The Council began, tempers held for less than ten minutes, after which everything promptly degenerated into a screaming spat between the three dwarf nations. First it was over war crimes, then over being too ‘weak’ to defend themselves from war crimes, and then everything descended into a caricature of a debate about morality where nobody was actually trying to listen and discuss anything, only to reply and to insult.

  The only reason Anduin could actually do his part as moderator was because I began to use my spirits to prevent anyone else’s words from being heard, when someone took their turn on the soapbox.

  The only reason the dwarves submitted to such treatment from me was because Kurdran Wildhammer and Brann Bronzebeard respected me too much to storm off, and Dagran Thaurissan’s pride would not allow him to be the first to ‘run away.’

  “I dare you to say that again,” High Justice Harrold Grimstone spat at the Bronzebeards on behalf of the Dark Irons, having long since left his chair to pace and blandish. “Because I could’ve sworn I just heard you say that you’re all just too good for the rest of us.”

  “Hardly,” scoffed Kurdran Wildhammer, also standing ready to throw fists. “I said we at least have the sense to understand what we did wrong, but it’s no wonder you still haven’t. Evil sods like you are hypocrites or delusional, otherwise you’d commit penance or suicide in self-disgust. Or at least stop being such evil sods!” What a way to parrot my words. “Why so angry? Struck a nerve, did I?”

  “That makes no sense at all!” Grimstone scoffed. “You think you’re fit to stand in judgment when you still believe that the judge and judged have to share the same values? Maybe that’s true among your wishy-washy folk, but I couldn’t see how! Of course they don’t have the same values, that’s why one is on trial. If you think everyone can or should be the same, you’re insane. I mean, just look at elementals! What cause would a fire spirit have for self-disgust if it burns you? That’s what it’s supposed to do! It simply doesn't care about anything you care about.”

  Lovely, we were already at the ‘evil is a social construct’ argument, combined with the standard ‘I choose to believe good and evil are 100% subjective and here's my personal opinion on this entirely fictitious example as an argument.' And it was fictitious, fire elementals in their natural state were spirits of purification and transmutation, not destruction.

  “Trust a Dark Iron to prattle that good is made-up and a dwarf would need no morals in a cut off cave!” Magni Bronzebeard snapped back, visibly forcing himself not to jump out of his own seat. “An isolated cave is exactly where you’d need it most! Collapse the only mineshaft out and then try to claim that a rock is a house, that dust are clothes and that food will drop in your mouth without you doing anything! Reality will show you that life is a value only other people can buy for you at that point, but of course you won’t think so because you’ll be dead! Who’d ever go out of their way to save your sort?”

  “Trust a Bronzebeard to claim anyone who doesn’t act like you do is an idiot! It’s like you don’t even know what values are! They're judgments, they only exist insofar as we decide they do! Or did you maybe mean they’re all arbitrary? Because no, they aren't arbitrary. Remind me, who’re the ones who had to band together because they couldn’t beat us on their own? How’s that for reality teaching you a lesson?!”

  “You dare say that when it was your band of crazies that ruined everything for all of us?! Even having everything you could ever possibly need wasn’t enough for you lunatics, how’s that turned out for you, huh? Oh, right, you’re all slaves!”

  “Say that again, you-“

  “Everyone take a few steps back.” Anduin intervened, talking over everyone else because my spirits allowed only his voice to be heard. Just to be sure, I had them form a wall of air pressure between the dwarves so they wouldn’t break into a brawl. “Allow me to remind everyone that we are here to discuss the liberation of Grim Batol and who can – or may – be involved in the efforts. Not a screaming match over whether or not good and evil are subjective.”

  They weren’t. It’s just that evil people were very rarely self-aware enough – and audacious enough – to own it. So they tried to pass good and evil as subjective value judgments. Meanwhile, good people rarely have a reason to develop the superlative debate skills that it takes to convince such deluded folk of simple things like ‘objective bad exists so objective evil also must.’

  You know, because they’re the peaceful majority. And, being the majority, they almost never have to deal with evil fucks long enough to need those skills in their life. Not until the evil minority insinuates themselves into all the important positions of power and make themselves everyone’s problem.

  “What’s to discuss?” Dagran Thaurissan lazily asked this time. “It’s going to happen one way or another, isn’t that what the so-called Prophet boasted? His ultimatum on the matter has already been delivered and then some. This ‘council’ is only taking place so you can hurl abuse at us in a way we can’t defend against.”

  “Run away from, you mean,” sneered Magni Bronzebeard. “Or maybe hide behind the skirts of yet another incarnation of destructive evil. No, wait! This fool just said that good and evil don’t exist, what a thing for the High Justice to say! I’d hate to be put on trial by you lot, or is that the whole point? Ragnaros the Firelord himself, I bet he’s just misunderstood! Maybe we should’ve invited him to these talks instead of you!”

  “I could do that,” Dagran threatened. “I could summon him right here, right now.”

  “You probably should, Your Majesty,” Grimstone sneered. “Then again, maybe not. If I had a coin for every time I heard someone claim that their idea of ‘honor’ was more worth following than ours, instead of just presenting their 'very easy' logic-”

  “You’d be either poor or wrong,” I cut in this time, because this wasn’t like the bottled senators. There were people here who would actually listen to what I said, even if it wouldn’t be them. “Personal experience is either anecdotal – in which case it doesn’t prove anything, so what you just said is a confession of confirmation bias.” In other words, you’re full of shit. “Or it happens so much and so often as to be statistically significant, in which case you should start considering that maybe all those people have a point if you’re the only one who stubbornly disagrees.” In other words, you’re also full of shit.

  If you would be rich just by getting one coin for every time someone claimed that there is some very easy way to establish objective standards for something, maybe they’re the ones who have a point.

  “What sophistry!” Grimstone bulled on ahead, did Thaurissan bring him just to ruin all overtures for calm and peace? On purpose? “In my personal experience, the only arguments that benefit from dismissing the other side’s foundation of communication are those that rely on fallacies of ambiguity!”

  Your personal experience is shit then. Grimstone was now arguing against what he imagined I’d meant, whereas I was still deciding if I wanted to engage in a discussion at all, a desire that was quickly waning. Sophistry indeed.

  “Honor is not something that exists separate from any sentient creature!” Grimstone pushed on, which was half true – it only applied to dishonor and in a very reductionist sense. “Consider an empty universe – it would be neither good nor evil, it would simply be!”

  “Hold the door,” Brann Bronzebeard hopped down from his own chair to rebuke, which I was glad about because otherwise I might have had to speak again. The bottled senators had spewed this tripe as well. “‘I want to argue against facts so here’s my entirely imaginary and nonsensical opinion about something that’s entirely make-believe’, are you kidding me? Whether or not something exists is itself an objective standard! You don’t get to argue against the existence of objective standards by invoking an objective standard, that’s not how it works.”

  “Aye, that’s right!’ Kurdran jumped in. “If nothing existed you wouldn’t exist either, does that mean you don’t exist now? Give me a break!”

  “Aye, Grimstone, are ye drunk or summat?” Falstad tossed in, jumping down too, to stand shoulder to shoulder with his cousin. “An empty world wouldn’t be no world, it’d be nothin’, and so not a thing tae be talked about! I thought ye wanted tae have an argument? This ain’t one at all, it’s just sad, honestly. If ye’re not sure ye exist, believe me when I say I only wish ye didn’t.”

  I used Falstad’s pause for breath to shut down his voice this time, before it really turned to fists.

  “An argument that applies to everything is an argument for nothing,” Anduin tried, really tried to be a good moderator. “Perhaps a lifeless but otherwise normal universe might work better for your debate?”

  Don’t egg them on, Lothar. Also, no it wouldn’t. The proper context he was looking for was a universe without sapient life. And it would still be wrong because parasites are a thing that exists.

  “Nay, that doesn’t make sense either,” Antonidas suddenly decided to get involved in the spat for some unfathomable reason. “At that point you are merely arguing that nothing can go wrong in that hypothetical universe if thinking life isn’t there to cause it, in which case you are just arguing for the existence of an objective standard of good – which is to say, the perfection of that closed system. Same for the aforementioned ‘empty’ universe, if we must pretend such is possible.”

  “Hey, he’s right!” Magni said triumphantly, grinning not at Grimstone but Thaurissan. “You just destroyed your entire argument in one fell swoop!”

  Well, half of it anyway.

  “Yes yes” Grimstone tried to act unimpressed. “Everything evil is evil because it goes against the right of someone or something to simply ‘be’, isn’t that what I just said?”

  Not in the slightest, goal shifter, your gaslighting needs a lot of work.

  “This is the same thing Anvilmar did, you know,” Mastran Thundermantle calmly stated before the Wildhammer Lords could explode again. Notably, he was talking to Dagran Thaurissan, not anyone else. His complete refusal to even acknowledge Grimstone said all that needed to be said about how much the nonsense spewing out of him was worth. “He refused to judge, never agreed nor disagreed with any of the claims or charges that the Three Hammes brought against each other. He refused to acknowledge absolutes, all because he wanted to escape responsibility for the civil war he knew was coming upon his death.”

  For a wonder, people actually seemed to be listening this time. For the first time.

  “I commend you for not following in old Thaurissan’s footsteps, Blackrock Lord. But Anvilmar’s footsteps are only somewhat less bloody, because he refused to acknowledge absolutes. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a dwarven life.”

  I sat up in my chair, recognizing the words. I’d never spoken them on this world, but here they were, almost identical. What a thing to see this line of reasoning emerge from first principles here!

  “Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of meat or not is an absolute. Whether you eat your meat or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, that too is an absolute. Do not spurn common wisdom for being too easy, I beg you all. The only difference between bad and evil is premeditation… and if any of you have the gall to claim ‘bad’ is itself a relative thing, I name you parasites.”

  Parasites were, by definition, objectively, a net negative on existence. They existed only to inflict harm on the host system, and by extension the other systems that relied on that system. They harmed the genus of creature, the species as a whole, and from there the biodiversity of nature, thus undermining the circle of life, and through that the overall stability that the universe has spent its entire existence building.

  The only way you could argue against that was to claim the existence of life itself wasn’t necessarily good thing for the universe, which disqualified you from any discussion ever. If anyone ever really believed that, they would kill themselves instead of trying to talk others into doing it.

  I agreed with Mastran about premeditation being the moral difference between bad and evil… but the ironic thing was, evil did exist without sapience too. The cuckoo bird alone proved it – that unholy creature knows exactly that the first thing its newborn chick will do is murder the real chicks of the parents whose nest it was lain in.

  In fact, the parent cuckoo will spend the ensuing months watching to see what the foster parents do, and inflict all manner of torments on them – after eating their real chicks – if they refuse to raise the parasite. Some were even known to ‘educate’ the foster species for entire, consecutive roosting cycles, until the poor birds resigned themselves to slavishly raising the cuckoo chicks every year thereafter, just so the parent cuckoo didn’t come to peck them bloody and kill their own young again.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Not for nothing had Aiden Perenolde been so traumatized as a child.

  “Maybe we just don’t know enough about the cuckoo to say if it’s good for nature in other ways,” Grimstone blustered. Because Greyfeather had just voiced my cuckoo argument aloud, that’s what I get for indulging so many conversations with friends on the way here. “Its song is pretty enough that people wrote their own songs and poems about it, no?”

  ‘The parasite has a deceptively pleasant disguise’ should just be added evidence of its insidiousness, but here it was being used to argue for benefit of the doubt because Harrold Grimstone’s self-interest was the opposite of enlightened.

  “No, you don’t get to play dumb in the face of reality when you made the assertion about nature in the first place,” Magni Bronzebeard rebutted, speaking words that Gelbin Mekkatorque had just whispered in his ear. “Nothing that arises from natural law is subjective, and right and wrong are no different!”

  “Counter-point – the trolls,” Grimstone argued with unvarnished smugness. “There’s a culture that considers rape and cannibalism to be perfectly fine.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well you’re the one asserting that nothing that arises from natural law is subjective.” My arcane sight showed that Grimstone was using a spell to eavesdrop on Magni and Gelbin’s whispered conversations. “How do you explain them?”

  “Ye canna be serious,” Falstad balked. “Just ‘cause the trolls have a shit culture dunnae mean the universe willed it! It just means their ancestors were right cunts who happened tae get away with it!”

  “Since you don’t get to deal with many of them down here, let me enlighten you,” Kurdran sneered. “Those trolls that get the bad side of the raping and cannibalism don’t enjoy it none, and a lot of the ones on the ‘giving’ side feel bad doing it, never mind after! Some even find ways not to do it again after the wench they raped spends the day cryin’. They’re savages, not demons! What point are you even trying to make?”

  “I’m starting to feel like we’re having two completely different conversations,” Grimstone lied. “Maybe we should step back and try something we both agree on.”

  Translation: let me backpedal while I figure out how to shift goals again.

  “Like chess! The rules are arbitrary.” No, they were developed to simulate war. “But we can make objective analyses of moves with relation to players' goals within the framework of said rules.” True. “Such analysis of the system is objective.” Unless it’s a liar doing it, like now. “But the resulting value judgment of each move is still subjective relative to each player's goal!” Not usually, players are objectively wrong about what the winning move is all the time, no matter their assumptions or skill level – the latter of which is also objectively measurable through things like pattern analysis and statistics, is this really supposed to be a serious argument?

  “What are you getting at?” Kurdran demanded impatiently.

  “Don’t you see? You’re assuming that all of the players playing on the same board have the same fundamental goals!” No, no one ever assumed this, in fact it was impossible for this to be the case in his example. The goal of chess being ‘to win’ means the goals of the players are diametrically opposed, not the same. “It’s an understandable mistake, but by doing it you also claim that people with different standards of honor from yours are just objectively worse at playing the game.” False, Grimstone was just projecting at this point. “You’re arguing that the ‘evil’ and ‘dishonorable’ – meaning us – would be aghast at our own ineptitude if only we had a fuller understanding of this game.” Grimstone lost all his glibness. “I assure you, none of that is the case.”

  Translation: we know exactly what we’re doing, and we always did.

  “I s’pose ye’re right,” Falstad shocked everyone by conceding. “Insofar as ye don’t mention the self-aware assholes, but that’s only ‘cause they don’t last long.” The future High Thane of the Wildhammer dwarves grinned mockingly at Grimstone. “Unless ye do a good job of escapin’ consequences, I guess. But that takes either so much power that no one dares mess with ye – unlikely, unless the Emperor over there is secretly your thrall-“

  “The gall!” Grimstone exclaimed, which shouldn’t have gone through the noise suppression, Thaurissan had used a spell to create an illusion that he spoke aloud in spite of me. Antonidas and Hugarin both countered it immediately, but I was not oblivious that Thaurissan had been looking my way more and more as the argument dragged on. As always, the enemy had ulterior motives for letting lesser enemies take the fall for them.

  “-or bein’ way good at playing yer society’s rules fer yer own benefit, in which case ye’re really just ‘nother hypocrite. Don’t worry though, yer Emperor’s not fooled.” Falstad’s mock turned outright cruel. “After all, he’s sitting right dignified and pretty all the way over there, while lettin’ ye make a fool of yerself here with us.”

  Alas for the enemy, I had more good friends than they had fall guys.

  It was a bit mean to do it like this, but when you talk with someone who only interprets things his way and projects on you the rest of the time, setting traps to make them overconfident is objectively necessary. The bottled senators had done this too, latching onto the one thing I’d left out for their benefit – that self-aware and unrepentant evil did exist – and turning it on me as if it disproved everything else I said. Which it didn’t.

  “Bah!” Grimstone scoffed. “As always, the ones who talk and debate on a topic most confidently are the ones who understand it the least.”

  That was word for word what I’d told the senators before I bottled them, back on the mountain, confirming that this whole display had just been a proxy argument between Dagran and me. Clearly, none of the Dark Irons entirely disagreed with the bottled senators about what all they’d spewed at me, back at the mountain. Except maybe Galgann Firehammer, all this time he’d just sat next to the Emperor and not said a thing.

  “Are you speaking just for yourself, or for your whole side right now?” Kurdran wondered.

  “Forget it,” Magni said, his goodwill crumbling in the face of Grimstone’s relentless insistence on talking almost exclusively in fallacies, as was the point all along – when you don’t want to admit you’re wrong, you just need to make the other side give up in disgust and pretend you won the argument. “The Dark Irons will never treat with us in good faith. I, for one, am ready to accept their refusal. With this, Ironforge hereby declares all our points proven and I have nothing more I wish to say.”

  “Please don’t patronize us,” Grimstone couldn’t leave well enough alone, not realizing he was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. “We at least maintain enough doubt in our own position to offer up our reasoning for dissection and critique from all and sundry!”

  No, that was what everyone else had done.

  “You, on the other hand, have only asserted your positions, complained about hypotheticals and analogies, extolled the supposed simplicity of some logic you couldn't be bothered to provide, bemoaned the basic necessity of clarifying terminology, and now dismissed me with a snide remark implying that I understand less about the topic based on your refusal to even try to discuss it.”

  This was the most audacious stream of blatant lies I’d heard since that guard who killed Orsur. Everything Grimstone did and said up to this point indicated the opposite, though he pretended otherwise fairly well. He wanted the attention less than he feared losing the argument because he never planned to concede either way, wrong or not.

  Not for nothing was he suddenly talking for his entire faction, rather than just himself. He was trying to claim the other side’s contribution to the argument as his own contributions. He was also pretending that ‘winning’ his personal argument automatically won the Dark Irons the moral victory here as well. Reality didn’t matter to him, only appearance did.

  I had my work cut out for me with these people.

  “I accept your refusal to actually engage on this topic,” Grimstone finished with such somber calm that everyone knew it was completely fake. “But please don't attempt to paint your own dismissive confidence as some sort of authoritative humility.”

  The projection this dwarf was capable of could play motion pictures on Blackrock Mountain from all the way back on Earth.

  “No, fuck this.” Muradin Bronzebeard was suddenly a living statue soaring across the entire intervening space between his chair and Grimstone, bulldozing through my air wall to punch the dark iron dwarf right in the face.

  The High justice of Shadowforge City flew spewing teeth and crashed to the ground unconscious.

  “You don’t get to pretend you won here!” the middle Bronzebeard brother hollered at Dagran Thaurissan, before his brothers and the Wildhammers all jumped him at once to stop him from going on a rampage. The Dark Irons also jumped from their chairs then, drawing their weapons.

  “There’s two sides to a spat!” Muradin snarled, throwing the others off him but not advancing further, even though his Earthen Avatar made him too strong and immune to most spells we might have used to stop him. He itched to start a fight but was too proud to escalate past the first punch all by himself. “One’s right – that’s us – the other’s wrong – that’s you – and the middle is always evil too – that’s also you! Just because we didn’t want to bring up no baby-eating rapist trolls and goblins and what the hell else, who know exactly what they’re doing and enjoy it –! That doesn’t mean everyone else who’s a sick fuck and deludes themselves into thinking they’re not a sick fuck isn’t still a sick fuck! Yes, that’s also you! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

  As I healed Grimstone despite my wish to let him lie there, where he couldn’t poison the air again, I experienced a moment of shining epiphany.

  The Khaz Modan, Hinterlands and Dark Iron dwarves had all gone through this entire screaming match just now, without once mentioning even a single specific grievance. Not even the slaves recently freed. They hated each other almost entirely because of wounds inflicted by their parents and grandparents. It was astonishing to realize it here and now, of all times, but...

  I can work with this.

  Not easily, though, it had to be said. As the dwarves descended into screaming again, the same argument except framed in different ways because there was too much bad blood between the Three Hammers to let any insult go, I seriously considered turning Grimstone into a slug.

  For better or worse, Antonidas chose that moment to lean in and distract me from my all too righteous fantasy. “This looks like the perfect moment for a diversion.”

  I looked over to the Stormwind side of the circle of throne-chairs, where Anduin was standing and watching the unfolding disaster with eyes damn near dead. “Since you’re not including the good King over there in this talk, I assume you’ve got something outrageous in mind. Finally ready to spring on me whatever you’ve been plotting since you regained the ability to walk?”

  “In a way,” Antonidas hedged. “You will need to bolster me for it, however. As much power as you can give me.”

  I grabbed his hand and renewed the tiny fragment of my spirit I’d given him. I could still cast my spells on him even if he wasn’t in my line of sight, but this way I could let him draw on my Light as substitute for the spiritual power he was still too short on to do… whatever Arcane manipulation he planned.

  “I apologize in advance if we lose our friendship over this, but I do think in some ways you are a tad too prudent.”

  I very carefully didn’t pinch my nose. “… Because I don’t want a single experience to taint all my friendships forevermore, I’m not going to assume you’re going to pull a Granodior on me.”

  “… The comparison is not entirely inappropriate.”

  I looked at him.

  “Rest assured you can always refuse.”

  Refuse what?

  “But I and everyone else really hope you don’t.”

  Everyone else who?

  I immersed myself in the Light. I felt the significance of this moment. I felt, with sudden clarity, that the event Odyn had found so funny in my future, the thing he’d deliberately overfocused his prescience upon just so I wouldn’t also foresee it, was now upon me.

  I decided not to stop him. I didn’t have it in me to give my consent to anything either, but… I watched Antonidas nod to me, rise and exit the pavilion without stopping him.

  Unsure if I should anticipate or dread what was coming, I just sat in my chair and watched the increasingly loud and no longer intelligible argument – the dwarves had switched to their racial tongue now, which I would’ve still understood if not for their accents.

  Then I felt a positively immense pull on my energy, and a commensurate emergence of magic outside. Arcane Magic.

  Space-time magic.

  Everything came to a stop. I wasn’t the only one who sensed that something was happening.

  Then the buildup of power outside became so great and intense that you didn’t need extrasensory perception to feel it at all.

  “King Anduin,” I said idly. “I request a recess.”

  “… Granted.”

  I nodded, stood up and calmly exited the pavilion. The mounting power being channeled outside ensured everyone else would follow me out.

  The diplomatic pavilion had been set up along the imaginary western edge of the main Stormwind camp, equidistant from the Shadowforge, Ironforge and Aerie Peak camps that had been set up around it. Encirclement wasn’t usually the best idea, but Anduin had anticipated difficulties and brought a lot more men than all three dwarf delegations combined. Also, there was me and my knights up in Morgan’s Vigil too, ready to come down with a flanking charge if anyone tried to cause trouble.

  What this meant was that west of the pavilion was all open steppe, so we all got to watch Antonidas work a feat of magic that wouldn’t normally be seen on this planet until decades from now.

  With the , a contingent of soldiers appeared in the open field, a very familiar man at their head.

  I slackened in surprise. And relief.

  I moved forward.

  Across the field from me, Richard Angevin moved forward as well, a platoon of soldiers dragging a lone cart in their wake.

  We stopped just a few meters from each other. Richard studied me intently, glancing briefly over the other worthies before turning his gaze back to me.

  I studied him in turn. He looked good. And…

  And like someone about to see their life’s work finally bear fruit.

  “Richard.” He didn’t say anything. “You stand before Anduin Lothar, King of Stormwind; Kurdran Wildhammer, High Thane of Aerie Peak, and his cousin, Falstad Windmauler; On my other side are King Magni of Ironforge, and his brothers Muradin and Brann. And here is Dagran Thaurissan, the Emperor of the Dark Iron dwarves who live in that volcano over yonder.”

  “Well met,” Anduin said.

  “Well met,” Richard said.

  Nobody else said anything.

  “Everyone, this is Richard Angevin, Regent of the Nation of Alterac last I knew.” I looked at the man. “Unless that’s no longer the case?”

  “It is, but hopefully not for much longer.” Richard looked at the others with apology that was far less than his conviction. “I can tell that whatever is going on here is momentous. I do beg pardon, but I will be infringing upon the occasion now.”

  Richard gestured to one of his men.

  The soldier – I recognized him as the man who’d been in charge of the guard force around my home back in Alterac – marched up to me with three items he picked up from the cart. When he was in front of me, he bowed deeply and held out two of three.

  I took them.

  The first was a letter from my parents, written on the back of a sketch of my father hugging my visibly pregnant mother.

  The second was a ledger bound in fresh leather. When I opened it, the first page read words that made me seriously wonder if this was a dream: Alterac Accession – Referendum Results – Year 581 of the King’s Calendar.

  The third was a box that the soldier didn’t give to me, but instead opened and held out to Richard when the man walked over and knelt on the ground at my feet. The soldiers, and all the other men behind the both of them, all the newcomers knelt to me as well.

  “Alterac has been bullied for too long. No more.” Richard Angevin reached into the box, took out the crown of Alterac and held it up to me in entreaty. “Your Majesty. Your people ask you to come home.”

  I had no words. I had no thoughts to think them. Around me, no one made a noise. The only sound that pierced the tableau was the voice of a raven, languidly and invisibly circling above us all, enthralled.

  “Ferdinand Rogasian, you will not save the world.” Prophecy spoke in the unseen world. “You will live and you will die, while the rest of us all fall over each other to save it for you.”

  here.