§ I had been fully prepared to argue with Ged, to beg and plead, to do whatever I needed in order to convince him. To my surprise, none of that was necessary. While Ged had the officers recalled for another emergency meeting, we used the crystal ball network to brief Uncle Owen, Mother, Rod and Uncle Matthias, who was looking …

§ Prince Ged’s eyes remained narrowed in thought and fixed on the half-full wine glass in his hand. Aenëe and I waited, giving him time to mull over the puzzle pieces I had just given him, occupying ourselves with munching slices of hard sausage or cheese. Aenëe had turned her nose up (as politely as possible) at the canned peaches …

§ The emergency briefing soon devolved into a brainstorming session for the colonels and their intelligence officers, to work over various theories of what the enemy planned to do with this nasty surprise I had stumbled across. Starting from before the meeting began, my ‘bat’ continued its journey through the tunnels and galleries of the Carael Mines, slowly confirming the …

§ Fan Li had called herself ‘quite anxious’.  Those words reflected her bad habit of seriously understating matters. “May I ask what is wrong, My Lady?” Aenëe begged as we rushed back at the fastest speed she could fly… which was quite a bit slower than my maximum, even though wasp-winged Aenëe was doing her fastest. Our after-lunch foray had …

§ As this small one settled once more into meditation, Oranos spoke again. “Do not attempt the entire translation, Little Sen. Only deduce the broad form of the language and test your translation on a few lines.” Confusion could cause my thoughts to lose their order. For that reason, despite the arrogance in questioning his wisdom, this small one had …

§ Aenëe did not stop trying to fool around immediately, but I managed to get her to knock it off and get some sleep without too much trouble. She really did need it. She had suffered significant blood loss, and [Healing] could only restore the physical blood, not the missing pneuma and mana. [Restoration] could insure that the remaining pneuma …

§ Toward the end of my lifetime as an Enhanced Human, I came with great difficulty to value the part of me that fit the ‘Human’ half of that description. That fact differentiated me from the great majority of my kind. A society that used ‘defective’ infants such as myself as raw material for human-shaped machinery offered no particular incentive …

§ I had broken through a defensive barrier into this protected space upon entry. Naturally, the residents had alarms. And naturally, they had an emergency response, in the form of this group of warriors, classically kitted out in leather armor, heavy helmets and battle axes. I wanted to rise and confront them, but my continued deep fatigue argued against it. …

§ I didn’t turn back to fight Trisiagga because I still had a gigantified wolf to worry about. With an Orestanian army to protect and a titanic creature of utterly unknown capabilities, I couldn’t remove potentially the only thing keeping it in check. Yes, I was well aware that paralyzing us like that might be the creature’s actual purpose. But …

§ Although I was once more paying attention to my surroundings, I let Kwelabi and Sirth continue to handle things for the moment, as I caught up on the situation. We were actually flying away from the camp, although on a dogleg. Once I became aware of that, I fully understood why. The flow of information is weird between mental …