“The Pond,” I whispered, staring at the tranquil scene of the lightly gurgling creek filling the pond within the cavern filled with crystals.
This was it.
This was what the last few weeks had all led up to. The pond. I’d made it.
But for what?
My master had not disclosed anything about the pond other than I was expected to enter its watery embrace.
My master, who could be for all I knew.
I began to reverse course, to head back the way I had come, but it was as if something stopped me, a force gently pulling me closer.
Come to us.
The words whispered through my mind, and while logically, I knew an unknown voice speaking from within my mind should have alarmed me, I felt compelled to walk toward the cave pond.
Come to us.
I felt my feet begin to walk me forward, stepping past a stone that happened to look a lot like a skull.
Come to us.
I neared the small creek flowing into the cave. Even with the voices calling me forward, I couldn’t deny my curiosity, crouching down and sticking a cupped hand into the water.
Part of me expected something to happen; perhaps the water would glow or begin to burn like magma.
My hand got wet.
That was it.
Curiosity sated, I approached the cave, the voices still humming in my mind.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Standing before the entrance to the Pond, I stuck a testing hand through the opening, checking for potential traps.
When nothing happened, I took one last deep breath before passing through the threshold.
Instantly the voices in my head doubled in volume, sounding as if they were standing directly next to me.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Come to us.
As for where us was, a single look at the crystal-clear water of the Pond made it clear where they expected me to go. Perhaps under normal circumstances, listening to voices within my head telling me to enter a dubious pond upon a strange mountain wouldn’t have been the wisest of choices. That would have been under normal circumstances, at least. As I was, I felt like I was walking through a dream.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Come to us.
In front of the pond, I stared into the depths. Even with the crystal-clear water, I still could not make out the bottom, the pond apparently endlessly deep.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Body moving of its own accord, I left the security of dry land behind. To my surprise, rather than sink into the depths, my feet found purchase upon what appeared to be some invisible surface, the water only up to my thighs. I wavered momentarily, but as if sensing it, the voices grew even louder.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Come to us.
Gathering my courage, I continued walking out into the pond, the invisible floor sloping gently until I was up to my chest at the pond’s center.
Now what?
As if responding to my thoughts, the pool of water began to bubble, sparks of violet light floating upward from the depths below.
“What the-?”
I didn’t have the chance to finish the words. One moment, I stood thigh-deep in water within the cave; the next, I found myself floating in a void of endless white horizons.
“H-hello?” I called out, flailing my arms as I attempted to orient myself on anything.
Orient on what, well, that was anyone’s question.
“Finally.” I heard a voice boom from around me. “It took you far too long. When you didn’t appear for a hundred years after our fall, we assumed you and your master had prevailed in triumphing over death. I am curious why it has taken you so long to return, in one shape or another.”
“Return? What do you mean? Who are you? Where are you?”
The white void was silent for several seconds until a person appeared before me.
“Huh. Well, isn’t this unexpected?” It was a man, his eyes golden and skin heavily tanned as if he spent every waking moment in the sun.
“What? What is unexpected?”
“You.” The man scratched his chin, walking around me like we weren’t floating in an empty void.
“What do you mean ‘me’? And how are you walking like that?”
“You. You aren’t who we originally anticipated.”
“Who is ‘we’!” I finally snapped, unsure what was happening or who the man was.
The man in question sighed, rubbing at his face.
“Goodness. Things have really changed. Back in our era, any would know when they were in the presence of a Sage.”
“Sage?” I stared at the man as I continued floating about. “I thought you all died.”
“We did, I suppose.” The man shrugged as if his death was only a minor inconvenience. “What you see here, what you’re talking to, is a replication of the mind of the Sage of White Peaks. I, or he, passed on, and on the passing of a Sage, their mind is copied and transferred here, where it is forever stored, or at least for however long the magic holds. Last estimates put it at a hundred thousand years.”
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“Hundred… what?” I was lost. Of all the things I had expected upon entering the pond, this wasn’t one of them.
“A long time, that is. All the Sages of our era eventually ended up here, save for The Sage Above All and her apprentice.”
“Her apprentice,” I repeated back.
“Yes. You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, we recognized your mana signature, except now that you are here, you are somehow both the Sage Under All to Be and an entirely different person.”
“Sage Under… What sort of name is that?”
“Blame your master, or rather, his master.” The Sage, or the copy of the Sage, continued to walk around me as if inspecting me. “I think I begin to understand.”
“Well, that makes one of us, at least,” I muttered.
“She told me she was close to finding her answer…. This is the fruit of her efforts, it appears.”
“Her…. Answer?”
“It would be impossible to explain it to you as you are now. The short of it is, the pinnacle of a Sage, of reaching the title of a Great Sage, is finding the answer to the question.”
“What question?”
“As I said, it would be impossible for you to comprehend.” The long-dead Sage answered with a shake of his head.
“Fine. Wait-” I stopped, realizing I had gotten sidetracked. “So I’m in some…. Sage graveyard?”
“A distasteful way to put it, but yes.”
“A place meant only for Sages.”
“Yes. Sages could come here and receive aid from those who came before, and novice Sages would be sent here to find direction.”
“Right. Okay. So why am I here?”
“And there we have the intriguing portion of this.” The golden-eyed Sage continued walking around me for several more rotations before finally stopping in front of me. “It appears you are once a former Sage, the apprentice under the Sage Above All. Tell me, do you have news of her whereabouts?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “She stole the body of my best friend, then vanished after asking me a bunch of questions and gloating about her greatness.”
“Hmm. That does sound about right for her.” The Sage nodded, well, sagely, before continuing. “You have confirmed my beliefs, though. You two were reborn and reconstructed in the far future. How long? Well, I couldn’t tell you as I have been here with little news since the fall of the Sages. Seeing you here leads me to believe that the reincarnation process failed in your case.”
“So I’ve been told,” I grumbled.
“Oh, you have? Well then, someone in your era still has interesting amounts of knowledge. I would love to meet this individual, but alas, only those with the marks of a Sage can enter here.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. Only Sages are allowed here, and I’m a failed reincarnation. So what, this… apprentice person they what, didn’t make the trip?”
“No.” The Sage poked my chest, I half expected his finger to pass through me, but it felt as real as any other touch. “The reincarnation succeeded in theory. You are the former apprentice of the Sage Above All, I can see the shape of your soul, and it hasn’t changed.”
“Should I even bother asking what that means, or are you just going to say it’s beyond me again?”
“You catch on quick.” The Sage winked at me. “The theory of reincarnation was always just that, a theory. My field of expertise was never with the temporal realm like the Sage Above All, nor was it with the astral realm such as the Sage Who Sees. I know of the practical theory of reincarnation, though. It is a matter of taking a mind that has been imprinted and passing it into a newly formed body. Except, in your case, an issue arose.”
“Being?”
“Over time, there have been mutations within the magical world.”
“Mutations?”
“Think of it as evolution or progress in magic. I can see a bias for a preformed type of magic in you.”
“Kin magic,” I added, realizing what the Sage was referring to.
“Ahh, so you are familiar with this then?”
“Yeah. It’s like, magic that is passed through bloodlines. My family has illusion Kin magic, apparently.”
“Interesting, very interesting.” The Sage nodded. “Well, there was no such thing as this ‘Kin magic’ in our era. The appearance of this genetic magic interfered with the magic involved in the reincarnation that took hold of you and the Sage Above All. Your master, being a Great Sage, could break through.”
I shook my head, correcting the Sage for once. “No, Sar- The Sage Above All, her family had no Kin magic.”
“And there it is.” The Sage laughed as if finding a breakthrough for an interesting problem. “Without having the foreword knowledge of a genetic variety of magic appearing after our fall, the spell was laid for the reincarnation of yourself and the Sage Above All. For the Sage Above All, being born anew within a bloodline with no such ‘Kin magic,’ the magic worked exactly as intended. Even had she been born within a bloodline affixed with this ‘kin’ magic, the nature of her soul as a Great Sage may have likely overcome such complications, effectively brute-forcing the nature of her spell to succeed.”
“Then why did she, the Sage Above All, only appear recently? What happened to my friend whose body she stole?”
“It may have required a trigger to unlock the astral memories sent through the temporal plane. As mentioned prior, my area of expertise is with neither such field. You must ask the Sage Above All herself for such answers.”
“Right.” I looked down, or what I presumed was down, given I was still floating in a directionless white void.
“As for you, your reincarnation happened within a family’s bloodline with this ‘kin’ magic. A lesser sage than that of the Sage Above All, her apprentice’s spiritual fortitude could not withstand the process, leading to the astral memories of her former apprentice being cleansed during the journey through the temporal plane.”
“Meaning?” I questioned, never bothering to ask for an explanation of what he had just said, the spiel sounding like nothing more than gibberish to me.
“Meaning, by all rights, you are a functionally different existence, yet the shape of your soul remains the same.”
“Oh.”
“Indeed. My, this will be interesting. What will happen when you die, and your memories are brought here? Will the original memories of the former you be brought here? Or will yours? Or will it be a case where both sets of memories are combined, two effectively entirely separate beings, forced to fuse into a new single entity?” The Sage seemed concerningly excited about the prospect of my eventual demise.
“Yeah. Very interesting.” I mumbled, acting like I cared about what he was saying.
In truth, I was too disconcerted by what he had just said to focus on the Sage.
I wasn’t me, not really. I was always someone else; I simply had the wrong memories.
Did that make me, me, or did that make me, them? Or perhaps did it make them, them, while also being me?
At the very least, it makes me confused.
“What am I supposed to do then.” I finally gave up trying to interpret something more profound from his words, throwing my hands in the air. “I came here because I was told this would be the first step in my journey, but does it even matter? Who am I if I’m not me?”
The Sage stared at me, silent for several seconds, before he stuck his hand toward me like he’d decided upon something.
“I believe you are overthinking what a person is in the first place. You are simply you. It doesn’t matter what form you take or the memories you hold. You of now will always be you. If you flounder too much on a perceived thought of who you ‘once’ were, you will lose who you are now.”
“So…. Be me?”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” The Sage raised his eyebrows as if trying to get me to bite.
“I… sure.” I sighed, my mind hurting too much to argue further. “But I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. All I had to go on was that I should come here, and well, here I am.”
The Sage crossed his arms over his chest as he smiled.
“Well, while you aren’t technically a new Sage, your path has been wiped fresh, made anew. Therefore, I believe it best we do as we have always done with young Sages. We will, or in this case, I will give you direction.”
“You keep saying we; where is the rest of ‘we’?”
“I was sent as the delegation, but upon discovering your circumstances, they have decided it best to let this be handled by me alone.”
“Wait, and you know this how?”
The Sage wiggled his eyebrows suggestively once more.
“Right, won’t comprehend. Got it. So, what do I do?”
The Sage leaned in before whispering three words in my ear.
“Whatever you want.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” The Sage nodded as he stepped back. “Being a Sage is about freedom to pursue what you seek.”
“But what if I don’t know what I seek?”
“Then what you seek is something to seek.” The Sage said as if it were obvious.
“That’s it?”
“The answer has not changed since you last asked, so yes, that is all there is to it.”
“So, just… do whatever I want?”
“Yep.” The Sage confirmed.
What do I want?
My mind instantly turned to the night before when I had asked myself the same question.
“An adventurer. I want to be an adventurer.”
“Then so be it.” The Sage nodded to me. “Experience the world through the lens of a so-called ‘adventurer’ and begin to find what you wish to seek in the first place. In that regard, it is time I send you off.”
“Send me off? What do you mean by that? What does ‘send me off’ even entail?”
“With the residual magic vested within these mountains, I will transport you where you need to be, wherever that may lead you.”
“Wait, wait, hold on? What do you mean where I need to be?”
“If your direction is to be an adventurer, causality shall guide you there. Consider it the special one-time pulling of the strings of fate, a gift given once in a lifetime per Sage, possible only through generations of Sages that have passed ahead of you working together to peer through fate.”
“But- but wait! What about my master? He was the one who led me here!”
“Master?” The Sage wrinkled his nose before he sighed. “The Void Mane?”
“Void, what now?” I stared at the Sage in confusion.
“Void Mane. A derivative of a Black Mane. Was that the one who led you here? Your so-called master?”
“Y-yeah? Do you know what happened to him?”
“It is rather troublesome to peer outside this realm, but assuming he is nearby, I should be able to pierce the veil with only some effort.”
The Sage concentrated for a moment before nodding as if confirming something.
“It appears the Void Mane has left.”
“Left? Meaning he is okay?”
“It would appear so.”
“So he really did leave me behind.” I sighed, a weight I hadn’t realized I had been carrying suddenly lifting from my shoulders.
Master survived.
Part of me was hurt that he had abandoned me, but I had come to terms with it, even expecting it. If anything, it would have been out of character for such an aloof person to remain by my side.
“Okay, I think I’m ready then,” I said after taking a moment to compose myself.
“Good. When you land, you will find yourself in a new land with a new goal, to seek what there is to seek. Discover yourself, young Sage, and discover the world. Perhaps we will speak one day again, preferably before your passing.”
“Thanks… I guess?” I scrunched my eyebrows up as I considered the thought of living within an endless void of white eternally. “Wait, what about my magic? I was told coming here might be able to, I don’t know, fix it?”
“Fix it?” The Sage crinkled his nose as he looked me over. “What is there to fix?”
“I can’t use it.”
“Hmm.” The Sage mumbled, deep in thought, until he smiled, shaking his head as he did. “It would appear that the Void Mane, who you refer to as your master, is still ignorant of many things. Nothing is to be fixed, which is the last I shall speak. Now, our time is up. I wish you the best of luck. In place of a master who would normally bestow such a title, I will grant you your identity as a Sage. Henceforth, you shall be the Sage Who Flows.”
“Sage, who what?”
“Sage Who Flows.” The Sage pointed at me one more time. “You shall receive a new formal title upon reaching the heights of your seventh ring. Until then, do your best to find what you will seek.”
I had so many questions, but I was out of time. The void, which had seemed boundless, was disappearing, a sandstorm of darkness subsuming the endless white.
Then I fell. Through darkness and sand, I fell as the voice of the sage called out to me one last time.
Seek out the villages of the sand.
Then the last of the pearly white void vanished as I was swallowed entirely by darkness.