CHAPTER 482

THE EXTREMES

Lino stared at the void beyond the sky, currently ablaze with the molten rocks trailing across like the falling stars. Only One and he remained floating high up, others having withdrawn down to the ground.

It was a spectacular sight, as much as it was destructive. The rocks were like an army, ineffable in their make, fearless, cruising the cold, freezing void, yet unwilling to let it extinguish them. Altogether, he and One counted roughly two hundred of them that were on the direct course to crash into Noterra, taking into account the planet’s orbit. Though many may see it as a catastrophe, a world-ending one, Lino didn’t. It was easy to deal with inanimate objects for one simple reason -- they were straightforward.

The rock wouldn't curve at the very last second, circumvent him and gain speed as it barreled toward the earth. It wouldn't fake its intent in hopes it might cheat him. It would run its course, whatever may come at the end of it.

Lino glanced at One from the corner of his eye; the man seemed as apathetic as ever, though now it made sense -- he was no man. Lino had begun suspecting something was athwart with the enigmatic ‘One of the Great Descent’ long before he met Dangwe, but that meeting confirmed his suspicions to a certain extent. Ashtar’s Archaic Record grounded it further.

If the Writs were not the first to descend, why were there only Seven of them? They were entirely unnecessary for everything the legends give them claims for; as far as Lino could realize, anything can become a Writ. Perchance, somewhere on Noterra, conscious or not, there was a Writ of Wit. Writ of Fire. Of Emotion. This notion stirred even more fervently when he learned that Ataxia wasn’t always the Writ of Chaos.

Writs, as far as he understood them thus far, are simply penultimate realizations of a concept -- similar to the Spirits, yet different. Whereas Spirits were marked with self-realized existence and didn't necessitate a very specific set of circumstances, Writs did. Even more, Writs were a complete bundle -- whereas Spirits were not. There were hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of Spirits of Fire. However, there can only ever be a single Writ of Fire.

Most of it was still a jumbled mess and a conjecture, but One’s admittance caused a surge of pride in Lino’s soul. He’d connected all the dots on his own, taken from the bits and chunks that hardly seemed connected -- knowledge worth over five decades of living and learning. Another conjecture that he was trying to see through built upon what he already determined -- not just Writs, but everything else was not limited in number.

This applied to everything -- from something as simple as the diversity of plants in the forest to the potential amount of intelligent lifeforms across the cosmos. It was not some arbitrary number that limited them, but very specific circumstances. It is impossible, for instance, for some flowers to grow in the forest -- not because there were already enough flowers there, but perhaps because the seed was never planted, or the flower simply can't grow without a continuous stream of sunlight to feed it.

However, that might not necessarily be true. Some things, perhaps, were sealed by a number -- for instance, Writs. He wasn't certain, but he suspected there can only be one Writ per element or, rather, per concept. He could be completely wrong, of course, but some sense of logic in him dictated that there can only be one.

Ataxia, as was usually the case, remained mum on the issue, not denying or confirming any of Lino's doubts. He also doubted he could pry much from One; he was a strange Writ, an anomaly of sorts when compared to the rest. One wasn't a human per se, that is the person wasn’t a Bearer of a Writ -- he was an agglomeration of initial mankind, their hearts’ fires to survive. In a way, One was a Bearer of himself. Rubbing his temples in frustration, Lino slowly realized that chipping away at the mysteries was far from being as fun as he’d expected.

He knew so much, perhaps more than any other Bearer of the entire Era, yet so little. The entire story was muddled with too many fogs and mists, too many interpretations, pretenses, too many diverging paths. Perhaps, in a vacuum, these all may make sense to a certain degree. However, as a part of a whole, they didn’t. Though he knew Ataxia didn’t create Primes, merely ‘corrupted’ Archangels, that didn’t actually answer the question of how. Why was it that in some cases he'd heard it being referred to 'Angels having Fallen'? Also, why was it that Asmodei's story, from when he first met the remnant of the Archangel, now seemed a feeble fabrication? No, some elements of it echoed what Lino knew to be the truth -- yet most was false. Asmodei claimed to be the first Archangel -- an Overseer. He also claimed that the descent of the Writs marked the inception of the Universe. Yet, it clearly didn't. He also claimed Gaia created Noterra, yet she clearly didn't.

What did all of it mean? Why the lies? The smoking mirrors thrown around whenever the first few thousand years of the squabbles were mentioned? He didn’t know. Which caused him to sigh audibly.

“Don’t think too much about it.” he heard a voice chiming in from the side, glancing. One seemed to be smiling, yet not at the same time. “You’ll know when it is time.”

“... I have to think,” Lino replied. “It seems oddly unnatural not to think. Also, I don’t believe in waiting for the perfect time, Alladin. I believe in creating it.”

“--have you?”

“Hm?”

“Created the perfect timing, I mean. Ever?”

“...” the man’s question prodded Lino for a moment before he replied. “On occasion.”

"... besides you, only Eldon ever figured out my identity," One said after a short silence. "It truly is remarkable... how similar, yet horrifyingly different you two are."

“... I keep hearing the name,” Lino said. “Yet, never a tale. Who was he?”

“...” One glanced at him for a moment, as though thinking whether to say anything or not. “The cleverest person -- nay, the cleverest anything I’d ever met in my life. You’ll hear him spoken of as strong, unbeatable, but he certainly was not. In a way, you’ve already surpassed him in strength; after all, he walked down the Path of Creation, rarely outright fighting.”

“... then what did he do?”

“Played the tune to which the whole of creation danced,” One replied, chuckling. “You and him... you two are terrifying for two completely different reasons. Your Will is indomitable, like the weight of a galaxy pressing on one’s soul. If you lack the key for the door, you’ll break through it. If there are a hundred guards there, you’ll break through them. A thousand? Same. A million? Same. You are determined, and that determination cannot be taken away.”

“...”

“He was... different. Played the world against it each other, running all the currents as though we were simply characters in his story. You’ll see, one day. It’s... difficult to explain. Whereas you win the heart of others with who you are, with beating the hate out of their hearts, he won it by making all other alternatives worse... in a way.”

The silence once more descended between the two as Lino slumped deep into his thoughts. Eldon... he’d heard the name echoed repeatedly, for a long time now. Stories -- no, not stories, just vague chunks, like prophecies of the past. He had absolutely no idea who they were referring to -- and he’d scoured most of the historical records he could find. For someone who, according to most who spoke of him, impacted the world so much, there was not a word of him, or anyone like him, in the histories.

One oddity that did stick out, however, is that he noticed that some people referred to Eldon as a ‘he’, and some as a ‘she’. Though he did not yet know what to make of it, he noted the detail as the sole thing he was certain of. He’d been compared to them often, yet never collectively -- always in the parallel to the specific differences between the two. He found it odd, as most of who spoke about Eldon did so with a sense of reverence -- be they those who might have supported him or those who probably have not.

Plenty enigmatic figures existed within the Noterra still -- one he called his mother, for starters -- but something about Eldon was different. He, or she, seemed more a myth than an actual person. Yet, he was certain they were an actual person.

There was no need to add another branch to his thoughts just yet, as they were already preoccupied beyond his capacity to hold them. He was never an agile thinker; perhaps, in the heat of the moment, he intuitively knew what to do, but when it came to sitting down and sifting through his thoughts, he felt lethargically slow. Most of what he 'concluded', after all, he did so with a great degree of Hannah's help. She helped him arrange his thoughts better than he ever could, and see the order in the seeming chaos. In a way, he mused, it was rather poetic.

The molten rocks flying across the void would soon arrive, but he didn’t pay them much heed; what concerned him was the aftermath -- the war was imminent. Upon his return, ranks of soldiers would be sent into dozens of battlefields, and within weeks splinters will come. He was not yet strong enough to realize his convictions, yet he had no more tools to stall. Aah, I really wish I was more privy to philosophical books when I was young, he chortled inwardly. Perhaps, then, I’d be able to make sense of the shittery surrounding me...