[Be Gone] Ch 34 – Dealing with a Dragon

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            “This is true. His lineage comes from... elsewhere.” The way the word lingered was a clear indication of where the Earth Dragon’s concerns lay.

            I popped up some Wrathflame, and his eyes zeroed in on it instantly. “You have some questions about the power of Heaven that I wield, Elder? Please examine it as closely as you wish.” I took down my Astral Ward, pretty damn sure nobody was going to be able to eavesdrop upon us, and flared my Pact under my skin. Celestial Runes glowed gold, silver, and rainbow under my epidermis.

            His dark eyes widened at the display... whether it be the implied honor, trust, or interest in the energies, all were possible, and all were probably involved.

            I waited patiently for his examination to be completed, feeling a powerful but subtle hand looking at everything on several levels now that my Astral Ward was down. I endured it calmly, waiting until he exhaled with a sigh and made a gesture at the flame in my hand.

            I let it go as it was pulled over to him, electrum bound with Banefire, vivic flame, golden Holy fires, and the two ireflames of the Tokens dangling from Mortus Dius.

            It touched his hand, flared sapphire and emerald, and poofed out of existence. He stared at the vanishing sparks with a complicated expression.

            “From whence does this power come?” he asked, waving to me to sit.

            “You are a great Spirit bound to Fate, are you not, Elder?” I asked, crossing my legs to sit down on Feature’s patient head.

            He eyed me, wondering if he should take affront at the description. “From the viewpoint of mortals, perhaps that is an apt description,” he acknowledged carefully.

            “If that is so, then your divine opponents are of Chaos, Elder?” I went on respectfully.

            “Opponents... yes. Those me and my brethren oppose are of Chaos, seeking to bring down the natural order.”

            I inclined my head. “You are missing exposure to two of the Profound Forces, and perhaps do not consider them real at all.” Wrath came up on my hand again. “Good.” I swiped at the Hellscar across my face, currently mostly slumbering for the moment, as there was no great Evil around, “and Evil.”

            His eyes sharpened dangerously again, even as he muttered, “Sophistries of philosophers...”

            “...who do not understand the workings of Creation,” I finished for him, Wrath blazing on my hand. “Yet as real as Luck and Chance, Doom and Destiny, Mass and Gravity, none of which I purport to truly understand, either, only making idle speculations about them to fit my own half-blind observations on the reality of things.”

            “There is no such force working here!” the Dragon rumbled, clearly agitated.

            I made a confused face. “Of course there is, Elder. What do you think the Taint is? You would know it if it was Chaos in one form or another.”

            His mouth opened and closed, clearly caught off-guard. “This...”

            “Elder,” I said patiently, “there are higher Realms and lower ones, but the ones you know of are all tied to this world, are they not? Even if you know of some of the alternate worlds, they are all just variations of this one, no?”

            He stared at me, measuring and probing, but could find no dishonesty, nor arrogance. It was a simple question, if ominous in its portent.

            “That is correct, Master Aelryinth,” he finally agreed after long moments.

            “And you... are tied to this one world, above all things, no?”

            He was still staring at me, seeing where this was going. “Yes,” the Earth Dragon agreed. “The Celestial Courts, Jigoku, and the other Realms are all intimately tied to here.”

            I nodded once. “Fate is not tied to here, Elder. It is not born here, nor does it end here. Fate’s power extends throughout transfinity. So too does the power of Luck, Chance, and Chaos itself, even if they are not acknowledged.

            “If Fate rules all, there is no free will. If Chance rules all, there is no destiny. Both are true, and both are false.

            “Between Fate and Chance lie multitudes of choices, made by beings sentient and sapient. Every single one of those choices has a weight attached to it, and that weight is measured against two Forces as absolute and abstract as Fate and Chaos. Those Forces are Good and Evil.

            “They are not good and evil. Mortal good and evil can be totally relative. A great victory on one side is a crushing slaughter to the other. Sparing a child is letting live a tyrant to be. Cheating on a spouse births a child who saves a kingdom.

            “Good and Evil, like Fate and Chaos, simply Are. You do not define them, I do not define them. The only thing you can do is choose to stand somewhere, by exercise of Free Will, and hold closer to one or the other.

            “You may disdain them, ignore them, scorn them, and misunderstand them... but they Are, and like Fate and Chaos, they simply do not care what you or I think of them, because They Are Beyond all of us. They form Creation itself, of which this world of yours and the distant homeworld of mine are but specks of sand on a forgotten beach at the edge of a great ocean of possibility.”

            His hands closed, his only sign of any agitation. “So, you claim to act with a greater mandate than our own?” the Earth Dragon asked in a calm voice.

            “The Four Forces are equals, Elder. There is no greater mandate, save that of Free Will. Upon the choices of free will, Creation itself turns.” I pointed unerringly southwest. “There lies the Vortex that is resulting from the collision between this realm and Jigoku. I have made it my choice to bring down that Vortex, destroy the Sin invading this Land, restore the Veil, and sever Jigoku’s connection from this world. If you wish to call that a mandate, then so it is, Elder.”

            “And if I should choose to stop you?” the Earth Dragon asked, dark eyes gleaming.

            “I am not certain why you would even wish to, but I do not believe you can do so, Elder,” I answered honestly.

            There was a spark in his eyes, and a fluttering in the manafield, and the ground below me. “Oh? So confident, are you?”

            “Mmm,” I nodded, making no attempt to grab for power myself. “Before you test me, I suggest you look around you. Um, twenty miles might be enough.”

            He paused uncertainly, and glanced around.

            Then, he really Looked, and he froze impossibly still, as if he’d been turned into metal.

            Because he had finally realized something was looking at him, because he was looking at me!

            “You are the Earth Dragon, the mightiest of the Spirits of Earth known to the Jade Empire. Were we to fight, Elder, you would crush me out of hand, I have no doubts.

            “But you are an infant child before the Mother Land upon which we stand, and furthermore, a child who has accomplished absolutely nothing for Her in the past thousand and more years.

            “She wants the Vortex gone. She wants the Shadowlands purged. She wants to feed on the vivus that Burns away the Sin that infests this little bit of Her skin, and then She wants to slap away the uppity bastards who think they can feed on Her as they like and get away with it.

            “I am going to DO that. She knows it. And I don’t believe a small regional Earth Dragon has the power to defy Her will.

            “Elder, I seriously believe that if you make a move against me, the Mother Land will extinguish you on the spot.”

            The Earth Magic in the Sublime Chord for twenty miles around evaporated. In an instant, it was just gone.

            Directly in front of me was an Elemental Dragon in human form who had absolutely no power to draw on at all. I could probably kill him without effort at this moment, and he had to realize it.

            “So, Elder, enough of your tests, please. I have been judged and found willing by a far greater force than you, and I am in service to a far greater force than Her.” My Wrath flashed up for a moment once more. “If your Senior approves of what I am doing, do you even have the right to disagree with Her?”

            He turned a suddenly limited gaze on me, complicated expressions crossing his face. He was an immensely proud, arrogant, and lofty being of true Elemental power, capable of laying waste to an empire and beating on the local demigods with impunity.

He had been put in his place like an errant child. Unlike me, he was something strong enough for the Land to take notice of and action against.

            “No,” he admitted after a moment, and this time, it was the Dragon who bowed his head. “No, I do not.”

            Earth Magic rose chiming back into the Sublime Chord as if it had never left, and the Dragon took a long slow breath, his influence winking back on along the power, reassuring himself that his lordship of his Domain was intact.

            But it was all relative.

            I sat there, waiting for him to speak; patient, unimpressed, broadcasting the fact that this was something so minor and expected that gloating about it was just silly. Watching a Great Dragon get humbled was simply not that important to me.

            “My brethren and I have grave concerns about these gods and Forces you and the Tigers purport to worship,” the Earth Dragon finally admitted, his jaw hard. “They are alien to these lands, and their influences unwanted.”

            “We do not purport to venerate those deities; we do worship them, Elder. Let there be no question on that point,” I told him calmly, which didn’t seem to reassure him. “The Divine are Aspects of the Alignments, and yes, those Aspects may be unknown to you, but the Alignments certainly are not,” I pointed out. “Indeed, the only Alignment without representation here is the one you seem to need the most... Good!”

            The Earth Dragon flinched at the mild rebuke as he processed the truth of it. After all, what was Jigoku of? Not merely Chaos...

            “You are afraid of what is behind them and the changes that they might bring. That is understandable. You are mostly powerless in the face of Jigoku’s influence, simply by nature of what you are. Contamination by Jigoku can affect you as it does every other Elemental being. After all, if a million square miles of the Mother Land can be Tainted, certainly one Great Dragon can also be corrupted.”

            It wasn’t an allusion to weakness. It was just a statement of fact.

            “The Motherland needs help to do what needs to be done, or else She will simply have to endure this invasion. This is a problem beyond the power of a mere Continental Spirit. This is a matter that could be solved and prevented in seconds by the power of true gods... but you don’t have such things here. Elementals have no true power against dimensional incursions from the Profound Planes that do not acknowledge your own status.

            “If the gods I serve were worshiped here, this whole invasion by Jigoku would never have happened at all. Such minor planar incursions are part of the whole spread of events they are meant to guard against.

            “If you fear what might happen if those gods can finally manifest here, Elder, then I can say little to reassure you. They would indeed bring great changes before them, if for no other reason than they are far, far greater than you, at least as far above the Mother Land as She is above you. They are only limited by one another and the presence of mortal Faith in them and their abilities to manifest.

            “The Heaven you call the Jade Court and the powers that reign there are immaterial to such beings, finite creatures who are mere unknowing pawns of greater forces, scarcely above mortals in their eyes.

            “Your question is not if you should allow those forces to manifest here, because you are already too late for three of the Four. The question is... Will you thwart the balance that is attempting to right itself, as the fourth Power readies to arrive here, and set the scales to their proper balance?”

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