Every Circle a Point

“What totem do you use?”

Mal was so rapt in his morning meditation the words almost didn’t reach him.

“For what?” Mal asked. He kept his head down and his eyes closed, holding onto what bit of his focus he could.

“The summoning rite.” Tenil said.

The question wasn’t an unwelcome one——the Arcs often asked students to describe the thoughts they used as totems to inspect why a visualization works better in some tasks than others——but why was Tenil so eager to know? Their roles for summoning were so different, Mal doubted the knowledge would help his classmate with his own task.

In the rock garden before them, jagged stones jutted out of combed white sand and around the perimeter moss and vines spread out in contrast to the stark geological colors. Cicadas droned with a tone that seemed to change but never did. Mal was admiring how still and eternal the scene was when a bird flitted over a wall and landed on one of the stones. He would have to return to motion as well.

“Eggs.”

“Eggs?” Tenil said.

“Yeah.” Mal said. “I picture two eggs: one black, one white. Spinning around each other, barely touching——but not rotating. That’s important. I can——“

“Why Eggs though?”

There went Mal’s breathing rhythm.

“Because. Shells, they’re like ‘boundary’, right. But there’s two, so the vision also manifests ‘binary’. Those are the most important protypes.”

“The protypes aren’t more important than each other, thats the point of them being the protypes.”

“Yeah, but to us I mean——for Indrans.”

Mal felt his face flush, and turned to hide it from Tenil. It’s not like Tenil was the one to decide if he was ready to graduate to the next level in the Circle. Mal struggled sometimes to give Arc Rhea an articulate explanation of his totems, too. Her reactions to his need for additional instruction felt different than it had with Arc Pomnu, who was more like a Nodemother when a child has a fever. Tenil didn’t have that problem. To him, everything was intuitive. He never needed extra instruction.

“Have you ever thought about smashing them?”

“What?” Mal said.

“Summoning manifests the protype ‘breaks’ doesn’t it? Maybe it would——“

“No!” Mal remembered to breathe, but too late——his meditation broken.

Mal felt for a moment that he and Tenil looked much like his eggs-they might as well have been spinning in the non defined space of his mind. The sights and sounds of the monastery and the half-lit sky above rushed to his senses. A breeze blew over the walls, winding through the rocks and foliage to reach Mal——that stillness that seemed outside of time now evaporating into movement.

“Arc Rhea says——well I know that control and order are important.”

“And what if we don’t want that?” Tenil said.

“You want to lose control of your powers? On purpose? That’s an odd way to try to become Degree of Arc.”

“The Circle are meant to be that——a circle, encompassing humankind. How can you ‘encompass’ anything without knowing its limits? You just said yourself how important Boundary is——“

“And you said it isn’t more important than the others.” Mal said, “We’re only up to second sector, we haven’t even finished all the rites yet.“

“Exactly!” Tenil said. He leaned towards Mal, “We failed at pulling a gem out of the Annwyn before, and that was six months ago. All Rhea has given us since then is riddles and lectures. There is something we aren’t doing, something we aren’t understanding. Something fundamental.”

Mal felt a surge of panic catch in his throat. Tenil belonged here, did he?

Tenil seemed to notice his reaction, and placed a hand on Mal’s shoulder.

“Curiosity is a scholarly virtue,” He said. “If anything goes wrong you can just say you were curious and Arc Rhea will praise your creativity. Summoning gems from the Annwyn doesn’t mean much on its own, but if we can’t do that we can’t do anything. All the Tau arts that are actually useful build off of summoning. We can’t risk failing again or it could be years before we get another chance.”

Tenil let out a sigh. “Makam thinks Arc Rhea will ask us to try again today, and——”

“Makam? Are they in on this too?” Mal said.

“No, this is between you and me. Come on, we can trust each other! Remember when you wanted to swim in the emerald lakes, and I made it seem like you were sick in bed so Terani wouldn’t find out?

“We were nodemates, then” Mal said.

“Aren’t we nodemates still? Besides. Makam is good, but Theep have their own allegiances, I’m not even convinced they want to be an Arc. You do. Don’t you?”
Mal nodded. Makam was the only Theep’wa Mal had ever met, but he had never questioned that their intentions were good; they were kind, if a little reserved.

“Good——We have to do it at the same time. The signal will be when Makam’s avatar surfaces from the dive. As soon as you see the gem appear in Yon’s portal, smash your eggs. I’ll break my vision too. If I’m right,” Tenil said, “the gem won’t evaporate in the portal like it did last time——it’ll be stuck here.”

Tenil searched Mal’s eyes for acquiescence.

“Ok” Mal said. “But if anything goes wrong we have to let Arc Rhea know immediately.”

“Of course,” Tenil said, “you’ll see, Rhea might even graduate us on the spot.”

The light of Indra, the massive host planet of their lunar monastery, seeped over the garden wall as it crested the horizon; the cool, white hue of the early morning now striking a lively orange. Mal watched the sliver of Indra swell skywards. The Arcs said that Indra was a powerful symbol, a sign of the perfect geometry at the center of reality, its thousands of banded rings a representation of Nevu’s powers over the physical realm on a scale beyond comprehension.

“I should go” Tenil said, and got up to leave the garden. “I’ll see you at the Pygon.”

Again, Mal had to remember to breathe.

“Wait, Tenil?”

Tenil stopped in the hall, the robes on his back bathed in the pale light. “Yeah?”

“What do you use? as your totem, I mean.”

Tenil turned to keep walking, and shrugged.

“Indra.”

#

Mal spent the rest of the morning trying to reenter his meditation without success. He tried not to think too much about Tenil’s theory——he needed to conserve brainpower for the day ahead. He didn’t see any of the other students when he went to the kitchens, so he ate his porridge in silence then made his way from the Abbey out towards the Pygon.

Unlike the inner worlds of the Ra Sol system, the moon world of Io, circumscribed by the 26 monasteries called the Points of the Circle, was so far from the sun that they had two types of day, half and full. Halfdays were those periods when only the sun shone faintly on Io, while Fulldays were those when Indra faced Io with the side that was fully illuminated by the sun. Today was a full day, and the heat and humidity was already starting to pick up. Mal felt the warmth of Indra seeping through the robes on his back as he walked. The monastery’s lecture hall, the Pygon, was a short walk away, the path marked with cobbled stone and sweet smelling flowers tenderly cultivated by the Arcs of Point 13.

As Arc Pomnu had taught him to, Mal contemplated the protypes at work in the natural world as he strolled. The protypes were the prime patterns, everything was manifestations of them on some level: Flowers were ‘emergence’, as all life was, as well as ‘trigger’ for their blooms and ‘schema’ in their intricate designs of petal, stalk, and leaf. There was ‘border’ between the walkway and the surrounding growth, and of course, the pathway itself was ‘arrow’, as well as ‘web’, connecting places to one another. Even the Cicadas, in their droning, were manifesting ‘cycle’ as they met every summer to sing their one-note song. Mal felt at ease, picking the world apart into things he could understand.

The circular lecture stage of the Pygon was nestled into the base of a hill, with terraced rows of carved stone benches rising in a fan shape above it. Mal crested the hill the amphitheater was built into and walked through one of the arches that stood at intervals around its perimeter. Arc Rhea said there was a time when the half shell of benches was filled with students attending lectures by the grand Arcs——but that was many generations ago. Mal tried to imagine it now: the worn and moss-covered steps and benches pristine with strong, unbroken edges, filled with Indraspa’s most promising young minds, eager to affect change in the world. Now we don’t even use the benches, he thought. Mal descended the stone steps which ran between the rows until he stood at the edge of the stage.

A girl a few years younger than Mal sat at the front of the raised stage, legs dangling off the edge. She was rapidly articulating a teph, the white sand dashing around the surface of the square tablet in spurts to the movement of her fingers creating shapes and letters—notes from the past few months of lectures. Did she know they’d be retrying the summon today too? It felt like Mal was the only one the koans weren’t whispering their secrets to; maybe the puzzles just didn’t like him very much.

“Ten to you, Gremn.” He said as he approached.

Gremn looked up from the teph and peered not at Mal, but towards the sun. The faint ball of fire, so much smaller than Indra, haloed a pillar marked with an ancient rune for the present month of the Indran calendar.

“Fifteen, actually” Gremn said, and went back to her teph without a glance at Mal.

“Just saying good morning.”

“Right. Sorry. Can’t talk, in the middle of something.”

Mal nodded and took the side stairs. The surface of the stage was scored with deep grooves, a labyrinthine series of circles and arcane geometric shapes which Mal began inspecting to look busy. The lines and shapes formed a Pythagorean Mandala. Arc Pomnu said this one was supposed to be a representation of a first principle, but Mal couldn’t remember what its meaning was. He found himself wishing Arc Pomnu were still his teacher, that he could soothe Mal’s nerves and explain everything he didn’t understand in simple terms and without judgement. Did others understand the meaning of this pattern just by looking at it? Makam definitely did, but might not say so if asked. Tenil would say he did, true or not.

“Going to run class yourself?”

Mal turned and looked to the top of the amphitheater to see Yon, followed closely by her brother, Wen.

“Do you remember what this means?” Mal said.

“A stage can’t mean anything, it just is.” Said Wen trotting ahead of his sister.

“Not the stage, the pattern word on it.”

“Oh” Wen said. He furrowed his brow, but quickly released the tension and broke a toothy smile. “Something cool, I bet. Shadow demons vanquished here!”

“Thats not how pattern words work, Wen” Yon said. She reached the stage and hopped up onto it. “They don’t make sentences, at least not how we think of them. How are you supposed to be a scribe if you can’t even read patterns?”

Wen shrugged. “I don’t read them, I just let them float through me. They change how they like.”

Yon sighed and shook her head. She walked over to Mal and looked out at the mandala.

“We’ll be lucky if Arc Rhea asks us to perform a rite at all with him on the team——I think it means building. See that? Don’t eight-sided stars mean ‘emergence’?”

“That triangle there could mean ‘group’. Maybe it means something about societal progress?” Mal said.

Yon tilted her head and squinted, “No way. It’s definitely about making things. Trust me, I’ve been here longer than you.”

“That’s not a good thing” Gremn interjected, not bothering to pause her work on the teph.

“I would have graduated when Arlo did, it’s not my fault there are so few students. I’m doing you a favor, actually. You couldn’t do the rites without me.”

Gremn didn’t respond. Mal was trying to think of something disarming to say, but was saved by the arrival of Tenil and Makam. Makam was holding back a smile, their hair curled and colored blue in the Theep’wan style, and Tenil was grinning and speaking straight into their ear. Mal tried to act disinterested in their arrival, but Yon went to greet Makam. Now alone, Mal had no way to avoid Tenil.

“Hey.” Tenil said.

“15 to you.”

Tenil looked up over the arcade and squinted, “oh yeah, good catch. I thought it was still 10. Forgot this was the first full day this month.”

“So should we——“

“Let’s grab the others, form up. Arc Rhea will be here soon.” Tenil said.

Mal didn’t argue.

The chatter quieted as the students sat as they always did: in a hexagonal array facing Io’s magnetic pole. Being towards the front of the stage, this created a line between them, the pole, and the center of the mandala engraved on the stage floor. There they would wait in silence until Arc Rhea arrived.

The sun continued to drop, and slotted itself between two pillars in the Pygon’s arcade above. When the sun disappeared entirely, The light of the day, given now by Indra alone, became noticeably more red, and Rhea’s shinning figure replaced the sun’s in the arch above.

“15.” She said, then made her way down the stone steps. She came before them center-stage and swept her arm around to point towards Indra, which now loomed over them from behind, almost wider than the arcade itself. “432,” Arc Rhea said, then bowed deeply. “Every circle a point.”

“Every point a circle” the students replied in unison.

Rhea assessed her pupils. She waved her hand and a large rectangular teph rose from a groove in the stage behind her. It whistled and sizzled softly as she materialized it. Rhea then began etching words and numbers on the tablet’s surface with twitches of her fingers and wrist. The lecture begun.

“There are certain rules, it is said, that are constants in our universe. Ro’s constant, pi, the first order materials, and the speed of light, to name a few.” She said, “Is it possible, students, to move faster than the speed of light?”

“The speed of light is a universal bound.” Gremn said, straightening her back, “but… maybe if there were some way to manipulate time. Or space, then perhaps-“

“There is a way, without resorting to hypothetical or extreme circumstance.” Arc Rhea finished her work on the teph. “Anyone? Do not be afraid of foolishness. Remember that foolishness and genius are siblings, often misjudged as one for the other.”

Wen was not afraid, or was foolish besides. He rambled a few thoughts that didn’t actually go anywhere, eventually landing on ‘and what if time is like a wedge of cheese’, at which point Yon interjected with a sharp elbow and an eye-roll.

“Another hint maybe, madam Arc?” Yon said.

“I think we are trying too hard to be genius and not hard enough to be foolish” Rhea said, offering a rare smile.

“Watch closely,” she said, raising her right hand towards the center of the Mandala.

With a flick of her wrist, grains of sand rose by the millions out of the grooves in the circular stage that made up the mandala. White at first, the sand grains gathered together, taking on new shapes and colors. A large sphere formed at the center and started to glow an atomic yellow-orange. The rest of the sand revolved around it in a cloud, gaining speed and flattening into a hazy disk. The disk began to stratify into rings, the rings settled into spheres, and the spheres developed color and detail as they made their rounds about the stage. Mal recognized the planets of their system. Five of them were present. Rhea had only created Indra and the planets closer to the sun. Mal marveled at her technique. How did she get the sand to give off color and texture in such a detailed way that it emulated atmosphere? And all coming together at the same time, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Rhea pointed at the miniature sun, paused to make sure they were all paying attention, then pointed at Indra slowly moving around the outskirts of the stage. “It takes an hour for light from the sun to reach Indra——“

“Forty three minutes and thirteen seconds, madam Arc.” Gremn said.

“Yes, that’s right. Can anyone see a way to get between the two quicker than that?”

A koan, probably one fully-initiated Arcs were all familiar with, Mal realized. The koans of the Arcs were purposely confounding, but if you could grasp their meaning, it would unlock something in you that would aid in the practice of the Tau arts. Mal looked at the miniatures, and tried to focus. Of course it was impossible for anything to move faster than light, but Arc Rhea knew that. Why show us a model, instead of relying on our imaginations? Was it something to do with the physical nature of the Ra Sol system?

Arc Rhea stepped to the front of the dais, then off it. A sharp buzzing cut through the droning of cicadas, a harsher and more metallic sound. Instead of falling when she stepped off the dais, Rhea hovered, and glided over to her projection of the sun. The air around her seemed to swim and shimmer like oil on water, contorting the color of the platforms behind her. She pulled her legs up to a lotus pose, the back of her robes falling towards the ground behind her. Then she reached out a single finger and poked it into the sun. Sand fell to the floor where she touched it, and the orange of the sun-globe went pale white around where skin and sand met. As the sun continued its rotation, a curved line dragged behind her finger.

“Count” Arc Rhea directed her students, and then floated sideways toward the sand replica of Indra. She slowed to a stop just as her finger dipped into the miniature Indra right at its equator. “How long was that?”

“Ten seconds!” Wen exclaimed.

Rhea raised an eyebrow.

“Was it supposed to be nine?”

Gremn and Yon both laughed at him, and Wen shrank behind his hands against the ridicule. Rhea raised her hand to silence the students.

“Precision was not the point, Wen. But thank you for displaying your commitment to my instructions. Ten seconds is shorter than an hour, don’t you think?”

The miniature. Thats why she made it, to show the difference between real and abstract. Mal thought about saying something, but before he could, Yon spoke up.

“If that’s the answer to this Koan, it’s a silly one, Madam Arc”

“It’s not silly, Yon” Tenil fired back. Mal realized his friend had not said anything till now. Tenil sounded so sure, how quickly had he figured it out? Was he just waited to see if anyone else would catch on?

“Why not, Tenil?” Rhea asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Because to move faster than the speed of light, you just have to imagine doing so.”

Rhea closed her eyes and bowed, “that’s right, Tenil.”

“Tau arts can make you move faster than light?” Wen asked in amazement.

“You are not moving faster than light, but in your mind you can imagine being in one place and moving in a straight line to another, and so it does happen.” Makam said.

Makam waited to see if little Wen would give any indication that he better understood what the koan was attempting to convey. Mal could hear the gears and pistons at work in his classmate’s mind.

“For the Degrees of Arc, a symbol is the thing it symbolizes, Wen.” Rhea said, “this concept is essential to mastery of the sacred geometries. When you imagine something in your mind, it is real, and can manifest in the physical world, the Bithu as it is called, if that connection is properly fostered and articulated. All of our arts are made possible by the fact that all phenomena is expression, and all expression, in turn, phenomena. Even us. Your body, your mind, the concept of consciousness itself——these are manifestations of the Protypes, the indivisible patterns that underpin reality. You are as much a part of the cosmic geometries as any divine pattern. We are self-similar to the universe. If in our minds we can envision moving between the Sun and Indra in ten seconds, then it is true, and it happens in the moment we envision it.”

“But not literally” Yon muttered.

This prompted Gremn to speak up. “_yes_ literally! Thats the whole point: figurative and literal are indistinguishable in the Annwyn, and that is where we get the ability to use the arts. Did you listen at all last cycle?”

“I’ll believe it when I see an Arc flying to the sun and back in ten seconds.”

“Maybe you will, if you ever get higher than second sector.“

“Madam Arc!” Yon pleaded, pointed a finger at Gremn in exasperation.

Arc Rhea raised her left hand to silence them. “The Arcs do not work alone, we grow and learn together. We are all only a fraction of the grander Circle.”

Yon turned away to hide her red face. Her brother, sitting behind her, reached out to put his hand on her back. Yon’s shoulders slumped and she let out a long sigh.

The buzzing from Rhea’s levitation art stopped as she let her feet come to the floor beneath her. The cosmic spheres surrounding the students, having served their purpose in the lesson, turned back to white sand and dissipated, washing gently down back into the creases of the mandala.

Mal felt sweat on his back. He kind of understood the koan, but he hadn’t spoken up or shown his level of comprehension at all.

“This stage we are gathered on is a mandala. The word, like ‘koan’, borrowed from the language of the Annwyn, ancient and ever-present, the realm of cognition and spirits. To our minds, the meaning of the word carved here manifests ‘breaks’, something near ‘to teach’ but can also be understood as ‘to show’.”

Mal noted the mention of ‘breaks’ and looked to Tenil. Their eyes met for a moment. Maybe Tenil’s theory is right.

“It is time once more to attempt the rite of summoning, and in so doing, bring an object that exists only as thought into the physical plane. I will remind you all: it is one thing to pull an Annwyn object up into the Bithu. It is quite another to then change its structure, or to use it to change the structure of an existing object as you will be learning to do from Arc Roland. Speaking of which, the Circle is eager to see the initiates of Point 13 succeed, and I have been asked to identify by the end of the fullday who is ready to graduate to Arc Roland’s sector. A successful summon is a requirement of course, but it is not a guarantee of advancement. I hope you have meditated well and practiced the faces you will take on for this art.”

Mal turned to Tenil nervously. Maybe they should tell Arc Rhea their idea, ask if a connection to breaks really was the thing they were missing. But the rest of the students were already closing their eyes and beginning to hum low notes, blending in with the cicadas in the surrounding forest. He shifted to face the center of their hexagonal arrangement, drew out his breath to join the chant, and closed his eyes.

As Arc Pomnu had taught him, Mal emptied his mind, allowed the mantra to take over his atman, his cognitive self, and wash away all impurities. Then, once his mind was clear, he began to build the totem Arc Rhea helped him cultivate for this task. Two eggs appeared in the infinite blank space of his mind——one with a white shell, the other black. He brought them together, feeling their fragility as they touched. Then he began to move them around one another, like twin suns in close orbit. focusing on the microscopic peaks and valleys of each shell as the point of contact between them shifted. As is the case for most of the advanced Tau arts, summoning was always performed in teams, each individual carrying out a specific role called an art-face. Mal’s art-face was ‘conductor’. His totem working, Mal felt impressions coming to him through the vision. The shell of the white egg became gummy and tacky. Mal focused on the sensations, and allowed them to translate into feelings, and the feelings into thoughts. ‘Descend’, ‘ready’ and ‘evaluate’ were his calculation of the impressions’s meaning. They must be from Makam, their art-face was ‘diver’, He waved his eggs though the space of his mind until he felt a faint feedback, as if entering a pocket of thicker air. Mal kept his eggs there, still spinning, feeling the shells stretch around the bounds of something. For diving, Makam used a piece of paper as their totem. Unlike Mal’s own divination-class totem in the eggs, Makam’s paper was an avatar-class, so they could quickly articulate it even at a distance. This also meant Mal and the others could sense it in the Annwyn space. Not wanting to keep the group waiting, Mal quickly went about making sure Makam’s totem was stable, and its connection to their atman secure. As always, Makam’s visions were vibrant and realistic, not a blemish to be found. Rhea was sure to let Makam through to Roland’s sector, Mal realized.

Once finished, he clicked his eggs together, a trick he had come up with on his own, which projected impressions to the others of affirmation through the Annwyn——something not usually possible with divination-class totems. Mal didn’t know what Wen or Gremn used as their totems, but he could observe the results: metavic objects streamed out of the aether and began to attach themselves to Makam’s paper avatar. Gremn was the ‘scribe’ face and Wen the ‘catalyst’, and the patterns they produced together provided the tools for Makam would use in the coming dive. The surface of Mal’s white egg grew spines, which curled into spirals as the black egg revolved around it. Mal reversed the black egg, and watched the spines curl back, retreating into the eggshell. Clever, Gremn, Mal thought, clever, but never kind. Mal wondered how long she had been working on this. ‘state’ and ‘hook’ were the main patterns she had blueprinted for Wen to build from, with some smaller sigils woven into them. This was a definite improvement from the attempt they made last time using ‘attach’ and ‘sweep’. It seemed like no matter how intricate Gremn’s designs were, Wen was able to give them form—— no wonder he had moved up to sector 2 so fast. Would Wen be graduated twice in a year? Was that even allowed?

Mal clicked his eggs again. The point of contact between them flattened out till the pair became like two halves of one whole. The eggs began to fold in on themselves, mirroring the folds Makam was making on their paper sheet. Mal had to brace himself to not lose control of his vision as it evolved realism. The key to being a conductor was in that ability to see the impossible as possible: you had to keep your vision concrete enough to hold stable in the mind but still abstract enough to make reading impressions possible. Mal steadied himself with a breath, and the distortions on the egg-folds disappeared——just as they formed what looked like a bird with curved wings. The dive had begun.

Mal’s totem returned to its base state, the two shells making faint scratching sounds as they circled one another again. A new impression came in the form of a spout of smoke suddenly bursting forth from the black egg. Mal startled, he had almost forgotten there was more to do. Yon——the ‘projector’ face——was ready to open the portal, her totem already place. The smoke was an impression telling him to check both sides of the portal, to ensure the gem would be safe making through the transposition. Mal centered his breath and began to enter dreamsight. This was the hardest aspect of the conductor art-face, and since he was the only one of their group that could do it, it was why he had been assigned the role. Dreamsight——the state of awareness within which both bithic and metavic senses are active at once, would allow Mal to perceive both the physical world and the annwyn space simultaneously. He kept his breathing steady, and focused on the feeling of air entering his lungs. He let that sensation carry his awareness back to the physical plane. Then he opened his eyes. The overstimulation would normally break a vision, but Mal had practiced this skill for months, it was about the only minor art he could do without help. He saw the five other students, still seated, eyes closed, expressions distant. The Annwyn as he perceived it in his mind began to coelesce around the physical reality——a process called mapping. The eggs seemed to be right in front of his face, and a million miles away at the same time. The bodies of his classmates glowed with the aura of their atman, a thread of blue light emanated from Makam’s chest up into the air. Right where the string disappeared into nothing, a portal began to form: a point of shimmering sapphire, extending out into a line, extending up into a square; the sharp smell of distortion met his bithic senses. Now, with his dreamsight active, Mal could double check Yon’s work from both sides. The edges of the portal were rough and ill proportioned, but it at least seemed stable——Mal knew Yon was trying her best. Mal clicked his eggs together once more, and watched as a grin formed on Yon’s face. Mal turned his attention to Tenil; he searched his friend’s face for any expression, any hint of fear or hesitation. Nothing. For a moment, Mal wondered if he had changed his mind; maybe he had seen the sigil Gremn had coded, and that Wen had beautifully rendered, and saw it would work. Tenil’s eyes opened. Mal had not noticed Indra floating above——in double. Through his dreamsight Mal had mistaken Tenil’s totem of Indra as the real thing, one was superimposed on the other, offset almost imperceptibly——it was all too clear now as the false Indra went from red to deep purple, and began to shrivel like an apple in the sun. Looking into Yon’s portal from the physical side, Mal could see Makam’s paper bird, a scintillating crystalline shape behind: the gem summon was working! The two scenes played out before Mal side by side, the brightly burning Indra and the metavic copy pulling into a black tarry ball next to the sleek paper avatar folded into a bird, flying swiftly towards it’s birth in bithic reality. Mal heard a voice call out to him. Tenil’s voice.

“Now!”

A third object seized Mal’s focus. Rhea was rushing over, he saw her raise her hands to her head to some artful purpose Mal did not know. It was now or never. Mal shut his eyes, and tried to distance himself from his bithic senses and return to the Annwyn, to his eggs.

Before him, his eggs spun in their perfect order, everything else washed away. Why had Tenil made him be a part of this? They had almost done it! How would he explain all this to Rhea? What if she did something worse than hold him back, what if she sent him home? No, that can’t happen. His eggs stopped spinning, like they were mocking him. He let his body materialize in thought, and reached out to them. A flash of impressions came to him. Wasn’t it all so easy, after all? It was like Rhea said, the symbol is the thing. If he was master of this vision he could be master of everything. The fear and anxiety and anger washed away from him. He understood the meaning of the mandala on the stage. It’s so obvious. The arcs were scared, of him, of his power. They were what held him back, not a lack of talent. Do they know how much power we wield? He squeezed down on the white egg, and felt a surge of ecstasy. Forget Arc Roland, he could be made Degree for what he was about to do, he could be beyond the Degrees. I can form a Circle alone. He squeezed, hard. Then a crack, a crunch, the shell gave and Mal felt warm liquid spewing down the knuckles of his hands.

Mal was so caught up in the feeling, the ecstasy of the breaking, he forgot these were impressions. he forgot they were coming from somewhere. The ecstasy emptied from him like water from a spilled cup. Mal looked down in horror; the liquid streaming down his forearm was black like thick congealed blood and, in the palm of his hand now unfurling, the grey remains of a body, mangled jelly, an embryo once alive inside the white egg——but no more.

Flashes of memory and emotion struck him: A younger Tenil with a bowl of candy held out, a hand raised during a lecture, a tower of old stone crumbling. The pang of curiosity then the embrace of a mother forgotten then a smell like lilac and gooseberries, the feel in his mouth of jam on toast, the awe of seeds on the wind and frost in the morning. His senses felt like they were on fire, like his soul were being peeled away layer by layer. The deluge of stimuli melted together, the overlap between and the differences juxtaposed created impressions grander than any he had received before. And somehow, he understood them as words. Words of that language older than man, and matter, and time——older than thought.

Appreciation. Gift. Question.

Mal’s mind jolted reflexively into cleansing mantras; he had learned in his first days as an initiate how to force a vision to dissolve. It refused. The black egg, uncrushed, began to grow of its own accord. It was his vision no longer. The solid surface of the black shell turned to smoke and vapor, obscuring the twisted carcass in his palm. The image of his body, of the lifeless thing, of the blood, all fell away but the smoke billowing from the black egg as it grew. More impressions flooded his mind.

Name. Target.

Searing pain seeped in at the cracks of his soul. Mal’s eyes wrenched open. He saw his classmates around him, their faces pained. The smoke that was once Mal’s black egg was now spiraling out from the portal Yon had opened, blotting out the light of Indra. Between them floated the gem, summoned from the Annwyn but wrong, like the very air around it wanted to get away from it. Mal stared in awe.

Target.

Mal felt his gaze being forced against his will to move. It rested on Yon. With all his strength he tore his eyes away, only for them to land on Makam, then on Gremn, then on Tenil, then Wen. No! none of them! Then, through the black fog above, a burst of air expelled the smoke, and a column of light burst through. Descending from the tear in the dark was Arc Rhea. Mal felt like weeping.

“Please, Rhea, I’m so sorry!” He choked out.

But, as he fixated on Rhea, so did the source of the impressions in his mind.

A dark thunderous boom echoed across the stage and out into the plains. The trees trembled and dust flew out in every direction, scrapping against ancient stone and ripping grass from the ground. The smoke faded away, the gem dissolved, and he heard gasping and coughing as the other students regained their bithic grounding. Mal’s legs trembled as he pulled himself up off the ground. The twins clung to each other. Makam was questioning them through ragged breaths.

Mal looked at Tenil. His face was pale. They did not hold eye contact long. Tenil’s gaze drifted to something behind him. Mal turned to look. IT was Arc Rhea; her body crumpled on the stone ground, her yellow robes burnt and her limbs disfigured and there, in the palm of her hand, were smoldering pieces of broken black eggshell.