The iron horse ate up the kilometers, running south and west, paralleling the plume of smoke and ash from the volcano. People were on the roads, trying to evacuate. Some people were let through, long buses pulled by seven legged lizards carefully screened by the checkpoints. Others were turned back, told to go home. Truth couldn’t see any justification for letting some people through but not others. The locals apparently agreed.

There weren't any riots. There were secret police waiting in every crowd, knock-out and mass paralysis charms ready to go. The cops were all Level One. A hell of a lot of the mountain peasants looking to evacuate were Level Zero. It wasn’t a fight.

“Don’t look at me! Eyes down! Face on the ground!” Boots slammed into ribs, flipping people over. Noses broke as rough hands slammed faces into the pavement. Truth understood where the brutality was coming from. Small villages. Everyone knew everyone. The plainclothes pricks just had their cover blown.

For now, that made them someone to be feared. Their families are untouchable. But the magic was dying. Soon, they would be the weak ones. Bullied by Level Zero nobodies. Not one person would consider their duty honorable or their service necessary. Their families would be catching the same Hell they did. When things settled down again, the secret police would resume their untouchable status, but in the chaos of the apocalypse many old debts would be paid.

The countryside was like a sheet of paper that had been crumpled up and smoothed out again. The towering mountains were visible on the horizon, but around here, it was all smaller foothills and a seemingly endless procession of ridges and valleys. Even in early summer it wasn’t what he would call “beautiful.” Weedy little trees, densely clustered on the sides of the hills. Even with all the green, it had an inherent sense of brown-ness.

His eyes flicked up to the ash filled sky, orange red tinging on black as your eyes moved northeast. It was possible he wasn’t seeing things at their best. The sky certainly lent the hillside temples a certain intensity. He slowed as he passed a larger one.

The locals were kneeling and praying on the long flight of steps up to the temple. Gloriously robed priests, brilliant in vivid orange and turquoise, cried out their prayers. Strong, trained voices, chanting their liturgies, the familiar words calming the masses. Long whisks flicked blessed water out over the kneeling masses, as junior clerics swinging censers purified them with incense.

Smoke from a jar, to protect you from the smoking mountain. Our magic isn’t enough. We need divine protection from this angry world. He didn’t look down on them in their desperation. It wouldn’t work, but so what? Ultimately, nothing they did could affect the final outcome. They could only protect themselves however their limited means would allow. They weren’t allowed to run, not allowed to fight, not allowed to hoard supplies and hide. What could they do but pray?

There would be secret policemen mixed in with them, listening carefully to the prayers for any hint of heterodoxy or lack of patriotic spirit. Quietly desperate and wishing like hell they believed the blessings would work. Truth sped up again. The bright spot in the sky was moving steadily west, and he wanted to be a long way gone by the time the sun set.

There was something in the air. Something worse than volcanic ash and the echoes of war. Not a good night to spend in the wilds or on a road.

Military wagons rushed around in long, rumbling convoys. Police on spell beast rode ahead of the wagons, carrying bright lanterns blaring “Official Business! Give Way! Give Way!” They were still somewhat near the border, but Truth suspected these were more concerned with the volcano. The prevailing winds were blowing the ash plume into Onis, not Jeon.

Early summer, moving into mid summer. It hadn’t been raining much. Too early for forest fires? He didn’t know. Awful lot of closely clustered trees, though. And one thing he had noticed about the towns and villages in Onis- they were dense. Nicer than he expected, by the standards of poor mountainous region villages, but very dense.

That phoenix he liberated had made a point of the terrible vengeance it planned for humanity. Fingers crossed it couldn’t survive the magic collapse. These dense little towns and villages wouldn’t survive a single move from that ancient.

Truth let his mind drift back to Sally and what she had said about nascent souls. The thing that came after Level Nine. The shattervoid didn’t cultivate the same way, but they were quite familiar with the usual way cultivation went. The joys of being in transport, Truth supposed. You got to go everywhere and meet everyone.

According to her, a mage was their spells, but those spells also took on aspects of the mage. Since no two people understood a given thing identically, there were subtle variations between two seemingly identical spells. Truth’s Incisive would never be identical to someone else’s. Merkovah had unknowingly touched on that truth when he was tutoring Truth. Learn your spell. Learn what it means to you. Only when you have reached a bottleneck in your understanding should you study other people's interpretations.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Truth felt like he had barely scratched the surface of his spells. What did that say about those mighty ones who created them?

Of course, the reverse also applied. If he didn’t understand his spells, what did it tell him about how they were changing him? The Truth who learned Incisive was… not a nice person. It was still coming together while he was in Siphios, but once he got back to Jeon and started using it constantly? Those personas came out of him. The fact that the Prince felt so natural and so right really should have been a major warning sign.

His blind grappling with Cup and Knife had to be changing him too. A spell for fixing things. Making them more “right.” He had been spending an awful lot of time confronting just what “right” was, recently Was that a coincidence? The natural result of what he was doing? Because he wasn’t this introspective or curious when he was working for Starbrite. In fact, he was completely indifferent to “right.” That word was irrelevant. Was something good for him and good for Starbrite, that’s what was “right.”

Not so anymore. Now he was having to look at a broken world outside himself and look inward at the broken world within and ask “How do I fix this? How do I, at the very least, make it better?”

All of which was meaningless without strength, of course. You could have the most perfect justice in the world and it was just pissing into the wind if you could’t enact it. Your fist had to be bigger than the bully’s. Which led to the last spell in his arsenal.

The Meditations of Valentinian. Visualizing the perfected version of yourself you wanted to bring into the world. Imposing it on the world. Becoming more real than the real. A completely self focused spell. It was interesting in that way. Every other spell in his arsenal was about changing the world around him, or how the world reacted to him. The Meditations didn’t give a damn about the world. The Meditations…

He let the iron horse drift to a stop by the verge. Over and over he had experienced that alienating sense of unreality. That the world was paper thin, an illusion. A demonic lie. Something to be overcome. And the Meditations had gotten there first.

What was the premise of the Meditations? That, with meditation and visualization, a mage could reinforce their own existence to the point where they could snatch the stars out of the sky. A flip of the hand could open valleys, a downturned palm could smooth away mountains. The mage was realer than the world he lived in. If only they could see it. If only they could unleash the divinity within themselves. The world offered the mage nothing. Everything they needed to achieve Godhood was within.

Even the Nine Worms, those remnants of his partial ghulification, agreed. They didn’t just repair his body. They incorporated the Meditations into it. The worms looked down on everything except that.

He started connecting the dots. The Meditations made him self sufficient and largely insular. It’s not that he refused to deal with others, but he insisted that they deal with him on his terms. His assessment of reality was the only one that mattered to him.

This led neatly to Incisive. His tools to impose his reality on the world. A world view heavily inflected by a famously self sufficient timeless snake demon. Then there was Cup and Knife. Ready to “correct” the world, bringing it into line with how it should be. The difficulty in using the spell is likely a difference in understanding between himself and the angel Manda, its creator.

Where did the influence of the spells end? For that matter, how much of this was him blaming his own personality on his magic? Making his faults the faults of others? Truth had no idea. He still had a fourth spell to pick too. By the time he left the Initiate’s realm, there would be nine spells within him. Nine points of view. Nine ways of dealing with the world that would have to be harmonized.

An initiate into the mysteries of reality. No one could explain it to you. They could talk until their tongue fell off. You could listen until your ears bled. But until you had seen it, until you had that stroke of revelation, it wouldn't come together. A divine revelation, a level of understanding beyond the rational.

Once you had assembled your spells, plumbed the depths of your understanding of them, of yourself, of the world you existed in, you were ready to step out onto that wider world. Your soul would no longer be completely bound by the “real.” It would be a tentative thing. Tiny, in the vastness of the universe. A little spark, trying to ignite a sun. A Nascent Soul, ready to grow into its potential.

And if you never got that spark of revelation? If you chose not to put in the time and focus on cultivation and mired yourself in the real?

He looked out over the countryside. Plenty of farmers tending their fields. Plenty of people shopping in the villages he passed. People watching the scry. Talking with each other. Living. You would have to do your best. You would have to say “That’s just how the world is,” and do your best to live well in an imperfect world. “It can’t be helped. The world doesn't care about your feelings. It is what it is.”

Cultivation was an act of defiance. Every meditation, every moment spent in study or reflection was a bloody mouthed declaration that the world would have to hit you harder than that to make you quit. Like Hell it can’t be helped! Like Hell it was what it was! You were a damn mage. You took the furious powers of the Heavens and hammered them into your own power. You used your wisdom and your spells to impose your truth on the world. It was what you said it was. The world was what you say it is.

And if the universe disagreed? If it sent plagues and apocalypses and evildoers to hound you? You spit the blood out of your mouth, clench your fist and pay them back double. Be it with an angelic blade in your hand, or sitting on a mountaintop in silent reflection.

Truth threw himself back into motion. There was a city up ahead. He would spend the night there. He would reach the capital around lunchtime. Then it would be time to conspire with Merkovah. Starbrite was waiting for him. Truth hoped he had washed his neck.