Chapter 234: 234
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Quietly muttering to himself, Orison said, "Heat, light and radiation link extensively to this mysterious positive energy that's used in healing and neutralizing negative energy based stuff. Because of kinetic principle, I can see runners connecting to spacial concepts along pathways of transition as well. Those same transition principles let me see vaguely downward into places I've never really considered studying much.
"Oh my god! Negative energy has more connections to Cure Disease and Poison that positive does despite practically being conjoined twins to healing! Following that, I see connections to cold in there too but cold is an abyss of no-go. It's like there's some sort of null at it's heart that's as close to 'nothing' as reality can know. If I can-
"Are you serious!? I'm out of memory space again? If I get rid of much more, this matrix is going to be useless. If only I had one with bigger stor...age... No. This is wrong. This is so far beyond what I can personally visualize, I can't even begin to imagine when I could. If I had a bigger matrix, I'd only have a bigger dependency.
"This isn't MY way. This is a whole different path. Somewhere out there is probably a person who's so artificially augmented that they can't be seen as organic anymore or little more than a monstrous mass of connected brain matter. That's not the way I want to go at all!
"Maybe it won't stay that way forever but I want my soul to be the heavy lifter. It has its own space to contain and make it safe to connect with a physical vessel. I am far, far from the point I want to disassociate with being a 'people'. How do I take this stuff and make it mine in a way that's still me and not 'me with a chip' that can be lost, broken or corrupted?"
Orison combed through his experiences. In the first two worlds, he and 'the boy' never really had the need for a spellbook to hold what they knew because they didn't know much. As he traveled between realities, that knowledge became internalized, held by his soul. It had condensed into concepts.
All he had been doing the past few days was decompressing to challenge and remove parts that were proven false with external aid. There wasn't a need for him to 'know' all the models. He just needed the concepts re-compressed into their essential states.
"Come on... I know you can do this. I KNOW you can. So many have done it before you with a lot less help. I'm bu-" Orison thought before he was distracted by a tiny mote of faith essence forming and melting into his soul.
"I-I'm building my tower. Not just a nebulous, theoretical one but a real tower that represents my path. It's not the tower of faith, waiting for divine intervention. I believe in myself.
"It's not a path of scientists or technomancers. It's not a pure path of magic, even. Since the beginning, the soul has been my center base of operation, and magic has been the light I use to reveal things. I've been leaning too heavily on science as the tools of measurement and understanding but it IS undeniably useful, especially with the little mind-to-spirit lubricant that a touch of psionics has provided."
A shout of 'I'm building my soul tower!' was halted as another barely visible mote of the mysterious 'faith' essence formed and melted into his soul. He suddenly realized a few things in quick succession at that moment. He felt he knew how he had 'saved' the Entanglement Key. He hadn't saved it at all. He had remade it.
The mysterious essence he had arbitrarily labeled as 'faith' was too 'mysterious' and beyond comprehension for such a small minded concept to encompass it. It could turn someone into a god. He was almost certain that it was responsible for the forming of conduits. He was less sure but highly suspicious of its role in creation itself.
"Gods demand it in return for miracles. Chrism wrings it out to produce expressions of potential and make or strengthen conduits. I'm fairly convinced its the force that stamps order into chaos in the image of its wielder.
"No wonder Sammy tried to warn us not to play games with it. Every mote produced is more precious to its maker than any other essence. If it's what's needed to mold chaos into ordered creation, then it's what I need to make my tower within my soul!"
***
In a flash of creativity inspired daydream or desperation induced hallucination, Orison saw a blasted and rocky landscape. Lightless skies occasionally erupted with streaks of lightning to reveal madness inducing storm clouds of chaos roiling above a ruined structure, ancient and decrepit. The occasional small mote of wholesome light sunk into barren soil or slag topped ruin only to draw destruction from above in silent, negative image flashes.
A sense of dread filled him but he felt how fragile the moment was. If he ran away from it, some precious chance would be lost for lifetimes or possibly forever. For all the complex meaning to it, the choice was simple. He could embrace the raw chaos whipped ruins with all its hidden treasures and dangers or wipe it clean into the void and start over.
He had never been that brave or adventurous. But, there was one trait he did possess that wouldn't let him turn away. The once glorious thing the ruin had been, he wanted to fix it because it felt like him, the old him. That feeling held a ringing truth beyond the shallow sympathy that spawned it. The easier, safer and healthier path of a fresh start felt like letting go and he had only recently learned how to do that. The ancient echoes of pain and despair trapped within the cracked foundation and crumbling masonry possessed and ensnared him.
He could have fought free if he had wanted to but he didn't. Instead, he took everything that he had achieved, all the potential that he owned and poured it into the cracks. They were deep, far deeper than he had imagined and all that he had barely sealed the smallest one.
***
Orison's eyes flew open with a start. He felt listless, hollow. The young mage raised a delicate, withered hand and felt awe. He would have felt more but terror required energy and more effort than he could muster. Looking around, he knew what it meant to be a shadow in a bright world.
In that first moment, he felt the ghost of relief that he was inside a tent. There was a sense of being so greatly insubstantial that a single piercing of sunlight from the bright and sharp world around him would have been the end. No sooner had the thought entered his mind, his eyes grew dim, one step closer to utter oblivion.
Searching within and without, he spent the last wisps of lifeforce he possessed to find something to restore a wisp more. Magic channels trembled and broke under the strain of simply bringing out the medicine cabinet from the storage device. Porous and brittle bones fractured from opening drawers.
As first one raw ingredient joined another in his mouth, enamel flaked and teeth fractured from chewing. The esophagus tore and bled from the passing of them into an ulcer riddled and failing stomach. Sluggish blood pumped and nerves fired from the magic and spirit essence reserves stored in the most hidden of places within his body alone. Had it not been for that, he might have already perished but he pushed the thought away before he could finish thinking it.
While mild medicinal power ravaged organs too frail to even withstand their pacified strength, Orison harnessed that energy to turn within. A weak spark of a soul sputtered on the brink of snuffing out as the layered space collapsed back in on itself. Turning a blind eye to it, he searched for the very best of his life saving and soul nourishing medicines. With a sigh, he added them to the blaze of rampant cremation consuming all that he was.
Under the brief stay of execution, an ancient voice that was his own said, "Do you regret?"
A defiant dying cluster of brain cells and wisp of spiritual consciousness returned, "What is there to regret? I'm too poor in all things to spend it on regret."
In what felt like ages to accomplish, he unzipped a portion of flap over a screened section of tent. A flit of feather light refreshing breeze circulated in, threatening to scatter him. It scoured through him, lifting out both alien and familiar dark vapors to disburse into the air. It was the remnants of the negative energy that empowered the undead body he had claimed mixed with some other cursed essence of unknown origin.
Weaker still, yet internally invigorated, he endured the agony of opening the tent entrance and standing up on a grinding and splintering frame. With glacier movements, he creeped out. Rheumy and cataract filled eyes squinted at the vast shower of fractal, prismatic rainbows raining down upon the world around him as he held a hand out past the protective shade.
Broken sunlight filtered through tree leaves to pierce the shadowy, nearly translucent palm. He couldn't see but he could feel the tiny pinpricks of bombarding rays mostly pierce through his palm as small bits careened and ricocheted within, spreading destruction and change in their passing. The sensation sparked activity within dead protein covered synapses and gossamer spiritual essence.
The echoes of recent labor illuminated a bridge between the destructive forces of fire and radiation to life sustaining energy. As the thready pulse of a heart stopped beating, the understanding of conversion from one major force to another bloomed into another minuscule morsel of revealed law. A baptism attempted to descend upon the shadowy remnant dissolving under the light but it was intercepted by a force of such stygian depths that the surrounding world saw and felt nothing of it.
The passive but overwhelming force drew two more baptisms of ever greater magnitude before not even its dark gravity could wrest more than Greater Reality spared for any mortal creature. It had taken all in but for a ghostly shell of a physical pattern supplied by someone else's imaginings and two anchoring spiritual tethers which it could not. With nothing left to take, the force triggered by sacrifice returned to its settled state.
As with all things, an action has its reaction. An ancient, fathomless curse that had lingered past both its maker and designed target, violently expelled from that stygian depth, dragging things with it in its passing. The path of least resistance to its release, a dissipating shell. And all that it carried, deposited within as it moved on.
A flash of bleak scenery displayed itself once more. The madness inducing chaos was hidden behind dreary clouds that filtered weak light onto a dismal landscape. Seven lead colored rings draped around a ruin that the lightning overhead could only touch in a mild static. The sprinkle of a handful of mysterious essence motes sunk into the ruin with the overhead wrath too impotent to completely eradicate.
Orison was shunted, poured back into his outer self. Nearly imploded to a vastly different kind of oblivion, he was severed of everything but his connection to Cray and Stefen by the passing of a desolate weave of will strong enough to erase realities. Yet, it was so self contained that it passed without a single trace. He had never felt so alone and insignificant.
He had wanted to build a tower in his soul capable of holding his comprehension of law. It was an action that he didn't think would have been nearly as traumatizing had he built anew. The inconceivably ancient grit at the center of his spiritual core had offered a different option. He didn't feel up to the challenge that he had accepted but it was too late. There was nothing for it but to accept and move forward or give up.
"If only for the sheer spite of refusing to admit it was a mistake, let's make it happen. Let's renovate Castle Grimdark of the Edge Lord kingdom into something that would make unicorns puke rainbows of joy, damn it!" the young mage said shakily as he waved his temporarily small and delicate fist at the indifferent world.
Moments later, the young mage was wracked with pain and throwing up watery gray clay riddled with woody fibers. A couple of potions and some spotty passes of magic added, Orison had expelled unpleasantness from every place possible. In its wake, a faintly agreeable scent took its place after a thorough cleaning. After finding and reattaching the marble form of the suit, the young mage started packing up.
"If I had a small silver for every time I woke up naked, alone and with a hangover..." a jovial man's voice said from nearby.
Surprised at himself for having failed to notice a gawking stranger for so long, Orison turned to address the new stranger, "A word of advice. If you find yourself witness to a person's weakest and most vulnerable moments, pretend you weren't. That's doubly true of a stranger's. That goes three times for someone who may have possibly been a traumatized victim and four if there's even the most vague of possibilities that you might share common features with an assailant."
Slightly unsure of how to proceed, the plucky young man who wore colorful clothes but was otherwise unremarkable in a vaguely pleasant way, said, "And on that scale of one to four, where do I rank?"
Orison gave a ghost of a smile and said, "Two. Lack of blood in my surroundings and lack of holes on you are the give away clues."
The man's eyes widened slightly as the young mage put things away in a manner that made them seem to have disappeared. "I didn't realize I was in the presence of a young... a-and beautiful member of the Sisterhood. Please forgive my rudeness."
"I'm a free... person. And as per the laws of this land, I only accept coin for magical arts related to healing. Now, if you'll excuse me." the young mage said before walking away.
It wasn't so much that he minded the man's presence or that he thought there was something malicious or annoying about him. The combination of being caught in the process of taking care of private matters and the less than subtle hints of interest beyond being friendly made Orison want to put distance between them.
Predictably, the man wasn't going to give up without reason. "Since we seem to be roving towards the same destination, we can stave off the loneliness of solitary travel. I'm passably skilled at the shepherd's pipe I carry. An unfortunate accident took my instrument of choice from me but-"
With the last bit of sympathy and kindness he could drudge up, Orison said, "If you can walk in silence and a minimum of greater than arm's length distance from me, I won't make it too obvious how little I don't want your company. Deal?"
"For the presence of your charming company I'd do many deeds, milady," the man said with a flourishing bow.
Frowning, Orison replied, "Strike one."
Several minutes went by before the man started pelting out some mild and agreeable melodies on his pipes. It actually seemed to help ease some inner tension and allowed for the young mage to consciously digest some of the illuminations of law his soul seemed to passively study without outward motivation. Seeing the improvement of mood and a sudden brilliant smile from Orison, the man felt his boldness return.
"I'm Owen, milady. Surely an impoverished minstrel could at least earn a name for his musical labors?" he said, giving a cheeky smile.
The young mage flipped him a silver and said, "Shut up and play, minstrel."
"You're too kind," Owen said blandly with hint of bitter sarcasm.
A half hour of nature blending melody later and there was sudden silence as the moderately talented bard staggered sluggishly. Orison was tempted to keep walking but he noticed that the man was flushed with only the barest hint of perspiration.
After a restrained sigh, the young mage handed over a water bottle and said, "Get to the shade. Lay down and loosen anything tied or tucked."
Despite his obvious distress, Owen gave a cheeky smile and was about to say something Orison was all but guaranteed to be annoyed by.
He cut the man off by adding, "Keep your head elevated above your heart so you don't pass out. As long as you don't take the opportunity to throw a lame, unwanted flirty line, I won't take the opportunity to ditch you... literally."
Wind stolen from his sails, the minstrel slumped into the grass by a fat but tall bush. And not a moment too soon, as he started trembling faintly. Mustering his strength to start draining the water bottle, it was obvious he didn't have much left for anything else. The young mage helped him into an inclined position, untucking and unlacing with a grimace.
"Unless you have a crust of bread to share as well, I won't be up for much... performing but I'll do my best," Owen said as he watched himself be semi undressed with bewildered awe.
"Strike two," Orison replied as he tossed a ration bar to the minstrel.
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Quietly muttering to himself, Orison said, "Heat, light and radiation link extensively to this mysterious positive energy that's used in healing and neutralizing negative energy based stuff. Because of kinetic principle, I can see runners connecting to spacial concepts along pathways of transition as well. Those same transition principles let me see vaguely downward into places I've never really considered studying much.
"Oh my god! Negative energy has more connections to Cure Disease and Poison that positive does despite practically being conjoined twins to healing! Following that, I see connections to cold in there too but cold is an abyss of no-go. It's like there's some sort of null at it's heart that's as close to 'nothing' as reality can know. If I can-
"Are you serious!? I'm out of memory space again? If I get rid of much more, this matrix is going to be useless. If only I had one with bigger stor...age... No. This is wrong. This is so far beyond what I can personally visualize, I can't even begin to imagine when I could. If I had a bigger matrix, I'd only have a bigger dependency.
"This isn't MY way. This is a whole different path. Somewhere out there is probably a person who's so artificially augmented that they can't be seen as organic anymore or little more than a monstrous mass of connected brain matter. That's not the way I want to go at all!
"Maybe it won't stay that way forever but I want my soul to be the heavy lifter. It has its own space to contain and make it safe to connect with a physical vessel. I am far, far from the point I want to disassociate with being a 'people'. How do I take this stuff and make it mine in a way that's still me and not 'me with a chip' that can be lost, broken or corrupted?"
Orison combed through his experiences. In the first two worlds, he and 'the boy' never really had the need for a spellbook to hold what they knew because they didn't know much. As he traveled between realities, that knowledge became internalized, held by his soul. It had condensed into concepts.
All he had been doing the past few days was decompressing to challenge and remove parts that were proven false with external aid. There wasn't a need for him to 'know' all the models. He just needed the concepts re-compressed into their essential states.
"Come on... I know you can do this. I KNOW you can. So many have done it before you with a lot less help. I'm bu-" Orison thought before he was distracted by a tiny mote of faith essence forming and melting into his soul.
"I-I'm building my tower. Not just a nebulous, theoretical one but a real tower that represents my path. It's not the tower of faith, waiting for divine intervention. I believe in myself.
"It's not a path of scientists or technomancers. It's not a pure path of magic, even. Since the beginning, the soul has been my center base of operation, and magic has been the light I use to reveal things. I've been leaning too heavily on science as the tools of measurement and understanding but it IS undeniably useful, especially with the little mind-to-spirit lubricant that a touch of psionics has provided."
A shout of 'I'm building my soul tower!' was halted as another barely visible mote of the mysterious 'faith' essence formed and melted into his soul. He suddenly realized a few things in quick succession at that moment. He felt he knew how he had 'saved' the Entanglement Key. He hadn't saved it at all. He had remade it.
The mysterious essence he had arbitrarily labeled as 'faith' was too 'mysterious' and beyond comprehension for such a small minded concept to encompass it. It could turn someone into a god. He was almost certain that it was responsible for the forming of conduits. He was less sure but highly suspicious of its role in creation itself.
"Gods demand it in return for miracles. Chrism wrings it out to produce expressions of potential and make or strengthen conduits. I'm fairly convinced its the force that stamps order into chaos in the image of its wielder.
"No wonder Sammy tried to warn us not to play games with it. Every mote produced is more precious to its maker than any other essence. If it's what's needed to mold chaos into ordered creation, then it's what I need to make my tower within my soul!"
***
In a flash of creativity inspired daydream or desperation induced hallucination, Orison saw a blasted and rocky landscape. Lightless skies occasionally erupted with streaks of lightning to reveal madness inducing storm clouds of chaos roiling above a ruined structure, ancient and decrepit. The occasional small mote of wholesome light sunk into barren soil or slag topped ruin only to draw destruction from above in silent, negative image flashes.
A sense of dread filled him but he felt how fragile the moment was. If he ran away from it, some precious chance would be lost for lifetimes or possibly forever. For all the complex meaning to it, the choice was simple. He could embrace the raw chaos whipped ruins with all its hidden treasures and dangers or wipe it clean into the void and start over.
He had never been that brave or adventurous. But, there was one trait he did possess that wouldn't let him turn away. The once glorious thing the ruin had been, he wanted to fix it because it felt like him, the old him. That feeling held a ringing truth beyond the shallow sympathy that spawned it. The easier, safer and healthier path of a fresh start felt like letting go and he had only recently learned how to do that. The ancient echoes of pain and despair trapped within the cracked foundation and crumbling masonry possessed and ensnared him.
He could have fought free if he had wanted to but he didn't. Instead, he took everything that he had achieved, all the potential that he owned and poured it into the cracks. They were deep, far deeper than he had imagined and all that he had barely sealed the smallest one.
***
Orison's eyes flew open with a start. He felt listless, hollow. The young mage raised a delicate, withered hand and felt awe. He would have felt more but terror required energy and more effort than he could muster. Looking around, he knew what it meant to be a shadow in a bright world.
In that first moment, he felt the ghost of relief that he was inside a tent. There was a sense of being so greatly insubstantial that a single piercing of sunlight from the bright and sharp world around him would have been the end. No sooner had the thought entered his mind, his eyes grew dim, one step closer to utter oblivion.
Searching within and without, he spent the last wisps of lifeforce he possessed to find something to restore a wisp more. Magic channels trembled and broke under the strain of simply bringing out the medicine cabinet from the storage device. Porous and brittle bones fractured from opening drawers.
As first one raw ingredient joined another in his mouth, enamel flaked and teeth fractured from chewing. The esophagus tore and bled from the passing of them into an ulcer riddled and failing stomach. Sluggish blood pumped and nerves fired from the magic and spirit essence reserves stored in the most hidden of places within his body alone. Had it not been for that, he might have already perished but he pushed the thought away before he could finish thinking it.
While mild medicinal power ravaged organs too frail to even withstand their pacified strength, Orison harnessed that energy to turn within. A weak spark of a soul sputtered on the brink of snuffing out as the layered space collapsed back in on itself. Turning a blind eye to it, he searched for the very best of his life saving and soul nourishing medicines. With a sigh, he added them to the blaze of rampant cremation consuming all that he was.
Under the brief stay of execution, an ancient voice that was his own said, "Do you regret?"
A defiant dying cluster of brain cells and wisp of spiritual consciousness returned, "What is there to regret? I'm too poor in all things to spend it on regret."
In what felt like ages to accomplish, he unzipped a portion of flap over a screened section of tent. A flit of feather light refreshing breeze circulated in, threatening to scatter him. It scoured through him, lifting out both alien and familiar dark vapors to disburse into the air. It was the remnants of the negative energy that empowered the undead body he had claimed mixed with some other cursed essence of unknown origin.
Weaker still, yet internally invigorated, he endured the agony of opening the tent entrance and standing up on a grinding and splintering frame. With glacier movements, he creeped out. Rheumy and cataract filled eyes squinted at the vast shower of fractal, prismatic rainbows raining down upon the world around him as he held a hand out past the protective shade.
Broken sunlight filtered through tree leaves to pierce the shadowy, nearly translucent palm. He couldn't see but he could feel the tiny pinpricks of bombarding rays mostly pierce through his palm as small bits careened and ricocheted within, spreading destruction and change in their passing. The sensation sparked activity within dead protein covered synapses and gossamer spiritual essence.
The echoes of recent labor illuminated a bridge between the destructive forces of fire and radiation to life sustaining energy. As the thready pulse of a heart stopped beating, the understanding of conversion from one major force to another bloomed into another minuscule morsel of revealed law. A baptism attempted to descend upon the shadowy remnant dissolving under the light but it was intercepted by a force of such stygian depths that the surrounding world saw and felt nothing of it.
The passive but overwhelming force drew two more baptisms of ever greater magnitude before not even its dark gravity could wrest more than Greater Reality spared for any mortal creature. It had taken all in but for a ghostly shell of a physical pattern supplied by someone else's imaginings and two anchoring spiritual tethers which it could not. With nothing left to take, the force triggered by sacrifice returned to its settled state.
As with all things, an action has its reaction. An ancient, fathomless curse that had lingered past both its maker and designed target, violently expelled from that stygian depth, dragging things with it in its passing. The path of least resistance to its release, a dissipating shell. And all that it carried, deposited within as it moved on.
A flash of bleak scenery displayed itself once more. The madness inducing chaos was hidden behind dreary clouds that filtered weak light onto a dismal landscape. Seven lead colored rings draped around a ruin that the lightning overhead could only touch in a mild static. The sprinkle of a handful of mysterious essence motes sunk into the ruin with the overhead wrath too impotent to completely eradicate.
Orison was shunted, poured back into his outer self. Nearly imploded to a vastly different kind of oblivion, he was severed of everything but his connection to Cray and Stefen by the passing of a desolate weave of will strong enough to erase realities. Yet, it was so self contained that it passed without a single trace. He had never felt so alone and insignificant.
He had wanted to build a tower in his soul capable of holding his comprehension of law. It was an action that he didn't think would have been nearly as traumatizing had he built anew. The inconceivably ancient grit at the center of his spiritual core had offered a different option. He didn't feel up to the challenge that he had accepted but it was too late. There was nothing for it but to accept and move forward or give up.
"If only for the sheer spite of refusing to admit it was a mistake, let's make it happen. Let's renovate Castle Grimdark of the Edge Lord kingdom into something that would make unicorns puke rainbows of joy, damn it!" the young mage said shakily as he waved his temporarily small and delicate fist at the indifferent world.
Moments later, the young mage was wracked with pain and throwing up watery gray clay riddled with woody fibers. A couple of potions and some spotty passes of magic added, Orison had expelled unpleasantness from every place possible. In its wake, a faintly agreeable scent took its place after a thorough cleaning. After finding and reattaching the marble form of the suit, the young mage started packing up.
"If I had a small silver for every time I woke up naked, alone and with a hangover..." a jovial man's voice said from nearby.
Surprised at himself for having failed to notice a gawking stranger for so long, Orison turned to address the new stranger, "A word of advice. If you find yourself witness to a person's weakest and most vulnerable moments, pretend you weren't. That's doubly true of a stranger's. That goes three times for someone who may have possibly been a traumatized victim and four if there's even the most vague of possibilities that you might share common features with an assailant."
Slightly unsure of how to proceed, the plucky young man who wore colorful clothes but was otherwise unremarkable in a vaguely pleasant way, said, "And on that scale of one to four, where do I rank?"
Orison gave a ghost of a smile and said, "Two. Lack of blood in my surroundings and lack of holes on you are the give away clues."
The man's eyes widened slightly as the young mage put things away in a manner that made them seem to have disappeared. "I didn't realize I was in the presence of a young... a-and beautiful member of the Sisterhood. Please forgive my rudeness."
"I'm a free... person. And as per the laws of this land, I only accept coin for magical arts related to healing. Now, if you'll excuse me." the young mage said before walking away.
It wasn't so much that he minded the man's presence or that he thought there was something malicious or annoying about him. The combination of being caught in the process of taking care of private matters and the less than subtle hints of interest beyond being friendly made Orison want to put distance between them.
Predictably, the man wasn't going to give up without reason. "Since we seem to be roving towards the same destination, we can stave off the loneliness of solitary travel. I'm passably skilled at the shepherd's pipe I carry. An unfortunate accident took my instrument of choice from me but-"
With the last bit of sympathy and kindness he could drudge up, Orison said, "If you can walk in silence and a minimum of greater than arm's length distance from me, I won't make it too obvious how little I don't want your company. Deal?"
"For the presence of your charming company I'd do many deeds, milady," the man said with a flourishing bow.
Frowning, Orison replied, "Strike one."
Several minutes went by before the man started pelting out some mild and agreeable melodies on his pipes. It actually seemed to help ease some inner tension and allowed for the young mage to consciously digest some of the illuminations of law his soul seemed to passively study without outward motivation. Seeing the improvement of mood and a sudden brilliant smile from Orison, the man felt his boldness return.
"I'm Owen, milady. Surely an impoverished minstrel could at least earn a name for his musical labors?" he said, giving a cheeky smile.
The young mage flipped him a silver and said, "Shut up and play, minstrel."
"You're too kind," Owen said blandly with hint of bitter sarcasm.
A half hour of nature blending melody later and there was sudden silence as the moderately talented bard staggered sluggishly. Orison was tempted to keep walking but he noticed that the man was flushed with only the barest hint of perspiration.
After a restrained sigh, the young mage handed over a water bottle and said, "Get to the shade. Lay down and loosen anything tied or tucked."
Despite his obvious distress, Owen gave a cheeky smile and was about to say something Orison was all but guaranteed to be annoyed by.
He cut the man off by adding, "Keep your head elevated above your heart so you don't pass out. As long as you don't take the opportunity to throw a lame, unwanted flirty line, I won't take the opportunity to ditch you... literally."
Wind stolen from his sails, the minstrel slumped into the grass by a fat but tall bush. And not a moment too soon, as he started trembling faintly. Mustering his strength to start draining the water bottle, it was obvious he didn't have much left for anything else. The young mage helped him into an inclined position, untucking and unlacing with a grimace.
"Unless you have a crust of bread to share as well, I won't be up for much... performing but I'll do my best," Owen said as he watched himself be semi undressed with bewildered awe.
"Strike two," Orison replied as he tossed a ration bar to the minstrel.
Quietly muttering to himself, Orison said, "Heat, light and radiation link extensively to this mysterious positive energy that's used in healing and neutralizing negative energy based stuff. Because of kinetic principle, I can see runners connecting to spacial concepts along pathways of transition as well. Those same transition principles let me see vaguely downward into places I've never really considered studying much. "Oh my god! Negative energy has more connections to Cure Disease and Poison that positive does despite practically being conjoined twins to healing! Following that, I see connections to cold in there too but cold is an abyss of no-go. It's like there's some sort of null at it's heart that's as close to 'nothing' as reality can know. If I can- "Are you serious!? I'm out of memory space again? If I get rid of much more, this matrix is going to be useless. If only I had one with bigger stor...age... No. This is wrong. This is so far beyond what I can personally visualize, I can't even begin to imagine when I could. If I had a bigger matrix, I'd only have a bigger dependency. "This isn't MY way. This is a whole different path. Somewhere out there is probably a person who's so artificially augmented that they can't be seen as organic anymore or little more than a monstrous mass of connected brain matter. That's not the way I want to go at all! "Maybe it won't stay that way forever but I want my soul to be the heavy lifter. It has its own space to contain and make it safe to connect with a physical vessel. I am far, far from the point I want to disassociate with being a 'people'. How do I take this stuff and make it mine in a way that's still me and not 'me with a chip' that can be lost, broken or corrupted?" Orison combed through his experiences. In the first two worlds, he and 'the boy' never really had the need for a spellbook to hold what they knew because they didn't know much. As he traveled between realities, that knowledge became internalized, held by his soul. It had condensed into concepts. All he had been doing the past few days was decompressing to challenge and remove parts that were proven false with external aid. There wasn't a need for him to 'know' all the models. He just needed the concepts re-compressed into their essential states. "Come on... I know you can do this. I KNOW you can. So many have done it before you with a lot less help. I'm bu-" Orison thought before he was distracted by a tiny mote of faith essence forming and melting into his soul. "I-I'm building my tower. Not just a nebulous, theoretical one but a real tower that represents my path. It's not the tower of faith, waiting for divine intervention. I believe in myself. "It's not a path of scientists or technomancers. It's not a pure path of magic, even. Since the beginning, the soul has been my center base of operation, and magic has been the light I use to reveal things. I've been leaning too heavily on science as the tools of measurement and understanding but it IS undeniably useful, especially with the little mind-to-spirit lubricant that a touch of psionics has provided." A shout of 'I'm building my soul tower!' was halted as another barely visible mote of the mysterious 'faith' essence formed and melted into his soul. He suddenly realized a few things in quick succession at that moment. He felt he knew how he had 'saved' the Entanglement Key. He hadn't saved it at all. He had remade it. The mysterious essence he had arbitrarily labeled as 'faith' was too 'mysterious' and beyond comprehension for such a small minded concept to encompass it. It could turn someone into a god. He was almost certain that it was responsible for the forming of conduits. He was less sure but highly suspicious of its role in creation itself. "Gods demand it in return for miracles. Chrism wrings it out to produce expressions of potential and make or strengthen conduits. I'm fairly convinced its the force that stamps order into chaos in the image of its wielder. "No wonder Sammy tried to warn us not to play games with it. Every mote produced is more precious to its maker than any other essence. If it's what's needed to mold chaos into ordered creation, then it's what I need to make my tower within my soul!"*** In a flash of creativity inspired daydream or desperation induced hallucination, Orison saw a blasted and rocky landscape. Lightless skies occasionally erupted with streaks of lightning to reveal madness inducing storm clouds of chaos roiling above a ruined structure, ancient and decrepit. The occasional small mote of wholesome light sunk into barren soil or slag topped ruin only to draw destruction from above in silent, negative image flashes. A sense of dread filled him but he felt how fragile the moment was. If he ran away from it, some precious chance would be lost for lifetimes or possibly forever. For all the complex meaning to it, the choice was simple. He could embrace the raw chaos whipped ruins with all its hidden treasures and dangers or wipe it clean into the void and start over. He had never been that brave or adventurous. But, there was one trait he did possess that wouldn't let him turn away. The once glorious thing the ruin had been, he wanted to fix it because it felt like him, the old him. That feeling held a ringing truth beyond the shallow sympathy that spawned it. The easier, safer and healthier path of a fresh start felt like letting go and he had only recently learned how to do that. The ancient echoes of pain and despair trapped within the cracked foundation and crumbling masonry possessed and ensnared him. He could have fought free if he had wanted to but he didn't. Instead, he took everything that he had achieved, all the potential that he owned and poured it into the cracks. They were deep, far deeper than he had imagined and all that he had barely sealed the smallest one.*** Orison's eyes flew open with a start. He felt listless, hollow. The young mage raised a delicate, withered hand and felt awe. He would have felt more but terror required energy and more effort than he could muster. Looking around, he knew what it meant to be a shadow in a bright world. In that first moment, he felt the ghost of relief that he was inside a tent. There was a sense of being so greatly insubstantial that a single piercing of sunlight from the bright and sharp world around him would have been the end. No sooner had the thought entered his mind, his eyes grew dim, one step closer to utter oblivion. Searching within and without, he spent the last wisps of lifeforce he possessed to find something to restore a wisp more. Magic channels trembled and broke under the strain of simply bringing out the medicine cabinet from the storage device. Porous and brittle bones fractured from opening drawers. As first one raw ingredient joined another in his mouth, enamel flaked and teeth fractured from chewing. The esophagus tore and bled from the passing of them into an ulcer riddled and failing stomach. Sluggish blood pumped and nerves fired from the magic and spirit essence reserves stored in the most hidden of places within his body alone. Had it not been for that, he might have already perished but he pushed the thought away before he could finish thinking it. While mild medicinal power ravaged organs too frail to even withstand their pacified strength, Orison harnessed that energy to turn within. A weak spark of a soul sputtered on the brink of snuffing out as the layered space collapsed back in on itself. Turning a blind eye to it, he searched for the very best of his life saving and soul nourishing medicines. With a sigh, he added them to the blaze of rampant cremation consuming all that he was. Under the brief stay of execution, an ancient voice that was his own said, "Do you regret?" A defiant dying cluster of brain cells and wisp of spiritual consciousness returned, "What is there to regret? I'm too poor in all things to spend it on regret." In what felt like ages to accomplish, he unzipped a portion of flap over a screened section of tent. A flit of feather light refreshing breeze circulated in, threatening to scatter him. It scoured through him, lifting out both alien and familiar dark vapors to disburse into the air. It was the remnants of the negative energy that empowered the undead body he had claimed mixed with some other cursed essence of unknown origin. Weaker still, yet internally invigorated, he endured the agony of opening the tent entrance and standing up on a grinding and splintering frame. With glacier movements, he creeped out. Rheumy and cataract filled eyes squinted at the vast shower of fractal, prismatic rainbows raining down upon the world around him as he held a hand out past the protective shade. Broken sunlight filtered through tree leaves to pierce the shadowy, nearly translucent palm. He couldn't see but he could feel the tiny pinpricks of bombarding rays mostly pierce through his palm as small bits careened and ricocheted within, spreading destruction and change in their passing. The sensation sparked activity within dead protein covered synapses and gossamer spiritual essence. The echoes of recent labor illuminated a bridge between the destructive forces of fire and radiation to life sustaining energy. As the thready pulse of a heart stopped beating, the understanding of conversion from one major force to another bloomed into another minuscule morsel of revealed law. A baptism attempted to descend upon the shadowy remnant dissolving under the light but it was intercepted by a force of such stygian depths that the surrounding world saw and felt nothing of it. The passive but overwhelming force drew two more baptisms of ever greater magnitude before not even its dark gravity could wrest more than Greater Reality spared for any mortal creature. It had taken all in but for a ghostly shell of a physical pattern supplied by someone else's imaginings and two anchoring spiritual tethers which it could not. With nothing left to take, the force triggered by sacrifice returned to its settled state. As with all things, an action has its reaction. An ancient, fathomless curse that had lingered past both its maker and designed target, violently expelled from that stygian depth, dragging things with it in its passing. The path of least resistance to its release, a dissipating shell. And all that it carried, deposited within as it moved on. A flash of bleak scenery displayed itself once more. The madness inducing chaos was hidden behind dreary clouds that filtered weak light onto a dismal landscape. Seven lead colored rings draped around a ruin that the lightning overhead could only touch in a mild static. The sprinkle of a handful of mysterious essence motes sunk into the ruin with the overhead wrath too impotent to completely eradicate. Orison was shunted, poured back into his outer self. Nearly imploded to a vastly different kind of oblivion, he was severed of everything but his connection to Cray and Stefen by the passing of a desolate weave of will strong enough to erase realities. Yet, it was so self contained that it passed without a single trace. He had never felt so alone and insignificant. He had wanted to build a tower in his soul capable of holding his comprehension of law. It was an action that he didn't think would have been nearly as traumatizing had he built anew. The inconceivably ancient grit at the center of his spiritual core had offered a different option. He didn't feel up to the challenge that he had accepted but it was too late. There was nothing for it but to accept and move forward or give up. "If only for the sheer spite of refusing to admit it was a mistake, let's make it happen. Let's renovate Castle Grimdark of the Edge Lord kingdom into something that would make unicorns puke rainbows of joy, damn it!" the young mage said shakily as he waved his temporarily small and delicate fist at the indifferent world. Moments later, the young mage was wracked with pain and throwing up watery gray clay riddled with woody fibers. A couple of potions and some spotty passes of magic added, Orison had expelled unpleasantness from every place possible. In its wake, a faintly agreeable scent took its place after a thorough cleaning. After finding and reattaching the marble form of the suit, the young mage started packing up. "If I had a small silver for every time I woke up naked, alone and with a hangover..." a jovial man's voice said from nearby. Surprised at himself for having failed to notice a gawking stranger for so long, Orison turned to address the new stranger, "A word of advice. If you find yourself witness to a person's weakest and most vulnerable moments, pretend you weren't. That's doubly true of a stranger's. That goes three times for someone who may have possibly been a traumatized victim and four if there's even the most vague of possibilities that you might share common features with an assailant." Slightly unsure of how to proceed, the plucky young man who wore colorful clothes but was otherwise unremarkable in a vaguely pleasant way, said, "And on that scale of one to four, where do I rank?" Orison gave a ghost of a smile and said, "Two. Lack of blood in my surroundings and lack of holes on you are the give away clues." The man's eyes widened slightly as the young mage put things away in a manner that made them seem to have disappeared. "I didn't realize I was in the presence of a young... a-and beautiful member of the Sisterhood. Please forgive my rudeness." "I'm a free... person. And as per the laws of this land, I only accept coin for magical arts related to healing. Now, if you'll excuse me." the young mage said before walking away. It wasn't so much that he minded the man's presence or that he thought there was something malicious or annoying about him. The combination of being caught in the process of taking care of private matters and the less than subtle hints of interest beyond being friendly made Orison want to put distance between them. Predictably, the man wasn't going to give up without reason. "Since we seem to be roving towards the same destination, we can stave off the loneliness of solitary travel. I'm passably skilled at the shepherd's pipe I carry. An unfortunate accident took my instrument of choice from me but-" With the last bit of sympathy and kindness he could drudge up, Orison said, "If you can walk in silence and a minimum of greater than arm's length distance from me, I won't make it too obvious how little I don't want your company. Deal?" "For the presence of your charming company I'd do many deeds, milady," the man said with a flourishing bow. Frowning, Orison replied, "Strike one." Several minutes went by before the man started pelting out some mild and agreeable melodies on his pipes. It actually seemed to help ease some inner tension and allowed for the young mage to consciously digest some of the illuminations of law his soul seemed to passively study without outward motivation. Seeing the improvement of mood and a sudden brilliant smile from Orison, the man felt his boldness return. "I'm Owen, milady. Surely an impoverished minstrel could at least earn a name for his musical labors?" he said, giving a cheeky smile. The young mage flipped him a silver and said, "Shut up and play, minstrel." "You're too kind," Owen said blandly with hint of bitter sarcasm. A half hour of nature blending melody later and there was sudden silence as the moderately talented bard staggered sluggishly. Orison was tempted to keep walking but he noticed that the man was flushed with only the barest hint of perspiration. After a restrained sigh, the young mage handed over a water bottle and said, "Get to the shade. Lay down and loosen anything tied or tucked." Despite his obvious distress, Owen gave a cheeky smile and was about to say something Orison was all but guaranteed to be annoyed by. He cut the man off by adding, "Keep your head elevated above your heart so you don't pass out. As long as you don't take the opportunity to throw a lame, unwanted flirty line, I won't take the opportunity to ditch you... literally." Wind stolen from his sails, the minstrel slumped into the grass by a fat but tall bush. And not a moment too soon, as he started trembling faintly. Mustering his strength to start draining the water bottle, it was obvious he didn't have much left for anything else. The young mage helped him into an inclined position, untucking and unlacing with a grimace. "Unless you have a crust of bread to share as well, I won't be up for much... performing but I'll do my best," Owen said as he watched himself be semi undressed with bewildered awe. "Strike two," Orison replied as he tossed a ration bar to the minstrel.
