The conflict did not end for twenty minutes, maybe more, and it took Theron thundering down the hallways personally before it did. He hadn't spoken, but a formless rage pressed down on us all, temple-folk and outsiders alike. I briefly wondered which category I counted as, given my only brief stint as an acolyte, before bowing my head submissively before the Saint.
He gave me a probing glance, but only for injury, and not suspicion. Why would he, since I was just a mundane boy of only nineteen or twenty? Theron was swift in gathering witnesses and testimonies. The man I had originally provoked was knocked unconscious by a stray punch, so it was the young guard who came to my rescue who was the first to be grilled. He stated he acted in my defence, and I in turn stood up for him. This started a cacophony of voices shouting that we had done nothing wrong, silenced with an impertinent flick of Theron's wrist. "One at a time," he spoke.
When he had heard our side of the story, he turned to one of the refugee spokespeople. A man I vaguely remembered as a carpenter stepped forward and spoke nervously. Most of the involved had no idea what was happening, merely striking back in retaliation for stray blows or just outright panicking. While the mob was not blameless, there could be no fair judgement passed on any one individual.
And Theron was far too kind for group punishment. He ordered an early night, and for every guard to stay awake on supervision before turning away. Yet he had only taken a few steps before abruptly stopping, then calling out my name. "Adam, you are to come with me."
Jeryl and the others looked at me with worry, but I just shook my head and followed after the older Saint. We walked in silence towards his office, and he offered me a seat upon entering. I looked around in restrained curiosity, not wanting to gawk too much, but Theron seemed unbothered.
Not that there was much to see: it was a quaint but cosy little room, with carpets and a high-back chair of leather. A bookshelf stretched from wall to wall, but it was only half full. Once I was properly seated, Theron crossed his hands and looked at me deeply.
"I have heard from Annette that you and others have been greatly dissatisfied with my leadership as of late. You feel I have abandoned our dignity as servants of the Lord of Light, that I am content to simply doom my fellow man to the darkness. Is this what you think?"
"Yes" I respond frankly.
The silence that followed was heavier than the chaos in the hall. I sat in the high-backed leather chair, feeling like a child called to the principal's office, the weight of the recent violence and my own guilt pressing down on me.
Theron didn't sit behind his desk. He stood by a small, high window, staring out at the grey sky, his broad shoulders slumped with an exhaustion that seemed to go far beyond the physical.
"They tell me you were defending yourself," he began again, his voice quiet, devoid of the resonant power he used in the sanctum. It was just the tired voice of an old man.
"I was," I said, the lie tasting like ash. "I didn't mean for it to… escalate like that."
"It was always going to escalate, Adam," he sighed, turning to face me. There was no accusation in his dried-gold eyes, only a deep, weary understanding that was somehow worse. "The fear had nowhere else to go. I have… given them no outlet."
He gestured for me to stay seated as he slowly lowered himself into the chair opposite me. "You are not from here. You have seen more of the world than I have. This temple… it is all I have ever known. I was left on its steps as a babe. The stones of this floor were my cradle; the hymns, my lullabies. My world has always ended at the tree line."
The confession was stunning. This powerful Saint, a Transcendent being, was a prisoner of his own sanctuary. His entire existence had been this single, failing point of light. How old was he? I called him an old man, but Transcendants had a way of surpassing age. Maybe late fifties, maybe mid-sixties?
"I met Karion on one of the few occasions I journeyed beyond the mountain," he continued, a faint, ghostly smile touching his lips. "It was a diplomatic errand, a foolish attempt at unity between our gods before the current war. We are not friends. Our natures are too opposed.
But we understand each other. We are both… relics of a dying age, trying to fulfil our duties to powers that may no longer even be watching. The path of Ascension is becoming harder with each passing year.
The need for struggle and growth has slowed and stagnated, as much as the Priests of War would try to make you believe otherwise. Their Empire, founded on the very concepts, has decayed and begun rotting from the inside."
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and the mask of the serene Saint finally fell away completely. What was left was a man stretched to his absolute limit.
"You think I am a coward," he stated, not as a question, but a fact. "You think I lack the will to fight. You are wrong. I have been fighting every single day and night since the refugees began to arrive. Just not in a way you can see."
He took a slow, shuddering breath. "The 'Radiance' is not merely a weapon. It is a blasphemous item, combined from the divinity of not one, not even two, but three Gods. It was left over from a horrendous battle from the Age of Heroes, maybe even earlier, that requires champions of the three Gods to sacrificed themselves.
Their souls and lineages combined into one. An extremely powerful thing…and volatile. Unstable. To wield it in violence, to channel it for war… it would be like trying to focus sunlight through a lens made of glass. It would shatter. It would consume the wielder and likely everyone nearby in a conflagration of pure, undirected divine power."
"It combines the purification of the Sun, the destruction of War, and the emotions of Heart. I do noy trust my own capability to wield the power of the former two, so I can only turn towards the last of the three."
He met my eyes, and I saw the true depth of his sacrifice. "I have not been idle. I have been using the Radiance, siphoning it in the smallest, most controlled amounts I can manage. I have been trying to use it to tunnel through the mountain, to create an escape route.
But the process is agonizingly slow. It drains me. It requires absolute peace of mind, a soul utterly dedicated to preservation, not destruction. Any act of aggression, any intent to harm… it would disrupt my control. It would snap the tenuous connection I hold, and the Radiance would shift towards the other two aspects within it. Only by minting the ascetic balance within my heart can I choose the power of the Goddess of Souls"
He looked at his hands, and for a moment, I saw them tremble. "Agreeing to form a militia, to brandish weapons, to prepare for battle… in my heart, that is an act of war. The Radiance would sense that shift in my spirit. It would become unusable.
The escape tunnel would collapse, and our one hope—a hope I have been sacrificing my strength to build—would vanish. Not to mention the possibility of it just exploding. So you see, boy? I am not choosing peace over war. I am choosing a possible, difficult salvation over a guaranteed, glorious death."
The truth landed like a physical blow. I had seen a passive leader. In reality, I was looking at a man conducting a desperate, silent, and solitary operation to save us all, an operation my manipulations had just brought to the brink of catastrophic failure.
My cleverness, my authoring of discontent, hadn't been a masterstroke. It had been the fumbling of a fool who couldn't see the real battle being fought. 'So in the end, I was right,' I though numbly. 'I was the ignorant one.'
"Why tell me now" I asked firmly, leaning forward.