Chapter 407: The Touch of The System

I woke to the sound of stone grinding against stone, and I was surprised that I was able to sleep at all, and that I had apparently done for several hours until daybreak.

I have not slept properly since before the loop. Arcanist bodies do not require it, and a mind like mine does not stop, and for a while the nearest thing I have had to rest was meditating inside a space of infinite darkness.

For a moment, I did not know where I was. The darkness of the spatial storm still clung to the edges of my consciousness, and I half-expected to see the infinite pillars stretching into nothing. But the warmth of the forge seeped into my bones, and the weight of the mountain pressed down around me, solid and real.

I opened my eyes. The hall was lit by the invisible fire of the forge, casting shadows that moved without source. Dorrik was at his table, his back to me, his hands moving over something I could not see.

I sat up. The hides rustled beneath me, and I felt the ache of healing flesh still working its way through my body. The Law of Flesh had done its work, but there were places where the damage had been too deep, too strange, and it would take time for my body to fully remember what it was supposed to be.

"You are awake," Dorrik called out and I nodded towards the old man, even though his back was to me, I knew that he was able to see me. "Told you, you needed to sleep; it’s good for the soul. Ah, you went off like a dropped stone. Snored, too."

I rolled my eyes, "I don’t snore."

I heard the smile in his voice. "You’ll have to take my word on it. There’s nobody else here."

Turning away from him, I looked at the walls, focusing on the shelves cut into the stone, filled with the thin pale tablets that I had noticed the night before. They were books, I realized, made of stone, their surfaces covered in lines of script that glowed faintly in the firelight.

There were various methods of storing information for mages. Acolytes got most of their knowledge from books, and for more exclusive knowledge, like spells, the books could be enchanted. Then, as Adepts and above, the forms of storing and delivering information became more exotic.

I had heard of certain spells stored in the wind, or the first ray of sunlight touching a particular spot every century... it was not so much of a stretch for me to see that knowledge was etched into stone.

I stood up, walked to the nearest shelf and looked at the tablets, and I felt the familiar hunger of knowledge rise in my chest.

"Dorrik," I called out to him. "These are books, right? I want to read them."

He paused, and his hands stopped moving. I heard him set something down on the table. Then he turned, and his pale grey eyes found me.

"The tablets," he said. "Aye. I thought you might."

"You did?"

"You came into my hall bleeding curiosity out of every hole in you. You looked at that shelf before you even considered looking for clothes or food." He got up. "A man like you craves knowledge, and my hall welcomes that hunger. However, the problem would not be if I can give you access to them, but if you can receive it."

I frowned and looked at the tablets again. "What do you mean?"

"Dorrik shook his head. "You cannot feel my magic, lad. I could tell from the way you looked at my hall and everything around you. There is a reason for that, and all of it is tied to the System bound to your soul."

"As far as I can tell, this System has not stopped me from learning anything new that I want to learn," I replied, but my voice was low and a bit unsure, because I think I was understanding what Dorrik was telling me and I did not like it.

He was quiet for a moment, and I could see him weighing something behind his ancient eyes. "You are chained, Elric. The System is in your soul, and it will try to interpret what you read through its own lens. It will try to fit what you learn into its framework, its order. You may not see the truth as it is. You may only see what it allows you to see."

I sucked in a deep breath, and I understood what Dorrik meant. I had gained a lot of power, but it was all tied to the System in one form, and so when I did not meet certain criteria, I was deprived of accessing those powers. This was the framework that the System had built around my soul.

In one breath I could challenge Sovereigns, but thrown into a different time, and my spells were shackled and I could not see the world with all my senses. Dorrik was right, the System had taken my powers unless I obeyed its rules, who was to say that senses I should have had were gone because the System forbade them.

By all the lights in heaven, was this not what Dorrik was telling me yesterday? A god of stone was able to be in all stone, everywhere at once, and was not bound by any borders or space, but the System changed all of that, giving them territory and forcefully granting them a rank, and they were no longer free.

How could I know I had never seen colors when everything I knew from the moment I was born was black and white?

I swallowed the panic inside me and slowly nodded to Dorrik. "I understand."

"Do you?" He walked toward me, and I felt the weight of his presence settle on me. "The tablets you want to read are not written in the language of the System. They are written in the language of the free, the language of the world before the Dragon brought back his prize. You will not find what the System wants you to see, but you will find names, and places, and the shape of a world that is slowly heading towards extinction. The System will try to translate it into something you can understand, and it will lose something in the translation."

I looked at the tablets. At the faint glow of the script. "I still want to read them."

"You are a stubborn one, aren’t you? No wonder you are Chained. Are you sure you did not kill your god?" Dorrik studied me for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and gestured toward the shelf.

"Take whichever you wish. They are not fragile, and they do not break. But they do not give up their secrets easily. You will have to work for them."

I reached for the nearest tablet. It was thin and pale, its surface smooth as polished stone, and the script on it was not a language I recognized. But as I held it, I felt something shift in my mind, a flicker of understanding that was not quite knowledge.

Then more clearly than I had ever felt before, I felt the touch of the System reaching for my mind.