The treatise from Caius lay on Finnian's obsidian desk, its pages filled with elegant, impenetrable logic about "relational value" and "hermeneutics." He did not crumple it or cast it aside. He read it once, then again, with the meticulous care of a general studying a map of a battlefield that had just radically changed topography. When he finally looked up, his face was not angry. It was calm. A decision had been reached.
The philosophical siege was over. He had sent his best minds to dissect the anomaly of Aethelburg, and they had all, in their own ways, returned speaking its language. They had been converted, not to its cause, but to its complexity. To continue down that path was to admit that some things simply could not be dominated by the mind of Silverport.
But Finnian was not just a mind. He was a will. And will could dominate in other ways.
