Book 4, Book 4, Chapter 29: Other Than
Once we said our goodbyes and he’d left, I brooded. In front of the fireplace, slowly sipping on ale. No need to drink it all at once, now. And lost in thought. Perplexed and, if I’m being honest, a little bummed out.
Other than Etienne, I couldn’t talk to anyone about what we’d discovered in the runes on my back. Non-mages couldn’t understand, mages would attack me. And Etienne couldn’t talk about it.
So, why’d he discuss the rune with me? The only reason to do that, that I could think of, was to test my knowledge. Certainly not to show off his own, since doing so would apparently end his life. And I fell for it. Maybe I should just come clean to him.
Would that help? Probably not. It wouldn’t allow him to explain magic to me. But that thought made me wonder, can a geas be broken? Something I had to look into, if ever I got the chance, got near their libraries.
Despite understanding the representation, looking at the inscription on my back didn’t really help, as I didn’t have anything to compare it with. It was like someone handed me the Rosetta Stone and said, ‘Here, work out these languages.’
Yes, I could say, those are definitely languages. Probably human ones. Without knowing one of them, some reference point, all of them were untranslatable.
I sort of understood the barest minimum of the concepts. The fact that I’d seen hypercubes and knew what they looked like. Not what they do, though. Or how that translates to magic.
So, this line of reasoning was effectively a dead end for me, until I had access to something like a dictionary of magic. It did make me wonder, though, as it seemed to me that the math might explain why I didn’t have memories. Because if the rune wasn’t a fourth dimensional polygon, but a fifth dimensional one, it might reduce in size as it got bigger. That’s one of the crazy features of fifth dimensional math.
Unless I never had memories from the beginning. I shuddered. That was a distressing idea.
Everyone knows 2D math. Two times six equals twelve. Whatever you multiply, the end result is bigger. And the same is true for 3D math, which is volume. Two times six times ten. Bigger number. 4D math is nonintuitive, though, and seems to give objects more than one spatial location, at least in 3D representations. When you add that extra dimension for 5D math, through multiplication, the end result can be smaller. Instead of two times six equaling twelve, you’re getting two times six times ten times ten times ten and getting four. No, it doesn’t make sense and no, humans don’t do this kind of math in their heads. Unless they’re smarter than me. Or supercomputers. Or gods.
So, that sorta proved I wasn’t one.
Regardless, that math seemed to me like my memories. Assuming I had a life before this one, and I really, just really thought I did, most of it was lost to me now – smaller. Was that a coincidence or a product? Maybe I was brought here by such math. Such awful magic.
And if time was one of those five dimensions, then time could actually go backwards. That’d break causality, though. Or, the annoying voice in my head calmly said to me, it wouldn’t. Not If the information – me, my mind – came from another universe. Causality couldn’t be broken if there was no returning. That could mean Bechalle called me here to my new present, with a future and everything as long as I could stay alive, but to a moment in his past.
If only I’d met him earlier and killed him! Then I wouldn’t be here. Ok, alright, maybe it would break causality. Unless the special parts of the equation put me too far away to interact with him, then it wouldn’t. But, magic – it violates other physics, why not time, too?
Screw it. I stood up, going in search of whiskey. This was just too damn complicated.
And I guess it didn’t matter. No amount of turning it over and over in my mind would give me real answers. I needed a dictionary. And the only way to get a dictionary would be to train as a mage. Or, in my case, as a ruler forbidden such things, overpower every other mage on the planet and take their goddamn dictionaries by force.
That was likely impossible. But, as Sisyphus surely said, it was nice to have goals.
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