Chapter 24
"What?" Rommus blurted out slightly louder than he intended to. "What do you mean immortal? And do you mean you worship Inshae?"
Vohl laughed, showing his perfectly straight teeth. "Hardly, Master Rommus. I am personally quite angry with him, and not many of the other Dirujen are very fond of him. And as for what I mean by saying I am immortal, I mean that I will never die. Does the word confuse you?"
"The word doesn't confuse me, but your story sure does. How can you possibly expect me to believe that you cannot die? It's absurd."
"You only find it absurd because you are unfamiliar with the idea. Is it absurd to believe in a sunset if you've spent your whole life looking to the east?"
"A sunset follows a sunrise. It's a natural order. Everything has a beginning and an end. Living forever is not part of a natural order."
"Ah, but does the sun not rise again after it sets in the west? Does it not follow a perpetual pattern of rebirth and death over and over? Who are you to determine where the beginnings and the ends lie?"
Rommus shook his head as if to clear it of the confusing thoughts. "So you mean that instead of never dying, you are perpetually reborn? I don't see how that is supposed to make more sense Vohl."
"That's not exactly what I am saying. It would make better sense if you understood your own immortality."
Rommus snorted a laugh. "I am not immortal, I am an ordinary man."
"All beings that are aware of their own existence are immortal. I can prove it to you."
"This should be good," Alana said as she finished up with the horses and approached them. "Let's hear it."
Vohl smiled at the woman. "Of course. I will start by asking a simple question. How far can you see?"
Alana immediately pointed and answered. "To the horizon."
Rommus rubbed his chin and twisted his face in thought. His eyes met the patient eyes of Vohl. "The stars. I don't know the distance, but I think that's as far as I can see. Perhaps the blackness between them is farther away, but there's no way to know."
"Both legitimate answers, but I am sorry to say that both are wrong. The true distance is much shorter than you think."
"How can it be shorter if we can see farther?" Alana asked. "That makes no sense at all."
The answer will become evident, I assure you. As long as I can explain it well enough. The truth is hidden in the nature of light. When we are in darkness, we see nothing. Our eyes require light to see, that's something even a child is aware of. It is a sad fact, however, that a child does not ponder the nature of light after he learns what it does. He understands the outcome, but not the thing itself.
"Take the light from the stars you mentioned. It is necessary for the light of a star to meet your eye in order for you to see it. When you close your eye, you cut off the transmission of that light temporarily. This is the same as the leaves of the trees creating shade by blocking light from the sun. From this simple observation, we can see that light showers us in a similar fashion to rain, although it's far more complex. Unlike rain, it is constant, and emanates from light sources like stars, the sun, and candles. It does not fall from clouds, but shines outwards in all directions, bouncing off of things and into our eyes. It is how we are able to see things."
Alana smacked Rommus's arm. "Rommus that's kind of like what you were telling me about the candle and shadows."
Vohl raised an eyebrow. "So you were one of the children that did ponder things. I am impressed Master Rommus."
"I think I understand light fairly well, but I don't understand how light can convince me that we are all immortal. Are you saying light lasts forever?"
"No, I am not saying that, although the statement is true. I will come to my conclusion in a different way. Now that you know that light showers us like rain, it should make sense that in the same way rain touches your skin, light touches your eyes. If you were unable to see, you would only be aware rain when it touches you. Light works the same way. Now I ask you again; how far can you see?"
Rommus and Alana both stood in silence a while. Finally Rommus spoke up. "A person can see as far as his eye. Like rain on skin, light must meet the eye in order to be seen."
Vohl nodded. "Very good Master Rommus, you are right and you are wrong at the same time."
"And you seem to be sane and insane at the same time," Alana said.
Vohl laughed. "Stay with me, I steered you both in this direction to make my point. There is more to this riddle. The rain on your skin, the sun in your eyes, the smell of a campfire, the sound of the waves meeting the sands of the beach; these are all things our bodies tell our minds. Our bodies are tools for interpretation and manipulation of our surroundings, but the mind is lord of the body. Tell me Master Rommus, where am I?"
"Where are you? You are in Medora, near Vindyrion."
Vohl shook his head as he smiled. "No, I mean where am I in relation to you? How far away am I?"
Rommus reached out his arm. "Roughly arm's length I suppose."
"Think again Rommus and remember what I just told you."
Rommus brought his fingers to his mouth and stared at the ground. After a long pause he finally came up with an answer that he thought was just crazy enough to be correct. "There's no way to be sure. If I rely on my senses, it appears that you are at arm's length, but since light must bounce off of you and into my eye, I can't be sure of your position. Just like the stars, you are really only as far away as the edge of my eye. What my senses tell my mind is irrelevant."
Alana shook her head. "What? Have you gone crazy too Rommus? You sound like a fool."
"No, he's right. It makes sense to me. We can't be sure where any object is because the light bouncing off those objects can only be interpreted by our minds when it meets the eye. Therefore my perception of his position is actually on my eye?"
"Wait, what are you talking about?" Alana interrupted. "Why do you think light bounces? I don't get it."
"Don't you remember what I told you before about the shadows? If something is blocking the light source, it creates a shadow. The shadow is the absence of light. If the sun was over there on the horizon and he stood in front of it, blocking the light from reaching us, what would you see?"
"Nothing. He couldn't be seen in the sun. He would just be a dark figure."
"Exactly. Now since he is not a dark figure, and we are able to see his features, light must be bouncing off of his features and into our eyes. Do you understand?"
Alana paused before she answered. "I think so. But how do you come to the conclusion that you can't trust your senses? Aren't you using them to figure all of this out?"
"No, I am using my mind. He just explained that we cannot trust our senses to figure out where things are, so our senses cannot be used to interpret reality. Our mind is all we can be sure of."
"Now you are correct, Master Rommus," Vohl said as he folded his arms. "All things are in your own mind. You can be sure of nothing except the fact that you exist. Your friends, your past, the people standing before you; it is entirely possible that they exist only in your own mind."
"But how does that make us immortal? No more riddles and games, just tell us."
"I will tell you but I must ask another question. Do you remember your fifth birthday?" Both of them nodded yes. "If you died tomorrow, would you still remember it?"
"We can't be sure. Not until we die," Alana said.
"If you are hit over the head tomorrow and your memory fails, would you still remember that birthday?" he asked Alana.
"Well obviously if our memory fails we won't be able to remember it. Don't be silly."
"But Alana, you just told me you remember that day. Doesn't it make sense that if you can remember it now, you will never lose that memory? You might forget it for a short time, but that memory will never go away. The fact that you are able to remember means that you will always remember. If this was not true, your memories would start after you get hit on the head. You would not be able to rem
ember that birthday because for you, life would start tomorrow.
"Death is much the same way. If we forget everything at death and everything goes black, then our memories would have to start from that point, not from our birth. Of course that idea is preposterous. We cannot begin our memories at the point where all of our functions fail. The fact is that we must be able to function and remember after death because if we cannot, then we would not be able to remember our fifth birthday right now."
Rommus put a foot in a stirrup and mounted his horse. "I am impressed with your knowledge Vohl. You are probably the most intelligent man I have ever met, and I have only heard you speak a few words. There is, however, one flaw in your reasoning."
"And what is that, Master Rommus?"
"You claim to be immortal, and yet you speak of death as if you know it intimately. While it is possible for you to be right about death, your beliefs do not make it truth. By using your own logic you should realize that we are unable to experience the world directly, and that world includes death. We cannot base our knowledge on something that we cannot directly experience; it must fall into the categories of faith or theory. None of us have died, so we cannot truly know that death even exists. And just because we cannot directly experience the world does not mean that there is not a world beyond our mind. It's entirely possible that what we see is real, and not some elaborate dream in our soul. The only thing we can be sure of is that we can't be sure of anything."
Vohl climbed onto his steed as Rommus helped Alana up on his own. "Very interesting observation, Master Rommus. I cannot tell you that you are wrong. I can see that we will have many interesting conversations. I am amazed that a man can see a point that I have not seen when I am probably 100 times older than he is. Wisdom is must fall like rain and wet some more than others."
"I don't think wisdom has anything to do with age. I know that older men speak of wisdom coming with age and having to learn from their experiences, but I believe you can make wise choices without having to fail first. A wise man learns from others, not just from his own success and failure." He paused and ran his hand through his hair. "Of course, I can't really speak when it comes to actually succeeding, so perhaps I am not as wise as I think I am."
Vohl laughed. "The words of a truly wise man."
"Just how old are you supposed to be Vohl?" Alana asked as Rommus brought their horse to a comfortable walking speed.
"I was born 3031 years ago," Vohl answered over the clopping of hooves on the cobblestone road.
"Your explanation for our immortality does not explain how you are unable to die. How did you become truly immortal?" Rommus asked.
"It is a complicated story. In the first age of man, when man was created by the gods, and the gods were created by man, there was a harmony?"
"Wait what did you say?" Alana asked. "Who created who?"
"The gods created mankind, but man created the gods as well. It was not until the gods and the humans existed in the same world that the history of time was written. The humans that came before us lived and repeated their lives an infinite number of times, and in fact, they are still living and repeating their cycle as we speak. Things are everlasting in more ways than you know."
Rommus stared over at the man riding next to him. "You seem to make a habit of making statements that contradict themselves."
Alana squeezed him from behind. "Kind of like how you say the moon stays up in the sky because it's falling?" Rommus laughed.
"I assure you they only seem to be contradictions because you are unfamiliar with the stories behind them. The people from the times before us needed a creator, or else their existence had no meaning or purpose. They could not understand the world around them, so they imagined a being greater than themselves who made things happen. Through the will of the people, a soul was created, a god. He was a part of the people, residing inside their hearts and minds. His existence became woven into reality through the minds of the entire world. Like I said earlier, we can only be sure of our own personal reality; the reality of our own minds. Since we are the architects of that reality, the god became real. That god is Oderion, the creator.
"At first Oderion could not handle the paradoxes his existence presented. He decided to create other gods, and he created the other six you are familiar with. Each has his purpose, and allowed Oderion to rule in a more effective manner. He created Tachion, the god of time specifically to travel back to where time did not exist, when all things from here to the stars were one, and no being could survive. He traveled there and rewrote the history of time by creating the world as we know it, along with every living being in it. It was this event that started the first age of man."
"That's a hard thing to comprehend, let alone actually believe," Rommus said.
"Well that is how it happened. If you consider it a while, I think you will come to understand it. The Dirujen come from a time when the people knew these things to be true. The truth has since been hidden from the world, but it is there if you look for it.
"It is the god Inshae who is to blame for our immortality. You see, the gods required bloodlines connected to them in this world in order to exist in their own. Each god resides now not in the minds of mankind, but in a world parallel to our own. They also had items of great power that existed on both plains in order to be able to use them in their world to manipulate ours. You carry one at your hip, Master Rommus.
"In order to protect himself from ever being destroyed, Inshae granted the Dirujen immortality. If we could live forever, no one would be able to manipulate events to kill Inshae through killing us."
"Vohl, I have already told you, this is just an ordinary sword. And what do you mean by killing Inshae? You're saying a god can be killed? How?"
"I don't know the way to kill a god. It was not something the gods told us about. For obvious reasons the gods meant to keep it a secret, but when we were made immortal it became obvious what Inshae was trying to accomplish. But I know I have seen that sword at the hip of Arius himself. You must be careful with it, for anyone you touch with that blade will be sent into the void for eternity. The void is a place where there is nothing but blackness and you must suffer the horrible emptiness alone forever. Even I fear to be near that blade, for I do not know if it would kill me or not."
"You saw a god?" Alana asked with her jaw hanging open in shock.
"I have seen all the gods, Alana. The last one I saw was Inshae when he sealed us away from our loved ones."
"Why did he do it though? Why send you away? Wasn't making you immortal enough?"
"No my lady. The gods could not live among the humans with humans having true knowledge of them any longer. They sealed us away because they could not kill us, and they hid all of the items of power as well. The world they created was becoming too difficult to manage in the state it was in, so they changed it so that any actual knowledge of them was erased. There was still faith in them, but the knowledge was gone. Our existence was proof of their existence, so we needed to be separated from mankind. "
"You mean that the knowledge was erased on this side of the seal," Rommus said. "Your people still had knowledge."
"Yes Master Rommus, but we are just a few souls. It was easy enough for the gods just to cut us off from the majority of the world."
"I have knowledge of the gods," Alana stated with confidence.
"No, my lady, I'm sorry but you do not."
"How can you say that? Look at the sky, the trees, and the animals. Look at us and how complex we are. Isn't that enough to prove that the gods exist? You can't tell me I am wrong."
"I don't mean to sound rude Alana, but you are wrong. While it is true that Oderion created those things, you do not have a true knowledge of it. No matter how strong your faith, you cannot know things that you have not encountered. Those who claim they know things about a god are the most dangerous of people."
"But you claim to know about the gods," Alana said.
"Yes, but I really do have know
ledge, not faith. Once you have seen a god, all faith is gone and it is replaced forever with knowledge. I have never known faith because I have walked next to the gods when I was very young. The difference between me and the dangerous people I speak of is that they would have you follow them. They would base their actions on belief alone and call it knowledge. They would have you believe they know the will of the gods, and that is not possible. They are dangerous because they become fanatics. I do not ask you to follow me or even to believe me. I would not have even mentioned these things if you had not asked me about them."
They remained quiet for a while as they inched their way closer to the horizon. Rommus took the time to consider Vohl's words and weigh them against his own beliefs. If it was true that the man was more than 3000 years old, he obviously had a considerable amount of time to ponder his own existence. It was difficult for him to believe, however, because if he accepted Vohl's story, he would have to accept the fact that the gods were real. While it didn't make much sense that everything simply existed without being created, he found it equally illogical to believe that some secretive beings were responsible for it.
Rommus decided to put the subject in the back of his mind and consider it later. He turned his head around some so that he could see Alana behind him. She had given into her fatigue and was resting her head on his back.
"That man I killed back there; who was he?"
She lifted her head up but did not answer right away. "Just someone I knew when I was younger. He had a thing for me, when I was really too young for that sort of thing. He tried to make me do things I didn't want to do." She seemed to stumble over her words a little. "He's just a jerk. He deserved what he got, believe me."
"If Vohl is right about this sword, then he was sent to the void. Do you still think he deserves that?"
"All I know is that he is no longer alive and that suits me fine. I'll let the gods decide what his punishment will be."
Rommus touched the sword at his hip. "I'm sorry if he hurt you Alana. I would have sent him to the void on purpose if I could have."
"Thank you Rommus," she said quietly as she rested her head on his back again.
"I don't understand what happened though. I just barely touched him with the blade. I don't see how that could kill anyone. Maybe something else killed him and we just didn't catch it."
Alana positioned herself so that he could hear her whisper. "Or perhaps Vohl saw the odd way he died and then made up a story about the sword having magical powers."
Rommus nodded slightly. It was perfectly possible that Vohl was indeed inclined to fabricate stories. He was certainly a man who was comfortable thinking that reality was only in his head; and he wasn't shy about telling that to strangers either. Still, as odd as the man seemed, there was no way to know if he was right or wrong, and regardless of his ideas, he had earned their respect and gratitude.
"Vohl, are your people experienced in magic?" Rommus asked.
Vohl cleared his throat. "Well, yes and no. Some would call our power over animals and people magic, but I don't believe it is. The ones who ended up becoming our rulers have some knowledge of magic, but I cannot say how powerful they are. Their spells would not kill us, and they had to resort to actual physical violence to get us into the stone caskets and then drop us into the water. Maybe they used magic in some cases to seal the casket or to drop them from the ships, but I have no way of knowing."
"So you cannot use magic?"
"I have never tried to use it before. I have not studied any spell books or the like. Our rulers kept things secret long before they ever became our rulers. I can use items of magic though, and I have before. I have already mentioned my cape and the rings we used to communicate with our loved ones here in these lands."
"Do you have any knowledge of how magic works?"
"Yes, some. I know that it is a force that permeates all the different worlds. It is leftover energy from when Oderion created this world. It cannot be destroyed, only manipulated by those who have the talent for it. It hides in all things, but it can be forced into items or even people. What you may have seen is but a small trickle of the energy available to the gods. In a way the people who can use magic are stealing it from the different worlds; but the gods permit them to do so. I am not sure that the gods can even stop people from using magic. It is as basic and natural as the air we breathe or water we drink."
"Do you have any other items of magic with you now?"
"Yes Master Rommus. I carry two of the rings I mentioned, along with a pendant that gives me strength. This sword is also magical, and is made to be lighter and faster than an ordinary sword. Its name is Tursari."
"Your sword has a name?" Rommus said as he eyed the man.
"As does yours, Master Rommus. That sword is called Archenarius. It means 'The Might of Arius'."
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