The Sixth School Book II Ch. 024

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All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...

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Chapter Twenty Four: Torn Reality...

"Forgive my impertinence Elder, but may I ask why you chose to enslave them? If there is something you wish done, just ask and I'll do my utmost to see it done."

Standing on the partially burned deck of their airship, Morpheus watched as the seven pirate airships disappeared off in the distance. He allowed a few moments of silence to pass before answering the clone standing just a few steps behind him "No, you may not ask," he said. Though the words were spoken calmly, they both knew that they were not in any way negotiable.

Though she hadn't descended, Morpheus could feel the focus and attention of the real Primordial on him. Her attention had snapped to him the moment he'd stepped onto the deck and in the clone's line of sight. He was being watched closely. Everything he did and said would be taken apart and scrutinized from all angles for any openings or vulnerabilities.

An easy way to find yourself in trouble or worse, dead, is to assume that your foes are stupid. They had succeeded in convincing this Primordial that he was an Elder. But the natural question anyone would ask in such a situation is, why is an Elder attached to a mortal? And why is a mere mortal able to contain the power of an Elder without being erased from existence? The only answers that made any sort of sense were two. Either Morpheus was lying and he wasn't an Elder or worse, he was an Elder that was weakened beyond measure that he needed a mortal to go on existing.

Bad as the first option was, it would still give the Primordial pause. Even if he wasn't an Elder, he was clearly more powerful than she was. His display of the mastery of the language of creation also was a rather strong deterrent as it wasn't supposed to be known by anyone who wasn't an Elder. If he wasn't an Elder himself, then his knowledge of it was a strong indication that he was closely connected to one. And should that be the case, any move she made against him could easily bring down the wrath of an Elder on her head. In such a situation, to hope for death was to hope for the best outcome possible.

On the other hand, if Morpheus was an Elder so weakened that he needed a mortal to go on living, then it was blood in the water. She might be putting on this meek act right now but the moment that she was certain he was too weak to fight back, she'd turn ravenous. She was someone who had hit the pinnacle of her life order and was looking for ways to break past her life order tier into a higher one. There were no words to describe just how attractive the prospect of a weakened elder would be to her. Like a spider with a fly wrapped in a cocoon, she'd probably lock him in a formation and extract whatever laws he had control over, taking that knowledge for herself and whatever other power an Elder might possess.

Meek as the Primordial was portraying herself, she wasn't an ally, she was a presently pacified enemy. The reason she was being careful was that even if injured, a dragon was still far more powerful than a tiger. She might be dangerous enough to bring down weaker beings, but to an elder, even an injured one, she was an ant. And one that was easily crushed if she wasn't careful. This was why she was taking the cautious approach. Even though she more than likely had questions about his real identity, she acted like he was who he claimed to be. That way, if she was right she was safe and if she wasn't the worst outcome was that she had missed an opportunity. It would sting to lose that opportunity, yes, but her life would be preserved.

"How is the boy doing?" The silence that followed his words was once again broken by the Primordial's clone.

Morpheus turned to regard her with a flatly unimpressed look. "I am not one of these mortals, that false note of concern in your voice is not earning you any regard with me," he stated bluntly, cutting through the façade the Primordial was trying to put up.

The look of concern on the clone's face immediately vanished as an indifferent one took its place. "I may not care what happens to him particularly, but that doesn't mean I'm not curious," Came the simple reply.

Morpheus didn't miss the way her tone had become less formal. To the casual listener, they wouldn't have noticed anything. Morpheus, however, saw it for what it was. The Primordial was testing his boundaries. Trying to gauge if he would react badly to what might be perceived as a lack of respect. Despite noticing it, however, he didn't say or do anything about it, an amused smile the only thing on his lips. If there was one thing he had learned from his mother, it was to bide one's time. Do not punish your enemies the moment they step out of line. Rather, give them time. Allow them to think they've got one over you and consequently grow arrogant. When they least expect it, that's when you descend upon them like an avalanche.

"You wish to expand your domain," Morpheus said instead of answering the Primordial's question. The words weren't a question, but rather, a statement. The familiar stiffened a little, but Morpheus paid it no mind, continuing with his analysis. "You didn't pick the people that you gave the soul seeds to at random. Rather, you found the people with the highest affinity for laws closely linked with your domain and planted the soul seed. At first, I thought that you wished to establish a faith. Trying to force your ascension to the rank of deity by accumulating worshippers even before becoming a god. But then, Roka, an elemental mage who should have been drawn to either earth laws or life laws, is for whatever reason drawn to the law of desire."

"I spent the past few months analyzing the soul seed you planted. Apart from the backdoor that would allow you to collapse his soul whenever you wished, there is another one that would have allowed you to experience the same epiphanies in terms of law that the ones with your soul seed experience. At first, it didn't make sense to me. Why would you, a creature at the ascendant tier need the epiphanies of mortals? You should be far more in tune with your particular law than what any mortal mage is capable of. But then I remembered, you are a Primordial. A being born of the realm laws. I'm guessing that the sentient creatures in this realm grew in numbers enough that not all lust was mindless, and once the laws of lust incorporated this aspect, you were a byproduct. When it comes to the laws of lust, they must come as easy to you as breathing. However, the fact that you are born of that particular law limits your ability to tap into other laws, doesn't it?"

The clone's expression remained completely flat, not giving away anything that would indicate whether Morpheus was right or not. The deity, however, didn't care. He hadn't been expecting her to verify his words either way. He was touching at her core secrets. Unlike in the lower life order tiers, those in the middle tier lived and died by the laws they had command over. To know someone else's abilities and limitations in terms of their law was like knowing all the vulnerabilities of a fort. Had the Primordial been certain of victory, chances are that she would have already attacked.

"You couldn't seek help from others at the ascendant rank as you would be exposing your weaknesses to them. It'd be no different from a mortal exposing their neck to a pack of wolves. Those in the demi tier were also not a viable prospect as even if they are closely aligned with lust, they've already set themselves on a particular path. You weren't looking to copy others, you wanted to experience the epiphanies as far as other laws were concerned. After all, from the same epiphany, two individuals will gain different insights. Besides, even if one didn't consider the laws themselves, the amount of resources someone at the demi tier needs is just too prohibitive. Just ten of them would probably have been enough to strain your resources significantly. All this leaves you with one option, mortals. Not only are they yet to gain any insights into the laws, but compared to those in the demi tier, it costs you next to nothing to supply resources to mortals, especially those in the lower tier."

There was a long silence on the deck after Morpheus laid bare the primordial's entire plan. The pirates had already vanished from sight, but still, the deity had his gaze turned in that direction. "I've also had the chance to do some digging myself. After all, it's not every day that you get the chance to speak to an old one," Olivia finally spoke, her tone neutral.

Unlike the Primordial, Morpheus made no effort to hide his reaction, as he recognized the title. Old one was the name given to the longest-living deities. Beings that had gathered so much power in their long lives that even a thousand other deities coming together wouldn't be enough to kill them. A look of bitterness and perhaps slight shame entered his gaze for a second. "So, she didn't make it in the end," he muttered with a sigh. Apart from being old and powerful, a deity needed to have given up all prospects of becoming an Elder to be considered an Old one. It was simultaneously a title of honor for surviving for so long and a label of defeat in the one thing all deities strived for. His mother, powerful as she was, was not an old one. First because of how young she was relative to those old monsters, but secondly and more importantly, because she succeeded in rising from a deity to an old one. Now, while still being far younger than the old ones, if the two met, the old ones would have to bow their heads before her, an Elder.

"Serap--"

"Do not speak her name," Again, the words were spoken calmly. Rather than anger, however, the bitterness in his tone spoke of one recoiling from a painful memory. From the way Olivia immediately went quiet, she could see that to test him on this would be unwise.

"That's an interesting way to react given what she said about you," Olivia said, sounding genuinely surprised. "One of the last things she did before the body she descended into turned to ash was to ask me to find her court. As I said before, you don't get the chance to interact with an Old one every day, so I was more than willing to establish such a valuable connection."

"Bold of you to assume that she wasn't an old enemy masquerading as a friend,' he stated.

Both of them, however, knew that it was an attempt at deflection by Morpheus, and she voiced as much. "She's an old one. If she wished me harm, she wouldn't even have needed to move a finger. Simply speak it and a thousand deities would have been after me in an attempt to garner favor with her."

Morpheus said nothing in return, knowing this to be true. "To be honest with you, when I first encountered her back in Ethavel, I thought her to be one of your former lovers. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that she instead considered you the closest thing to a father figure in her life back when she was still a young deity. That the only reason she called you friend and not father was because you'd always complain it made you sound too old, and so, as a way to tease you, she took to calling you old friend," Olivia repeated the strange encounter she'd had with Seraphia.

Unbeknownst to Morpheus, a bitter smile had crept onto his lips as memories he'd thought washed away by time once again surfaced in his mind. "She said that you were the most gifted deity she'd ever known. Concepts and laws that took other deities millennia to comprehend, you could grasp in a few centuries. According to her, you were the only deity she'd ever been certain would become an Elder one day. But then, you crossed an Elder and disappeared. Whoever the Elder was, they made even the mention of your true name forbidden so that not even those who knew you could speak it. She said that part of why she struggled so hard to become an Elder was because she wanted to save you. Apparently, while everyone else that you conspired with was killed, you were the only one that was spared. But with your name forbidden and the passing of time, your memory was erased even more effectively than all the other deities that were killed," Olivia stated.

"Why am I telling you all this? Because I know without a shadow of a doubt that you are no Elder. Who you once were is irrelevant, as things stand. All you are now is an old deity that never got the chance to accumulate power because they were dumb enough to provoke the ire of an actual Elder. You act like some mysterious Elder just suffering my existence, but we both know that your ability to fight me is dependent entirely on the boy's lifespan. Exhaust that and you'll just be a set of eyes at my mercy,' the clone spoke in a glacial tone of voice, the look in her eyes like that of a predator ready to gobble up its prey. The look, however, faded as a small smile crossed her lips, an amused gleam in her eyes. "All that said, I don't see any reason we can't work together,' she declared.

It was such an unexpected pivot from the previous statement that for a second, Morpheus was at a loss as to what to say next. In the end, however, a laugh burst out of him. "You call me weak and declare that you can take my life whenever you so wish in one breath and in the next, you ask me to work with you?" He said, the incredulity in his voice clear to be heard.

"It should come as no shock to you, but this wasn't my first choice," Olivia spoke in a neutral tone. "A weakened deity with nothing more than the lifespan of a mortal as their shield is like a dream come true for me. The power I could get from killing you and taking yours would be enough for me to easily break into the deity tier. There's a chance I might even break through the first few ranks if you haven't lost too much power over the eons. Even now, I have to fight the urge to just go for it,' she said her voice unconsciously going low with deep longing.

"Why fight it? Here I am, go for it," Morpheus spoke with an eerily calm tone of voice, a small smile on his lips.

"Because she told me that if I did anything to you, she wouldn't send any deity after me... she'd come for me personally!" The Primordial answered, unable to hide a trace of fear in her voice. "Whatever power I might be able to extract from you, it's not worth being on the run from an old one for the rest of my days. Besides, you went after an Elder and for whatever reason, they chose to keep you alive. I'm not going to be the fool that comes along and kills you. Pissing off an Old one is to seek death, To do the same with an Elder is to seek an eternity of suffering,' she spoke, her tone grave. "It's just not worth it,' the Primordial repeated with a shrug. It was clear to both present that, more than saying it, the primordial was reminding herself of this fact lest she give in to temptation and do something stupid.

"I can see why you wish to work with me, I am yet to hear why I'd want to work with you," Morpheus at last spoke up.

"You're sealed, aren't you? Otherwise, there'd be no way a simple mortal could contain you. It's not a possibility, but a damn near certainty that you are trying to figure out a way to break out of that seal. After all, that's the purpose of the formation in the room the boy is in, is it not?" She questioned. A smile crossed the clone's expression when Morpheus turned to it with an arched eyebrow. Despite not letting it show on his face, she could probably sense his surprise. "Like I said, I've been doing some digging myself. Every time the boy is corrupted by the law of desire, the formation kills him, doing its best to disperse every law associated with him before reassembling him from the level of law upward. You are trying to see if you can break the seals tying you to the boy, aren't you? The fact that you are still here means that you haven't yet succeeded. I can't imagine that an Elder's seals are easy to break. But while you haven't entirely broken free of the seals placed on you, you've loosened them enough for you to at least manifest a physical body,' she analyzed, her head tilting to the side in a contemplative manner. "What remains to be seen is if you've loosened the seals permanently or if you can only maintain a physical form while Roka is constantly dying and coming back to life," she questioned.

"It would seem you are not completely uninformed," was all Morpheus said in response, not giving an affirmative or negative answer.

"What I can't understand is why you keep him alive?" Olivia callously questioned. "Aren't you more certain to break your bonds if you killed him permanently? After all, without somewhere to anchor to, won't the seals unravel?" She questioned.

A dark look passed through Morpheus' eyes for a second before he seemed to catch hold of himself. With the look of a predator forced to spare its prey rather than tear it to pieces, he let out a sigh. "It's as you said, I'm not going to be the fool that comes along and kills someone that an Elder wishes to stay alive,' he replied.

This time, the shock on Olivia's face could not be hidden as a slight tremble rippling through her. "Are... are you saying..."

"I'm not attached to some random mortal as part of my punishment," Morpheus said. "If the Elder that I crossed didn't think that I could help further their plans with the boy, I'd probably still be nothing more than a memento of the past rotting away in their vast collection of other relics and mementos. Much as it galls me to admit, the boy is the only reason I have any chance at freedom at all," Morpheus admitted, a deep resentment at this fact clear to be heard in his voice.

There was a long silence on the deck, the Primordial probably rethinking the wisdom of being in any way involved with the boy. A look of suspicion, however, appeared in her eyes as she regarded him. "How do I know you aren't just saying this to make me hesitant to make a move on you?" She questioned.

A huff of amusement left him as Morpheus turned away from her and back toward the horizon. "I think that's far enough," he muttered, more to himself than anyone, even as he stretched his hand out toward the horizon in the direction that the pirate ships had flown.

Reality groaned.

Morpheus couldn't help the maniacal smile that crossed his lips as he tapped into powers that he'd been unable to for eons. In these few moments when the seals attaching him to the were loosened, he didn't have to worry about draining the boy's lifespan. With stiff fingers, Morpheus jabbed forward as if he was trying to dig into the air. Acting like he was holding on to two heavy doors, he slowly pulled his two hands apart. Olivia's gaze snapped to the horizon as reality was torn asunder. While it would have been too far for any mortal to see, Morpheus knew that the Primordial could easily see across the distance to the rift that opened, connecting two realms that should never have been in contact with each other. With eyes wide and mouth hanging open, the Primordial watched as the enslaved pirates barely reacted, calmly sailing their airships into the new realm as if it was just another town they were heading to.

Once the last of the ships were through, Morpheus relinquished his tight grip on the air before him and allowing the rifts in the distance to slowly start to close. Space would be unstable in that region for a long while, but eventually, it'd be back to usual. Morpheus turned back to the Primordial with a smile, his unspoken message all to clear. He didn't need to in any way lie to scare her off. The moment she chose to attack, would be the moment she forfeited her existence...

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What is law?

Truth.

Law is truth.

One who masters law, masters truth.

Every law asserts a truth. It dictates how big, small, hot, cold, far, near and so on any object is. To master a law was to learn that truth and figure out a way to subvert it by substituting it with your own truth. The length of each step you take is largely a function of how long your legs are. If a space mage that has mastered the laws of space, however, asserts that the space between one step and the next is a kilometer, the truth of space is subverted. And thus in taking that single step, they cross a kilometer. The length of their legs becomes largely immaterial because, at the level of law, they have asserted that a different truth and mundane reality has no choice but to comply.

But then, wasn't there a contradiction in that theory? Can one change what truth is? If whenever you so wish, you can change what 'true' is, then is it really true? Perhaps then laws are lies and the one that masters a law tells the most convincing lie. To a fire mage that had mastered the law of heat, the actual temperature of their flame doesn't matter. At the level of law, they tell a more convincing lie than the natural law and thus they can modify the heat coming off a flame to be anything they wish. Could it be that to master laws, one needed to understand that all of reality was a lie? That one could master any law so long as they learned to weave together an even better lie than the one told by the law and then enforce it with their will?

But then again, what if laws had nothing to do with truth or lies? What if it was about authority? Wouldn't mastering a law be just gaining the authority to dictate over a certain corner of reality? A healer, like his teacher, who gains insight into the law of vitality, gains partial authority to dictate over that aspect of existence. Authority that allows even a simple healing spell to hold far more healing ability than what it would have otherwise had. Hence in a battle between two mages that had insight into a particular law, the one with the greater authority wins.

But then, couldn't law also be considered an argument? One who masters a law makes a better argument than what the natural law makes and thus gets to exert their will on mundane reality. Or one could think of law as an equation, change the variables and you change the outcome! Or maybe, laws were just balances and to master a law was to learn how to tilt it in accordance to your will. Do you want a certain outcome? Then tilt it that way and get the results you desire. Perhaps law was just an intricate web, maybe it was a machine, maybe it was a source code... or maybe... maybe he was just engaging in pointless wordplay.

Maybe there was nothing there. Maybe, like a cat pouncing on the laser point on the wall or a dog chasing its own tail, he was indulging in questions that had no answers. A moment of doubt caused Greg to question the utility of this line of thinking. It, however, quickly passed. Despite the temptation to think that he had wasted his time, there was no denying the fact that laws existed. Not only had he seen and felt it firsthand whenever Morpheus meddled with the laws, but he'd also spent the past several months dying over and over again to the law of desire. Whatever thing it was that had been killing him, it most certainly wasn't just a concept or play on words.

That said, however, while the questions weren't pointless, that didn't mean he could answer any of them at the moment. Just like had been the case with willpower, Greg was once again forced to confront the fact that a million and one analogies for a concept didn't translate to the thing itself. Perhaps laws were a lot like a bottle opener. You could spend an eternity trying to understand the nature of the metal that made it up. But until you picked it up and used it to open a bottle, a whole book's worth of knowledge about the steel that made it up wouldn't get you any closer to what a bottle opener could do.

His musings about the true nature of laws were like someone pondering the true nature of steel in an attempt to understand the function of a bottle opener. Yes, laws had to have a true nature, just as steel did have a nature to it. Whatever the true nature of laws were, however, they remained beyond his reach at the moment. For now, Greg needed to focus on less ambitious goals like trying to pull open a bottle. In this case, pulling open the bottle was trying to keep his law body intact for ten seconds in the face of a law that sought to completely subsume him into itself.

Opening his eyes, Greg studied the light coming from the runes all around him trying to gauge if he should start making more attempts to connect to the law of desire or not. In this dark room, there was no day or night or any means of telling time. In fact, if the runes didn't glow, he'd have been in the dark for months now. Greg could not tell the exact amount of time that had passed since he last saw Morpheus. His innate gauge for time, however, told him that it had been several weeks now. If a whole month had passed or not, he was not certain. When the deity first left, Greg hadn't really seen any need to call him back. When a few days had passed, however, Greg realized that it was now up to him to monitor the stasis formation around him and figure out if it was ready for use or not.

Greg had been tempted to call on the deity to have him help with this task. Greg, however, had quickly discarded the idea. While he didn't talk about it too much, Greg knew that Morpheus didn't like the fact that he'd been attached to a mortal and worse yet had to work with said mortal if he was ever to be free. If Greg called on him just so he could keep time while he meditated, it more than likely wouldn't do their relationship any favors. Choosing to avoid unnecessary trouble, Greg had taken to keeping track of the cycles by himself.

"Another hour or so," Greg muttered to himself after inspecting the formation for a while.

Closing his eyes, he turned his mind back to the puzzle before him. Greg felt like he had two parts of a three-part puzzle. The first part was demonstrated to him by Morpheus, willpower. If the past few months had proven anything, it was that the fundamental forces of the universe didn't like anyone trying to meddle with them. If you dip your toe into those waters, you need to ensure that you are firm enough not to be moved, lest you be swept away.

The second and more surprising discovery he'd made in the past few months was his anchor, his desire for freedom. No matter how many times it happened, after everything else had been taken away from him, his desire to break the shackles placed on him was always the last and hardest thing for the law of desire to destroy. This anchor would be his starting point. If his will to be free was the hardest part of him to destroy, then he'd weave this aspect into every part of him. Every time he was destroyed, he'd have to ensure that more and more of himself was imbued with this desire. He might not be able to fully endure the law of desire's assault indefinitely, but it would have to work harder and harder every time it tried to take him.

The third and final piece he was missing, oddly enough, was the very thing he'd been told to start with. Morpheus had told Greg to study the law of desire. Every time he came into contact with it, he needed to piece together a map of the domain it covered, in a manner of speaking. While every single encounter was brief, lasting barely three seconds, Greg had come in contact with the law thousands of times. Spread out across all those instances Greg had been in contact with the law for a little over an hour. While it wasn't enough to claim perfect understanding by any means of the imagination, it was enough to give a basic idea. And with only about four or five months having passed, Greg still had more than half a year to study the law.

Know yourself and know your enemy and you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles.

The line from his previous world crossed Greg's mind as he once again opened his eyes to see if the formation was ready. One day in the future, his will might be strong enough to resist any law he comes across without the need to even understand it. That day, however, was not today. If he was going to effectively resist being annihilated by the law of desire, he needed to understand it in and out. If he could find out where the law was strongest and where it was weakest, he could tailor his response to it accordingly and find a way to hold on longer. Judging that the formation was ready, Greg once more sunk into the realm of laws...

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