Chapter 9 - Balance(II)

Setting aside all his thoughts, Vern focused on his ethereal eyes yet again. The monochrome world of myriad gradients had disappeared, replaced by this all-encompassing conflagration, supplemented by the putrid smell of burning flesh and crackling of the fire.

He was pretty sure that all he had to do was think and follow the same process as before, and the changes would manifest in the world around him. But what exactly were the ‘laws of balance?’

He didn’t know what this piece of glass plastered on his eyes considered balance, but Vern’s study of Lennian Fundamentals had given him strong opinions about it. Balance is a simplified framework that one can use to study relations of other concepts and their condition.

Like Temperature. Then in a flash, the world around him turned dark. The red fire shone a cloudy gray, while purple morphed into a saturated white. Burning cabinets turned a shade darker while pillars, walls, and their occlusion tinted themselves a barely noticeable shadowy gray.

Humans lying around him diffused a dark gray shade that fluctuated a little over time, and all of it faded into pitch black about seven or eight meters away.

It was clear what was happening. This was the representation of the balance of temperature in his surroundings. So, does that mean I could change the balance of ‘heat‘ around me? It sure looked like it.

Not wasting any time, he came up with multiple hypotheses on how the ‘manipulation’ part of observation worked.

The first one was simple. He willed for the fire to not exist—and nothing happened. Other than wasting a few seconds, that is. Next, he thought in terms of balance. The idea was to tip the balance of temperature towards cold. A quiver ran through his eyes, but nothing happened again.

His heart, which he had just calmed down from the earlier shock, began to race again as he noticed the long coat that stretched all the way to her shoes caught fire the moment a wisp landed on it.

The monochrome vision shattered, flinging him back to reality. Ariane’s face, which used to have a healthy sheen to it, was now teeming with drops of sweat, her rosy cheeks reflecting the oversaturated violet.

His instincts screamed at him to do something. Stomp away the fire, get some water, wave it away, anything. Something dripped through his hands, and he finally noticed how hard he’d been clenching his fist. But it didn’t matter. Nothing he’d done had mattered since this day started.

NO! The vision works. I am just missing something simple to make it work. His mind whirled faster than it ever did, and he had another idea.

Vern took a deep breath and relaxed his eyes. Everything went out of focus, and he imagined.

A grayscale hall with silhouettes of books strewn haphazardly, carcasses of men and women littered the floor, dimly lit by the orbs in front of some. He augmented every detail—it was almost a spitting image of the sight he’d just witnessed but without any bright spots. The incandescent fire didn’t latch onto the mahogany shelves, books didn’t turn to ash, and bodies weren’t melting anymore. Ariane’s coat only had a little patch burnt off of it.

It was the library’s second floor but without the burning menace.

As he refocused his eyes, Vern willed for this vision to superimpose on the world around him. The moment he did so—

AAAGHHHHH!!

—he let out a piercing scream and fell on his knees as a throbbing pain wrecked his eyes. Clutching his eyes that felt ready to burst, he peered through the gaps, not ready to give up just yet—and froze in his tracks.

Something extraordinary was happening around him. It was like a few meters wide sphere was carved out in the flaming inferno with Ariane in the center. The drops of sweat on her face disappeared like they never existed, and many cabinets that fueled the fire crumbled in an instant from the sudden change of temperature.

He had done it—just in the nick of time. A little too close for comfort, but he had done it. He let go of his tense body, which fell straight back on the floor as he looked at the smoke-filled ceiling.

So the idea was to imagine in shades of gray. To modify what I see in the vision instead of manipulating the reality itself. He closed his eyes to rest them, but when he blinked out of habit, his breath caught in his throat, and he bounced right back up.

The flames never stopped! The sphere of tranquility had deformed, and fire naturally began filling in the void.

Fuck! He had been too naïve. He assumed that whatever he envisioned would stay put, but it only made sense that it didn’t.

He had only been able to see that vision for a fraction of a second before the excruciating pain forced them shut. So it was no surprise that the fire didn’t stay put and resumed its relentless invasion once the vision was gone.

I need another solution right now. My current method isn’t really sustainable. All I did there was buy myself a few seconds. But what exactly? He did something right since it worked, but something went just as wrong. There was no way he could keep doing the earlier stunt every few seconds.

Another thing to note was the sphere. He had imagined the entirety of the hall, but only a small area within the sphere was affected. It could be a limit on observation, personal or otherwise.

Could he maintain a smaller area without any fire for long? Maybe, but he felt there was a better solution to this. What other way was there to keep the fire at bay? The answer was simple, but he didn’t want to risk it on the whole room this time in case he needed to repeat the earlier stunt.

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Some sort of resource must be actively depleting in order to facilitate this, and he wouldn’t needlessly gamble on it being endless.

Air. The pain from his earlier recklessness didn’t stop, but everything around him glowed a brilliant white while human carcasses made for subtle patches of darkness. Borders of all structures appeared dark as some of them slowly dissolved into white.

Without wasting any more time, he envisioned a little black sphere amidst the sea of white. This time, he didn’t fill in every detail. The sphere simply covered the nose of the silhouette of a person near the stairs. Then he attempted to superimpose this slight modification to reality as he willed in his mind for it to be so.

The grayscale disappeared like smoke and color slipped back into the blurry figures. Lightheaded, he observed the fuzzy figure of a man by the stairs.

After blinking a few times, his sight cleared up. The man had involuntarily begun breathing with his mouth as if his nostrils were blocked.

It can work! The increase in stress on his eyes from this wasn’t unacceptable, and the effect could be maintained, though it was quite taxing on his brain to do so. The moment he took his eyes away, the men’s chest fell back down, returning to the usual rhythm of relaxed breathing.

The wooden aisle next to them breathed its last, blowing out a deluge of dark smoke as a shimmering lilac maw peeked through the cloud, pouncing forward to swallow them whole.

Air!

Vern hurriedly visualized a hollow spherical film of darkness that draped around them, passing through the cabinet and floor amidst the dazzling white that painted his sight. Willing for it to occur, his vision swam with another bout of pain, and he fell back on the floor, gazing up at the ceiling.

Another abnormal sight played out around him. Flames, red and purple, drowned the entirety of the hall. The floor, shelves, people, books, everything was being torched into blazing luminance. However, in this infernal chaos, was a recess.

A gaping hole that doused any flame which dared enter its perimeter. It was unnerving, yet just as fantastic to experience. Outside the invisible barrier, the tongues of fire leaped towards it with great intensity, only to disappear without a trace once they crossed that invisible threshold.

He had done the best in the little time available to him. He envisioned this ‘barrier’ to be hollow so Ariane wouldn’t suffocate in an airless environment. Another consideration was to reduce any potential cost associated with this vision. The changes he had augmented this time were nowhere nearly as significant as the earlier stunt.

Vern sighed and gazed around himself, checking to see if he had forgotten something crucial yet again.

It was actually better than expected. Even though his luck had been rough lately, at least a few things were working in his favor.

The floor of the library wasn’t made of wood, so he didn’t have to fear it collapsing on him, and the ceilings were so tall the smoke had yet to become a problem.

He finally sighed and felt his nervousness fizzle away. As he regulated his erratic breathing, the all-consuming pangs drumming at his eyes began to dwindle, leaving behind a dull heaviness at his eyelids. It had only been around fifteen minutes since the start of everything, but too much had happened, and he needed time to process it.

He slowly turned his neck over towards Ariane, making sure the curtain of vacuum didn’t have any problems as he did so. He guessed it wasn’t the eye contact that held the vision together but his mental focus on the task.

Ariane’s eyes were still closed with no visible signs of change other than her half-burnt olive long coat and a thin layer of soot on her face.

She’s good. But what is going on? Why did everyone get pulled into that space? Just where did all this come from? What exactly is this observation?

Which reminded him. Vern looked down at his coat and noticed that most of it was gone. A pile of ashes on the ground, including the pocket where he had kept the ancient book.

So reading up the rest of that book, which would have hopefully been visible to him as an observer, wasn’t on the list of options anymore.

Rolling over to one side, he pushed himself up with his invisible arm and sat up. The disconnect between his touch and sight baffled him still. It was like the vicarious experiences he’d heard of from psyche fundamentalists. Yet very real and very terrifying.

His short experiment with the form had given him a clear sign that it wasn’t to be messed with lightly. It would need a considerably larger and rigorous set of tests and trials before Vern could tease out its potential.

Minutes passed by as his thoughts whirled, generating more questions than answers.

Outside their little haven, red flames with an eerie purple edge to them blazed the architecture in plumes of smoke. The likening of scholars turned to ash, the statues melting into formless monsters.

No screams escaped the mouths of scholars as tissues melted off their serene faces, bodies shriveling under the assault of the chemical fire. It was a sight right out of hell. Nauseous, Vern looked away.

Focus. He couldn’t have the vision fade even for a second. He’d managed to keep her unharmed under one of the most stressful circumstances of his life. Letting up at this point, even for a bit, would be truly pathetic.

A few more minutes passed by, and his eyes only got better over time, making it easier and easier to keep the vision up and running. The fire, on the other hand, didn’t show any signs of letting up. It had too much fuel, and the hearths were probably still churning out more heat.

He had gotten a chance to clear his mind, but this whole situation still baffled him.

Vision and subjectivity were deeply unsettling. He had been a fundamentalist for quite a while, and that meant he had an extensive understanding of the civilization’s limits and its advancements. Never had fundamentals revealed anything so…disruptive. But these concepts did exist, and he was using them himself. So, did he have to accept that Lennian Fundamentals were not universal and comprehensive in nature? Or had people just failed to discover this in the fundamentals as of yet?

Shaking his head, he slowly stood up, his torso crossing the short hemisphere of tranquility out into the fiery expanse. It whizzed right through him, not fazing him one bit. Also, he could now completely look away and maintain his vision without a problem. So, visions had all to do with his thoughts and less with line-of-sight.

His plan was to inspect the streets and see what was happening to everyone outside. While at it, he would also check out the structural integrity of the library from the balcony. He started backpedaling with short and measured steps as if sneaking away. The safe haven remained tranquil as he continued the retreat towards the balcony, but then came a point where the farther edge of the hemisphere began receding.

Vern stopped right there, close to the burning entrance of the balcony, and estimated the distance between himself and the farthest point of the vacuum pocket. It was around twelve meters, which was odd given how when he first performed the stunt of manipulating the temperature itself, the sphere spanned only around five meters in diameter while the monochrome sight was also only around seven to eight meters.

Remembering all these numbers for future reference, Vern slowly turned around where he stood—his neck craned back to ensure the airless compartment stayed tight.

Swiveling back, before he could take a gander at the barely visible streets, his eyes snapped towards it, up in the sky. A gasp escaped his lips, and before he got too engrossed, he snapped his eyes shut. The simple action jolted him out of his reverie.

Flustered, he cast a nervous look back toward Ariane and sighed in relief. At least he hadn’t interrupted the vision in the brief moment of distraction. Then before turning back to face the spectacle one more time, he took a deep breath and reminded himself not to get too lost.

A colossal chasm loomed high in the starless sky, stretching across the unlit expanse like an unhealed wound.