Not enough.

  The wave was ahead of me. Already past the trench. Already south. Half a second from the barriers. One from the village. Three from the slope where Wei stood with the villagers, a bundle at his feet and his eyes pointed in the direction I'd gone.

  It was not enough to kill anymore, but enough to break. Enough to crush the grain stores that stood between the village and winter. Enough to poison the well permanently — for the people that were living there at least. Enough to turn a community that had survived through stubbornness into a place where the numbers didn't work anymore.

  Not enough.

  I didn't think about it. That's the truth and the truth matters here because thousands of years of existence had produced a mind that thought about everything — that analyzed and calculated and weighed and measured and rationalized every action or inaction with the exhaustive thoroughness of a consciousness that had too much time and too much data and too little willingness to act without certainty.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I didn't think about it.

  My hand came up.

  Open. Palm forward. Fingers spread. The gesture I hadn't needed in three thousand years. The bones singing. The muscles still remembering.

  And four words came to me with a resolution that transcended thought. My mind became clear and cold and focused on the simple, absolute acceptance of what was coming.

  Then so — be it.

  The wave was less than a heartbeat from the barrier wall. The distance between catastrophe and my people had shrunk to nothing and my hand was up and my palm was forward and the four words were not a decision because decisions require deliberation.

  This required nothing except the thing I'd spent thousands of years burying and a few weeks digging back up.

  Then so — be it.