Act 3, Chapter 108: The old soul

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 5:00 a.m.—approximately 11 hours and 21 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Alexandra May

“It radiates Authority over growth, but also over the passage of time and passing in general,” I said, relying on how Maya perceived the crystal fragment in Sophie’s chest. I slowly pressed a finger against it, and Sophie allowed it.

“I honestly have no idea what it is exactly, but during the trial it allowed me to channel part of the Authority gathered inside it to speed up the growth of a vine so I could climb it.” I removed the finger and took a step back.

“Woah!” Maya clasped her hands.

“I also felt my skin tingle a bit when that happened, but I think that and the fact that it is part of me now, are because of my Shadow, the change that happened to her, and the necklace I was wearing.”

“A confluence of many things,” Nickolas said quietly.

“I guess you have to wave goodbye to big décolletages, unless you want to explain how you have a crystal with light caught inside of it, in your chest.”

“A small price to pay,” she said and turned toward the Weaver’s Tree. Anansi was climbing back down the trunk. “I have my own Anima.”

“You can speak to her too?”

“No. It’s most likely just like every other mage’s in the world.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s totally fine,” she replied, turning once more toward me. “Alexa, can we talk? Just you and me somewhere?”

“You heard her, Nick. I am sending you home—”

“No. I actually meant you, without your Personas present.”

“What? You know they are still me,” I protested, placing my hands on my hips. Gertrude shrugged her shoulders and headed toward the trunk of the soul core.

“We don’t mind,” Alex said, walking toward the same place and summoning his guitar. “Could use some quieter time just to play a bit.”

“I know, but it makes no sense.”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Sophie said. “Or maybe it does. It concerns your sickness, the universe’s memory, wizardry, and everything I learned from my interactions with the remnant of your Shadow within the Trial’s space.” As she spoke, she held out her right hand and used the other to straighten each finger in turn, counting off the points she was making.

“That’s a lot of things.” I extended my hand toward her, palm up, and she placed hers on top of it. “Let’s do it,” I added, and the world around us dissolved, turning into the interior of the Nest, with its white marble walls decorated by my various paintings of places. I stared at the Old Oak, grateful that my current state allowed me any control over my abilities at all, while dropping onto one of the couches in here. It was white and made of a very nice, fluffy material that was somehow still firm to sit on.

“I met her at the very end and almost had a heart attack.” She clutched a hand to her chest, which reminded her of the crystal there. She traced the petals with her fingers, and small ribbons of shadowlight followed them. “She looked horror-like scary. Mostly like an enormous spider, but with human parts.” She took a deeper breath, and I nodded to indicate that I was listening. “And while she was scary, I’d say that, adversely proportional to how she looked, she was that much nicer to me. She talked and explained, but something in what she said was strange.” She kept pacing back and forth in front of me

“What exactly?”

“I can’t really repeat it verbatim, but it was about pulling the strings and being hung on a string of her own that vibrates not to her liking. It made me think about those shadowlight strings all around there and here. I can feel them now. See them when I close my eyes. Those that connect me to the core and also those that go away from the core to other things, like your Personas. Are you aware of that?”

“Of what exactly?”

“That she is connected to them? That she too can exert some control over how they behave, and not only you? Maybe it is what causes your soul to cramp. That dissonance between you and her. She is hung on your string and doesn’t like it.” She stopped and turned her attention to me.

“I don’t think so. I know that she has a certain degree of control on her own, which, once again, boils down to how Identity is my main soulmark—I think—but I honestly believe that she is benevolent in her intentions, so her actively harming me is out of the quest—”

“Don’t dismiss it. With you gone, and me connected, she could be trying to replace you and have the biggest share of power over what happens in here.”

“I don’t know, Sophie. I think the mention of the string pulling on her is the clue here and I don’t think that she meant me. When I was at the hospital, they checked all the connections between me and various things, but maybe there is something that connects only to the soul core that creates the problem for me. If that were the case, it might become an issue for you too, the longer you stay connected, which is probably why she mentioned it to you.” I tapped my chin. “I will have to investigate every shadowlight link between the Weaver’s Tree and other things that are also not connected to me at the same time. That, luckily, excludes the Personas.”

“Maybe. She was so nice to me, it somehow rubbed me the wrong way.”

“I’m nice too.” I faked outrage.

“You know what I mean.”

“There are those other issues you mentioned too. Memory of the universe and a thing about wizards? You mean mages by that?” She stopped upon hearing those questions and dropped onto her knees, sitting back on her heels in front of me.

“It wasn’t my decision, and I wanted to honor her wishes, but I feel like keeping this secret for much longer could be detrimental to your health and life. Maybe you can find something that helps you through Zoe’s discovery.”

“Soph…”

“I know, make more sense.” She exhaled slowly, then focused on me. “EoT is studying ancient texts of some kind. Running them through an advanced AI Zoe’s working on in her company: the Library.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, when her colleague ran one of those scrolls through the AI and part of it came out as gibberish, that got her attention. It appeared that Reality was meddling with the results. She could, however, read it perfectly fine. The text talked about the universe remembering everything. And I mean every single thing. The concepts, the ideas, the actions, people, events, magic. Everything is recorded somewhere in there. Now that I think about it while I explain it to you, maybe it is what constitutes dark energy? That unseen mass scientists can’t explain.” She looked onto the glassy ceiling and into the starry night sky.

The author's publishing page contains the chapter readers can use to support their work; this copy was not permitted.

“I still have no idea what—”

“Just listen. The memory of the universe can be manipulated to reach for those encoded things and bring them back into being, or rather copy the effects if you hit the right keys.”

“What does that mean?”

“Any manipulation of Authority you do, or any mage has ever done, is remembered, and if you know how to set up the right ritual, you can cast it yourself.”

“Okay. What does the right ritual mean?”

“I don’t understand how it works exactly, but each spell needs Authority to be cast, and it could be any form of Authority. But besides that, some require just the gestures or the words, while others need elaborate setups of ingredients arranged in proper patterns, intricate lines traced in the dirt of only a certain kind. It doesn’t really follow any sensible rules, but it does work.”

“Maybe it has to do with how the mage cast that spell and under what conditions, and that’s why it needs those things? Maybe if someone painted a round black hole with spray paint and infused it with Authority while holding a Bugs Bunny doll, they could recreate my magic?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but Zoe, Peaches, and I tried enacting a few witchcraft and voodoo rituals described in literature, using the ingredients listed there and arranging them as Zoe felt was right, and we managed to cast quite a few spells. We could track a person, see through their eyes, light candles, move objects with force of will, make someone hurt by pushing needles into a doll, and even make a broom levitate. It’s scary stuff, and somehow seers are predisposed to tune in and listen to the universe for clues on how to arrange a proper spell.”

“That’s fantastic!” I exclaimed.

“I wondered why the mages don’t know about it.”

“Oh, some of them most likely know. We have mentions of witches being persecuted in history, and depictions of wizards too. Most probably don’t bother, having their own more easily accessible power. Or it truly is a forgotten art, but the worlds are so vast it’s foolish to think you girls are the only ones doing it.”

“You are probably right. Would you like to see it anyway?”

“Of course! This sounds absolutely great.”

“It’s nothing ground-breakingly powerful.”

“For now, Sophie. The more we learn about it, the more we will be able to do, and I bet the really powerful spells require lots of Authority and elaborate rituals. Maybe if something requires four, five or six of soulmarks to will into reality, then the imprint it leaves behind needs an equally complicated setup to reenact.”

“Zoe came to the same conclusion,” Sophie whispered.

“Why did she want to keep it from me? She is putting me in the same basket as Peter’s rotten egg, right?”

“She certainly doesn’t want to do it, but she most likely is. Yes. I think she needs to feel like she has some semblance of control back.”

“I see. I will keep what you told me to myself.”

“Just until I tell her myself that I shared it with you. I don’t want to plant any wedges between any of us,” she said, and I looked at her intently. She was a mage now, and apparently a wizard in her free time. But above all, she was my friend. A sister I never had, and through my connections she would have been dead if not for a miracle.

“You were shot by Penrose’s man,” I said bluntly before I could come up with a reason to conceal it from her and have it bite me in the ass later. She stared at me for a while, weighing the words in her own mind.

“Why?”

“He’s got a dead man’s switch procedure prepared for me. Upon his death, assassins were supposed to kill you and Peter.” Her brows furrowed.

“So he is dead? You killed him?”

“No and no. I tried killing him after I learned it was his doing, that it was his plan,” I simplified it for her. “But I failed. I’m very sorry, Sophie.”

She took a while to answer, her brows never really unknitting. “He overcame you in a fight?”

“No. There wasn’t any fight. I confronted him at gunpoint and we argued about it. I couldn’t force myself to pull the trigger, no matter how hard I tried, Sophie. Even though I love you and I’d be devastated if you died, I just... wasn’t strong enough.”

“Will he try something like this in the future?”

“No. I strongly believe that he won’t.”

“But you aren’t sure?”

“No. I’d be lying if I said I was.”

She exhaled and her face relaxed. “I understand that, Alexa. I don’t like learning about it, but on the other hand I painted a target on my back when I decided to help you with the mage’s agency anyway. If not for Penrose, it could have been someone else. It could still be someone else or even him in the future. It’s up to me to deal with it.”

“What do you mean by dealing with it?”

“You said that you can’t make sure that he is harmless toward me. I will make sure of that. But first I need to get some fresh air.”

“You are going to fight him?” I asked, watching her stand up. She looked down at me.

“Not today. Probably not for a long time, but I will not let him get a free pass at trying to kill me and getting away with it. He did not succeed with his machinations now. He lulled you with his talk and the power he has over you—and I understand that. I really do, Alexa. I can’t imagine myself killing my own father, ever. And I know he is doing some despicable things himself. But to me, Penrose is a liability and a danger, and I can’t give him more opportunities to try something like that in the future.”

“Maybe I was right after all, about Penrose already being dead and the universe not knowing it yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just something I swore to do in a moment of rage,” I replied, watching her move slowly toward the exit of the building. She stopped at the threshold and looked back.

“I feel rage too. I just won’t let it overcome me. I prefer the old-fashioned method of revenge: calculated plans,” she said and left to wander the Domain, finding within herself the strength to still love me the way she used to. At least that’s what I hoped for.

**********

I moved out into the open on my own two legs. I counted the prostheses as my own for the sake of simplicity. I felt better, but there was a possibility that at any moment my ability for locomotion could be taken from me in an instant, and truly in spite of Peter’s words that stuck with me, I decided to walk whenever I could just to show him that I still knew how to do it.

Sophie had been joined by Nickolas, and they were walking beneath the cherry blossom trees that had appeared in the meadow over the last ten minutes. I liked the addition of natural elements to my Domain. They helped connect something artificial, as in the case of art, with something that had sprouted from the effort of the universe itself. I knew the environment here responded to her soul’s needs, and I allowed that. I knew it was only partially deliberate on her part, but there was an invisible hand of hers at play in here. In how those trees were arranged in crisscrossing patterns and yet somehow felt as though this were nature’s own gift. Like the new vines that rose all over the columns of the temples, growing completely wild and yet unmistakably bringing to mind the golden ratio in how they climbed and the spaces they left behind.

I stopped by a single forget-me-not in the sea of grass and poppy flowers. I paused there and decided to try something new, inspired by Gertrude’s ability to harness the power of performance and steer toward the more literal and poetic nature of art. There was power in words, in how they were structured, how they sounded and rhymed to mimic and portray a process. My soulmark of Identity had long been one of a Trueform now, and I wasn’t really treating it as such. Identity and truth, of course, were not the same thing. The first answered the simple question: What is that thing? While the latter dealt with whether the proposition corresponded to reality and whether a statement about something was correct.

I could look at water and claim that it was wine, and it would not be true, but if someone like me, who wielded the power to shape Identity, did so and forced the water through paint to accept its new identity, I would make it its new truth too. I was pretty sure it was Aristotle who thought that knowing the essence—and thus the identity—of a thing was knowing what it truly was. While Heidegger argued that truth is not merely correctness but the unconcealment of beings, making the disclosure of a thing’s identity part of the truth itself.

I needed that reminder, because tonight I was going to compose in the truth of growth between the words that had not existed yet, but would as soon as I let them leave my mouth. I kneeled before that flower and, with the help of the brain web, began spinning the weave of a poem that already existed within my mind as the first word left my lips. It parted from them slowly.

“Hush.” With that word, shadowlight left my mouth like a light mist that fell to the ground as much as it befell it and engulfed that solitary blue flower in the cradling power of the Identity and the truth I lent to it.

“Wake.” The flower responded, its green leaves trembling and rising slowly, becoming visibly larger with each following word.

“Small green, softly seen,

“leaf by leaf, beyond belief—

“petals rise, to greet the skies,

“where light and spring learn to sing.”

When the last word was mine no more and was cast adrift upon the wind, the power I had granted it faded, and with it the small spurt of growth I had induced in the forget-me-not. It stood taller than the other flowers by two whole inches. It wasn’t much, but I had created a poem that mimicked the structure of growth itself and spoke of it. And it accepted the Identity I gave it. It was more localized, however, in how I could direct it. While music worked on everything and everyone who could hear it and were within close vicinity of the source, reciting the poem allowed me to target the process at one particular element. I liked it. It made it more intimate. Not as powerful, but all the more beautiful.