Eldric Chronicles: The Bonded

Book One

Chapter Thirteen: The Yamato Crisis Part II: Aftermath— The Shogun's Seal

Afterward

The courtyard in the aftermath of significant things had a specific quality that was different from the courtyard before them.

Not destruction — there was damage, yes, the evidence of the battle present in the scarred stone and the displaced temple architecture, but the physical evidence was not what gave the space its quality. The quality was the specific register of a place where something of weight had concluded. The absence of what had been building. The particular silence of a tension that has resolved — not comfortably, not without cost, but resolved, which was its own kind of fullness.

The three-hundred-year-old maple was still standing.

Sakurai, doing the security check that was the first task after any significant engagement, noted this with the specific satisfaction of someone who had not expected to care about a tree before arriving and had, in the course of the night, developed a position on the matter.

The darkness was gone. Not retreated to somewhere — gone, the absence complete in the way that a thing was absent when the thing generating it had ceased rather than withdrawn. The street lamps, where they still functioned, were doing the ordinary work of street lamps. Where they were dark, it was because the engagement had been physically consequential to the infrastructure, which was a manageable problem and not an existential one.

Allen had his notebook out.

This was, Sakurai thought, the most reliable indicator of the situation's nature: if Allen was writing in his notebook, the situation had moved from active response to documentation phase, which meant the situation was no longer evolving in the crisis direction.

"Seven breach points confirmed closed," he said, for the record — for the tactical net still running, for the report that Roy in Kyoto was waiting for, for his own notes which would be the most complete account of the night's events because they always were. "Void gate foundation: collapsed. Naltharin presence in the city: zero confirmed signatures. Ambient void energy: declining toward baseline." He looked up from the sensor display. "We're clean."

"The Shogun's ETA," Kazuma said.

"Twenty minutes. Her advance team is already through the outer perimeter."

Twenty minutes was workable. Twenty minutes was enough to do the immediate assessment and reach the minimal order that a situation needed to be in before a Shogun arrived to complete the formal work.

Yui was already moving through the courtyard with the quality of someone performing a thorough assessment and constructing, simultaneously, the appropriate presentation of results. She had the warrior's eye for what was important and the Anuyachi matriarch's eye for what would be perceived, and she applied both without apparent effort. She paused once, at the base of the maple, and looked at the ground around its roots — the specific look of someone checking for something she expected to find and was confirming rather than discovering.

She looked up at the tree's canopy, which was undamaged.

"The old wards held," she said, to no one in particular, because no one in particular needed to be told but someone needed to say it.

"Yes," Lailah said, from nearby. "They were built well."

"Seventeen generations is a long time to build something," Yui said, and went back to her assessment.

Odyn was at the courtyard's eastern edge, which was where he had been since Daeanthas dissolved — not standing there for any specific purpose but occupying it, the way you occupied a space when you needed the specific dimensions of that space to think in. His arms were at his sides. The marks, at their full extension, were at the lower end of the elevated register they'd been at during the amplification — coming back toward baseline, the bond's natural post-combat recalibration happening in its own time without any management from him.

He was not thinking about the marks.

He was thinking about what Daeanthas had said, in the moment before the dissolution.

You named me correctly. You separated the loss from the lost.

He had said it in old Albanar, and Lailah had translated it for the tactical net, and then there had been other things — the collapse of the nexus, the Naltharin's fragmentation, the work of the next ten minutes — and the translation had been received and then superseded by the immediate requirements of the moment.

Now the immediate requirements were managed.

He was thinking about whether I held that wrongness as true for seven years was something Daeanthas had received, in the moment before the dissolution. Whether the thing the void had preserved — the structure, the scholarship, the form — had, in that last moment, had something of the original contents present to receive it.

He did not know. He could not know. The documentation on what a void entity experienced at dissolution was, as all documentation on void entities tended to be, incomplete.

He was thinking that he was glad he had said it anyway.

Ichihana came to the eastern edge from the south approach, which was the route she used when she was doing a perimeter check rather than coming specifically to find him. She completed the check, noted something in her own internal record-keeping about the south wall's structural status, and then stood at the edge beside him with the quality of someone who has finished one task and is now in the brief interval before the next.

"He heard it," she said.

Not a question.

"Yes," he said. "I think so."

"Good," she said.

The sun was coming up. Not dramatically — it was the specific quality of a spring dawn over Kyoto, the light arriving sideways and gradual, the city beginning to re-find itself after a night that had been wrong in the specific way that the darkness made it wrong. The recovery was visible in real time: lights coming back on, the specific sounds of emergency services working in the outer districts, the quality of the air changing as the void energy's final traces receded to nothing.

"The Shogun in twenty minutes," she said.

"Yes."

"The sealing ritual will require the full synchronization again," she said.

"Yes. I know."

She looked at the marks on her arm — the full extension, still in the elevated register but declining toward baseline. She looked at them with the quality of someone looking at something that has become ordinary over the past several weeks and has not entirely stopped being extraordinary underneath the ordinary. "I'm not going to manage it," she said. "The synchronization. I was managing it, in the earlier sessions. I'm not going to manage it for the sealing."

He looked at her. "No," he agreed. "Managing it would make it less effective."

"Yes," she said.

They stood for a moment in the ordinary quality of the dawn.

"Lilian is thirteen," he said, which was not a non sequitur — it was the thought that had been present in the background since he had watched her fight in the courtyard with the controlled precision of someone who had been training very seriously for a long time. "She has been watching us since before the bond appeared. She has been drawing what she sees."

"Yes," Ichihana said.

"She drew the full marks weeks before the adjustment," he said. "She drew the courtyard, approximately, before we knew it would be the location." He paused. "She is thirteen years old and she has been carrying the weight of knowing what was coming and choosing the right moment to say it."

"Yes," Ichihana said again. "She's been doing that her whole life. Seeing things and understanding when the seeing is useful and when the information needs to wait." She paused. "I used to think it was inconvenient. Now I understand it's how she takes care of people."

"She takes care of you," he said.

"Yes," Ichihana said. "She always has."

Below them, in the courtyard, Lilian was helping Allen with the sensor equipment breakdown — the specific help of someone who had paid close enough attention to the setup process to know the breakdown sequence without being told. She was talking to Allen in the focused, practical register she used when she was doing a task and the task had her full attention.

She looked up, briefly, and found Ichihana at the eastern edge, and her expression did the specific thing it did when she found what she had been peripherally tracking and confirmed it was all right.

Then she went back to the sensor breakdown.

"The Shogun," Ichihana said.

"Yes," he said.

They went to prepare.

The Battle Lotus

Lady Miyako Himura arrived in the specific manner of someone who had received a detailed briefing and had formed a clear operational picture and was now arriving at the location to apply that picture to what was actually in front of her, reconciling the two in real time without slowing down.

Her armor had seen actual conflict. This was evident in a way that ceremonial armor was not evident — the specific quality of something that had been maintained rather than preserved, that had been in the presence of events rather than occasions. The imperial symbols on it were present, but they were not the primary fact of the armor; the primary fact was its function, and the symbols were secondary to that.

She assessed the courtyard in approximately the time it took her to walk from the outer gate to the center — not a sweep, a complete read. The damage distribution. The position of the collapsed void foundation. The sealed breach points. The maple.

Her gaze rested on the maple for approximately two seconds.

"The wards held," she said.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Yui confirmed.

"The ward structure on that tree is pre-Meiji," the Shogun said. "I would have expected less." A pause. "I would have been wrong." She moved on from the maple with the specific quality of someone who gives things the exactly correct amount of attention and then releases them. "The foundation."

"Here," Lailah said, indicating the ground at the courtyard's center — the space where the nexus had been and now was not, the stone beneath it carrying the specific quality of a surface that had been in contact with void energy long enough to need the kind of sealing the Kagami mirrors were designed to provide.

The Shogun looked at it. "Daeanthas."

"Dissolved," Odyn said, from Lailah's right. "At the final collapse of the nexus."

"Dissolved permanently, or temporarily contained."

"I do not know," he said, which was accurate and which the Shogun received with the quality of someone who appreciates accuracy over reassurance. "The dissolution had the specific quality of something that was concluding rather than withdrawing. But certainty requires documentation we do not yet have."

"Honest assessment," she said. "Good." She looked at him — at the marks, fully extended, in the post-combat recalibration register. At Ichihana, at his right shoulder, with the same. "You deepened the bond during the engagement."

"Yes," Ichihana said.

"To stop the nexus from completing."

"And to clear the breach points," Odyn confirmed. "The amplified signal was architecturally incompatible with the nexus's void construction."

"Lailah's theory," the Shogun said, with the tone of someone who had been in the briefing and is now confirming.

"And practice, as it turns out," Lailah said.

The Shogun looked at the foundation again, with the quality of someone confirming that the task they have brought the appropriate tools for is, in fact, the task that needs doing. "Then the mirrors will complete the work." She turned to her advance team. "Bring them out."

The Kagami

The mirrors were old in the specific way that was different from merely having been made a long time ago. Things that were merely old carried their age as accumulated time. The Kagami mirrors carried their age as accumulated purpose — the specific quality of objects that had been used for something serious and had been maintained in readiness for the next time that same serious thing was required, which was a kind of age that was weight rather than length.

Two imperial guards brought them forward in their lacquered containers, and when the containers were opened, what was inside was not what Zerik had expected, which was what Zerik noted in his observation log as the first significant data point about the artifacts.

He had expected polished obsidian. What was in the containers was obsidian in the sense that it had the right composition and the right darkness, but the quality of the surface was not the quality of a mirror that reflected its surroundings. It was the quality of something looking back at what looked into it from the other side.

"The First Void Incursion," he said, to Lailah, quietly.

"Three hundred years ago," she confirmed. "Yes. They were made from void-touched materials — taken from the incursion site itself and purified through imperial ritual. The void origin is what makes them effective against void corruption. They speak the same language."

Allen had his notebook out and was writing with the focused efficiency of someone who understood that what was about to happen was worth documenting carefully. He was also, simultaneously, running the detection array to confirm baseline conditions before the ritual introduced new energy variables into the field.

"The mirror at opposite foundation points," the Shogun explained to Odyn and Ichihana, with the practical efficiency of someone who gives instructions once and expects them to be followed correctly. "Your bond energy flows through both simultaneously — you direct it through the mirror's surface, which refines and focuses it. My ritual provides the structural architecture for the seal. Your bond provides the energy." She paused. "The mirrors require harmonized input. If the synchronization is insufficient—"

"It will be sufficient," Ichihana said, without qualification.

The Shogun looked at her. "You've done this before."

"No. But I know what we're capable of."

Lady Miyako held her look for a moment — the assessment of someone evaluating not the claim but the person making it. Then she gave the slight nod of someone who has decided the claim is credible. "East and west. Precisely opposite. The foundation point is at the center."

Odyn took the east mirror. Ichihana took the west. They moved to their positions across the forty meters of the foundation's diameter without discussion, their steps adjusting naturally to the distance without apparent calculation.

Zerik, watching from the northern perimeter, noted in his log: East-west distance approximately 40m. No signal communication between pair during positioning. Spacing achieved to within 0.3m of optimal alignment without measurement or instruction. Bond-mediated spatial awareness confirmed at distance.

He underlined this.

Allen, at the sensor station, noted the energy signatures beginning to activate before either of them had raised their mirrors. The marks were doing the preliminary calibration on their own, which he also wrote down, and also underlined.

Lady Miyako took the center position and opened the scroll her chief ritualist had prepared — not reading it, because she had the ritual in memory, but confirming the sequence in the specific way of someone who does not perform without checking, regardless of how many times they have performed. Her ritualists formed the outer boundary of the working space with the formal precision of people who understood that their function was architectural rather than contributory — they were holding the structure, not generating the energy.

"Begin," she said.

Odyn and Ichihana raised their mirrors simultaneously.

The obsidian surfaces caught nothing. No reflection — just the specific quality of the looking-back that Zerik had noted, the quality of a surface that was oriented in the other direction, toward whatever was on the other side of what anyone else saw when they looked at it.

Then the bond's amplification began, and the mirrors did something else.

It was not light exactly — it was the quality of what light was pointing at when it was pointing at something real. The obsidian surfaces opened, in the specific sense of a door opening that had been a wall a moment before: not physically, not with any structural change, but with the quality of suddenly revealing a depth that had not been visible before. Through both mirrors, at the same moment, the energy moving from east and west toward the center was the same energy — not two contributions combining, one energy that happened to have two points of entry into the working space.

This was what the synchronization looked like from the outside.

From the inside: Ichihana was later unable to describe it to Lilian, not because she was avoiding the description but because the experience had a quality that precluded description — not transcendent, not mystical, but simply more specific than language was calibrated for. What she could say was that the working felt like being exactly the right size for the space she was occupying, which was a thing she had never felt before doing this work, and which she attributed to the bond rather than the mirrors, because the mirrors were the channel and the bond was the water.

Lady Miyako's incantation moved through its sequence with the specific quality of someone doing something that has been done correctly for three hundred years and is being done correctly now, the form preserved in the preservation of the practice. Old Japanese — older than what Allen could parse from the peripheral monitoring, from a register that the linguists would later identify as coming from a period before certain vowel shifts and therefore placing the origin of the ritual in an era that matched the documentation.

The foundation responded.

Not dramatically — not the theatrical response of a thing being dramatically purified. The practical response of a contamination encountering the appropriate counter-agent: a withdrawal, a reconfiguration, the void energy's residual presence in the stone understanding that it was no longer in a hospitable environment and moving accordingly. Where it had been: stone. Old stone, with the quality of stone that had been in the same place for a long time and had acquired the depth that long-term presence gave things.

The mirrors flared once — the single flare that the ritual's sequence required, the moment when the sealing energy moved from flowing to established, from process to structure — and then went still, and in the stillness, the seal was present.

It was visible as a pattern in the stone: not carved, not inscribed, but present in the stone's own structure, as though the stone had always had this configuration and the working had simply made it legible. Imperial and elven patterns, woven together in the specific geometry that the Kagami produced when the bond's energy ran through them — something neither tradition could have produced alone, and both had contributed to completely.

The Shogun concluded the incantation.

The courtyard was quiet.

"Complete," she said.

The Echo

The quiet held for approximately four seconds.

Then, from the sealed foundation — not from above it, not from the air of the courtyard, but from the stone itself, from the specific location where the void energy had been and was now not — a voice.

Not Daeanthas's presence. Not a return — the dissolution had been what Odyn had understood it to be, a conclusion rather than a withdrawal, and what this was was not him. It was the quality of something preserved in the residual energy, the way a sound sometimes remained in a space after the thing making it had gone, the physical fact of the pressure wave outlasting its origin.

What remained in the sealed foundation was a recording in void energy of something Daeanthas had prepared before the dissolution. A transmission rather than a presence. His voice, with the layered harmonics of the void's alteration, but the form and structure of his own intent rather than the void's direction.

It was addressed to Odyn.

It was in old Albanar.

The courtyard heard the voice and most of the people in it heard the harmonics and did not understand the words. Lailah understood, and her expression shifted in the specific way of someone receiving information that confirms a fear they had been carrying at some distance.

Odyn's expression did not shift, because he had learned to hold his expression when receiving information that required decision about how to receive it. But the marks on his arm brightened once, briefly, at the specific passage of text that Lailah later translated as: the seal fractures where the severer touches. protect the bond at its softest point, which is the point you have not yet acknowledged. I did not name it while I was what I was. I name it now.

Then the transmission ended.

The foundation was sealed and quiet.

The courtyard looked at Odyn.

"A prepared transmission," he said, to the courtyard generally and to the Shogun specifically, because she was the person whose operational needs had the first claim on the information. "Not a manifestation. He cannot return through that channel — the seal would prevent it regardless." He paused. "He left information."

"The name he spoke in Yamato," Lady Miyako said.

"Kitane Yamitosu," Lailah confirmed, and the name produced in the Shogun's expression the specific quality of something she had hoped not to hear and had prepared to hear anyway.

"Tell me what you know," Odyn said, to the Shogun. Not a request that could be deferred.

She was quiet for a moment — the quality of a woman who has maintained the confidentiality of imperial records for twenty years and is now performing the calculation of what the current situation requires against what that confidentiality has historically protected.

"Kitane was sealed three centuries ago at the conclusion of the First Void Incursion," she said, finally. "The seal held because the entities who bore the Vhaeryn'thal at that convergence period were present at the sealing. There are no records of his abilities or methods that are not classified at the highest imperial levels." She paused. "The classification exists because certain information about his methods, if widely known, would constitute a guide to using them."

"You are telling us he targets bonds," Ichihana said.

The Shogun looked at her. "I am telling you that the imperial historians gave him a specific epithet, and that this epithet has been removed from all documents available below the imperial level." She looked at both of them. "They called him the Severer."

The courtyard absorbed this.

Lailah's expression confirmed it — the confirmation of someone who has records her own archives did not have direct access to, who has been carrying the knowledge of what this name meant from the elven side of history and is now seeing the human side's records align with it. "He does not attack the bearers directly," she said. "He attacks the bond. Specifically — the aspects of the bond that are not yet fully acknowledged. The points where the bearers have not yet come to terms with what the bond is and what it means."

"Because those points are undefended," Allen said. He was not asking. He had been running the logical sequence and had arrived at the conclusion before it was stated, which was what he did with information. He wrote it down.

"Yes," Lailah said.

The morning light was fully present now — the sideways spring quality having resolved into the ordinary quality of mid-morning in Kyoto, the city's sounds asserting themselves, the emergency services' activity at the outer districts a manageable background. The courtyard looked like what it was: a space where something significant had occurred and been resolved, which was not a neat space but was a real one.

Odyn looked at Ichihana.

She was already looking at him, because the bond had been doing its work throughout the Shogun's statement and she had been receiving the same information he was receiving about the specific nature of the vulnerability being described. The bond's undefended points were the ones neither of them had yet addressed directly. The transmission had said: the softest point, which is the point you have not yet acknowledged. Which was, in fact, precisely specific.

"We will need the imperial records," he said, to the Shogun.

"I will provide what I can authorize," she said.

"And the elven archives," Ichihana added, to Lailah.

"Everything relevant," Lailah confirmed.

"How much time," Odyn asked.

"We don't know," the Shogun said. "He has been sealed for three centuries. His capacity for action after reactivation is unknown. Daeanthas chose to tell you his name, which means Daeanthas believed the threat was real and imminent. I do not think Daeanthas, in his final transmission, was making a warning for entertainment." She paused. "He still understood what we are trying to protect, in the end. He used what remained of that understanding."

The courtyard was quiet for a moment with a different quality than before — the quality of a threat named and not yet present, which was the specific quality that required preparation rather than response.

"The Shogun honors us with the information," Kazuma said formally.

"The situation requires it," Lady Miyako replied, with the practical quality that had characterized everything she had said. "I do not honor you with threats I am not prepared to face with you." She looked at the sealed foundation, at the marks in the stone. "The seal will hold. Daeanthas is resolved. The immediate crisis is managed." She looked at the team — at the Anuyachi parents, the Albanar siblings, the allied children who had aged five years and handled a void incursion in the same week. "What comes next requires consultation, preparation, and the kind of sustained alliance this morning's work has demonstrated is possible."

"Yes," Kazuma agreed.

"My office will contact the Anuyachi household through the secure channel," she said. "Within two days. We have things to discuss that the morning does not have enough time for." She looked at Odyn and Ichihana one more time — at the marks, at the synchronized quality that had not diminished post-ritual, at the fact that they were standing three feet apart without either having commented on it. "Rest," she said. "Both of you. The work you did this morning was significant. Preparation for what comes next requires you to be functional, not depleted."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Ichihana said.

The Shogun gave the slight nod she had given before and moved to consult with her ritualists about the mirror transport and the secondary seal they would place at the courtyard's perimeter before departure.

Ren, who had been at the outer perimeter for the duration of the ritual, came in from the eastern approach as Lady Miyako departed for the consultation. She had the expression of someone who has been thinking during the time they were maintaining a position and has arrived at several things she intends to say in the appropriate moment.

She found the appropriate moment beside Lailah. "The Vhaeryn'thal fragment at the Hokkaido site," she said, quietly. "Kitane was active during the period the fragment was last documented. He would know its location."

Lailah looked at her. "Yes," she said, carefully. "He would."

"Which means the lineage carrying it — my family — is known to him."

"Likely," Lailah said.

"Then it is relevant to the preparation," Ren said, which was not bravado and not anxiety — the flat determination of someone who has arrived at a fact and is stating it as a fact. "Not just the bond. The fragment is in the same category of vulnerable point. An unacknowledged guardianship."

"Yes," Lailah said. "That is a correct analysis."

"Then I should be part of the consultation," Ren said.

"Yes," Lailah said. "I had intended to recommend it to the Shogun. She will agree."

Ren absorbed this. "All right," she said, and went back to her perimeter assessment, because the perimeter still needed assessing.

Returning

The convoy back to the hospital staging area moved through streets that were beginning to re-find themselves with the specific quality of a city after a night that had been wrong — emergency services working through the outer districts, the evacuation areas beginning to process the return flow as the void energy readings confirmed the recovery. There would be weeks of restoration work. There would be reports, and documentation, and the specific infrastructure of the aftermath that a Category One event generated. There would be the human authorities and the imperial office and the Ministry's framework and all of the formal architecture of a response to something unprecedented.

This was not that time.

This was the drive back, with the specific quality of a vehicle full of people who have been through something significant together and have arrived at the particular tiredness that was not the absence of energy but the presence of completion — the exhaustion of having done the thing you were built to do and having done it to the full extent of your current capacity.

Alek was asleep before the convoy had cleared the inner perimeter, which was not surprising given that he had been running the detection array for most of the night and had at no point acknowledged any physical limitation, which was characteristic.

Banryu had his eyes closed in the posture that was either sleep or the specific quality of alert rest that elven training produced, and was probably both simultaneously.

Ragnarok was looking out the side window at the recovering city with the quality of someone who was not processing anything in particular but was simply present to what was there, which was its own kind of rest.

Allen had his notebook out, which was not surprising. He was writing with the quality of someone documenting while the details were still present rather than reconstructed, which was the right instinct. He wrote for approximately twenty minutes and then stopped, and looked at what he had written, and then closed the notebook with the quality of someone who has finished a thing.

Lilian was sitting beside him, not sleeping, with her sketchbook open in her lap. She was not drawing. She was looking at something she had drawn before — not the drawings from the two weeks of anticipation, which had served their purpose, but something new, in the blank pages at the back of the book where she drew things she had not predicted but was now recording. Allen glanced at it and looked away with the specific respect of someone who has learned that Lilian's sketchbook was not always for sharing immediately.

Sakurai was at the forward position, reviewing the tactical summary Allen had prepared and confirming the breach point documentation against the sensor logs. This was the work of a person doing the work because the work was there and needed doing, and because doing work was how certain kinds of people managed the aftermath of significant things. She worked through it with the specific focused quality she brought to analysis, and when she was done she sent the completed summary to Roy's coordination station in Kyoto, and Roy's acknowledgment came back immediately, which meant Roy was also not sleeping.

At the convoy's center position: Odyn and Ichihana.

Not talking. Not doing the post-combat analysis that they would both eventually do — that was for later, when the operational context had been fully documented and there was time to review it properly. Not managing the bond's recalibration, which was happening on its own at its own pace. Simply present to the drive back, with the specific quality of two people who have been in each other's complete awareness for several hours and have not felt the need to reduce that quality, and are not reducing it now.

Sakurai, finishing the summary report, looked up and noted this, and filed it in the specific category of things she was not going to comment on today. There was a right moment for things, and today had already had its significant moments, and this was not one that needed her contribution.

Lilian looked up from her sketchbook and also noted it, and also filed it, in the specific way that Lilian filed things — not for deployment, but for the honest accounting of what was true.

What was true was: they had been through the night. What was true was: the nexus was sealed and the foundation was sealed and Daeanthas was resolved and the Shogun had been and the mirrors had been and the bond had done the thing it had been building toward. What was true was: there was a threat named and not yet present, which was the specific kind of threat that required preparation rather than response, and that preparation would begin when the people who were going to do it had rested.

What was true was: the bond was at baseline plus a specific additional register that it had not been at before the morning's working, and was not declining from that register, and both of them had noticed this and neither had said anything about it.

What was true was that the three-hundred-year-old maple had survived.

Lilian opened to a new page of the sketchbook and drew the maple, quickly, with the specific quality of documentation rather than vision — this is what was there, this is what held, this is the thing that survived the night and was still standing when the dawn came.

She drew it small, in the corner of the page.

The rest of the page she left blank.

For later, she thought — for what she had not yet seen that would fill it. The drawing that came from looking rather than knowing, which was a different kind of drawing from the other kind, and which she was learning to trust equally.

The convoy moved through Kyoto toward the compound, and the city around it moved through the ordinary work of a morning that had followed an extraordinary night, and both continued at their own pace, which was the correct pace for each.

End of Chapter Thirteen

Next: Chapter Fourteen — Rumblings of War and What Is Not Yet Named