The entire concert building was surrounded by guards when Isaac and Lenna made their way there a little over an hour before midnight. They walked arm in arm past the guards in full view. Walter was waiting at the door and gave them a nod. "Hey you two, he's still setting up."

"That's fine." Isaac replied. "We'd rather be early than late."

Walter nodded in agreement and pushed off the door. Gypsy uncoiled from her resting place beside him and waited as Walter got the door for the duo.

"Thank you." Lenna told them both.

"I hope you don't have allergies." Walter chuckled. "And don't mind chalk."

Isaac gave Walter a questioning look but the artificer didn't reply and just gestured towards the moving room down the hall. Isaac sighed in resignation and the three took the room to the top floor. "What are you doing here?" Isaac eventually asked Walter as they reached the top floor.

"This isn't something I'd miss. It's the last wish of the last Fate Weaver. This isn't a once in a lifetime thing, it's a once ever thing. A whole species of power is going to go extinct after this." Walter explained.

"What do you mean?" Lenna demanded as the doors opened and they were assaulted by the scents of iron, irises, and chalk dust.

"He's the last of his kind. No new Fate Weavers have been born, not for lack of trying apparently, so there is no one left for him to pass the art onto." Walter explained as they walked out of the moving room and into the hall that led to the open air concert hall. "We've talked about colors of mana before, he has a secret tenth option, Fate. It is something that only sorcerers can be born with and the dragons made it a point to hunt them down during the last dragon surge."

"Oh." Isaac whispered as the weight of the end of something incomprehensibly grand settled around him. "And all he wanted was for us to sustain an orphanage and to help out his grandniece?"

Walter shrugged. "That sounds like him." He commented. "You see, Fate Weavers only ever get three wishes, normally." He continued as they walked past a pair of guards who stood on either side of the last doorway into the concert hall.

As they walked through the doorway, they noticed how the entire hall had been gutted and leveled out for Cainen to work. There was an image of a wyrm drawn out in a large circle around the entire area. The dragon-snake was made entirely out of red thread and was positioned so it looked like it was trying to eat its own tail. On the outside of it there were three feet of pure purple iris petals and on the inside there were five feet of purple irises with their flowers in full bloom. Inside of that there were twenty seven red threads spiraling towards the center where one circle was clearly laid out. The center circle was six feet across so it was clearly wide enough for Isaac, Lenna, and Cainen. Below all of the surface work, there was a runic circle so complex that Isaac's mind couldn't piece it together properly with everything lying on top of it. Completely encompassing the chalk was gold dust, at least a hundred thousand gold coins worth of it, scattered just barely thick enough to hide the floor.

Cainen was sitting directly in the center of the center circle with his eyes closed in meditation as Xlen finished placing iris petals around the outside. Xlen barely spared them a glance as he still had half of the circle left to go, which, based on his speed, would take him another five to ten minutes or so. He was pulling them out of a Bottomless Bag.

"You said that normally they can only cast three wishes?" Isaac asked Walter. "What about Master Su'Sol and this crazy ritual?" The more Isaac looked around the more of a dull ache started to form behind his eyes. He felt like there were parts of it that he recognized but brought him pain and also like he was looking at something that he shouldn't.

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"Gramps was specifically allowed to cast a fourth one, but wasn't told when or where he was supposed to do it." Walter explained. "The ritual's an old one that every Fate Weaver and their guardian's taught, and it basically just absorbs the recoil from casting the spell and disperses it into every being observing it. Which, since this is a Wish, is every divine being and no small number of curious mortals. I'm actually getting paid by no less than seven noble elves to be their eyes for this."

"Be their eyes?" Isaac wondered.

"Allowed by whom?" Lenna asked a more pertinent question.

Walter nodded. "Yeah, they're all Scrying on me right now." He explained to Isaac. "Gramps said it was alright because the more people watching, the less pain he'll be in afterwards." He felt the need to clarify before anyone thought that he was selling tickets to a private show. "I don't know by who." He told Lenna. "I just know what he told me."

Isaac's eye twitched as he stared at the wyrm, irises, and red thread in general. "What's giving me a migraine?" He wondered around.

"Lord Darkness," Walter began. "might we speak privately?" He asked and tapped his own temple.

Isaac nodded as he turned to look at him. "Sure." He agreed.

Walter reached out with his hand and tapped Isaac's temple and then looked at Lenna questioningly. Lenna nodded her assent and he did the same to her. 'Testing, testing, one, two, three.' The duo heard in their heads.

Isaac's eye twitched at the voice in his mind that was distinctly not his own. 'This is weird.' Isaac thought and it was transmitted into Lenna and Walter's minds.

'You get used to it.' Lenna replied and Isaac started blinking to try and get his mind to settle into the new strange mental landscape he found himself in.

'Alright, so, what's giving you a headache is the references to things from our old world.' Walter explained. 'Stuff like the Red Strand of Fate and the World Serpent are related to fate. Irises are related to divine intervention, and depending on how observant ya are, and how long you've been staring at it, there's a lot of numerical symbolism and connections. Enough to give most people a headache if they think too hard about it even without your specific memory related issues.'

'Numerical connections like what?' Isaac wondered.

Walter took an actual deep breath as he prepared for a massive information dump directly into Isaac and Lenna's brains. 'The outside edge of iris petals is three feet thick, starting us off with a base three number, the number that symbolizes a complete cycle. There is one wyrm inside of it that is eternally eating itself which references a cycle that, although complete, will never end. The five feet of irises inside of it reference the five separate materials used in the ritual; chalk, gold, irises, red thread, and people. The twenty seven red strands represent the nine base colors of mana, multiplied by the number of people involved in the ritual. There are ten rings of chalk, you might not be able to see them all but they're there, which tells you that this is a tenth level spell. There is a hundred thousand gold coins worth of gold dust used as filler that will be used to ensure an even spread of power across the ritual which is the spell level to the power of the number of components. There are five components to the spell because five is the number that means change and transformation but also exponential growth.' Walter finished. Isaac and Lenna were doing their best to keep from losing their balance as their brains worked overtime to keep up with Walter's relentless deluge of information at a speed that neither of them were prepared for. Walter's internal monologue was moving at a minimum of three times the rate that the man usually spoke. That simple fact made it known that Walter actually slowed his speech down to a speed that he considered 'normal' in standard conversation.

"Hold on." Isaac groaned aloud. "Was that it?"

"Yeah." Walter replied aloud. "Want me to cut the connection?"

Lenna nodded. "Yes, please." She said with a slight but noticeable strain in her voice.

"You think way too fast." Isaac told him.

"I've been informed, yeah." Walter agreed. "But anyway, a bit of that crosses over to stuff from that place." He said as he cut the mental connection.

"How'd you cast a telepathy spell like that anyway?" Isaac wondered. "There wasn't an incantation but I've seen you use an incantation for telepathy before."

"Oh, that's because it's a first level telepathy spell that only has a range of around ten feet." Walter explained. "It's great for private conversations but that's it so very few people actually bother learning it."

"I take it you found a reason to at some point?" Lenna asked, already having an idea of his answer.

Walter nodded. "Yeah, Philia and I used to have private conversations right in front of the old man all the time." He agreed. "She got in so much trouble every time she laughed when he was saying something serious." He added with a shit eating grin.

"Speaking of Lord Ashborne," Lenna began. "is he resting?"

Walter nodded. "He isn't going to miss this though. He'll be here right before it starts. I'm also recording it for Philia." He said and gestured towards a strange crystalline and silver contraption that was set up in a corner of the room. It had lenses and mirrors directed into a dodecahedron, from just as many sides, that were all held in the air by tiny struts and hanging cables of silver. The entire thing looked far too fragile to touch without it breaking.

The group continued to stand on the sideline until Xlen was done and the old warrior joined them. "I hope you are ready." Xlen told the duo. "He has been looking at possible futures for nearly eight hours straight. I'm pretty sure he's found an acceptable outcome but I think he is still looking for a 'perfect' one."

"Well, I hope he finds it." Isaac replied. "For our sake."

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