Return of the Tower Conqueror

Chapter 326

The First Kindle (I)

There was darkness--a cosmic cloth stretched into infinity, warped unto itself until it was a delight to be beheld. It wove and cradled the nothingness, and it waited and bated its time, patient beyond patience, wanting beyond want. From wanhope to delight, from cold to warmth. What was of the want? Nothing new.

Though time existed, it did not move--for nothing was there to behold it. Time itself was not self-aware, could not self-actualize. It simply waited. Waited for the spring to shuffle back, waited for the cloth to un-weave, waited for the pendulum to swing back.

As for how much time passed, nothing said or could say. It passed, and it didn’t, caught in the bind of unaware. But time did pass--and the dawn came, much like after night the sun becomes and dwells upon the sky.

Amidst the infinite darkness, yet one seemingly crammed into a point of singularity, with the wants and delights of neither here nor there, the first kindle appeared. Tiny, short-lived, but beautiful. Time beheld it, as did the dark, and the glimmer of the eyes that were not there. The first kindle sparked life, breathed into the void the phantoms of energy, all the ingredients of existence.

That much was known, Be’dun mused. Not by many, but by most. It was a famous tale that children were told as early five-six. It was a tale of the fantastical beginning wherein a melody of life was strung for the first time. All tomes in the libraries, when speaking of the beginning, began with the tale. Be they histories that seek to describe the Ages of Cycles, or just stories of heroes who rose above the matters and conquered their fears.

Be’dun read one more such tale--it was deeply fascinating and delightful, though admittedly nothing new. Just the very first passage of the book as thick as a delightfully meaty thigh told him as much.

Is there a beginning? There must be a beginning--for such a story demands. And if the whole of life is not a story, what is it? To recount history, we tell stories--and all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is not a story of the beginning, and neither is it a story of an end--for none who among us dwell shall or can be aware--and it is a story of the middle. Though of the middle it speaks, it is not divorced from the beginning--for all that we see and touch and speak of traces its roots to the cosmic darkness that watched the first fire be born.

Carrying the thick tome, and many others like it, Be’dun waved through the tall, silvery pillars that upheld the dome above. His footsteps echoed throughout the grand hall, though it otherwise remained silent. He was alone amidst the many stars, but he didn’t mind it. Some men, he learned early on, were meant to be alone. And, through and through, he was a man--a man of many vices, a man of many shortcomings, a man of many wants and needs and delights.

He was an old man--but, in many ways, he couldn’t recall his life before that. He was always an old man, he mused. Even when young, he was old. Others would look at him and say ‘there goes old Dun, watch out, he might break his hips!’. He’d accepted that he was old and alone. There was no place for him out there, beyond the stars.

Some few minutes later, shuffling away from the pillars and onto the stairs that led up, he broached into the massive library where tens of thousands of bookshelves were lain on top of the cosmic plate of stars. There was no dome above them, for the perennial shine of the stars glimmered from top toward them.

Though he’d seen the sight innumerable amount of times, he still paused and gasped at it. The shelves were all at least forty feet tall, packed full with tomes numbering in... well, even he didn’t know. He was their custodian, caretaker, the closest thing they had to family--and he didn’t know. Every year, from every corner of everything, more and more tomes would come and more and more shelves would build themselves.

Youngs often joked that he read all of these tomes and yet was stupid still, but he of course did not read all of the tomes. He could, but he didn’t; he’d take one every day, at random, and read them like a mortal man, page by page, line by line, word by word. Today it was yet another grand tome depicting a hero’s journey, a rise from the nothing to the greatness. Be’dun had noticed, especially recently, the unifying end to those tales--the hero creates a new world, for this one is want of corruption beyond repair.

It saddened him deeply, it did. He didn’t think the world ugly; he thought places and people ugly, but every world would have those. But more and more wished to escape. Even here, where laylines of the universe converge, people dreamed of something greater.

On his way to return the tomes, he spotted a few youngsters looming about. It wasn’t strange--after all, if one wanted a book that couldn’t be found anywhere else, they would come here. And those studying still oft came here--and not always for the books.

“Hey, hey, old Dun, don’t run off like that!” they called him out and he paused. He didn’t like the nickname ‘old Dun’, but he was old indeed. It was befitting, albeit hurtful.

“What can I help you with?” as always, he put on a smile. He liked smiling. It was freeing and liberating to smile both in joy and in pain.

“Ah, nothing much,” there six of them, all boys, all children of Mi’ragee, clad in star-suffused Robes of Light, the kind that no gems could buy. ‘s far as Be’dun knew, only a few tailors had the capacity to weave even one of those robes every few thousands of years. “We just wanted to check up on our dear friend. We worry, you know? After all, in your old age, what if you slip and hit your head? Or break your hip? Or one of those fat books you love so much fall on your fat head and kill you? Wouldn’t that be tragic?”

“I am grateful for your worries,” Be’dun smiled still. “I am fine, though.”

“Really? I don’t know,” the boy walked up and seemed to just inspect Be’dun closely. But the old man felt it. He always felt it, after all. These boys imagine he was a crook who never held Mana in his hands, and thus used to it to see him fall. So he fell. “Ha ha ha, see? I worry, old man. I just passed by you and wind knocked you down! Ha ha ha...” the tomes spilled away from him as he lay down, sighing inwardly. He truly was old.

He gathered his bearings as soon as they left, resuming his walk among the shelves. Until he reached the desired location, he was ‘worried about’ four more times. He heard that it was a rite of passage of sorts--make the old Dun fall on his butt, they’d say, and you’d become one of us. He was old and they were young. It didn’t hurt him to fall, after all, despite being old, and it brought them such delight.

He put away the tomes, one by one. He didn’t need to fly toward the higher shelves--the shelves themselves were sentient, capable of using Mana, and would extend arm-like throngs that gathered the tomes and put them back into place. Before returning, he had one more task: select a tome to read tomorrow. And thus, he began to peruse.

He didn’t look at the titles or the leathery covers or the thickness--one by one, he’d pick out a tome and read the first passage. If it intrigued him in any capacity, he would select the tome. Today, however, he was not having a lot of luck.

Dusty floorboards creaked when Timothy shuffled his feet onto them; it was another boorish morning for a boorish young lad. Thought Timothy dreamed of bigger, he...

Vester had just turned fifteen and thought he was in for another boorish year. And yet, just a day later, he was witnessing something he’d never seen before, something that stirred the soul within him...

Patrick...

In the beginning, there was darkness...

Somewhere and nowhere, a twinkle behooved...

Eventually, he landed on a tome that was fairly thin--barely a finger thick altogether--but one that intrigued him. Rather than a passage, the first page contained a picture--it was a picture of a dead woman with her arms bent unnaturally and tied behind her back with thick lettering below that read ‘WHO DID IT?’. Be’dun was curious. Who did it indeed? And thus, he picked the tome and put it into his inner breast pocket, as it was so thin.

“Hm? Oh, Mr. Be’dun!” a melodic voice interrupted his return back home. He spun around too nimbly for his age and faced a young girl with a delightful smile. She turned fourteen, he heard, some two weeks ago. He wanted to give her a present, but being given a gift by an old man like him would have likely scared her, so he didn’t. “Lucky I caught you!”

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Nymia?” Be’dun asked with a jolly tone and smile. Nymia was one of those that didn’t call him old, at least not to demean him. She often held him back from returning home and asked him all sort and manner of questions until his old throat hurt.

“Boo! Didn’t I ask you to stop calling me that?!” she pouted and grabbed his arm, dragging him forward. “It makes me sound so... pompous! Do you think I’m pompous?”

“I do not, Mrs--khm, Nymia.”

“He he, there we go! Anyway, is it true that you’ve read every book here?!!”

“H-huh? What... what makes you say that?”

“Today, in school, when I told some of the girls that I like talking with you, they told me that you’ve read all the books here!” Be’dun smiled faintly at the fact she focused onto that, rather than what likely surrounded it. “Is it true?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but no,” Be’dun shook his head.

“Ah, I figured,” she sighed. “After all, there’s so many books here! I think that even if I had the whole infinity, I still wouldn’t be able to read them all! Anyway, what’d you read yesterday? I still have an hour until my class, so you can take your time!”

Be’dun sighed; he resigned himself and retold the tale of yet another grand hero to the young girl. He enjoyed these few moments, though he knew they’d be short-lived. Such was the nature of man, and a man had a tiny heart. Soon after she waved him off with a beaming smile, he was accosted in front of his room by the Grand Marshall.

“What is it now?” Be’dun asked.

“... Lord Divine Vekkun finds your influence on his daughter... troubling,” Grand Marshall Fye spoke in a somber yet pitiful tone. The two men have known each other for a long while now, and even if Be’dun was older, both were old. “And requests you cease all communications or he’ll pursue the matter further.”

“Thank you, old friend,” Be’dun said, understanding that it was likely Fye’s interference that prevented the man from having already pursued the matter ‘further’ which would have likely meant Be’dun’s public execution.

“Forgive me, Be’dun,” the man said. “I...”

“Nothing to be forgiven. To begin with, old men have no business chatting with young girls,” Be’dun said. “It’s my fault. Extend to the Lord my deepest apologies and a promise it won’t happen again.”

“...” the men moved afoot and Be’dun entered his humble abode, a small cappy suspended in the cosmos. There was a bed and a small reading table and a shelf and a small kitchen where he would occasionally get inspired for a meal. He was old and worn, but young and spry. He sat down onto the bed, looking at the few books on the shelf. “Oh well,” he mumbled. “Nothing is eternal. Nothing is eternal...”

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