I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 486: Of Course Itʼs the Power of the Creator

For as long as Ray stayed in the Matale Principality, Ose racked their brains for every way they could think of to help him draw his map of the world.

They not only took part themself, they also called in a fair number of the Matale Principalityʼs scholars, historians and craftsmen.

They brought Ray ordinary maps of the Land of Light and the Desert of the Fallen Sun, records left behind by winged scholars hundreds of years before.

Ose also dug out of ancient tomes all sorts of maps of the Avel Peninsula that the winged people had once drawn themselves. Every one of them was hundreds of years old, yet at the least they preserved some record of the peninsulaʼs terrain and extent.

Into the mansion where Ray lived came huge quantities of books, and writing surfaces of every manner.

Books, wooden boards, clay tablets and scrolls piled up on top of one another until the place had gradually turned into a chaotic storeroom of a library, and a handful of winged people helping Ray draw the map even moved in to live there.

Ray laid his own travel notebooks in among them, cross-checking as he went, and all the while he was setting down still more of the memories inside his own mind in writing.

Inside the high mansion, Ray unrolled a huge blank sheet of paper and wrote a few numbers and symbols into one corner, fixing the compass directions.

Ose watched the way Ray went about drawing the map with open curiosity, then asked him, ”What is this symbol? And this thing like a cross with an arrow on it, what is that?”

Ray told Ose, ”The first thing with a map is settling the scale. These symbols here are numbers, and this cross with the letter beside it is what fixes your direction.”
”Once thatʼs set, then you go gathering reference maps from every quarter.”

Ray climbed back up off the paper, fetched out the reference maps he had already settled on, and laid them down on top.

”Lucky for us you helped. Weʼve gathered quite a few reference maps.”

”Hereʼs the map of Ruhe Beast Island. Here are dozens of nautical charts of the Storm Sea. And hereʼs the rough sketch of the Avel Peninsula you gave me, the map of the Land of Light, and the records on the Desert of the Fallen Sun.”

”Throw in my travel journal and everything I jotted down along the way, and we can get the framework up first.”

”After that we keep gathering reference maps and records of the terrain, and fill it in bit by bit, correcting as we go.”

Ose spoke up then.

”Master Ray, I heard you say once before that you know how to craft artifacts.”

Ray answered, ”Iʼm no alchemist, but I know the ordinary craft of artifact-making well enough. And in some respects what I turn out can beat what an alchemist gets from alchemy.”

”Theyʼve got their strengths, and Iʼve got mine.”

”Back when Apostle Oran, of the God of Desire and Alchemy, was building the Alchemy Tower, I gave him a hand with it.”

In the fields where he excelled, Ray clearly still carried a measure of pride.

Ose put in a suggestion.

”If it is to be revised again and again, would it not be better to craft the map into an artifact? It would be the easier thing to preserve as well, and to hand down.”

”It would be a great pity if something this important gathered errors as it was copied and passed along, or came to be damaged.”

Ray weighed Oseʼs suggestion a moment.

”Craft it into an artifact?”

Ray stuck out a finger and nodded, over and over.

”Thatʼs not a bad idea at all.”

”Do it that way and itʼd be far harder to damage. It could be kept forever.”

”And when we turn up a mistake we could put it right faster, fix it anytime, anywhere, and keep making it more and more accurate.”

Ray told Ose, ”I think itʼs a fine suggestion. Thank you, Ose.”

”Still, letʼs get the rough draft drawn first, and leave trying to make it into an artifact for the very end.”

Drawing a map was no simple task, and Ose learned a great deal in the doing of it.

Mapmaking technique was only part of it. There was knowledge of other kinds as well.

What Ray knew and let fall only in passing was, to Ose, treasure beyond price.

Ray had noticed, for instance, that every book and scroll Ose brought him was copied out by hand and riddled with any number of miscopied characters, and so he asked, ”Your books all seem to be copied out by hand. Hardly any of them printed?”

Ose told Ray, ”Only the myths, the law codes and the dictionaries are ever printed. The books that pass among ordinary people are all copied by hand.”

Ray nodded.

”Looks like your papermaking and your printing are both still at a pretty early stage. Thereʼs been some change and progress since the Avel left Ruhe Beast Island, but not a lot.”

Ose answered him slowly.

”Perhaps the Land of Light is too comfortable a place. We have been too far from the true world, and for too long. Over these few hundred years our changes have indeed been nothing beside those at the other end of the world.”

So Ray laid out for Ose several printing techniques common on Ruhe Beast Island, along with the recipe for printing ink.

Ose at once ordered the Matale Principalityʼs craftsmen to do the same, printing books by the methods Ray had described.

It was only a beginning, yet in time it seemed sure to leave a tremendous mark on the whole Matale Principality, and on the whole of the winged people with it.

Then there was the time Ray had been making use of a ritual array and told Ose the name of the Storage Nymph, Saint Raphael, letting them in on the core steps of crafting a storage artifact.

This was hardly rare knowledge. Any artifact-maker on Ruhe Beast Island had it. Here, though, it was another matter entirely.

One thing more Ose kept engraved on their heart, every waking moment.

Ray had told them of a plant on Ruhe Beast Island called the Brown Ball Vine, whose yield far outstripped the Curled Ball Fernʼs, and said he had long thought of transplanting the crop someday to the Matale Principality, and to the Land of Light as well.

Beyond all this, the smaller influences were more than a few.

Without ever meaning to, Ray had worked all manner of change on the whole Matale Principality.

By now the whole principality knew that a strange metal puppet had come to their country, one that could not only speak but held wondrous knowledge and power, and that was, on top of all that, the Blessed One of another divine being.

The winged people of the Matale Principality had come to see the three of them, Ray and his companions, as a metal angel, a flame angel and a kite angel come down out of the sky, and they feared him no longer.

Whenever he stepped out of the mansion, the winged people in the marketplace and along the streets would often greet him with cheers.

Over this time Ray picked up the language of the winged people, and he and Ose grew friendlier.

Ose was less a ruler than a scholar, hungry for knowledge and endlessly curious about the unknown.

It showed plainly enough in the way they had handed power down to their son ahead of time, so as to give themself wholly over to cultivation.

Ray, for his part, liked dealing with people of that sort.

He was a technology fanatic himself, after all, the sort who liked to shut himself up at home tinkering with all kinds of inventions and studying whatever caught his fancy.

One day Rayʼs fountain pen ran dry, and the pen itself finally gave out for good, so Ose at once had someone bring him a quill of the sort the winged people used.

Ray gave it a try and was thoroughly taken with it.

”Thereʼs something to this quill. Itʼs easier to make, and it suits you winged people better.”

Once he had written several letters with it, Ray asked Ose where the Rainbow Tree known to the Matale Principality lay, and Ose at once led him flying off toward it.

Along the way, Ray asked Ose, ”Do you send letters through the Rainbow Tree too?”

Ose nodded.

”Of course!”

Ray asked again, ”Have you ever tried reaching the snake people on the Avel Peninsula? Or making contact with the people of Ruhe Beast Island?”

Ose said, ”A good many winged people did try, in the past. But most of the time the letter never went out at all, and on the rare occasion one did, no answer worth the name ever came back. Little by little, no one tried anymore.”

Ray nodded.

”Thatʼll just be because you havenʼt tried enough. Keep at it a bit more and itʼs bound to work.”

Ose added, ”Sending a Rainbow Tree letter is not without its cost. Every Rainbow Tree that has been found is a treasure, and the most precious resource any winged nation possesses.”

A note of regret came into Rayʼs voice.

”Exchange with the world outside, thatʼs the fastest way there is to develop.”

Of late Ose had gradually come to understand this truth themself. Understanding it, though, had left them no more able to do anything about it.

But Ray had come, and with him a turning point for the Matale Principality, and even for the whole of the winged people.

Ose looked at the letters in Rayʼs hand and asked, ”Who are your letters for? That apostle you mentioned before?”

Ray said, ”One of themʼs for him. Some are for other friends of mine, and oneʼs bound for the Abyss Royal City.”

”Iʼm hoping they can send me some useful books back, a more detailed map of the Avel Peninsula, say, or a map of the Black Mountain Peninsula.”

”And a nautical chart of the Avel shipping route too, so I can know exactly how far Ruhe Beast Island lies from the Avel Peninsula.”

”On top of that I want some cloth from the Silk-Weaving Spirit Insects the witch spirits raise, and a few special extraordinary materials, to get ready for crafting the world map into an artifact later on.”

Oseʼs eyes lit at that.

”Then I shall look forward to it. To see you craft an artifact with my own eyes.”

Ose truly did look forward to the day they would see Ray craft an artifact. There was bound to be a great deal to learn from a master artifact-maker like him at work.

For any nation, the craft of artifact-making was an expression of its national strength, and of the core of its power.

They flew down into a forest, and there, behind a castle, they caught sight of a Rainbow Tree under the guard of winged ability users.

Ray laid his letters into the hollow of the tree and prayed to the Letter Nymphs of the dream realm.

Light shimmered in the hollow of the tree, and before long the letters were gone.

Watching it, Ose found their thoughts going back all at once to the conversation they had just had with Ray.

They thought to themself, ”Perhaps we truly should be reaching out to the world outside more.”

”If we could get in contact with the people of Ruhe Beast Island, perhaps we could gain more knowledge, and other things with it.”

”That crop called the Brown Ball Vine, for instance.”

A shaft of white light streaked across the sky, broke free of the sea of clouds, and came at last within the borders of the Matale Principality.

The light drew slowly inward, and out of it emerged the shape of a sky messenger.

The sky messenger Lomier had set out from the Sacred Mountain of Light and followed the trail of that strange meteor the whole way, crossing nation after nation along the road, until at last he came to the Matale Principality, the westernmost nation of all.

His long, pure-white wings beat the air, his feet crossed one over the other, his gaze fixed on the land below.

”The meteor passed over the kingdom handed down from Good News, the sky messenger, and in the end it came through here. The people of this nation must know something.”

”This nation was founded by Mataleʼs descendants. I shall go and put the question to them.”

At once he dove down out of the sky, making for the nationʼs central city.

No sky messenger had visited the Matale Principality in years, and the moment the guards atop the round towers caught sight of one coming down out of the heavens, they rang the bells at once.

Dong, dong, dong, dong!

Across the city the winged people saw the beautiful sky messenger streak overhead and cried out in astonishment, one after another, and they came pouring out of their homes to bow low before him.

”Itʼs a sky messenger!”

”A messenger from the Sacred Mountain of Light has come!”

”A divine messenger has come to Matale!”

The present Grand Duke led all his subjects out to welcome him.

At that moment Ray and Ose, newly returned from sending off the letters, heard the bells too.

Ose looked off into the distance.

”What has happened?”

Ray answered at once.

”Letʼs hurry back and see.”

They flew off toward the city above.

The channel carrying the mountaintop waterfall happened to curve around the plaza before the palace, and at the plazaʼs center stood a tall statue of a sky messenger. Beneath that divine likeness there now stood a living, breathing one.

Ose was overjoyed.

”A sky messenger of the Sacred Mountain of Light has come to our nation.”

To the winged people, a sky messengerʼs very identity was that of a divine messenger.

Even Ose themself had long yearned to meet one, to hear the will of the King of the Sky Messengers spoken firsthand.

Ose went at once to welcome him.

They hurried out ahead of the crowd and bowed low before him.

Ray came quietly over from one side, studying the sky messenger closely as he drew near.

Beautiful as the winged people were, they lacked a complete Godʼs Form, and so to Rayʼs eye their beauty was always an alluring, seductive thing, never something he could quite connect with the sacred, however he looked at it.

In truth, by that same measure, the snake people were no different.

The sky messenger standing before him now was another thing entirely. He had a complete Godʼs Form, with nothing added to it but a single pair of wings.

Male sky messengers were extraordinarily handsome. This was the very winged form the Mother of Life had originally set out to make, and its roots ran all the way back to the Creatorʼs own Godʼs Dream.

Ray looked him over and could not hold back a gasp of admiration.

”What a beautiful creature!”

The sky messenger Lomier had noticed the ancient demon spirit puppet as well, and caught what he said.

He turned his head at once and looked Ray over.

”And you are?”

In Ray he saw tremendous strength and bearing, and something else beyond them, an air of age so ancient it could hardly be put into words.

For one brief instant that air even put Lomier in mind of the ancient divine beings of old.

Ray said, ”Iʼm a demon spirit, from Ruhe Beast Island, a follower of the God of Demon Spirits, Lady Elena.”

The sky messenger was greatly astonished.

”Ruhe Beast Island. To think that anyone would come all that way to the Land of Light. That is a distance beyond imagining.”

Then he took up Rayʼs last words in particular.

”I never thought to see a Blessed One of a divine being come to the Land of Light. The winged people and the Sacred Mountain of Light alike welcome your arrival most warmly.”

At Oseʼs eager invitation, the whole party made their way into the palace.

They were overjoyed. Hard on the heels of Rayʼs arrival, a sky messenger had come to visit as well.

For the Matale Principality, this was an occasion of excitement almost beyond imagining.

The banquet held to welcome the sky messenger was a lively affair, though Lomier, this divine messenger from the Sacred Mountain of Light, showed little enthusiasm for it. Before the whole gathering he asked them all whether they had seen that meteor.

Plenty of those present remembered it vividly, and they all began talking at once.

Ray remembered it too, the meteor that had nearly brought his aircraft to grief, and he spoke up at once.

”Are you talking about that meteor?”

”I saw it. That was no ordinary meteor.”

Lomier turned to look at him at once. Of everyone present, Ray alone had seen how far out of the ordinary that meteor was.

He crossed to Ray and sat down beside him.

He nodded.

”Just so. That meteor holds a wondrous power, and I have come on behalf of the Sacred Mountain of Light to find it.”

”Blessed One of the God of Demon Spirits, would you tell me what happened when you encountered it?”

Ray was a little curious himself.

”Of course. But why is it youʼre all looking for that meteor?”

Lomier said, ”Across all that distance, that meteor lifted the sand and the stones and every object on the Sacred Mountain up into the air. Even those of us standing there felt a mighty force dragging our own bodies toward the sky.”

”And the range of its effect went far beyond anything we could have imagined.”

”We are certain that had that meteor come even a little closer, it might have torn a whole mountain peak up off the ground and into the sky.”

”That was a stone possessed of power beyond imagining, a stone that could make mountains fly up into the sky.”

Lomier looked at Ray, his expression grave and earnest.

”You passed right by it. Surely you must have felt just how powerful it was too. Can it really be that you have no interest in it at all?”

Ray admitted that he had felt the meteorʼs power well enough, but said in the same breath that for the moment it held no great interest for him.

”I can certainly feel how powerful it is. But Iʼve seen too many powerful things already, too many things beyond belief.”

”If I chased after every single one of them, thereʼd be no point to any of it.”

”I have my own purpose, my own pursuit. I know what it is I want, instead of chasing after everything with no aim at all.”

The sky messenger Lomier asked, curious, ”Blessed One of the God of Demon Spirits, do you mean to say that you have seen such a power before, a power that can send mountains flying into the sky?”

Ray told Lomier, ”If you ever have the time to make a trip to Ruhe Beast Island, youʼre bound to hear of a place with quite a name for itself. Itʼs called the Lost Kingdom.”

Lomier repeated it.

”The Lost Kingdom?”

Ray nodded.

”Thatʼs what the snake people call it, at least. It has another name too, but that one has long since been forgotten.”

”Itʼs a colossal city, floating in the sky. I can promise you, youʼve never seen a city so vast, so magnificent, and you couldnʼt begin to understand what power could keep a city like that suspended forever above the sea of clouds.”

Lomier was silent for a long moment.

”A colossal city floating in the sky. Does a place like that really exist in this world?”

By the end there was a note of disbelief in his voice, and even something like doubt.

Ray told him firmly that such a place truly did exist in this world.

”But what Iʼd rather tell you is this. Behind a miracle like that, one straight out of myth, lies a great power that is not to be touched.”

”Thereʼs nothing wrong with a person chasing after strength and power. But to go chasing rashly after the unknown, after things of power too great to understand, is to walk straight toward death and ruin.”

Lomierʼs heart, though, was still caught on what Ray had told him, on that city floating in the sky.

”Could you tell me more about it, that Lost Kingdom of Ruhe Beast Island?”

So Ray painted the scene of the Lost Kingdom for Lomier, boundless lakes, mountains piercing the clouds, the vast city floating above them all.

He said little, but what he said was enough to fill a listener with longing and excitement.

The sky messenger suddenly rose to his feet and spoke.

”All at once I understand why I must go after that meteor.”

”Because one day we too shall lift the Sacred Mountain of Light into the sky, and make it a true sacred mountain, a true divine kingdom.”

”A place such as that is where the sky messengers truly belong.”

After that, the sky messenger Lomier could sit still no longer. He wanted to go and find that meteor right now.

”I thank you for telling me. I think it is time I set out.”

Ray rose to his feet then, and asked one more question.

”May I ask, is Queen Duma up there on the Sacred Mountain of Light?”

”Iʼd like to go pay her a visit!”

The sky messenger said, ”Of course she is. But the King of the Sky Messengers does not, as a rule, receive outsiders. Even we sky messengers cannot gain an audience with her.”

”Eternal and undying, she dwells in the deepest reaches of the Sacred Mountain, and most of the time she lies in slumber.”

”Even if you were to go to the Sacred Mountain of Light yourself, there is no certainty you would see her.”

Ray took that in.

”Ah, so thatʼs how it is!”

The sky messenger said nothing more. The legend of the Lost Kingdom had set his heart surging with excitement.

He took his leave of Ose and the Grand Duke of Matale, and walked out of the palace before them all.

His feet lifted from the ground as he went, and he hung there in the air, pure white wings beating, light pouring from his whole body.

He looked at Ray, and nodded.

Ray offered him his blessing.

”May you find that meteor, and find that power that can set mountains and cities alike afloat in the sky.”

Lomier held his gaze.

”If you should ever come to the Sacred Mountain of Light, come and find me.”

With that he turned into a shaft of light and shot up into the sky, phantom feathers drifting down one by one in his wake, and the winged nobles watching cried out in astonishment and threw themselves flat to the ground.

The sky messenger Lomier set out at once on his journey to find the meteor.

Ray, standing outside the palace, felt a little lost. He had no idea when he would ever find the place where the sun rose.

Inside Rayʼs temporary residence, after an enormous outlay of time, manpower and resources, the map stood complete at last, two meters wide and, unrolled, very nearly ten meters long.

Ray studied the various markings on the map, leaning in close to examine every detail.

On it one could see Ruhe Beast Island, and one could see the Storm Sea and all the little islands upon it.

The map marked out the Avel shipping route, and at the far end of that route, the Avel Peninsula and the Black Mountain Peninsula.

Beyond the Avel Peninsula lay the land the winged people had once lived in, long since turned into an impassable, gaping chasm.

Beyond that lay the Desert of the Fallen Sun, and beyond that at last, the Land of Light.

On either side of the map stretched a boundless sea, rendered entirely in deep blue.

It gave off a sense of something vast, and unfathomably deep.

Drawn across the sea were the uncanny, perilous places Ray had met with along the way, nests of monsters of every kind, islands that moved, and the flow of the ocean currents.

When Ray finished looking it over, he said, ”Itʼs still a bit rough.”

A map like this was of course far from precise, above all where the Desert of the Fallen Sun was concerned. Never mind its extent. Even a rough width had to be estimated from how far the winged people had flown and how long it had taken them, then reasoned out against the records they had left of the long detours they had taken, the distances they had lost their way, the uncanny weather and the attacks by monster hordes, until at last a rough distance from the Avel Peninsula to the Land of Light could be worked out.

To Rayʼs eye, the margin of error in all this was bound to be enormous.

Beyond that, plenty of other places were sketched in only the roughest strokes, the Black Mountain Peninsula for one, the Storm Sea for another.

Even the Avel Peninsula and the Land of Light, the two places he knew best, still carried more than a few errors and omissions.

All the same, it was the first map this world had ever seen drawn with the whole world in mind.

The winged elder Ose, meanwhile, had been struck utterly speechless by the world laid out on the map before them.

”This... this is more than good enough already. I have never seen a map like this in my life. I never imagined that the world could be so vast.”

Ray said, ”This still doesnʼt amount to the world. Thereʼs far too much blank, unknown space left.”

Ray studied the map, and the longer he looked, the stranger it seemed.

He walked over to stand before Ruhe Beast Island on the map, and pointed toward the Endless Desert.

”Look, this is where I set out from, and I flew due east the whole way from here.”

His finger slid across the map, tracing a route that twisted and turned, doubled back on itself again and again, and stopped and started the whole way.

But beyond doubt, it had always led east.

At last, Rayʼs finger reached the edge of the map.

”I flew as far as here.”

His finger left the edge and crossed to the opposite end of the map.

”And then, I ended up over here, and from there flew straight on to the Land of Light?”

”What in the world is going on here?”

Ray scratched at his iron skull and looked over at the Big-Head Flame Demon Spirit beside him.

”Is that really how we flew?”

Just then, the shadow of the Kite Demon Spirit flitted past the window, and a light, airy voice drifted in with it.

”He canʼt even tell north from south. Thereʼs no point asking him.”

Ose, too, was thoroughly puzzled. They looked between the two ends of the map, unable to understand just how Ray had ever flown from one to the other.

”Are you certain that this is truly how you flew here?”

”Could you not have strayed off course somewhere?”

Ray was completely certain of it.

”No. I went through every one of my memories from start to finish before I ever drew this map. It shouldnʼt be wrong.”

Ose carried the map out into the great hall and laid it flat on the floor.

They turned it this way and that, and at last bent it around so that one end joined up with the other.

Seen this way, the map looked just like a hollow ring.

Ose pointed at the map, curled into its hollow ring.

”Tell me, could it be that you flew all the way around the edge of the world, just like this?”

Ray looked at the hollow ring Ose had shaped, and gave it serious thought.

”If thatʼs really how it is, then Iʼve had the wrong direction the whole time?”

”Some force made it only look as if I were flying east the whole way, when really I was just going in circles, never once heading toward the true edge of the world?”

Ray shook his head.

”But Iʼve been flying toward where the sun rises this whole time. If thatʼs how it is, then where does the sun rise from at all?”

Rayʼs eye suddenly fell on the Desert of the Fallen Sun.

”Such an enormous stretch of desert. Could the sun really rise from the Desert of the Fallen Sun itself?”

In this age everyone held to a single fixed belief, that the earth was flat and that the sun and moon rose from the very edge of the world.

Ose shook their head at once.

”No!”

”The sun could not possibly rise out of that desert. The so-called Desert of the Fallen Sun is nothing more than a fancy of the ancient winged people, long ago.”

”The winged people crossed the Desert of the Fallen Sun once, and since then a few have gone into it now and again. But the sun has never once set there.”

A strange thought struck Ray just then.

”Then going by what youʼre saying, maybe it could work like this instead.”

Ray stood the map on end, and brought its two edges together.

Now it looked like a paper tube with no bottom or lid, or a loop of ribbon.

”This way, I could still fly due east from Ruhe Beast Island the whole way, and still end up at the Land of Light.”

Ose looked at the map standing on end, its two ends joined into a loop, and shook their head over and over.

”Impossible. Quite impossible.”

”How could the world possibly be shaped like that, like a loop of ribbon?”

”That is far too strange.”

Ray said, ”Nobody actually knows what shape the world is. I think this idea of mine could be just as possible as any other.”

Ose pressed him again.

”Then what of the sun? Where does the sun rise from?”

Ray began to walk circles around the standing loop, and Ose kept pace beside him, the two of them going round and round to study the map.

Seen from this angle, the map really did give off a strange, wondrous feeling.

Ray suddenly smacked his own skull.

”What if the sunʼs just like us right now, floating up in the sky, circling around the world?”

The more Ray thought about it, the more excited he grew. It seemed to him this answer might explain any number of things, might resolve the doubts sitting in his own heart.

”Thatʼs it.”

”If thatʼs how it is, it would explain why I never found the place where the sun rises. Itʼs because the sun goes on circling the world just like this.”

”That would explain, too, why my direction was never wrong, why I kept flying due east and still ended up in the west.”

Ose was a scholar, and one who could usually take new and unfamiliar things in stride.

Even so, they felt this notion shattered the very worldview they had always known, and they found it hard to accept.

They seized at once on a point to argue against it.

”If the world were truly like that, would not everything on it simply fall off?”

Ray nodded.

”Thatʼs true enough!”

Ray stood on the ground and tilted his whole body sideways, ninety degrees over, and looked at the map from there.

”Standing like this, this is how weʼd be living on the earth.”

He waved a hand again, and the ribbon-loop lying on the ground rose up into the air, turning to a different angle.

”That doesnʼt work either. The ones on top could still hold steady, but the ones on the bottom would fall right off.”

Rayʼs hypothesis could account for some of the doubts and problems he had run into, but it left others unsolved.

Just as he was sinking back into confusion, Ray found his thoughts drifting, for some reason, to that meteor again.

That powerful pull had drawn everything up into the sky. Come close enough, and it could even tear up a mountain by the roots. What, then, if that force were magnified?

Magnified ten thousand times over. Countless times over.

Ray suddenly turned his head and asked Ose.

”Listen. Could there be a force like that, one that pulls everything down and holds it fast to the ground?”

”Pulling down the earth and the forests, pulling down every living being and every mortal, pulling down everything, absolutely everything there is, until every last one of us was held fast to the ground.”

Ose stared at Ray, their mouth slowly falling open, and try as they might, they could not close it again.

Ray must have lost his mind, Ose thought, to be saying such wild things.

Ose found their voice at last.

”What manner of power do you imagine could ever do a thing like that?”

Ray answered without a momentʼs thought.

”The power of the Creator, of course!”

”This whole world was created by the Creator. Every rule, every power in it, naturally comes from Him as well.”