I already have aggression to work out—honestly that's a pretty permanent state for me, being the incarnation of Wrath—so I take the stick without a word and get to whacking.

  In between the sound of the stick striking the cushions, Zan tells me, "The Quiet was the catalyst for a revolution. The priests had been overreaching, and you rebelling against them in such a visible way brought a lot of attention to it. People thought the explosive magic you unleashed was a sign the gods thought the priests were corrupt. The priests tried to spin it as that they clearly needed more control."

  I hit the blanket with a little more force.

  Unsurprising, that everyone would still try to use me for their own ends.

  "To make a long story short, there was an extremely messy revolution. People seized the priests' spell knowledge—" Basic spells had been common knowledge, but not complicated specialized ones. "—but without the priests' training, people were accidentally causing all kinds of devastation, so there was yet another backlash.

  "All spell knowledge is now tightly controlled. The temple became part of the government and effectively runs the military, so they have a monopoly on state violence. There was a period of unification, but the priesthood has been working to take over from the inside by installing their own candidate that they control as emperor. There are different factions among the priesthood, of course, with their own candidates. The frontrunner is a consul named Hakon with an unfortunate amount of charisma who has become known for gathering sages under his aegis."

  Zan was definitely right to give me a safe outlet for this conversation.

  The priests never would have.

  "And the sages?" I ask tightly.

  Zan is silent a moment.

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  I hit the cushion really, really hard.

  "Controlled even more than you were," he finally says. Before I can ask how that's possible, Zan says, "They're barely trained."

  I whip to stare at him. "What?"

  "The priests have developed spells that allow them to use a sage's power without the sage actually directing it. So the priests drain the sages to keep them safe, and provide them luxuries to keep them content where they are."

  Like defanged pets.

  My next strike has some magenta in it and whacks the blanket clear into the air.

  Zan moves quickly to catch it.

  "And once the sages have been part of the priesthood long enough to draw their power out, the only place they could live is here, because the Quiet suppressed their power," Zan concludes quietly. "But..."

  "But they're comfortable," I say, and abruptly I'm tired.

  It's not their fault. They've been deliberately indoctrinated. Without any education, without knowledge, with no options... of course they can't risk leaving. The priests made sure of it.

  I beat some more blankets.

  "Have I found your calling?" Zan asks with a hint of amusement. "You could offer this as a service. No blankets will ever be dusty around you again."

  "Oh no, I'd do this for free. Imagine what a symbiotic relationship I could have had with temple communities."

  Imagine if the priests had ever been interested in fostering a symbiotic relationship between people and sages.

  They were, once, and some priests still strove for that, even within the machinery of the priesthood bureaucracy.

  But that reality was long gone before even my time.

  "The priesthood—this consul—is going to come for me," I say.

  Zan comes to stand next to me. "Almost certainly. The priesthood's official line was that you're dead, punished by the gods for apostasy, and that you "cursed" this region. Your continued existence alone threatens a counternarrative."

  Even if I don't do anything.

  Even if I just want to live quietly away from it all.

  Even though I didn't kill any priests, I'm still going to be punished for it.

  They can't allow a power to exist that they can't control.

  And no matter what else I am, even if I am more—a person, and not just a weapon—I will always, always be a power.

  "That's why you were mad about me revealing myself," I realize.

  Zan sighs, gently pulling the blanket beater from my death grip. "Partly. I'm also mad at myself for apparently learning nothing in five hundred years so you had to put yourself at risk again. But I'll stay nearby to defend you, as a sage once did for me."