I don’t wait to find out what it is.
She believes she’s right, that she is helping all of us. Her Compassion will be strong.
But not as strong as if she were using it herself.
Not as strong as my Wrath, even tired as I am.
My wrath at what they’ve become.
That my choice five hundred years ago changed so little.
That they are going to force me back into the patterns I wanted to leave behind.
And these priests—they are not motivated by Compassion.
They want to fight. To dominate.
And that, I can use against them.
That’s what a sage does, after all. We are, in some sense, a focus, giving feeling form with our katas to magnify them and changing the world with them.
Being a focus means we can also magnify the emotion in others that is our domain.
In theory, making the people I am fighting against angrier might not be the best move, except:
They are not using Compassion.
They are trying to use power divorced from emotion, and that will always, always be weaker.
That’s part of why the Order taught me to manage my wrath, to punish unapproved expressions of it: because then I was easier to control.
But I’m not going to simply make them angry.
I can do worse than that.
The priests are ready before I am, which is fine—it will hurt, but I can take their hit, so I ignore the pallid yellow ball of power shooting toward me.
But Zan doesn’t let me, stepping in front of me and releasing a jet of fire from his fingertips that disperses the priests’ initial salvo.
Gods damn it, he’s spending his magic on me again!
But I don’t waste the opportunity.
Before the priests’ next attack is ready, I finish my kata, and releasemypower.
A magenta aura manifests around us.
Wrath from myself.
And Wrath fromthem.
It eats away at the yellow aura protecting them.
Because now that I’ve seen Eraya’s kata, I know enough to read it: She isn’t magnifying the priests’ Compassion. She’s simply powering their own spells.
And that means they’re not safe from me.
Petty grievances, beliefs thattheyshould be the ones in charge—the priests’ unity erodes before my eyes.
