“Let me tell you what is going to happen, now that the cat is out of the bag,” I addressed the Kabbalist Elders.

“Within a short span of time, as the Beasts reckon things, the Netherworld and Nirvana are going to attempt to start their end game, and divide the world between them for a great fight. Armageddon, Ragnarok, the Apocalypse, the End Times.

“The Church of Light will miraculously manifest the prophesied Savior, probably the most rebellious of their Archangels taken, turned into a puppet, and made an Avatar or favored of one of the Lords of Light.

“The Netherworld will, in turn, recruit all those souls with Dark Elements, forcibly if need be, pointing out that if you have a Dark Element, the Lords of Nirvana will absolutely cull you.” Two pairs of eyes among them snapped open. “Yes, that means both of you with the Curse Element, Elders.”

Eyes turned on the two I had indicated. Perhaps the others hadn’t known, perhaps they had.

“When that conflict starts, the Great Beasts will move. Regardless of who wins that fight, the Beasts themselves will die or be enslaved. The only hope they have of survival is extinguishing all the followers of the Dark or Light before they can bring in the Realm Lords, and that basically means wiping out most of Humanity straight off.

“So that is what will happen. It will further drive Humanity to the Light or Dark, and the Beasts know it, but they will have no choice in the matter.

“Once that conflict begins, unless there is a third party to break it, Humanity is doomed to extinction or enslavement!

“This is the place you stand at now, the one where we try to bring in the third option, the one that founded your very people, and which we can offer to the world. We can bring in co-existence, we can bring in Heaven, and we can restore the freedom to choose what path you want to take in life, as opposed to having it imposed upon us by force, or being tricked into it by lies.”

I let them stew on that, on what they’d felt, seen, heard, and now knew, despite themselves.

“Go home, Elders, and think on the world you want for your children. One where the extinction of Humanity is nearly assured, and if not, our slavery certainly is! Or, perhaps, one where the world continues, and maybe we can even make a better place out of it.”

The Gate back to Detroit opened up in front of them, the very room they’d exited a week before. Slowly, a bit achingly, the elders of the Kabbalist people rose to their feet and filed through that Portal, which closed quietly behind them.

I wasn’t their Messiah or Savior or whatever, either. That was all propaganda inserted in their legends by the Prophets, there to be ‘fulfilled’ whenever it was convenient.

This was, in the end, about Free Will. Would they continue to be puppets of the Realm Lord who had lied to them and changed their tribal history? Would they condemn their people to the same fate?

Or did they want something better, deep down? Would they try to strangle their own Hope, and shy away from the courage to do what needed to be done?

Or would they realize there really was a much better way, and I was merely a product of it?

Skyweeper the Stormcrown Eagle met my eyes, nodded fractionally, and took wing as soon as the Kabbalist Elders were gone. The Open Sky Wolf Duke, Chases-Tempests, watched him go, and then turned his golden eyes back to me.

I flitted over to the Pyramid that had been distilling Heavy Light Mana for Radiant Holy Auspicious Butterfly Emperor for the last week. The Open Sky Wolf got to his feet and padded over to watch, putting his front paws high on the Pyramid to crane over and watch as I changed the alignment and configuration of the Pyramid Formation there.

The remaining Heavy Light Mana was compressed into a Soul Gem, as it was basically useless to almost everything in the plains here. Instead, the winds that blew constantly across the land began to swirl and condense, and the first beads of heavy Air Mana condensed in the bowl there at the top of the Pyramid.

It was a repast fit for a Wolf Emperor like Racing Thunder himself, let alone an Open Sky Wolf Duke like Chases-Tempests!

“The best time to drink it is at dawn, Elder,” I informed him, reaching up a telekinetic hand to trail it through the silken fur about him and ruffle his massive ears. “When the first morning winds hit it with the light of the new day, inhale it long and slow, and savor the breath of the wind.”

“YES,” the elegant Wolf Duke confirmed, trying really hard not to squint and grin like a puppy at my TK grooming. I had experience with the ears of powerful canines, after all. “WAS WORTH THE TIME. BUTTERFLY EMPEROR WORTH SERVING.”

“Indeed She is,” I agreed, patting his huge dark nose once. “Be well, Elder.”

This would be a fine resource for the Wolves of the Great Plains, perhaps shared with some of the Avians, perhaps not. It would be good for Humans, too, but it had Selective Invisibility warding it, and was visible only from two hundred meters or less away. So, if you didn’t know it was here, it was going to be nigh-impossible to find, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone it was here. The native Beasts would naturally have no problems locating it.

-Hey, Reynard, you want to go for a run?- I /asked him through our bond.

-Always, Healer Fae!- he /replied instantly, and a second later popped out of nowhere. I hopped up onto his back as the Open Sky Wolf Duke carefully considered those seven-almost-eight Tails and a Celestial Bloodline, and astutely did not exert any Presence.

Reynard was nice enough not to taunt the respectful Wolf as he streamed down the Pyramid into an open run across the plains, heading to someplace new even if we’d crossed the plains before.

I leaned down into his golden fur, metallic strands became softer than silk, and I zoned comfortably away from everything, confident he wouldn’t let me fall and I could just enjoy some no-stress time.

Not that the back of my head wasn’t as busy as ever, of course...

------

“Ten billion Euros!” Archangel Uriel screamed at the technicians who ran the finances of the Church of Light. None of them were stronger than Adepts, and they all faltered and fell under the merest wisp of his Aura. Several of them went directly unconscious. “Explain to me where ten billion Euros vanished to!”

The oldest of the techs there took a deep breath, watching two more of his associates slump directly unconscious. He didn’t know if their cultivation was even left intact. “We were hacked, sir,” he managed, guessing he was going to die, and deciding to get it over with. “We were hacked by someone who was as much better than us at the job as you are at magic. We don’t know how they got in, we can’t track what they did, we’re pretty sure they are still in there, and the only way to get them out is to kill our whole system and burn it in fire.”

The white-haired, middle-aged Archangel glared at the technician, seething, his eyes glowing with outrage, and the fellow just closed his eyes and prepared to die.

“Are you bloody joking with me?” the Archangel finally hissed, watching the man quiver in expectation of death, and somehow found it self-defeating.

“No, sir, not one syllable,” the man finally got out after swallowing twice, his eyelids fluttering, unable to keep them open. “Everything that happened just came out of thin air. None of our monitoring software caught anything, like someone like you just reached into the programming and changed everything at a whim. We could see what it did as it happened, the couple of us who actually managed to catch something was going on,” he gestured at two of the unconscious techs on the floor, “but before we could crash everything, they still made off with what they did.”

“Can... you... fix... this?” Uriel demanded icily, his eyes like cold stars.

“No, sir,” was the emphatic reply, to the Archangels’ disbelief that someone would dare say that to him. “That money is gone. If we sever every external connection, we can probably track down exactly what was taken, but when we’re done, we’re going to have to slag everything if we want a clean system. And before you ask, sir, no, we can’t do the same job using only people now. If we try, we’ll start losing millions of dollars a day to the systems of others.

“Parpari and Tivotti there probably saved the Church a hundred billion dollars by catching the transfers as soon as they did.”

Uriel glared at the unconscious men, and with great effort of will reined in his Aura completely. The senior technician gasped in relief, as did the two others who were still conscious.

Uriel eyed the department manager with ill-concealed contempt, the chubby Adept also drooling on the floor. “Do you know what has to be done to make sure this does not happen again?” he asked icily.

The technician slowly drew deep breaths, centering himself and considering his reply, now that he knew he wasn’t going to die. “No more than I’m a Sage, sir,” he finally replied, and Uriel tightened his fists audibly. “I know what we CAN do to minimize or protect against such a thing in the future, and I know we can transfer some of our operations to clean systems in other locations to try and stem some of the damage.

“We can tighten up information security and access, we can put in new programming, we can install new hardware, and put in new safeguards... but if they get in again, we’re not going to be able to stop them, only cut the lines and reduce the damage.”

“Was there any magic involved in this?” Uriel didn’t think so, as he was glaring at the offending instrumentation right now, and none of the machines had any hint of magic in them that wasn’t there before.

“Everything we have says no, including some very, very sensitive monitors looking for magical influence, devices whose sensitivity should rival your own, sir,” the technician replied with all his forced calm. “Computer makers keeps a very, very sharp eye out for any kind of magic that can go in and remotely rewrite systems like this, and even the best stuff out there leaves a blatant magical signature that is easy to detect and track down.

“There is just absolutely nothing of the sort going on here. We’re dealing with a hacker who knows coding and computer systems like you know Light Magic, sir. Their only requirement was getting actual access to the system.”

“And do you know how that happened?” Uriel pressed, his fury abating as he realized he was now part of the problem, pulling these men away from the job they had to do, and they had to be about doing quickly!

“No, sir, we’ve only guesses. The best guess now is an annoying computer virus that got into our systems through an email link to one of the security teams, added onto a dinner question from his wife. We brought in an expert to clean that problem up, and she did a very good job at it. However, we think the virus was just a disguise for the program underneath, perhaps an activation key to start something that had been in our systems for months or years, and was simply fired up.

“We’re completely convinced all our monitoring software is as compromised as our information transfer and record systems. We’re hoping our longer-term backups are uncorrupted, but we may need to crash those too, after verifying the data, and simply rebuild the records with the help of our trading partners.”

The technician finally sighed, took off his glasses, and cleaned them slowly and calmly. “Sir, this cost us a lot, and it is going to take a lot of time, money, and manpower to fix, but given another hour, the Church would have been completely insolvent. When matched to the incident in the Synod, I’m inclined to believe it was just a warning, and we got off light.”

Uriel just stared at the man, but he didn’t have skills in programming computers or the intricacies of international finance systems, although he could, did, and had done a lot of market manipulations of his own over time.

Phanuel and basically his entire group of Psalms were now missing, as were his fellow Archangel’s Wings... the second pair of them to be lost in less than a year, despite none being lost for centuries before this! The bank accounts for Phanuel’s department had been completely emptied, as had many of the personal and secret accounts of the missing Syndic operatives.

Some of those had been secret accounts that could only be emptied in person, not electronically. They were still gone...!