Chương 13: Chapter 288 - The Edge of Heaven

Siobhan Month 9, Day 28, Tuesday 8: 30 p. m.

"The myth of the soul?" Oliver muttered, looking at the incomprehensible pages in front of them. He turned to Siobhan.

"What do you think he meant by that?" Siobhan ran her tongue over the back of her front teeth.

"What is a soul?" she asked rhetorically.

"An ephemeral representation of a person that contains their indelible personality."

"Depending on your cultural beliefs, that may or may not include your memories," Oliver interjected. He had more experience than her with other cultures, so she accepted this knowledge with a grateful nod.

"It is connected to the body, but not reliant on it, and most importantly, I think most cultures believe that it continues to exist after the death of the flesh," she said, raising her eyebrows questioningly. He nodded.

"Correct. So Myrddin found an external identity that is constantly updating—much like our mortal identities constantly update with every new experience and memory—and it is interdependent with the mortal flesh, which is, obviously, the source of the Will." He paused and added softly, "We are also the source of the identity, though I find myself uncertain how closely together those two concepts are tied."

"Like a copy of a book written with the mimeo-motion spell," Siobhan said, her chest tightening. She didn't know why she found this notion so strange and anxiety-inducing. Maybe it was the fact that Myrddin had called this soul "artificial."

"Who is Night?" Oliver asked. Siobhan brightened, happy to show off her knowledge.

"Night is spoken of in myths about Myrddin, but I've never seen them mentioned in any official history." She searched back in her memory to find the story she had read in Enough Yarn to Last the Night: A Collection of Myths from the Life of a Man with Many Names. Quickly, she explained the gist of it to Oliver. Myrddin, as a young, willowy sprout of a man, looked up at the sky and yearned. So he rode upon a cold northern wind, up, and up, and up. He spoke to the moon, but she would not help him.

He flew farther and spoke to the stars, but they were too fickle. Finally, he flew even farther, into the darkness beyond the edge of heaven, and spoke to Night herself. She thought him brave and charming, though his life was just a twinkle, a blink of an eye, to one such as herself. Saddened by the future she knew would come, she agreed to grant him a boon. Myrddin asked for an unbreakable shield that could not be bypassed and would protect him from even Death itself.

Night told him that nothing could protect such a bright spark from Death, but she gave him a piece of herself to shield him from all else, should he use it correctly. With a piece of Night in his hand, Myrddin fell back down to the earth. Ilma's mentor had made a note connecting the myth to the story about Myrddin's void-like, absorbent shield.

"I thought the myth about Night was a way for people of the time to understand his otherwise incomprehensible magic. But if Night was real, what does that indicate? I guess all we really know is that they gave him some information about the Will and people's linked identities found in the fabric of magic. I need to find out more about them," Siobhan decided abruptly. It was another reason to return to the restricted archives, despite the risk of encountering Thaddeus. Siobhan tapped a finger on her lower lip.

"Myrddin was called by many names depending on the country and the time period. Why did he have so many, do you think? Did he go around introducing himself differently to different people?" Oliver raised his eyebrows.

"You think that has something to do with 'identity?' It is curious. While no one who lived during those times was as famous as Myrddin, there were plenty of well-known kings and powerful thaumaturges who managed to keep a single name and perhaps also a couple of titles given for extraordinary deeds."

"I have two names," Siobhan murmured, wondering if there was some connection to their shared ability to split their Will. But if she understood her newly revealed childhood memories correctly, she first split her Will after the fight with Claudio. At that point, she had had only one identity, one name. Of course, there were extraordinary circumstances at the time.' Splitting the Will is very dangerous.

There might be a good reason why all the people Hite has experimented on in an attempt to recreate the ability have died,' Siobhan realized, resolving never to allow someone she cared about to take that risk. She tilted her head slowly to the side, staring blankly at the far wall. If any of her speculation about what Myrddin knew was correct, what did it mean to split the Will? When people cast magic, was it that copy of their identity within the fabric of magic that was actually effecting change on reality?

Did that mean she had three copies? Three…

"souls?" How were they created, for that to be possible? Oliver abruptly drew her attention back as he mused.

"Please let me know if you find any information about who Myrddin might have been writing to in these journals. He might have sent them other valuable information that, if it hasn't already been discovered, I could track down."

"It seems like, to spend decades writing these journals to the same person, yet not giving them to that person, they must have been very important to him but estranged." Siobhan thought back to the first note from Myrddin, the one he had left on the first page of the journal she had.' What is The Work?' Myrddin had mentioned it multiple times now, and she felt there was something big there.

Whatever goal was so important that someone like Myrddin would dedicate decades to achieving it—even if somewhat distractedly at times—could not be a small thing. And if she guessed correctly, the driving force was not pride, nor honor, nor spite, but guilt. If she didn't know there was irrefutable evidence that Aberrants existed since the beginning of known history, she might have suspected him.

But the thought of Aberrants led her to wonder: if a thaumaturge's Will was tethered to an identity somewhere in the fabric of magic, what did that mean about Aberrants? This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. And what was the fabric of magic? Her recent experiences had given her some insight.' Is it… the spirit realm? Or at least connected in some way that makes the spirit realm able to provide insight into the state of magic?' It made sense.

The spirit realm was a place of ideas and identity. And that theory also aligned with everything she'd learned and speculated about how closely tied together belief and magic were. Even echoes of Titans could be found within the spirit realm, retaining enough influence to create the thing that called itself Claudio.

And suddenly, Siobhan understood why the Red Guard might have such restrictions against shamanry that dealt with the spirit realm. Before, she'd simply believed that it was too dangerous to create Aberrants with such strange and unfathomable anomalous abilities. Claudio was a wonderful example of how wrong things could go. But if it wasn't just that…' If the problem lies there, then if an answer exists, it is likely to lie there as well. The spirit realm might hold a clue toward a solution.

A way to mitigate break events.

'Siobhan shivered with excitement, her heart racing and her skin faintly clammy, as if she had downed several cups of wakefulness brew in succession.' And what a coincidence. I have a guide that can allow me to walk through that realm unharmed, who understands it better than I ever will, and who has the power to effect change there in a way that most mortal shamans could only dream of.'

She turned back to the journal, determined to abandon the quick skim and look through this section page by page to get more specific information, but somehow, she failed to get past Myrddin's protections three times in a row. This was rather surprising, given that she had three branches to her Will, and really only needed two. She smiled awkwardly.

"I guess I'm a bit worn out." She closed her eyes to try to clear her mind, but opened them again as the side of the book within her grip was pulled away.

"I want to know more, but I think you shouldn't be pushing yourself right now," he said gently.

"You experienced something traumatic recently, and you might think you've recovered, but all serious wounds take longer to heal beneath the surface than is visible from the outside. That holds true for both physical and mental wounds."

"I'm fine," she tried to argue, but he ignored her, walking back to the shelf and returning the journal to the warded space there.

"It's my book, so I get to make the decision," he said, throwing her a smile over his shoulder.

"You can come back again soon and we'll continue. Perhaps next week."

"Don't you want to know what Myrddin was talking about? And we didn't even get the information about celerium!" She took a few steps toward him, reaching out for the journal, but was rebuffed by the wards. She glared with frustration at Oliver, who smiled smugly back at her.

"You have a very punchable face. Has anyone ever told you that?" she asked. His smile grew larger.

"Inexplicably, yes! I have no idea why." She rolled her eyes, but froze for a moment as she had a sense of déjà vu back to her thirteen-year-old self. Oliver's smile faded.

"I do want the information, every bit of it, and that's why I must protect the mind of the only living thaumaturge who can access it. I have waited this long; I can wait a while longer." Siobhan could see that nothing she did could change his mind, but she was not good at waiting, especially when there was a problem waiting to be solved. She couldn't continue here, but she had other sources of knowledge that she still needed to explore.

Olive escorted her out through one of the expanded tunnels, which rose into a nearby house and came out under a bathtub, of all things, which was attached to a hinging section of the floor. She left through the back yard, pulled her cloak down over her face and cast her shadow-familiar to practice maintaining awareness of her surroundings through it. She walked while mentally gnawing on her lingering questions, like a dog with a bone.

If Night had been a mortal, they might have left information behind, as Oliver speculated. But if they were a powerful spirit, or even—and this thought would never have passed her mind if not for recent events—an Aberrant with access to obscure knowledge, then they might still be alive and directly accessible. If the Red Guard was suppressing information about them, they would be difficult to find, but she didn't believe anything was impossible.' What Night gave Myrddin… a piece of themself.'

Siobhan realized that she understood the concept of Myrddin's void shield in a much more comprehensive way than she had when she first read about it. She paused mid-step, almost stumbling, and looked down at her shadow stretching out harmlessly from the light of a nearby streetlamp. Then she looked, wide-eyed, up into the moonless sky, where only the brightest stars were visible past Gilbratha's city lights.

She stayed that way for almost a minute, drawing a few strange looks from people on the street, then hurried to transform. She had an idea about a way to make this constant need to change her physical form less of a hassle, but it wasn't something she could implement immediately, so she went through the whole usual process to return safely to her attic apartment. Sebastien set her spell rod on the small table beside her bed, then paused as she noted the lingering dents along its side.'

Do not leave emergency preparation for later,' she reminded herself. She pulled out her small, folding slate table and drew a mending spell array, then took half an hour to fix every small flaw in the device, including seemingly harmless scratches. The time it took also helped to calm her excitement, and rather than immediately test her idea, she sat making a mental list of everything she guessed could go horribly wrong and kill her.

Reluctantly, she turned to her bed, and after taking a dose of the anti-anxiety potion she'd been prescribed by the University infirmary, cast her dreamless sleep spell and forced herself to rest. Her eyes snapped open in the middle of the night, and she sat upright, then scrambled out of bed and began to prepare. It had been a good idea to rest, as she realized now how skittish and tense she had been before. Reluctantly, she admitted, if only to herself, that maybe Oliver had been right.

Sebastien cast the Crown of Madness first, feeling safe to do so without all the protections in place underneath Liza's house now that she no longer had to fear Legion's response. With a third branch of her Will to keep her on track, the spell's effects were easier to resist than she remembered, and she quickly used a mirror to send some part of her consciousness through her pupil and into her own mind.

She found Legion's broken seal that had now become their home in a way that strangely reminded Sebastien of a snail's shell. She hesitated awkwardly, then floated a bit closer and knocked softly on a spot near the torn-open edge, where twisted bands of metal emerged from the jagged stone. This might be her mind, but there was still no need to be rude. Legion grumbled from within the midnight-dark shadows, the sound an exhausted, sleeping person makes to protest any attempt to wake them.

"Wake up. I need you to eat something for me," she said. There was a pause, and then Legion popped their head out of the jagged opening, showing no signs of sleepiness.

"Do you mean what I think you mean?" Sebastien nodded. After all, the energy absorbed by her shadow needed to go somewhere if she wanted to be sure trying something new would be safe. She explained her plan simply, then allowed that branch of her Will to retreat back to full consciousness and dropped the Crown of Madness spell before the creeping sense of eeriness it caused could sink any deeper.

Then, she used one branch of her Will to very deliberately cast her shadow-familiar, with the kind of care she hadn't needed to use for this spell for years. She focused on her intent, trying to push as much clarity into the casting as she was capable of.

"Life's breath, shadow mine. In darkness we were born. In darkness do we feast. Devour, and arise," she breathed through the Circle of her cupped hands as she remembered the void that Legion had shown her. It struck her how appropriate the chant was for the application she had in mind.

The eldritch black shadow that formed into a small dome in front of her, facing the spell rod pointing from the bedside table, was chillingly cold enough to waft fog and so dark that she felt staring into it for too long might make one forget the meaning of light. But somehow, it was still more ominous than she had expected, as if it was silently screaming of its own emptiness to the world. She tore her gaze away, looked to the spell rod, and cast the spark-shooting spell at herself.

The shadow-void devoured every bit of light, heat, and magic with ease. Sebastien grinned savagely at the shield.

"Let's try something bigger."