So He Left

So He Left

Mors withdrew his will from where Peturabo was. His condition no longer allowed him to divide his attention.

The sharp dagger sliced through the black cloth covering his hand. The material woven from physical threads and hemp fibers was severed again and again by a sharpness beyond the mortal realm, peeling away layer by layer to reveal what the dagger had truly pierced.

A patch of void.

More black bandages crumbled from the surface of his arm, scattering across the damp ground.

Whatever the black robe had wrapped around seemed to vanish into thin air—or perhaps it had never existed at all.

Mors closed his eyes. Deprived of support, the pitch-black fabric collapsed inward, answering gravity's call and falling to the floor, where it lay crumpled in a defeated, charcoal-black heap, soaked through with the blood of abominations.

Resting atop the cloth was that delicate little dagger, as though announcing its accomplishment to all with the utmost mockery.

Then, a form that could never be observed within the real universe opened its eyes and stepped out of his false body.

Every piece of disguise shed exposed more of his essence. From fingers to shoulders, from the soles of his feet to his chest, golden incantations upheld a void-shaped thing resembling a human body.

Every meal he had ever consumed had returned to nothingness. Every drop of blood he had shed had been an illusion fabricated by runes.

With the robes and bandages covering his body stripped away, and the simulation and shaping of his face ended, what remained now was the core of his true self.

Mors tried to smile. He felt that the place where his head ought to be had rippled slightly.

Ordinarily, he would not exist in this form unless he had no choice.

It was not because he had any particular dissatisfaction with a nonhuman state, but because compared to the body he had once possessed, this appearance was truly rather crude and unfinished.

He raised his left hand. Countless flowing incantations reflected golden light under different conditions of illumination, outlining his approximate form.

Even the most inconspicuous fragment of an incantation, less than an inch long, was a supreme command that directly communicated with the foundational laws of the real universe.

Spellwords.

That was what the runes were called: a system distinct from psychic power, one that directly shook the foundations of reality.

As for his right hand, the spellwords stored there had been lost beyond the veil some fifteen thousand years ago. Having returned to his original form, his right hand was temporarily absent as well.

Thinking of that incident, he could not help but think of a certain thief he did not even know how to describe. Linking that event to Peturabo's existence, Mors realized that he had finally, by accident, figured out what mysterious technology that man had been tinkering with back then.

That fellow had never told anyone what he actually wanted to do.

As he set foot on the ground, the entire scene shifted further. The room he occupied became a small cabin of gold and silver, and beyond it lay a boundless ocean of countless colors, endlessly swirling.

In that profound, endless space, infinite things devoured and replaced one another every second. Fixed time and space, even the ordinary laws of physics, had no meaning here. Only chaos was eternal.

He left the cabin. A magnificent sail stitched from mammalian hides billowed above his head. The little boat rose and fell unsteadily, while wind and waves mixed with scornful, sweet laughter and struck him in the face, telling him where the boat was headed.

Mors simply sat down and let the tides of the Warp guide the boat.

Then a short, broken wooden arrow was slapped onto the deck by a wave, landing before Mors. A faint conversation followed.

"This is my arrow. I shot that deer!"

"Our arrows are obviously identical. Stop lying, little brother. That deer is mine."

"But I carved a mark into the shaft..."

Mors picked up the broken arrow and found a horizontal notch in the wooden shaft near the arrowhead. Spellwords crawled from his void-like skin onto the broken arrow and annihilated it in an instant.

He heard the shrill laughter grow even harsher. A large bird with blue feathers flew to the top of the mast, chirping out an unpleasant laugh.

A string of runes flew upward, scorching the bird's feathers and electrocuting it until it tumbled headfirst back into the ocean.

The second thing to fly onto the deck was a piece of iron. The voices drifting from it became clearer, while several hazy reflections were extracted from time and space, stored, and replayed at this moment.

Those ethereal things passed through truth, illusion, and reality, crossing tens of thousands of years to seize Mors once more. Back then, he had another name.

His first forging. He had used some psychic power to control the furnace's temperature. There was no mentor and no companion. His brother had other matters to attend to—he was receiving instruction from a mentor who had come from afar, instruction in how to build a city.

He studied every transformation of steel himself, listening to the voice of the flames. Naturally, his experiment failed. The iron sword fractured into several warped pieces of iron. He could hear his own sighs and frustration.

As he gripped the failed work and prepared to secretly knead it into a ball with psychic power before throwing it away, a cold and majestic force held up the broken iron pieces.

A narrow beam of light shone through the crack of the opened door, piercing the dim room after the furnace fire had gone out. Wind came from outside, carrying the scent of forest and cold sunlight.

The vision stopped abruptly there. The Warp could not simulate things that did not belong to it. Mors shrugged, picked up the shattered iron pieces, and threw the vision back into the depths of the sea.

He stood, bracing himself against the side of the boat with one hand.

The next vision no longer relied on a tangible object, nor was it so friendly.

He saw his own corpse—the first and only one—lying in the trench of a half-built city. Its dim eyes were still open, gazing at that great city. The city was to be named after his brother, and the reason for his defeat in their struggle could only be called absurd.

Heavy rain swept over the bricks and the eagle emblems upon them, pouring into the channels. Someone walked toward him from deep within the curtain of rain, and a flash of lightning turned the entire scene starkly pale for an instant.

The shifting image condensed into an azure bird feather that fell upon his shoulder. Before it was destroyed, it conveyed its words: "Your death happened long ago... How can you still live so peacefully as a living person? You can't go on living like this... Do you know what happened next?"

Impatiently, Mors tossed a handful of feather ash back into the sea.

He had merely lived a long time. It was not as though he suffered from a degenerative disease of the central nervous system causing progressive cognitive and behavioral impairment.

"He remade my insides with lightning, bricks, and wind and thunder. He sustained me with a sorrowful spirit and green olives, washed me, and made me whiter than snow."

"He fashioned my outer skin from the dust of the earth and filled my flesh with spellwords."

"My spirit and spellwords became one. I am a dead man, an enduring monument, a living book."

He was an aggregate of spellwords, a mobile storage device.

Mors looked at his missing right arm.

When, beneath the mountains of Lupacalia, he had helped the Fire Thief open and close the gates leading to nightmares and immaterial realms, ventured deep into the sea of pantheons of destruction and disorder, and returned whole, some of his spellwords had been permanently lost in use, taking all related memories with them.

Even now, he did not know which commands for manipulating reality he had lost back then. There was only one thing he likely would not forget even after another ten thousand years.

And he did not even know whether "this matter will be remembered until life ends" was the right way to describe it. After all, from the moment of his first death onward, he had never lived again.

"Your duty is temporarily complete."

The wind of Moro blew into the distance, and white-hot flames drifted away. There was scorched blood and distant thunder in the words of that First Thinker. This was the final, cold revelation.

"You should leave."

So he left—

So he left.

Mors leaped from the little boat and stepped upon the heaving surface of the waves. The tides immediately receded, leaving only a golden sandy plain of unresolved chaos. Looking through his transparent body at the ground beneath his feet, every grain of sand was a precious, dazzling gold coin. Gold and jewels piled into mountains, while whole azure gemstones reflected endless, magnificent streams of light.

He had reached the edge of paradise.

Mors raised his left hand, and spellwords caused a great sword to emerge from the sea of chaos. Then he advanced into the depths of gold.