“So how do I learn that teleporting trick? Can you teach me?” Hudson asked. “After I got these sigils from Sal – a silicate that I met during the sigil trial – I didn’t exactly get them in the… typical fashion. The Sage – the Elder in charge of the trial – helped me fix one of the sigils, but not this one. He did something to help me incorporate a sigil of Rooted Strength into the tree I had growing in the yard of my mindscape.”
“We have some knowledge regarding sigils in order to assist participants with their integration and growth,” Ix replied. “In general, there are usually two issues participants face: first, misunderstanding the non-duality of mind and body, which can artificially isolate the knowledge the sigil imparts in their mind, and prevent it from fully activating in their body.
“The second common issue, we posit is more relevant for Participant Hudson due to the advanced nature of your mindscape and experience with other sigils. It is a weakness in the conceptual anchor of the sigil to the holder’s mind-body. If the participant struggles to understand how the sigil incorporates into their sense of self, then they will struggle to utilize the sigil effectively.
“We can possibly assist Participant Hudson, but to address the conceptual anchor issue generally requires a significant amount of time. And we must remind Participant Hudson, that the amount of time we have available…”
“I get it,” Hudson said. “Back to figuring out your bindings here first. I think you’re right about the issue though – I have no idea what to do with this guy, other than put him on my porch like a… like a garden gnome or gargoyle or something.
“Will using it on your bindings destroy it though?” There was a shallow groove carved into the body of the stone jackalope after being used against the biding.
“Unlikely, but we have no data on this exact phenomenon.”
Hudson was suddenly loathe to risk the integrity of his stone jackalope. Ix could possibly help him figure out how to use it! But without any better ideas on how to destroy the bindings, Hudson hefted the stone and ground it against the spinning bindings once more.
Sparks flew, and loud screeching noise filled the space. The stone jackalope began to grow warm in his hands, and so he backed off.
“Let’s check to see what kind of progress we’re making,” Hudson said, and Ix reversed their rotation so that Hudson could take a look.
If he squinted hard, he thought he could see a dull streak on the stone binding, like some kid with sticky fingers had run their hand along a pane of glass and smudged it.
He looked down at the not-small grooves carved into the backside of the stone jackalope and sighed. At this pace, he’d run out of stone jackalope before doing much to the binding.
“There is basically no damage – just a bit of a smudge – to the binding. Don’t think this is going to work either,” Hudson told Ix.
He was out of ideas, but he refused to give up yet. Maybe he was going about this in the wrong way. He was trying to destroy the binding with brute force, which is exactly what the bindings were designed to prevent.
He gathered up the rest of his “tools” to return them to his mindscape, while he tried to think of other ideas. The concept of a “mindscape” was still very strange to him; the reality seemed to be similar to the physics of the real world, but was clearly not the real world. His emotions could make the sun change color and intensity, for crying out loud.
He didn’t understand how to make intentional changes in his own mindscape, much less go after some kind of high-level binding that a Disciple had put in place around a silicate’s consciousnesses. He was starting to get tired of feeling like he was stumbling around in the dark.
Complaining about what he knew and didn’t know wouldn’t help him now though. He reviewed what he did know: the binding prevented Ix from growing in his understanding or wisdom, and thus cultivation, by “silencing the whispers of heaven and earth” – whatever that meant.
The binding was incredibly resilient, stronger than any material he had in his mindscape, and had countermeasures designed in place to prevent others from tampering with it.
Hudson had an idea… a very much out-of-the-box kind of idea, and one he really, really didn’t like… but maybe it would work. He was confident that he had been thinking about the problem the wrong way, and changing his angle of attack was the only way to succeed. He hurried back to where Ix was waiting patiently.
“What happens…” Hudson started breathlessly, “If you do grow your cultivation, while you are still bound?”
Ix thought for a few seconds. “Unknown, and not likely to be possible. There is no mechanism by which we can grow our cultivation.”
“Exactly. It’s impossible for you to push against the bindings the way you are now, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“So why should the Disciple who put this binding in place plan for that occurence? I don’t think they would. Just from a design principles perspective – why plan for something that could never happen?”
Hudson gestured to the stone jackalope, and felt the pang of impending loss. He tried not to think too much about what he was going to try and do.
“But this sigil… the petrified jackalope… some sort of crystallized dao understanding – whatever it is! – if you absorbed it, it would grow your understanding, which technically… should never happen, correct?”
There was no immediate response from Ix as they considered Hudson’s words. Ix’s nebula was fairly small, but the two stone bindings encircling their form didn’t cover the entire surface area. There was just enough space for a small statue of a jackalope in decent condition to fit through.
“You owe me extra for this,” Hudson said as he picked up the stone statue and angled it through the central binding.
“What are you intending to do, Participant Huds–” Ix’s voice cut off when the stone jackalope touched the edge of his gaseous form.
The stone figure grew warm in Hudson’s hands, then gradually began to soften, his fingers’ grip sinking in slightly. The leading edge of the stone began to deform and melt, drops forming and falling off slowly.
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Each drop fell sideways into the gaseous nebula of Ix’s form, as if the center of gravity in the room was in the center of the nebula, or as if Ix’s form was a small black hole, and the petrified jackalope was crossing the event horizon. The drops grew smaller and smaller as they fell, until they disappeared somewhere in the middle.
The stone jackalope began to melt faster, the drops forming and accelerating into the nebula one after the other in a continuous stream. Hudson struggled to hold up the stone figure that was now the consistency of putty and leaking around his fingers.
Ix’s nebula began to roil, clumps of dark gas bubbling at the edges.
The absorption of the stone jackalope into Ix’s central mass accelerated even further. The stone form had now gone from the consistency of putty to a barely cohesive slime. A large portion plopped onto the stone floor behind Hudson, as he kept hold of the cylindrical part going through the gap in the bindings, making sure that they didn’t touch.
Thankfully the sigil didn’t break apart, and instead Hudson was able to guide the liquified stone through the bindings. After a few more seconds, Ix had completely absorbed the sigil, and Hudson stepped back to see what would happen.
He also realized that perhaps he should have asked Ix, or told them, about what he had been planning, before he’d done it.
Ix’s dark, gaseous form was bubbling fiercely at the edges and began to spin, forming a dark sphere. That dark sphere began to expand, slowly and in spurts, until it touched up against the first, inner binding.
The sphere continued to expand, bulging around the band of blue-gray stone holding it back. The rotation of the binding began to slow as it ground against the bulging sphere. Cracks began to show in between the segments of the binding. Just a bit more and the binding would shatter.
The sphere condensed downwards, and Hudson thought that Ix had failed to break through. But the sphere began to spin even faster before expanding outward rapidly, slamming into the inner binding. It bulged, but didn’t break, and Ix brought his spinning form back down for another attempt.
Hudson realized that he probably shouldn’t be standing so close, and retreated to the edge of the room.
Once more Ix pushed his spinning form against the inner binding. Cracks formed in the segments, and the binding itself bulged outwards, increasing its diameter. Ix continued to push, and as the inner binding expanded, it collided with the still rotating outward binding.
There was a loud grating noise as the inner binding ground up against the outer. Purple sparks flew, and a halo of violet flames surrounded the two bindings before the inner one broke in two, flying into the wall with a tremendous snap.
Ix’s form slowed its spinning until it reformed the familiar nebula of dark gas. Hudson looked closely at the twinkling stars in the nebula, and they now seemed to form a constellation in the outline of a jackalope.
The inner binding was broken, snapped in half. The outer binding appeared to be damaged, but it still remained.
“Participant Hudson, in the future, please inform us prior to attempting such reckless actions,” Ix said.
“Yeah, um, sorry about that. I didn’t really want to give that up, so I hurried up and did it before I could talk myself out of it. How are you, uh… feeling?” Hudson asked awkwardly.
“The binding restricting our growth in understanding is gone. We did not know how tightly we were bound before, and only wished to be free, not understanding what that freedom meant. We understand that now. We understand how large a gift this is.
“Thank you, Participant Hudson.”
“You’re welcome,” Hudson replied. “But only one of the bindings is broken. I don’t suppose you can break the other, as well?”
“No, we cannot, but Participant Hudson has already found the hole in the defenses left by the Disciples, and demonstrated how we must proceed.”
“How so?” Hudson asked.
“That which can grow, can also shrink. That which expands, must first divide,” Ix responded cryptically. “The binding we have broken was not just limiting the expansion of our cultivation, it was also preventing it from shrinking. We can escape the prison of the second binding, but we will need an anchor to attach to.”
“An anchor? Like… me?”
“A part of your mindscape would suffice, yes. Then we will split our cultivation along with our consciousnesses, leaving a portion within the binding and a portion outside of the binding.”
Was this the catch? Hudson didn’t like what he was hearing. He didn’t want to give up a piece of his mind, and he was also pretty sure what Cor would say as well.
“So… If I did this, you would then be hanging out in my mindscape? A part of my mind”
“Negative. If we split ourselves, as we are right now, then we will simply have two parts, both within the confines of the binding.” As Ix spoke, the nebula of gas gradually divided into two equal forms, with a clear space between them.
“But the binding is anchored to our form,” Ix spoke, this time with two overlapping voices. The two clouds combined, and he spoke again with his regular voice. “Let us use a metaphor, and imagine that our form is bound in chains at the bottom of a well. Participant Hudson opened the top of this well, and dropped the sigil of Liminality into this well for us to absorb. We used this sigil to grow strong enough to break the chains binding our form.
“However, we still find ourselves at the bottom of well. We either need additional sigils to grow our understanding and strength – which Participant Hudson does not have – or, we need a rope, dropped from the top of the well, and anchored outside of the well.”
“Ok, I think I understand. But hang on a second… couldn’t I have just dropped this metaphorical ‘rope’ in the first time, and not the sigil?” Hudson asked.
“Negative. The logic of the metaphor may not follow, but the inner binding prevented all changes in our form. It is a paradox of life that division, and loss, can ultimately lead to growth.”
Hudson wasn’t sure if he could trust Ix, but he wasn’t sure if it mattered. It might be nice to be able to leave the outer binding in place, but he couldn’t if he wanted to separate Ix from the trial space.
“Let me ask you a question,” Hudson said, in a moment of inspiration. “Is your name really ‘Ix,’ or is it something else?”
The other silicate he had conversed with, ‘Sal,’ had been adamant that they had no name, and the Sage had confirmed the same. It was a weirdness that didn’t make much sense to Hudson, but it was a weirdness that he suddenly wanted to confirm with Ix.
“We are… divided. We do not have a name, and yet, we are named Ix.”
Interesting. And confusing.
“Here’s the deal, and I can only go out on a limb and trust you,” Hudson said. “I’ll give you something to anchor on, but it won’t be a piece of me – I have something better in mind. In exchange, whatever parts of you think of themselves as ‘Ix’ – that part comes out of the binding. The rest of you stays inside the binding.
“Oh,” Hudson said, almost forgetting. “And bring that sigil of Liminality and all of the portal and rift making knowledge. You’ll need it to help us escape, as well as teach me how to teleport.”
There was another long pause before Ix responded.
“We can agree to the terms, although there may be unforeseen complications. And while we can agree to teach… we cannot guarantee Participant Hudson’s ability to learn.”
Hudson grinned. “Good enough. Sit tight and I’ll be right back with a bit of silicate mind rock that should do the trick for you.”