*This is Chapter 36 From The Book The Rogue Scholar The Rogue To Victory. Chapter 35 is here.

Shaper Journal 8.45 Hierarch 9 entry - Shaper Asiduo Moratori

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I cannot help but shake a strange feeling. I am not sure I can find the words. Perhaps an analogy will work best. Suppose there is a familiar tune you have played and sung a million times. You know the notes, and you know the tempo. You know it so well you could almost hum it in your sleep. You take comfort in this song and your knowledge of it. If you are confused in life, or else upset, you hum this song because it is familiar--because you know it.

Every point in time, I suppose, most have a certain feeling associated with it. As a Shaper, I am sensitive to this particular point in time. I can feel what ought to be the case, and to some extent what has been the case, and I can feel what needs to take place in order to maintain balance and harmony. The song that I have sung with regard to this balancing act is very familiar. It has slight perturbations or changes, but I know the tune, and I know when something needs to be tweaked or addressed at the council. Usually, most of the other Shapers can feel it too.

Something, though, has shifted. I can't say I know what it is. I just sense that the structure of the tune is now fundamentally different in a way I cannot define. The people of this time period have, more or less, already corrected for it. Since they are not Shapers, they are probably only vaguely aware that something has changed. However, I can feel that there are many people out of place. It is as though the cast has been assembled, but yet there is confusion as to who should play what part--like some sort of shift has hit that moved reality away slightly from where it should be. Reality has, like water, assumed another very close form, but it is off. The tempo doesn't fit, and the notes are off-key.

Equally, the council seems to be more unbalanced than usual. Most of the time the Shapers can agree on a course of action nearly unanimously. Lately, it seems like there is more polarization than there is agreement. It almost feels like there is some infighting--as though the Shaper council were about the power to Shape rather than about the service it is supposed to provide.

One thing that I can sense in an unprecedented way is that there is an energy of conflict that is more pronounced than ever before. It is almost as though some ancient well of hostility has been unearthed.

Perhaps this energy will dissipate in time. Variations have spiked and relented before. Whatever this is, though, it feels different.

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