“She’s right,” Clem said. “We all got out of there light, compared to you. Cuts, bruises, some burns. Nothing that won’t heal.”
“Get some rest,” I said to Clem. She was clearly exhausted.
“I’ll stay.” Her downcast eyes were surrounded by rings of dark shadow. She had to have been by my bedside for the whole night, at least.
“You need to sleep,” I said with a smile. “Go on. I’ll see you later.”
“If you insist.” Clem leaned forward to wrap me in a gentle hug. When she straightened, her eyes were fixed on Hirani. “Don’t let anything happen to him.”
The elder smiled at Clem’s fierce glare and offered my friend a shallow bow of respect.
“I would never let harm befall him,” Hirani said. “He is my friend, too.”
“Thank you, honored Elder.” Clem bowed so low her face nearly touched her knees. “I am grateful for your help.”
Clem backed out of the room without rising, a surprisingly formal show of respect from my usually outspoken and untraditional friend.
“Keep her close.” Hirani sighed and flicked her fingers toward the chair she’d left. It zipped across the room, and she sank into its comfortable embrace. “Don’t tell anyone about that. I’m embarrassed enough that the heretics caught me unaware. I’ll never live it down if anyone finds out I can’t stand on my own for more than a few minutes. And that goes double for you two.”
Niddhogg cleared his throat nervously, and Hahen glanced between my clan elder and me.
“No one listens to me, anyway,” the rat spirit said with a shrug and tapped my toe with his tail. “Especially this one.”
“Go easy on the kid,” Niddhogg said. “He did what needed to be done to save his friends. What kind of jerk finds fault with that?”
“That’s a fair point.” It was Hirani’s turn to look embarrassed. She leaned further back in her chair and stretched her legs out in front of her, feet under my bed. “Jace, we worry about you because you’re important. Not just to the clan. The Inquisition thinks you’re critical in the coming convergence, and I’m inclined to agree with them. It’s been generations since someone with your powers appeared in Empyreal society.”
“I didn’t just appear,” I grumbled. Eclipse Warriors, including me, had been the result of experiments by masters of jinsei engineering. That hadn’t worked out well for any of us. The original Warriors had been all but wiped out, and I’d had to finish them off.
Which had, I suspected, a lot to do with why my core was damaged. What had happened in the Far Horizon had changed me in ways I didn’t fully understand. I still had nightmares about the realm of the Locust Court and the otherworldly horrors that I’d witnessed there.
That memory triggered a cascade of images through my thoughts. The end of the last challenge rushed back to me in vivid detail, and I sat bolt upright in my bed. How could I have forgotten any of that?
“What does the Grand Design look like?” I asked.
“It doesn’t look like anything.” Hirani shrugged. “To mortals, anyway. The Flame can see it, I assume. Or it holds a very detailed model in its conceptual space. None of us is really sure what the Flame can or can’t do.”
“How do the oracles interpret the Design if they can’t see it?” My time with the inquisitors taught me that the Church took the predictions of the oracles very seriously. If they couldn’t even see the Design, I couldn’t believe they were accurate at all.
“It’s complicated.” Hirani paused at my frown. “Oh, fine. I don’t understand all the details, either. Mortals can’t comprehend the full scope of the Grand Design—not even the oldest of dragons or sages. It’s simply too vast for our minds to contain. The oracles are gifted with glimpses of parts of the pattern, and they interpret what they see using divinatory techniques.”
“That doesn’t sound very useful.” Pronouncements from the oracles were rare, but they were always disseminated as if they’d come through a hotline directly from the Flame. This was the first I’d ever heard that maybe the information they provided was basically secondhand hearsay. “What if their interpretation is wrong?”
“Or they just lie,” Niddhogg grumbled.
“That’s why their accuracy is often in question. Imagine trying to describe an entire painting after only looking at one tiny corner of the canvas. That’s effectively what the oracles do.” Hirani paused and lowered her voice until I had to strain to hear her words. “And your dragon friend is right. There’s no guarantee that the oracles are always truthful or accurate. The temptation to adjust what they see to promote a conclusion favorable to their interests must be difficult to resist.”
I chewed on the elder’s words. The image of a red-robed giant burning the scrivenings with a brand he’d taken from the silver fire made much more sense after my discussion with Hirani. The Inquisition had tried to pressure me into affecting the convergence. That couldn’t have been what the Empyrean Flame wanted when it laid out the Grand Design thousands of years ago.
“The Flame should stop them from interfering with its plan,” I said. “There’s no point in creating the Design in the first place if mortals can mess it all up whenever they feel like it.”
“Free will,” Hahen explained. “The Grand Design is an image of a perfect, harmonious universe. The Flame never intended for it to unfold exactly as it predicted. The plan is there to guide us. We aren’t shackled to its path.”
That was exactly the kind of annoying nonsense Brother Harlan had told me over and over while I’d been the Inquisition’s guest. Maybe it all made perfect sense if you’d been born into the upper levels of Empyreal society, but as a camper who’d been kicked and stepped on by servants of the Grand
