What was true power?To influence the world? To live comfortably and lavishly? In accordance with one’s ideals?Or was it to protect the life one had built from destruction?It was a broad question, the sort argued over by meandering philosophers and fools in taverns.But while such people would argue about whether kings, emperors or Gods held true power, Orodan had gone ahead and done something which none of them ever had.He had permanently altered reality and by extension the tapestry of fate and timeline itself. If that wasn’t true power, then what was?Even now as the council members, many of the faces unfamiliar to him, and many familiar but wearing different colors. Furthermore, many of the banners and sigils were different too.A quick check within his soul had Orodan sighing in relief as Fenton’s device and Adeltaj’s memory bank within it remained intact. Which was quite strange, as the timeline had been altered yet a trace of the old man still remained? It had him immediately considering whether the alteration of reality didn’t affect him and anything within his soul because he was the caster, or because he was too high in power to be erased and moved about in the timeline.Still, his postulations did little to distract him from the glaring absence of his mentor Adeltaj Simarji.A problem of his own making that he was dead set on fixing.The chamber of the council, this city, this nation, everything around him felt similar yet radically different. Even Zaessythra seemed more than a little alarmed at the changes he had wrought.Matter of fact, he needed to verify the extent to which his unintended erasure of Ilyatana had affected the timeline and reality.“Mister Wainwright? We have yet to finalize a date for the ceremony. A new addition to the ranks of the Republic is quite the auspicious occasion,” the High-Burgher reminded. “Does sometime in the coming two weeks sound preferable?” (...)