MAGUS INFINITE

The Sovereign suddenly smiled, ”I would not have believed you if I had not seen that you have conquered a Tribulation; a soul like yours is truly something rare... Is it the loop that made you this way, or is there something special about you, Elric?”

I cocked my head to the side a bit in confusion. It would seem that although I had been persuasive in my speech, the true reason why Seed had changed his tune was not the Soul Forge, but the light of the Tribulation lightning in my eyes.

What I did then was incredibly difficult, and it had challenged the core of who I was, but I did not think it was that special, but I may be wrong about Tribulations.

The Sovereign sighed, ”Before you go break yourself against a mountain, you will need somewhere to stand.”

He turned from the hooded giant and walked back into the dark, and I followed, with the fox riding my shoulder in silence. I know the little critter wanted to speak for a while now, but she knew any distractions at the moment could be costly, so she was silent.

We did not go far, as Seed stopped at a stretch of wall that looked like every other, and he laid his hand flat against it.

”There is a place in this facility that I had slowly carved out for myself over the years,” he said, ”I don’t know if he knows of it, I bet that he does, but he would not care for it... the point is, that this place would keep you safe from my ignorant eyes in any further loops, and if I find you in this place, I know that it would be only me who could bring you here... not even the Soul Flayer can enter this place without my consent.”

My eyes brightened as the significance of this place may be greater than anything the Sovereign could have offered me. From the moment I gained the loop, the one thing I lacked was a place of calm where I could contemplate my abilities and understand the crises I was in without being distracted after a few moments of peace.

At the earlier stages, I could push through the crises in front of me by just pushing ahead, but even this sort of approach would not work for long, not when the path to becoming a more powerful mage was found in silence and the deep contemplation of existence itself.

I truly needed this space, a chance to breathe after what felt like a lifetime of holding everything inside my chest.

Seed pressed his right hand against the wall, and darkness poured from his hand like oil that spread over the wall, thinning it and revealing a space behind it.

”The key to entering this space is a simple Cantrip; it is the first spell I learnt as a child, and is called Clean. Are you aware of it?”

I paused for a moment, and I nodded. I knew of the Clean Spell; it was not an elemental discipline, and I had not learned it yet, but if I remembered, it used only a single channel, and Seed turned and pointed to the air, and the simple spell displayed itself in the air, and I learned it at a glance.

I made a motion with my hand, pushing a tiny trickle of Anima through the channel in my palm, and a wave of clean air washed over my face that smelled... clean.

”If you press your hand against the wall of this place and use this spell, this would open the door, but that is only the first part of the sequence.”

I could already see into the space behind the wall, and it was small. Bare, at first glance, until my eyes adjusted and I saw that the room appeared to almost be made entirely from Inscriptions.

The walls of the little room were covered in it, floor to ceiling, dense and layered, and there was something about the Inscriptions that almost felt... clean.

They did not writhe around or send pulses of power; it was as if they were naturally carved out of stone, and I was nearly enraptured by it. I don’t know how he did it, but these Inscriptions felt as if I was looking at the true path that Inscriptions were supposed to take.

”What is this?” I said quietly.

”Everything I could keep.” Seed’s voice had changed. ”This is eight thousand years of tending a language and never being allowed to speak it, only enforce it. So at night... There is no night here, but you understand me... I would come here, and I would write the words of magic. Just... the language, as I understood it.” He looked at the covered walls as if he were staring at a life’s work he may never get to use. ”It is a great deal of what I know... and I am giving it to you.”

I swallowed the words I was trying to say, sure a part of me believed that this might be a trap, Seed might be trying to bring me into a space where he believed I could be trapped, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, not that I didn’t believe that the Sovereign was capable of deception, no, I had a sinking feeling that if Seed wanted to deceive me, I may not be able to know he was doing it, but he knew the nature of the loop, and if he was going to betray me, there were better ways to do it.

Although I did not find it strange that he knew I needed a place of safety to plan and think, I decided to run with it, primarily because of my new Mythic Title, since I was no longer afraid of not being able to die.

”The Clean Spell is to open the door; now watch my hand and follow the sequence to disable the hidden layer of defense.”

Seed pressed his hand over the open space in front of him, and the space rippled as if a bubble was covering the doorway to the room. His fingers spread out, and he pressed seven points in the air.

The invisible ripple vanished, and the room was fully opened.

”Oh, there is one more thing, you have...”

The air suddenly turned cold, and the Sovereign gasped, ”No, not now... Sad!”