Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (67 page)

“I thought you were the academic aspect, not the arrogant
aspect.”

I have done nothing but state facts.

“What does the plaque say?”

Kallen shrugged. “I can’t read Dnnac Ledo’s elven.”

“You can’t? But Zaticana’s blessing allows everyone to
understand each other on grace.”

“That applies primarily to
spoken
languages,”
Annala explained. “Our writing system is specifically except from Zaticana’s
authority over languages because of the prayers of Meza-like individuals who
lived long ago. They wanted to keep other races, and especially humans,
ignorant of our ways in writing, both the grammar and the vocabulary, so our
knowledge could not be easily disseminated if stumbled upon and cause a tragedy
among both races.”

“Really?”

That wasn’t in any of the possible futures he saw. Then
again, he didn’t look at
every
possible future. They were infinite. Only
Wiol herself could see them all at once.

“No. Zaticana doesn’t include written languages because
‘that would be too easy,’ but Meza’s group likes to say otherwise. The goddess
only allows a person to learn
one
written language by grace. The rest they
have to pick up with study and each elven written language has drifted from all
the others due to isolation, local culture and tradition and mortal loan words.”

She cleared her throat.

“The plaque reads, 'Dengel the Fallen One.' Furthermore,
it elaborates, ‘
In memory of the faithless villain Dengel Tymh, born 30 BAA
and died about 400 AA. An elf of endless arrogance and ambition who ruined the
lives of everyone he met. He reached for Chaos with control in his heart and
for this, he was obliterated. Pay heed all who read this. Beware your own
hubris.’
”

“Mom told us this story over and over again when we were
little,” Annala continued. “Ironically, this very moral is why she is known as
a witch even among elves. The project she worked on with Mr. and Mrs. Selios
was considered blasphemous by many.”

Kallen coughed. Annala eeped and tugged her ear.

“I’m sorry. I got carried away and —”

“In addition to being the Boogeyman,” Kallen said, “Dengel
has also become the exemplar of over-reaching ambition. Dengel wanted power
that could kill an immortal and that's
exactly
what he got; power that
can kill an immortal elf."

Eric looked again at the statue. It stood tall and proud
dispute the trash and defaming inscription. Dengel never did talk about how he
died. Eric assumed it was simply too depressing a topic, but now he knew
better. It was too
humiliating
.

Chaotic Starlight...the one spell Dengel failed to
do...If I succeed, I'll surpass him. I'll build my own name while pushing his down,
and at the same time, remove a threat to myself and my future mate. I have seen
the future and this action plays out in many of them. I just have to grasp it
and make it happen.

“Kallen, you said turn things into chaos. Is Mana
Conversion similar?”

He cupped his hands and generated a sphere of mana. That
sphere became fire, then water, then earth, then air, then lava, then ice, then
electricity, then shrubbery, then shifted back to mana. The cycle then repeated
in reverse.

“That’s it!” Kallen exclaimed. “How’d you do that!?”

Eric collapsed the mana between his hands.

“While you learned that everything is Chaos and so it can
be returned to Chaos, I learned that everything is Chaos and so it can become
anything else, but I don’t know how to turn something into Chaos.”

“Enthralling!” Kallen gushed. “
Please
continue.”

Eric gave her a bored look.

“Alright, if you insist. We’ll reason through it instead.”
She assumed a thinking pose and walked about the courtyard. “Everything was
born of Chaos and before Chaos, there was nothing. Even Order admits this is
true. If everything is born of Chaos and can be returned to Chaos, then Chaos
is in every molecule of creation.”

“Exactly,” Eric said. “The air I breathe is chaos and so
is the ground beneath my feet. The water composing the majority of my body is
chaos and so is the heat it generates. If everything is chaos, then how can
anything be stable enough for growth and life? Spirit, which is also chaos.”

“But spirit forms a unique substance known as
paku
that can control mana and
kon
, which is the animating force that enables
paku
to bind with solid matter,” Kallen said. “All of these are lesser
forms of chaos, and spirits can direct them towards a given purpose. That makes
them closer to Order.”

“But Order can’t handle the truest form of Chaos, the Sea
of Itself,” Annala continued for her adoptive sister. “Thus it is Noitearc that
performs the conversion from chaos to spirit to life to mana and then back
again.”

“Yes, that’s mana conversion, but I can only perform the earthly
sort. If it takes divinity of Noitearc’s standing to recreate chaos, then we’re
sunk.”

“Are we?” Kallen asked. “You can say that much, right?”

Eric didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to Annala and
asked, “What do you think? Surely you’ve read something along these lines in
your vast studies, or your mom has attempted something of the sort in her long
time of research.”

“Well...” She pawed the ground and tugged on her ear again.
He grasped the other hand and entwined their fingers.

“It’s all right. The Church of Chaos has never established
a formal Inquisition because such a thing is too close to the Order Orthodoxy.” 

 His words and demeanor melted her fears. His touch
reassured her. A small nudge from the Subjugation Collar provided a final
ironic push over the fence.

“There is a school of thought that says the symbol we use
for the Flower of Chaos, that of ten lines from ten directions joining at a
central point, is not a symbol for Chaos at all, but for Order. The argument
goes that the lines are threads woven into a pattern and the point where they
meet is the spoke of a wheel. Thus, it is a loom for the creation of the fabric
of reality and a mill for producing the work of life.”

She stopped then and walked over to a tree. There, she
attempted to take one of the lower and thinner branches from it. The tree
protested. Annala insisted that she needed it to draw a diagram in the snow.
The tree insisted that it needed the branch because it was on its good side.

“Annala,” Eric said, “You could ask your master for
permission to use magic.”

She stopped and stared. So did Kallen.

“I can do that?”

Eric shrugged. “Maybe. I’m just guessing. It would make
sense, wouldn’t it? Order is the Original Mage, after all. He wants to control
it, not necessarily destroy it, so as your master via ordercraft enslavement, presumably
I could—”

“You saw it in Wiol’s Future Vision.”

Again, Eric shrugged.

Annala sighed and walked back. “Master Eric, please grant
me permission to use illusion magic to illustrate my point.” She even threw in
a curtsy.

“You have my permission to do so.”

The collar shimmered. “Thank you, Master Eric.”

Annala chanted and the symbol in question appeared in the
air between them. She pointed to the center and it colored golden-brown. Then
she explained that the dot created by the union of the lines was traditionally
thought to be Chaos. She made circles with her hand and beads of light
representing life radiated outward from the center and reached the end of the
ten lines. Then they flowed back to the center. As the beads traveled, the
lines colored to the element they represented, creating a rainbow.

“We use this symbol because Lady Chaos has no form that we
could comprehend. This represents the sum total of Creation; all of its
component parts connected through the Chaotic River. The ‘Spoke of a Wheel’
heresy has a different interpretation.”

With her other hand, she flapped her fingers up and down.
This triggered a line of silver light to circle the outer rim of the symbol.
The dot at the center shifted to silver-grey in color while the golden-brown
drifted into the space between the lines.

“If we take this to be the spoke of a wheel, then it can
have a lever attached to it and, with a lever, one can control the wheel like a
weapon or a water mill. In both these cases, the wheel is exploited by
something outside it for labor and energy. To summarize, this symbol represents
Noitearc as used by Order to extract mana and survive.”

“In other words,” Kallen said, “to do this, we will be
like Order; controlling the elements that compose the world to control the
world, and through controlling the world, control chaos. The spirit in the
center could be Order or any lesser soul, like you and me.”

“Then you should stop contemplating the Three Great
Powers,” Eric said, “and focus on the Ten Worldly Elements. Back to the
courtyard!”

While the trio ran, Kallen quipped, “You know, instead of
all this running around and wasting time, you could just tell us.”

Eric adopted his best trickster grin. “If I did that, then
you wouldn’t learn anything.”

The border of the courtyard was a link of the Eight
Earthly Elements. Within this border were two more shrines for Light and
Darkness. Between these two shrines was empty space. Conventionally, this void
represented the omnipresence of Chaos, but according to the heresy, it could
also be the astral body of Order. Annala walked into this space and declared, “I
am Spirit, the center element. I am that which animates matter and grants true
life, but I have no life of my own. Did you get all that?” she asked Eric.

“It’s no more complicated than your lectures about the Anich
Amplification of Dragonic and Feline Leyline theory.”

Annala cocked her head. “What’s the Anich Amplification of
Dragonic and Feline Leyline theory?”

Eric comically covered his mouth. “Oops! Spoilers.”

“
To put this in perspective
,” Kallen said, “I have
the Composite and Eric has the Basic. Both of us are the center and we have
Light and Darkness respectively. That means we are two halves of the sum total
of existence.”

“Since Dengel did this by himself, you don’t need to do
this together,” Annala continued. “You should have all you need within the
crystal…PRISMS!”

“Prisms?”

 “Prisms! They’re all different colors!”

“No, they’re always clear.”

“Because of the different colors! All colors in the
Visible Light Spectrum come from white light; it splits into a rainbow if you
use a dispersive prism. In this case, spirit is the prism because a mage takes uncolored
mana from Noitearc and converts it into a colored spell.” 

“I see where you’re going with this!”

The crystal mages chorused. Annala found it distasteful
that they were in harmony. Then Eric laughed and she pouted, having fallen for
one more cheap time travel trick.

“Refracted light will turn back into white light if passed
through a second prism,” Kallen said. “Theoretically, we can use our two
prisms, our spirit, and our crystals to control elemental refraction and merge
the elements in our possession into chaotic energy. Once we reach that step,
all we have to do is direct it at Nulso and he will cease to exist.”

“This is all fun speculation and theory, but we need to do
more research to be sure.”

Both girls turned to him and said, “You just want to go
back to the library.”

Eric shrugged. “Guilty.”

While they searched for a method to harness the Chaotic
Starlight, they came across something peculiar. The power of Chaos could
destroy those protected by Order but it was Order’s power that was the best
defense against it. Paradoxically, Order was both especially vulnerable and
especially resilient. They tried to ask the local Ordercrafter Killer for
advice, but he shut them down.

“In the unlikely event that an ordercrafter comes to Dnnac
Ledo, I will kill it myself. I don’t want humans—former, future, or otherwise—to
learn my tricks. Figure it out yourselves.”

So they returned to their studies.

Kallen passed Eric a diagram she created; it arranged the
Eight Earthly Elements in a square grid with the Spirit Element in the center
flanked by the Two Cosmic Elements.

“I’d call it ‘The World According to the Avatars.’ What do
you think about this?”

He passed her the incantation he wrote; a short series of
words designed to focus their will and direct their power.

“You’ll win first prize for beige prose.”

“I’m studying intermediate magecraft; I don’t want to use
rhymes anymore.”

The battle mages decided to stick with what they were
familiar with; a straightforward attack spell. They devised a method to direct
the chaotic energy into a single beam like mundane mana. This way, they could
direct it where they wished. While their theory was sound, there was no safe
way to test it. This led to a chilling conclusion.

 “This is basically a spell to generate the same kind of
energy that created the world, and can just as easily destroy it. Once you
bring it here, you won’t be able to stop it or dismiss it. All that energy has
to go somewhere...” Annala gulped. “…A mana storm is a wet firecracker.”

Kallen jumped up. “We can’t use it here!” she shouted.

“Kallen, relax. It will be fine,” Eric said.

“We
can’t use it here
. It would be a second Siduban
Chaos Explosion!”

“There are plenty of futures where that doesn’t happen,”
Eric continued.

“Destruction. Chaos is destruction.” She stumbled away
from the table. “Even when it creates, it destroys what was there before. An
endless cycle of rebirth that produces nothing. This is my home, my
second
home, and my parents and younger sister and—No. We can’t use it here.”

Eric rounded the table and she backed further away.