Endraya and Callas, and the choice
Madrid, about 8 PM on 12/31
Callas walks into the lab, dressed in armor and with her hair braided. Her armor shows signs of recent repair--new rings in several places in the shoulders and sides, and traces of blood near the new work. She moves a little stiffly, the way those newly healed from injuries do, the nerves taking longer than muscle and skin to repair. Endraya bends over a number of dishes full of various substances, magic streaming from her fingers, probing the various dishes. Clerics of varying ages and dispositions work around her, preparing dishes, scribbling down results in notebooks.
Endraya looks up and catches sight of Callas, and withdraws from what she's doing. She claps her hands together. "Rest break, everyone! Come back in half an hour. Make sure you all eat and drink." The clerics blink and leave their tasks, stretching arms and fingers that have gone numb with concentration. They file out one by one as they put away what they were working on, walking out with sidelong glances at Callas, who stands silently, watching them leave.
After the last one goes, Endraya closes the door behind him. Without a word, she gathers Callas into her arms and hugs her hard, and then holds her at arm's length, looking at her with calm blue eyes. "How are you holding up, love? You look like you've been through the wars."
Callas laughs without mirth. "Been through? Try still going through. I'm hanging in there for the moment, at least. Thank all the gods for Gavaio and Galvin and the rest. If I survive, it will be all their fault."
"Don't underestimate yourself, love. Truly."
Callas sighs. "Have you heard?"
"Morgan's declared war on us, yes."
"Andorra's fallen. We won't lose Ireland, but they're sweeping south, and they're probably going to be here tomorrow afternoon or evening. You need to stand ready to pack everything up and move at a moment's notice."
"I know. I have the most essential equipment ready to go; all we'd need to do is pack up the samples and media and run. We're working until the last possible moment, probably through the night tonight, and unless something changes we'll be on our way tomorrow morning."
"How is it going, anyway?"
A tired look crosses Endraya's face; for a moment she looks every day of her nearly sixty years. "Slowly. Too slowly. There are too many factors to control for, and the designer of this thing is fiendishly clever. It resists my efforts to change it. It doesn't help that the damned stuff is so contagious; we have to take extraordinary precautions with it."
"Is there anything I can do to help? More resources?"
"The only thing I can think of is getting whoever designed this thing to help. That would help enormously, maybe even get us a cure for all the races in time."
Callas blinks. "All the races...are you having to design a cure for every single race?"
"Yes, that's part of what makes this thing so damned annoying. It effects every race differently."
"Shit."
Endraya sighs heavily and sits down. "We don't have the time for this. If you can find the designer and get them to cooperate, we might be able to get a cure for three or four major groups before the plague starts moving through Europe like wildfire. But if you can't...it becomes a matter of who you want to save."
"Our options?"
"Elves, dwarves, humans, at this point. We've made the most progress with those. But any one of them is going to take a month to six weeks to put together a cure for, if we concentrate all our efforts on it. Possibly longer. And we're out of time, Callas. From what I've been able to glean, the only thing holding it back currently is the cold. As soon as the weather warms up, it'll be an epidemic. After that..." She shrugs. "Four, maybe six months until it reaches its peak. Two years, and it'll burn itself out--but long before then, the worst of the damage will be done.
"So, daughter of my heart, you have a decision to make. Which do we work on first?"
Callas' eyes are dark and Endraya realizes that she is holding onto her temper by only the thinnest of threads. She's known this girl--young woman--for ten years, and she knows the signs that her anger is only under the barest control. That famous temper that nobody ever became Headmaster or mistress without, the anger that was both their strength and their greatest weakness.
Callas closes her eyes and wraps her arms around herself, taking deep breaths. When she opens her eyes again, Callas' face is calmer, by a little. "I'd ask why it's my decision, but I know the answer to that." Her hand closes around an empty glass flask and she stares at it. She slams it down on the table, hard enough to shatter it.
"GodsDAMNit. How do I make this decision, Endraya? We save one race, the others perish. And I have *friends* of all the candidate races. How am I going to explain why I chose to save one over the other? How am I going to say that there wasn't enough time to save them all?" She cradles her bleeding hand close to her chest and begins to pace around the lab. "These people have so much blood on their hands, and all for the love of power." She spits that last word out with contempt. "They would wipe the world clean of all of us inconvenient lower life forms and
set themselves up as rulers of a wasteland. They wish to be gods, and in the end they would indeed be gods, but over what? Nothing. Not even rats. How hollow a victory is that, Endraya? How could anyone be so insane as to think that power over a land that all of the magic has been drained from would be any power at all?
"And Morrigan...Morrigan can't see beyond her own nose. She's *helping* them because she thinks she'll be the last god left. But what happens when they all become gods? They kill *her*, take her power. And then each of them kills the others, until there is one god left and he or she is entirely insane. And what kind of world will that be, without magic, presided over by a vicious god with no thought for anything but keeping power over what little is left? A god who is prayed to endlessly but never answers?"
"A world very different than the one we know, surely." Endraya is watching her pace, wanting to hold and comfort the girl who was nearly her daughter, but knowing that was the last thing she should do at this moment.
A thought lights Callas' eyes. "Tell me...is there anything that's immune to the plague in its current form?"
"The only thing we've been able to find is that it doesn't affect reptiles of any sort."
Callas' mouth quirks in a half-smile. "Ah. I think I know who it is. We may be able to convince her, given the right bait. Tell me, could you modify it so that it affects reptiles?"
"Yes, but it would take away time from looking for any cures. And I will *not* do it unless it's absolutely necessary. We shouldn't be making this thing any more deadly than it already is."
"Don't worry, I don't think I'm going to have to ask you to do that. But if we have the ability...if she can't be talked around, we may have to threaten her. We'll see." Callas seems to suddenly wake a little bit. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm bleeding on your floor." She holds her hand over a dustbin and whispers three syllables. The cuts on her hand close, and the shards of glass that were stuck in her wounds fall with plinking sounds to the bottom of the container.
"I'll take care of the rest. Just...I need your decision, Callas." She pauses. "Headmistress."
"Oh, little mother...don't remind me." She sighs. Closes her eyes. "Humans first. We're the most numerous, and a cure for humans will save more lives than any other course. And the most magic, as well. Dwarves next, if you have time--we'll never convince them to leave Europe, they're too stubborn. The elves--I think we can convince at least some of the elves to leave for elsewhere. Maybe enough to save the race--I think some of them are in the process of leaving, but the more we can get off the continent, the better. I think we can also get the halflings to relocate. The centaurs may be convinced to send at least a breeding population elsewhere, as well. The gnomes, and the rest...well, let's hope we can get that damned dragon to give us some answers." Her face might be carved in marble as she speaks, the angles and lines of her face still and her voice steady.
Endraya nods. "I'm sorry I had to ask you to make this decision."
"I know. But...this is what I do now, isn't it? My decisions echo in the world. And here I thought I was going to get to be a simple cleric who settled down somewhere and spent her days birthing foals and treating colic."
Endraya smiles. "You always knew that wasn't going to be your destiny, dear. Not from the very beginning."
Callas nods and wraps her arms around herself again, resting her chin on her shoulder. "This chose me. I didn't ask for it, but now I have to do my best to be equal to the task."
"You've got places to go, dear. Go find Gavaio and the rest before that damned drow takes apart anything *else*. He was in here before and I very nearly had to throw him bodily out the door."
Callas laughs. "I can't tell Aiden what to do, but I'll try to prevent him from doing any damage."
"Shoo, shoo. And tell that rascal Galvin to make sure you eat, girl. You're getting thin as a rail. You'll be no good to the rest of us if you starve yourself to death accidentally."
Callas hugs Endraya. "That's more like the heart-mother I know, always after me to eat. I'll tell Galvin. And...thank you."
Endraya rests a hand on Callas' shoulder. "You're welcome, dearest. You take care of yourself out there. More people love you than you know, and we all hold our breaths when you're gone."
"I'll do my best." She kisses Endraya on the cheek and is gone, closing the door behind her.
Endraya sits in silence for a few minutes. Then, methodically, she begins to take out certain dishes with various media and other fluids in them.
Every dish is marked, among other things, with the word "Human".
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