THE CONTROL OF CONTROL

The Nexus is far too powerful to control, but the Continuum just may be able to seal it. The Iron Assembly has spent generations deciding what Caldra does with its greatest discoveries. Luminance built their cities, powered their machinery, and established the guilds as the unquestioned authorities of Mechanica. The Ashfall Breach presented them with something different: a source of power they could neither explain nor contain.

Varris Kane's answer to this was unacceptable to nearly all of them. The Continuum would not harness the power of the Nexus or study it further. It would seal the Ashfall rift, and in fact all rifts, entirely cutting Mechanica off from whatever lies beyond them. To Varris, this is the only responsible conclusion. But to the guilds, it amounts to surrendering the most consequential discovery in their history before they even know what they have found.

The disagreement has exposed divisions that already waited beneath the Assembly's surface. Ashfall district guildmaster Grenda Marrow wants the opportunity to recover from the disaster that damaged its reputation and prove that the Breach can still be made useful. The Emberlight guild sees possibilities in the anomaly that Varris once might have pursued himself. Baldrec Hoss of Coreward questions whether any individual, especially one who no doesn't even hold a guild seat on the Assembly, should have the authority to dictate the fate of such potential. Fennick Ess and the rest of the Ironvein guild has remained without a voice on the subject, though nothing moves through Caldra without passing through its hands.

Varris is still consulted as a senior advisor to the Assembly, and his expertise makes him difficult to ignore. But he no longer speaks for Emberlight, and he holds no position of real power. The engineers who once regarded him as one of their own now find themselves debating whether the man who survived the incident at Ashfall is still capable of seeing the problem as they do.

Guildmaster of Emberlight, Osric Odessa, knows better than most who Varris is and what he is capable of.

Baldric's claims indicate his dismay at this attempt to place one engineer's judgment above the authority of the Assembly. And so the question surrounding the Continuum is no longer simply whether it can be built, but whether the Iron Assembly will allow Varris Kane to decide what happens when it is finished. By politics or by force.