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There was something -- no, everything -- endearing about receiving a polite letter of introduction. It reminded Hvergelmir of Titan, a little: the commitment to traditional etiquette and the time taken to compose it, the slightly courtly tone of it all, like he had to have some kind of permission just to ask to say hi.

Most of all, though, there was a phrase she couldn't get out of her mind -- something that had charmed her unduly when she'd read it, and stayed with her still. Scholomance's tiny aside:

I'm privy to a maddening luck.

This, most of all, was the man she wanted to meet, when she arrived. Certainly she had an element of curiosity about the circumstances themselves, too -- who had been recommending her as a source of information, and what had they said? Was it Mont Blanc again, like with Thrymr? Was she meant to be providing more career guidance, perhaps?

Mostly, though, it was that phrase that had drawn the bulk of her interest and held it. There was something just slightly conspiratorial about it -- a single note of light-heartedly confided irritation nestled in among his very proper address, like a friend leaning in to whisper a secret at a party.

Charming. It was charming.

What she found when she arrived was a squire somewhat discomposed: glancing about himself repeatedly and plucking impatiently at his clothes. Maybe he'd waited long. Maybe he was just nervous.

Hvergelmir, approaching in the distant space behind his left shoulder, tucked her cloak in around its usual place over her forearms and smiled at his very human, most likely private display of unrest.

"Scholomance?" she called out, though she wasn't particularly in doubt on that score. He was a squire of Saturn, after all, and waiting where he'd said he'd be. It seemed unlikely this was a popular spot for so many Saturn knights to meet that she'd run into the wrong one.

He was, in the end, a reedy thing -- half human and half caricature, in the way one might picture Olive Oyl if she were made of flesh and bone. Cartoonishly slender. Such was the young man who now waited before her.

She offered, as her greeting, a warm and welcoming smile. He'd taken the time to pen such a lovely letter, after all. And, she thought with some amusement, he was privy to a maddening luck. Hvergelmir would hate to improve upon its track record with an unpleasant introduction.

"What you're asking for is a little bit of a tall order," she explained, her smile turning apologetic. "Most of our verified information comes second and third hand -- and the rest of our information -- which is the lion's share -- is based on inference, rather than facts. I can tell you what I believe to be true . . . but there are no guarantees."

She moved closer and a few steps past Scholomance, to watch the fountain up close and organize her thoughts.

"There is a connection that exists between you and your Wonder -- a connection you affirm whenever you call upon your power to become a knight, and one that you reify by casting magic, or speaking the vow that takes you to its soil. Each Wonder is a sort of font of magical energy, and your knighthood gives you the almost-exclusive power to draw on that energy to become something more than human capacity ought to say you should be. The power you can use to jump higher, run faster, hit harder than you otherwise could -- the magic that gives you these clothes, and protects people from recognizing a knight as a civilian no matter how distinguishing your features might be -- " Hvergelmir held up her left hand, palm outward, to show the sharply drawn, star-shaped scar there, " -- that's the constant outflow of power your Wonder is feeding you when you power up, and the conduit you tap into when you need more. What we know, as knights, is that you can ask a great deal of the place you're tied to, where power is concerned."

She frowned, moving from territory she knew well into the less familiar soil of supposition. "What we understand less is what obligations we might owe those Wonders in return. What sort of people they will accept us being, as the knights that wield their power -- or whether they have any choice in accepting it at all." She considered her own situation -- what she knew, what she didn't. "I've seen or heard of most knights reaching new levels of power in combat situations -- reflective of their immediate need. In my own case, that hasn't been true at either time." She summoned her distaff to hand, the tall arc of its antlered design occupying the space above her head. "The magical fetish I was given as the focus of my bond with my Wonder is a distaff. As a weapon, it has very little use -- but my impression was that it suggested to me something greater to understand about my knighthood, and what might be expected of me. I became a squire trying to spin thread."

Hvergelmir shrugged delicately, the shawl moving over her arms. "And this cloak was the accomplishment that won me my knighthood -- spun from my own thread, woven on my own loom, dyed in my own well. I don't know if that happened because I became the knight my Wonder required of me, or if I simply became the knight I required of me, and that was somehow worth rewarding. I'm afraid, if that's what you're asking, then my initial answer is that the will of the stars is something we don't yet fully understand."

Somewhat fortunately for Scholomance -- if the knowledge proved any use to him in whatever troubles he might work through -- what Hvergelmir cited as her initial answer was not her only answer. She was careful not to convey the impression of a greater understanding than she actually possessed -- that way lay disappointment -- but withholding information was not a practice she generally believed in.

"I'm not sure if our Wonders think in the way we might understand it as people," she hedged, "whether they have wills based on emotions, or feel emotions anything like our own, but there does exist a kind of an . . . an animus, I suppose you could say. A consciousness with a will, whether or not it's its own will. We've encountered a force that calls itself the Code -- something made of evidently pure Order energy -- and we have reason to believe a piece of that Code inhabits each of our Wonders. There's a piece at my Wonder, for example -- it looks like a glowing ball of white light, and can change shape, and it speaks to me in images, when it does. Usually it stays hidden."

She reached her hand out, letting the cascade of water slide over her fingers. The chilliness of it felt strange to her anymore -- she was used to the easy lukewarmth of her Well.

"There's some evidence of the way the animus of our Wonders interacts with us, beyond that -- though the conclusions we can draw from it aren't very complete. There's a bond some knights -- and some senshi -- have forged with their Wonders and homeworlds, something that results in outwardly glowing marks on the skin. We call it transcendence. The transfer of energy from your Wonder to you comes faster, easier -- like a door that's been opened wider -- and from what we've seen, that flow of power becomes maybe such a direct channel that it evidently protects your starseed from any Chaotic interference.

"I have my own connection to my Wonder, but . . . in my case, the will was my own, and my Wonder only provided the power to back it up. I have a sworn oath, with my life as surety if I break it -- and my Wonder holds me to that vow." She tilted her body at an angle, to show him the rainbow-glittery tattoo of her sigil on her left shoulder. "This is the mark my Wonder gave me as the seal of that oath."

These were no answers to Scholomance's question -- but Hvergelmir had no answers to Scholomance's question. She had information . . . but she was hesitant to extrapolate beyond what was immediately clear. She left that to him.

"As for my personal growth into power, I remember . . . sitting on a bench, wondering why, of everything in the universe that might possibly represent the place and the task I was charged with, I'd been given a distaff. I imagined that if my greatest job was protecting people or fighting monsters, a sword or a shield might be handy -- but of all things, it was this. So I wanted to understand how anyone could look at something as strange as that -- as absurd and un-battle-worthy as that -- and think there was only one way forward, and that we all understood everything there was to know about it. When I decided to start spinning thread, I'd come to a decision within myself to step off that path . . . to question the world around me and take responsibility for the effort I put into understanding things, not just accept the common view. The second time was very similar -- I'd set out to try to prove that magic existed in the universe outside of just what we're given to make war with. Whatever my Wonder requires of me, it doesn't require that I value convention for convention's sake."

She watched Scholomance's face for his reactions, listening to his side of the conversation for any cues beyond what he was saying. Something in his ascension to becoming a squire sat uneasily with him, evidently -- or something about his own talisman -- but what it was, he didn't say. His sentence trailed off into nothing, aside from what might have been a look of vague alarm.

"My Wonder exists as an interstellar waystation," she went on to his next question. "A refuge for weary travelers. I find it welcoming, for my own part -- but I suppose that's its particular purpose. Others I've been to seem different . . . and of course, I don't feel a connection to them." She frowned. "What troubles you so much about yours?"

Hvergelmir listened to Scholomance's answers without any sense of hurry. She had, in some ways, all the time in the world to ponder the mysteries of a Wonder's sentience with another knight (an opportunity she rarely encountered). He was not a Negaverse agent. She didn't have to push had to make an emotional connection in a short amount of time to try and assure a return visit.

"I happened on it by accident," she said, considering the way she'd all but tripped over finding her way down to the Code. "A secret passage, hidden from view, that only opened for me. At the bottom of the passageway, there was the little floating blob of Code."

One of his comments struck a chord with her, reminding her of other conversations she'd had -- mostly with Negaverse agents, and one in particular. 'I wonder if Chaos is really so inherently bad.' For all that she normally did her best not to let her own suppositions color the facts she presented for others -- here, she felt compelled to speak.

"I don't know if I can say if the force we call Chaos is good or bad, any moreso than ants crawling the Earth know whether the human overhead is good or bad -- but it is not an abstract concept we can make peace with or not. It's an active being with its own will, and we can recognize its impact on us, and decide whether or not that impact is harmful. Queen Metallia -- its avatar within the Negaverse -- asks constant energy, constant blood sacrifice. She bends the will of the people she takes into her service, so they can't think against her directly -- and in the cases I've seen, it changes your personality, too, to create a dependency of one kind of another. People believe they're fundamentally too flawed to go on as anything other than the Negaverse agents they've become. That doesn't sit well with me. Are our Wonders any better? I don't know if they all are. But I believe mine is."

She frowned. "Form you own opinions," Hvergelmir said, more gently. "Mine are based on my observations in the field. Your own experiences might turn out to be different.

"My Wonder," she went on, trying a different topic, "doesn't actually give me any benefits for my oath -- nothing except the mark on my arm. The truth is, that's all I need. People are more comfortable talking to me because my promise has the weight of real consequences behind it. It's the truest safety I can offer them."

People either understood or they didn't. To her, it had always seemed like such a simple strategy, a calculated tactic -- but many people didn't look at it with such an emotional remove. They saw only a gesture of compassion -- which it always had been, yes -- and thought of her as stupid, naive, foolish.

"Do I feel like I'm being patted on the head? I don't know -- maybe. That's not something I've ever noticed, but maybe I wasn't paying attention."

She crooked her head to the side. "We don't know much about our Wonders, but even so, whatever's going on with yours isn't hopeless. If you were descended from another knight, there should be a ghost of one of your ancestors there to help you. If not -- if you're a reincarnated knight, you can recover memories from your other life, in time. It's a place to start."

Hvergelmir giggled, a little delighted. Somber as he looked, Scholomance was so cheeky.

"Well," she said with a smile and a raised eyebrow, "it's not an entirely left-field theory, I'll grant you that. Knights did originate in some form from the kingdom of the Earth, as far as we've been told. Some sort of bond was made between the Earth's kingdom and the Moon's, something that allowed knights to take up guardianship over landmarks on senshi planets and territories -- our old ancestors and selves would've ultimately served the prince of Earth, first and foremost, rather than the princes and princesses of any of the other planets our Wonders might hail from. If Metallia truly does have some tie to the Earth's throne, as she claims -- we don't know anything of her true origins -- it's not outside the realm of possibility."

Hvergelmir was relieved, at least, not to receive another mini-lecture on her lifespan. This drew a wider smile from her. Had anyone actually ever called her oath clever before? "I think they really did just expect that I'd be dead in a few days. They've still never bothered to target me. It's given me a lot of time to get things done."

Where ancestors were concerned, she didn't have a lot of knowledge -- her experience was limited. Hvergelmir was doubtful she could provide any information Babylon hadn't already -- but it was worth commenting on, at least. "I met someone's ancestor once -- her information was a little spotty, when I tried to ask her how everything ended a thousand years ago, she couldn't remember it -- but in general she knew what she was about. I can't say how much is normal. I'm a reincarnated knight, myself -- I always assumed our lot was a little harder. At our early stages, our memories are barely useful: flashes of images, a few seconds of memory here or there without context. I have . . . a pretty good memory, and I couldn't do anything to get them to bubble up any easier."

"There are one or two agents I could ask," she acknowledged. "But getting information is a delicate business. It's important to me to make sure the people I talk to feel like the relationship's more of a one-way street, going their way: I give, they receive, and I ask nothing in return except their forbearance. The minute you start asking for anything, it chips away at that trust. And what's more . . . " She sighed, sliding her fingers contemplatively down the worked gold chain that dangled down the front of her costume and terminated in a spindle pendant near her feet. "Metallia's very dangerous ground -- with the way she influences the minds of people that serve her. I have to skirt around her as much as I can, so the people I'm talking to don't start putting their guard up."

Scholomance was right, though -- it was a large gap in her knowledge, and that galled her to no end. She hadn't managed to find a solution, frustratingly . . . but hopefully someday, something would occur to her. She didn't like not having an answer to someone's question. Maybe she could try and ask the Code. Maybe it knew.

"What I've gotten done depends on who you ask, probably. Maybe nothing -- maybe not much. What I try to do is help people understand that there's a place for them away from Chaos. I find them someone willing to do the job of converting them back, if they want it. I can't say for sure if many people have really been changed because I spent time with them, but -- if they have, it helps our cause. Every person I can convince to leave Chaos willingly has double the impact on this conflict of killing any one person.

"The case of your ancestor . . . my sample size with these things isn't that large, but it does sound unusual. You really are privy to a maddening luck, aren't you?" Her smile was apologetic. He seemed to be taking his unlucky situation relatively well in stride, all things considered. Their side could use more of that sort of level-headedness. "I'll ask around," she said. "See if anyone else has had their ancestors start speaking in tongues."

The chain trailed between her fingers -- boredly swinging the pendulum at the base back and forth. "Not affiliated with any star or planet," she said, a note of amusement on her face. "My Wonder's a small island very close to the heart of the galaxy, on its own in the middle of nowhere. Think of it like a cosmic gas station."

"A shop owner?" Hvergelmir echoed, both brows raised. She filed this knowledge neatly away in her brain. "That's pretty impressive for your age." She squinted for a moment in the dark, looking for wrinkles she might not have noticed initially. A lopsided smile flitted across her face. "I think."

There weren't, unfortunately, too many people among Order's ranks who'd actually converted from the Negaverse. "We do have some people who've left . . . but some of them never had any answers about that, and others -- conversion's not a flawless process, unfortunately. In every case we know of, the person who's converted has lost either their memories from their former time spent as a powered individual, or else they've lost their memories from their time spent as an average Joe. So some of them can't really provide us with any information that's useful, once they convert."

Hvergelmir looked away from the vulnerable white of Scholomance's throat, speckled with darker stains of color just barely visible in the low light, and downward toward her own feet. Each one bore a single pink scar, well-centered and circular. "The Negaverse can convert people to their side against their will, but they won't always do that right away -- the memories are why. If they've captured someone they think has a lot of potential information for them, they won't risk losing that if an interrogation might get them what they want to know first." There were a few nerve endings in her feet that she'd been told would never recover sensation. There were nightmares that never fully went away. But life went on.

"The Code told us the universe is out of balance," she said, vaguely, "so maybe it has a way of taking constant measurements. From the impression we were given, the deficit's pretty severe -- but if the day does come that the Code starts telling us the world's out of balance in our favor, I hope we'll be able to recognize what it looks like when whatever that mystical balance is isn't being met." It wasn't her favorite topic. The obsession that some people had with this notion of balance when the immediate reality was a situation of survival seemed, to her, the wrong time for the right priorities. Burning trees was bad for the environment in the long term, but that didn't make a fire any less necessary for someone lost in a forest in the middle of winter. It wasn't likely they'd be anywhere near tipping the balance in Order's favor any time remotely soon.

"Finding other knights is sort of catch-as-catch-can right now -- but we're trying to work on that, a little. Babylon and I are trying to set up regular meetings off-world for knights, to talk and meet each other and share what we know -- but it's taking time to arrange and coordinate. It'll be word of mouth until we have a better system."

It wasn't much, put that way. In fact, it sounded pretty pitiful. But, like so many things, it was the best they had.

"In the past, a lot of the galactic civilizations had more advanced magic and technology than we do now. Many of them had access to methods of interstellar travel -- huge sky-faring ships of all kinds. My Wonder sits, I think, on a kind of a ley line -- and it produces a kind of universal energy that ships like that could run on. I'm not sure how widespread proper teleportation was, then, but regardless, it probably wasn't possible, that far in -- my Wonder and everything beyond it are protected homeworlds, they can't be entered without permission. Only the pier at the end of my island is accessible when I'm not there."