49 – Heavy light

Bouts of anger were not alien occurrences to Ishrin, nor were their consequences. Yet he found his mind drawn back to the exchange he had with Melina at the duke’s mansion many times in the following hours, along with the sensation that something wasn’t quite right. The first fact was the simple truth that he was not alone, he was in a party with other people. As such, he could not run his tongue however he wanted, but had to watch his mouth.

That was not quite all. There was something that was there, with him perhaps, like a tugging sensation that made his temper flare more easily and made him lose control of his thoughts when his mental state was altered, like when he was particularly angry or annoyed. And in his meditation session he tried to find that loose thread, that strange factor that was scrambling the equations in his brain and making the world grow increasingly disconnected. For all he tried, it remained elusive, like the watcher observing wildlife in a pond from afar, armed with his binoculars. The watcher might chuckle when some of the animals turn to face him like they see him, but he knows well that it’s just an illusion, for the bird the pond could never have possibly seen him. Ishrin was the bird. He felt like the bird. But the idea of the birdwatcher was impossible, yet the patterns in his mind had never been so hazy to his inner eye as to prove inscrutable even with the aid of meditation.

Almost as if he was not a millennia-old wise man, rather an anger-prone teenager. Perhaps it was due to his actual brain age. The keeper had reincarnated him inside a body that was not only of the wrong race but also barely out of its teens, with brain patterns and development proper of that age. Back in his old world Ishrin had outsourced his thinking to external magical means with the use of rituals, but here he was back to thinking with his own actual brain, standing on his feet. Even the notion of death was something he was not used to anymore.

You see, Ishrin had contingencies back on Eternia. Plans upon plans. Safety nets. Fringe cases were all covered by this or that mechanism that ensured his continued survival.

He was much like a lich, in a sense. Not even the total and utter destruction of his own body could put an end to his continued status of consciousness. Nor could he be affected by mental illness, or by emotions so strong they threatened to break him. For he had protocols for that too. If his mind ever strayed too far in one or the other direction in too short a time frame, he would be pulled out of it and put into some sort of white room, where he was still in control of his logical faculties but not of his emotions. That was not all either. His brain would be rolled back to how it was prior to the change, so that he could assess with an unbiased mind whether the change was good, or if it only seemed good in light of the new conditions under which he was assessing it.

All this was to say that when the Keeper ‘killed’ him, by effortlessly plucking him out of reality, none of these safety measures had done anything to stop it. This is why his reaction to the event was somewhat bland, and very much unlike what Ishrin was at heart. Because when faced with absolute power, true absolute power that made him look like nothing no matter his extensive and intricate system of contingencies, he could do nothing but listen in calm contemplative silence. All the while his mind, his ego, his inner solidity was being shattered by the realization that all his life ultimately amounted to nothing.

A shattering of the ego that was not offset, nor inhibited by any of his contingencies because he was no longer in Eternia.

All this he thought about during his meditation. And it left him with a deep sense of unease, yet it also motivated him to strive to do better. Especially because, and he was very aware of this, he could not afford not to act. If he didn’t act fast, then he would be doomed forever. This was not the time to slack off, it was the time to build a strong foundation upon which rebuild his old power, and beyond.

***

When Melina confronted Syrma it was in broad daylight, in the middle of a guild full of people and adventurers. Adventurers who could not be turned against her under the guise of orders given to them from above, and her capture could not be justified within reasonable parameters, not with so many witnesses. Scum and villainy are common denominators in the guild, among adventurers and staff both, but most of them were not evil for the sake of being evil, and repercussions counted. That’s why she felt safe, and indeed safe she was.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” The guild master said when he responded to her obvious provocation, proceeding to then deny everything with his usual silky voice so full of contempt for the lower and so in love with itself.

It was like a song of a siren intent on trying to fall in love with herself, while she watched the rest of the world with disgust. This was Syrma and how he spoke. The smirk in his eyes was that of someone who was hiding something but was not hiding the fact that he was hiding stuff. It was the look of someone reveling in the pleasure of being superior to the other party, no matter the fact that Melina was the one asking questions.

It was human nature. All humans were born the same, back when the species first appeared. But the condition didn’t last long. As soon as the great equality of simply being is broken, be it when magic gets discovered or when technology is developed, then greed and the selfish nature of man is revealed.

When Melina returned to the temporary base camp in the middle of the fields, close to the forest, she found that Ishrin and Lisette were sparring. Lisette was particularly impressive to watch, dancing around with her blades moving in the air, sometimes trailing her and sometimes preceding her. Always moving in unpredictable directions and following inscrutable patterns that were difficult to defend against even for Ishrin. She was still learning of course, and after a dozen of minutes or so her control over the blades became sloppy and she was left vulnerable to attacks because of the many openings she gave, but she was improving by leaps and bounds. She was truly terrifyingly good at things she set her mind about doing.

Ishrin was… well. She had nothing to comment about him, just that every time he fought he seemed to have come up with a completely new style that was at the same time simple and unpredictable, hard yet flexible. This time he danced in the air like he had no weight, last time he was solid and steadfast like a tank build. Who knows what he would do next time?

After Ishrin noticed that Melina was back, he let Lisette keep practicing some more rote exercises by herself and freshened up. He wasn’t tired, nor dirty, showing that even with the blades Lisette was not his match in terms of fighting power. He hadn’t been using his whole arsenal either during the fight, just his sword and his superior movement given to him by his enchanted boots and his telekinesis, that when applied to himself allowed him to move in 3D space like he was a fish underwater.

“Did you do some ritual on yourself?” Melina asked.

Ishrin chuckled. “Is it that evident? I upgraded my telekinesis a bit, as well as my speed and defense.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you handled the full wrath of Lisette without breaking a sweat! Even I would have to concentrate against her and her devious blades.”

“Truly magnificent, those things. And the control she has? Man, that girl is talented. But… well, both me and her are still very early into Tier 11. At this rate it’s going to take a while before we advance.”

After a few more minutes the conversation moved to the topic of Syrma. Melina recounted her encounter with him with great detail.

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“I could feel him come down the stairs before I could even see him or hear his steps. I could see what he was doing, now that I know how to spot auras and how they look and feel like. His was like… it was like his presence blanketed the whole guild, with spikes of energy shooting out in all directions, touching the adventurers, touching me. I felt almost violated. When he saw me I felt him try to do something with his aura before he quickly pulled it back. I saw him reach for the Mirror Orb, smirking.”

“That’s no good. You stopped him from using it, right?”

“Obviously. Or I wouldn’t be here to tell the story. Although the adventurers seemed more passive than usual, he wanted to use the Orb because I doubted he would ever dare touch me with so many eyes on us. And he didn’t. In any case, I told him about the duke’s confession, and I asked him why he was coming after us. I didn’t mention the hunters, thought. Thought it would be a bit too much to reveal at the moment, and it’s better that we keep what few cards we have secret.”

Ishrin hummed. “We have a lot of secret cards, actually, but none of them are very helpful right now. We know about the mountain realm, and by extension we have some data on the volcano realm but… that doesn’t help us now. Perhaps as a bargaining chip later on.”

Melina shrugged. “I doubt Syrma even cares.”

Ishrin didn’t expect the nihilistic delivery. This Syrma person really did a number on her. “Still. What did he say in response?”

“Denied everything, of course.” Melina replied, biting her lips. She was upset.

However that was not all she did in her trip to Noctis, or she would have had all reason to be upset. In fact, her chat with the master of the guild was more of an added bonus to her trip, a little extra she threw in to motivate the whole expedition to Ishrin. Her real purpose was different. There were documents in the guild master’s office. Pieces of information that she had written down when she was still the guild master in charge of the Noctis guild, depicting the arrival of a possible deviant individual: that person was Ishrin. This was before she got to know him, and before she was made to see what the actual purpose of the guild really was.

She had always harbored doubts about the guild, and about the moral implications of being a part of its system. But for a long time she had thought that the benefits outweighed the moral cost of being involved in it, and so she stayed. Perhaps that was why she quit her position in the end, after Ishrin gave her that little push to reflect and think about what she was doing, and not because things had gotten dire and out of control for her. Or perhaps not.

The fact that the documents were there remained. It was indeed her who had first told the guild about Ishrin, right about the time when she also put in the request to make him S-Tier.

“I lied to you,” she confessed him.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

She told him everything. She recounted how she immediately noticed that something was off about him based on his behavior, and by the fact that it made no sense for someone as weak as he was when he showed up to have a Tier 15 elemental pixie follow him like a puppy. She told him that the fact that he didn’t know what a creature core was immediately gave away the fact that he was not from this world. She told him about the flagging, and about the real purpose of the S-tier token as a way to notify the higher-ups in the guild. It was true that there was no tracking magic in it, but the sole fact that he had it made him a target of surveillance whenever he used it at a guild, no matter how far from Noctis. She also told him that she had been aware this whole time that Liù and Willow were two names for the same person.

“When I saw you, with your pixie that you named after the Third Hero… alarm bells started to go off in my mind. Besides, that name was not a name many knew. At the beginning I thought you were just a fanatic, someone who did a bit too much research into heroes to be totally stable. But then I learned that you didn’t know about her at all, or at least about her life after she came to this world. It was still unclear what she was for you. Hells, you weren’t even the same race as her, so… well, then I learned that the Keeper changed your race for some reason but by then I was no longer guild master, and the damage was done. I am sorry.”

Ishrin smiled. “Why be sorry? Your allegiance was with the guild, and I was a stranger to you at the time. Things changed; it would be stupid of me to hold you responsible for acting in good faith with limited information.”

“Thank you.” She said, visibly relieved. “You can see why they think you are a hero candidate now. Syrma has a whole folder about you in his office, and it was thick but I didn’t dare peek inside it for fear of some sort of protective magic. I know I used to booby-trap them, I don’t see why Syrma would not be as paranoid if not more.”

“Ominous… anything else?” Ishrin said.

“Yep, there is more.” Melina said. She was playfully fidgeting with her tail to hide her nervousness. The run into town had upset her more than she thought, especially the face-to-face with Syrma. “The guild sent an official response to the flagging. That document was out in the open, right on the table. It’s written very clearly that Syrma is to not interfere until the Dyansty arrives, merely to observe and report.”

Ishrin tapped his chin. “Huh. He didn’t just observe, thought.”

“There’s more. They ensured that this time the Dynasty will be powerful enough to avoid a repeat of the events of last time.” She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment. “Before you ask, I have no idea what it means.”

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