70 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
70 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
—Welcome, President Calvin!
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—Thank you, Elder Caprina, Calvin replied.
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I know we gave very little notice, but I believe it's a matter of grave importance for Galvarelli.
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—Oh, don't worry about that, Calvin.
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Do you mind terribly if I call you Calvin?
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I always get a bit flustered trying to figure out whatever other titles people want to be called.
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Calvin nodded.
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—Wonderful.
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Call my Caprina too, there's no need for any of that Elder nonsense.
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You're worried because of Yakaterina's warning, right?
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—How did you know?
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—Calvin, it's my duty here at the Temple to know these things.
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Anyway, Yakaterina wrote often before her arrest.
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She studied here, you know.
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Probably more diligent than any other Hierarch, until she decided to test the freedom's your predecessor gave her.
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I felt her death, through the Meadowlark.
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I shall miss her passing, although I regret her ambition.
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Anyway, the New Voice.
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I felt it myself.
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A gentle whisper, at first.
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But it grew, and I felt it attacking my mind.
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I assumed it was a mistake, and tried to follow the source back to whoever created the attack.
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However, as I did, I found only hatred and malice at its source.
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I was only just able to escape back to myself.
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Only fragments of information came to me, the most important of which being the great distance that separated me from the attacker.
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But it was too far for me to travel, and I felt it was not my fight to win.
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I resolved myself to remain here, helping any who were being afflicted by the terrible insanity the New Voice inflicted upon them.
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—Is that something you could help me teach others?
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To fight the Voice's hold on the mind?
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—I'm afraid not, Calvin.
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Not unless we could go to each person, one at a time, giving them centuries of training.
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But there's more.
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Calvin, do you know about the creation of our kinds?
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Calvin shook his head, lightly.
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Whatever he did know would be embarrassingly small in front of an Elder.
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—It goes back, all the way back.
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To the legacy of the Fourth and Fifth Races, Man and Beast.
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The Ancestral Voices, which became known as the Great Voices, helped them commune with the powers of the Sentries of old.
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But they were not alone.
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The Aery was founded and grew, a seed around which the Birds became a society.
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The Voice of the Birds had always been hard to hear, but the Birds acting at one gave it great power.
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And then, it became obvious that balance was needed.
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The Hidden Lands were created, for the Voiced Beasts, Voiced Birds and the Voiced Men, who became the Dwarrowfolk, alone.
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The Unvoiced you enjoy so much were kept alone for their own safety, although as you know they thrived.
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And the Hidden Lands were divided in Three.
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But between those borders, space unclaimed remained.
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There, the powers of the Voices Ancestral lost some of their structure and mingled.
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But that is not all, as far as I can tell.
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Some other force, a power primeval, cast its lot with the people between the Trethings.
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These people, corrupted power unbound by nation or species, are known as the Witches.
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—Witches?
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—Indeed.
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And when I followed the corruption of the Meadowlark back to its source, I found a horrible power looking back at me.
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I suspect that it was a powerful Witch.
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Calvin, if Galvarelli has made an enemy this powerful, |