The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 1

The Fire and The Storm – Book Two of The Nexus of Kellaran

(please read Book One first; Blessings of a Curse)

Part 1

Chapter 1

This book begins at the exact same time and place that Book One ends.

(If you are reading this account in a language other than Grand High Draconian, you might consider making a contribution to the Translation section of your local Magic Users Guild. XVD)

“Have you noticed exactly who is here today?” Quewanak asked Mark while throwing a two meter white cross to circle the young man. The comparatively tiny green dragon was looking astoundingly healthy since he had become Draconian God of Dreaming.

Mark looked around again, then shrugged. “Just our usual friends and accomplices.” he grinned, and threw his cross to circle his green friend at the same time.

“Think a moment. This is not the first time that this exact group has been together in this place.”

It took a moment, then realization came.

“Ah.” Mark nodded. “Right after I Healed Dalia and Bezedil. When we found out that all of us except Gran were candidates for divinity.”

Quewanak nodded, and made another toss while calmly meeting Mark’s eye. “It’s an incredibly beautiful experience, you know. And it’s as easy to set godhood aside and ignore it as it is to do so with the magic you already know. Sure, it changes you profoundly, but you can simply enjoy time as a mortal whenever you want, just as being a great wizard and warlock isn’t impeding your enjoyment of playing with toys like a child right now.”

Mark nodded thoughtfully. “You’re saying you think I should take the big step?”

Quewanak raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”

Mark paused and looked around, noticing that everyone was now following their conversation intently.

“What do you think, my love?” he silently asked Talia psionically.

“Know that every god has found a different way to achieve it, and none of us have been capable of communicating it effectively to any mortal. Many of us stumbled across it by accident, most of the rest achieved it in a very intuitive process that defies rational analysis. Only two have achieved it by processes that were arrived at through intellectual cognition, and they lack the ability to communicate their methods to a mortal without spending thousands of years in educating that mortal.

“The method you have devised, from what you have let us know of it, is far more basic and understandable. The study of the achievement of divinity that your group undertook was the first to summarize the process so succinctly; gain power to increase understanding, gain understanding to increase power, continue until divinity is achieved. Never before has the Ascendance been reduced to such simple concepts, and that led to the method that you discovered.

“Furthermore, your ability to transfer complex and immediately usable spells into the minds of other mortals is supreme among all beings, with the possible exception of Quewanak here. If you allow him to observe the process via a psionic Link while you achieve divinity, I believe that he could teach it to mortals in a dream. But only you have the psionic ability to simply place it in the mind of another mortal so quickly and easily. In this one way, you already surpass the gods. After you have become a god, you will almost certainly be able to make any suitable Candidate a god, simply by showing them how it is done.”

“Hey, we still don’t even know if my method will work!” Mark protested. “And even if it does, I might not be the best person to try it first! Look, I’ll give you my Reading of everything I thought and experienced during the battle with Zarkog, and the moments after when I still held all the power, and held all the crucial thoughts in mind. Take it, all of you.

“There. Now it’s not just my problem anymore. You can give that to all of your magic researchers, both mortal and divine, and I’m sure someone else can figure it all out! Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on it from that angle, being able to teach how to do it without having to do it myself for at least the next twenty years, because that’s how long it’ll take to have a couple of half-elven kids and raise them up to adults. And I don’t even want to start until the nexus is over.”

“Bah! You are ignoring the dependencies!” Heklivmalgiso insisted. “Those dependencies were discerned by our power as divine seers, for we see the shadows of the future, and combine it with supreme intellectual chain-of-events analysis in a way that is not understandable by a mortal mind, not even one such as yours. Consider it fact; Talia cannot become divine unless you do, and no amount of analysis of what you have understood so far will be of any use. You cannot teach her how to do it until you have done it. The same can be said of the rest of these candidates.”

“Perhaps not.” Yazadril said as he rubbed his chin and considered Mark’s Reading. “You said my Ascendancy and Alilia’s were only partly dependent on Mark’s. That has been fulfilled, since I wouldn’t have thought of this on my own, and I doubt she would have either. However, with what Mark’s given us, and some time to study it and make a few careful experiments, we might be able to do it.”