Liu Xi has now twice managed to create a body from elemental matter. The first time took her days and left her very weak. This time, using Celestian-generated pseudo-Exu-stuff, she has recovered much faster. I've deliberately avoided establishing that Liu Xi could always manage such a feat; certainly I don't expect she could do it very often. So the problem would be, if her current elemental material vanished before she could fully assimilate it over time, would she be able to set herself right quickly enough?

Fortunately, Aella seems to have an instinctive feel for the Celestian systems and how they operate, and she's certainly not going to want to cause anybody harm with any adjustments she makes.

And then there are whatever adjustments the Doomherald wants.




It does sound like a career-curtailing one-way trip.




Not many of them, no.







There's also the "least worst option" principal. If one is able to understand all possible consequences then one has to make terrible choices. Say Faite shifts a driver's attention back to the road in time to spot a wandering child, thus saving her life. But the knock-on consequence of there not being a traffic accident might alter the outcome of a police chase two hours later so a criminal gets away and guns down three victims. Preventing that tragedy too might have some other effect, all cascading away. It might be the horrible truth that the child dying is actually the least harmful and awful thing when all the chains of possibility are considered.




The Hood does enjoy making his adversaries responsible for his victories.




We've pretty much assembled most of the dominos now. Time to knock them over.