Let There Be Light
Chris was thrown by the unexpected turn.
Who the hell are these bastards?
"No. 4. If someone speaks to you, you answer."
"What's wrong with you?"
"Did something happen?"
Their reactions told him that Cyril belonged to some secret organization. Any group capable of handing out masks like this was no ordinary outfit.
Was Cyril a spy?
"No. 4! Why did you shout at all of us?"
The one who had contacted him first was growing irritated.
"No. 4! Silence again?"
Chris swept the useless speculation aside and fixed on the mask. It was a magic tool governed by will, which meant it had to be handled with will.
"No. 4, speak. I told you to speak."
He contemplated the mask and separated himself from it. Out in the world it still covered his face, but in the mindscape it peeled away. Fingers formed there, heavy with the force of his will, and touched it.
Five windows opened across the mask. The one who had spoken first was shouting from the third. Sound leaked now and then from the others as well: irritation from the third, and from the rest a muddle of alarm, worry, and plain bewilderment.
The fourth window is quiet.
The others glowed. The fourth showed only a shape, and gave no sound at all. A moment later, Chris understood.
Ah. The fourth window is my mask.
So that was why they called him No. 4.
"No. 4! No. 4!"
Within the mindscape he gathered mana, rearranged it, and sent his meaning toward every window, this time at a lower intensity than before.
"No. 3, because of you..."
Third window. So No. 3. Has to be.
"Because of you!"
He loaded the words with a heavy charge of anger.
As expected, the man was No. 3. A voice came through the third window.
"No. 4, what are you trying to pull?"
Chris wrung his brain for an excuse that would hold.
"No. 3, you son of a bitch!"
"What did you just say?"
"I was weaving a ring, and you kept contacting me until the whole thing failed! Shit—if a man doesn't answer, you figure he's got a reason and you try him later. What do you think happens if you just keep screaming? You damned bastard! Do you have any idea how I nearly killed myself weaving that ring..."
He poured so much feeling into it that, out in the real world, tears ran down his face. The meaning seemed to carry. For a moment the world of the mask went utterly still.
"Ahem."
Someone cleared his throat.
"Sorry."
No. 3, who had been spending every nerve he had, apologized.
Chris had expected the excuse to land. He had seen, from right beside them, what the words weaving a ring did to mages.
Back in the days of the Lion Pavilion, when the prince was murdered, mages of the Sikbae realm had come swarming in. They were blazing with fury that Sheikh had not come himself and had sent his disciple Harvey in his place. Then Harvey remarked that his master was weaving a ring, and the air changed on the spot. In that strange hush they stopped denouncing Sheikh's absence. Even those cantankerous mages accepted that he was not there.
Only later did Chris learn what the phrase meant. When a Sikbae mage sought the realm of Chukhwan, forming a circle around the Klpandi was called weaving a ring. Make even one, and you entered Chukhwan.
No. 1 sent his meaning to all of them.
"No. 3. Why were you hounding No. 4?"
No. 3 offered his excuse.
"I wasn't hounding him, exactly..."
"No. 3. Speak plainly."
"No. 4 left his post. I thought something had happened, so..."
No. 1's arrow swung toward Chris.
"No. 4. Why did you leave your post?"
"One can hardly weave a ring on a battlefield, can one?"
"No. 4, did it truly have to be now?"
"You know as well as I do, No. 1. Miss the moment, and you may never reach it again."
No. 3 said, "No. 4, don't exaggerate."
No. 2 said, "Not forever, maybe. But it can set you back decades."
No. 1 said, "No. 4, return to your mission."
"That is rather difficult."
"Why?"
"I slipped away without a word when I left, so..."
No. 3 clicked his tongue.
"You shouldn't have. Do you know how rattled I was when I went looking and you weren't there?"
Chris frowned.
Looking for me? Strictly speaking, he was looking for Cyril... Still. That means he normally knew where Cyril was and what he was doing. And No. 3 is on the battlefield too. What identity is he hiding behind?
The thought ran one way. His mouth kept opening anyway.
"The insight came out of nowhere, I tell you. A chance at Chukhwan arrived, and—if it were you, could you ignore it?"
No answer.
No. 1 let out a sigh.
"Nothing to be done. I permit you to leave your post. Come to Beca."
Beca... That's in the Grant Kingdom.
Chris had not the slightest intention of crossing into the Grant Kingdom, home of the Mickclonia Magic Tower and the Laphunian Magic Tower.
Why would I go there?
Take the mask off and walk away, and that would be the end of it. He had entertained them this long only because digging into the mask's workings was fascinating. Thanks to that, he had learned to load meaning into mana arranged in a particular pattern and convey his will—a higher art than packing a voice into a voice-transmission construct and sending it off.
He could not form the voice transmission any mage of the Jenyeom realm could make. In its place he had learned a method usable only at Sikbae and above: speech that never passed through the voice at all.
Stay mixed up with these people, and there might be a great deal worth learning...
Cutting the tie left him reluctant.
No. Meet them and it gets dangerous. I have to cut it.
No. 2 said, "Wouldn't a meeting be dangerous? If we're found out, the people around us will think it strange."
Chris nodded.
Nothing good comes of spies meeting face to face.
He ventured a light probe.
"We're in the middle of a war. Given our positions, meeting seems a little..."
From the way they spoke, No. 3 and No. 4 held cover identities on the same side, and the rest seemed to stand on the opposite one. He had no idea who their master was, but a man who had planted spies on both sides was no ordinary man.
No. 1's answer caught him off guard.
"We have entered the final phase."
No. 2, No. 3, and No. 5 burst out, excited.
"So it's in Beca."
"The ruins..."
"The secret art of Chukhwan..."
Chris's eyes flew open.
The secret of Chukhwan is in Beca!
"Where shall we meet?"
"The Dandelion Inn. Come to Room Three."
No. 2 said, "I'll come as well."
No. 3 said, "I want to go too."
No. 5 showed his greed along with them.
"Me too..."
No. 1 cut them off, stern.
"No. Do not forget your own missions."
No. 3 grumbled.
"So the only one who profits is No. 4, who abandoned his duty."
From No. 2 through No. 5 they spoke to one another as equals, but toward No. 1 they were respectful. From that, Chris understood that No. 1 was the commander.
"And would it truly be a profit?"
No. 1's words hung, heavy with meaning.
"Oho."
"So that's it."
Satisfaction drifted from the other windows. Chris knit his brow.
He means to hand me a dangerous task.
"I will see you in Beca. I'll withdraw for now."
He offered the courtesy, then pulled free of the mindscape and tore the mask off entirely. His skin stung. When he rubbed at it, beads of blood came away on his hand.
He went down to the stream and was washing his face when a thought struck so hard his eyes flew wide.
The mindscape!
Water pooled in his palms spilled away in streams.
"I—I made a mindscape!"
He had even gone inside it. That had not been imagination. It had not been a dream. In that space he had seen the mask, and he had seen the windows.
The stage of forging a Thought Space within the mind was Jenyeom. Chris had made a space in his mind, though it differed a little from a true Thought Space. His meaning, his will, had not soaked into that mindscape. It was a mental image bound to the mask.
Wait. How different is it, really?
Inside the mental space linked to the mask, he had loaded meaning onto reshaped mana and spoken with the people wearing the other masks.
"That's Jenyeom."
Whoooom.
The instant he understood, the mana around him rushed madly into his body. It raced the path of Iron Body, drove in beneath his solar plexus, and vanished. What had happened every time he worked Iron Body had happened again.
For four years he had poured mana into that spot with the grim patience of a man emptying buckets into a bottomless jar. Now, unlike then, something felt as if it were welling up. The hole in the jar seemed to have closed.
He pictured the mana spilling over and flooding a grassland. Then he passed beyond picturing into yearning. Intent rode the image, and a space was born.
A Thought Space.
He observed the one that had opened in his mind. A rough wasteland stretched away. He had imagined a lush prairie; what he had was grass in thin, sorry patches, like the last hairs clinging to a balding scalp, and even those were yellowed, ready to wither at any moment. A pity. A disappointment.
He kept drawing mana in and pouring it into the Thought Space. Earth-attribute mana and metal-attribute mana snarled together and bored into the ground. Water-attribute mana and wood-attribute mana joined and seeped into the grass.
The blades took on green, and new ones pushed up through the bare places. Even so, he still felt it was not enough. From his spatial pouch he drew high-grade mana stones and closed one in each hand. Dense mana was pulled free, passed through his solar plexus, and entered the Thought Space.
Does it have to go in through the solar plexus?
His body answered that it did.
Then has my Thought Space dropped anchor in my flesh? If so, how is it any different from a traditional mage forming circles in the heart, or a knight building a mana storehouse in the lower abdomen?
He went on absorbing mana and tending the space, and he went on thinking.
Little by little the Thought Space widened, and a sense of fulfillment welled up until it nearly overflowed him.
He felt the truth of it.
No. My space is not subordinate to the body.
It was plainly different from the traditional mages and the knights.
The grass was extending its hold when, at a certain moment, it struck a limit.
What's missing?
Earth, metal, wood, and water were abundant.
He searched for the thing plants could not grow without, the thing his Thought Space did not have, and soon enough he had it. There was no sun, the root of all things.
The sun!
How do I make a sun?
He called up the image of one. Bright, and warm.
What is brightness?
Light.
From ordinary mana stones he had been drawing earth, metal, wood, and water, and putting them to use. Fire and wind he had sorted out as well, but he had not used them; he had set them aside. What remained, mana of an attribute he had never sensed before, had clumped together and was drifting in the empty air.
The moment he recalled light, light slid free of that clump of indeterminate mana.
He understood.
This is light-attribute mana.
He shouted it inwardly.
He was drawing mana not only from the high-grade stones but from nature itself. The light held in the stones and the light held in the world entered the Thought Space and gathered.
Something bright exists. What's needed next?
Warmth.
He bound the fire-attribute mana he had set aside into the light. It grew bright, and it grew warm.
A sun.
He exulted.
"A sun! I've got a sun!"
The sun made in his Thought Space was nothing like the sun of the real world. Strictly speaking, it was not a sun at all. That did not matter. It matched, perfectly, the image he had drawn.
Within his thoughts it was a true sun, and it did a sun's work. That was enough.
With wind mana he pushed it upward and set it in the sky.
Earth and metal enriched the soil. Wood and water became nourishment. And the sun set the grass to growing.