Трой Деннинг - Waterdeep

At last, when all the Faithful had been gathered from the Fugue Plain, the gods returned to their homes with their charges. Midnight and her mount went to the Plane of Nirvana, that place of ultimate law and regimented order, where there were always equal parts of light and dark, heat and cold, fire and water, and air and earth.

As they approached Nirvana, Midnight’s faithful saw an infinite space filled with circular subplanes hanging in the air. The subplanes were arranged in every direction, locked to each other at the edges like the gears of a clock. Each planar level rotated slowly, and its revolution was transferred to adjacent levels through its gears, so that the entire plane spun in unison. Midnight’s mount turned in the direction of the largest subplane, carrying his mistress and her faithful toward their new home: a perfectly symmetrical castle of tangible magic.

In another castle, very different from Midnight’s new home in Nirvana, Lord Cyric sat in silence, brooding. His defeated denizen army swarmed about him, and the cries of the damned in the wall around his city drifted to his ears. The new God of Strife and Death liked his new home, though he found his master, Lord Ao, troublesome. Perhaps given time, Cyric mused, I will find a way to revolt against the overlord of the gods.

As Ao watched Midnight and the other gods return home with their faithful, he felt a deep sense of relief. At last, his gods might start fulfilling the tasks for which they had been created.

The overlord was sitting cross-legged and alone, surrounded by a void so vast that not even his gods could comprehend it. Of all the states of being he could assume, this one was his favorite, for he was at once in time and disconnected from it, at once the center of the universe and separate from it.

Ao turned his thoughts to Toril, the young world that had consumed so much of his attention lately. Surrounded by a hundred planes of existence and populated by a variety of fabulous beings both sinister and benevolent, it was one of his favorite creations—and one that he had come close to losing, thanks to the inattentiveness of its gods.

But in two of its inhabitants—Midnight and Cyric—Ao had found the fabric of the Balance, and he had called upon them to right the world. Fortunately, they had answered his call and bound the fulcrum back together, but it had been a dangerous time for Toril. Never again would he allow his gods to threaten the Balance so severely.

Ao closed his eyes and blanked his mind. Soon, he fell within himself and entered the place before time, the time at the edge of the universe, where millions and millions of assignments like his began and ended.

A luminous presence greeted him, enveloping his energies within its own. It was both a warm and a cold entity, forgiving and harsh. “And how does your cosmos fare, Ao?” The voice was at once both gentle and admonishing.

“They have restored the Balance, Master. The Realms are once again secure.”

Troy Denning is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Waterdeep, Star Wars: Star by Star , and Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost , and more than twenty other novels, including Pages of Pain, Dark Sun: The Prism Pentad series, and Dragonwall . He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, Andria.

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