The site of the miracle was empty. Of breath, at any rate. Wax puddled on the floor, the product of a hundred candles pooling together as they flickered. The hall was not dark, but they flickered anyway, marking with warm light the shrine of the City God, Mysa. The sunlight cast dappled beams from the surface of the rippling water below.

A mist erupted from the pool.

"Have you had your fun?"

The centermost candle of the shrine array brightened, just a little, swaying as it wavered. A breeze had caught it, only one little flame among a multitude that were perfectly still, swaying it on the line between flaring and going out.

"A jealous spark in you, little son."

The mist thinned, revealing the form of a powerful man on its breath. Phlogiston tossed his hair. His arms were crossed. "Do not taunt me, Mysa. This canal was our domain, and remains so, by your agreement. Keep to your lane."

"Keep to my lane!" a merry laughter from the candle. For a moment it flashed, and in the fire was the shape of a woman, fat and healthy from the wealth she ate. "Keep to my lane! Oh, you! You little fool." The water bubbled beneath Phlogiston's feet. "You think you can divide this city, in neat little lines, and have your share untouched, while my power encompasses all. It was necessary, my dear, all the people cried for it. Who am I to deny them?" Low, mirthful laughter.

Phlogiston's heel ground against the surface of the low pool. It whitened. Steam filled the room. "I had purpose in denying them, and you are nought but an opportunist. You are a scavenger, a seeker of mortal affection, and it is disgraceful. You spoil your subjects! O great and powerful Mysa, these people rule you. How are you to say you control them when they have not learned to fear you and take mind? Nay, o firelady, they take you for granted! How shall you deny them when you are become but a tool in their fickle lives?"

"With cruel satisfaction," said Mysa, hardening somewhat. The shape of the candle brightened, a tiny image of her true splendour. " 'Control them'? To hear you talk! What will our dear Phi say? She shall take it for insurrection."

Phlogiston rolled his eyes. "My father has always controlled these people, since the birth of their nation. The line of Phlegethon is and remains the First Spiryt of Metera." He cast out his arm, and a great cloak seemed to follow, thick and royal. "I am his son! You fear him, and I fear nothing. Phi is feeble! She cannot hear us talk. My own sons prevent her. It is but you and I here, o Mysa," he sneered, with cold command, "And you have overstepped your bounds."

" 'My bounds.' "

With a vicious flare, the candles erupted, their wax igniting into liquid fire. The light filled Phlogiston's fog, and before he had braced, five daughters of Mysa now stood on the candles. They were lean and bitter, emaciated, hungry spiryts eager to burn. Mysa's greed was great.

"Remember where you are, fog-whipper," rasped one.

Phlogiston twirled his hand, slowly flexing his wrist, and two brothers of his stood beside him. "...You would risk this. You fool."

"I will not risk anything but our own-"

A noise. Both parties flinched. They cast their awareness out.

"...Syokoy."

"Bahahahahaha!"

The waters erupted, again into a figure, but this time with no class. Water sprayed everywhere, extinguishing half the candles, which were immediately relit by a sister. The channel cooled, a line drawn around Syokoy where white met cool transparent blue, expanding until only the feet of the eight other djinni were still hot.

"Two's company, but I prefer crowds," he said, teasing. "Or not- you may leave now, son of Phlegethon; the two true elements are here now, and you are irrelevant."

Phlogiston hissed.

The daughter took a step forward, tossed her head. "This does not concern you. Go back to your business, Syokoy. Go tease some women. You know that they're the only ones who'll stick up with your perverted delusions, and then only out of fear."

Syokoy flexed his arms, unbowed. They morphed fluidly from his human to his fish-like forms. "The mortals like me. My perversion-" he laughed. He couldn't help it. "They represent you as a candle, Mysa! They commune with Phlogiston through the steam that pours from their kettles! So what if I should take the proud form of my element? It's a fish, you tightened prudes, a fish! Elegant! Refined! What's there to be afraid of? Y'vahn? Bah."

"...You are worse than Lumikki," grit Phlogiston over the fingers on his eyes. "The truant."

"She never served Boreas for long, you know," he commented.

"We eat fish," said the daughter, who was tired. That brought conversation to a grinding halt.

"...'til next time," said Syokoy, disappearing. The dorsal fin of a mighty shark followed him out down the channel. Phlogiston shared one long look at the daughters of Mysa, and then he, too, was gone. The hungry daughters turned, shrugged, and disappeared. The moment had been exhausted. The candles went out.

Smoke filled the empty room.

Ah, thought a voice, kids.

---

The missionary held open his book, and the watchhain read. The longer he read, the more he realised that this man feared not death; for he was reading not only his text, but also his face. Humans have such expressive faces, the watchhain thought.

"They told us you were barbarians," he said out loud.

The missionary grimaced a bit but shrugged. "We grew to pity you, likewise," he said, "for living in caves... and such. Sunlight is good for a man."

The hain was not a man, and in fact preferred the cool of the dark, but he let it pass. "This verse. What does it mean?"

"Oh, ah... Is the translation off?"

"I wouldn't know. I read it as, 'if you blaspheme, that's forgivable, but not...'" The language barrier wasn't tall, but words hopped from time to time. "'-bright, because it's an act of blind hatred'. Something like that."

The missionary re-read the words. Even in South Tounic, the doctrine of Phi rang clear. 'Fear not retribution from ye elder gods, whose souls are grown thick; fear nor the Zealotry Mortal, for they can only slay; fear only that in your own heart, for a little wisdom breeds great ignorance, and only ignorance breeds great wisdom. Thus let your blasphemy be as the raging child, and remain thus, and in age be humble to all things...'

"It means that we must not presume we know the gods well enough to speak for them," the man clarified. His name was Silas. "Whether we offend god or mortal is irrelevant. The important thing is not to act wise when we are really ignorant. What's wrong?"

The watchhain shook his head a little. "Irrelevant..." One little word that could have damned his entire family. How long had the missionary been doing this? A month? Ten? He knew humans and rovaick tended to measure bravery by cullion size; this man's must have been enormous. And you are sheltering him, he thought. Maybe you have... big cullions of your own. It didn't really fit.

Silas smiled, and shook his head. "I don't fear death, Kilago," he read from the hain's mind. "Only yours. Pray with me, in your heart, in the dead of night, if you have to. Believe in God, and She will claim your soul. If not when you die, then when this land is liberated. Change is coming."

Kilago dipped his beak and shook his head. "When I die, friend," he said. Maybe it was because he was an outsider himself that he could see this side of the story at all, but he had grown up with the rovaick of Rulanah. The Azibo were strong. The legion was strong. There was no revolution coming. That he knew.

"Well, then," said Silas, disheartened, "follow the good gods Toun and Teknall, and be safe. All worship has value, and there is no shame in lying for a while. This verse, see... 'Such is the law of Prudence: faced with the choice of deception and suffering, it is permitted to silence one's faith, and once you confess in your heart the lies you have spoken in the name of God, you will be forgiven. Only among your Chiral sisters never lie, for God hates to see mistruth as She hates to hear you suffer.' Be kind, Kilago, be humble, work hard and pray often- that's all She asks."

"...It sounds beautiful," he admitted.

"It is," Silas said.

A knock at the door.

Silas gestured once ('quickly!') and bolted in an instant. Kilago immediately exited the room. "Sir! Yes, Inquisitor, yes, sir..."

Kilago heard nothing from the back of the room. He kept his palms still as they searched the watch tower, and found nothing. He alone noticed the disturbed meltwater around the far arrowslit, the one broken open by a Dwarvish ballista, leaving a hole that led to an almost sheer face on the stone edifice below.

And they say their god works no miracles, he thought.

---

"...And there he goes. I was almost expecting he wouldn't make it." The droningbird looked on.

Phi flicked and uncurled over her cornflower-coloured simulations. Sky City's altar room was empty, for now."These systems are so chaotic. Anything could save a missionary, and anything could kill him. A slip on the ice one millimetre from his hand? Silas is gone. My best evangelist, disappeared. Bang! All that work for nothing. It would be hilarious, though," she admitted. Old Walker barely even sighed in the background.

"You know," she said, rambling half to Toun (who, by the black eye of the droningbird, was not watching and had not done so in weeks) and half to her aide. "The hardest part isn't even the training I lavish on these nutters. It's convincing them not to go. Do you know how easily young men become zealots? A gentle tap of sexual frustration and they'll throw themselves on Rulanah spears. And if they come back... There's a reason Chirality makes exemptions for sex before marriage, you know? Keep the loyal genes in the pool. Give them a nudge."

The diagrams shifted, from human pedigrees to incident reports across the southern Ironhearts. "Of course," she continued, her voice slowing to something deeper than a purr as a long string of deaths across the mountains lit up. "All this eugenics would be so much easier if I didn't have to subvert Rulanah in the first place."

The simulations disappeared with a snap of light that burned Walker's eyelids and shocked the droningbird to sharp attention. On a wind of spiral radiation, the Chiral God blazed like fire.

"FIX. YOUR. RELIGION, TOUN."

"If you don't take control of Rulanah, I WILL. It will cost me time, and it will cost me blood, and it will cost you your dominion. I have reached the end of my patience with this godless anarchy, and I can not afford to sit here and wait for missionaries to sow the seeds of violent reformation among your followers while dwarves ravage our borders and my coffers are slowly drained of resources that should be funding your war effort."

"Get a grip. Put down your filthy rag, stop polishing Cornerstone, and do something. I will personally pay the shadow tunnels to carry every single one of your magi and a fat stack of gold to Yorum if you would get them to shut up for one minute about their divine heritage and fight! I will take care of their strategy! I will rebuild their towers, arm their soldiers, write their magic, haul their burden, and if that wealth becomes the fuel for a Tounic war against the Commonwealth, then damn it, Toun, so be it! I accept! Only get Heartworm's filthy pests off my borders!"

The light curled, and disappeared back into its Kernel. A flick of light alerted Phi's aide. Old Walker mroomed and effortlessly caught the droningbird in its front hands.

"And then you can go right back to tinkering with your pelagic china set to no explicable avail. Like you always do."

Phi bowed with her words, and there was a sound of crushing porcelain.

ogres bow to insidie bow to metera bow to Dabbles