[Midir Faust.]
It was a most glorious progression. My intelligence was correct: Mirabel had given birth.
I knew because she made me wait outside the castle for longer than etiquette required, as if hiding the existence of children were some delicate secret.
She cannot fool me.
No one in the Central World can deceive my king, and that absolves her of blame, if blame is even sensible here.
I waited while the cold settled into my bones. Eventually Sansir came to meet me.
They had not yet summoned servants or knights to the castle; it made sense.
They were preparing to reveal their heirs to the Central World, and courtiers prefer the luxury of secrecy before spectacle.
I pushed my hair up and tied it into a ponytail. I dye it black for appearances; its original shade leans grey.
I cannot make the dye permanent, my body clings stubbornly to older traits. Small rebellions, amusing to watch.
Sansir watched me more than he spoke.
I wore a scholar's outfit rather than armor: a black cloak, a brown satchel, loose brown trousers.
My katana hung at my side more for silhouette than intent.
I have made peace with the label of pacifist, though names shift like weather.
Was I truly the pacifist, or Lancerial once more? Memory is a pliant thing.
Sansir led me to a large room filled with trinkets and treasures.
Veronica hovered nearby with a tray, determined to appear useful.
I sat on a white and gold settee that pretended to be regal.
Sansir bowed and departed. Veronica offered me a cup of wine and tried very hard to please me. I humored them both.
I looked at the back of my hand. My skin, darker than usual from travel and ritual, trembled.
This was the start of a new movement, a new event, delicious in its inevitability.
The king would not be waking soon. Nicholas slumbered like a world in eclipse.
Mirabel would seek counsel, she would ask how to wake him. I would not give her the answer she wanted.
Some truths are instruments; some answers are weapons. I prefer to hold them.
The woman arrived then, not wasting ceremony.
She wore red: a dress cut sharp as accusation, lipstick the color of fresh ruin, long star-shaped earrings that swung when she spoke.
She bowed with practiced grace.
"I am honored to meet such an esteemed guest," she intoned.
"Don't," I said, a hand flicking the air. "I heard you offered no such courtesy to my king. It would be improper to afford it now."
Her smile vanished. She did not pretend. She blurted her aim with reckless haste. "I want to wake Nicholas."
Ah. Directness. So bravely vulgar. Her hair was red. Anger colored her like a banner.
"To put it bluntly," she leaned forward, "waking him requires a sacrifice I am willing to make."
The attempt at devotion was blunt, honest.
I allowed myself a small smile. "You can either slaughter your children or slaughter the Central World."
Her hair darkened into something nearly black, and her eyes split into ice. "What the fuck did you just say?"
Power surged from her like a furnace. She matched my king's presence in an instant.
I had expected mortals to quake; instead, she flared. I had named the cost; she confirmed her inability.
"You need a vast surge of mana to replenish him," I said coolly. "Your children would suffice. So would the entire Central World."
She pressed a finger into my chest; light burned through my soul and lodged there like an accusation.
Burning me was an impressive feat, my soul was a repository of energies capable of sundering continents.
Yet she managed to scorch it and flare her strength.
"Don't you speak of my children dying," she hissed. "Say that again and I will wipe you from this putrid reality."
Her threat tasted sincere. I inclined my head. "I warned you that it would be something you could not do."
She leaned back. The color of her hair returned to a violent red, less furious now, tempered. "I see. Then I suppose I will let you off."
Relief and arrogance braided together in her posture. A spike like that could only mean one thing: fear.
She feared losing. Last time, Earth nearly burned under Griffin's hand.
If events had skewed otherwise, Valadeus might have risen in full. Then the only equal would be my king, or a handful of others.
Her composure settled into the practiced veneer of a courtier who believes herself clever.
"My king has ordered me to inform you that Drandafal has already begun to marshal its forces."
"So it's like that?" she said, quietly. She gave me dejected eyes. "Don't finish, just give it to me straight."
I nodded. "In short, they plan to start a war with Anstalionah, and they will not stop until the first and last banners fall."
She looked agitated, rightfully so. Nicholas is pretty beat up, and I do feel bad lying to her.
I contemplated and sighed. "Listen, Mirabel, I'm a man of morals, so I'll give you a piece of advice."
She gave me a confused stare, almost like a lost puppy, which made me want to laugh.
"Nicholas, there's one more method to waking him. All you have to do is call his name."
She looked even more puzzled. "I've called out to him countless times by now. That can't be true."
I held my hand to my mouth. "Names are not merely sounds. They are defining aspects of a being. You need to call out his True Name."
We live in the Central World, but beyond it lies lower structures of infinite stars, planets, galaxies, and dimensions.
Yet it is not a universe, at least not in the sense that matters.
If contained within a world, it would seem like nothing.
It is this distinction that makes worlds different from universes.
There are worlds that regard the Central World as higher.
This is the same for all worlds, the gap, expressed as inaccessibly large.
The same gap everything might hold to something which is nothing.
"Please note that while it may be common to call our world a universe, it is degrading, to say the least."
She seemed to not care all that much, but I did. I loved the study of existence, and cosmology as well.
Like Heaven is to Earth, so are names to True Names, just as True Names are to True Selves.
A True Name is the distilled characteristic of a thing, the full, concentrated description of what that thing is when all disguises are stripped away.
"Think of a tree. To most people, it is simply wood and leaves, a place to lean a sword," I said calmly.
She nodded, clearly not yet understanding where I was going.
"A True Name of that tree would contain the pattern of its growth, the memory of the soil it drinks."
Her eyes brightened. "So it's like the memory of the exact way its limbs will split in winter, and the sound of its roots."
I allowed myself a faint smile, surprised at her intelligence. Most people required pages of notes to grasp this.
"Yes. It maps events as well as fact. Speak the True Name, and you do not merely call the tree, you set its entire nature in motion."
Because True Names are more real than reality, they obey a higher order. They are not bound by measure or imitation.
You cannot improve or amplify a world by painting its surface brighter, or building taller walls, and expect to reach Earth.
You could forge towers, fill plains with light until your lungs ached, but any attempt to make Earth into Heaven would fail.
Heaven is not a larger Earth. It is not simply another realm, as most people imagine. It exists outside of ours, a separate order entirely.
Much like the Sea of Time views anything bound by space as nothing, it is a matter of definition, of fundamental distinction.
The Historic Veil also contains an eminent layer of time, linked with memories and history.
It is part of why higher forms of time exist, even in realms that are not materially bound.
Time itself has layers, and each layer regards the others as fiction.
The first, ordinary time, is what mortals perceive: seconds, minutes, days.
It is linear, predictable, and tied to progression, distance, and causality.
All action, all possibility, moves through it.
To ordinary time, Set Time is a story, a fixed pattern that does not truly exist; its events are abstractions, mere narratives.
Set Time is the second layer. Here, sequences are immutable, outcomes inevitable.
What is destined will occur, no matter what unfolds in ordinary time.
Kill everyone capable of destroying a world? Set Time will still see its destruction.
Ordinary time, in this layer, is a fleeting shadow, infinitely irrelevant; an entire history of seconds is nothing.
Composite Time is the third layer, the time of Heaven.
It is not a sequence measured by duration, nor a framework of inevitability.
Events there are omnipresent to lower layers: they occur outside seconds, beyond destiny.
To all time encompasses every nuance of action, consequence, and potential.
It is fully characteristic, absolute, untouchable by lower temporal measures.
I leaned forward slightly, letting my gaze linger on her. "I'm sure you do not yet know it, Mirabel, but you must scream it, his True Name."