79. THE EMPTY CUP

Janel’s story

The Manol

After their return from the Blight

“Half of humanity?” Grizzst’s voice seemed too large for the space they occupied, a volume that conveyed all the anger and fury of shouting without technically qualifying.

Janel wasn’t sure what to call this meeting. It struck her as one of those portentous gatherings that historians in later eras would name something reverent. Something that would utterly fail to capture the rabid, scrambling desperation that had proceeded it and that still hung thick and suffocating in the Manol vané sitting room. Something that wouldn’t even hint at the barking, snapping, arguing of people with almost unimaginable power grappling with the unwelcome sensation of being so terrified they were all but shitting themselves.

The only good thing to come out of the whole ordeal was that Tya had immediately volunteered to shield them against magically scrying. At which point a nervous Qown had stepped forward to volunteer that he’d magically scryed on Tya herself, and she didn’t know how to protect against Worldhearth. Which stole all the fuel out of any attempt the two remaining Immortals might have made to control that meeting while burning with righteous fury. A not-too-subtle reminder that they were all there because Guardians too were no more immune to making mistakes than anyone else.

Said meeting included two gods (Tya and Khored), three people in the process of becoming gods (Xivan, Talea, and Dorna), an immortal wizard now trapped in an articulated metal statue (Grizzst), two former vané queens (Valathea and Khaeriel), the current vané king (Teraeth), his heir (Therin), a mimic (Talon), four members of Quuros royalty, including the empress (Thurvishar, Galen, Sheloran, and Tyentso), a former Vishai priest (Qown), a mostly reformed terrorist (Senera), a former assassin (Kalindra), her brother, Jarith, and herself.

Doc was probably in the room too, but she couldn’t see him.

“Half of humanity at minimum,” Tya agreed, “but that’s assuming that Kihrin is correct about Relos Var’s intentions. We don’t know for certain Var intends to do any of this.” She was visibly upset, visibly tired, and Janel had to pinch her own hand to remind herself not to devolve into screaming at her own mother.

Seriously. Seriously, after all this time, after everything that he’d done. Tya was still going to make apologies for that bastard? Unbelievable.

But Janel couldn’t completely hide her disapproval. “Whatever his intentions, you didn’t think this fact about demon souls was worth mentioning?”

“Why would we have said anything?” Tya said in response. While she hadn’t ignored Grizzst’s outburst, the goddess did a commendable job of gracefully conveying the idea that he’d rudely interrupted a private conversation. “To what purpose? So people whose only sin was the origins of their souls could wallow in the anguish and guilt of never knowing if that mattered? If a dark or evil thought was truly theirs?” She waved a hand negligently at everyone in the room so that it would have been impossible to tell exactly who she indicated.

Khored’s voice was soft but cut through all others. “Feel free to dissect our mistakes if we survive this. In the meantime, what happens moving forward—”

“I cannot fucking believe this,” Grizzst interrupted. Before anyone could make any further comment, he added, “And you’re wrong, Tya. We do know Relos Var’s intentions. I know, because I fucking helped develop the ritual to do it. Which I only did because someone didn’t think the rest of us needed to know that its qualifying criteria included half the damn population—”

“You developed the ritual,” Janel said, heart rate picking up.

“Helped,” he corrected. “Gotta give credit where it’s due. Var did a fair chunk of the work.”

“But you know it? You could re-create it?” Janel pressed. If they knew what Relos Var was doing in advance, then that changed things. That changed everything.

Grizzst paused, but then made a clanking noise as he shook his head. “You won’t have time. It takes ages to set up a ritual like this.”

She laughed. “Me? No. You misunderstand. Relos Var’s already setting up the ritual for us. We’re just modifying a few glyphs.”

Senera sucked in a breath. “That … that could work. If we knew what those glyphs were in advance…” She met Thurvishar’s gaze.

He in turn raised his hands. “It might be an option, but it seems riskier than stopping the ritual in the first place.”

“That’s the problem: you won’t.”

Kihrin appeared at the far side of the room.

Given that Kihrin (albeit Talon shape-changed as Kihrin) was already in the room, a certain amount of consternation was to be expected. Khaeriel was one of the first to start moving.

“Kihrin!”

Janel stepped in front of the woman and stopped her. “No, don’t do that. I’m sure Kihrin would like to still have a mother when this is all finished.”

“What are you—?” Khaeriel’s mouth dropped open in outrage. “Get out of my way!”

“No, no, Janel’s right,” Kihrin said. “Everyone should keep their distance.”

Khored had already pulled his sword by this point. Janel thought it was likely habit. And possibly also that part about being terrified. He pointed it at Kihrin. “Are you Kihrin D’Mon, or are you Vol Karoth? Show yourself!”

Kihrin stared at the blade and then at the Manol vané man holding it. “Do you really think that I’m the problem right now?”

“We saw what happened to Ompher.” Khored’s stance was battle-ready and his expression grim. “This could still be a trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” Thurvishar said. Then he paused. “At least not the way you mean.”

Teraeth sent a glare in the wizard’s direction. “Stop helping.”

“Yes, because obviously I mind controlled Ompher into dropping a comet on the planet. That seems like a strategically wise play.” Kihrin’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Stop panicking and start thinking, Mithros. If I were your enemy, I wouldn’t have helped you in that fight back there. Also, I’d be appearing here in the flesh and we’d be fighting right now.” He paused. “And I think we can all agree that I wouldn’t have fixed the sun.”

“I agree that the sun part does seem odd,” Tya said, “but perhaps you might make an exception and appear in person, anyway. Call it a mark of trust.”

Kihrin threw the Goddess of Magic a sour look. “I’m not staying away to protect me, Irisia.”

Tya’s face went blank for a second, and then she inhaled. “How bad is it?” Her voice was softer, more notably concerned.

“Could be worse,” Kihrin said. “At least I managed to not blow up the planet.”

“Was that an option?” Therin’s voice sounded strangled. He hadn’t attempted to approach his son.

Kihrin didn’t answer. No one else volunteered to explain either. Janel already knew the answer was yes.

Kihrin glanced over at Janel and smiled. “You all right? I saw you take a hit out there.”

“I’m fine,” she said. Whether that was true or not would have to wait. If she wasn’t dropping unconscious or forced to abandon her body, she was “fine” for the only definition she cared about.

“Let’s get back to the part about how we can’t stop the ritual,” Teraeth said.

“And even more importantly,” Senera said, “did it work?”

A corner of Kihrin’s mouth flicked up. “Yes, it worked perfectly. A small snag on the power levels, but otherwise exactly as planned.”

There was an almost audible release of tension around the room, at least from some of the people present, Janel included.

“Xaltorath is dead,” Kihrin continued, “and I have access to all their memories. Which is why I know that you’re not likely to stop the ritual. At least, we never have before, in all the times that Xaltorath has ever replayed history.”

“Replayed history—?” Several people, mostly the oldest and most powerful in the room, all began babbling at once.

“Xaltorath had figured out how to move through time,” Janel declared loudly, giving Teraeth a glance that she hoped he would interpret as “please use your fancy throne to shout over people as necessary.” “It required incredible amounts of energy, which is why she kept attacking Immortals. She needed their power. Each cycle she repeated, she would leave herself notes on what had happened before—what everyone else calls the Devoran Prophecies. They don’t predict the future. They never did. They chronicle the past.”

“But this time they made a mistake,” Kihrin said. “Xaltorath decided that their job would be easier if they only had to deal with one enemy rather than two—and apologies for any egos this may trample, but the only enemies they cared about were Vol Karoth and Relos Var. So this last time through, they set up a chain of events that resulted in Elana Milligreest fracturing Vol Karoth’s soul, which as a side effect resulted in three souls being reborn that never had been before: Elana, Atrin, and S’arric.” He gave Thurvishar a shrug, which the man returned, an unspoken apology for leaving him out. “Xaltorath didn’t care about that, though. Their true goal was making sure that what remained of Vol Karoth would be too spiritually and cognitively damaged to prove any threat by the time we reached this point.”

“Oops,” Talon said.

“Right,” Kihrin said, smiling with grim satisfaction. “Xaltorath’s plan worked in a way. They did a fantastic job of eliminating one leg of that triad: themselves. But as soon as Relos Var realizes that Xaltorath is gone, he’s going to move on to what would normally be his next step—the one he’s likely been delaying because any time he’s ever tried it previously while Xaltorath was still alive, the demon was able to twist the ritual against him.”

“Wait, so Relos Var knows about the time loops?” Tya asked.

“He does.” Senera paused as several of the other people in the room threw her questioning looks. “I was the one who figured what Xaltorath was doing using the Name of All Things. We were trying to find out why the demon prince was so interested in Janel. Relos Var didn’t accept it was just the obvious: that she was Tya’s daughter.”

Janel found herself grateful that Senera and Relos Var still hadn’t known quite the right questions to ask back when she’d been their prisoner. They’d known about her previous incarnation as Elana. They hadn’t known about her first incarnation as S’arric’s lover, C’indrol. It had been a pivotal blind spot.

“Very well,” Janel said. “Let’s assume we can’t stop his demon ritual. I’m betting we can modify it. We know more about demons than he does. We can be more precise so that it only affects actual demons and, instead of ejecting them from this universe, sends them to the Font of Souls to be reborn.”

Very smart people were in the room. She wasn’t at all surprised when those very smart people immediately looked concerned.

“Janel—” Teraeth said.

“I know,” she said. “I’m an actual demon. So is Jarith. Knowing that, it may be possible to modify the ritual so it won’t affect us.”

“And if it isn’t?” Kalindra’s voice went shrill at the end.

**Then we do it anyway,** Jarith said.

“No!” Kalindra said. Teraeth looked like he was about to start voicing a similar objection.

Janel met Kihrin’s eyes. He understood. He wasn’t happy about it, but he understood.

“There isn’t a single person here who won’t be risking their lives,” Janel said. “Any one of us might not come back. I don’t plan on committing suicide.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure we do a better job of redesigning the ritual than Relos Var did,” Tya said. “We’ll do it together.”

Janel nodded at her mother, throat suddenly dry. She knew that Teraeth was still giving her a worried, upset look that spoke volumes about how they absolutely weren’t done talking about it, but that was fine. It was possible that her concerns meant nothing, that there might be an easy way to make sure neither of them were affected.

But it would have been wrong of her not to bring up the possibility.

“Once he realizes Xaltorath is gone,” Kihrin said, “his next step will be to strip the Eight Guardians of their powers so he can claim those concepts for himself.” He inhaled. “So let’s talk about that.”

“He can’t do it,” Tya said. “If Relos Var could steal our powers, he also would have done it by now.”

“The problem was never the ritual,” Kihrin corrected. “He created the ritual. He knows how to undo it. No, the problem is that it’s all or nothing. Once he starts, all Eight Guardians will know that someone is trying to cut their links with their powers and they’ll know where that person is. If he didn’t wait until you were too weak to stop him, it would never work.”

“I don’t know if you’ve taken a head count recently,” Talon piped up, “but there’s a lot fewer than eight of you these days.”

“Yes, that’s my point. Now originally, he likely thought that once Xaltorath was out of the picture, he could just perform the ritual to strip the Guardians, perform a second ritual to destroy demons, use Urthaenriel to take control of me and force me into the Nythrawl Wound, closing it behind me, and … I don’t know. Take a nap? He’s engineered enough chaos and mayhem in the rest of the empire to make sure Quur is in no position to interfere. And had I still been diminished, he’d be able to control all eight dragons just in case any unexpected complications turned up. It would be impossible to stop him.”

“Except he knows you’re not diminished,” Teraeth said. “He’ll know the moment he looks up and sees a yellow sun.”

“That reminds me,” Tya murmured. “I need to remove the Veil or the planet’s going to freeze.”

“You might want to do that sooner rather than later,” Kihrin suggested.

“You said we can’t stop the ritual to destroy the demons,” Valathea said. “Is there nothing that can be done about stripping the Guardians of their powers?”

“Of course, there is,” Thurvishar said. “We beat him to it.”

Silence.

It was a testament to how total the stunned surprise was in the room that no one said a word. Most of them just blinked at Thurvishar like he’d just told them that jumping into the Nythrawl Wound themselves was a perfectly rational solution to the whole problem. Most. Senera was nodding. Kihrin was showing no reaction at all.

Janel thought that was wise. Coming from him, the likelihood that someone would accuse this of being a trap seemed a certainty.

Grizzst broke the silence. “To what end? To make his job easier for him? If he has a way to claim those concepts, it doesn’t matter who cuts the connection—”

“He’s not the only one who has a way to claim the concepts,” Xivan said. Her gaze was firmly fixed on Khored.

“Oh, I get it,” Dorna said. “Can’t empty a drained cup, can you? But couldn’t he just … do the ritual again?”

“He has to know their names for the ritual to work,” Kihrin said slowly. “Their true names. He’s already denied Thaena, Taja, or Galava. He just doesn’t know it yet. But once that first attempt fails, he’ll start searching for answers. In previous runs, when that happened, he just asked the Name of All Things for the identities of the new hosts. This time, he doesn’t have that option, because this time, Senera switched sides and used that Cornerstone to cure Drehemia.”

“You would just have to strip … us,” Tya said. “The only two left. The others are easy. We just hand out Greater Talismans.”

“Greater what?” Grizzst asked.

Tyentso leaned over. “I have no idea either. Just shut up and listen.”

“Hey, I’d like to know what’s going on!” Grizzst snapped back.

“And I’d like Nemesan to not start a damn civil war. It’s nice to want things.” Tyentso stepped forward. “But just to cut through all the bullshit on this, am I understanding what you’re proposing, Scamp? You want to do this ritual, making eight new Guardians … and then what? That doesn’t fix the demons. That doesn’t fix the Nythrawl Wound.” She shrugged. “And while I realize this part’s a bit more personal, it doesn’t stop Nemesan from ripping the empire apart.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why did you want to make sure that Relos Var has Urthaenriel, anyway?”

Kihrin grinned, big and wide and so like, well, Kihrin that Janel damned the fact she couldn’t stop everything and kiss him right there. “Oh, because that way I can track his location.”

“You can’t track—” A half-dozen voices, all at once, saying some variation of Godslayer or Urthaenriel or in one case, the Ruin of Kings.

Kihrin met Janel’s gaze and smirked.

“Not helping,” Teraeth called out. “One at a time.” He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but Janel could tell he was fighting it.

“Kihrin can track Urthaenriel,” Thurvishar said. “I’ve seen him do it. And that was before, when he was mortal.”

Kihrin held up a hand. “Three steps. First, we make new Guardians. Two, we take Janel’s suggestion and fix Relos Var’s ritual for him. Three—” He hesitated. “Three’s more complicated. I’d prefer not to use Relos Var’s method of solving the Nythrawl Wound problem, but we’ll have to see how it goes.”

“Kihrin—” Teraeth leaned forward, a warning in his voice.

Janel commiserated. “We’ll have to see how it goes” wasn’t so difficult to translate into “if I have to sacrifice my own life, I will.” But at least Kihrin wasn’t making it the first option.

“You make that sound so easy,” Tyentso said. “Like he’s not going to have eight dragons and an entire army stewed on Warmonger fighting on his side.”

“He won’t,” Kihrin said. “He thinks he controls the dragons. He doesn’t. He thinks he can use Urthaenriel to force me into the Wound. He can’t. And as for Warmonger—”

Tyentso addressed Jarith. “You tracked down Warmonger once. Can you do it again?”

**Yes. And teleport wards won’t stop me.**

“You’re still my favorite Milligreest,” Tyentso told him, shaking a finger. “All right. That’s almost starting to sound like a plan. We’ll beat him to the finish line on the first ritual and then track him down and kick his ass before he can finish the second.”

“You’re all assuming we’re going to agree to being de-powered.” Khored was practically growling.

“You’re damn right we are,” Dorna said, whacking the God of Destruction on the arm as she did. “Sounds to me like you’re losing that loaf of bread no matter how you cut it. What they’re suggesting is giving you control over who comes next. Now come on, old man. Ain’t you immortal and thousands of years old, anyway? So, you won’t be a god. So what? Didn’t seem to me that you enjoyed that half as much as fighting in the tournaments and wenching yourself sick after.”

Khored gave Dorna an admonishing look to which the old woman seemed perfectly immune. “Damn it all, Dorna. Who told you to start making sense?”

“Must go with the job or something. We both know that it ain’t natural behavior for me.”

Sheloran snapped her fan closed with a hard metallic click. “So,” she said. “I suppose the most obvious question is: Who do we choose as replacements?”

Khored frowned. “Does it matter? They won’t have time to acclimate.” He pointed to Talea and Xivan. “You two have come along faster than I would’ve expected, but there’s little chance we’ll have even that much time for our replacements. Which is fine, because until we can kill Relos Var, we’ll have to keep all of you out of sight, or he’ll just do the ritual again with the correct names.”

“It damn well does matter,” Senera snapped. “Because whoever is chosen will still have the job when this is all finished! Telling yourself that the compromises were fine because they’d only last until you accomplished your goals was how we ended up in this position in the first place!”

Khored’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t tell the wizard she was wrong. In fact, he didn’t seem insulted by her rant. Janel wondered if she should blame too many years spent working alongside Khaemezra.

“There’s one last thing,” Kihrin said.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tyentso said.

“You have the option of resisting the ritual,” Kihrin said to Tya and Khored. “But if you do, it will set up a fatal disharmony. It’ll kill you. Relos Var probably doesn’t mind that outcome. I do. So don’t fight it. I know after all this time it will be instinctive to do so, so all three of us are going to have to make a point of allowing it.”

Grizzst whipped back around. “Wait. It’s going to affect you too?”

“I did say all or nothing, didn’t I?” Kihrin said. “The ritual isn’t piecemeal. He has to try to strip the powers from all eight of us, all at once. He won’t get all of us, but as it stands right now, he will affect Tya, Khored, Ompher, Argas, and yes, me. It doesn’t matter that Ompher and Argas are both dead. That just means they can’t resist.”

“No, that’s bullshit,” Grizzst interrupted. “Look, I get that it’s possible, but he went through a lot of effort to make sure that you, in particular, had these powers. He’s not just going to remove them.”

Kihrin looked vaguely annoyed at the interruption, but he simply shook his head. “But he’s not removing the powers he cares about. You forget I’ve been through this ritual twice. He’ll strip S’arric’s concepts away. Vol Karoth’s will remain.” He sighed. “Unfortunately.”

Janel stepped forward. “We need to remove those powers and reassign them before Relos Var can. That’s the point.”

“We’ll still have to find the right people,” Tya said. “The Greater Talismans only respond to very specific resonances. Not just anyone can form the bond with them.”

Valathea cast her gaze around the room. “Be that as it may, I see a roomful of people who likely qualify. With the additional bonuses that we both already know them and they’re here. I see no reason we can’t start this right now.”

“Wait, you’re not suggesting—” Galen started to say.

The mimic began laughing.

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Talea said. “It’s not like becoming a god hurts.”