To Fly the Soaring Tides

Chapter 281 - 274 - The Archive's Destination

Roughly seven hours had passed since Cira left entered the dark staircase. The only sound accompanying her along the way was that of her own footsteps which echoed eerily too long. To stave off the boredom, Cira spoke to the archival wisp—she wasn't sure which it was yet.

Of course, she would prefer if this wisp here were a new facet of her power and merely a conduit to the Archive. She had a feeling it was something between that and an aetherial incarnation though, which was potentially troubling.

Regardless, it paid no heed to her words.

This didn't offend Cira. Instead, she pondered its intentions.

It clearly possesses a high level of intelligence, but is it something that even has intentions as I know them?

No, that's stupid. Everything has intent, whether it stems from desire or inherent behavior. The Archive should be no different. I already know it craves wisdom. Thinking about it from that perspective… What does that have to do with me?

Now that she was in the midst of a surplus of time to ponder, Cira realized the Archive's actions were quite strange.

For one, it could manipulate this place—or itself—at will. This had become evident when it got upset and started throwing that wall of boundless darkness at her, sweeping up countless bookcases in its passing.

Wait…

It should have been obvious, but that was the closest thing to emotion Cira could figure the Archive had displayed thus far. If not fury, then a form of wrath. The Archive wanted to see her curse and seemed to fall into a brief rage upon being refused that privilege.

It should know everything… right? Does that not apply to primordial laws? Or… just mine? There should be no reason for it to simply observe the myriad flame if that weren't the case. After all, even I lack wisdom pertaining to it.

Could it be… the Archive wishes to see Kazali's plan through to fruition so it can gain something novel?

Cira did her best not to display it on her face, but she instantly grew more suspicious of the Archive and the wisp. At the same time, Cira decided that she naturally had to invoke that fury the Archive had displayed again if this little tour didn't work out.

But that could wait. She truly wanted to see where it intended to lead her.

Not long after that, only sixteen more hours of stairs, Cira finally reached the last step. After taking a moment to appreciate flat ground, she fell backwards against an empty bookcase.

The surrounding chamber was dark, but she closed her eyes anyway to catch her breath.

The last few miles of stairs had been traversed at a full sprint, and Cira was exhausted. Meanwhile, that purple wisp gently floated to the side, trying to lead her toward its desired destination.

She grasped it in her hand. Despite this, the wisp still trailed off opposite the direction of its path, as if it were still moving anyway.

"Hey." Cira spoke in a cold voice as white light emanated from her palm, forming a small shell around the wisp. Following this the trail grew still, and it was clear she had the Archive—or the wisps attention.

She narrowed her eyes and cast a cold glare unto the wisp, before tossing it aside, "Let me make this perfectly clear. So long as you want something from me, you're on my time. We will stop here and rest until I am ready."

Cira closed her eyes again and continued to breathe. She had been slacking on her physical fitness routine ever since landing on Icarus, and it really showed in this moment. By the time she had steadied her breath, she noticed a pointed object that had been jabbing into her back and turned around to address it, only to find a single book on the shelf.

"Hmm…" 'A Study of Causal Rejection'. What even is that? There's no author.

Cira flipped through the pages with her jaw on the floor. It essentially answered the single question that the scholars of Yon couldn't manage to fathom. While the law of causality could exert faint influence over fate under certain conditions, it could inversely affect one's understanding of reality.

This was naturally far-fetched, but when the effect was condensed to a single event—the primordial genocide—such a feat was actually possible.

The more Cira thought about it, the more it made sense. At this point, near every sky should have some history of such an event. Vast swaths of life had been decimated everywhere. All Kazali had to do was blur the line between past and present.

No one cared how long ago it happened, for they knew it happened in the past. Even when disputed by someone who held a different recollection of events, it was simply assumed that the other was mistaken. Beyond this, the sky was vast. No matter where you asked and when they were affected, it was not untrue to say that the entire sky had to endure Kazali's purge.

There was no reason to believe they were remembering separate events, and Kazali's power enforced that belief across all the skies, likely inculcated with each subsequent activation of the array.

Cira couldn't help but shudder at the thought. She had a tenuous grasp at best on what the law of causality even was, so to think that his power could influence everybody across all skies to think a certain way was terrifying.

It wasn't that she misunderstood the definition of causality. Cira had experienced it first-hand during her debut job all those years ago and that lesson really stuck with her. In the present, she could only wonder if this job was a pointed effort from her father long ago.

Cira's first official job was performed under the supervision of none other than the Great Sage Gazen, not long after her eleventh birthday. A small island of farmers were experiencing a sugar-rat infestation. Cira thought this was an easy one and spent a couple weeks killing rats the size of small dogs. That alone wasn't bad as she had already endured practical combat training by this point, and it all went quite smoothly. The island was devoid of sugar-rats in short order.

She was so proud of herself and Gazen even gave her a reward for her efforts.

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"You've done very well, Cira." He said with a suspiciously amused glint in his eyes, "Why don't we stay here for a while and take an impromptu vacation to celebrate?"

As this island consisted of nothing but sugarcane, huts, and a tavern, young Cira did not really see the allure. But to her childish mind, the word vacation set all qualms to rest.

They stayed for nearly two months and were treated like royalty by the locals, which Cira foolishly enjoyed at the time.

One morning however, she awoke to the sky rumbling. She ran out of bed with a start and went straight out to the lawn. A dense cloud of black swirled above the island, seemingly coming from the sugarcane fields she had just saved by exterminating all the rats.

The sound was deafening, and out in the open now, it sounded like countless buzzing insects. Cira's face paled as the cloud thinned, and she recognized the large black insects that comprised the swarm. They were about the size of her head, and the sugar rats were often caught eating them before they died.

She watched in horror as the entire swarm flew off swiftly into the horizon, leaving behind nothing but a barren patch of dirt in the middle of the island.

She was only shaken from her stupor to the sound of her father's aloof chuckle from the garden. He sat calmly at the table with a cup of tea, "Do you understand?" His voice was patient as always.

Cira nodded with tears in her eyes.

"Sugar locusts." Gazen continued. "Until recently, the rats would keep them in check and even eat their eggs before they hatched."

This of course only threw Cira further into the pits of despair. "I-I'm sorry… I didn't think it through, and… and—"

Gazen cut her off, "There was a delicate balance on this island, one that not even the villagers seemed to realize. The rats just so happened to get ahead in the race to eat the sugarcane, but those crops' destruction was inevitable. Because the rats did such a good job, no one understood the threat the locusts posed.

"Now you completed the job as requested but opened the path to a greater threat." Gazen's lecture was making Cira sick. "You have accepted great generosity from the people of this village since we landed, but look at those fields. Even the threat you hadn't considered is gone, but do you consider this job complete and your rewards earned?"

She could only shake her head, holding back childish sobs.

Gazen dried her tears with his sleeve and continued, "Of course you don't. Because you are the sorcerer I am raising. Not everything is as simple as it appears on the surface. But as sorcerers it is our jobs to see the unseen… No, it is our responsibility. And you are a smart girl, who no doubt could have seen what I saw had you only sat down and thought about it. Instead, you just witnessed the fruit bore of such a small oversight."

Cira glanced over to the barren fields and the villagers quickly gathering with grim looks on their faces, then the small speck on the horizon that became of the sugar locust cloud. She then turned to her father, again, with tears in her eyes, "It would have been better if we never stopped here…"

She had been asked if she wanted to stop or pick a different island before they landed, so this result felt like she had only invited trouble upon the villagers and herself.

Her father's face suddenly grew stern, "No, you made the right choice there. The moment this island entered your path, it became a part of your path. The first step. Whether you help them or not, their fate is inevitably the result of a choice you made. This is what it means to wield power. This, my daughter, is the sorcerer's burden."

Understanding dawned on Cira's face, then determination, "So… What do I do, Dad?"

Gazen's face turned even more serious, "Well… you hung onto a sample of that sugarcane, right?"

There was no longer any color left in Cira's face as she sucked in a sharp breath. She was sure she would have died that very instant had it not been for Gazen's next words.

"Not to worry." He pulled out a bundle of sugar stalks with a grin on his face. "The rats and locusts are all gone, but it will be a lot of work to fill these villagers' fields again. Are you up for the task?

With new light shining in her eyes, Cira shouted, "Yes!"

"And then what…?" Gazen's sudden tone shift made Cira's brilliant smile begin to pale.

"And then…" She melted under his gaze, "And then… No vacation! Onto the next job!"

She thought it was the right answer, but this smile too was short lived.

"Not so…" Her father shook his head, "I told you this island is a delicate ecosystem. Without rats, the soil will turn barren over some years, and without locusts, the rats will die. The quality of this island's sugar will reduce, then eventually cease to grow. The result is the same."

Cira couldn't deal with the tumult in her heart and just when she thought she was again doomed to fail, Gazen let out another chuckle.

"Not to worry, my Daughter. You may not see everything yet, but that is only because you lack experience. The same cannot be said for me." With an amused grin, he proceeded to conjure two cages on the lawn right next to each other. One full of rats, and the other locusts.

In the end, Cira spent the next two weeks planting sugarcane. It would have taken much longer, but the villagers ended up helping after a while. Gazen made it clear in the beginning who exactly it was they were hiring for this job, so they found Cira's efforts endearing.

In the end, Gazen left them with a heavy lecture on ecology, along with rat and locust traps. He ordinarily would not leave such artifacts behind, but it was something of a reward for dealing with Cira's learning process.

"You must understand the cause and effect of your every choice as a sorcerer," Gazen told her over dinner on the evening they finally set sail, "only then will you have the power to prevent disaster and control your fate."

Causality wasn't always so grandiose though. It could be as simple as getting tired early after eating too big a dinner or complimenting a chef on the meal they cooked and ensuring the next few customers' dishes were made with extra passion.

This was all cause and effect. And it was true that one could guess at the end result of most situations based on how they chose to act. For example, tell the same chef their cooking was garbage, and the following customers' meals may suffer under his frustration.

The big question in Cira's mind was how Kazali's law allowed him to ensure the outcome of events across the world and over such an unfathomable timescale with such high degrees of success. Enough to create a world-encompassing genocidal array in secret and silently suppress all of his kin.

Cira suddenly glared at the wisp, "Why are you showing me all these secrets? Is this a trade or are you actually trying to make a point?" The impatience was clear on her voice.

This was all good information, but the magnitude of it was beginning to make Cira uncomfortable. With this she had become in possession of knowledge which exceeded even the scholars of Yon, and there was a suspicious air about the way the Archive kept leading her by the nose.

As if the Archive could tell what she was thinking, the wisp started moving again. She replaced the book and quickly followed with a groan.

The wisp drifted along, illuminating the room in a dim purple glow. It was a bare room that seemed to be carved out of stone with no more bookcases beyond the one Cira leaned against. They walked through the dark and barren passage for only ten minutes or so before finally reaching the far wall which held a crude doorway that Cira had to duck under to walk through.

The moment she entered the next space she could see a dim light in the darkness ahead. It looked like sunlight. Cira also noticed the air had gotten muggy and the temperature had risen considerably, meanwhile a slight breeze blew thin mist around.

It appeared the wisp was heading straight for the light, so she followed.

There was a moment there when Cira thought she was going to step out into some kind of pocket dimension with an artificial sun in the sky, but she only grew more confused once they approached their destination.

The source of the heat was a blinding point of sunlight at the tip of a stone obelisk. At its base, water bubbled from a mound of earth covered in grass, forming a layer of mud and a ring of water against the floor of the Archive. Between the cool waters from below and the blazing sun above, a faint cyclone of mist was produced and twisted around the obelisk.

The more Cira looked, the more awe she felt in her heart. The grass seemed to be in a state of constant growth, while wind battered the tips of each blade that grew too high before sweeping away the dried-out bits as they decayed.

The obelisk gave of an ancient feeling that Cira couldn't describe in any other way, and it seemed to possess deep powers of the world that she could only see as natural. The elemental powers didn't seem to possess even a hint of mana, yet somehow felt purer than anything she had ever conjured.

There was a series of plaques carved flat into the face of the obelisk, topped by two characters of sorcerous script.

Cira read them with bated breath, "Origin Arts..?"