68. Law Binge

He drifted away almost instantly.

It was like he was in one room and stepped into another—a hazier room, less defined, more felt. But his mind still felt just as sharp. He felt awake. Unnaturally so, for a dream.

He was hoping to get through at least two Major Laws this session, one of Fire and one of Steel. Maybe a third Electric Law, if he could manage it. He'd give it his all.

First up, Fire. He could feel the three Law treasures out there, hovering near his soul. He went for the Orb of Azeroth.

The Major Law of Ethereal Flame. The Law that founded the Cult of Black Flame, pretty much. He already had one chunk of it—Fiery Rebirth. He reached for the orb and sought the rest.

The scene shifted.

It came in vague, like an impressionist painting. Some sort of bleak forest he could barely make out. The trees were shifting shadows, and the ground was splotches of brown. The clearest shapes were the spikes—spikes tipped vivid purple. They crowned vines that choked the forest, wrapping the trees, stuffing the paths, coiling like an endless nest of snakes.

There stood Azeroth in the midst of it, kneeling, staring up at the sky, gasping. The demon bled black blood. Zane didn't see the wounds so much as the colors. The spikes' bright purples shone in the demon's wounds. They went deep, seeping far beneath the skin, and they were spreading. Corrupting.

It was like Zane had X-ray vision. Then he realized he wasn't really seeing the world. He was seeing the world beyond the world, the true face of the world. He didn't need to search for the crack—he was past that. The truth was laid out plain before him.

This world was the inverse of the world he knew. The fine details, the material surfaces, the flesh, and the matter—that was all muddy.

But the Laws that ran through it all, under the surface… he saw them clear as day. Clear as colors. The purple was a kind of poison Law. And it had Azeroth wounded deep.

Then Azeroth put his hands together as though in prayer. It seemed a little odd. Did demons pray? To who? He was using some kind of Skill, Zane figured—one whose powers were far beyond him, one that drew on several kinds of Law, all meaningless. But the centerpiece he saw clearly.

It was a pale fire. It blossomed at every wound and started burning on the purple. The purple melted away. It wasn't Fiery Rebirth--that Law healed, but this Law destroyed and healed at once.

No, that wasn't right. It didn't really heal. It just destroyed—it cured the poison. It cut out the blemish, the impurity, the corruption. But removing a negative was a positive.

It all felt a bit like an acid trip. The most lucid acid trip he could have. The warbling colors before him made so much sense….

It clicked.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖'𝕤 ℙ𝕦𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕪

The scene shifted.

Shifting black grounds. Wounded purple skies. The same impressionist vagueness. There stood Azeroth, gasping, riddled with heavy wounds. And facing him, on the other side, was a man who seemed human. Golden-haired, well-built, dressed in heavy white-gold armor. His sword shone with a holy light. He seemed like a paladin. If this were a story, he'd be the hero come to slay the evil demon.

The man had Azeroth on his knees. He pointed his sword and said something—or rather, his lips moved, but the sound came out in that other place, the other world, and Zane couldn't hear it. But Zane could imagine the gist of it.

Azeroth just laughed.

Then the demon burned.

Not his body—something deep within, and separate, something that suffused every inch of him—his soul.

Azeroth stoked his soul again and again, the way you use a poker to stoke a hearth. Zane saw it was some kind of Skill again, but that Skill was tipped with a certain Law. He peered closer…

Azeroth roared to his feet. Suddenly, he was blazing with essence, blazing with life, a living pyre. He swiped, and a ghostly claw crashed down on the hero. He swiped again, and splotchy black-red meteors drilled down from the sky. It was like he had tapped into some unknown reserve—a reserve of the soul, a last resort.

The hero tried blocking, throwing up glowing gold shields, but the onslaught grew relentless. He broke; he was forced to his knees. He cried out in shock. Then Azeroth took his head off.

Oof. Tough luck.

Anyway. The scene faded, and Zane was left with the impression of it. The burning of the soul—a burning of another fuel. That was all Fire, wasn't it? Taking what was there and releasing its energies. It could burn wood. When Zane threw out a Cyclone, it burned his essence—and whatever it touched. Of course, it could burn the soul. Inflame the soul.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕥'𝕤 𝕀𝕟𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕤𝕔𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖

Though Zane got the sense this was a last-resort thing. He'd healed just fine when the Demon Cultist had given him a soul wound. But whatever Azeroth did was less taking a wound, more chopping off a finger, he felt. It wasn't the kind of thing you just healed from.

Cool to know, but not something Zane was interested in using. At least not how Azeroth did it. Zane seemed to have an unusually chunky soul, which was why he was so good at feeling out Laws. He didn't want to give any of it up.

The scene shifted.

Azeroth stood on white ground. All around him lay the emptiness of space. From here, you could see his planet, the Void planet—an almost unbelievably huge sphere made of gradient shades of swirling blackness, studded all over with coal-black mountain ranges. Spots of Fire spewed from their tips.

But Azeroth wasn't on his planet. He was on the moon, staring at the warbling bright red mass above him. The sun. It was a little more than a smudge of red in the haze of memory.

And underneath that sun, coming closer, was a glittering army. An army in white-gold gear—just like that hero had been. Zane couldn't see their faces, but somehow in this strange underworld he knew their feelings.

They were furious. They were here for revenge.

Azeroth regarded them coolly, then he raised his arms, and the sun's redness drew into him. Down his arm, into his body, simmering there, building hotter and hotter…

… and from below, drawing up, came the whiteness of the moon, another kind of power. They twined in him, fused to one in the crucible of his body.

Then he let it go. He screamed soundlessly, threw out his hands, and the light streamed forth. A swirling firestorm of two colors—one raging solar red, one cool moon blue. They wove into one another, making something monstrous. An unnatural disaster.

It swept the paladin army away with almost contemptuous ease.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝔽𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤

The scene melted away. Zane was alone again, floating in the nothing. He breathed out slowly.

He had all the pieces—he could feel it. Now, to put them all together…

Fire's Purity.

Fiery Rebirth.

Celestial Flames.

Spirit's Incandescence.

His mind flickered from one to another. He saw the aspect in full. He knew the fires of the soul.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕒𝕛𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔼𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝔽𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖 (𝔼𝕝𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖)

He floated there, basking in it.

Well, that was exhausting. And rewarding.

But there was no time for rest. Another Law to go. Hopefully. He took care of one last errand—he delved into the orb of Azeroth and drew out that soul defense skill, Hellfire Cloak. With this new Major Law, it took little effort to grasp.

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕃𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕖𝕕!

ℍ𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖 ℂ𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕜 [ℝ𝕒𝕣𝕖]

He didn't plan on using it much, but it was nice to have something guarding against soul threats. He was done with Fire. On to Steel.

His main resource was the Sermon by the Sage of the Iron Fist. He touched on the Recording Crystal treasure.

The scene shifted again.

It came in impressionistic, yet again—it must be his state of mind. He'd taken so many of those Dew drops he was seeing things differently, instinctively. He saw the Sermon with fresh eyes—the Sage of the Iron Fist clapping his hands, his body turning to Steel, the shockwave he made. Then that punch. So heavy it felt like it might break the memory itself.

It was such a simple movement when you broke it down. But it took Zane's breath away. The Sage's whole body was one beam of shining gray light. And they knew the Sage had spoken the truth. If you could pick that mass apart, like with a prism, you'd find the colors of every Law of Steel, side by side.

It was so much he didn't know what to focus on. So he just let his mind wander. He cast about the scene. He'd learned for him, learning Laws was less about thinking, more about feeling, seeing what called to his mind. To his soul.

He let the recording play slowly… He found himself growing curious about the Sage's hands. Something odd was going on there. He squinted, tried picking out the colors—they were changing before the Sage even clapped, taking on different sheens. One was like iron. The other, something else.

And when he clapped, they flowed into one another, made something new. Something that mixed them both. Made Steel.

He played it back. He found that if he really focused, he had some control over the memory. He could rewind it, slow it down, zoom it in. Home in on that precise point. And watch it. Over, and over, and over.

Until….

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔸𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕪 𝔸𝕝𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕞𝕪

Ahh.

Right after the clap, too—he paid careful attention to the way that new light stilled in the Sage's body, and what changed. It was subtle, yet clear. Every line in his body was clean, sharp, defined, flowing from one to the next, precise as cast Steel. There was a new symmetry to his limbs, like his body was something crafted…

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 ℙ𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕤𝕖 ℂ𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘

They just kept coming—Zane loved every second in this space. He wanted to keep learning until he drowned. The problem was he was starting to feel sleepy—weirdly tired. Could you feel sleepy in a dream?

All this… it was starting to take a toll. It had been all along. He'd just been too excited to really feel it.

But he had more in him. He had to push through. The scene played back, back to before the clap. He slowed it down as the hands met. There, Zane stared deep into that bright gray light. He could pick them out if he tried.

In that pure gray there was a strand of deep orange woven deep into the Sage's body. A subtle glow rising to the moment of the strike. It was what made the fusion possible. Metal didn't fuse cold. The Sage had made of his body a forge, spreading heat down his limbs. A heat that peaked with the clap and faded instantly after, firming the Steel…

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕪

This one came surprisingly easy, maybe because his Fire Laws had helped him.

There was one more, Zane felt. It didn't take him long to find it. It was in the moment the strike finished. The moment the Steel fully settled, when the impurities had burned out of it, when it gleamed clean and bright and pure, with that telltale steel sheen. Polished, finished, flawless.

By now, Zane was slipping. The world was starting to clarify. The colors were starting to fade. It took him six or seven tries to grasp it. In the end—

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕪 ℝ𝕖𝕗𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥

It was dizzying how many secrets lay in the Sage's one move. He knew now that they were all put there very intentionally. To the layman, it might just seem like a clap and a punch—simple moves. But maybe that was what it meant to be a master. To make the complex look effortless.

Alloy Alchemy, Precise Casting, Heat Mastery, Steely Refinement—they cascaded in Zane's mind. He was fading. He shoved them against each other like steel grinding, making sparks, trying to find the perfect fit by brute force. What was the concept that fused them?