MAGUS INFINITE

Every word spoken by the old man filled me with questions that could fill up an ocean. I did not want to think about the fact that our language had not changed for thousands of years, but that was not so strange when you consider that Sovereigns may not even die of old age, and so they would preserve traditions across the ages.

He said I had the appearance of a demigod, and I could guess what that meant, but I needed more information. What was the chained? The fallen gods? And was my speculation that all of this was tied to System wrong?

I calmed my mind and followed the man made out of stone down the mountain. I had already placed down a Temporal Anchor, and so I was not scared of lacking information in the future, not when I could return again and again to this moment and understand everything that I had missed.

I followed the old man and watched the way he walked down the mountain, and I noticed that he did not slip once, and I don’t think it was just because of his familiarity with the terrain; it was something more. Even for me, if I was not careful, there was a chance I would stumble down this mountain.

And this thought naturally led to the next obvious one: what sort of creature was this old man? In the future, there were hardly any new species on the planet; even though I had read about the few of them that were locked in certain closed areas around the world, I had never seen any race that was made out of stone.

I did not feel the power of a mage from the body of the old man, but I know that he was powerful and dangerous. He must know that I was powerful, and unless he was blind, he must have seen me fall from the sky, and he did not seem to have any fear of me, even inviting me into his own home.

This either indicated supreme confidence in his abilities, or he may just be insane, but whatever those answers were, I guess I would find out soon.

Ah, this was a bad time to be reminded that I hardly understood everything about the past of my world, and the dangers here may be greater than what I was facing in the future.

As we neared the base of the mountain, something the old man said flashed through my mind: ”Follow me, child, or don’t. But if you stay here, the sky will eat you.”

What did he mean by that?

∞

Before long we came to what I thought was the entrance to his home. It was a crack in the mountain that I could have easily missed, mostly because it looked the same as the hundreds of other cracks in this mountain range.

Of course the man made out of stone would live in a mountain.

”Mind your head,” the old man said, going in sideways without breaking stride.

I smiled, ”It’s a crack in a rock.”

”Aye, and I’ve watched three of your sort walk into it at full speed. Two of them were taller than you, and one of them was maybe a little smarter.” He did not look back. ”Mind your head.”

I blinked... okay, he may have a mouth on him. Looking back to the sky, I followed him into the mountain, and I minded my head.

Twenty feet in, the crack ended, and a passage was revealed, and in my senses the passage was, well, perfect in dimension.

It was cut square to the floor, level to a degree I could not fault, and no tool marks anywhere; the walls smooth as if a river had flowed through it for thousands of years, except nothing of nature could make walls that were this smooth.

You would expect the passage to be dark, but it was not. There was light, but it was faint, the colour of a cloudy morning, coming off the stone itself and casting no shadow.

I stopped walking since this light oddly reminded me of the blue glow in the walls of the Caelith, but this one was different, as it almost felt natural.

The old man paused and then said, ”It’s a corridor; you have seen one of these before, right?” Then he continued walking.

I tried not to roll my eyes. ”I know it’s a corridor, but there is no lamp giving out light.”

”No.”

”I cannot feel the flow of energy in the walls either. How is this possible?”

That stopped him. He came back three paces and looked up at me with those pale grey eyes, and I saw the light of interest appear in his eyes, and I did not like it; for a moment, it made me think of Seed.

”Hm,” he said. ”So the eyes work.”

I tried not to make my right eye twitch and gestured to the walls, ”What is it?”

”Light.”

”That is not an answer.”

”It’s the answer you get for free.” He turned and went on. ”The rest costs soup.”

∞

I stopped asking questions, and we arrived at a hall at the end, and I looked around; it appeared well lived-in. There was a forge on the far side that was cold. A table, a bench, a bed frame with hides on it. Shelves cut straight into the rock, stacked with tools and jars and bundles of something dried, and a rack of thin pale stone tablets, perhaps two hundred of them, each one carrying lines on its face.

These were books, knowledge, and my eyes lingered on them for a while before I looked away and grabbed at a hazy shape flying at my face; it was a brown robes that was rather heavy.

The old man put down his arm, ”Put that on before you frighten the pot.”

I looked at the pot expecting them to move, and after a few seconds, I wondered if this old man was pulling my leg. I sighed and wore the heavy robes, grateful that I was no longer naked.

It came to my shins. The shoulders were built for a frame twice my width, and it was the best wool I have ever had against my skin, and I have worn Academy robes.

”It’s short,” I said while I ran my hand through the fabrics, trying to figure out the materials that it was made of.

The old man grunted, ”You’re long. One of us is wrong, and it isn’t the robe.”

He was already at the forge, and the forge was not cold anymore, the heat touched my skin, and I looked over at the forge, but there was no fire.

I had not felt the essence in the air move, or felt the touch of Anima. The old man had not even gestured, and heat was coming from the forge.

He appeared in front of me, and there was a bowl in his hand filled with what looked like grain or meat, and again, I was not aware of how he had produced all of this. He thrust it at me, and I grabbed the bowl, feeling the heat of it through my palm.

”Sit. Eat. Then you can ask me the eleven questions you’ve been holding behind your teeth since the ridge.”

”Eleven?”

”Give or take. Usually it is mostly eleven; I have done this long enough to know.”