“Every single material they know is based on the Periodic Table, energies applied or not to the chemical elements upon them, and then those materials combining with one another or remaining relatively pure. I would imagine they have incredibly hard times discerning individual differences in the composite wave-form of most materials, and so basically consider such elements individuals on their own merits.
“For instance, I imagine they regard water as a single substance, given its commonality, rather than being made up of hydrogen and oxygen.”
His glowing eyes blazed in disbelief. “Water… is made up of gasses?” Candeth Martine blurted out in astonishment.
No formal alchemy training, indeed. “Correct. Do the virindi not know this?” I inquired of him.
“They… have records of cleaving water apart, but the results were mixed and often very explosive,” he related quickly.
“That is because hydrogen and oxygen are both extremely combustible. Amusingly, burning them both tends to create water as they bind together again. An extremely basic alchemical reaction, which can get very, very energetic if we start using Energized examples of water or the gasses in the process.” I waved my hand absently. “Alchemical studies, the knowledge of how the processes of the materials and energies of the world we live in function. The virindi likely know a lot of this simply from observing and recording, but their energy states also mean they have a biased and incomplete view of the whole subject, much like we with our more physical senses do not have a complete picture.”
“Yet you learned something the virindi did not. How?” he had to ask.
“Mortals build tools to help them understand the world. Scientific tools are not dependent on altering energy states and manipulating reality to be stable, and can show us measures of what we cannot sense ourselves.”
“Of course!” he blurted out, slapping down his hand. “Of course…” he repeated in a quieter voice, excited as his mind got to boot up and start heading down roads he had not traveled down in years, too focused on his dump of virindi knowledge. “We may not have the raw accumulation that the virindi do, but ours will be particular and focused on ourselves and our way of life, and could be far, far more pertinent than what they have to say on the subject...”
“I would love to see a treatise from you comparing the virindi style of Casting versus the Isparian style we know they emulate widely, and then how it compares to the Empyrean level that Asheron and a few of his peers could wield. Then I would like to see how that compares to increasingly more complex Matrix system magic of the higher Valences.”
“That… sounds like it could be something extremely interesting. Mutual insights from completely different styles of magic uniting to form a greater whole…” Martine mused softly. “It is something that would be of little to no worth to the virindi at all, as they tend to optimize their magic to their energy structures quickly to fit into the world they are on.”
“They have not managed to pass on the sight and analysis of Matrix magic, or I imagine the spells they would have access to would grow by an order of magnitude or more very quickly. Then again, materiality might be required for Matrix magic, and they might be unable to interact with magic sufficiently to wield it the same way, or at least not without incredible difficulty.” I slowly shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not going to be the one to teach them such things to find out.”
“You’d rather someone like I learn the Matrix magic to find out the truth of the situation, and possibly expose a weakness in the virindi while they are in the mortal realm,” he quickly deduced.
“Would I be so opportunistic and savage about such uncaring extraplanar axiomatic hivemind aberrants?” I put a hand to my breast in shock. “Such ruthlessness you ascribe to me, Lord Martine.”
“Given the tales I have heard of you, Lady Magos, a terrifying level of ruthlessness that you keep very much under control seems to be entirely appropriate, and a wise man should be wary of it, even while understanding that you do not want to use it. You merely will when it is the proper course of action and the alternative is not feasible.”
I inclined my head slightly. “And thus politeness, propriety, and a civilized mind is born, Lord Martine, while not being restricted or tied-down by one’s level of control. Because sometimes all you can do is just slaughter them all, and let the gods pass judgment upon you.”
“Cold comfort to the thousands of undead you have already slain forever. An impressive achievement I am not certain they fully understand as yet,” he pointed out.
“Their years and timelessness work against them. Waiting for me to die of old age is a viable tactic to things that are millennia old, why be bothered by some of their own who are taking rather long to return to them? Perhaps they were just old and tired and their souls couldn’t take the strain, or their minds finally gave way, and they just failed to restore themselves, truly a sign of the weak and feeble they are so much better than.”
He could not help but smile thinly. “It seems you are familiar with the mindset of the old and powerful…”
“It is not unique to them, and they don’t realize that many of the Entities that they deal with consider them the same way.” I just shook my head slightly, keeping his gaze. “Of course, the problem is those many, many millennia that they’ve been around, and just how many undead are out there, especially those caught in the System, being continually recycled over the eons.
“There could well be millions of those undead Empyrean souls rotating endlessly through the System, being eventually killed and put back into the queue as others rotate in to take their places.
Stolen novel; please report.
“It’s why the undead aren’t particularly worried when someone doesn’t pop up. They’ll be back eventually, even if it’s just bound to the System somewhere. No need to get worked up about it, there’s plenty more reserves to call upon.” I lowered my eyes slightly. “Which, since there are no more Empyreans contributing undead, is rather more important than they like to think. I doubt they have considered the implications of their race going fully extinct.”
“They believe they can leave and go elsewhere. The Empyreans have settled many worlds across the dimensions, and Auberean is not their homeworld. There are certainly Empyreans elsewhere. Even the virindi are certain of this. They have met other groups of the Empyreans before, in other times and places,” Martine confirmed.
“True. But they will have to be ABLE to leave. And that might not be their choice at all.”
He caught the schadenfreude in my voice. “There is something that would prevent such?” he inquired sharply.
“The same effect, I believe, which brought you back here, instead of returning you to Ispar, which you most certainly could have ventured to when you regathered yourself. The Portals were there in the aether, you could have followed them back and returned to our own homeworld.
“Yet, instead, you came back HERE.” I tapped my forefinger’s nail on the tabletop directly. “Here, Lord Martine. Probably the last place you truly want to be.”
He froze again, that unnatural stiffness coming with inhuman control over a rebuilt body. I waited politely as he processed that, his glowing blue eyes shifting slightly, as if looking around, while consternation fluttered across his expression, fighting against… something.
“I don’t believe the virindi can leave, either,” I went on before he spoke again. “Even after the Fall, the disruption of magic… they are still HERE. This island, on this world, on the mortal plane.
“They are a hivemind of aetherial investigators and voyagers, explorers in their own way, following a racial imperative to grow their combined mentality and power.
“And yet, they are still right damn HERE, just like you, Lord Martine.”
Seeing the edges of comprehension worry about the edges of his face was interesting. He didn’t want to believe it, but… he also couldn’t say that I was wrong.
It was indeed an unnatural and strange thing, looking at it objectively.
“You are positing that there is a… force, or something, keeping us here?” he asked softly, hard disbelief in his voice. “I… sense nothing like that at work, Lady Magos,” he stated carefully.
“To be utterly truthful, Lord Martine, neither do I,” I smiled ever-so-slightly at him, and he was not reassured. “And then Lord Mick tells me tales of Quests he ran a dozen times and more. Like how many times King Kresovus was kidnapped and replaced and he went to go save him, over and over again, for the same rewards… and yet the King never took more precautions, and it happened over and over and over again.
“Even now, if you were to go ask the King, he will have difficulty remembering being kidnapped more than once… and most tellingly, none of that stuff happened after the Fall at all. As if something was disrupted, something broken, and the crazy way the world worked wavered and broke.
“And yet, the undead are still here, on this island. The shades are still here, on this island. The virindi are still here, on this island. And,” my voice dropped lower, “at least nine Mythos Entities have displayed repeated interest in whatever is going on, on this bloody island.”
He wasn’t a whistler, but I could tell he wanted to let go with one right now as he sat back, considering that information in a new light. “The virindi believe that their own presence may have attracted some of those forces. Certainly the arrival of the Rynthid here could only be related to them, as there was a great war between the two races. Someone… unleashed the Rynthid upon them for some reason. For some reason, here.” His knuckles tapped the table softly, as I had. “And you are right. I would actually have to question the Quiddity in depth, but... the virindi should have long since learned what they wished to from this place and moved on, judging by all past experience...”
“Consider all the problems they have had, and are having. Virindi corrupted by Shadow. Virindi corrupted by contact with mortals. Virindi falling to Chaos. Virindi falling to the Rynthid. Wholly unacceptable tensions within and between the Quiddity and the Singularity.
“For their own protection, the virindi should have weighed their matters and departed long ago.
“They are still here.” I repeated his soft knocking. “On this island.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “You know something. Something dangerous,” he said softly, guessing, willing it to be true.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Do not go investigating what is under this island, Lord Martine, or you will not be Lord Martine very long.”
He stared at me, then looked away. “Say the Word,” he murmured unwillingly.
I nodded slowly. “I have spoken Truth.”
He twitched from head to toe, and the azure energies forming his eyes sputtered and flared as the Word impacted what he was thinking and remembering, but he recovered forcibly. “I will endeavor not to do so,” he replied quickly. “Studies of the ley lines in particular…”
“I think it would be better for you to reclaim some of your humanity, build some ties with your Prodigal brothers, and learn the Matrix Magic. They are all extraordinarily good uses of your time, and will keep you very busy and encouraged.”
“I would like to stay informed of things relating to this that you discover,” he said softly, a grim undertone to his voice. “There is a feeling here I do not like…”
“It is the feeling of being manipulated, of having your heart and mind and soul messed with,” I informed him gently, but firmly, noting his long frown of comprehension and dislike of that very thing. “Lord Mick gets the exact same expression on his face that you have on yours now when he realizes just how much his head was messed with for years and years.” I narrowed my eyes again. “Now consider that the same force has been doing it to the virindi, a hivemind of incredible power, AND it has been doing it to the shades, and particularly the undead, for tens of thousands of years.
“They are slaves to the System and whatever is behind it, and are simply incapable of realizing it. Asheron himself likely was suborned by it and didn’t have a clue.”
“Do you know how disturbing this news is to someone like me, Lady Magos?” Martine asked, his face twisting.
I just nodded slowly. “You think you are powerful, in charge of your own destiny, with few peers in the world, few things that can threaten you…
“And then you realize you are once again a bug in a jar, and you aren’t in control of anything. You’re just like the rest of us, just a bigger, shinier bug than the rest of us… and the big bugs are the bugs things happen to and who get screwed up the most.”
“The Quiddity not being strong enough to defy them. That… is a level of power I did not believe could exist,” he admitted very softly.
“It is power at the level of a true god, Lord Martine.” I favored him with a slight smile.
His eyes slowly, slowly dipped down at the floor. “A true god,” he repeated hollowly.
My own eyes went up in counterpoint. “A true god, yes…”
And so our conversation mostly ended, save for arranging for a tutor to come to the Keep and begin teaching him and his servants of the new Matrix magic, and what it could do…