Quoted By:
"You're Richard." Right?
"Yes. I am. I'm glad there's something we can still agree on." Richard clasps his hands. "We're straying from the topic, though. Three years ago, I fill the role of Correspondent. I am provided with all necessary information to 'succeed' in my role. Nobody has ever succeeded, by the way, Charlie. Not completely."
"...Or the Wyrm would be possessing somebody? And the world would be over." It's only logical. "Wait, but why do you— wouldn't the world end for you and the agents, too? Why would anybody want that?"
"Hold that thought, please, or we'll be here for a week. I am provided with the information. I am also— this is raw conjecture; I can't remember. I am also, somehow, incompletely recycled. Something of my past self survives. Alternately, my past self had made plans and illicitly transferred them to me. The gist is, I am unique. I exist at several intellectual levels above any of my colleagues, who follow their proscribed plan slavishly, nevermind that it has failed in every way, over and over, for the past two centuries. Yes?"
You're not sure what gives Richard the right to be so smug, given he's drugged and groveling, but whatever. It's not like you have love for any other snakes (sorry, "agents.") "Are you just here to talk about how smart you are? I asked about my father."
"We're getting there. I will elaborate on the proscribed plan. The proscribed plan is to identify and cosy up to a human person of a particular 'type': arrogant, hot-blooded, power-hungry, etcetera. This person is convinced that, through locating and utilizing the Crown, they can achieve godhood and anything else they desire. They then willingly participate in the search for the Crown, including slaughtering or dominating all obstacles in their path, and succeed in locating it and charging it, whereupon the Wyrm is called into them. Yes?"
You frown. "Isn't that what you did?"
"No. Not at all. You were hot-blooded, I suppose, and somewhat arrogant. Not entirely off-type. But you weren't power-hungry. The core fault of the proscribed plan is that a person like that chafes at the yoke. They squabble with their Correspondent. They distrust them implicitly. Reach a certain nearness to 'godhood,' and they are chiefly inclined to betrayal. Most never get that far, but the ones that do are, without fail, cut off at the ankles. A dimwitted, wrong-headed plan, but one that had calcified into doctrine. As if the Wyrm itself had spoken it. I had a better idea."
"Involving killing my father," you say.
Richard ignores you. "The first sub-issue was the type of client selected. Too power-hungry, like I mentioned, and often too old. Most of them aren't intelligent in a traditional sense, but they're worldly. They have a sense of when they're being led. This limits options drastically. I thought it best to pick a client who was young and naïve."
(2/5)
