20 – Ancient Wisdom

Victor walked up the steep mountain trail, turning occasionally to watch Cora make her way behind him. It had been four days since they’d arrived on Ruhn, and he could see the strain of her responsibilities begin to lighten as they put distance between themselves and the palace. As for Victor, his stress was entirely self-contrived, and no distance from any place would help him, not so long as he was with himself. He paused, waiting for her to catch up.

As she reached him, cheeks rosy with the cold and exertion, he asked, “The air up here is different, isn’t it?”

Cora’s breathless reply was cheery, and the spark in her eyes made her words ring true. “I love it up here! My skin tingles with the Energy in the air!”

Victor smiled, nodding. “We’re at the heart of the mountain’s power now. There’s a secret here, but I’ll leave it up to the mountain whether or not to reveal it to you.” He pointed to a narrow crevice leading away from the trail. “This way.”

She followed him into the gap, her voice chasing after him. “You can’t just say that! A secret? What kind?”

“It’s not mine to tell, so just be patient. If it wants you to know, you’ll know.” She continued to try to question him, but Victor ignored her, leading the way along the narrow path as the crevice widened into a canyon, the ground opening up into two cliff faces, revealing a perilous drop—to anyone who couldn’t fly. He chuckled at the thought; they could have made the trip up to the mountain half a dozen easier ways, but the hike felt good, and he could tell it had been good for Cora, too.

He'd needed the movement and mountain air to clear his head after the last few frustrating days. He’d spent hours upon hours cloistered away with the former geist, listening to her lectures on the merits of various Core constructs, and the potential benefits—and perils—of them all. Victor’s gut told him to push on, despite her warnings, but he didn’t know if it was just his pride, his determination to be the best at the things he pursued, or if it was a proper instinct guiding him.

The problem was that Victor had begun to second-guess those instincts and his perception of them. Were they anything more than his titanic pride, his instinctive refusal to bend or accept mediocrity? Did he assign some magical quality to those feelings because they’d happened to be right most of the time? True, his ancestors did speak to him through his blood, but was this an instance of that, or was he just…projecting?

With no easy answers and only more and more doubt coming from the knowledge Wynnla shared with him, Victor had decided to seek out a second opinion. He didn’t know if Azforath would speak to him again, and he doubted that bringing Cora along was increasing the odds. He’d impulsively invited her after breakfast, but he wished he knew if it were because it was the right thing to do or if he subconsciously hoped her presence would make the primordial titan reticent about showing himself.

He scowled at the thought, irritated that he was questioning his own resolve. He wanted to speak to the titan, despite his earlier resolution to wait until he’d have more to show for himself. It wasn’t like he had dozens of “elder” titans he could go to for advice; he was alone in his corner of the universe—something even Azforath couldn’t claim to have gone through when he was young.

He'd grown so lost in his contemplations that it was Cora who pointed out the cave entrance, tugging on his sleeve and gesturing across the canyon. “Are we going there?”

Victor nodded, bunching his legs and leaping across the gap to land in the cave mouth. He turned back to watch as Cora, her brow furrowed, summoned her crimson wings and jumped after him, wobbling in an updraft before landing. She stumbled as she dismissed her wings, and Victor caught her wrist to help steady her.

“Well done,” he said, releasing her.

“The Energy is so heavy here!”

“Wait until we get deeper.” Victor gestured to the wide, dark tunnel leading down into the mountain. He led the way again, but took his time, aware that Cora needed to take two steps for each one of his.

As they descended, he felt a small surge of Energy, and then a warm, yellow light shone from behind him; Cora had summoned an Energy orb. She was adept at manipulating unattuned Energy. In fact, her blood affinity was only slightly stronger than her natural Energy affinity. Olivia seemed to think it would allow for some powerful and versatile spell designs.

Before long, they reached the enormous cavern with the gigantic amber ore wall blocking off their forward progress. Cora was suitably impressed, exclaiming some Fae curse Efanie had taught her, and holding her hands to the sides of her head as she, wide-eyed, gaped at the thousands of tons of amber ore. “It’s impossible!”

Victor laughed. “You saw how big this mountain is. There’s a lot of metal in its roots. Consider the Energy in the air and then think about what kind of effect it would have over the span of a million years.” As he spoke, Victor approached the massive vault door, producing the key from his spirit space.

“You have the key?”

“Sure. I’m the Duke of Iron Mountain, aren’t I?”

She nodded, watching as he twisted the heavy lock, then pulled the huge door wide. Warm air and heavy Energy rushed out, and Cora took several steps back. Victor watched her, happy to experience the wonder of the mountain through her fresh experience. “Now you can see how thick this pinche wall is.” He laughed again, leading the way through the round, metallic tunnel.

On the other side, he paused, and as he watched Cora come through, face flushed, breath quick with exertion, he considered for the first time that it might be dangerous for her there. He wasn’t worried about the environment or the heavy Energy; he could protect her from those. No, for the first time, he wondered if it was foolish to bring her into Azforath’s presence. The primordial titan had seemed rational before, but he was a truly ancient being—a force of nature far more powerful than a hurricane or volcano.

“You know, if you want to wait here, it’s fine—” he started to say, but Cora was quick to interrupt him.

“No! I want to see what’s down there! I feel something!”

“More than just the Energy?”

“Yes. It’s like…it’s like how I used to feel when Fak Loyle brought me into the city and I saw the towers floating in the sky, framed by the moons and stars. I felt small but…hopeful. I knew the world had mysteries beyond my—well, my circumstances, I suppose.”

Victor nodded. “All right. We’ll continue. We may see something, and we may not. Don’t get your hopes up too much.”

She nodded solemnly. “I shan’t.”

Victor had, of course, hampered himself a bit by bringing Cora along. He couldn’t really call out and announce himself to Azforath, not when he’d promised the primordial titan not to go around telling people about him. He supposed it was entirely up to the titan to decide if he’d acknowledge Victor and speak to him.

The air grew warmer as they descended, and the tunnel, smooth and flat, soon led them into the cavern where Du’s dungeon used to reside. At the entrance to the tunnel, he noted the harshness of the air and the cloud of gases near the ceiling and turned to regard Cora. “Can you breathe all right?”

“It’s unpleasant, but I’m fine.”

Victor nodded, gesturing to the lava bubbling near the center of the cavern. “The molten rock gives off fumes.”

“I can clean my blood, so it’s only discomforting as I breathe it. I’ll get used to it.”

“Good.” They walked deeper into the cavern, and Victor found a large flat boulder on which to sit. When Cora stood before him, he patted the stone beside him. “Relax. We’re here.”

She turned in a slow circle, taking in the dim, hazy corners of the hot underground space. “Here?”

“Yep.” Victor pointed to the little stony jetty stretching out into the central pool of lava. “That’s where I found the dungeon you and your sisters love so much.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.” Victor had told the girls the story of Du and how he’d found the Core more than once, so he didn’t launch into it again. Instead, he said, “We just need to be patient and see if the mountain wants to share its secret with us.” He spoke loudly, hoping that Azforath was watching. He could, as always when he was in the vicinity, feel the titan’s presence, but he wouldn’t know if Azforath was watching him unless he wanted Victor to know.

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Cora, almost reluctantly, sat down beside him. When Victor looked down at her, he saw that her eyes were closed and she was breathing slowly and steadily. He felt the currents of Energy stirring around her and realized she was cultivating. Before he could say anything, she whispered, “I’m getting a feel for the Energy here. It’s not like the volcano back home. There’s more to it. It’s alive—”

Her voice abruptly faded, and Victor blinked, startled to see that the cavern—and Cora with it—were gone. He was sitting on a rock, but it was on a grassy slope beneath a royal blue sky. The air was clean, and a soothing breeze tickled the back of his neck as he watched a tall man with long, untamed silver hair approach. He radiated strength in his every movement, his dark red skin vibrant in the sunlight, and Victor felt like being the focus of those bright eyes was what it would feel like to have a star take notice of him.

“Another visit so soon?” Before Victor could respond to the melodic, if rumbling, voice, Azforath said, “I’d be surprised if I hadn’t watched your bright spirit flare into this world again and again recently. Each time, it was brighter than the last. Each time I read the state of your emotions—sometimes hungry for vengeance, other times full of peace. You were troubled as you approached my place of rest today, and I see why. You approach the precipice of the mortal stage; the threshold of a new existence nears, and you wonder if you’re ready.”

“Heh.” Victor stood, squinting against the bright sunlight as he watched the titan approach. “You know so much?”

The ancient titan motioned for him to sit. “Be at ease, young friend. Many assumptions lie in my previous words, but am I wrong?”

Victor sat, looking down the slope as he contemplated a response, surprised to see people moving about in the distant fields. Hadn’t Azforath frozen time for the people who lived within his spirit realm the first time he’d visited? Then he remembered Cora and reflexively looked to his left, but the space on the rock beside him was empty.

“Your child isn’t here. I feel my spirit realm would be too weighty for her, not being born amid the Energies that stir here. Fear not, one of my daughters visits her now, and she’ll gain much from the encounter.”

Victor arched an eyebrow. “A daughter?”

The ancient titan chuckled, smoothly folding his legs to sit on the grass before Victor, yet still somehow looking down upon him. He wore soft, loose linen clothes and was the picture of comfort as he regarded Victor. “Many of my children dwell here from time to time. As I told you before, I grew weary of the world outside, but my life here keeps me happy. Perhaps not endlessly so, but for the moment. Well? Are you going to give voice to your quandary?”

“It’s my Core. It’s my mantle. I want to be the strongest I can be, but I have my doubts about the wisdom of that desire. I sought advice from an entity—”

“The fear-soaked spirit?”

“You saw it?”

“Felt. What did it tell you?”

“She said I was right in a way—that if I restructure my Core so that all of my Energies flow into my spirit unobstructed, I’ll be stronger. She also said I shouldn’t do it, worried that my fear would master me, leading to the same sort of fate she suffered.”

“And yet you push on?”

“I’ve been trying. Despite her warnings over the last few days, she’s helped me to see how my rage is a response to my fear and hope—something I already understood to some degree, but she’s made it clearer. My hope and fear are mirror images, and my rage, sometimes positive, turns fear to hope, and sometimes negative, turns hope to fear.”

“And what structure did she suggest?”

“A kind of loop: fear leading to rage, which leads to hope, and that, in turn, gives way to rage, and then back into fear.”

Azforath chuckled. “She’s insightful about how your Energies interact, but she’s faced with the impossible: to understand your complicated emotions. Do you feel your emotions are so cleanly related?”

Victor chuckled. “No.”

“So, before I help you any further, tell me, how do you feel about the possibility that your fear and rage will once more touch your spirit, unfiltered by the light of your hope? By the way, that’s an interesting change since we met—the hope. You’ve grown much and in surprising ways. Honestly, my sense of time outside my spirit realm is more than a little flawed, but it seems too short for so much to have occurred.”

Victor decided much of the titan’s commentary was rhetorical, so he chose to answer the first question and leave the rest aside. “I’m not…afraid of my fear.” He chuckled at the strange turn of phrase.

“Nor should you be. It’s a part of you, after all—a part that you’ve done well to confront and master. For a titan so young, your will is prodigious, your aura heavier than that of many of my children who have already stepped beyond the mortal realm. If you could not master your own emotions, I’d have to assume there was something wrong, some flaw in your nature that didn’t want you to do so. I don’t sense such from you; you aren’t cruel or desperate. You’re loved by thousands; a monster rules by fear, not love.”

“My ancestor, Chantico, thought it was good that I was filtering my fear and rage through my hope. She—”

“She meant well—a motherly sense of caution.” Azforath shrugged. “Not everyone’s spirit feels the call that yours and mine do.”

“Call?”

“To greatness.”

Victor’s chest swelled to have the ancient titan compare himself to Victor—to say they both shared that quality—but he also balked at the idea of not giving Chantico the respect she deserved. “Chantico is

great, though, she—”

“There are different types of greatness, Victor, and different roads to it. I don’t mean to imply your ancestor isn’t great; I say she doesn’t feel the call that you do. In here.” He reached forward and, like a series of lightning strikes, tapped Victor’s chest. “No, I reckon the flaw in her reasoning is the same one the fear-soaked spirit has made: they forget a fundamental truth—that your spirit is what fuels your Core, not the other way around.”

“What?” Victor pictured his Core and how the Energy at its center, his hope, bled into his spirit.

“Your Core is a furnace, but the fuel at its heart is the stuff of your spirit; a fundamental difference among Spirit Casters and other users of Energy is that close relation. Did you never cultivate Energy from your emotions?”

Victor’s mind drifted back to his time at the Wagon Wheel and in the Great Bone Mine. “Yes—much.”

“How could you have done that if you required external sources of Energy? Of course, you can cultivate Energy outside yourself, should you find the right kind. I don’t doubt that’s how you came to know the fear-soaked spirit who counseled you. A pity her understanding seems limited.”

Victor was still trying to make the connections Azforath was hinting at. “Do you mind explaining what you mean?”

The ancient titan looked at him with those piercing, depthless eyes, staring for several long seconds before he shrugged. “Why not? I’ve taken you under my wing, it seems. Listen and learn well: many Spirit Casters, even great ones, fail to understand that a person’s spirit is capable of every emotion from hate to love, terror to hope, joy to sorrow. They grow bound up in the pursuit of their affinities, especially those they value, to the exclusion of all else. The fear spirit and your ancestor rightfully see your hope-attuned affinity as a powerful influence on your spirit. They hope to wall off your more dangerous affinities, keeping them at arm's length from your spirit, tinting their Energy with that from your hope.

“But those other affinities are a part of you—essential for your spirit to be whole. The fear spirit says that your fear gives birth to your rage, which summons your hope. I disagree. I believe that all of your affinities are integral to your spirit. Your rage is no mere child of your fear or hope. Can you be a great man with the more negative”—he sneered the word dismissively—“aspects of your spirit muted? Certainly, but you’ll never be as great as you could be.”

Victor’s mind was reeling, his voice a rough whisper as he said, “So many Spirit Casters would disagree with you—”

“Let them. My achievements speak for themselves. No doubt the Other helps to keep them ignorant. I’m glad you sought my counsel before you crawled on your belly to that strange entity.”

“I am also glad. You’ve certainly given me much to think about, though I don’t think I’m much closer to a proper Core construct than before. I guess, at least, I know the fear geist isn’t right about a loop—a cycle.”

“Think of your affinities and answer me this, Victor: has your rage ever led to fear?”

Victor had thought about the question at length recently while trying to reconcile the former geist’s advice for his Core construct, so his answer was ready: “I think so—when I’ve been angry at myself and beat myself up about something.”

“Did such behavior really lead to fear, or was it more akin to despair?”

Victor closed his eyes, trying to remember times when he’d been furious at himself. Azforath was right, and the way it clicked so immediately made him feel stupid. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been able to see it before; it was that he’d wanted to believe the geist was right, so he’d made himself believe. He opened his eyes. “No. You’re right. My rage has always helped me overcome fear. It makes hope.” He was quick to qualify his words: “For me, at least.”

“Now, knowing that, you can see why your attempts to make a circular cycle of your Core construct won’t work. Remember that your spirit is the fuel that sparks your Core alight, and as it grows and becomes powerful, it, in turn, feeds your spirit. Think on that for a while and try to come up with a proper image for how your Core construct should be shaped.”

“I will. I—”

Azforath cut him off, smoothly standing. “Time moves differently here in my spirit space. I didn’t stop things the way I did during your first visit, so I think you should go. My daughter has finished speaking with your young charge, and she’ll be expecting you.” Victor stood too, and it seemed his expression might have been a little surprised by the abruptness of Azforath’s dismissal because the ancient titan stepped closer, locking eyes with Victor and adding, “You may not see it yet, but the answer is before you. Once you’ve made the connections and rebuilt your Core construct, then look upon your mantle and you’ll see things in a new light.”

He held out a mighty, reddish-black hand, and Victor took it, amazed by the ripple of the ocean-deep Energy that washed over him. “Thank you for seeing me again.”

“So long as I rest here, you are welcome to visit. Your story has renewed my interest in the world outside, at least for the moment.”

Victor felt the Energy around him grow thin, and then he blinked, and he was standing in the cave again. Cora was there, sitting primly on the flat stone, staring into the distant pool of lava. “Was I gone long?”

She leaped to her feet, startled. “Victor! You’ll never guess who I just spoke to!”

“Oh?” He smiled, gesturing for her to follow him. “Let’s get out into the fresh air, and you can tell me about it while we walk.”

“Of course!” She skipped ahead, turning to face him as they entered the smooth tunnel. “She stepped out of a burning portal, and, at first, I thought I was about to be attacked—struck down where I sat! Then she smiled and spoke, and Victor, she was so lovely…”