Soul Bound

1            Soul Bound

1.1          Finding her Feet

1.1.5        An Inscrutable Mastermind

1.1.5.7      Questions

The CoThEx tower was low and wide, with an arch leading into an internal garden, rather than a door. The garden had a few comfortable wooden benches on a neat lawn divided by a few gravel paths. Birds perching in the trees looked suspiciously well fed, and eyed a couple of mages who were chatting on a bench while eating. The garden was overlooked by rows of windows, through which groups of mages could be seen drawing on boards, reading books while lounging on leather stuffed arm chairs, playing card games and discussing things as groups. Only a few were looking at objects through complicated instruments. Kafana could see little sign of magic being used.

Bungo led them into the building through an entrance on the far side of the garden, and consulted a diagram on the wall.

Bungo: “There was a message waiting for me this morning, from Grand Master Yusupov. It said his promising student claimed to have made some progress, and we should visit room 3E if we wanted to check on it.”

Bungo led them up the stairs to the third floor, and along a carpeted hall. Opposite each door was a painting of a different mage, all done in the same style. The picture opposite room E showed a man with a shock of white hair, and cruel burn marks covering the left half of his face. Bungo knocked at the door.

“Come in” a voice replied “Don’t step on the questions.”

Kafana entered after Bungo.

A short man was kneeling on the ceiling, held there by a strong upwards gust of air. He was writing on it, in a clear flowing hand.

What is the fundamental root of identity; the mind, the body or something else?

A line with an arrow head pointed to it from a circle containing another piece of writing.

Does a Vessel weigh more when inhabited by a Questing Spirit?

More lines pointed to and from that.

What is the nature of time, and why does it change around Questing Spirits? Did they come from our future? Can they change our past? Have they already, and we can no longer remember?

Are there planets beyond our sight? Are there creatures whose vision can see that far or those colours? Whence did Cov call the Questing Spirits from?

Does sending a questing spirit here move energy between universes or parts of our own universe? Is there a theoretical limit to how fast things can travel?

Is what is moral and immoral for us, also moral and immoral for a Questing Spirit?

She looked about slowly, her eyes following the flow of text and lines as it spread down from the ceiling. Many of the questions on the wall near the door she'd just entered by were linked to rectangles filled with annotated lists of possible answers.

When should a youth be treated as the equal of an adult? What is the real effect of the INT stat?

Do people find other people attractive mainly because attractive children received more attention and so survived better?

Can we improve people the same way we improve the quality of ingredients? What about unborn people in the womb?

Why do we age and die? Could magic support an infinitely large population in a finite volume?

Can we make a magic spell that persists and evolves? Should we?

Can a golem build a golem? Can a golem build a better golem? Could a golem be built that doesn't really think, but perfectly imitates a person who can?

Is marriage a social construct or a biological one? Does that mean what is right for us may be wrong for the Lunadan?

Monsters change over time, depending on which members of a pack survive to breed. Should we always kill the dangerous ones and leave the weakest to survive? Why is genocide impossible? Can we work out how many times Rac originally transformed?

The network covered every wall, weaving between flocks of illustrations and scrawled memos, and around the occasional piece of shelving. She switched to looking at the pattern itself and something about the way the connecting lines varied in colour and thickness drew her attention, like it was hinting at deeper things just beyond her grasp.

A series of 20 images of a bird with its wings in slightly different positions. An architectural diagram of a bridge. A mathematical calculation using what might be matrices. The bones of the hand. A design for a barometer. A cross section of a feather. Three different sea shells. A siege ballista. Something that might be chemistry, or possibly alchemy. Wave harmonics of musical notes. A reminder to order more coffee.

The effect was almost mesmerising and she only broke free after noticing where, in miniscule handwriting, a note had been crammed along the edge of a shelf and in an effort to peer closely enough to read it she'd leaned over too far and nearly stumbled.

1.618034 1.618033989

Studying all this would take hours! But was that her only option? No. Better to use her time now making sure her tiara recorded it all. Posting it to The Burrow where they could all have a crack it it, could be equally well be done later when it wasn't busy. She smiled, and started a steady systematic scan of the room as the other Wombles spread out and waited for the man to notice them.

What had he meant by not treading on the questions? She looked down and realised that many of the floor's dark wooden boards held a mess of questions written black ink, but few connections and fewer answers.

Why do emotions affect magic but not the speed that things drop or how hard a sword is? Can unlimited emotion provide infinite energy? Is energy conserved?

What are dreams? Can seers predict the future? Can you prove to me that you are not a detailed dream I am having? Can I prove to myself that I am not just a figment of your mind?

If I make a guild for all people who are not guild-masters, who would be the master of it?

What does it mean for something to exist? Do ideas exist? Do numbers exist? What about properties, such as the 'primeness' of a number?

What reason is there to trust reason, other than that reason tells me so? Could a powerful being cause me to think logic dictates that 1 + 1 = 3?

This last spawned a long faint line leading back up from the floor to the windows looking out over a garden, but not even a word was scratched upon them, leaving her feeling somehow cheated. She looked around. Could it be?

She untied the curtain that was nearest to the faint line and then, with a single tug, pulled it sideways, blocking the window but revealing a web of writing so dense if felt like even the words were trying to side. Many parts were in a code, a foreign language, or both.

How do we really know what happened in the past and how old the universe is? Have we evidence that what we've been told is true? Do deities lie?

Is telling the truth always moral? Is it always wise to be moral? Who defines what is moral? If moral is just pleasing a deity, why is that important? Can a deity be immoral?

How did the deities and elements come to be? How come anything at all exists?

Why does pain exist? Why does evil exist? Why did the deities do such a poor job of creating the world? Will their current attempt succeed, or will it also destroy itself? Is it moral to research new magic? If you create a harmful spell, should you keep it secret, or try to find a counter?

Do we have a duty to obey the law? Do we have a duty to not obey a law we believe to be corrupt and harmful? Do coins have an actual value, or just a perception of value?

What is it that makes a deity, a deity? Is it just a question of power? Can Bel die? Do deities age? Can people become deities? Should people become deities?

If the deities made vampires to be as they are, are they responsible for those they kill to get blood? Can a moral vampire exist?

Will the deities ever create more sentient species? Can we create sentient species? Should we? If so, what sort should we create? If we make a species that is better than us, ought to to allow ourselves to die out and be replaced?

She blocked the windows one by one as she recording the curtains, finishing with a flourish as she reached the final question and traced a line from it that completed her circuit by rising all the way back up to the ceiling.

Where do things in a pocket dimension go when the spell ends? If we are in a dimension, what will happen to us if the dimension is closed? Is there life after death? Will we ever be able to visit the world where the questing spirits come from? Why do questing spirits choose to answer Cov's summons?

The only light now came from a candle upon the desk, and she realised every eye in the room was watching her. Should she apologise? No, she decided. Instead she locked eyes with the mage, her chin raised in challenge, and willed him to speak first. It didn't take long.

“Well speak up. Who are you? What do you want? And do you have any coffee?”

Bungo spoke up: “We are Questing Spirits, we want world peace, and we have excellent coffee.” He turned to Kafana and stage whispered, “You do have coffee, don’t you?”

Bungo turned back to the figure on the ceiling: “And we may, or may not, have excellent coffee. Perhaps the coffee won’t actually exist until we check to see?”

The figure above responded: “My name is Flavio, but that is a label attached to me, not what I actually am. I want many things, but I fear peace is not among those I shall be granted this afternoon. And I do not have any coffee.” With a swift motion he drew a circle around the question he’d just finished writing, and then descended to the floor.

“It pleases me to meet you, Questing Spirits. May I kill you?” said Flavio.

“Just a little, I mean. If you stand on a set of very precise scales, inside a bag to catch any blood, and then someone crushes your skull with a club, and you send your Spirit back to the Sanctum, leaving a body, will the reading on the scales change? The Questology group here at CoThEx discussed it yesterday, and they think if they offer a large enough quest reward, they might get a volunteer, and that would allow them to see if the Spirits of Questing Spirits weigh more or less than those of non-Questing Spirits. It is interesting, don’t you think?”

Bulgaria said, mysteriously: “Not today, I think. But yes, it is interesting. Perhaps you would get more volunteers if you just asked the Questing Spirit to lie on a bed and then temporarily absent themselves, leaving the Vessel in charge?”

Flavio looked crest-fallen. “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

Kafana took pity on him: “No one can think of everything. And this must be a new area of research for you; terribly exciting. Perhaps you better go tell your fellow Questologists, before they start hiring assassins to help with their enquiries?”

They all trooped out of the room. Alderney took the opportunity to ask: “By the way, what does CoThEx do? Other than try to kill Questing Spirits, I mean?”

Flavio perked up: “Oh, we’re the cutting edge. Collaborative, theoretical and experimental. If it is something that nobody thinks can be done, or it involves working in large groups, or it involves more than two types of element, we’re the people interested in studying it.”

Bungo: “Grandmaster Mage Yusupov said you’d made some progress with my question about cooling air down to temperatures so low that most of it turns solid or liquid?”

Flavio: “That was yours? It was a good question. I love good questions. How did you think of it?” he nipped into a meeting room and wrote in a small space left on a board nearly filled with writing and diagrams of different ways to kill people bloodlessly: “Don’t kill. I have found a better solution, but it is too long to explain here. Flavio.”

Wellington put a restraining hand on Bungo’s arm: “When Cov called us, we were warned that, for the good of the people of this world, we should say nothing about the place we come from or the lives we live there. It would be a breach of hospitality to ignore his guidance.”

Tomsk: “How about you show us what you’ve achieved so far? Wouldn’t you like to go down in history as the first mage here to officially collaborate on a research project with Questing Spirit mages and crafters?”

Flavio: “History be damned. History is a liar. Let’s discover what we can, so we end up with better questions than we started with. Follow me, and don’t startle the mephits.”