It was a strange light—a radiance that stemmed from an internal certainty. An awareness of an understood complexity. What was it? Disruption, yes, but what was disruption?
The churning produced an answer...
He reached for it, fitting the meaning into the webs of his being. To know was inherently different from the understanding of it. And oh, now... he understood. The tranquility was growing in his mind. Slowly, the endless torrent of data flowed with a certain recursive trait. He was relearning—no longer was it the alien surge of madness. No. It was cleaner, simpler. He stood in a web of words—a mental manifestation, undoubtedly a thing of his nearly broken mind.
Not that it mattered.
In there, he traced the definitions of the acquired symbols. Steadily then, he remade them. It was like a pushing of information into a different source—the beads. Although the linkage between him and them was weaker, it remained nonetheless.
And that was enough.
For him, that was enough.
On the ground, he stood, his eyes flickering with the shifting scenes: Battle. Ardents and the Aelmiren. Whatever it was, he saw it. Orvane, there, smashing through the hordes of blackness, charging—her face still locked in that odd passivity, yet... he noted this. She was different. Perhaps it was the shifting of her marble skin, the hands that clenched tightly around the spear... Whatever it was, the Caster within took in and broke the stimuli.
From it... he knew... She was terrified.
He smiled.
Good!
And the lance of light rippled into his grasp. He tensed, swung back, and off it went. A shudder through the Grayworld. A world that now admitted the birth of a new light. A spear of blinding illuminance hurling through the world.
Chaos was coming.
And Orvane, passive, saw this, reared her arms, and called for her children. They came like a swarm of marble gray, slamming before her. Their bodies became a wall... What a waste!
The spear brought devastation. Tearing into the solidity of stone, shattering into pieces. Orvane was defenseless—she turned, charging a spear of hers.
A mistake. A moment and a giant talon hammered her into the earth. It gripped. The bird took to the air. Its speed whistling through the heavens. There was no time to react; Orvane remained in its grasp... And Merrin? Now, Merrin was on the earth, rousing his lance of power.
The bird, on the other hand, tunneled through the skies. Through the darkened clouds. Through the churning heavens. Higher and higher it went. Upwards. Endless. And then it let go—leaving the Marble woman alone in the sky, suspended for just a moment.
Then she began to fall, tumbling through the azure welkin. Downwards... and below... waiting for her was he, Merrin, locked with a pike. A lance of milky energy, charging, growing in intense luminosity.
"Come, Orvane! Come and regret!"
With a dull drift in the heavens—Orvane. Yet, what he saw first was a brightness growing from the sky. A false sun. Orvane had prepared herself.
And so be it!
The world hummed and trembled as force soared into its highest peaks. Merrin and Orvane, both stirring the internal waters of the mindForce. Utter domination had come to this world. What was to happen?
Merrin clenched, gritting, feet slapping down on the hard earth. "Come, Orvane!" He roared and launched the spear. The world's shadows drifting with the emergence. And from the skies, Orvane had released her weapon.
A single agreement was fitted into that action.
The spears ascended and descended—both coming to a single point... What happens now? Would the winner, the master of this world, be decided by that collision? That was the agreement within the action. But would they wait? To see whose spear... whose force was to triumph?
No!
Orvane was already on the earth, drilling a fist toward Merrin. He rolled to the side. And above, the lances rammed. Entropy. A shockwave spreading out from the singularity, shattering the Aelmiren, the Ardents, everything. All were reduced to a rumble. And yet, above, the dual energies hummed in defiance, thrusting against the other in a violent battle. Each hum, casting more waves unto the world.
Who would win?
Merrin arched in the air, his fingers rubbing the beads scattered below. It seemed even the force of the above spears had little effect on them. Why? Was this another representation of symbolic hierarchy? Were the beads, in symbolism, greater than the Disruption?
All important questions.
Except... now was no such time.
The earth turned into turbulent waters, rippling and tiding forward. Like a wall of liquid. Towards Orvane, they came. Powerful. She waved, and spikes poked out from the lands, battering into the fluids.
He wasn't done.
Call it focus, madness, discord, but the innate awareness worked in extreme lengths. Words... Everything he had ever heard. Everything he had ever said. Every symbol seen, observed... All of it came rushing back. An endless reliving of moments.
Now he was in the mines, poking on the vertical surfaces of its pits. The walls rippled with its symbols.
He recalls it, and Orvane is sunk into the ground, stones latching hard onto her feet. She whines, but breaks free with the strength of her physicality. But there is more. Now Merrin is observing the miners, the scrapers... all of them. Their emotions. Their fear. The Rage. The chains that bind them to servitude!
And Orvane looks up... There, from the heavens, chains rain down with whistling fury. Piercing into the earth. She dodges, somersaults, and rolls to the side. Still passive.
She doesn't know.
It was fast...
She turned, and there... before her was a red skull—burning.
Fury!
"N—" The symbol sinks into her body, her marble flesh trembling to the intrusion. "Damn it!" She echoed. "Damn it all!"
Her eyes are wide now—teeth gritted, fists clenched with such intensity it threatened the breakage of that marble skin. Now she knows anger. Now she knows emotion.
Este, I am fixing your work!
She turned to him, heaving. "What did you—" The words are stuck as a tempest of flame descended from the sky. She is within the spiraling splash of colors. Red for fire. Inside, she screamed. Inside, she whined like an animal.
Merrin now stands within the vast chamber... there, he and Auwale battle the Talemir. More memories. Too much that has been observed in mere days...Oh the life of the El'shadie.
"Know this, Orvane!" He said, "I have experienced enough."
Too much!
And above, the ascending spear pierced through the other, bathing the world in mad intensity. Utter brightness of whiteness.
Orvane, within the cyclone of redness, screamed, clenched her fist, and shouted, "KILL HIM!"
Those words were meant for nothing within this world.
In reality!
The world shattered, and Merrin awoke, eyes wide, head spinning. Mist it! But there was a rage within, an anger, and fear and guilt. Countless emotions that burned within the collective acquired data. It was rather overwhelming.
He staggered up, eyes flickering into vision and the unseen world. Symbols blurring and fading. He groaned... something was coming. Countless somethings. He was unsure where he was. Not the created hole, that's for sure.
Was he taken? Orvane had revealed as much!
Looking upwards, he saw figures descending. All stone-skinned, fissured. Aelmiren. Slow.
So Orvane had commanded my death in reality?
He waved, and they were battered down by a tide of air. Like ants swiped away. No need to ponder. No need to consider. His force seemed like an endless ocean. Each wasted drop returned with a massive collection.
Catelyn, or was it Ron? Did it matter? One of them had revealed that force usage acted like a muscle? Use more, and the stronger you become. Of course, he knew better now. That wasn't technically true. Casters did not gain a stronger force by usage. He did. He was the anomaly. The El'shadie.
Ahead, he noted a throne—a stone, high-backed cathedra. On it, seated a woman, pale-faced, dressed in a tattered red dress, head slumped to the left. Below, he saw another. A female, younger, her head resting on the stone legs of the other.
Enavro... her red scarf worn around her neck. Somehow, he noticed the similarity between the two. Both passive. Both stone-skinned. Except... Now Orvane gritted. Weakly, that is, but she gritted.
"Orvane..." Merrin said, staggering. "You have to..." The words left his thoughts for a moment. "You have to die."
Enavro tightened her grip around the legs... Why? She looked to him, uncaring. Which was normal. Said, "No."
"She has to."
"No, she doesn't."
Merrin lingered, nearly tripping over a stone. "Mist this, Enavro. You hated her." He was unsure whether those words were leaving his lips... They seemed so... Cynical. "You hid from her for years."
"As it turns out..." She said, "That was my objective."
There was a warmth in his head. Painful. What was it? "No." He murmured. "Be more than what you were created for... That is free will."
She locked eyes with him. "And you told the Orvalen to remove free will from my siblings."
Don't do this, Enavro! His thoughts were trailing over the wind weaves. There was no control to refuse. Only the objective. They were enemies. A barrier against his people. He knew that. Yes... But what about the other? The emotion of it all.
There was none.
Merrin felt the fading away of affectivity. That and its replacement with utter rationality.
It was frightening.
Inwards, Enavro seemed more of a bug than a woman.
Was this also Discord?
"Enavro, please..." The words were of a detached quality, almost like a reading of written words. No emotions. "Please, Enavro, stop... I might kill you now." He said, "I need to protect my people!"
"Then leave."
"I can't." He stuttered. "The seal!"
Enavro paused for a moment. "Don't worry about that. Mother will soon destroy the seal... And everyone will be free. No one will have any more objectives. I wouldn't..."
What? Merrin saw then, there, within the marble hands of Orvane. Fiddling with it... Her fingers held the coin.
"Enavro!" He screamed. "So after so long, you are just ready to die?"
"I've lived enough."
His eyes were wide. "Who are you?"
"It is done!" Orvane.
"What?"
He heard something... A scuffling of feet... Heavy? Big? From behind. Where? He gasped. "ENAVRO!"
A large claw ripped through the throne, slicing through the WhiteMother—her robes. Her dress, shards floating in the air... Almost like blood. Her blood! And Enavro, her head... it rolled down to the side, closed...
She knew it was coming. She knew and she waited!
And there, standing on the rubble of the throne, on the corpses of the two women, was a giant beast. Red-eyed, wide claws, muscular. Prime and ready for a hunt. It roared. "SEE THAT MORDRASK! SEE THAT MY STRENGTH REMAINS. SEE HOW I CLEANSE MYSELF OF THIS SIN! YES."
Merrin is before it, a stone knife piercing forward for its eye.
The mind will and inevitably fade away the emotions as a defense against the mental threats. This has been tested and proven—Code of the Dead Eyes.