“Wrath isn’t just anger,” I explain. “Clarity is an important facet that distinguishes it from just mindless rage. Which meant that in order to be able to wield Wrath effectively, I had to have a very good education. The danger of an education, of course, is that it meant I could think for myself.”
Which is why I got quieter and quieter as the years passed. I could see very clearly what the priests wanted from me, and how any deviation would be handled, and the hypocrisy.
It’s also why I hid how much I was capable of from them until I needed it.
“I did also just spend five hundred years meditating,” I add wryly. “Now that I can move, I feel like my mind is primed to synthesize rapidly.”
“Hmm.” Zan arranges the cushions in a line. “Watch this.”
He whacks them.
Dust flies into the air.
“I think the theory here is within my ability to understand even without centuries of meditation,” I tell him dryly.
His eyes crinkle with humor.
Damn, didn’t quite get the laugh out of him.
Zan hands me the blanket beater. “Your turn. I think you’re going to have some aggression to work out when I update you.”
Ialreadyhave aggression to work out—honestly that’s a pretty permanent state for me, being the incarnation of Wrath—so I take the stick without a word and get to whacking.
In between the sound of the stick striking the cushions, Zan tells me, “The Quiet was the catalyst for a revolution. The priests had been overreaching, and you rebelling against them in such a visible way brought a lot of attention to it. People thought the explosive magic you unleashed was a sign the gods thought the priests were corrupt. The priests tried to spin it as their need formorecontrol.”
I hit a cushion with a little more force.
Unsurprising, that everyone would still try to use me for their own ends.
“To make a long story short, there was an extremely messy revolution. People seized the priests’ spell knowledge—”
Basic spells had been common knowledge, but not complicated, specialized ones.
“—but without the priests’ training, people were accidentally causing all kinds of devastation, so there was yet another backlash.
“All spell knowledge is now tightly controlled. The temple became part of the government and now effectively runs the military, so they have a monopoly on state violence. There was a period of unification, but the Order has been working to take over from the inside by installing their own candidate that they control as emperor. There are different factions among the Order, of course, with their own candidates. The frontrunner is a consul named Hakon, with an unfortunate amount of charisma, who has become known for gathering sages under his aegis.”
Zan was definitely right to give me a safe outlet for this conversation.
The priests never would have.
“And the sages?” I ask tightly.
Zan is silent a moment.
I hit the cushion really, really hard.
“Controlled even more than you were,” he finally says. Before I can ask how that’s possible, Zan says, “They’re barely trained.”
I whip to stare at him. “What?”
“The priests have developed spells that allow them to use a sage’s power without the sage actually directing it. So the priests drain the sages to keep them safe, and provide them luxuries to keep them content where they are.”
Like defanged pets.
My next strike has some magenta in it and whacks the blanket clear into the air.
Zan moves quickly to catch it.
