The western slope of the Star Mayhem Mountain was already crowded by the time Suryax-Regalon arrived.
The spring sat in a wide basin of glowing crystalline stone, partway up the slope, and the water in it caught the Mountain's shifting light and held it the way still water holds the moon. It was not a large pool. That was the problem. A pool that small, with power like that coming off it, could not satisfy four alliances. There was enough to make a few thousand people permanently stronger, and there were far more than a few thousand people who wanted it.
The four forces converged on the slope from four directions and stopped short of the basin, each one holding at the edge of the open ground around it.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
