Page 250 of The Gods Order

“This wasn’t the weapons room back in your day?” I ask.

“My day. You make it sound like I’m so old.”

I blink at him.

He’s as old as the fucking realm.

“So,” he says with that infuriating, I know what’s coming smirk. “What do you have planned?”

I step farther inside, trailing my fingertips across the nearest rack.

“My swords, the ones my father made me, which are embedded with power. I’ve embedded my own power and permissions into Thayla’s daggers. They can’t kill my brothers, me, or her friends. I need to do that but to all of these.”

He lets out a low whistle as he picks up a blade.

“Hundreds of weapons embedded with the power of Death. That’s quite the risk.”

“I’m aware,” I say. “But it’s a risk we have to take. Some of those Defenders have been fortunate enough to never cross the barrier to the Abandon. They’ve never seen a Dark God or Oblirian. They need every advantage we can give them.”

He studies me for too long a moment.

I sneer. He laughs.

“Okay, okay,” he says, holding his hands up. “What do you really need from me, Creed? You already know how to embed your power and permission.”

I pick up a sword, weighing it in my hand. My thumb runs along the flat of the blade.

“Yeah, but I don’t know every Defender or god standing with us and wielding these. I don’t know all their souls.”

“Why would you need to?” he asks.

I gesture around the room.

“If I’m embedding my essence and power in these weapons, I need to know who not to kill. I don’t know how to layer my permissions so they don’t accidentally kill themselves or our own people.”

“You don’t.” He shakes his head and I frown. “You’re trying to ask essence and power to recognize faces and names. That’s not how this works.”

I lay down the sword I was twirling and cross my arms.

“Explain.”

He chuckles low, picking up a spear and spinning it around like he’s getting used to the feeling of it.

“When you embedded permissions into Thayla’s daggers, you weren’t truly teaching the weapons who Thayla is. You were teaching your essence what to allow. Your essence and power already knew hers. Trying to force yourself to learn hundreds of new gods and their being will never work.”

“Then what am I supposed to tell my power when I embed it?”

He looks toward another rack of weapons. All the while he’s still handling that spear.

It’s kind of impressive.

“You tell it what to seek and what to reject,” he says. “Essence recognizes essence. Power recognizes power. Corruption can’t hide from either. So you don’t ask your power and essence to recognize allies. You tell it to recognize corrupt essence and power.”

My arms slowly untangle and hang at my sides as I stare at him.

That’s…

Brilliant.