The Crimson Calling has arrived at their camp site east of Nodden-Torr, and the rangers are finalizing the details before camp is truly struck. Alexis has wrapped his winter blanket around him. He waits until the four others are near enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice.
“Good job” Nodding at Gustav, Ca’armine, and Rask. “Before we settle in. A thought gnawing at me since the fire lake. At the time when I spoke with Vorgoth, I was just giving you all my best translations, but I was also distracted by listening to him. He said a few things that require reflection.”
A silver piece starts over his knuckles.
“I’d given him the name Bandesingh, and that he means to bring back Ath and put the world in darkness. He’d never heard of the man in his life.”
“He said: ‘Bandesingh. Another one who mistakes certainty for wisdom.'”
The coin walks.
“Then: ‘So. Shasharak has found another road. The dragon believed he would.'”
He lets that stand a moment.
“A few ways I can take ‘another road’.”
“One. Bandesingh is the road. Plain reading. I asked all of you a while back whether Bandesingh learned his trade from Shasharak or whether two men arrived at the same answer on their own. If Vorgoth’s right, that’s answered.” Alexis shugs as-if a mystery could be checked off his list.
“Two. Another road to a Tear, not to this Tear.” Alexis points to his belt pouch “Bandesingh has two. If what Shasharak wanted was one of these and not our particular one, he got it centuries ago, and we never really thwarted Shasharak.”
“Three. Another road to what he actually wanted, which was to be a god. The Tear in the time-vault was one way. He found a different one.”
“Four.” The coin stops. “‘The dragon believed he would.’ He planned for a man to go around him. Whatever he built in there, he built it knowing it would be walked past, and then he left it to five strangers seven hundred years (or longer) later.” A slight shrug, and a nod off to the side. “There’s a possibility that we were the arrangement the Dragon made for losing.”
He pockets the coin.
“But back to Vorgoth.”
“I handed him the name of Bandesingh, which he had never heard and two sentences about a man alive right now. He didn’t ask me a single question. He set him beside Shasharak on the spot.”
“Earlier in that conversation I’d said Raiden. He said, ‘You say Raiden, the last true king. I saw him once in the flames.'”
“Vorgoth has stood in that room since at least some time in the 2nd age. Raiden doesn’t rise until a minimum of one hundred and sixty years after that. He cannot have seen him. Not face-to-face.”
“So. He sees forward in that fire. Or standing outside of time he’s able to see time flow outside the time-vault, which would make that fire room a stranger place than we initially gathered.”
Alexis’ tone shifts to light-hearted, almost joking “Or he has simply met enough men like Bandesingh to know one by the smell.”
The coin starts walking his fingers again and Alexis looks at his companions for any possible insights they might have.
