It turns out that when asking yourself, ‘What’s a little run?’, you set yourself up for sixteen hours of burning lungs, aching arms, and a body that gasped for both oxygen and mana.
Who knew?
Hours passed as I ran my heart out, even my thoughts fading into nothing more than background noise as I listened to the sound of my own breathing.
Breath in…. And out.
The terrain bled away with a frightening speed, hours passing before the trees thinned out into nothing more than a barren land, tiny hills far on the horizon.
That must be it.
My run continued for hours more as the tiny hills grew larger until they had become a sight I’d burned into my memory years ago.
Slowing my run, I came to a stop before the mountain. The first moment in sixteen hours, I had to rest my feet. I looked upward, craning my neck as I stared at the mountaintop where I knew the Pond would be located.
“Huh…” I muttered to myself. “Smaller than I remember.”
Climbing the mountain as a kid had felt like climbing to the ceiling of the world; now, looking up at the peak, it was hardly a mountain, in truth. The only reason it had taken Imako and me as long as it had to scale the mountain must have been the fact that Imako was stuck waiting on me. By himself, he could’ve probably done it within an hour.
Glancing down at my feet, I sighed, patting my legs comfortingly. “Which means you guys got another hour to go.”
Taking a final deep sigh, I began my trudge up the mountain. It was a strange feeling; I’d only ever been here once before, and yet each footfall felt as if I’d done it a thousand times before.
Strange.
Nearly halfway up the mountain, I stopped, glancing further down, half expecting to see men and women on horseback trailing me up the mountain. There were none, and yet I almost found myself longing to see that sight that had scared me half to death as a child.
A chance to redo things?
What would have been different had I the strength to confront them with Imako all those years ago? Perhaps not much. Perhaps I’d have been sent to the exact same spot, or perhaps fate would have found a different, more appropriate path for me.
Silly musings of a run-drunk man.
I continued my way upward, once more coming to a stop shortly before the summit, taking in the sight.
What the hell happened here?
It was as if a volcano had erupted just shy of the summit. Melted rock and twisted black obsidian scarred the ground, and the bones of what were clearly people scattered throughout, clear signs of aging showing that none of it was fresh.
On second thought, I think I can figure it out.
This had been where Imako had confronted our pursuers, and evidently dealt with them using extreme prejudice. Still, the evidence of almost volcanic-like activity could have only been produced through Deviant-level magic. It was a rather powerful reminder of the powerful magic Imako was capable of and how I’d only seen a fraction of what he could do.
Still curious, I crouched down, picked up a piece of obsidian, and turned it over between my fingers as I inspected it.
There is no magical residue, which means the application of magic was practical, and magma was made utilizing the natural earth elements around it.
I dropped the obsidian, no longer interested. Leaving behind the scarred scenery, I climbed the last bit of the mountain and found myself met with the mountaintop. There, a small creek flowed, connected to a cavern atop the mountain where I knew the Pond lay. The last time I’d been here, I’d heard the voices of Sages long past calling out to me, but now all was silent.
Curious.
I strode forward into the cavern, admiring the pink crystals dotting the cave. Unlike when I’d been young and forced to wade out into the depths of the pond, the instant my foot touched the clear water, the world vanished around me, and I found myself in a familiar scene.
What was strange was that it was familiar in a way I wasn’t expecting. It wasn’t a white void, as I had recalled. Instead, I was in what looked to be a brightly lit laboratory or research facility of sorts.
I’ve been here before.
“Ahh, if it isn’t the Sage Who Flows.” A voice interrupted my thoughts. Appearing from a doorway off to the side, two figures entered who I recognized. The first was the single Sage who had met me when I’d first come here. The second was-
“Wisdom?” I questioned, my eyebrows shooting up.
“Well, I’m not surprised you recognized me.” The Sage crossed his arms as he inspected me. “Unfortunately, I have no recollection of you.”
“What do you mean, didn’t- oh.” I cut myself off as I put the pieces together. “That’s right. That wasn’t you; that was your vestige.”
The Sage nodded as if already aware.
“Wisdom here decided to join me as we sensed your little journey here. I’ll say it was intriguing to find you had a resonating mark with Wisdom here, given Wisdom is already dead. Else, he wouldn’t be here.” The Sage chuckled. “Which, of course, means you were taken on as an apprentice by his Vestige.”
“It’s a bit vexing, I’ll admit.” Wisdom sighed. “That my Vestige remains influencing and interacting with the world even after my passing. While my Vestige may not represent me fully as I once was, the fact that it took you on as an apprentice of sorts means that it recognized you for your worth. I must question how you found yourself in my Citadel. I believe I had done a rather good job of sealing it off from the rest of the world so that only another Great Sage or such could unseal it.”
“It’s a bit of a long story.” I shrugged. “I don’t actually know how it was unsealed, but I do have my own speculations.” I nodded toward the other Sage, figuring he’d be able to fill in the blanks.
“Ahh, I do suppose you mean the Sage Above All.” He answered. “Yes, that would explain it.”
“Well, however, she did it; after being thrown down an endless void, I ended up appearing at the bottom of the dungeon, where I was met with your Vestige,” I said to Wisdom.
“An endless void…? Oh, I know of the room you refer to. It was where I did much of my research into the depths of darkness, staring out into the cosmos.”
“Y-yeah, sure,” I said. “Long story short, your Vestige trained me for some time next to the great rift and also gave me the mana matrix.”
“Besides the fact that my precious Citadel was transformed into a dungeon, I suppose there is nothing of much concern with such a story.” Wisdom tapped a finger on his bicep. “Though I do find it curious that Above All would go through the efforts of turning it into a dungeon. Even for a Great Sage, that takes considerable time and effort.”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve barely an idea of what she is up to.” I shrugged.
“So then, past history aside, what brings you here, young Sage?” The Sage of White Peaks questioned me. “Unlike last time, you weren’t being pursued, so what could possibly bring you here?”
“Honestly.” I looked between the two Sages before I scratched my chin. “Nothing, really.”
“Nothing?” Wisdom turned to White Peaks, incredulous. “Back in our era, admittance to the Pond was a great reward, a chance to speak with those who came before, hundreds and thousands of years of wisdom and knowledge that could be conversed with. And you just came here because… you felt like it?”
“Well, if you must know.” I snapped perhaps a little more harshly than intended. “I was on my way north to single-handily, or near single-handedly, bring down walls which have never once been conquered in the hundreds of years they have been up. I just detoured here because it’s been my first chance since I was a kid. Not like I knew that I had to do some big humbug of a task to be granted the reward of talking with a bunch of dead people.”
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I found myself in a glowering contest with the Sage of Wisdom, who, in my opinion, was decidedly less sociable than their Vestige. That was until we were interrupted by White Peaks clapping his hands.
“Yes, that is what has been missing for so long, the bickering between a master and their apprentice.”
“He’s not my master.”
“He’s not my apprentice.”
“Yes, just like that.” White Peaks was all but cackling before he smothered it a moment later. “Now, as much fun as this is, I’m not the ranking Sage here, so it’s Wisdom here who should be the one to help you with your task.”
Wisdom was silent for a moment before he sighed. “Yes, I suppose. You have a rather worthwhile task, I suppose, and while I may not have the insight into what my Vestige was thinking when he took you on as an apprentice, you are still in your right as my apprentice, even if only in technicality. Also, ignoring your reasons, the sheer weight of your essence is promising, the obvious talents of your age.”
“The weight of my essence?”
“Soul, spirit, whatever you like to call it.” White Peaks answered. “You can think of it as a measure of your connection to the world, to existence itself. Some Sages sought to have an essence as dense as a mountain, while others felt that becoming a truly transient existence was the course they sought, an essence as light as a feather. At the very least, those with a heavy essence, such as yourself, would go on to become major figures of importance on the grand scale of history, in one form or another. As a fifth-ring Sage, you have an essence that marks you as exponentially more advanced than your status would normally imply; in fact, I could mistake you for a seventh-ring sage if measured by the density of your essence alone.”
“And a second ring if measured by the strength of your mana.” Wisdom said with unbefitting snark.
Was this what the living Sage of Wisdom was closer to? Snark and sarcasm? I can see how he was friends with the Sage Above All if that’s the case.
“And yet he speaks of bringing down an unconquerable defensive position by himself.” White Peaks reminded.
“Yes, yes, I suppose these walls would be the planned Great Walls of the North, which they managed to complete in the time since I’ve been dead.” Wisdom shrugged as if he didn’t find the thought impressive. “So, how tall did reach? Do they scrape the heavens themselves?”
“They’re fifty meters at the least.”
“Oh, not terrible.” Wisdom, who had been deferential, seemed impressed for a moment. “Composition?”
“Northern granite.”
“Tough.” Wisdom nodded. “But not impenetrable. To smash through walls such as those with pure magical muscle would be taxing for even the most high-ranking Sages. Wide-scale destructive magic was more the forte of the True Dragons, after all. Are they magically enchanted?”
“I haven’t inspected them myself, but from what I’ve gleaned from what others have mentioned, there appear to be minor enchantments, mostly those to prevent ordinary wear and tear with a very minor degree of self-restorative properties also imbued. I’m assuming that they draw minuscule amounts of mana from every citizen within the walls, and as a collective, it provides more than enough to fuel the enchantment indefinitely.”
“I suppose they weren’t all short-sighted idiots after the Sages passed from history.” Wisdom took a seat at one of the worktables. I followed him, sitting across while White Peaks stood silently off the side as if he were here only as a chaperone. “Interesting indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised if some former friends or acquaintances of some Sages were helping. In fact, there was that research lab in the far north; they were studying some interesting fields of magic. Perhaps some were spared, and in return, they settled nearby within the city and helped with the planning and the construction of some walls”
“Yeah, I’ve met them.” I thought back to my experience traveling through the frozen dungeon. “It’s a dungeon now.’
“Oh? And what of the research heads?”
‘They belong to the dungeon now as the Will of the Dungeon.”
“Ahh, intriguing, but not that it matters to me past passing intrigue. In this state, being dead, that is, it’s not like I can pay them a visit, nor can they come here. I do find myself curious what research they could be up to even now.”
“And how does that matter to this situation?”
“It doesn’t, but one can never relinquish what it was that strove them in life, and the pursuit of knowledge, of wisdom, has always been my motivation. I would question your understanding of what wisdom truly means, but given my Vestige took you on as an apprentice I have no doubt he would have had the foresight to pound such a notion into your skull.”
“Yes, that he did. Now, as you were saying about the walls?”
“Yes, well, northern granite is some of the toughest material out there than can be conventionally gathered. There was an island in the south with cliff faces made of-”
“Been there, seen it, let’s move on.”
“Tsk.” Wisdom seemed annoyed that his tangent had been cut off, but he didn’t complain further. “Yes well, northern granite is impressively strong, compressive strength that is all but unbreakable with even a surprisingly high tensile strength given its stone. The granite even has minor mana absorption, which is part of why the enchantments laid into these walls have worked as well as they have over the years since they likely have no need for external mana crystals to store the mana they gain from the populace. Yes, bringing down such walls truly is a task for someone of your caliber. Why not simply secretly enter and open the gates from the inside?”
“I’m considering the option,” I admitted. “But the problem is, we are doing this to hold the north with a relatively small group, at least compared to what is stationed here.”
“Ahh, so a show of force is needed to grind their spirits into the ground. Spoken like one whose former soul was apprenticed under Above All.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” I sighed. Once, the notion of my soul having belonged to an entirely different person had left me awake for countless nights, but since my encounter with the leviathan months ago, I’d come more to terms with the thought. “My issue is, even by the standards of past Sages, my magic generally isn’t destructive enough to even scratch the walls.”
“Yes, your handicap, that crippled mana core of yours, prevents you from vastly increasing your reserves of mana. You’ve done well repurposing your Sage rings as both mana accumulators and storage vessels, but it doesn’t change that compared to an ordinary sage of your same status, you have less than a hundredth of the mana they could draw upon.”
For a moment, I felt like I’d been sucker punched. I’d always known I was ‘behind the curve’ as far as my mana capacity went, but in recent years, I’d felt like I’d been managing to catch up some. The issue was that I’d been comparing myself to modern mages and not Sages.
Less than a hundredth. Gods and lords above, if that doesn’t strike a nerve.
“Now, your form of magic is a different question entirely. If I was speaking to another fifth ring sage of the past, my best advice for them would be a single concentrated release of the entirety of the contents of their mana core. Releasing so much ascended mana would undoubtedly do severe damage to such a fortification, but alas, you do not have that possibility. In truth, even that much mana may not be enough coming from a mere fifth-ring sage. So, with less than a hundredth of the mana reserves of your equivalent peers, you must do what even they would likely fail at. Tell me, my technical apprentice, what is the real problem at hand here, and how do we solve it?”
I thought for a moment, letting thoughts wander and blend together before discarding them. I repeated the process for nearly a minute straight before I nodded to myself.
“It’s a problem of quantity. Taking the summation of a whole doesn’t change the fact that using the most basic calculus can tell us that it won’t be enough.”
“Correct, but something I pointed out myself.”
I focused for a moment before a sword appeared in my hand. It was a well-refined sword made of polished steel with a razor-sharp edge, but it was not all that interesting from an artistic point of view; it was nothing but an ordinary weapon of war.
“Rainsplitter,” I said, tilting my head toward the blade as I kept Wisdom in the loop. “It’s a spellform of my understanding of what a sword is. Being a spellform, it evolves as my understanding of what a sword evolves, alongside my obvious growth as a Sage.”
Wisdom was silent, letting me do the talking as I turned the blade around in my hands. It wasn’t really there; we were inside some sort of thought dimension, so any magic was likely only a shadow or a reflection of the real thing, but it fit what I needed.
“It’s my most powerful form of magic. As I said, it incorporates my understanding of what a sword is into its formation, but it also grows alongside my magic. In its current state, it can bend space and dissipate resisting magic when fully released. Once, I managed to release it in an extra-released state after siphoning off some of your own mana to strike down a Hollow. I didn’t even have four rings at the time.”
“Hollow’s, nature's magical trash dispenser. The Hollows within my Citadel were kept specifically for assistance in developing the Mana Matrix. Those Hollows were also roughly as powerful as a sixth or seventh ring Sage, so I’m impressed you managed to slay one, even siphoning some of my remaining power.”
Nothing said was much of a revelation other than the specifics of just how powerful the Hollow had been. Ignoring it, I continued my thought process.
“Even with that much power, I have doubts I could split the walls of Theronhold in one strike. Inflict some heavy damage? Sure. Split them? Not a chance.”
I mulled over my thoughts, letting an unknown amount of time pass—maybe no time at all—the flow of time wasn’t exactly normal within such a realm.
“Rainsplitter is my best shot.” I finally concluded. “But I don’t have enough metaphorical juice to feed it the strength to strike down the walls in one go; in fact, I may never have the mana necessary to give it that much juice.”
“Your problem of quantity.” Wisdom agreed.
“But a sword isn’t an ax,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “And Rainsplitter is a spellform of my understanding of what a sword is.”
“A conceptual weapon of sorts.” Wisdom nodded.
“Just adding more power to Rainsplitter is like trying to just add more steel to a sword. Eventually, it becomes too heavy and unwieldy to even be classified as a sword anymore; it loses its identity. What I need, then, is a way to sharpen Rainsplitter.”
“Your understanding of the concept must deepen.”
“Exactly.” I agreed. “But easier said than done. A sword is a sword, but how I view a sword grows and changes with time and experience. The issue is, I can’t just suddenly gain such insight in a measly few days. When I drew upon your mana to slay the Hollow, it wasn’t just the raw power that amplified it, was it? It was also the embers of your own understanding of such a concept.”
“I never much cared for swords or typical mundane weapons, but given my identity as the Sage of Wisdom, it was part of my very existence to expand the horizon of my own wisdom.”
An idea began to form, the mere specks of an idea, but an idea, nonetheless.
“You seem like you’ve come up with something.”
“You could say that.” I nodded. “If my understanding of what a sword is is lacking, then I simply borrow from elsewhere.”
Wisdom’s eyebrows furrowed, for once looking deep in thought. “And how do you suppose to do as such? From what you’ve said, there are no sources of profound understanding that you can borrow from nearby that surpass your own; your role as being the wall-breaker indicates you are the person of power that must be borrowed from.”
A shark-like expression crossed my face as I reveled in knowing more than the Sage of Wisdom. “Who said I wasn’t going to borrow from myself?”