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11012Translator: Snorri
Proofreader: theunfetteredsalmon
Amon arrived at the cold spring in the dead of night, but he didn’t take a bath. He used to sit in the water near the edge of the pool and soak his body and wash his face and hair. Tonight, Crazy’Ole wanted him to dive down to the deepest depth of the spring and find the mouth at the bottom to retrieve a special object for him.
What was this object? Crazy’Ole did not mention it to him.
The cold spring was strikingly chilly. The surface of the pool was covered by a white fog, much like a hot spring. Actually, it consisted of vapour which was condensed due to the low temperature. An average person could only take a few seconds in this bitterly cold water. Diving down to the very depths was extremely risky, even for Amon.
Amon took a deep breath, dove into the water soundlessly and tried his best to ignore the biting cold. He concentrated on feeling the weak currents underwater and sought for the mouth. The central area of the cold spring was not very deep, it was about twice the altitude of an adult. This meant that the water was obviously above Amon’s head.
In the deepest parts, the bitter cold pierced his bones. The warmth in his body was leaving quickly. Amon tried his best not to jerk, but all of his pores were contracting and his every muscle trembled.
It was hard to focus, but Amon was able to make it. He felt the weak and slow flow of the seemingly quiet water and traced it to its origin. Its source was from a pile of cobbles somewhere at the bottom of the pool. Amon could feel a more severe chill waving out from the gaps.
The difference was difficult to perceive because it was freezing all around him. Amon’s hand touched a stone that felt similar to an ore. When he tried to feel the stone more carefully, his body trembled out of his control. He almost choked. The coldness chiselled into his body.
It was not that the water had turned colder, but that Amon’s body seemed to have connected to the source of the coldness, waking and amplifying the feeling to a degree where he could not bear it. He could not help but think that he was going to freeze to death in the water. He knew he had to surface.
Amon was wrong, he did not freeze. A warm current arose within him, which started spreading all over his body and limbs. This only happened when he had finished bathing and took a rest beside the cold spring. But now he was still in the water, which meant he stayed too long and exceeded a limit. His body naturally alerted him that a power was awakening inside him.
Amon gripped the stone and pulled, but he found it fixed to the bottom. It looked as if it just laid on the ground, but it was actually bolted by a mysterious power to its spot.
Amon kept holding his breath and concentrated. At this moment, the iciness and the warm current seemed to be under his control. His whole body shook violently, and he felt suffocated. A great strength suddenly surged his arm and he felt his grip tighten and the stone was successfully pulled out. Amon rose from underwater rapidly like a lifebuoy and bobbed on the surface with the stone in his hand.
He crawled back to land. The first thing he did was not to check the stone but to sit down and close his eyes. The blood in his veins was flowing fast and each of his pores vibrated imperceptibly. The water covering his skin vaporized quickly, but the coldness in his body lasted a long time.
He had not stayed very long under the water but he felt exhausted. He stood up, moved and stretched his body which made him look like he was doing strange exercises. When he regained his peace of mind, he began examining the cobble. It was very similar to an ore, but Amon had seen too many ores and he felt there was something different about this one. It looked natural, but Amon thought it was an artefact – a well-made one at that.
When Amon first touched it, it was extremely cold. Now that it was in his palm, it just felt like a normal stone, with no unique characteristics. Amon felt something was strange. He put down the stone and touched the water in the cold spring. The water was still cold, but as Amon had guessed, the temperature was rising.
Amon had accomplished Crazy’Ole’s task, but he did not stop. He dove into the water again. This time it was much easier. He came out of the water and threw another cobble onto the ground. He repeated this until he retrieved twenty cobbles, then came back to land.
He was almost blue with frost this time, panting and shaking like a baker’s sieve. It took long for the numbness to fade. He glanced at the moon and it seemed to be brighter. A warmth covered and permeated his body. He turned up his head and saw a parangon floating quietly in the air, glowing softly. A figure stood right behind him. It was Crazy’Ole.
“You are hurting yourself. I didn’t tell you to dismantle all of the formation. You just needed to find the Aquaticore and take it with your ability.” As Crazy’Ole spoke, the parangon became brighter, and the mild glow developed into a dense fog of light. This light started healing Amon’s body and imposed a pressure on him, rendering him unable to speak.
“But, you exceeded my expectation again. My test had two purposes: First, to see if you could withstand the coldness and use your strength properly. Second, to see if your spirit and will are strong enough to detect delicate changes in the atmosphere. Only when you succeed in both can you awaken the power.”
Crazy’Ole wielded his wand as he spoke. The twenty cobbles on the ground opened up like ores being extracted by the miners, showing the parangons inside. The surface of the first cobble that Amon had taken out rippled like liquid. Then, its shell melted down like water, showing a deep blue parangon.
“Thirty years ago, I set up a magical formation with an Aquaticore and twenty parangons, making this cold spring. Now, its mission finally ends. Those stones did not form naturally, they’re my counterfeits. I was expecting you to find the Aquaticore, but removing the entire formation is a real surprise!”
When he finished speaking, the glowing parangon fell to his palm. There was now only quiet moonlight reflecting in the water. Amon stood up and picked up the blue parangon, “So, it’s called the Aquaticore?”
“That’s right. Special parangons have their own names. The mages called the blue ones Aquaticore.”
Growing up in Duc, Amon perfectly knew that there were four kinds of coloured parangons, but it was the first time he heard the name Aquaticore. These four special parangons were not as unique as the Gods’ Tear, but they were still rare and coveted. Even in Duc, they were only discovered a few times per year, or one every few years when luck was on the ebb.
Amon’s Gods’ Tear was taken by Judah just after he extracted it. He didn’t have the time to study it. Today, it was his first chance to study a special parangon carefully. He began to contemplate it for a while when he noticed that Crazy’Ole was leaving.
“Where are you going?”
“To sleep! I came just here to check if you drowned in the pool. Now that everything’s fine, I can have a good sleep.” Amon could hardly see his back now.
“How about the parangons?”
“What you took is yours. I dumped them thirty years ago! Keep them, you will need them!… Come here tomorrow night, I’ll hold the rites for you. Don’t miss it!” Crazy’Ole’s words wafted from distance.
Amon sat down and continued to observe the blue stone. When he tried to focus his mind and feel it, he could feel a mysterious wave being spread by the stone. It propagated from all directions to the spring, reviving something dormant inside him. It was like a vague aspiration, he was distracted and forgot about time…
To Amon’s surprise, the rites held by Crazy’Ole for Amon the next evening was a kind of praying. However, unlike the ceremonies held by the priests, the supreme sorcerer did not ask Amon to pray to a certain god or goddess. He only taught him to concentrate his mind such that the external world was between perceivable and not perceivable, to feel the delicate changes of his body and mind. He also taught him to look at his spirit, in hopes to communicate with the source of power, the force that existed in everything.
It was much harder than simply praying to a certain god. Crazy’Ole told Amon that it was not bad to pray to the gods, he started to explain with a smile, “I heard your conversation with Aristotle about the oracle the other day. If you truly understand what he said, then you will understand what I mean… One has to be well prepared for the awakening of power, or the rite will be futile. But don’t worry, you’re the best-prepared person I’ve ever seen.”
The rite opened a door for Amon and introduced an unknown world to him. Crazy’Ole asked Amon to place the Aquaticore before him to try and concentrate his spiritual power on it and use it as a medium to communicate with the unknown world. Amon felt as if he was surrounded by an elusive freshness when he followed the instructions. Then, he found that the fresh feeling became a cold, much like the that of when he bathed in the cold spring. He caught a rhythm from the water in the spring and resonated with it. It was neither the breath nor the heart beats, but a rhythm of nature that he had never known of.
Crazy’Ole watched Amon bathe in the hazy aura from the Aquaticore. He sighed and thought, It would be much easier with the help of the Gods’ Tear but the Aquaticore should be enough. Even without external help, you will still succeed. It’s safer this way, and it’ll be helpful when you learn the magic later.
Amon was still engrossed in the new world. So this is the so-called divine power? Or the force of the source of nature? Power inside the body? What he felt was not just change from the outside, but also relaxation and freedom from his body. He felt he had never been stronger than he was now, so strong as if he could control or overcome anything. When he concentrated and looked inside his spirit, he had captured the power.
Along with the power came the desire, it was normal. A hungry beggar might desire a good meal, but a hungry emperor might demand a whole continent of endless wealth and authority.
Even in total serenity, lusts and wishes arose. Amon could not tell if they were from his body or his mind. He could suppress them in prayer, but he would soon start feeling the troubles in his daily life.
……
The rite was just a nudge over the starting line. Crazy’Ole told him that he had to learn to control this feeling so that he could begin learning magic and body arts, and that this took time. Amon went to the spring every night and prayed devotedly for the next few days, but in the daytime, he was still a miner like usual.
He could not help but think about Maria and the events of that fateful night. He could remember her body and her kiss, and the feeling when he put his hand on her breast. His thoughts swirled subtly. He might indulge himself in the illusion that he was granted a superpower and beat Gabriel, kicked off Rod Drick and all his soldiers, so he could stay with Maria alone and…
He did obtain an unprecedented power, but along with it was a change in attitude. His lust and desire would swell and soar infinitely.
Each night when he tried to concentrate, he looked into his spirit and reflected the outside. He would return sober, and the desire would become suffering. A voice echoed in his mind, “You have the power. Go get what you want!” And another voice mocked, “How ridiculous! You are just too weak to be laughed at!” Amon’s soul stood beside them, and they were dragging him like torrents.
When Maria experienced this, she was told by Gabriel that all she needed to do was survey them quietly with a pure heart, and not to be influenced. Crazy’Ole did not tell that to Amon, he just mentioned that it was a test which he had to face.
Apart from the disturbed soul, his body reacted as well. He had an illusion that he was growing stronger every minute. His pace was strong and firm, every bone and muscle moving with endless energy. He even had an impulse to be violent with people he saw.
As the son of a drunkard, he had suffered a lot for being laughed and mocked at. Now, he had a desire to beat everyone who looked down on him. There seemed to be a beast awakened in his body. Although Amon did not start any fights in the town, he did something that shocked all the Ducians and made them envy.
As a result, Lord Macrobe, the executive priest and clerk of the shrine passed out spitting blood in public.
The trigger of the incident was the parangons Amon had retrieved from the cold spring. Amon carried them carefully with him all the time. When he passed by the shrine of Mourrin one day, he saw Shog registering the tax from the townies in front of the door with Lord Mayor beside him. An impulse from nowhere drove Amon to walk across the road and loudly announce, “Lord Mayor, I want to pay my tax!” He drew everyone’s attention.
Before Dusti could react, Shog asked curiously and nervously, “What are you paying for, Amon? You did not get any ore from the mine these days.”
Extracting the parangons was just the last step of parangon mining. The ores were dug out from the mine at the edge of the mountainous plateau of Syah to the north. The whole process included opening new mines, quarrying, digging out ores and transporting them back to Duc, which could not be done by one individual. So the work was divided and supervised so that the ores would be distributed to families according to their contribution in mining. Clerk Shog did not register any ores that were distributed to Amon’s family. He was feeling great about it, that is until Amon came and claimed he had to pay his tax in front of everybody.
Amon replied, “My dear priest and clerk. I found some ores in a stream in the Charcoal Forest, which must have been brought by the mountain torrents. They were like a gift from the gods, without the need to be mined. I brought them home, opened them and extracted some parangons. According to the laws, I have to pay tax for them.”
