He failed, so he tried again, and when he inevitably failed once more, he would try again and again until he succeeded or understood that whatever he was trying to do was never meant to succeed in the first place. But even if such an understanding would come, he would then sit down and come up with another plan, all this just so that he could try again and fail.

Failure was just another step toward mastery; it was a chance to try again; it was a chance to observe what you had done, to see what was the reason why you had failed, and then to alter or tweak that which had caused the failure in the first place. Failure was part of progress. Seldom was there an invention or a process that was without faults when first tested.

It was annoying and often disheartening. It was monotonous and even painful to do the same thing over and over again while knowing all too well that most of the tries that he would do that day, and possibly during the days that would follow, were most likely to be just more failed attempts in a long list of them.

Sweat dribbled down his face as he looked at what he had tried to bring forth the last three days. A small square of fire that blackened the rocky surface it was summoned upon. This was the moment he was supposed to feel victorious, a moment where he should find respite. He had succeeded, right? He should be pleased and happy about the great thing that he has done. But it wasn’t enough. This square was just a test; a puny little thing. Besides, what he needed to succeed in creating the wall of fire, would need to be much higher. The shape of a square wasn’t really enough; what he needed was a rectangular cuboid or another similar shape that wasn’t too far away from the desired wall shape that he was looking for.

Success was also just another step toward mastery. Because now, he had to either revise his plans so that he could fail again. He had succeeded in taking step A, and it had happened much quicker than he had anticipated, but now came step B: make the square bigger, using the same code that he had used before, this time just altering it slightly. If the previous square was about the size of a leaf, then what he wanted to achieve next was a square the size of a shed. It was likely that he would first have to create something smaller and build up tolerance until he would actually be able to create something so large. But he had time, and he had plenty of it.

Thus, Kanrel found rest; instead, he got back to work. He made some quick notes about his success and returned to his cave, where he opened another notebook and began devising yet another code, this one about twice as large as the previous one, and in preparation for the days to come, he created codes all the way up to the code that would create the shed-sized square. Then he simply got back to it.

This new routine was something that he hadn’t done in such a long time. The last time had been his time at the village, just outside his then home, the living quarters attached to the temple. He couldn’t count the time spent as Ignar as his time, even if it had affected him so greatly, and when parts of Ignar had become parts of Kanrel as well. He tried to keep these two people as two separate entities. The actions of Ignar weren’t his own, but he couldn’t claim that he wouldn’t have done the same if he had been the one in those very circumstances. But one could see that he had done the same. He couldn’t tell if he had lived as Ignar, who was Kanrel. He couldn’t tell if the actions that Ignar committed in the “vision” that he had seen were actions that he had done without the influence of Ignar’s desires and fears.

Still, this body remained, at times, weird to him. The time that felt like multiple decades that he had spent as Ignar was more than the years that he had lived as Kanrel. Or at least this is how he perceived it. His memories had changed, or at least there were now new ones, memories that weren’t his but instead Ignar’s, but they felt like he himself had lived through those moments; that the regret caused by them was his own regret. The memories of two had become one. This was a great pain as much as it was a blessing that now helped him as he sought to better his understanding of magic.

It took a week to build up his tolerance to be able to produce the desired large square. During that week, Y’Kraun and Gar had visited him a few times; with them, they brought more supplies, namely food, so that the priest suffering from magic-induced bulimia wouldn’t die out of hunger or needlessly lose too much weight. By then, it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to practice codes until nightfall; instead, he ought to eat then and rest well, lest he soon find himself the malnourished man whom Y’Kraun had found some months ago.

Gar and Y’Kraun were there the day Kanrel succeeded in creating the large square of fire. They observed with shock and awe the swift progress that the human was able to make; before, both of them might’ve believed that Kanrel wouldn’t be able to use such magic. Perhaps they had seen that the human magic would be lesser than their own. But now, with keen eyes, they began to understand that this was not the case.

It was like a carpet of fire gently placed upon the stone floor near the stalagmite forest. The flames weren’t great; they didn’t reach many meters up high; instead, they were just a few centimeters in height, but the flames were purposefully powerful, hot enough to cause almost instant burns on anyone who went too close. The reason for this decision was simple; it was like a training weight; this way, creating less powerful codes would be easier, or so he believed.

The next step would be creating a cube. Before coming up with a code for that, he tested placing multiple large fire squares on top of each other to see how many of them he’d be able to keep up at the same time before he lost control of the first one or before he’d end up vomiting once again. He managed to place three on top of each other, and then the expected visceral reaction happened. Tomorrow would be an unpleasant day.

And so the days went by. This too was a monotone existence, just more useful in Kanrel’s eyes than the days he spent telling the Atheians tales of the world above whilst in fear that they might one day decide that he was no longer interesting to listen to. He would much rather spend years in this cave than in that constant fear of possible death. At least here, things happened on his own terms. He was in this cave, doing the things he did, out of his own volition; even if he wasn’t in the Land of Shadows Below out of that same volition, that could be blamed only on himself and the voice that had enticed him to enter into that dark mirror, that substance from where there was only one way out.

For now, he had a goal—well, not just a goal, but multiple goals. The wall of fire was just one of them; a goal that was a step toward another goal; but even the goal that followed, the mastery of magic itself, was just a step toward a more important goal, which was the Sanctuary, and then, there was the ultimate goal: Home. To find a way home. If there still was a home, he had to reach it. He had to find his way back.

Kanrel wasn’t sure just how many steps, or goals, there were between this and the final one. Even the wish of reverting what the Ritual had done to him was secondary. He would live like this, without any form of pleasure or the bliss of love and life itself, if it meant that he might return to that home. To reunite with his mother and the many friends that he had, who surely awaited his return and wondered if he was alive or not.

He wondered if they thought him to be dead. If they mourned for him and felt pain because of this loss. He hoped that if they thought him to be dead, they wouldn’t be too sad. He hoped that his mother would find solace in her faith, but it was unlikely, for she was like him but much more. She was the Herald, after all.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

With all these worries and goals in mind, he continued this monotone existence. Weeks went by, which soon turned into months. He took steady steps toward his ultimate goal, although they seemed minuscule in the grand scheme of things. After arduous trials and tribulations, he managed to fully execute the code to create a cube of fire. A magnificent sight of flames. A vision where one could lose themselves as they stared into the flames, as they hungrily sought to burn and devour anything and everything that might come into contact with them. But a cube wasn’t enough, so soon enough he managed to create a wall of fire. He could imagine it being used on a battlefield, where two armies met in ruthless combat, with most surely having the desire to flee and the wish to return home to their beloved ones. Then, that wall of fire would emerge. It would split armies in two, burning hundreds alive, leaving their charred corpses behind; leaving them in a state from which none would be able to recognize them… Family members now left forever unable to bury the ones they cared for, leaving behind a wound that might never heal.

Had Kalma done something like that? Had the fall of his empire, the calamities that he had used been something like this wall of fire? But more grand? More devastating… more brilliant. A supreme showcase of magic, true mastery that none had achieved before or after. Something so terrible that one could only be in awe as the flames would engulf, possibly thousands, leaving behind a sea of death. Bodies of the Sharan, and the memory of a choir of death that had filled the air before their demise… They, too, had died for no reason…

Well… in the eyes of Kalma, there was a reason; in his eyes, the Sharan who had perished were nothing more than lives that he could use to build his grand temple; to achieve a second apotheosis, be it for himself or for Ignar or for another trusted follower. Only a sadistic mind could think of something like that; a mind drunk with power that they had accumulated.

There might’ve been a time when his quest for power could be considered just. But had he not already had his revenge? At least that is what the early history of the Sharan Empire suggested. At the gates of Urul, had he not killed Kahsro’On and their Kernen, an army that had almost hunted the Sharan into extinction. Had he not used that moment and the blood of his enemies as the moment of his apotheosis? Had he not become a god so powerful that no Sharan dared to go against him since?

The thought was sickening. But it made Kanrel wonder if that was the reason why the Angels had blocked the human priest’s ability to feel desire and even pleasure so that the powers they were then granted wouldn’t entice them into becoming monsters that would kill in their pursuit of more of it. It made sense. He would’ve done the same. But he wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of such a blessing.

After achieving his wall of fire, he did multiple experiments with his new line of code. He replaced the fire with water, but that only caused a mess as the water would just splash all around, keeping its shape for only a moment, so with water in mind, he altered this code slightly, mixing a heavy wind so that the wall of water would keep its shape.

Air was an interesting element to play around with. Technically, he could further alter the code, creating a cube of continuous wind that would move an object within it, either almost randomly or through a desired route as if it were a pipe. Such a code would be incredibly complicated, but probably something that would be useful at some point in time.

A cube of ice was easy to create, but he wondered if using such a code would ever be useful. A square of ice placed on the ground would almost always be more useful, at least in combat. And with ice, there was another shape that would be more important: spikes and cones.

The creation of these shapes with his altered way of coding wasn’t difficult at all, but creating multiple small cones at the same time proved, at first, difficult. And after that, using another code to push them forward so that they might accelerate and cause some damage on top of that was even more difficult. So what he needed to practice next was the sequence of codes, which was basically having multiple codes that would begin activation one after another until the desired effect was achieved. It wasn’t anything that he hadn’t used and learned before, but that was with his old ways of coding.

After all, to enter these godforsaken lands in the first place, he had barraged the dark mirror until its reflection had shattered, breaking the child that was within it but keeping intact the cat, Deft, it had kept in its arms. That barrage had been hundreds of ice spikes, but back then most of them hadn’t been created with a singular code but instead many; it took time to prepare such a code; he had to see each and every single one of them. But what he wanted to now achieve was creating the same amount and sending them toward their target, all this with just the one code.

And such a sequence he managed to create after another month of testing. First, the code would create the cones, about a hundred of them spaced evenly, followed with another step of the sequence activating right after the cones formed, a wind that would push the cones forth until they shattered against the target they hit or pierced through flesh and even armor…

Another code that really had only one purpose: combat.

He didn’t really want to use it like that, but it was possible that he would have to one day. If he wanted to survive, he needed to be able to protect himself, even if it meant creating codes that would obliterate tens or even hundreds of people in the blink of an eye. Kanrel had to prepare for such situations. And prepare he did, and besides, this too was good practice for what he wanted to achieve.

Meanwhile, his studies with Gar progressed enormously, and they began to practice without Kanrel using the pearl. The Atheian language felt so foreign all of a sudden to use, as did the human language for Gar, as there were many sounds that the Atheian language no longer used. Y’Kraun saw this as an opportunity to sometimes let Gar visit Kanrel alone, as he would instead visit another location. Apparently, the once lowly serf had found himself a princess, as he had confessed his feelings to the waitress, who had then accepted these feelings, to everyone's surprise.

This made Kanrel wonder if perhaps Y’Kraun was considered handsome by Atheian standards, but when he asked Gar, he received only laughter as a response. All in all, life went seemingly well. Even if that life remained in an endless cycle of doing the same things day after day, he’d wake up, eat, review his notes from the day before, make corrections, and produce new codes; he’d then go outside and practice for hours, return to the cave, make more notes, eat, sleep, then repeat… And every three or so days, either Gar or both Gar and Y’Kraun would visit him; during such days, he would focus on studying the Atheian language and listening to Y’Kraun as he would constantly overshare things about his beloved U’Ran’Ui.

One night, he woke up from a sound he did not expect to hear for many days to come; it had been just yesterday when his two friends had visited him, so the sound of movement at the entrance to his cave shouldn’t be a thing. It shouldn’t happen. His eyes burst open, and he lit the rest of the crystals in the dimly lit cave, examining the interior of it. But he saw no one there. Not a soul nor a reason as to why he had heard sounds.

His mind was on alert as his heartbeat quickened. Kanrel got up from his bed and, with a crystal in hand, approached the entrance, fully moving the slightly parted curtains to see what there might be outside. But he saw no cause for the sound. He braced himself and stepped outside, at the same time he prepared codes that he had practiced weeks before. The moment anyone dared to jump on him or attack him, a barrage of ice would strike them down, and another would, just in case, shield Kanrel from any harm that might make its way.

But outside, there was no one. There were no signs of anyone. There was nothing out of the ordinary. In the distance, there was no movement; he looked around and turned toward the stalagmite forest, and made his decision to go toward it. It was a bad idea, a terrible place to get ambushed, but at the same time, it was a place that he surely knew better than anyone who ever dreamed of attacking him.

So he entered the stalagmite forest, but there too were no signs of anyone. Only signs of his own experiments if one knew what to look for, but there really was no one there. He spent a good amount of time walking around but didn’t hear or see anyone. In the end he gave up. The sound must’ve been one that he had heard in a dream. He went back inside and returned to bed and tried to fall back asleep.

A figure remained still and waited for its target to fall back asleep. It had almost been caught. But the Darshi hadn’t looked above. And when it figured that the Darshi had fallen asleep, it slowly came down from the cave ceiling; it had managed to spend a few good minutes exploring what was inside before the Darshi had returned. Many notebooks with symbols that it could not understand, but also some that made it believe that the Darshi had begun learning their language. It wasn’t much, but its masters would be pleased with the information it had gathered.

It crept out of the cave, making no sound; it had made a mistake while entering, one that it wouldn’t repeat twice. Soon it disappeared into the stalagmite forest, leaving no signs of it ever being there.