Chapter 1004
New
Malcolm Tent
Monkey with a typewriter.
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Someone who wasn't me might wonder why I was so excited. I'd met my ancestor, he'd said almost nothing to me, then he'd kicked me out. Which…honestly had been what I'd expected. He was the Wishmaster. As a god centered around deals and contracts, once I was no longer relevant to him it wasn't surprising he had no use for me.
He'd answered no questions, given no advice, and hadn't even really acknowledged me as a relative with more than a passing comment. And despite that, he'd given me the most profound gift of my life.
I was sure he knew it, too. Because he could have granted that wish in a lot of different ways. An item, a blessing, there were dozens of methods of applying a defensive construct. And none of them would have been as earthshattering as the one he'd just given me. A book. A Skill (or technique?) book constructed from his power INSIDE my library. Where I could study it. Learn its secrets.
Of course, the first thing I did was try to do just that, splitting off a parallel and sending it to pilot my body back to my friends while I slipped into the library to explore this new gift. But naturally, when I got to it, I realized things weren't QUITE that simple.
The book was definitely impressive. As I stared down at it, my breath was stolen by the sheer artistry of the construction. The first thing I noticed was that despite being closed, because of the way it was designed, I could read the whole thing from above, or below, or even the sides. The runes that constructed it weren't opaque, even if they were constantly moving and shifting. Flames and lightning made up the tome, but they were mostly just SHAPED like a book, and that made a huge difference. I triggered Dantalion to study it, and I was blown away.
Mostly because the construct was shifting and changing in a way that made it feel almost ALIVE. Every symbol related to every other symbol. The first symbol in the book wasn't just the symbol before the next, it also aligned with a different effect when read in line with the one below, and diagonal. And more than that, each page was its own individual effect, and each chapter.
It was…art. Every individual instance of a rune was part of a constellation of different effects at any given moment, and all those constellations were part of a larger construction, each rune being used in a thousand ways in a thousand different patterns that were themselves making up larger patterns until-
I woke up. It was a little jarring. That was a LOT of information. My brain didn't really BEND in the way necessary to do that yet. But I knew how it could. Parallels. I needed more parallels. A lot of them. All going at once and calculating for a thousand days and- I shook my head.
Slowly. I needed to go slowly. That book was so far beyond what I could conceptualize. It wasn't just the insane cascading, overlapping patterns of formation like constructs. It was the fact that every second they were MOVING, rearranging themselves. And when viewed from a macro perspective, even THAT was a pattern. I could almost see it if I focused, almost grasp the edge of a great sprawling tapestry of constructs, all lined up in front of me in a way that showed me that the design wasn't just constructed in three dimensions. Yes, the thing was book shaped, and that was important, but beyond that, time was also a dimension the enchantment functioned in, with each second being part of an even larger array of overlapping design.
Which was why I had blacked out. I was doing too much. Trying to brute force something I had no chance at brute forcing. Scowling, I reached out for my staff. I called the object to me, then carefully set it above the book. Not interfering or even interacting, I wanted to avoid setting it off, if that was possible.
And this was why I'd been so grateful to my ancestor. The old man had made this book a PART of my library. Not in a 'stolen authority' kind of way. Like he'd loaned it to me for my collection. And since the library and my staff could work together to simulate different Skills and patterns, it would be perfect for reverse engineering this book…eventually. I set the Wisdom of Solomon to processing. And winced.
The book was changing too fast. To build an appropriate model, it would need to first build a model of each configuration, then try to line them up in the right way to create the overarching construct in spacetime. Which I had zero idea where to even start on. But before all that, I'd need to get a copy of each individual sequence of the book. And considering that my staff was having trouble calculating even one or two runes…that wouldn't happen soon.
Grimacing, I created another parallel to keep watch. Then I waved my hand and constructed a table full of empty books. "Alright," I told me. "You know the drill. The staff is going to take down every rune. Try to figure out which of them belongs to which sequence and put them together as best you can. Figure out how long until we get repeats, and then figure out if those are consistent. The staff is building the patterns, but you need to build the pattern of patterns."
Despite all that, and the fact that it would take me probably YEARS to crack this at the current pace. I was excited. Even the partial decryption was going to expand my understanding of Skill construction by leaps and bounds. And not just mine. My staff wasn't just stimulating, it was learning. And the more it learned the more it learned how to learn.
That wasn't all of it though. He hadn't just given me one of these. He's also given CALLIE one. And since my wife and I were connected at the soulular level (technical term I'd just made up), I could access hers too. Maybe it was different. Or maybe it wasn't, which would probably be better, because I would be able to compare and contrast (somewhat, without another staff it seemed unlikely to be that easy, but a man could dream).
I was about to return to my body, go find my wife, and then have her escort me into her soul space…and then I realized. Why would I need to do that? Our souls were connected by the bond. Truly, deeply, madly connected. We could share anything if we wanted to.
Soul spaces were…well, part of the soul. They were Domains, or pseudo Domains in our case. So since our souls were connected, why couldn't our soul SPACES?
I focused on the bond, closed my eyes, and then tried to PUSH myself between one space in the next. It didn't work. I tried again. Nothing. I kept at it for a minute or two, until I heard a knock on the door. Except I was currently inside my soul, so there shouldn't BE a door here. I opened my eyes to find that one had materialized.
It was set into a wall that had just been shelves previously, a large pair of gilded double doors, white at the top and bleeding darker to grey and then black as it approached the floor. A series of strange curved and twisted windows flowed down it, individual cells in a design that formed a familiar symbol. My well of wishes. There was another knock. I frowned, walking over to the other side of the room and pulling the door open slowly, ready for anything even if I knew what this PROBABLY was.
Sure enough, my wife was waiting on the other side, her eyebrow raised. "You know we can TALK telepathically?" she pointed out, her arms crossed in front of her in annoyance. "You could have just ASKED me to let you in."
I blinked. "I…did not consider that. I was kind of distracted. I assume you noticed-"
"The purple book made of flames and lightning sitting on the altar in my temple?" she finished dryly. "Yeah, it came up. I assume you're going to tell me what that's about? Because I've been getting a flood of excitement through the bond with no context." I explained the books and where they came from, and she seemed a little on the fence about if she was happy I'd used half of my wish for her. When I pointed out it was based on a memory I only had because of her link to Atlas, she caved and just said thank you, giving me a soft kiss and the kind of smile that still tied my stomach in knots even after years together.
After I finished explaining though, she paused to look up at the door. "Also, I didn't know we could do this. Did you know we could do this?"
I shook my head. "Not at all. Though it'll be damned useful. You can come down here to train and work on your techniques. With your new form you'll have to build an arsenal of them, and this is the perfect place."
"You're not wrong," she admitted. "So, are you gonna come in or what? I assume that you want to look at the book directly?" She glanced past me to where my staff sat above my copy. "Seems like you're already hard at work cracking the code. How long are you thinking, couple months?"
I snorted. "How about a couple years? Or possibly decades. This isn't something I can rush. I'll learn a lot in the process, but this…Cal, this is so far beyond anything I've ever seen. I can't even put it into words. It's almost a living being. This is like me building those walkie talkies that kids use out of strings and a pair of cups and then someone handing me a scan ring. It's…nominally the same as what I've been doing, but the scale is so absurdly different that you can barely even call them the same process. I thought I was impressive, honestly, at least with techniques. But past a certain level I'm not sure Skills and techniques are even different things. I guess they never were, given the way the library records them and things like sold paths."
Shaking my head in disbelief I laughed. "That's something for another time. I tried to brute force this earlier and knocked myself unconscious. INSIDE my soul. Slow and steady is the best course of action here. Why don't we go and take a look at yours. See if it's the same. Or if I can even tell."
We laughed, and I slung an arm over her shoulder, the two of us passing through the door from my soul to hers. When we entered, I looked over the temple that was her soul space. And I spotted a new stained glass window. Blinking, I stared at it for a moment before turning to smile at her. "Is that what I think it is?" It was an image of us huddled together, her head resting on my chest as we closed our eyes.
"Yeah," she grinned. "I felt like it was just…right to have it here. I considered using it to bind a page, but the pages reinforce certain aspects of your abilities. And I think that one would just empower the bond. Which I like, but I'm not sure I want it to be my FIRST page, you know?"
I nodded. "I can see that. We can always use it later." I squeezed her against me. "It was an important memory for me too. Now, let's go take a look at this book." We set off down the purple carpet towards the altar where the book sat, burning merrily away. Somehow, I doubted we were going to get any real answers from it right now. But hey, at least it was a pretty decoration.
He'd answered no questions, given no advice, and hadn't even really acknowledged me as a relative with more than a passing comment. And despite that, he'd given me the most profound gift of my life.
I was sure he knew it, too. Because he could have granted that wish in a lot of different ways. An item, a blessing, there were dozens of methods of applying a defensive construct. And none of them would have been as earthshattering as the one he'd just given me. A book. A Skill (or technique?) book constructed from his power INSIDE my library. Where I could study it. Learn its secrets.
Of course, the first thing I did was try to do just that, splitting off a parallel and sending it to pilot my body back to my friends while I slipped into the library to explore this new gift. But naturally, when I got to it, I realized things weren't QUITE that simple.
The book was definitely impressive. As I stared down at it, my breath was stolen by the sheer artistry of the construction. The first thing I noticed was that despite being closed, because of the way it was designed, I could read the whole thing from above, or below, or even the sides. The runes that constructed it weren't opaque, even if they were constantly moving and shifting. Flames and lightning made up the tome, but they were mostly just SHAPED like a book, and that made a huge difference. I triggered Dantalion to study it, and I was blown away.
Mostly because the construct was shifting and changing in a way that made it feel almost ALIVE. Every symbol related to every other symbol. The first symbol in the book wasn't just the symbol before the next, it also aligned with a different effect when read in line with the one below, and diagonal. And more than that, each page was its own individual effect, and each chapter.
It was…art. Every individual instance of a rune was part of a constellation of different effects at any given moment, and all those constellations were part of a larger construction, each rune being used in a thousand ways in a thousand different patterns that were themselves making up larger patterns until-
I woke up. It was a little jarring. That was a LOT of information. My brain didn't really BEND in the way necessary to do that yet. But I knew how it could. Parallels. I needed more parallels. A lot of them. All going at once and calculating for a thousand days and- I shook my head.
Slowly. I needed to go slowly. That book was so far beyond what I could conceptualize. It wasn't just the insane cascading, overlapping patterns of formation like constructs. It was the fact that every second they were MOVING, rearranging themselves. And when viewed from a macro perspective, even THAT was a pattern. I could almost see it if I focused, almost grasp the edge of a great sprawling tapestry of constructs, all lined up in front of me in a way that showed me that the design wasn't just constructed in three dimensions. Yes, the thing was book shaped, and that was important, but beyond that, time was also a dimension the enchantment functioned in, with each second being part of an even larger array of overlapping design.
Which was why I had blacked out. I was doing too much. Trying to brute force something I had no chance at brute forcing. Scowling, I reached out for my staff. I called the object to me, then carefully set it above the book. Not interfering or even interacting, I wanted to avoid setting it off, if that was possible.
And this was why I'd been so grateful to my ancestor. The old man had made this book a PART of my library. Not in a 'stolen authority' kind of way. Like he'd loaned it to me for my collection. And since the library and my staff could work together to simulate different Skills and patterns, it would be perfect for reverse engineering this book…eventually. I set the Wisdom of Solomon to processing. And winced.
The book was changing too fast. To build an appropriate model, it would need to first build a model of each configuration, then try to line them up in the right way to create the overarching construct in spacetime. Which I had zero idea where to even start on. But before all that, I'd need to get a copy of each individual sequence of the book. And considering that my staff was having trouble calculating even one or two runes…that wouldn't happen soon.
Grimacing, I created another parallel to keep watch. Then I waved my hand and constructed a table full of empty books. "Alright," I told me. "You know the drill. The staff is going to take down every rune. Try to figure out which of them belongs to which sequence and put them together as best you can. Figure out how long until we get repeats, and then figure out if those are consistent. The staff is building the patterns, but you need to build the pattern of patterns."
Despite all that, and the fact that it would take me probably YEARS to crack this at the current pace. I was excited. Even the partial decryption was going to expand my understanding of Skill construction by leaps and bounds. And not just mine. My staff wasn't just stimulating, it was learning. And the more it learned the more it learned how to learn.
That wasn't all of it though. He hadn't just given me one of these. He's also given CALLIE one. And since my wife and I were connected at the soulular level (technical term I'd just made up), I could access hers too. Maybe it was different. Or maybe it wasn't, which would probably be better, because I would be able to compare and contrast (somewhat, without another staff it seemed unlikely to be that easy, but a man could dream).
I was about to return to my body, go find my wife, and then have her escort me into her soul space…and then I realized. Why would I need to do that? Our souls were connected by the bond. Truly, deeply, madly connected. We could share anything if we wanted to.
Soul spaces were…well, part of the soul. They were Domains, or pseudo Domains in our case. So since our souls were connected, why couldn't our soul SPACES?
I focused on the bond, closed my eyes, and then tried to PUSH myself between one space in the next. It didn't work. I tried again. Nothing. I kept at it for a minute or two, until I heard a knock on the door. Except I was currently inside my soul, so there shouldn't BE a door here. I opened my eyes to find that one had materialized.
It was set into a wall that had just been shelves previously, a large pair of gilded double doors, white at the top and bleeding darker to grey and then black as it approached the floor. A series of strange curved and twisted windows flowed down it, individual cells in a design that formed a familiar symbol. My well of wishes. There was another knock. I frowned, walking over to the other side of the room and pulling the door open slowly, ready for anything even if I knew what this PROBABLY was.
Sure enough, my wife was waiting on the other side, her eyebrow raised. "You know we can TALK telepathically?" she pointed out, her arms crossed in front of her in annoyance. "You could have just ASKED me to let you in."
I blinked. "I…did not consider that. I was kind of distracted. I assume you noticed-"
"The purple book made of flames and lightning sitting on the altar in my temple?" she finished dryly. "Yeah, it came up. I assume you're going to tell me what that's about? Because I've been getting a flood of excitement through the bond with no context." I explained the books and where they came from, and she seemed a little on the fence about if she was happy I'd used half of my wish for her. When I pointed out it was based on a memory I only had because of her link to Atlas, she caved and just said thank you, giving me a soft kiss and the kind of smile that still tied my stomach in knots even after years together.
After I finished explaining though, she paused to look up at the door. "Also, I didn't know we could do this. Did you know we could do this?"
I shook my head. "Not at all. Though it'll be damned useful. You can come down here to train and work on your techniques. With your new form you'll have to build an arsenal of them, and this is the perfect place."
"You're not wrong," she admitted. "So, are you gonna come in or what? I assume that you want to look at the book directly?" She glanced past me to where my staff sat above my copy. "Seems like you're already hard at work cracking the code. How long are you thinking, couple months?"
I snorted. "How about a couple years? Or possibly decades. This isn't something I can rush. I'll learn a lot in the process, but this…Cal, this is so far beyond anything I've ever seen. I can't even put it into words. It's almost a living being. This is like me building those walkie talkies that kids use out of strings and a pair of cups and then someone handing me a scan ring. It's…nominally the same as what I've been doing, but the scale is so absurdly different that you can barely even call them the same process. I thought I was impressive, honestly, at least with techniques. But past a certain level I'm not sure Skills and techniques are even different things. I guess they never were, given the way the library records them and things like sold paths."
Shaking my head in disbelief I laughed. "That's something for another time. I tried to brute force this earlier and knocked myself unconscious. INSIDE my soul. Slow and steady is the best course of action here. Why don't we go and take a look at yours. See if it's the same. Or if I can even tell."
We laughed, and I slung an arm over her shoulder, the two of us passing through the door from my soul to hers. When we entered, I looked over the temple that was her soul space. And I spotted a new stained glass window. Blinking, I stared at it for a moment before turning to smile at her. "Is that what I think it is?" It was an image of us huddled together, her head resting on my chest as we closed our eyes.
"Yeah," she grinned. "I felt like it was just…right to have it here. I considered using it to bind a page, but the pages reinforce certain aspects of your abilities. And I think that one would just empower the bond. Which I like, but I'm not sure I want it to be my FIRST page, you know?"
I nodded. "I can see that. We can always use it later." I squeezed her against me. "It was an important memory for me too. Now, let's go take a look at this book." We set off down the purple carpet towards the altar where the book sat, burning merrily away. Somehow, I doubted we were going to get any real answers from it right now. But hey, at least it was a pretty decoration.