The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
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.

"I follow your lead in this, my husband." she replied. "I welcome you to take the step, so long as you can take me with you. I couldn't bear not sharing something so profound with you. But the thought of achieving divinity is both joyous and terrifying. I would gladly wait a millennium or three, if you so choose."

There was a long silence as they waited for his decision. Eventually he gave it.

"No." Mark stated decisively. "I'm not giving up my humanity until after we've had at least a couple of kids and raised them till they're grown."

"Impossible!" Amirgath growled, seeming more than a bit irritated. "The demons approach, and you are key to the nexus, which is due in two years! It is your responsibility to gain every advantage and ability you can, since the fate of this world may depend on your performance in the coming conflict!"

Everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered in a large loose circle to follow the discussion.

"Don't tell me it's impossible, Amirgath!" Mark returned with determination. "I'm still a free being, and none of the many responsibilities I'm fulfilling requires me to give up my humanity! We want to have children, normal children, damn it! I don't know if gods can even have children, and if they can, it's sure to be a completely different experience from having and raising children as mortals do!"

"Once you become a god," Heklivmalgiso patiently explained, "You will lose the urge to have children, and begin to share our feeling that every mortal member of your race are your children. Or perhaps, as you have advocated, you will feel that the mortals of all the races are your children. For we as gods are responsible for them, and for their racial survival.

"You know that the nexus and the coming war with the demons threaten every life on Kellaran. We will need every advantage that we can get, and if only your own divinity were in question, perhaps we could do with one less god.

"But you know that the divinities of almost all of these Candidates are dependent on yours, to one extent or another. So the question is not whether we will have one more god when we face the demons, the question is whether we will have at least twelve more gods, perhaps fifteen. And perhaps thousands, or millions, for I believe that once you have joined us in divinity; you may be able to teach the secret of achieving it to other mortals who have the potential to utilize it.

"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 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.”☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

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