“Master!” Yllis of the Ophalari declared, her voice ringing with the clarity of crystal, “I have found my true calling! Command me, and I shall spill the blood of a thousand elves for your glory!” Kelm blinked. He was still holding the rolled-up piece of trash. The black cat, Vorgath, wound around his ankles, purring with the rumble of a distant avalanche. He glanced from the glowing mud hut to the elf, then to the interface floating silently in his vision. [Charisma: 100/100] [Influence: 7/100] Still maxed out. Still pointless. This wasn't 'glory', it was an over-the-top audition. “Look, Green Bean,” Kelm sighed, letting the trash fall. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, really. But I’m not casting for a ‘thousand elves’ kinda gig. More like, ‘can you not stand there looking like you’re about to sacrifice a goat’ kinda gig.” He rubbed at his temples. The elven woman was still frozen in her dramatic pose, crescent blades glinting in the mud hut’s unholy glow. Her emerald eyes, wide and unnervingly sincere, tracked his every weary movement. “My sovereign dismisses my oath?” Yllis asked, a tremor in her voice, but not of fear. It was a tremor of unbearable longing. Her blades dropped slightly, presenting her own throat. “Then claim my life, Lord of the Wastes! Let my blood be the first libation upon your sacred earth! End me, and I shall serve you in the next realm with even greater fervor!” Kelm stared at her. Was this some bizarre fantasy realm equivalent of a reality show contestant throwing a tantrum? Offering her throat? The drama was off the charts. He needed her to *go away*. To make her so spectacularly useless that the producers would have no choice but to boot her. His gaze scanned the immediate vicinity, landing on a pile of refuse he had neglected to kick out of the way earlier. A rusty, bent spade, probably from some long-dead prospector, lay half-buried in the dust. It was the most gloriously un-divine object he could imagine. “Fine,” Kelm said, pointing a finger at the scooped blade. “You want to serve? Go dig a moat. Around the hut. A big one. Make it deep. So deep you can’t even see the bottom.” He hoped the sheer absurdity would make her storm off in a huff. Yllis’s eyes snapped to the discarded scoop. A gasp escaped her lips. Her gaze moved back to Kelm, then to the implement again. Her chest heaved. “A sacred instrument?” she breathed, reverence dripping from every syllable. “A tool for the shaping of your holy grounds?” She moved then, not with the assassin’s blur, but with the measured, deliberate grace of a priestess approaching an altar. She knelt, her fingers brushing the rust-pocked metal as if it were spun starlight. As her fingers closed around the handle, a soft, ethereal radiance flared from the steel, pulsing in time with the mud hut’s steady thrum. Kelm blinked, rubbing his eyes. Had he imagined that? The rusted metal looked… brighter. Like it had just been polished by a thousand tiny, invisible elves. Yllis, however, was clearly not imagining it. “By the Whispering Stars!” she breathed, her voice choked with awe. “The Sovereign’s divine essence… it imbues the very tools of creation!” She sprang to her feet, the radiant tool clutched in both hands, her pupils alight with a fervor that would have made a zealot blush. She marched to a spot a few paces from the hut, slammed the edge into the sun-baked earth, and *pushed*. The ground, which had been as hard as ceramite, parted like wet clay. A shimmering, emerald channel appeared instantly, perfectly straight, perfectly deep. Yllis moved along, dragging the tool, and the ditch widened, deepened, and then, impossibly, began to fill. It wasn't just water. It was a viscous, radiant liquid, pulsing with the same soft emerald hue that emanated from the scoop and the hut. It smelled faintly of ozone and fresh rain, and as it filled the canal, the air around it thrummed with quiet energy. Kelm gaped. He watched as a small, withered desert flower, caught in the channel’s path, was submerged by the gleaming liquid. In an instant, it unfurled, blooming into a vibrant, impossibly blue blossom. Then, the cut reached the desiccated corpse of a desert skitter-rat. As the verdant liquid touched it, the rat’s fur regained its sheen, its eyes popped open, and it scuttled away with a squeak, seemingly cured of its prior state of death. [Influence: 15/100] “Are you kidding me?” Kelm muttered, running a hand through his hair. “It’s a freaking *healing moat*? What even is this place?” He began to pace around the hut, scanning the horizon, then the sky, then the luminous mud walls. He was looking for hidden cameras, for wires, for the boom mic operator he was convinced was hiding in a bush somewhere. This was too much. This was *definitely* a prank. A very elaborate, very expensive prank. Yllis, meanwhile, continued her work, the shining trowel carving through the earth as if it were butter. She paused to watch Kelm’s frantic pacing, her jaw slack with fresh adoration. “The Architect performs the Sacred Warding Ritual of the Outer Perimeter!” she gasped, her voice faint. “He seals the boundaries against all encroaching darkness! His movements are a prayer, his gaze a blessing!” She redoubled her efforts, digging with renewed purpose, the moat expanding rapidly around the hut, its brilliant water radiating outwards, pushing back the oppressive heat and dust of the Wastes with a crisp, cooling presence. The revitalized skitter-rat even returned to drink from the ditch, its tiny whiskers twitching in apparent bliss. It didn't take long for the light to draw attention. First, a flicker on the horizon – a glint of metal, then a ragged figure. Then another. And another. Mutated humans, the outcasts of the Xoltar, drawn by the impossible glow in the cursed lands. They were a sorry sight: figures gaunt and scarred by radiation, limbs twisted, eyes milky white. They moved with a halting gait, shuffling towards the light like moths to a flame. As they neared the moat, a ripple of translucent green light washed over them. Their mutations seemed to recede, skin smoothing, eyes clearing, their stooped shoulders straightening. They stopped at the edge of the moat, their faces etched with disbelief and burgeoning hope. One, a woman with a third arm sprouting uselessly from her back, watched as the aberrant limb withered and fell away, leaving only healthy skin. Tears streamed down her face, catching the light. She dropped to her knees, bowing her head towards the mud hut, murmuring thanks to something unseen. Then another. Then another. Soon, dozens of figures knelt around the ditch, a silent, desperate congregation forming around the 'Sanctuary of Mud'. [Influence: 30/100] [Influence: 45/100] [Influence: 60/100] Kelm watched the numbers tick up, his face a mask of utter despair. “No, no, no,” he mumbled. “This is the opposite of what I want! You’re supposed to hate me! I’m supposed to be boring! Why won’t you fire me?!” He wanted to shout at them, to tell them he was just a guy who wanted a nap, not a deity. But his cynical brain immediately supplied the counter-argument: *That’s exactly what a reality show contestant who doesn’t want to be there would say. Instant audience sympathy.* He slumped against the mud hut, defeated. Yllis, ever vigilant, noticed a faint, shimmering distortion in the air, a hum of static that only a trained elven spy could perceive. It was a clandestine magical transmission, faint and targeted, meant for *her*. Her training, buried beneath layers of newfound devotion, instinctively kicked in. Her hand darted to her ear, tracing an unseen sigil that only she knew, activating a tiny, hidden receiver. The voice was cold, sharp, and laced with poorly suppressed fury. It was Commander Ryloth, her handler, the one who had sent her to the Wastes. The words that followed pierced through Yllis’s ecstatic haze like blades of ice. “Yllis, you insubordinate fool! Our scryers detected a massive mana surge from your location! You were sent to neutralize the human anomaly, not to join his pathetic cult! This is your final chance. If the target is not eliminated within twenty-four cycles, the Ophalari High Council will initiate the Core Purge. All human life will be erased.” The Core Purge. Her skin iced over. A doomsday protocol, a rumor murmured behind crystal walls, the ultimate eradication of the human blight from the face of Ophal. And she, Yllis, the loyal servant of the Mud-Weaver, was the only one who could stop it. By killing her Master.

A Trowel of Purest Light