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Teal lowered the mask from her face once again, frowning pensively down at it. The inner surface lacked the silvery decoration, leaving nothing but a blank wooden surface with cursory holes for the eyes and mouth.

“Still not Foxpaw?” Fross chimed after a moment.

“I don’t…know,” Teal said slowly. “There’s not really any way to know, is there? It’s worked every time, so far, but heck, there have to have been people besides Ashner Foxpaw who were smart enough to play word games. Merry, you sure you weren’t…”

Merry raised her hands in a gesture of innocence; despite this being at least the fifth time she’d been asked, she had yet to grow exasperated by the questioning. On the contrary, she seemed to be concerned mostly with establishing that she’d done nothing wrong. It was a subtle thing, but her tacit position that even using the Mask of the Adventurer was a sketchy action had cast a further pall over the group’s experimentation.

“All I was thinking was that there had to be someone who could match Tellwyrn for power, and if the Mask does what it seems to, it should be able to recreate them. That was the entirety of my thought process. Maybe it just threw up Tellwyrn because no one else can beat her.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” Trissiny murmured, also staring at the mask in Teal’s hands. “More importantly, Tellwyrn’s pretty sure that’s not true. She’s mentioned it, now and then, how even the most powerful and immortal people get along by not picking the wrong fights.”

“Perhaps the semantics are important,” Toby suggested. “Corporal Lang wanted something to match Tellwyrn, not defeat her. After all, if you want to beat a powerful mage, you need an equally powerful warlock, or a more powerful witch.”

“Yeah, well, forgive me if I’ve had about all the fuckin’ semantics I can stomach for a while,” Ruda grunted, sitting down on the ancient paving stones and pulling a bottle of bourbon out of her coat.

After Merry’s use of the Mask—since which she had adamantly refused to touch it—they had spent hours exploring its subtler capabilities. By unspoken agreement, Teal continued to serve as the test case, while the rest of the group took turns applying intellectual pressures rather than physical ones. It turned out the Mask was able and willing to assist with these challenges as well, and nothing they’d produced had managed to stump her as long as she was wearing it—though, at Fross’s insistence and accompanied by a shrill lecture about scientific procedure and the importance of control groups, Teal hadn’t donned the Mask to meet any challenge until she failed to come up with an adequate solution on her own, which had ruled out several of their efforts.

In general, these transformations were less dramatic, not only involving less moving about but fewer and subtler costume changes, and no conjured weapons or tools. In a few cases, they could only tell that the Mask was active because it wasn’t visibly in evidence while being worn.

The first two Omnist koans used up most of an hour, because it turned out that when one tested a question that was designed to have no answer against an artifact that provided an answer to anything, the result was a profoundly involved spiritual conversation. Toby, Juniper, and Teal had certainly seemed invested in their long discussion about what it meant that the way which could be known was not the way, but Ruda had finally broken under the pressure and loudly demanded they try something else.

More concrete challenges were answered more directly, not to mention faster. Trissiny’s challenge had taken the longest of those remaining, as well as being one of the few which created a costume change, though even the paladin couldn’t identify the military uniform Teal had been wearing when she provided answers to a series of military exercises and dilemmas. This had involved the two of them kneeling in the dust and scratching diagrams of troop positions on the ground. In the end, Trissiny had come away looking slightly shaken at Teal’s borrowed military ingenuity; according to her, those were problems on which Silver Legion officer candidates were tested to gauge the flexibility of their thinking and capacity to make inventive use of meager assets. They were supposed to be as impossible as Toby’s koans.

Fross, by contrast, had been so delighted by the answers provided to her probing questions into advanced arcane mechanics and theoretical physics by the robed wizard Teal channeled in response that Ruda had had to insist yet again on ending their session. In this case, it was because she wanted to try something of her own. Bringing up Merry’s channeling of Tellwyrn, she had posed Teal a series of questions and challenges taken directly from Foxpaw’s Exploits in an attempt to see whether the Mask could channel the archetypal master thief. The results of that had rather frustrated her. Teal had taken the Mask off and put it on several times over the course of that conversation, creating clear changes of her approach to these hypothetical dilemmas each time, and it turned out that a series of ancient thieves, bards, and miscellaneous tricksters mostly responded to being interrogated by turning the game around on the one asking questions. After Ruda had lost patience, demanded a straight answer, and been serenaded with a new verse of “I’d Hit Sally” featuring herself in reply, had stomped off in a huff.

“I had…” Gabriel trailed off, frowning, then shook his head when they all turned to look at him. “Never mind. Probably not a good idea.”

“Well, don’t let that stop you,” Trissiny said with a smile. “Screwing around is your greatest strength.”

His lips twitched in a reluctant reciprocation of her amusement. “Yeah, well, I was just thinking. It seems to me that this specific thing we’re doing here might have more important possibilities than the Mask’s ability to imitate dangerous people. I was just considering trying to stump it with a couple of intractable strategic problems I’ve been wrestling with, and it occurred to me that it would be amazingly practical if that thing could actually solve those for me. And from there… Think about it, this is way more than a weapon. It potentially turns its wearer into an oracle who can answer any question to which someone, at some point, knew an answer.”

“Isn’t that kinda what Fross tested?” Ruda asked.

“Not exactly!” chimed the pixie. “I was more asking for deeper comprehension and precise methodology than actual physical understanding. The tricky thing about arcane physics is that the underlying concepts are predicated on an entirely different physical logic than that which sapient minds evolved to process. The actual answers to those questions are known, otherwise it wouldn’t have been a valid test to ask them; we’d have no way to check the results! It’s just, that stuff is really hard to learn.”

“So we could still actually test that, then,” Toby said. “It sounds worth a try, at the very least.”

Teal frowned, slowly turning the Mask over in her hands.

“Are you all right?” Shaeine asked softly, stepping up next to her. “You don’t need to be the test case every time, love. Or we could stop.”

“No…” Teal lowered one hand from the Mask to gently take Shaeine’s, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “Actually, I was just thinking, myself, about the potential of this thing. This has been a lot more instructive than combat tests. My own entire problem has been…learning to find my own false face. You know, project a mask I can use as a mask to both protect myself and take on challenges in a way that’s not… Well. Teal ducking and hiding or Vadrieny smashing everything. A middle ground between those extremes is such a mess to figure out that it just makes more sense to obviate the entire thing by creating a character to use. The way Vidians do, and Veskers are supposed to.” She hefted the Mask of the Adventurer, frowning quizzically at it. “Every time I put this on, get a new angle from which to see the world, I feel like I’m getting one step closer to my own goal.”

“Well, we don’t mind you being the one to test it,” Juniper said, looking around at the others. “Right? Especially if it helps you. Helping with that specific issue is kinda why we did that whole ritual in the first place, isn’t it? And anyway, I don’t mind admitting that thing scares me. I don’t want to put it on. The absolute last thing I need is more power.”

“Yeah, that’s my concern,” Teal agreed, nodding at the dryad. “I am way too prone to lean on crutches when they’re available. Testing this thing out is helping me, but… Guys, I hope you don’t think this is cowardly, but I don’t want to be its guardian. I don’t want the option of just whipping it out as soon as things are tough.”

“I think that’s extremely wise, Teal,” Toby said, smiling at her.

“Hey, Fross,” said Trissiny. “Would it harm either you or the Mask to put it in your aura storage?”

“I don’t really see how,” Fross replied, bobbing up and down in thought. “I store magical objects in there all the time, and there’s no bleed effect with each other or my own aura. Clearly, we can’t actually know until we try it, and that object is orders of magnitude more powerful than anything else I’ve ever held onto. But in principle, yeah, that should work fine.”

“Well, if you’re willing to take on the responsibility,” Trissiny said, “and if no one else objects, how about we have Fross hang onto it when we’re not experimenting? That aura storage of hers seems like the best way to keep anyone else from being able to steal it from us. And more important, Fross is the most rational person I know. No disrespect meant to any of you, but I can’t think of anybody I’d trust more with something that dangerous. Myself included.”

“Hell, I don’t think you’ll get any argument from anyone here,” Ruda said, grinning and toasting the pixie with her bottle.

“Wow,” Fross said, as the others all nodded agreement. “I’m really honored, guys. And sure, I don’t mind. If it does cause me a problem we might have to revisit this, but yeah, I’ll definitely tuck it away. But first, weren’t we going to test Gabriel’s question?”

“That’s right,” Teal agreed, raising the mask toward her face.

“Wait!” Fross zipped around her in a circle. “Control group, remember? He’s gotta ask the question first!”

“Oh, right. Okay, Gabe, let’s hear it.”

He regarded her every bit as seriously as if he were actually consulting an oracle, a slight frown of sheer focus creasing his forehead. “How can you block a telepath… No, an incredibly powerful telepath, one who can no only read thoughts but read information right out of reality itself. How can you prevent someone like that from seeing your mind?”

Trissiny and Toby both stiffened as he spoke, eyes widening in comprehension. Ruda glanced speculatively at each of them, but the rest of the group just regarded Gabriel in puzzlement.

“Okay, yeah,” said Teal after a pause. “I have absolutely no idea. That’s a doozy of a test case. Let’s see, then…”

Still holding Shaeine’s hand, she lifted the Mask to her face again with her other, and in a short whirl of energy was left wearing a loose, slightly ragged robe of brown and maroon, with a hood pulled forward far enough to obscure her eyes.

“The question is, Gabriel Arquin,” Teal asked with a knowing grin that was not exactly unlike herself, but not the sort of face she would make under these circumstances, “who is you?”

“Do you mean…who are you?” he replied, blinking.

Teal’s new robe shuffled softly as she shook her head. “Who is asking the question? Do you wish to know how such a thing might be done by anyone, or by yourself specifically?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why does it matter?”

“The essence of deterring a telepath is not to create a wall to keep them out, for they will only take that as a challenge. It is to create an illusion, a superficial layer of false thought to distract them, and prevent them from looking deeper. No matter how powerful the enemy, once they have seen what they expect, they will rarely look a second time. The mental discipline this demands is vast. People train for lifetimes to hone their minds this way. But for you? There are answers within the berserking blood of the hethelax—”

“Bad idea,” Ariel interjected, the first she had spoken since they had begun the ritual at dawn. “Self-enchantment, taking advice from mysterious warlocks, taking advice from poorly-understood magical artifacts; this is in fact a whole stack of bad ideas.”

“Aren’t you a poorly-understood magical artifact?” Gabriel countered, placing a hand on her hilt.

“Not in the least. Just because you cannot make a talking sword does not mean the method isn’t fully a matter of record. That thing, by contrast, is an entire mystery and as far as I can tell an object completely without precedent. Tampering with your own mental and magical underpinnings at its suggestion would be terrifyingly reckless.”

“I happen to agree,” Teal said, barely an instant after she pried the Mask off her face again. “That one was…that was uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure that was some kind of warlock. And anyway, Ariel’s right. Getting theoretical knowledge from it is one thing, since it’s apparently the knowledge of people from the past. But that very fact means we have no way of vetting who they are or what agenda they had, or what might result from following their suggestions.”

“So in other words,” Gabriel said, still clutching Ariel as if for comfort, “the oracular powers that Mask presents might be just as dangerous as its combat powers.”

A short silence fell in which they all frowned in thought.

“Well, if we’re done playin’ around for now,” Ruda said at last, “I guess that brings us to the real question, here: what the fuck are we gonna do about that thing?”

Teal turned to meet Shaeine’s eyes, and the drow nodded minutely to her, squeezing her hand.

“Hey, Locke,” Teal called. “What do you think we should do with the Mask?”

They were far from alone on the plateau, though their various companions and minders were mostly providing them with some space. Sniff and F’thaan were both asleep nearby, having been up most of the night along with their respective masters, and their two Order of the Light guides were lurking on the periphery, watching the group from the entrance of the old building in which they were encamped. Merry had brought them up to speed on events, having designated herself the party’s gofer, likely as much to keep busy as anything. Principia had settled down on a rock near enough to the group that she could have heard their conversation even without an elf’s ears, but had not spoken to them since. She was currently stripped to her tunic and breeches, having occupied her hands in thoroughly checking, cleaning, and oiling her armor. Now, she set down the rag and pauldron she was holding, turning to face them directly.

“Here’s a question: what can you do with it?”

“What the fuck kinda question is that?” Ruda demanded. “Is that another one of those koans?”

“Not exactly, except in the sense that the point of it is to have you consider the implications, rather than provide me with an answer. What you’ve got there is an instant win card for any possible conflict. What do you plan to do with it, exactly? I think Juniper so far has come closest to the heart of the matter. Do any of you need more power?”

“Ruda sort of does,” Fross offered. “I mean, in relation to the rest of us, at least.”

“Oh, the absolute fuck I do,” Ruda snorted. “I can’t imagine anybody more weak or stupid than a person with a gimmick that automatically wins all their fights for them. You learn by failing, and you grow by being challenged. You lot can do what you like, but I will have to lead a nation, and I can’t let myself get soft by leaning on a crutch like that.”

“And that is a very smart outlook,” Principia agreed, nodding. “What about the rest of you? No judgment, there are no wrong answers. Do any of you feel you need that artifact, or have any particular plans to use it?”

“I…sort of,” Teal said softly after a short pause. “But just the way I said. It’s useful for me as a tool for self-exploration, but I’m specifically alarmed by the possibility of coming to depend on it. Overall I can’t shake the feeling that this thing is bad news.”

“I’m hearing a lot of good sense, here,” Principia said with clear approval, “which is very reassuring after the absolutely harebrained stumblebumblery by which you created that chunk of madness in the first place. Anyone else? Does anyone have a need or desire to use the Mask?”

She let the silence hang while they glanced at each other.

“Good,” the elf said finally, nodding again. “Then if you’re not going to use it, the question becomes: who should?”

“I cannot help but think,” Shaeine said softly, “the obvious answer to that is no one. I am uncertain that any person could be trusted with such power. I say that as one whose House and nation would be very eager indeed to control it. As we were responsible for creating the Mask, I feel we must be responsible for keeping it out of the wrong hands.”

“Yeah, the thing is,” said Juniper, grimacing, “are there any right hands?”

“I tend to agree with Shaeine,” said Gabriel. “We’ve all got people we trust and causes we support. But… That is a hell of a trump card. Does anyone deserve to have that kind of power?”

“More troubling to me is what power does to people,” Trissiny added. “Corruption is only the beginning of it. By entrusting the Mask to someone we respect, we might well be condemning them to a slide into madness.”

“I think that’s an unnecessarily dramatic way to put it, but in principle I don’t disagree,” said Ruda.

“So.” Principia folded her arms on her knees, leaning toward them with an intent expression. “You don’t want to use it, or give it away. That leaves taking it out of circulation. And that is complicated by how very much absolutely everyone who learns of that thing will want it.”

“Well, I mean, who even knows?” Gabriel asked. “It’s not like we’re gonna take out a newspaper ad.”

Principia pointed at the distant Great Tree. “That is one of the most powerful nexi of fae and divine magic in existence. You just stood at the base of it and did…this. Given the nature of oracular divination? Every witch and shaman in the world above a certain threshold of capability just lifted their heads to sniff the air, even if they don’t know why. The strongest among them will definitely have a general shape in mind of what happened here—and even if it’s just ‘something incredibly powerful was just created,’ that’s enough. Not to mention the existence of actual oracles, and the fact that they tend to end up in the hands of major governments and the Universal Church. It is not impossible that some highly motivated people already know exactly what you’ve got there. Maybe not likely, but at the very least, the hints are already spreading.”

“Oh,” he said quietly.

“And that’s only the beginning,” Principia went on, shifting to glance at the dwarf and human still keeping a respectful distance from them.

“Hey, now,” Ruda protested. “I’m not saying those two’re the kind of people I’d invite to my poker game, but they don’t strike me as squealers.”

“You have to think in terms of connections, and obligations,” Principia said seriously. “They are members of the Order of the Light. They cannot fail to report something like this to their Order.”

“The Order has fallen far from relevance since the Enchanter Wars,” Shaeine pointed out.

“The Order,” Principia continued relentlessly, “is nominally led by Ampophrenon the Gold. He is a founding member of the Conclave of the Winds. The draconic government is a formal ally of the Tiraan Empire, and I have personally twice seen its members cooperating closely with Imperial Intelligence.”

“Well, then, just, fuck, that’s all,” Ruda said feelingly.

“And don’t forget, Vesk was here when you were doing this. Just because they didn’t make their presence specifically known doesn’t mean the other gods aren’t just as aware. At minimum, the four to which the paladins are connected will know. Gods have their own agendas and aren’t very communicative as a rule; it may be that most of them wouldn’t share news of something like this with their cults. But Vesk, himself? Everything he came here to do, he could have done anonymously and in silence. Instead, he couldn’t resist putting in an appearance just to be mysterious at me—the very definition of a pointless exercise. Gods are constrained by their nature and their aspects. Vesk is well known for doing things for absolutely no other reason than that a rollicking good story will result. Which, for everyone not a bard, means a sequence of barely manageable disasters.”

Silence answered her as they all considered this. Principia stared at them, her expression revealing nothing of her thoughts.

“It sounds like it might be best if we destroyed it,” Juniper said at last in a small voice. “Gabe? Maybe that scythe of yours—”

“If you destroy the Mask, two things will happen,” Principia interjected. “First, the absolutely unfathomable amount of energy contained in it will all be released at once, and I don’t care how supposedly invulnerable anybody here is, there’s a very good chance nobody would survive that. Or what would happen to any who did; that kind of uncontained magic of all four schools and shadow besides can do hellaciously unpredictable things. Second, there would be pieces of it left, whether fragments or just dust, and there’s absolutely no telling what those would do, much less where they might end up. It is possible to safely dispose of artifacts like that, but you’re back to the issue of power and the temptation thereof. Any magic users who could handle that task, like the cult of Salyrene or the Wizards’ Guild, might very well want to possess that thing badly enough to risk pissing off the nine of you.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?” Gabriel commented.

“You goobers accidentally created the ultimate superweapon. I will stop pointing out what a fucking mess this is just as soon as it stops being urgently necessary.”

“That’s a lot of things we can’t or shouldn’t do with the Mask,” Teal said pointedly, “but I asked you what you thought we should do.”

“And this is me answering,” Principia replied with the ghost of a smile. “The absolute last thing you need is someone to hold your hands, kids. I’m just guiding you in the right direction, here. You already know what you should do with it.”

“Tellwyrn,” Toby said softly.

“Whoah, hang on,” Ruda objected. “I like Tellwyrn as much as anybody, but come on. Does she of all people need something like this?”

“No, she doesn’t need it,” Trissiny said thoughtfully. “Maybe…that’s why she can be trusted with it.”

“Here’s what I know,” Principia added. “I entrusted Arachne with the Mask of Calomnar a hundred years ago and nobody’s heard a whisper of that damn thing ever since. She can be trusted to hide dangerous artifacts away where no one can get at them.”

“Whoah, wait a sec,” Gabriel exclaimed. “What the hell were you doing with the Mask of Calomnar?”

“Getting the hell rid of it, is what.” Principia grimaced, rubbing her palms on her tunic as if at the memory of a greasy sensation. “I wouldn’t have gone near that thing at all, but I was in Onkawa when it popped into circulation nearby, and a particularly squirrelly succubus was that close to getting her hands on it. Obviously I couldn’t just let that happen; I have to live on this planet too. Arachne was…a friend of a friend, at the time, and someone pointed out to me as both trustworthy and powerful enough to handle a thing like that. And like I said, that was back during the Enchanter Wars; time has proven it was the right thing to do. She’s powerful enough to be able to contain such things, savvy enough not to mess with anything too dangerous to handle, and arguably so powerful that more power doesn’t tempt her. Give it to Arachne, and nobody else after the thing will even have a chance.”

Another pause fell, in which they digested this advice.

Then Fross let out a chiming little laugh. “Oh, wow… And I was just hoping we might be able to resolve this without her finding out about it. Man, she’s really gonna kill us this time, guys.”

“You did the thing; it’s time to take your medicine like big boys and girls.” Principia turned again to look at the distant Tree. “I just hope there’s time enough to get to her. The clock started ticking the moment that Mask was created, maybe before. I wouldn’t think anyone could reach us here before we return to Last Rock, but… It’s a new world, kids, and nobody knows all the rules, yet.”

She did not add that Vesk himself had predicted a new Age of Adventurers to be spawned from this day’s work. There was little point in spooking them further; they couldn’t do much to be more prepared than they already were. Depending on the powers already assembling, it might have been too late before they began.

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