The Sixth School Boo Ii

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***

All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...

***

Chapter Eighteen: Resonance...

Greg fell through the floor.

Some small part at the back of his mind knew it should have been panicking even as he came out of the bottom of the airship. Yet another small part was questioning the irrationality of falling through several solid floors and out of the airship. What little paranoia his mind could still scrounge up left him wondering if this was some elaborate plot by Morpheus to kill him. Greg had, after all, once told the deity that he could kill him whenever the fancy hit him. These, along with a whole host of other thoughts and emotions occupied some small corner of Greg's mind. Ninety-nine percent of it, however, was occupied by the new layer of reality that the mid-purity life order promotion elixir had allowed him to tap into.

There was so much information in this new layer that his mind was like a lagging computer. The closest approximation of what Greg was experiencing was like looking at a screen. If only one image was on it, it was easy to focus on that. Split it into two and while less optimal, one could still keep track of both sides. Split it into four and the task of keeping track of everything becomes challenging. Eight is even worse and sixteen is downright impossible for most people. In this analogy, the screen Greg was looking at was split into thousands of different images. Greg was looking at the whole screen, seeing everything at a glance but was unable to make out what any single image was. Worse yet, whenever he tried to focus on any one image it seemed to bleed into another one, making it impossible to have a firm grasp on anything.

Looking up at the airship as it became smaller and smaller, Greg didn't just see the vessel. He could see the space it occupied. And not in some metaphorical sense, but could quite literally see the dent the vessel made into the fabric of space. Greg could even see the fabric of space stretch between him and the airship the further away from the vessel he got. Some small part of him couldn't help but wonder if this was how Morpheus saw the world. Greg instinctively knew that if he could somehow interact with this layer of space, he could easily erase the distance between himself and the airship. If he just tweaked it the right way, he could end up back on the airship. The thought, however, had barely entered his mind when it was supplanted by another.

The wind blowing all around him as he continued to fall caught his attention. The air all around him was suddenly full of meaning and depth that it never had before. On the one hand, it was a life-giver, sustaining the lives of countless beings all across the realm, and yet at the same time, it was a patient and relentless destroyer. It didn't matter if it was the tallest mountain, given enough time, it would be ground down into a plain. Before Greg could pursue this thought for more than a few seconds, a new aspect of the air jumped out at him. Freedom, where it wished it went, from the top of the highest peaks to the depths of the lowest valleys, there was nowhere that air could be denied if it wished to go. At the same time, air was the most easily trappable thing there was. A child could puff out their lips and it would be trapped.

These and a thousand other thoughts flowed through Greg's mind all at the same time. It was a lot like playing a high-stakes video game but rather than seeing graphics on a screen, you only got to see the binary code of the game instead. So overwhelming was the experience that it barely registered to Greg when his body slammed into the ground. So lost in the revelation aspect of wind was Greg that he didn't even pick up on the odd fact that, forget being a broken mess on the ground, he didn't even have a scratch on him. By now, the airship was little more than a dot in the sky, and yet all Greg could think about was how sound was like a shell for meaning. The place Greg had landed wasn't at all secluded. And yet, Greg was too lost on how stone was the foundation of civilization to pick up on the odd fact that no one around seemed to have noticed him lying on the ground, let alone the fact that he'd just fallen from the sky!

***

Calyn sat at one of the tables on the deck of the airship, her gaze fixed on the scenic landscape that sprawled out below. They were currently flying over the Reni woods, a jungle a little over three weeks by airship from Ethavel. From all the factions that had been trying to get close to Mage Hira and Grenad, Calyn had gained enough resources that she could have focused entirely on ascension for the next ten cycles. It wouldn't have been enough to get her over the line into third tier, but it would have brought her right to the edge of it. Fearing that Roka would take them from her, however, Calyn had left ninety percent of those resources with her aunt for safekeeping. What was even worse was that she had handed over the best of what she had and only remained with the worst ten percent of the gifts. What she had would keep her going for little more than six months.

It was a mercy that Roka had turned out to be so understanding. She had been present when Roka, his teacher, and guard Olivia had been planning their route to the Arcana Islands. The original route they had been planning would have had their first stop be Kelden a city just outside of the vast swath of territory controlled by her clan. She had fully been prepared to part with some portion of those resources when she approached Roka to seek permission to call on her aunt. It would have stung badly, but losing even half of everything would still have left her with five years of progress still to be made. One could thus imagine her shock at Roka's response.

"You wish to call your aunt to get the resources you'd need for your ascension?" He'd questioned. Calyn quietly nodded in confirmation, waiting to hear what price she'd be made to pay. A shrug, however, is all she got. "Sure, why not?" Roka had said before turning back to the map they'd been planning their route on.

Calyn had already opened her mouth to negotiate when it sunk in what the young man had just said. Her planned words had escaped as an exhale as she found herself staring dumbly at him. In the end, it was Olivia who took the conversation in the direction that Calyn had been expecting. "Are you certain that it's wise to let her clan know that we are so close? We are, after all, keeping her as a slave," she argued.

Calyn had already anticipated that this would be a concern and had been ready to give assurances that nothing would happen to them. Before she could speak, however, Roka did. "They were willing to give her up as a slave to avoid making an enemy of me. I doubt they'd be willing to undo all that by attacking me," he'd stated with a carefree shrug.

"Except you weren't in a city just a stone-throw away from their territory when they were negotiating with you. A foe caught off guard is a very different beast from one that has been given time to prepare," she stated. It spoke to how strange the situation she found herself in was, that Calyn found herself agreeing with the guard even though Olivia was arguing against her. All the points she was raising were the same ones that Calyn would have had if her position and that of Roka were reversed.

The young man seemed to consider his guard's words for a second before turning to her. "How long would it take your aunt to get to Kelden from where your clan resides," he'd posed.

"A little over a week," she'd answered truthfully. Unlike Ethavel which was all the way across the continent, the Sydrak clan ensured that no part of its territory was more than a week away from the main clan abode by use of smaller flying treasures. Getting to Kelden wouldn't take her aunt more than ten days.

"Oh, well that makes things easier. You aren't allowed to contact your family until after we land. Getting the passengers for the next leg of our trip should take around two weeks, perhaps more. That should be enough time for your aunt to arrive at Kelden while also denying your clan the chance to plan anything against us in advance," he'd laid out. "Besides, there is one crucial detail you are all forgetting. The contract you signed precludes you from betraying us in any way. If those of your clan come after us, you'll be placed in the unfortunate position of having to fight and kill them. Fail to do that and it's your corpse they'll be fighting over," he stated with perfect neutrality. Calyn was once again reminded that, just because Roka wasn't the kind to try and wield power over others, didn't mean that he was naïve in the least. Should she ever betray him, then the same affable individual would, without a hint of pity, watch her die for it...

***

So, what is life?

Stripped of everything extraneous like the different kinds of beasts and plants, if one drilled down to the very core of things, what made one thing living and another dead? Zoom in close enough, and there was no difference between an ant and the pebble it was crawling on. It's all just atoms and molecules. So what makes one set of atoms living and the other dead? What exactly animates a flower and fails to do the same to a piece of metal or glass? Is it simply an issue of getting the right chemical reactions going and off it goes? Or did an extra factor have to be in place for things to work? Was this extra factor the soul? Or was the soul just another piece of the puzzle that he couldn't understand and so was conveniently trying to fit it where it didn't belong?

"Alright, I think that's enough."

Greg felt a sudden clarity wash over his mind as if some external force was suppressing the effect of the mid-purity life order promotion elixir. He couldn't help but blink a few times as his mind caught up to the fact that he had been lying on his back on the ground staring up at the sky for almost three weeks... or was it four weeks? His mind had been like a computer given a puzzle it couldn't solve and asked to do just that, solve it. A human given such a task would eventually grow frustrated with it and just give up. Unless directed otherwise, however, a computer would just keep trying to pursue the task till the end of time. Having his eyes opened to a new layer of reality made it impossible for his mind to stop trying to parse out the world around him.

When Greg first heard of laws, he'd been thinking of it in scientific terms, something like Newton's first law of motion. He'd been thinking of it like a rule book that defined the world around them. And while he hadn't been entirely wrong, it was just barely scratching the surface of the realm he was stepping into. As a mortal, when he looked at a rock on the ground, all he saw was just that, a stone. After taking the mid-purity life order promotion elixir, it was as if he'd discovered new layers to the stone. The stone was no longer just rock, it was infused with all manner of meanings.

To begin with, it was a home. From little bugs hiding under rocks to human beings that have taken rocks, and carved them into blocks that made their houses out of it, to races like dwarves who carve out whole empires inside mountains, to even dragons that made their homes on the peaks of the tallest mountains. Stone, for as long as living beings have existed, has been a home to them. Stone was also a keeper of the record of the passage of time. With enough time, all stone will eventually be ground down into dust. Still, as things come and go, stone tends to remain defiant in the face of time, weathering the coming of one age and the end of another. Dig through it and you will see traces of the things that have been before. It will tell you the story of what was, and eventually, even you and your civilization will be buried in stone for another to come along and find. Stone was also the anchor of civilization. Be it roads, bridges, houses, sculptures, the tools that peasants used, or the precious stones on the crown of a king, stone permeated every facet of society so thoroughly that, in many ways, people had even grown blind to it.

These were just three of hundreds of layers that opened up to Greg whenever his head turned to the side and he caught sight of a rock, to say nothing of everything else in his sight. Space, air, grass, buildings, people. What before had been singular entities as far as his perception was concerned, were now revealed to be packed full of an almost endless amount of layers. To make the picture even more complex, the deeper nature of items didn't just involve what it looked like under a microscope. With the prejudice of his former life, for example, he'd assumed that the deeper nature of a stone would require one to know what elements it was made up of. Was it composed more of carbonates, oxides, sulfates, and the like? This, however, couldn't have been further from the truth. In this world of magic, stone was far more than just the particular elements it was made up of. Barely any of what went through his mind when he saw a rock, however, had anything to do with its chemical makeup. The closest approximation that Greg could come up with as to what anything truly was in the world as he now saw it, was a debate between a scientist, a philosopher, a poet, and a stoner.

The wind would blow and the poet would close their eyes, feel it against their face, and say that freedom is the true essence of the wind, wherever it wishes, it blows. The scientist would snort and adjust their glasses before calmly replying that wind is just the movement of air from high-pressure regions to low-pressure regions, there is no freedom in it whatsoever. If anything, wind is the perfect example of inevitability. The philosopher would listen to the two, think for some time while stroking their beard, and then say something like, the wind perfectly encapsulates human life. Most of the time, it's a fleeting phenomenon that is only felt for a short while before it is gone and forgotten. Every once in a while, however, there is a gale strong enough to leave a lasting mark. The stoner would look between all three of them, take another pull of whatever they are smoking, and ask, how do any of you know that it's the wind and not something else that is blowing?

The strange thing is that, as far as magic and the laws that governed it, all those perspectives, including the stoner's question, are valid. Greg had found himself wandering down thought trails that equated the dark depth of the sea with the human desire to lie with no intervening steps of logic to justify this equation. The worst part was that Greg had been paralyzed in this cycle. Try as he would, he couldn't keep his mind from going over everything in this way. He couldn't stop trying to peel off one layer after the other futilely trying to get to the core truth of it. Had Morpheus not intervened, Greg could easily see himself pointlessly spending the entire year in this one spot, endlessly questioning if it was rocks or fire that was the cornerstone of civilization.

An old monk in loose robes appeared from the side and came to stand over him, his nebulous eyes looking down at him with some interest. "As expected. The mortal mind is not well-suited to seeing the deeper truths of the universe. It gets lost in a maze of its own making trying to chase down an ultimate truth that it thinks is hiding just behind the next discovery," the monk stated. Greg couldn't tell if Morpheus was trying to mock him or just stating an obvious truth that he had observed many times before. Whichever it was, he wasn't given long to consider as the old monk held out a hand to him. "Come on, there's still a long road ahead of us...

***

Calyn once again found herself seated on the deck of the airship instead of meditating. The past few months hadn't at all gone the way she'd been expecting it to go. Calyn could remember how she'd felt the moment the deity passed his judgment that she would be his slave for the next hundred cycles. The image that had dominated her mind was standing in between a dragon's open jaws. At any time and for any reason, they could snap shut and that would have been the end of her. She had been fully prepared to live on the edge of a knife for the next hundred cycles. The truth, however, turned out to be almost comically the opposite of what she'd been expecting. Not only was the dragon not interested in her, it wasn't even present. Other than at the Governor's castle, she hadn't encountered the deity again. Even more unexpectedly, the one that the deity was linked to, wasn't interested in having her as a slave.

When Roka had her sign the tier-seven mana contract, she'd pointed out to him that there was nothing in it that required her to obey him. With little more than a shrug, he'd reiterated his position, she wasn't his slave. Despite his words, Calyn had expected to play the role of a servant. Yes, he wouldn't lord over her or try to force her to do things she didn't want to, but at least she'd do menial tasks for him. True to his word, however, Roka asked nothing of her. While he, his teacher, and his guard Olivia were busy trying to get the airship up off the ground, she had been left to her own devices, to do as she pleased. At first, she'd felt odd and unsettled by the fact that, for all intents and purposes, she was a free woman so long as the Deity didn't take Roka over. That feeling, however, was soon replaced by a feeling of ecstatic relief. She was free to continue pursuing ascension through the tiers as had always been her goal, and that's what she did. With what resources she still had on hand, Calyn had thrown herself into meditation and pursuit of more power.

The more time passed, however, the more a new feeling of unease started to grow in her. At first, she wasn't sure why. But as time went on and she thought on it more, the answer slowly became clear to her. Unfortunately for her, it was one of those answers that didn't leave you with an obvious path forward. As the weeks went by and Roka didn't call on her for anything, it occurred to her that, while he may not wish to enslave her, it didn't mean that she was now a part of his inner circle. Yes, she was tagging along with them, but that was only because she had declined Roka's offer of freedom. If he'd gotten his way, she would have been free and back at her clan while he went on with his life. This led to a question of how she wished to proceed.

On the one hand, she could remain neutral as she currently was. Stay true to the contract between them, protect him and his family whenever it was called for, and keep his secrets if she came across any, but other than that, maintain the current status quo. The main advantage of this approach was freedom. Calyn was the proud scion of a powerful clan. The only people she'd ever had to lower her head to were her father and the clan head. With her father being the clan head's brother, not even other elders in the clan had tried to wield their authority over her. This isn't to say that she disrespected any of them, she just didn't have to bow and scrape around them as most others in the clan would have to in their presence. With Greg, that would change.

Looking at his group casually, one would be almost tempted to think that Roka wasn't in charge. With how open and willing he was to listen to others and take their advice, it'd be all too easy to think this a band of equals. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. To begin with, his family was under his complete authority. A short while of interacting with them and this would become all too clear. They looked to him as the head of their family and deferred to his authority whenever there was any issue that required his input. With Olivia, Roka's authority was even more pronounced. He was always seeking advice from her guard on many things. But when Greg gave an order, however, Olivia carried it out without fail. As for Lothar, there wasn't even a question of whether he'd follow Roka's lead or not. Like her, the fire mage knew that a deity watched from behind Roka's eyes. He had zero desire to draw the attention, let alone the ire of such a being.