The Scholar's Tale (Original Fantasy)

Book III, Chapter 8

It was so quiet, at first. More felt than heard. As if someone was clapping so lightly, only their fingers were touching, and barely even then. It felt like the breeze resulting from that, wafting over my skin and mind and spirit.

With every passing instant, however, it became louder, until my eardrums burst - quite a feat, considering sounds that would've reduced humans to mush were barely enough to make me notice. Even as my ears constantly tried to regenerate, though, I could still perceive the applause deep in my bones, the vibrations shaking me down to the marrow, like the passing of a great sea beast.

Dimly, I noticed the piece of itself Ib had given me - to act as armour, I'd presumed - wasn't doing much to protect me. If anything, I felt like I wasn't wearing armour at all, and I knew my friend could protect me from something as simple as sound, if it wanted.

Which suggested that the grey giant was either letting me be hurt to toughen me up - ahem, preserve my free will - or, far more unsettling, that it couldn't shield me from...whatever this was.

Never having liked fear, I settled for annoyance. It let me complain better.

Although, given the way it was shaking my thoughts and spirit as well as my flesh, and still growing harsher, maybe the applause was the prelude or build-up to an attack, which was what Ib was preparing for.

Who'd have been hurt if it had lent a hand from the beginning, though? Not me, certainly.

Gritting my teeth, I remembered bearing worse pain, and being hurt less. The aches began to fade as I felt my body become tougher.

I'd have remembered silence, but this resembled noise the way the sun resembled fire, so I gave up on the idea.

Glancing at Mharra showed me the captain was right as rain, smiling in curious expectation of our unseen visitors.

You care more about Mharra's body than my feelings, Ib? I'm sleeping with my back to you next time we share a cabin.

I could guess what Mharra was thinking, easily enough: no one who acted this theatrical before even introducing themselves could hold back from a dramatic reveal.

What Mharra didn't know, though, was who had stopped us like this, and why. Ib's words implied the unseen being, or beings, sought amusement, specifically through seeing it rescue us from this predicament.

I'd have laughed along with our unseen audience, if I'd thought it would make this end faster. Seeing Ib solve problems was always good for the soul, especially when those problems were annoying people.

'I wonder...' I began, thinking out loud to draw my crewmates' attention. To my mild surprise, it worked: they had clearly heard me, despite me not screaming myself hoarse. It seemed the applause was selective, allowing us to communicate, doubtlessly because that made us more...entertaining.

A sneer curled my lips at the thought. I had never had a taste for mockery, and performers couldn't stand being laughed at, rather than with.

Between my cheerful past and healthy mind, I was a perfect fit for such a life.

'Go on, Ryz,' Mharra urged, keeping an eye on me and one on the horizon. His armour formed pockets for him to stick his gauntleted hands into. A little proof of Ib's indulgence that would've normally made me smile.

At my sullen glare, Ib waved a careless hand, keeping most of its arms crossed. 'You're stronger than the boss in this regard, Ryzhan,' it said, giving no sign of focusing on me.

It would've been easy to mistake its explanation and body language as flippant, but I knew better. Ib knew I disliked being managed, having my life charted out by others. It was just trying to remind me of that.

Easy to mistake...tch. Maybe after the time spent drowning in mirages, and realising how stupid my fear had made me. How frayed did my nerves have to be that a friend had to help me remember - twice in a row?

'I wonder,' I repeated, licking my suddenly dry lips. There was something in the air that left them tingling, like mana, like a lightning strike too close for comfort. 'What are they applauding for?'

My first thought had been that the whole spectacle was intended to demoralise, through irony and the shattering of our bodies. But, while such pettiness was easily believable with power like this backing it up, I couldn't help but think that, maybe, the sentiment was genuine.

I told my crew as much, and they nodded their agreement. If there was one thing Midworld was never short of, it was arseholes with more power than sense. I mean, look at us. I actually felt bad for anyone whose life was so miserable meeting us in the open ocean could make them happy.

Finally, I got an answer to my question. Several follow-ups, too.

'Ah, see? See? He still has his wits about him. Enough to look for a method behind the madness, at least...' a voice, dripping with pitying approval, came out of nowhere, quickly filling the void left by the applause's disappearance. Unlike a normal sound, it hadn't faded over time, leaving echoes. Instead, it had been cut short, the way I intended to do with the life of whoever thought they could break my body just to announce their presence.

'With Freedom's help,' a second, snootier voice countered, sounding like it was coming from the other direction - or maybe that was just my bounded mind trying to make sense of these things, labelling them as opposites due to their differing opinions. 'Without the giant?' Though the voice didn't change, I got the feeling of someone adjusting in a chair, maybe crossing their legs, or a public speaker shuffling in place at the podium. A throat being cleared followed. 'Not to say we're humble, but he would still have been feeling sorry for himself and nursing his ego if he hadn't been distracted.'

'Well, quite,' a third, tired-sounding voice grouched. 'He is still a bit player, but you two are expecting the deeds of a hero.' Its tone became lighter, as if it had noticed something funny. Or maybe it was just trying to soothe its fellows before the argument could escalate. 'Besides - this is shaping up to become exactly what you hoping for, isn't it?' The third voice became inquiring, and my mind was filled with the image of an inhuman silhouette cupping something along its middle - its chin, or an equivalent?. 'Freedom, centre stage.'

The first two voices muttered darkly, before they deepened even further, drowning the third in what I could only assume was a series of angry exclamations and rhetorical question. They were speaking, if that was what they were doing, in a language I had never come across.

And, while I could sense the tension and irritated expectation around us, blanketing the sea from the steamer to the horizon, I was the one actually growing tired.

Why was it that so few could wield power with gravitas? These three, whatever they were, had shown up, mutilated me as a sort of stupid greeting, then descended into a childish argument about how they wanted us to act. The immaturity stung worse than the presumptuousness, somehow.

A new sound cut through the deep, bone-shaking chatter. It resembled the applause in intensity, although it didn't hurt at all.

'Enough, now.' It was the third voice again, gruff once more. 'I despise the "river" of time as much as the next connoisseur, but, if you so desire the Scholar, you can skip ahead.'

There were grumbles again, of disagreement rather than insult. It seemed they had settled down.

As I was about to step forward and demand an explanation, pain speared through me, parting my armour and the flesh under it with the ease it sundered my mind and split my soul.

The last thing I saw before the white spots dancing across my vision were swallowed by darkness as I fell to my knees was Ib, who had move to catch me, too fast to be seen by even by my mana-filled sight.

* * *

Ib knew that infinity, like kindness, or cruelty, was relative. Also like them, it could be deceitful, more often than not. Finite minds couldn't grasp the infinite, only abstractions of it. For, according to the laws of nature, the information needed to actually describe the endless was also endless.

Ib's mind, which, unlike in the case of most beings, was no different from the power that animated its physical form, was not so limited. In fact, it was so broad and deep, so intertwined with the workings of timeless, changeless eternity, that, without the power of freedom it represented, the grey being suspected it would've had a hard time focusing on the here and now of Midworld, where events were separated by time, even as they stood still in its gaze.

Much like these overgrown children who had hurt its crew, it suspected. Their attention turned easily enough to torment and arguments, but otherwise wandered. Ib's humour curdled.

When one's reflexes had no limits, time stopped being linear; instead, it more closely resembled a lake, moments arrayed around an observer in rows and rows, equidistant, all easy to access.

Ib would be damned if it ever thanked the Free Fleet for anything, but it could hardly pretend to regret the easy with which its mind grasped the boundless.

The creatures remained unseen to its Midworldly incarnation, but that just meant it had to step back, as it were, and focus its senses on the bigger picture.

An infinity of realities unfurled beneath Ib's gaze, some limited in size, unlike Midworld, others just as large, some even stranger than the world of unending tides. As the giant's vision pulled back into the whole of its true self's senses, they became faded and dull, nonexistent compared to those standing above them on the next layer of existence.

Just like dreams are nothing to the sleeper, and can be unmade by a stary thought, so, too, could have any inhabitant of that layer destroyed everything under it with but a pulse of will. So it went, upwards and upwards, layers after layers, an infinity of them. This sphere of realities was itself surrounded and dwarfed, several times over by the bluish-green aether, which was itself transcended by the land of dreams that one stepped into upon leaving mundane reality behind.

The land of dreams made what many thought of as substance and reality look like shadows cast on cave walls by dancing flames, yet it was swallowed and transcended in turn by the first of many, many vacua.

Some of Midworld's mathematicians, in rare moments of respite and fancy, had argued about the existence of an infinity of numbers between each pair of those that made up traditional infinity. One point one, one point two...ninety point seven. This infinity of infinities would've been a good way to count the chain of voids, linked like unseen particles that made up matter.

And, beyond these Voids of Twilight and Ebony, there loomed an Ultimate, Outer Void. Should a traveller reach it - and not be unmade by the merest glimpse of this unchanging realm - they could turn back, gazing over creation in its entirely.

Ib, the truest. deepest incarnation of itself, was always there.

The Idea of Freedom stood up and walked, noting its brethren in passing. Other Ideas, of elements, emotions and people, all the concepts that made up creation, for everything below them was a shadow of their flame, filled this World Of Forms.

Here, Ib could see the interlopers in their entirely. Here, it could stand up to them as an equal, without the risk of fragile space and time being shattered in a clash.

They were numberless, as many of the Ultimate Void's inhabitants were. The Archetypes, for one, The Voidmaws - beings of hungry nothingness that, if they were to be likened to anything in the world of length, width and height, would have resembled nothing more than one of those pale dweller of the deep ocean, who, having never need eyes in the darkness, hunted by other means.

Each Voidmaw could have erased the multiverse with its mere presence, and everything below the Outer Void with a fleeting instant of directed power. A swarm of them, as many as there were Voids, surrounded Ib, mindlessly gnawing on the edges of its being, as if they could affect it.

A glare unmade the Voidmaws as Ib made its way to the latest challenge to its crew. They must have known, for they clearly knew much else, how much it disliked making its friends feel useless, as if the joy they had filled its life with counted for naught.

The Idea of Freedom came to a halt in front of the Archetypal Amphitheatre, where an unending audience stood in circular rows. It was, it realised, at the centre of the stage.

Subtle. At least they kept their promises.

Though there was nothing to differentiate them from the others, in nature or power, Ib quickly picked out the three who had reached down into Midworld. They leaned on the edges of their seats, great black shapes like carrion crows with unfolded wings. Their faces - heads- centres - were dominated by swirling patches of colour, shrinking and growing like living, leering masks over nothing.

Ib saw straight through them, and its contempt grew. They were, when all was said and done, beings of hunger. Aspects of Hunger and other, greater Archetypes, they craved anything, everything that could fill their hollow cores.

Entertainment was their favourite meal.

Ib could understand, in a way. Boredom and listlessness, whether born out of a shattered existence or an unfulfilling one, could drive a person mad. What it could not was accept.

Amusing themselves with the pain of those too weak to do anything, like addults beating children. Like children pulling wings off flies.

'Mantlemakers,' it said tersely, not bothering with greetings. 'Your reach exceeds your grasp.'

One of them, its mask sporting a wide, toothless grin, cocked its head like a curious bird. 'Oh?' Its neck would've snapped in half, with how it was folded, had it existed in tridimensional space. 'Because we looked beyond the realm whose borders we set?'

'Because, fool,' the second countered, 'we are threatening what it sees as its own. It is...marking its territory.'

Ib shrugged. 'No one has ever accused me of being moral.' Its arms folded as it tensed. 'But know this: if you even think about taking my crew, I will-'

'There's no need to be possessive,' the last member of the trio purred. 'Or feel threatened. You know we are here to help, Libertas.'

Help yourselves get some cheap laughs, it thought. 'It is not Ryzhan's time yet, as his kind counts such things. You gain nothing from antagonising him, except my ire.'

The audience laughed thunderously at that, a din of caws, croaks and applause. 'So flamboyant! So righteous~'

'Maybe not,' the third Manmade God agreed. 'But this shall set him on the path to his destiny, more sooner and more firmly than your coddling would have. Rejoice!' It gave Ib an ironic smile through its blank-eyed mask. 'You are always fretting over whether you are doing too much for them , or too little. We have -'

'Freed me from the burden of choosing?' Ib scoffed. 'Had you done me a favour, I'd have ended you quickly. But you couldn't miss a chance to get a jab in, could you?'

'We have soothed your mind, by giving Yldii a chance to grow now,' the Listener said smoothly, its hooded eyes dark with reproach. 'Really, LIbertas. The way you look for offence in anything is just why you were made a cripple.'

'As quick to insult as you are to hurt? No wonder you love Ghyrria so,' Ib scoffed. They, all Archetypes, were, to an extent, caricatures, their personalities shaped by their portfolios, and vice versa. But the fact these blowhards thought they could treat Midworld, its crew, like their circus of a realm... 'I will not indulge you. You are here for me? I am happy to disappoint you. I will not steal the chance to grow from under my captain's nose, nor stunt Ryzhan's development.' It raised a clenched fist, hoping they would protest. The fact it hadn't destroyed them just for the intrusion would've been beyond merciful to most, but given how self-centred the Mantlemakers were, they likely thought it was ungrateful for the chance to act as a prop in the show they desired.'

'As you wish,' the trio replied. 'We shall take what we can. More stories can be spun from this dreary tale! Why, it feels like you never actually put ton a show! For travelling artists, you sure are quick to gloss over spectacle, and focus on the latest drudgery...'

Ib was done listening to them. Its attention turned back to creation, and its Midworldly incarnation. Ryzhan...and Mharra.

It would've been even more unfair to shield them from what was to come than to let them weather it. Ib, grudgingly, chose the lesser evil.