Truly A Miracle

	Edrik remembered the day that the Ascended had come to his village.
	They had arrived without fanfare, without a whisper of any kind. One day they were absent, and the next day, they were in the village, all business. The court had sent seven; not even a fraction of the entire body, but more than enough to deal with the threat of brigands. Edrik had wondered, at the time, how they had known that they were needed, but you learned as you grew older to take the feats of the Ascended for granted.
	Two of them had erected crude ramparts around the city, dragging tree trunks or uprooting hard earth from the ground into a wall-like shape. One had taken to the healer's tent, his deft fingers brushing away injuries like wheat flour off a millstone. One had knelt by the old, gnarled fig tree by the apothecary and coaxed life back into it until it was stretching, too big for its bark, almost eighteen feet high and producing figs, large enough to feed a grown man, that glowed with vitality. One had run her fingers up and down each improvised sharp piece of metal in the town's "weapons" cache, slowly warping and reshaping them into tools of war. The other two simply waited for the outlaws to show themselves. They needn't have bothered. As it turned out, said outlaws had been expecting a small village, not a fortified outpost, armed to the teeth. After a hasty discussion among themselves, they moved on. The seven Ascended didn't stay much longer.
	Several days later, the tree had returned to its former state, but not before every man, woman, and child in Hillmarch had gotten a chance to try one of its miraculous figs. You could still see the spring in the steps of the citizens who had been there, all of twelve years later. "Sweet as an Ascended fig" had become a local aphorism that persisted to this day. The tree hadn't become a town monument, but there had been a significant faction pushing for it, once, in the wake of the Ascendeds' departure. Hillmarch had tried to maintain the ramparts as best it could, but they had never been meant to last for twelve years, and were nearing the end of their lifespan despite the best efforts of the volunteer workers. The weapons that had been reshaped by the dark-eyed Ascendant, though, still remained as sharp as the day she had touched them. They would not rust, would not dull, would not even allow themselves to be reforged into a more useful implement. They were treasures of Hillmarch now, forever.
	Edrik held one now. It was a dagger, seven and a half inches of some non-steel metal -- that had been confirmed by the blacksmith, you'd think that would have been obvious by the way it resisted change, but the Ascended could have modified the properties of the steel instead of changing the metal entirely -- with a slight curve to its blade. It was not ornamental in the slightest; none of them were. It had a decent heft to it, it felt good in the hand. It would have been a miracle of craftsmanship if it had been made by human hands. It was still a miracle, of course, but one of a different sort.
	To be an Ascended… to be able to create those miracles on a whim, to change the course of an entire town forever… but that was fancy. Edrik didn't even know anyone who had joined the Ascended court. Not yet, anyway. It was still possible that a man or woman in Hillmarch receive the blessings of the gods and Ascend beyond their own mortality.
	One in ten thousand. That was the magic number, or close enough to give an idea. Large enough to hope for, but small enough to dissuade one from trying. That was the number of people who, when they died… came back. A second chance. A healing of all afflictions and injuries and a return of the soul to the body. But the soul always brought something back with it: some fragment of the greater divinity beyond. It manifested itself as added strength, grace, beauty, and self-confidence, but most strikingly of all, it granted the Ascended a unique power -- a special gift to be used for the benefit of the rest of humanity, the non-Ascended. And whenever an Ascension was catalogued, the newly-born Ascended would be welcomed into the Ascended court and given a voice within the capitol to debate the law of the land. They lived in luxury, like the parasitic noble houses that clustered around the center of the nation like maggots, but they could hardly be expected not to -- it was practically guaranteed with the concentration of power they represented. They had the ability to dine on those figs whenever they pleased, and a dozen other wonderful things besides, but Edrik didn't begrudge them a single pleasure. They had been chosen by the gods for their wisdom, after all. And they helped people, tangibly, every day. The noble lords and ladies could play their petty games, backstabbing, marrying, and promising each other for some abstract advantage that would all be undone next week, but the Ascended were above that. They cared for nothing save how best to serve those they had been called back to protect.
	And Edrik longed to be one of them.
	There wasn't any room in Hillmarch for a boy -- almost a man, now -- without a thirst for work. Each citizen of Hillmarch worked a full day, and yet the number of buildings in need of repairs climbed higher and higher. And in harvest-season, where the time to gather the year's crops before they withered on the stalk was short and precious, other jobs went undone and everyone pitched in. An extra set of hands could save many days worth of food. But harvesting had never appealed to Edrik. He was no good at it anyway. His hands split easily, and his eyes didn't pick out the ripe from the rest as quickly as they could have. Besides, all that walking was hard on his legs. He knew that the town needed him -- and beyond that, that the gods looked favorably upon the sweat of a day's toil -- but the feelings of I'm only getting in the way and Someone else could do this better than I could and I am not as comfortable as I was hoping to be today had always been stronger than that knowledge.
	He leaned against the rampart. On the other side of it, people would be working. Baskets of produce would be filling the carts by now. He had almost certainly been missed. He could hear his mother's chiding already, and he blushed. Couldn't she understand that it was bad enough without hearing the shame in her voice? That every time he ate, he was reminded that it was someone else who had planted and tended, picked and sorted, washed and prepared it? That there was no building within Hillmarch's ramparts that he could claim to have helped build or repair, not even the one he lived in? That no girl could ever take seriously the proposal of a grown man with as little to offer as he?
	He wasn't worthy of it. Of any of it. But one day, when he has Ascended, he would repay them for the tolerance they had shown him. Two days with a small group of Ascended had given his small town wonders. The magic he could bring to bear with the aid of the entire court would be transformative. He could give Hillmarch new ramparts to replace the crude, dilapidated earthen walls it had now. He could refill the dry well in the center of town with clean, pure water. He could shield the town from storms. But, most importantly of all, he could give every citizen the taste of those enormous figs. He could still remember the warmth that had flooded him with every bite he had taken, the sweet tingle that had settled on his tongue.
	A tear blurred the corner of Edrik's vision and he wiped it away. One in ten thousand. He couldn't let himself think about the chance he would just die and leave nothing behind, because the alternative was that he go on living as he always had, useless to his family and neighbors. Their resentment was a crushing shroud that had smothered any joy he once felt in life and weighed him down until his shoulders hunched beneath it. He could feel it even now, with the entire town at work in the fields. The looks of disappointment. He couldn't even remember the last time he had felt good enough. He had tried to work, year after year, and come up against the blocks in his brain. The only way he could achieve his calling, justify his life before the town and to the Gods was… well, if it was the only way, then the Gods had already decided that the way was open to him. The grip on his knife was fierce now, and his resolve was sharpening to a point. His blood pumped in his ears, drowning out the silence of the town.
	Before his brain could send a countersignal, it was done. The knife stuck out of his chest, buried to the unadorned hilt. He stared at it in shock, forgetting for a moment how it had gotten there, then staggered back against the rampart. It had gone in so easily. Truly a miracle. He coughed violently, his spittle mixed with blood, and as his vision faded, he realized that the blood tasted to him as sweet as the fig he had eaten years ago.
	It all went black. Edrik's eyes closed, and did not reopen.