rrin was awed at the tale, said, “These Orvalen could have destroyed the Aelmiren.”
Enavro regarded him. “They could, but then there was the contingency even Este had created. The Aelmiren were bonded to Orvane; any harm upon them would be healed by her force.”
rrin frowned. “A symbolic event.” He said, “Yet, the stone titan had died.”
“Try expending force for thousands of years and see the state of your reserves.”
“So she is weak? She cannot replenish?”
“Call it a natural flaw. Now, you know why she cannot risk war against the Shaedoran.”
“Why she will be eager to leave this place.”
Enavro sketched the Earth. “That’s a stupid plan,” she said, “You cannot convince Orvane to show you the seal.”
“Why not?” Caster cogitation had slowed due to fatigue, as expected.
“She is madder than I am.” Enavro said, “Imagine a rock gaining the sentience of a man—mories of a life never lived, yet clear as though it was. Emotions in stone. A contradiction that could not exist, yet does. And why would you want that?”
“What?”
“You are human, and evidently, from your lack of such simple knowledge…the Orvalen no longer hold sway—if Orvane is released into your world, your kind will be forced down. It is one of their primary purposes—to quell the rebellion of man. That will be chaos.”
rrin watched, stunned beyond words. The Aelmiren cannot leave this place!
Why didn’t I expect this? Lowering his head. Always such outcos were sure in their existence, a wall between desire and the necessary. How easy it would be to disregard the wholeness of humanity, seeking only the group chosen. How easy indeed it would be.
Yet, the mind knew the impossibility of such a choice. rrin was no murderer, yes, perhaps he was, but in the conscious state of the outco. Never had death co from an internal choice for it. Always a mistake. Always an error in pride or ntation.
That cannot be now. A critical juncture had manifested into realspace.
Reflecting on certain notions, he said, “Orvane has no reason to tell this, does she?”
“She does if she knows you can break it.” Uncertainty in the spoken words. “At least your claims would bring her…That can’t happen.”
rrin allowed the passage of the last words, choosing silence over interference. Let her keep the secrets—a thing of choice. “Do you know the location of the seal?”
“How would I?”
“Shared mories.” Obvious from the lingering clues. Sohow, unknown, Enavro shared an engram with Orvane, from the selected tones in narration, the reality of regret, pain, and sorrow in them. This was the channel sought.
A response. “I don’t know where the seal is, but I presu it's within Kharnel…In your language, I suppose it translates to the stone city.”
“My next point.”
“Your grave.” Flat-toned. “Kharnel is the stronghold of the Aelmiren, since the days of the second age, sealed by the Orvalen, that hold existed. A boundary, respected by both of them.”
“Auwale and Orvane.”
“Observables.”
“Then I must go to one.”
“How exciting.” Words spoken without the asure of warmth often allotted to them. “I wonder how long before I wake up back in the cave, realizing the depth of this specific illusion.”
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No attempt to assure the authenticity of his existence. Let her delude herself; the mind had ways of breaking out with absolute proof. When I leave this place, I wonder what she will think will happen…More falsehood, or finally, so asure of truth acceptance.
What an event to mark.
The stone ward within the hands, looping up and down. A mind-numbing ga, designed to maintain clarity. After all, distractions did serve certain purposes. Alleviating. Into the puddle, it went, sinking, oblivion assured within the greyworld.
Marvelous—horrifying to behold. A symbol that feeds on another.
Isn’t that what humans were?
Perhaps.
Noctivore, however, existed as an incongruous substance, darker than the veils of black over the unseen world. Deeper than the furthest dots of light, shapes, apparitions. Incomprehensible despite the caster procession. Was it beyond him? middleMind?
Likely.
He closed his eyes, constructing an image of the desired event—a ans to latch power into a weapon. What made the darkness a deterrent? The fear, the question that bridled the need to know. A child would stand in a gloomy hallway, marshaling the strength to observe it, to learn what hides within its oily drapes. What horrors might or might not linger.
The oldest emotion. Fear.
Did the event that could create the weapon require fear? Presumably, the surface definition of that symbol echoed a certain asure of sophistication not yet mastered in him. What vested caster could cast the primal emotions? Beyond the lowerMind, positively. No answers.
Another then.
The thing about casting was the multifarious forms in which it could take. A singular end might be desired, but the ans to that eventuality could be as infinite as infinity itself. A webwork no single soul can truly comprehend. Hence, another path.
Enavro, beside him, had spoken words that needed no further ntation—answers in them more than she expected to give. That was the caster trait. Regardless of her motives, any asure of words could reveal worlds of the internal constructs. Auwale was the channel onward.
Orvane would not cooperate, rrin saw that now—loathed yet the thing he must do now. No hate existed between him and her. The creatures were beasts in the end; one did not bla the fur lion for feeding. To attempt such was to bow to that ever-growing ego within all.
Why harm ? Why not.
The saness now applicable to him. Auwale, explained by Enavro, shared a boundary with the Aelmiren, both vowing not to traverse. Auwale must know then. A creature of such might as a Shaedoran could peer into the unseen world, discern the seal. That, or at least, via the sheer enormity of ti spent, held clues to its whereabouts.
Regardless, an answer existed in finding him.
But first.
rrin watched the symbols.
I must first make myself a weapon!
“A question,” he said, gaining the stonelady’s attention. “An experint—how would you go about creating a symbolic event with enough logic in its chanism to make it true?”
“Do I look like a caster?” Now she sketched his face, rather handso on the red dirt floor.
“You have knowledge.” Said in that slight mocking tone, just enough to arouse. “Any question asked by a human, you said you could answer.”
“True,” she muttered, added, “The once primitive Orvalen, during the first age, called it the Language of God. That’s what it is: a language. Spoken and converted into reality. Consider motion—every step is a combination of countless aspects, molded into one. Muscles, energy expenditure—the removal of one fundantally breaks the rationality of it, making the act of it incomprehensible. This is simple. Break down the necessities, and identify the individual symbols that act upon each point.”
Thought churned. The spoken words fitting into a ntal segnt, each bearing a different definition and understanding—together, they sought unity, oneness. Ponder more, and it would unveil. What was there to expose? What anings existed in Enavro’s words—of course, there were. An answer waited in them. Sothing purely logical that the conscious mind still struggled to identify.
Symbols were events.
rrin closed his eyes, falling into the darkness within—the blackness from which ideations often ca into formation. There, he thought. What answers existed in her words?
Symbols were events.
In the trailing of a hall, one can often find oneself distracted by the varieties of doors, divisions within it. Almost innate in how humans did this. Nothing straightforward, always in parts that could be united. Perhaps it was the feeling of godhood it presented; to watch the ‘coming together’ of sothing. The want for control.
Was that an applicable interpretation or a thing born from reverie?
Focus.
Symbols were events.
Indeed, they were—a weaker mind will find acquiescence to that concept an impossible task. Egoistic. They would wonder: if the symbols were the true forms of everything, what was I? Who am I? Do I exist, or am I rely a chance collection of symbols acting out? Is there no free will, but rely the echoes of abstracts
That would incur madness, yet even that, in its core, is an Event, thus a symbol.
To entertain such thoughts was to beco a victim of a paradox.
rrin frowned…More chaos existed internally.
Focus.
A hard thing, it proved, each attempt ending with the drifting of ntation into another…He paused. Just like a hall. Humans did this, the division into segnts—even in ponderings, thoughts often existed as multilayered ideas. What did that have to do with symbols?
Enavro called it the Language of God—humans sought godhood in their attempt to divide and refit.
Destruction and creation. Events. Symbols.
Wait—consider a hall—each step, each segnt an important piece for the totality of its existence. Without each piece, the hall would not exist. An event was composed of smaller occurrences, which themselves consist of smaller happenings…That was a symbol.
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