jackal-among-snakes-16091326
chapter-679

Argrave expected much of the meeting with the suns. Would they be fiery twins, perhaps? Would they be warm, life-giving, generous? In the end, all of these assumptions were based on the idea that they were anything like a human being. That had been an entirely incorrect conclusion, to put it mildly.

Argrave had sought Lorena for some advice, seeing as she had conversed with the moon. She had claimed rather bizarrely that it was like swimming for the first time. That sensation of being stripped away from air and submerged into water challenged a lot of her preconceptions about the world. Argrave certainly didn’t recall receiving such a lasting impression from swimming, himself. This, however…

Upon connecting with the suns, Argrave quite literally exploded into light.

Argrave—rather painlessly, fortunately—was atomized, and exploded out into the entire universe as rays of solar energy. He could tangibly feel everything that he fell upon, and with the aid of the ‘cognizance’ of the suns, could also piece together what it was he was feeling well enough to construct a mental image. Their light, in one way or another, made it to everything. It saw all, even the unseen. It was probably the single most unsettling thing that Argrave had ever experienced, and considering his history that was saying a great deal.

It took him a very long while to be able to notice the presence of the suns all around him. Their existence was a vast network with a central nexus—that nexus being the giant balls of plasma they all saw in the sky from the planet. The existence of the suns wasn’t something that could be constrained with definitions such as thought or physical being. They hadn’t transcended life and death. Rather, it was as though they were a third category, a third state of being, removed from it all. When Argrave pried at it, seeking truth, he realized that to understand fully what they were would be to become it. He rather liked his present form too much to toss it away to be among the stars. Perhaps later.

The stars didn’t have desires, per se, but they did have functions, purposes. In a sense, it was a manifestation of what they were. They came into being like all life—not knowing how or why. But unlike living things, they knew their purpose and carried it out immediately. Their purpose was their life cycle itself; to come into being, to undergo countless reactions dictated by nature, and eventually reach the point where they ceased to be any longer.

Argrave could tell that, behind that seemingly meaningless existence, was something much larger. It was like being able to see only one thread of a grand tapestry. Argrave might be able to take a step back and view the grand weave of all existence, but in so doing he would lose what gave him that desire to learn of it. He would become like the stars—omnipresent, omniscient, yet simultaneously devoid of so much as to be essentially nonexistent.

Argrave did not embrace their way of being. In so doing, he retained the concepts that allowed to declare himself ‘alive.’ And by retaining these concepts, he was able to bring it forth before these two stars. They were unable to differentiate between rocks and people or animals and water. He showed them the difference, using his own soul as the bridge. More accurately, the corpse of the silver knight created of Lindon’s psyche was the bridge. Without it, this would never have worked.

Teaching the suns how to think was a very dangerous game, certainly, but fortunately they couldn’t do it without the presence of a third party that could. The silver knight acted as a medium of sorts for the both of them down below. The moment that he’d introduced the concept, like children, the suns tried to imitate it. The brainless beings couldn’t think—they could only carry out thermonuclear reactions inside their bodies like the big lovable idiots they were. They kept on trying to think without success, because they couldn’t learn that it wasn’t working. Again, he thought on their behalf, teaching them that they needed his soul to be able to think.

The moment they learned Argrave was necessary, it was like two great giants began to grasp at him. Their souls grabbed him, tried to squeeze the thought out of him like he was just a fruit with precious juice instead of a living thing. His undying soul made their efforts fruitless—as infant thinkers, their grip was about as strong as cotton candy.

Argrave crafted deliberate pathways of thought that he allowed the two stars to travel down. He hoped to extract information out of these all-seeing existences, to ask them questions, and to receive a satisfactory alternative to the proposal that Griffin had made to him. He knew there’d be an alternative path—he just needed light sufficient to see it, hidden away in the dark as it was.

In response… Argrave received elaborate reconstructions of paths their sunlight had travelled. They showed him truths that he’d never thought he’d have access to. It was a silent movie, and so difficult to understand as to be incomprehensible… but through them, he did eventually confirm something for himself.

The Heralds needed a soul to anchor to.

At first, it was only further confirmation that Griffin might’ve been right in what he suggested. Souls were what kept someone alive, kept someone able to think. Without them, they’d be as Argrave was—detached. And without his undying soul, he’d perish in moments, fading away into nothingness beneath the weight of the world. The only beings exempt from that were gods. They lacked souls entirely—their body was its own existence unto itself. That was why, when injured, their flesh turned into spirits.

Eventually, though, Argrave came up with a rather unorthodox answer too all of this. With some finessing, some finagling, some selective application of thought, he decided to help the suns along on their pathway of change. These stars wanted to—or at least, their purpose was to—go through their lifecycle, right?

Well… perhaps it was time to accelerate that, no matter how many laws of nature that they needed to break. He’d gained access to a grand network that spanned the entire world—and it would be a shame not to take advantage of that.