Chapter Sixteen: Infinity Revisited
The doubts didn't come until Ryu was awash in his awakened power, and then they came in full force. More working in symbols - first he'd nearly been knocked down by a great wave that rose to meet him, but instead of drowning he absorbed it like a sponge. Now he was in a room with two golden treasure chests. The contents of the chests would not be required for him to reach his goal, but considering what he had seen he thought it best to open them now. There was a door - the doubts came through it as he worked on the latch of the first chest, his initial giddiness seeped away, and they took appropriate forms.
The Abbess of over a hundred years ago, a little girl with shining dark hair in coiled braids, spoke. "One mistake with such an amount will most certainly have devastating consequences, whether they are within or without."
P'ung Ryong, in his trident-wielding avatar, spoke. "The borders between life and death wert made to be respected. To bring back those whose time hast passed… 'tis unnatural."
Cray, looking somewhat bemused, spoke. "But if the two of you are supposed to be one… then wouldn't it be…"
Nina, clasping her hands together and leaning toward him, spoke. "Nobody's asking you to save the world. Once in a lifetime's enough."
"Who are you to decide such things?"
"Admit it - you just want to go on a power trip. You want to make sure this time everyone knows you're a big hero."
He fumbled several times, then worked his fingers under the lid and lifted. The doubts looked on, unable to stop him, and shouted with renewed intensity. "Oh, shut up!" he shouted back; they continued.
In the chest were eight bright pearls with blackest ink inscriptions - the symbolism, again. He picked up a pearl at random - it was the size of a child's ball - and read the inscription. "Nameless One," he called, and the pearl dissipated in a whirl of light and flew out the open door. He glimpsed the target for an instant as he stood in the center of the village of Pauk and convulsed as the light swept down and into him.
He picked up another. "Hae Ryong." The Sea Dragon, who had once given out blessings to those who wished to travel the water-sea, collapsed onto the deck of a familiar ship. Ryu's guess was confirmed when the sailors Zig and Kryrik ran up shouting.
"Su Ryong." The Tree of Wisdom had gone to the checkpoint south of Shikk and was discussing something with Alliance soldiers. Ryu hoped they weren't Ludian - then, as he reflected while Su Ryong spun crazily, if they were Ludian they'd soon be sorry.
"Ni Ryong." The Mud Dragon was being helped onto a sandflier by more Alliance soldiers who jerked away at the sight of his returned aura- he knew they weren't Ludian when he saw Sa Ryong standing to the side.
"Sa Ryong." Sa Ryong, too, became suffused by his aura.
"Ch'o Ryong." She sat beside Tarhn on the edge of a fountain in the castle courtyard. Her mouth opened slightly and she pressed a hand to her heart.
He hefted the second to last of the pearls and looked straight at the doubt. "P'ung Ryong." Lying in bed with a black eye (how did that happen, Ryu wondered), the Wind Dragon flew nearly to the ceiling before he fell back onto the sheets, and before the Dragon's Eye faded again Ryu saw his face, suddenly free of bruising, as he comprehended what had just taken place.
"Deis," and she looked at where his body lay and she grinned. Behind her Won-Qu and A-Tur blinked rapidly.
When Ryu got the other chest open he looked down at nine crystals of varying colors, one of them a merging of deep cerulean and the orange-red of fire. He identified them in the same moment - these were representations of the immortality of the Endless. Return these as he had the pearls and the nine of them (or ten, it would soon be ten again) would be again those who endured. He reached out to the first -
And a doubt that could have passed for his twin said, "It's not as if I want to make people immortal."
Ryu stopped and lowered the lid. He had yet to do what he had come here to do. And he had to listen to his doubts once in a while. This could wait, he decided. This could wait for some time.
He walked out the door and drifted above himself. He looked to make sure the others were all right, then thought himself westward to the other continent and south and west again until he was above Soma Forest. He thought of her and her bell, and particles rose from the blighted ground and trees and coalesced into a seething mass. Do you remember what you were? he asked what was left, and it said yes inasmuch as bits of hex could say yes. Good. Be that. Then he carried the mass to the other continent and surrounded it by a dome of barriers in triplicate. The him that was below had stood up and flung out his arms, and he closed his eyes and plunged back into himself.
He stood and watched the hex being purged inside the barriers. This was the real magic. Incantations and ceremonial music and whatnot were for smaller spells that needed such support. This was the magic that moved the world, and in under an hour the hex had been seeped out and trapped in between two of the barriers. He banished it without even a motion of the hand. The remainder knitted together and began to grow into a memory of what they had been a part of, and before long a human form took shape. None of the inch-by-inch of Deis and Elina; now he had access to the entire roaring reservoir, and he used it.
Nina lifted her head at his triumphant cry and blinked against the light of daybreak. Then she looked and she cried out herself, waking the others, at the sight of the girl's body lying in a flickering dome and the more familiar one keeping watch. "Oh, Ryu, you've done it!"
He looked up; his eyes seemed unusually wide. "Not yet. That was just the easy part."
She got out the clothes she had packed, he dissolved the barriers, and she began to dress the body - she had some trouble until Deis got up as well and helped her. When that was finished, she said, "Are you hungry?"
"Maybe after I'm done."
"What else is there to do?"
Ryu nodded at the body. "Remember Elina? That's just a shell for her to come back to. I'm going to go get her now."
If ever his hands had trembled before, now they vibrated. When he lifted them to rub at his widened eyes she had to restrain her shudder. "Can't you at least rest a bit?"
He retrieved his own set of clothes and shoes and laid them out just outside the circle. "I'm not tired. Anyway I couldn't rest if I didn't know if I could do this or not."
Won-Qu took a few steps forward. "Thou'rt surely in need of-"
"I'm not." He knelt in the circle again. "See you, Nina."
And he fell. This time she knew better than to scream.
Again he dove into the reconstructed body - no physical contact needed this time - into another great light, searching for some hint to the direction her soul had gone. In due time, he found a trail. There was some trouble catching hold of it, but that, too, was done in time. He recognized in it the place to where he had chased Elina's soul.
She was not there. She must have passed further on. He looked for another entrance; there was none, but a few moments' work quickly opened one.
Sorry, P'ung Ryong. Oh, who am I kidding, I'm not sorry at all.
Ryu plunged across the border between the living and the dead.
P'ung Ryong stood on a balcony and listened to what the wind told him. He twitched his wings; masses of feathers rustled. "He hath carried it out," he told Ch'o Ryong beside him. "Canst we do nothing?"
She shook her head, sending small crackles of power out around her. "I only hope that he doth find his way out, with or without that which he seeks. Let us go inform thy king of this development."
They ran into Cray and Elina as the latter pair came out of the throne room. Elina exclaimed briefly over P'ung Ryong's quick recovery. The two of them were smiling, and P'ung and Ch'o Ryong looked at one another and nodded as the knowledge seeped between them. "We hath news for the king," Ch'o Ryong told the guard.
The guard said, "Okay. Go on in." He momentarily contemplated P'ung Ryong's wings. "This might sound dumb, but would this be good news or bad news you've got?"
"News," said P'ung Ryong, and stood straighter.
It was with some relief that Ursula half-raced the Ludian troops southwest. The others were probably at the place they'd told her of, the place Yuna aimed for. She'd have some extra firepower for the inevitable confrontation. And if for some crazy reason they had instead gone somewhere else, for example the abandoned village where Rasso had died, they had some extra time to get out. Win-win either way.
With some guilt, she hoped they would be there. She didn't fancy trying to take out twenty soldiers on her own.
"Hello?"
The shades in the blackness pressed up to him and his light. Most of them were no longer recognizable as the people they must once have been. Some still maintained themselves as outlines, but he sensed they were giving fast.
You'd think the people who died later would be nearer to the front. Unless… He swallowed. Unless these are the later people and the earlier ones're already… No. Elina held together fine, didn't she?
"Mami?" he called out. "From Sonne, friend of Fou-Lu also known as Ryong?" The bell - or its representation - still dangled from his hand on its cord. It, too, seemed to glow with inner light. He lifted it and shook it again. "I've come… I've come to get you back?"
"She would be further in. The shades tend to move to the outside. They enjoy greeting new arrivals, as do I."
He turned to see a nearly solid form with sticks of legs and a distinct nose, outlined in magic flames. A living torch. "You're General Yohm, aren't you?"
A low bow. "Indeed. And you would be the God Emperor's other half?"
"That's me." He brandished the bell. "Where is she?"
"Further in. She should be near General Rhun."
A phantom in extravagant yellow robes and headdress approached. Ryu identified him as the late Thirteenth Emperor. Blood dripped from an impressive gash in his neck, and Ryu half expected him to take off his head and stick it under his arm. "I say… what is it, General?"
"We were discussing a young woman," said Yohm. "I believe he proposes to resurrect her."
"Was she important?"
Ryu thought of the Dragonslayer wound. It hadn't been that serious an injury, but it was the thought that counted. "More important than you."
The late Emperor's voice became a whine. "It's not for you to decide! He isn't here. He still isn't here. And after he told me he'd lay down his life for me."
Yohm gave him a see-what-I-put-up-with look. Ryu shrugged in return - Yohm was hardly innocent either - and continued. There were no pathways here, and the trail he'd followed in was quickly lost, but he called for her and sounded the bell and eventually she came to him.
As fading went Mami was almost as near-tangible as Yohm - she was beginning to go a little fuzzy round the edges, but that was it, to his relief. Her hair had come loose and fallen over her face; no ethereal bell adorned it now. Her clothes were torn and he could see half-scabbed wounds on arms and legs. From when they got her ready for the Carronade. She reached out and he took her hand. To his relief, it didn't go through his. She smiled through the veil of hair tangled with insubstantial caked blood.
"I heard your calling," said General Rhun as he came up beside her. "I thought I might have a look." He looked even closer to real, but like the others his cause of death lingered in the dried blood on his uniform.
Maybe the spirit-Ryu was more linked to his physical body than he thought - why else had his throat gone dry? "Should I come back for you later on?"
In return he got a gaze that made him feel like squirming in spite of everything. Then Rhun's expression shifted to… concern? Why concern? "I thank you for your offer, but I doubt it would be the best thing."
"All… all right." He swallowed. "If that's what you want. That's fine, then."
Rhun eyed him again. "Good luck."
"You too," he said. "Er. Goodbye." He began on the way out with Mami in tow before he could feel any more foolish.
When they were nearly out a crowd emerged from the shadows and made for them. He thought they were shades, then saw how distinct they were. Children. No, not children exactly. "I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry about," said the one in the lead. Unlike the other spirits, they were surprisingly free of injury. "You couldn't have known they'd find the other village."
"You want me to come back for you later?" he offered. Even as he said it he guessed their response.
They gave them the same look as Rhun had given him. "No, no," said another of them. "We'd hate to trouble you. We passed on even before her-" As one they indicated Mami. "And we might not like how it came to pass, but this is as it must be."
"It doesn't have to be."
"You are tired," they said. "Think of the living first. Rest and then consider it again." They turned and faded back to the blackness.
"I'm not tired," he called after them.
After they were out of sight she said, "Yer bringin' me back?"
"Yeah."
"Why're ye doin' all this for me?"
"For Fou-Lu."
"Eh? Mm, ye be right, that be his real name." She nodded. "That general… he did say so. Only he also said about desecrating and what-not… but that part weren't real, were it?"
"No. It wasn't."
"Is he… is he goin' to be there, then?"
"He'll be there if I've got anything to say about it." Ryu spotted the telltale flames in the middle of a group of shades, and again his phantom throat felt parched.
But if it was a last-minute effort at undoing the results of his journey Ryu expected, he was disappointed. When they approached, Yohm merely nodded at them and beckoned them onward. And they went onward.
He heard a surprised gasp as they crossed the border and went into her light. Stay here. Reacquaint yourself. We'll be seeing you in a minute.
Oh… all right, then. He left her and returned to the sunlight, now much brighter. She jerked, her eyelids fluttering as Elina's had; Ryu sensed her soul bonding to her body again. He nodded at the reawakened and wide-eyed group and moved to the sword, still lying in the circle of the platform alongside his own collapsed self.
Compared to what he'd just done it was child's play to extricate Fou-Lu, and within a minute they both stood in the circle. The others seemed torn between staring at them and asking questions of Mami. He heard her voice come haltingly, words tripping over each other, running more smoothly as she became reacquainted with speech.
Thou hast done it, then.
Yeah. Yeah, I've done it. Now… now is it all right?
Thou hast done it.
I have. Fou-Lu…
He smiled. Say no more. Thou hast given me the impossible. 'Tis only just that I capitulate to thee at this juncture.
So are you okay with coming back now, then?
Of course.
Okay. Let's do it.
A sudden frown. Art thou certain?
Why wouldn't I be? With that Ryu sent a steady surge of power in Fou-Lu's general direction. Fou-Lu caught it easily and began to knot it into a familiar pattern, though still with a look of misgiving. Mind the clothes! Fou-Lu shifted himself to the appropriate location.
With them working together on the weave, it was done in a half hour. As they did this, Ryu felt half of the Yorae Dragon's power flow to Fou-Lu - Now we're even, he couldn't help thinking. Aside from the predicted shortness in the pant legs, the clothes fit quite well.
'Tis time to return ourselves.
Yeah. See you, Fou-Lu.
The same to thee… And Fou-Lu smiled again as he began to fade. Ryu. When Fou-Lu's eyes opened Ryu, too, slipped back.
He opened his own eyes to a clamor that seemed rather louder than before, with a blur drifting above him. He blinked several times before it affixed itself to a stationary position and turned out to be Nina. "You're back now?" she asked. He nodded and sat up. "You're not going away again, are you? There's nothing el-" She shook her head. "Not so soon?"
"No, not so soon. So that's fixed." An invisible band played the drums of Worent on the inside of his skull. He pressed a hand to his forehead. It didn't help.
She nodded absently. Won-Qu and A-Tur had gone to greet Fou-Lu, and now they walked on either side of him as he made for where Deis, Ershin and Scias helped Mami remember how to walk. When Mami caught sight of him she remembered how to run. "Are you feeling all right?"
Ryu opened his mouth to say "I'm fine." No words came out. He tried again - still nothing.
Then, I'm not fine, am I?
The waves had returned. They dragged him down and he was so tired now he couldn't fight. He reached for some hidden reserve of strength and there was none. "What's wrong? Ryu?" He felt Nina's hands grabbing at his own. "Ryu. Ryu!" As he sank back and was borne downward Nina's voice rose to a frantic cry, and as the black water closed over his head the sun at noon blinded him.
"It can't be so bad," said Nina. "It can't be so bad. He's done this before, with my sister, and the next day he was fine as fine."
"That may be so," said the Abbess, "but as he described it, it was most certainly done working with a fraction of his total power at a time. Also, he still had Fou-Lu with him. I should have realized- the mental strength of one ordinary mind alone could never power such feats. Perhaps the Yorae Dragon had always had abnormally high energy, which was what made it liable to separate as it has."
Fou-Lu held out his hands. "He didst… he didst bestow to me a full half of it. Surely 'twould…"
"The damage had already been done. Trying to keep control of all that power - keeping himself from losing his mind beneath it - it must have utterly exhausted him, and even more energy was expended with all his recent activities. His life force must be drained below replacement. It is likely he will lose the rest before sunrise. At best he will enter a… long sleep."
Like Fou-Lu, only unless he's gotten immortal too, he'll die of old age before he wakes up.
Ryu lay where he had fallen, still holding Mami's bell - it seemed improper to take it, now. They gathered around as if at a wake, and if what the Abbess said was right, this practically was a wake, wasn't it? Nina pressed her hands to her face and clutched at her tears. "He told me he wasn't tired."
"He might not have been. Channeling the power would have kept him up, and now that he has done with his tasks and given Fou-Lu his share it no longer does so." Fou-Lu and Deis began gesturing toward the inert form. "No, that won't work. More of that kind of power would only keep him moving until it had completely burned him out." Something occurred to Nina and she raised her hands. The Abbess hastened to add, "Your regular healing magic will have no effect either - this is an affliction of the mind, not the body."
Mami said, "Ye mean… he's dyin' cause of me?"
"I did not intend-"
Nina dropped her hands. "I'm sure you didn't. What can we do for him?"
Her voice came slowly. "Nothing."
Silence. Then, even slower, Fou-Lu said, "Thou art lying. Something hath the means to restore him. But thou dost consider it too terrible for our ears."
The Abbess sighed. "You are correct. You will not like this."
"I don't care," said Nina. "Tell us anyway."
"Yes, tell us anyway," said Deis.
"T… t…tell us," said Scias. "W-whatever it is we c-can t-take it."
The Abbess sighed. "Theoretically, if someone else's life force were to be drained into him - someone else's would not be nearly as efficient as his own, but it would supplement his own life and allow him to recuperate with time."
Nina blinked. "I don't see the problem."
Scias nodded. "L-let's all g-give a little b-bit and that o-ought t-to-"
"No!" Nina flinched and Fou-Lu raised an eyebrow. Rhem looked down briefly, then raised her head high. "I might not be an expert, but I know something about that. With his life as low as it is, if a connection's set up he'll automatically take everything he can from the other end until he's above replacement - it's natural, he wouldn't be able to help it." A nod from the Abbess. "We wouldn't have the time to break the connection before whoever it was got drained empty, or at least as far as he is now. It's got to be a life for a life."
"I think that's a fair price." A second after Nina heard herself she knew it was true, and the next second she began forward.
"W… w… wait!"
Nina looked at the front of the green robe and then up toward the face of its owner. "What is it?"
"If y-you d-do that, w-when R-Ryu w-wakes up and finds out it'll k-kill him anyway." Scias nodded to the Abbess. "L… l-let me."
"Don't! I… I…" Her words faded. "I don't know…" she mumbled.
A-Tur turned to Fou-Lu and said, "If you approve I -"
"'Twill not be necessary. I shall do it myself."
Won-Qu dipped his head. "Master, pardon my saying so, but you doth speak in passion. If you do so 'twould defeat the purpose of his journey, would it not?"
Deis said, "You two. If you won't have other people do it then don't do it to yourself." She looked around at them. "And for the record, I'm not volunteering, all right? I've only got a little more than a week out of that-" She nodded at Ershin. "- and I'm not… I'm not going to… oh, forget it!"
Scias said, "N-nobody's t-told me y-yet why I oughtn't."
They all stared at Ryu again. Nina's eye was drawn to the bell, still glinting in the sun. "There has to be another way. It's not fair."
"No," said the Abbess. "It isn't. By all means, exercise your mind. There may be something we overlooked."
Fou-Lu nodded slowly. "There may be…" He frowned. "Perhaps if-"
A-Tur growled and Nina spent only a moment wondering why he was growling at Fou-Lu before she realized that he wasn't and turned in time to see the Ludian Master emerge from inside the shrine. He stopped and gawked; apparently he hadn't expected other people here. But he wasn't important. Nor were the soldiers that came out after him and lined up across the path, blocking their way out, all with expressions of equal surprise. The figure of interest to her was the man who came out beside the Ludian Master, holding a book.
A-Tur growled again, and this time Won-Qu joined him. Fou-Lu bent down, picked up Ryu's sword, and drew it as he stepped forward, A-Tur and Won-Qu beside him.
Mami whispered, "He were in Astana. He were at th' Carronade when… when I…"
"Yuna." The sound of her voice as she formed the word startled her. "He got away. Again."
It's not fair.