Spirit Wolf at my side, and slowly approached the lone figure under the curious eyes of the caravan. Hundreds of them had gathered just at the edges of it to watch the coming meeting, even if they wouldn’t be part of it. Considering the distance, they wouldn’t be able to hear a single spoken word. But the leadership hadn’t exactly made it a secret that we were looking for a rogue group of Elves who might just be able to assist us, and that had sparked the imagination of many.

  To be honest…even though I didn’t see any of them, I somehow doubted Alveron was truly alone. I couldn’t perceive them with any of my extra senses, but somehow I could tell.

  There were hundreds of other eyes watching me just as curiously as my own soldiers, hidden within the forest on the other side of the clearing.

  When Fade and I came to a stop only a few feet away from the spindly form of the elderly Elf, we spent a few moments examining each other. Alveron was much the way I remember him, all those months ago in Sancthaven. At least, from before he revealed himself to me before the ancient shrine of his grandfather. Covered from head to toe in a cloak that looked to be woven from freshly fallen leaves, he leaned on a gnarled wooden staff taller than he was. His face was obscured by a mask carved to resemble that of a stag bearing real horns that grew from the forehead, painted in greens and golds. Wise emerald eyes, of a shade not dissimilar to Kierla’s own, considered me through the holes of it.

  I leaned on my own stave in the silence, as Fade sat on his haunches at my side. Initially, I was a bit confused at just why I was so comforted to see the elder Elf after so long, and when we barely knew each other in the first place.

  And then I realized it was because now I could finally get some goddamned answers about just what the hell was going on.

  So I broke the comfortable silence between us.

  “Elder Alveron,” I said, inclining my head respectfully. “It’s been a long time.”

  The Elder made a deep, rumbling noise of consideration in his skinny chest. “Has it, now? Barely a year, to my reckoning. Such a length of time…it is little more than an eyeblink. And yet,” He said, a note of satisfaction evident in his tone. “I see you have grown considerably in that time. When last we met, you were little more than a stripling with delusions of competency. Now, at least…you appear seasoned enough for what is to come. It will have to do.”

  I blinked slowly at the somewhat…condescending words, exchanging a glance with Fade.

  “Was this guy always like this?” Fade said to me. “I barely remember those days. Was he always such a…dick?”

  Don’t laugh, Nate. You were in the middle of negotiating with a fellow faction leader. It wasn’t appropriate to laugh at him when your familiar negged them secretly.

  God, I was thankful the familiar bond was a private channel.

  At least…that’s what I thought.

  Alveron snorted across from us. “A dick, am I? I’ve been called worse things over the years. But I would have thought Taran had instilled a greater sense of decorum in you, impudent pup.”

  There was a short, stunned silence from Fade and me until my familiar broke it. “You…can hear me?” Fade said hesitantly. “That…”

  Almost felt like a violation, if I was going to be honest. The private channel between Fade and I, our bond, had long since felt like something special between the two of us. We had never felt the need to moderate our words before.

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  The possibility that anyone could force an understanding of what Fade and I had kept so private was…unpleasant.

  But I couldn’t dwell on it.

  “I can see many things, children,” Alveron said evenly, tapping his staff once in the grass. Then, I refrained from tensing when I felt the weight of his eyes shift back over to me. “The touch of the Harrower that lingers about you still, as well as something else. A link that I can now sense between you and She Who Breathes. Which is curious in of itself, because I know for a fact that Vereden has been cut off from the Concord. Which isn’t even considering that Life itself has never chosen an Envoy before, in all the history of this planet. Curious. How is that you’re still in contact with her…Nathaniel?”

  In other words, Anima.

  I tried to keep the imprisoned Great Spirit of Life up to date on what was happening on the surface of Vereden, while she remained caged in the heart of it. But truthfully, the two of us rarely felt the need to update her often. Anima wasn’t often interested in the minutiae of a military campaign and was content with knowing that I was working towards undoing this knot. She wasn’t very talkative herself, either. The Spirit was mostly comforted by the idea of being able to speak to me when she wanted to, rather than the reality of it.

  That way, the bars of her cage were just a bit wider.

  I inclined my head to Alveron. “Yes, I’m in contact with her, but I’m not her Envoy. I just intend to help her out of a bad situation that she’s stuck in. That we’re all stuck in. She’s had a number of things to say, about just what all of this,” I said, gesturing upwards with my amber-crowned staff towards the frozen lighting across the grey skies. “Really is. And I can speak to her because she’s on Vereden. Or rather, within it.”

  For the next several minutes, I took the time to fill Alveron in on something he apparently didn’t know.

  The betrayal of Orus and Neris, their ambush of Anima within their realms, and their imprisonment of her within the core of Vereden.

  Strangely, I didn’t see him blink at the admission that two of the five Great Spirits were now actively working against us.

  I heard the grim smile on Alveron’s face with his next words, more than I saw it through his mask. “I see. So, Orus and Neris colluded together in a fit of vengeful spite to chain my mad, beleaguered grandfather into the sway of another. Yes, if that’s what Anima has told you, then that sounds correct. I had thought it was strange that he had been bound so. Now I see that a long-held suspicion was proven correct. Already this meeting has borne fruit.”

  More and more confirmation.

  “Then…do you know exactly what the Mad God is doing to bring this about?” I asked eagerly, leaning forward. “Do you know how to stop it?”

  “Yes…and no,” Alveron said tiredly, reaching up with one hand to finally remove the mask on his face. That allowed me to see both the deep, strangely patterned wrinkles across his face that resembled the many, many rings of an ancient tree…

  And the grimace that distorted them.

  “I’m…not sure if slaying Fynneas will undo this,” Alveron said, a note of deep, deep regret in his voice.

  My heart.

  Stopped.

  “What…?”

  Killing the Mad God, the once god of Freedom Fynneas of Lasgach…wouldn’t end the Skyfall? Was this state of affairs permanent?

  That…that couldn’t be true…

  The old, old Elf shook his head wearily. “I suspect that whatever bond you have with Anima, she can’t perceive much from where she is caged. If she could, she would have been able to tell you just what those are.” He spat, waving an irritable hand up at the selfsame lightning I had gestured towards only moments before. “That is Fynneas’s Divinity, manifested into the physical realm and somehow crystallized into a tangible form.”

  I reeled back, outright gaping at Alveron. “That makes no fucking sense!”

  How the hell was all of that Fynneas’s Divinity?!

  From behind me, I heard a sudden uptick in murmurs from the distant expedition. That was the only thing that made me realize I had outright yelled that last word. I think I would have been embarrassed at screaming like that in the past, but…

  I didn’t actually care, now.

  My response was a raised brow and sad smile from Alveron. “Sadly, I recognize it. Anyone who has been in the presence of Fynneas since his fall would. It’s understandable, perhaps, that knowledge of it is so obscure. To the best of my knowledge, the only ones who have battled the beast that my sire became since the end of the War in Heaven are myself and those I have brought to his doorstep. Once upon a time…Fynneas bore a much purer lightning than this foul imitation. He fought and battled with bolts of a much clearer blue than that,” He scoffed, shaking his head disgustedly. “A facet of his Mantle, as I understood it. The concept of Freedom manifested itself as a form of lightning, and he wielded it well. And then he came back from the war a monster, and his power was tainted. That is what it became. And yet…I have no idea how it is in this realm in this matter.”

  I jabbed a finger at Alveron. “Right, yeah! I’ve literally heard from Spirits that Fynneas's Mantle of Divinity was in the Concord! That the Great Spirits needed to build a damned barrier in it to keep the…corruption from it…contained…”

  Oh.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Exactly,” Alveron smiled grimly. “The corruption. Corrupted Divinity, acidic in nature to souls themselves, propagating itself across the whole of Vereden from the physical form of the Mantle…that now spans across the entire sky. Whoever it is conspired with Orus and Neris-”

  (So he didn’t know who it was either. Damnit.)

  “-managed what I can only believe is a great working, such as Vereden has not seen since the apex of the gods, that brought my forebear’s tainted Mantle into the physical realm. From it has come the poisoning of the Aether and the manifestation of empowered, mutated monsters. The issue is worsening with every day that passes, too. There are few on the planet who have senses keen enough, but I’m sure your mentor could feel it in the air. The saturation of Corrupted Divinity grows by the day, and the effects grow with it. It is my belief…” Alveron paused for a moment. “I believe that eventually, the strength of it will grow to the point where our countermeasures are no longer effective. My Spells will fail under the pressure, and your…strange method of Ward chaining will as well.”

  Normally, I think I would have been a bit proud of the baffled look that Alveron shot at the APD then.

  But I was just numb to the implications of what he was saying.

  “Wards themselves across the planet will start to fail, and then…everyone, everywhere will die. I believe it’s…only a matter of time.”

  I stared off into the darkness of the forest behind the ancient Elf, not really looking at anything in particular. My mind was racing to the extent that my eyes saw nothing but the coming doom of Vereden.

  Including Aveline.

  “How long…?” I managed to whisper.

  Alveron was silent for a moment. “Three months, at the most,” He finally replied. “Maybe. And as I said, I’m unsure if slaying Fynneas will actually disperse the Divinity. The only thing that will…is returning it to the source.”

  I didn’t even care about the heavy look Alveron shot me, then, as he alluded to the true purpose of the Precursors. I could have been mad that he apparently knew that Precursors were meant to return the stolen Divinity of the gods. After all, he could have just told me that last year.

  Instead, I was just trying to process how I was meant to return Divinity to the System that was spread across the entire planet.

  Fuck.