TS5 - Chapter 41 (Patreon)

Trying to hold in his frustration, Thorn bowed towards Lyssia and without another word, turned to go, leaving the shrine and appearing outside. As his gaze swept over the valley, he found himself mulling over what he had heard. Though it pained him to do so, he had to admit that Lyssia's words were accurate. He had an incredible number of skills and advantages and had long since known that the lack of a unifying force behind them made it hard for him to leverage them all in battle.

Even though he had only gotten a tiny glimpse of it, the attack that Urmag'Tal, his grandfather, had used in Lyssia's memory reverberated in his head and heart. The best way he could describe it was that the attack had been full: full of martial strength, full of mana, full of a powerful divinity, full of the seven elements, and above all, full of the will of the titan unleashing the strike. Further, the strike had been without hesitation, and even the brief moment of pause had existed only to focus the various powers into one unified, unstoppable force.

To Thorn, it felt similar to the two attacks that he often used, but delivered in a million places simultaneously with absolute precision and unrelenting force. No one else was yet out of the shrine, and after debating for a moment, Thorn decided to wait for them. While he waited, he checked in on Velin and the others, learning that they had gotten about a quarter of the valley mapped before taking a break for lunch.

Able to sense that he had much on his mind, Velin asked what was going on, but he didn't answer, just shaking his head and saying everything was fine. This was an issue that he had to work through on his own, and that night, after the team had all returned to Old Iron Village and gotten settled in, Thorn found himself wandering through the dark streets to the ever-bright forge tucked away in the back of the village.

"I'll be with you in a moment," Urmag'Tal said as Thorn opened the door and stepped inside.

Finding a place to sit, he watched his grandfather skillfully handling the metal he was working with to create a simple hoe blade that he attached to a dense stick with a pin once he was done. After looking over the tool and examining it for any flaws, Urmag'Tal nodded happily to himself and placed it on the workbench.

Wiping his hands off on his apron, he turned to look at Thorn, a knowing smile gracing his lips.

"Well, hello there, grandson," he said, his voice deep and warm. "Why the long face?"

There was something about the way his words fell in Thorn's ears that caused a warm feeling to spread through the Titan's heart and for a moment, he didn't know what to say or how to respond. Sitting in the forge, watching the glowing coals as Urmag'Tal waited for him quietly, he found the tension in his body easing.

"I went to the Shrine of Water today," he said, "to do the solo challenges."

"Ah, I see," Urmag'Tal said, nodding sagely as he undid the straps holding his leather apron. "I imagine Lyssia had much to say about you, probably not all of it kind."

"What she said wasn't wrong."

Thorn found himself hurrying to defend the Lady of Waves, only catching himself after the words had tumbled out of his mouth. With a throaty chuckle, his grandfather nodded.

"All of the Elemental Emperors, or those who have been Elemental Emperors, are wise beyond reason as they see the world unvarnished by mortal wants and desires, but it doesn't make their words any easier to listen to. Let me guess, she told you to come and find me, to learn how to synthesize all of those strengths you have."

"She did."

Walking over to where Thorn sat, Urmag'Tal pulled up a stool and sat down. He had produced an apple from somewhere, though it was much larger than any apple Thorn had ever seen, and after polishing it on his shirt, Thorn's grandfather took a crunching bite, chewing and swallowing happily.

"One of the best things about living in a space like this," he said, "is that you can scale the fruit to any size you want. Would you like one?"

Nodding mutely, Thorn watched as Urmag'Tal plucked an apple from thin air and tossed it to him. It didn't feel like an illusion, and after biting into this sweet, juicy fruit, Thorn found himself convinced that it was as real as anything he had ever eaten before. Staring down at the apple, Thorn wondered how it had come to be.

"Don't bother trying to figure it out," Urmag'Tal said, noticing his questioning gaze. "Eventually you'll understand, and it's not a particularly useful trick until you can actually reproduce it, but that will be many years from now. Instead, better to focus on what's right in front of you, specifically synthesis."

"What's synthesis?" Thorn asked, in between bites of his apple.

"You don't know what the word synthesis means?" his grandfather asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean, of course I know what synthesis means," Thorn said. "I thought it was like, you know, a special technique or a thing."

"Special technique? There are no special techniques, Thorn. No, I'm just saying that you need to mix all of your abilities together, treating yourself as a unified whole rather than disparate parts. When you were learning how to forge, you probably didn't start with mastery over the whole process. An apprentice isn't told to make a sword, they're told to work the bellows so that they can both build up the strength they'll need and so that they can come to understand the temperature of the fire. The apprentice learns to judge that temperature by the heat that comes off of it, eventually graduating to working the metal by wielding the hammer.

“Here again, the apprentice learns through the repeated process, applying their knowledge of heat and the structure of the metal through their hammering technique. The further you progress as a blacksmith, the more tricks you learn, folding each one into the last. In that way, a master blacksmith is not the master of a singular thing, but the master of many synthesized skills. Does that make sense? Your problem is that that's not how you earned your various strengths and abilities. Instead, each piece has been added to you without tying it into the previous piece."

"Right," Thorn said. "So my martial arts and my magic are being treated as two distinct and separate abilities."

"But it's not just your martial arts and your magic," Urmag'Tal said, waving his hand and restoring the apple he held to pristine condition before taking another bite.

Noticing that his own apple had been restored at the same time, Thorn couldn't help but grin as he took another bite. His grandfather was right. This was a wonderful trick.

"Take, for example, your magic," Urmag'Tal said. "You know ancient runes, right? You operate as if those are two separate and distinct things, but the reality is they're not. They are one and the same in the sense that both heads and tails are part of a coin. Ancient runes are, at their core, a method for applying will to the world. Simple shorthand, you might say, for manifesting your will via your spirit. Until you can apply your will directly, as I'm doing with this apple, the only way to do it is through Titan runes. Likewise, the magic spells you cast through your spell constructs are a way of enforcing your will on the world around you, specifically on the mana around you. Titan runes are a sort of spiritual effect, akin to the divinity that you hold, while spell constructs are a sort of mental effect, directly translating your will and expressing it through mana. Your Titan martial arts do the same for your physical body. Do you understand where I'm going with this?"

Nodding, Thorn held out the apple in his hand, three large bites taken from its side.

"You're saying that at the core of all of these things, my divinity, my martial arts, my runes, and my spells are the same thing. My will."

"Yes," Urmag'Tal said, restoring Thorn's apple with a twitch of his finger. "This is not something that anyone other than a Titan can do, and you've already started on the path. Even if we were not having this conversation, eventually, you would find it on your own. You don’t actually need instruction, and even if I was not here to explain it, your nature would manifest it with enough time. The forging of your body and your spirit, the forging of your mana, all of these will eventually lead you to a singular path, which is the expression of your will into the world around you. You're in a slightly awkward period of growth where your abilities are out pacing your understanding. I remember when I was a voidforger, how hard it was to apply all of my various strengths smoothly.”

“Can you teach me how to do it?" Thorn asked. "Apply my strength smoothly, I mean. To forge myself into a synthesized being."

"Of course I can," Urmag'Tal said, a slight smirk on his lips. "There's nothing I can't teach."

Tossing the core of his apple into the air where it vanished, Urmag'Tal stood up.

"There are a few things I need to gather," he said. "So come back tomorrow, when the forge opens, at four o’clock in the morning, and we'll begin."

Excited, Thorn jumped to his feet and started to bow, only to feel his grandfather's large hand grab his shoulder.

"You're my grandson, no need for that," Urmag'Tal said, smiling down at Thorn. "We've got quite a bit of work to do, boy, so go get some sleep."

A moment later, Thorn found himself standing outside the forge, the faint glow from its chimney casting dancing orange light against the wall of nearby buildings. He wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up outside, but considering that his grandfather seemed to have absolute control over this space, he didn't spend a long time thinking about it. Instead, he hurried back through the dark streets to the Golden Meadow Inn, using Earth Step to bypass the locked doors and get to his room. When he arrived, he found Velin sitting at the small desk in the room, writing in her notebook. She looked up as he appeared, a happy smile appearing on her face as she caught sight of him.

"Did you have a good conversation?" she asked, as Thorn sat on the bed near her.

"I did," Thorn said. "My grandfather is going to be teaching me some things."

"That's wonderful, Thorn. He sounds like a really nice man."

"I can bring you to meet him," Thorn replied, but Velin quickly held up her hand and shook her head.

"He'll come see me when he wants to see me," she replied. "The truth is, I went to the forge earlier today, and there's no Titan there. In fact, the only man there was a short human who was in the process of packing his stuff up, saying that he was moving out of town. I didn't mention anything to you because I was curious if you would find your grandfather when you went to visit the forge, and I was afraid that I might mess something up."

Scratching his chin, Thorn shrugged. "That's strange," he said. "I'm supposed to go tomorrow at four when the forge lights. You could come with me if you want."

Once more, Velin shook her head, this time getting up and coming to sit next to Thorn on the bed, leaning against him.

“We’ve got plenty of time and I’m sure that I’ll get to meet him at some point. I’m guessing that he wants to get to know you better before he meets all your friends so you should go tomorrow morning without worrying about it.”

Struck by a thought, Thorn lifted his left hand, palm up, and called out to Eve who manifested her fairy form in a swirl of dark nanites.

“What’s up, Thorn? Oh, hi Velin.”

“Hello, Eve,” Velin said.

“Did you record my interaction with my grandfather?” Thorn asked, earning himself a confused and slightly concerned look from Eve.

“Your who? What are you talking about?”

“My grandfather,” Thorn said, his eyes narrowing. “Urmag’Tal?”

Growing absolutely still for half a second, Eve’s body suddenly shook, almost as if she couldn’t maintain her form. As she re-solidified, she stared at Thorn, her expression one of shock.

“Urmag’Tal is your grandfather? Why don’t I have any record of that? Wait. Where did you go this evening and why don’t I have any record of it? Thorn, what is going on?”

“What do you mean, no record? You mean you have a blank spot in your memory?”

Flying up from Thorn’s hand, Eve took a few quick turns around the room, zipping back and forth as if she was pacing in frustration.

“It's not a blank spot, precisely. I find it hard to explain since you aren’t an AI like me, but my memory works by storing huge amounts of tiny data points, and I remember something by putting linked pieces of data together. However, anything that should be linked to whatever it was you were doing before you came back is just… not there. I have data up until you walked up to the forge tonight. But from my point of view, you just stood there for a bit and then turned around and left, returning to the inn.”

Rubbing his chin, Thorn exchanged a look with Velin, whose forehead was wrinkled in thought.

“Do you think that this is like those times in Nova Terra where you couldn’t see pieces of the game? All the stuff with my dad, I mean?”

“It's exactly like that,” Eve said, her frustration leaking through her tone. “It seems that all information related to other Titans is locked away, and I can’t access it.”

“It's not just you, Eve,” Velin said. “When I tried to find out more, I couldn’t either.”

“No, it's different for me,” Eve said, “because even when you were talking about Thorn’s grandfather earlier, right when he arrived, I heard that information but my trigger to cross reference never fired. And I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be able to retrieve this conversation either. For some reason, this information can be stored but I can’t reference it once it is. I’m sorry, this probably makes no sense to you two. It's not something that you need to worry about, I just need to figure it out.”

Reaching out, Thorn brought his hand up to support Eve, who was hovering in front of him.

“Eve, it’s probably not worth trying to figure out. I’m sure there is a good reason that my dad built in whatever system is preventing you from cataloging information about the Titans. Who knows, maybe that information would be dangerous for you because of the way you observe the world. We know that my dad and my grandfather are not out to hurt me, and by extension, you, so I think we can trust that they were working in our interest.”

Growing still, Eve was silent for a full minute before she nodded, having thought it through.

“Fine, you’re correct. Well, correct-ish. There isn’t anything I can do about it at the moment so I’ll leave it alone. But I would appreciate it if you would tell me about your encounters from now on because I’m clearly blind during them.”