Orenda stared out at the crowd that had gathered in the temple. She didn’t know what to say to them. She didn’t know how to react to the situation. But she stood when Krothy beckoned to her, and as she rose the room filled with the sound of their cheers.

It was real now. This was her reality. The sea of faces stared up at her with an emotion that she knew they had all but forgotten, the emotion that had carried her through her childhood, had propelled her to the exact place where she now stood.

She saw the hope in their eyes, and she raised her staff.

The sound of the second cheer nearly knocked her off her feet, but she stood firm, and let that hope wash over her, absorbed it- and realized that she had chosen this. Orenda was not a symbol, not just a beacon of hope- she was a person who had made the decision to walk this path, who had decided on heroism over hiding, who would not run or stick to shadows because she could not, because she was not a princess or a pirate or a pauper or even simply a mage. She also was not a special chosen one gifted this power by a god. Orenda had traveled the streets when she was a child, had broken into an academy not only on the orders of the Order, but in the pursuit of knowledge, had turned away marriage into the nobility and the safety of such a position in favor of tracking down a temple and artifact that had been lost to time. Orenda could not hide because she was now, and perhaps had always been- a fire that burned brightly in the darkness.

“Everyone!” Orenda spoke to the crowd, “My name is Orenda Nochdifache-Firefist! I stand before you with the Sacred Staff, which I pulled from the Sacred Flame! I have bested demons and Urillians! I will no longer allow this empress to frighten us with stories of boogiemen and lies! I am not here to pretend that I am special! I am not here to give you false hope! I am here to beg for your help! The empress is losing this colony! The army of Huriyat AlIinsan is marching from one end, and the humans have already rebelled and taken the capital on the other! We fight together! Join us! Follow me, and we shall defeat the empress together! I stand before you with a promise! This land calls to us, it flows through our blood, the magic here enriches us though it kills them! We will not be crushed!”

She paused, and allowed the cheers to rush over her once again. She had never been before a crowd before, but she felt their energy, felt it moving through and around her like magic, and she realized that she had spent so much of her life among the enemy, being weighed down by the crowds around her that she did not realize how easily they could lift one up. Even when she had first arrived here, she had been an outsider- but no longer. There were more humans in the crowd than she had expected, and all of them were cheering for her.

“One spark can burn down a forest!” Orenda continued, “And the Urillians have become overgrown! Already they are in fear of us! Already they are falling! And you are strong! You have outlasted their barricades- they tried to starve you but you would not fall! They tried to break you but you would not shatter! Because we, all of us standing here today, are survivors, are fighters! We will not respond to threats! I ask those of you here today, those who have skills I can not hope to comprehend, like my dear friend Mr Hillheart, to help us! Equip us with your amazing technology, your armor, your weaponry- things that the Urillians have never seen and can not hope to fight! We will defeat the chaos that threatens us from all sides with the order of your genius! We walk the path of order!”

Another cheer came from the crowd, and Orenda began to think that this feeling was addictive. She did not know that both her parents had felt the same way- that Sokomaur had given many similar speeches, that Garon had the ability to raise the devout to sounds of worship that shook walls. She only knew that the energy was amazing, almost a high, and that she reveled in it, that it made her feel invincible.

“With your support we can do anything!” She said, though it was possible that without the crowd and their energy she would not believe this, “You have moved mountains! I have reached into the energy of the planet’s heart, and it has shown me that we are all connected! We are Xren! And I swear to you, today, that I will end the reign of the empress Xandra, not only here, but where she sits at the capital!”

She did not expect that the crowd would begin to chant, because this was all new territory to her. She didn’t know what a mob mentality was. She only knew how good it felt, how amazing it was, after a lifetime of being ignored or judged or shunned to hear them, almost as if they were all cells of one large organism, speaking in a single voice, impossibly loud and incomprehensibly supportive:

“Or-en-da! The Reign Ender!”

They said this, over and over, as Orenda held the staff in the air and shook it. Normally, she knew she would grow tired, but here, in this moment, she had the energy of hundreds of people, she watched the magic flowing through them like a wave, and she felt invincible.

Orenda’s invincibility lasted exactly as long as her time in front of the crowd. As she took her seat at the table between Falsie and Krothy the full force of what she had said hit her and she wondered why it was so easy for her to do that sort of thing. She remembered standing in front of all the gathered teachers, soldiers, and Quiroris as a child, proclaiming with full authority that she was a princess, that she was the child of a high priestess, that she could destroy them. She had just done that again, but with a force much more frightening than a school headmaster. She had just told an entire crowd that she was going to kill the Emerald Knight and dethrone the empress.

She looked out over them, at their celebration, and it was very clear that they believed her, whether it was true or not. But it had to be true this time. She could not keep lying to people. She had set herself up, and now it had to be done.

There was a very real possibility that she could die.

The Emerald Knight had killed her father.

He had killed her grandparents.

He had killed three gods, and nearly wiped two civilizations and their people off the face of Xren.

She had a staff that couldn’t cast. She had the promise of an object she had been twice warned not to listen to.

“They love you, Rendy!” Anilla leaned forward over the table to tell her this, so she could see her over Falsie. “You made them so happy! Look! When we first came here, they looked as if they had given up, as if they had lost all hope. But now… now they look like they have something worth fighting for. Even if we don’t win against the Emerald Knight, they know you got the staff! They know Thesis is on our side! That means everything is going to be ok!”

“Aye,” Falsie smiled at her, “That’s…” his voice dropped and he leaned in conspiratorially, “That’s the secret. That’s what I wanted to tell you. It isn’t you, it’s the idea of you. That’s what Gary doesn’t understand, but it matters so much. It doesn’t matter what happens now. We don’t have to go after the Knight. If they don’t hear from you again, they’ll assume you died. You’ll become a martyr. From this point forward, little lady, you’re a legend. Gary never meant to become ‘The dread pirate Nochdifache’, but that mask, that iconography, is hard to ignore. All the Order really needed was a hand holding that staff. It doesn’t matter who it is. But it had to be one of us, a dwarf, a fire elf, a human- it couldn’t be a earth elf, but anyone else. It isn’t that you have to be the chosen one. There just has to be a chosen one. Your work is done here. And it’s done more than you can ever know.”

“Thank you,” Orenda said, because it was exactly what she needed to hear. “Lord Hillheart,” She enunciated as if a teacher were watching, “Would you do me the honor of escorting me to the floor for a dance?”

“Do you know any traditional dances of any of the fire folk?” Falsie asked as he took her hand and led her toward the dance floor. “It’s not the spinning in circles those Urillians do.”

“No, but I’m a fast learner,” Orenda smiled.

“Good,” Falsie told her, “Follow my lead. You gotta shake it!”