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Updated: May 11, 2025
I did choose this, didn't I? Twice, and without realizing it." The three other Lords smiled proudly at him. "Yes," Kranath said. "Once when you accepted Ranger Ellman's invitation, once when you accepted the Ordeal. That you were persuaded into both decisions is irrelevant; none of us chose this without persuasion, neither I nor any of the others."
He was in a Traiti body that fit him perfectly well, though he'd prefer the familiarity of his human form. He felt the sensation of change again, and the glade's Traiti and human Lords returned to the bodies they'd first had. "One's original form is usually best," Kranath agreed calmly. "You have accepted that we exist," Sepol Lord of the Ordeal put in.
"No," Kranath interrupted the forming thought, "neither bodies nor refreshment are truly necessary. They are pleasant, though, and we often create them." He smiled again, and Tarlac could feel his amusement. "Those who went before left us Godhome, which gave us awesome power, but we remain, if you will excuse the expression, human. We see no reason to deny ourselves such things.
What had happened hadn't harmed him, and he realized it had been the only way to get him here. Kranath could imagine how he'd have reacted to a simple invitation: "Hello, I'm Godhome. I'd like you to visit me." He smiled, and thought he felt answering amusement from the computer. No, Godhome had known exactly what it was doing. He could feel no more lingering resentment about his capture.
Godhome had been right when it told Kranath that refraining from action was often harder than taking it and that too much intervention would harm, not help, even when it meant allowing suffering and death he could stop by an act of will. He sensed Dr. Jason's resentment at what seemed like callousness, and knew the man simply didn't have the scope to understand. "My word as a Ranger, Doctor.
He was the last to be forced to his full potential, to complete the Circle of Lords. He could see now how he'd been quite literally molded, as Kranath had said, from the moment of his conception and he'd had a mostly-pleasant life. Since he could understand and appreciate the necessity, he could feel no resentment at the manipulation. It was as inevitable, historically, as the Traiti war itself.
Kranath considered himself rather ordinary for a Cor'naya, and would have been surprised to learn that Godhome's opinion was far different: his generation was a key one by the reckoning of those who went before, and he was one of several exceptional males who had been born as predicted, then subtly guided by Godhome into developing their full potential without losing the essential values of the Traiti race and culture.
"To complete it," Kranath said, sitting beside him and materializing a mug of chovas. "I ended the clan wars, to begin the current cycle of history; a human must end this war, with our help, to begin the next." The rest of the Lords, except for Sepol and Carle, vanished. "It all ties together, Steve," Carle said.
He picked splinters of glass from the bipe's shattered instrument faces out of his leathery gray skin, working deftly with his extended claws. Gray skin? Claws? For an instant, they seemed alien. Shouldn't he have flat fingernails and a pinkish-tan skin? Kranath smiled, dismissing such ridiculous thoughts. He was groggy from the crash, that was all. This was no more than a dream, insignificant.
They did not think of themselves that way, though their powers of mind do seem miraculous to younger races, and many of those powers have been built into me. I am what your descendants will call a psionic computer." Godhome paused. "But I neglect courtesy. You are hungry and thirsty, and your flying gear is less than comfortable by now. Let me change it for you." Kranath couldn't object.
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