“You have some interesting selection criteria for the people you plan to spare from our little experiment Sasarai.”

“They seem like simple enough criteria to me Dyrena. The initial space of the Garden will need no more than ten thousand to maintain it, so I will be selecting the five thousand most of talented and useful Sylans and five thousand of the most devout. It is much the same as you have done with you, what did you call them, contests of beauty?”

“I assure you our criteria could not be more dissimilar. In this particular case however, I am intrigued by the idea that you either think these paragons you’ll be recruiting have no familial support structures or that they will allow their families to die without them willingly.”

“Well, certainly there may be a few who face certain challenges I suppose.”

“A few? Have you spoken with any of your potentials?”

“Not as yet of course. It’s far too early to risk revealing anything.”

“Perhaps you may wish to quiz one or two them. Nothing in depth, just ask them how important their parents are to them. Or their siblings. Or their children.”

“Do you really think that’s important?”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps the Sylvan communal structure places no value on social bonds. Best I think to give a look though.”

– High Accessor Dyrena attempting to prevent a disastrous imbalance in power between the Neoterics and succeeding, though at the cost of enlightening High Accessor Sasarai to leverage provided by controlling a social hierarchy.

Sasarai wanted me to panic. I could see it in the expression he put on the assassin’s face even without the insight and wisdom Draconia shared with me. It was a reasonable assumption he was making too. 

He’d played a card against me that would have brought any Sylvan to heel. We’d been taught since birth how important the bonds of family were after all. From the family of our birth, to the family of our community, to the greater family of all who lived sheltered by Holy Mazana’s light. 

A threat to my mother and father was one I had to respond to. 

What about Kam? My annoying brother? Who was showered with love and approval when I was expected to do everything and ask for nothing? That Kam?

Yeah. I couldn’t let him be fed to the roots either. The doofus.

Sasarai had made a mistake though, one that he himself had confirmed for me.

“You’re going to kill my family?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet and slow. Just like a frightened little subject of the Great First Tender would be when faced with his displeasure.

“No. You are going to kill your family. Slowly and painfully. Only by returning to face my justice will you spare them from that fate.” He held out the assassin’s hand and with Draconia’s awareness I could feel the power bound into the gesture.

A teleport spell. But only if I willing accepted it. That was an interesting limitation on someone who claimed to have none.

“Jilya, don’t,” Theia said. To her credit, I am very good at acting afraid and cowed by authority figures. 

Xalarai didn’t even make a request, she simply cut off the assassin’s hand. And then stabbed him a dozen or so times before I was able to blink.

“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do that,” Helgon said, as another assassin rose like a puppet. “Unfortunately, as you can see…”

“You are wasting our time, abomination,” Sasarai said from the other assassin’s lips.

Invisible strings pulled the assassin’s lips into something that was absolutely not a smile as Sasarai extended the assassin’s right hand again.

“You want me to come with you to save my family,” I asked, slowly again, so that none of the words could be missed or misinterpreted.

Sasarai made the assassin sigh in exasperation. Of course a the little Sylvan dolt before him was having difficulty understanding the simple demand he’d made. He’d put a lot of effort into making sure we were devout. Intelligent? Able to think for ourselves? Respond well under pressure? Those had all been rather low priority items.

Kalkit made a sound which I latter learned was a Crowkin laugh. Sasarai either wasn’t familiar with it either or thought they were laughing at me.

“MY FAMILY?” I asked one more time, letting my voice shift enough to give Sasarai a warning of exactly how much he’d screwed up.

Theia got it before he did, and her laugh was mean.

Registering surprise on the assassin’s face must have been an automatic effect of the spell Sasarai was using because I can’t imagine he would have wasted time with it otherwise.

I certainly didn’t.

MINE. THEY ARE MINE.

Distance isn’t what separates us. Not really. What lies between us is what is in our hearts, and for all the pain and turmoil I felt, my heart was still a part of my family, and they were a part of mine.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t actually hear Sasarai’s scream of rage from the Garden as my parents and idiot brother appeared behind me. They were crying, in part because the trip in and out of my hoard was not necessarily a pleasant one, but with their physical presence behind me I could feel the waves of fear and confusion they’d been wrapped in well before Sasarai had given them to me and I’d claimed them.

Predictably, he did not take their loss well.

I think Xalaria had plans to separate the assassins from Sasarai’s influence and turn them to our cause. Sasarai’s temper tantrum at least served him by ensuring that wasn’t an option. 

Where there’d been almost two dozen assassins in various states of unconsciousness or disablement, there became almost two dozen pillars of white hot flame.

I felt the temperature rise in car for the barest fraction of an instant before the flames leapt to Helgon’s hand which he was holding casually in front of his face.

“Tut tut, that was an amateur mistake. Have you really grown that sloppy you old shrub lover?” Helgon asked, turning a glittering ball the size of his fist over and around so he could admire it from different angles.

“Wha…what…wha?” His voice was high and a bit slurred but I recognized my father’s voice from behind in time to whirl around and catch him as he toppled over.

“How annoying,” Helgon said, “He’s doesn’t even have a presence here anymore to appreciate how out played he was.” 

He didn’t seem particularly concerned by my family’s arrival or the my father passing out. The rest of the people with me showed varying stages of surprise though.

“Daughter?” my mother asked. I could see a storm of emotions on her face, but none of the rest found expression.

My brother, on the other hand, was all too expressive.

“Jilya? Jilya! Was that you? Holy Mazana’s rotten seeds! That was amazing!”

Amazingly, of everything else they’d experienced, it was my brother’s profanity that managed to break through the my mother’s confusion to solidify her expression into a scowl of disapproval at him.

“This changes our timetable,” Xalaria said. “I need to get a message to Zeph.”

“There are new people we need to take care of,” Fulgrox said, nodding towards my family.

“I think the Blessed of Guardians has the covered,” Xalaria said which drew a questioning look from my mother and Kam.

“You’re going to have questions,” I said, calling on my healing gifts to make sure my father wasn’t actually injured. 

He roused at my touch, his eyes fluttering open though his gaze wasn’t exactly focused on anything.

“Questions I believe I will be more capable of answering,” Helgon said, appearing at my side. “You have the gift of healing. There may be injured in the other cars. Please tend to them. I shall endeavor to enlighten your family members on the present situation and the wider world you all have been denied knowledge concerning.”

“No. Wait. Daughter, Jilya, what have you done?” my mother asked.

“What I had to,” I said as I helped my father to his feet and turned to head towards the passenger car behind us.

“Hey, can I come with you?” Kam asked. “I had the medic’s training course last semester.”

“You need to hear what Helgon has to say,” I said, not particularly eager to have to deal with brining him up to speed myself.

“C’mon, you know Mom’s going to have all kinds of boring questions and she’ll just tell me what I need to know later anyways,” he said, which wasn’t, strictly speaking, untrue.

“If he has medical training, we can use him,” Xalarai said and gestured for us to leave.

“I’ll stay here,” Fulgrox said. “I need to see to the remains, and Helgon might need…assistance with his explanations.”

By which he meant that Helgon was likely to veer off a tangent or begin at a point far beyond any frame of reference my parents could understand. Even with my incredibly brief association with Helgon I could see how likely both of those were so I simply nodded to him in gratitude and turned to go.

And it was good that I did.

The assassins had appeared all over the train and had used their shadow stepping ability to close in once one of them had located us. In the process though, they’d stumbled across a lot of other people.

Some of those people were still alive, if barely.

The first I found had been stabbed through both lungs and a few other internal organs. My healing skills were good, but I wasn’t a full physician and even an expert healer would have found the level of damage I saw daunting.

Expert healers in the Garden however did not have Draconia with them.

Call on Diyas, no, better Polsgul’s fragment.

I wasn’t sure who those names referred to but when she gave me an image of Polsgul’s divine prison, I understood.

Manipulating divine power wasn’t an entirely new experience and the training I’d received in the Garden gave me the fundamentals I needed to not lose control the instant Polsgul’s fragment responded to me.

Anger. Resentment. Disappointment. Was I no more than another jailer seeking to misuse power which was never meant for my hands?

Stop it Polsguls, Draconia said, we’ve got a goblin, one of yours, bleeding out in front of us here.

I have no one, not any more. I failed them. They are all lost and dust because of me, Polsguls’ voice held weariness and defeat and neither of those was going to be any use to the goblin who was desperately struggling to draw air into ruined lungs.

Do. Not. Take. That. Tone with me Polsguls, Draconia said, and I felt her majesty looming within me, casting a shadow over the entire train car. Or would you have me claim your people?

There is no one to…wait, are you telling the truth? I…I can feel him! My child!

Normally healing someone requires delicacy and careful weaving of the magics involved. It can takes hours or even days to finish a lengthy procedure.

Polsguls took about one and half seconds.

The power that tore out of me was unlike anything I’d ever touched in the Garden or anything Draconia had ever shared with me. It felt less like healing than a raw and unfiltered command for the body underneath my hands to BE WELL.

And in a blink, he was.

With a shiver that ran down his whole body, Fiddler Jast was on his feet with eyes blazing towards the heavens.

In theory I could have held onto Polsguls divine fragment. It was mine after all. I’d claimed it fair and square.

But the past tense there was important. I could have fought for control of Polsguls but I hadn’t claimed even a single one of them to control the divinity they held.

And I would never try to come between a god and their newly empowered Blessed.