Chapter 189: Falsifiability
The moment the madman Bilden left, a cold smile crossed Agass's face. He turned and made his way back toward the Inquisition.
Evening had settled in by the time Evan stopped his headlong flight, having put considerable distance between himself and the holy city of Eton. He now stood deep in the mountains, nothing around him but the cries of birds echoing through the peaks. He glanced around and spotted a cave mouth high on a cliff face, and made his way toward it. The sheer rock posed him no difficulty at all.
Evan used Levitation to reach the cave. It wasn't deep — less than ten cubits — facing southeast, its interior surprisingly level. Xiaoshuang flew a circuit around the space. "This is nice and clean, good view too. I like it here."
She pulled out some honey. "Wang, want some?"
Evan shook his head. "I'll pass. It's not as though anyone's watching. I'll set up a ward — help yourself, then get some rest."
Seeing him decline, Xiaoshuang didn't hesitate, finishing her meal and saying, "I need water. It's too dry up here."
Evan snapped his fingers, and a floating orb of water appeared in the air. Xiaoshuang tested it. "Too cold. Warm it up a bit." Evan smiled and pointed, a spark of flame flickering, and she tried it again, satisfied this time. After a couple of sips, she dove straight in, soaking her clothes through — but the moment she emerged, steam rose from her body, and within moments she'd dried off entirely.
Evan finished setting up the protective array and settled down cross-legged to meditate. Around him, the elements — though he no longer believed in elemental doctrine at all these days — began to gather. He noticed particles of every color starting to shift and dissolve, drifting toward him, and by the time they reached him, the particles no longer existed at all, their color fading to a dull grey — exactly the traditional dark element, as classical doctrine described it. But hadn't traditional elemental theory always claimed the elements were the most fundamental thing there was?
Within his mental sea, the black lotus turned slowly, absorbing the grey mist, but releasing in its place a colorless vapor of its own — no, not colorless at all, but saturated with so many colors, uncountably many, that at first glance it appeared to have no color whatsoever, many of those colors falling entirely outside what the human eye could perceive, defying description altogether. If a single color corresponded to a single element, then the number of elements had to be infinite.
Evan sensed, faintly, that these colors might represent different energy levels. The instant that thought crossed his mind, space itself shifted abruptly. Somehow, the black lotus within his mental sea suddenly found itself at the base of that strange tree's trunk — as though the tree were a phantom, or the lotus itself a phantom, the two coexisting in the same space. In his current state, this struck Evan as perfectly ordinary, not the slightest bit strange.
Within his mental sea, the black lotus blazed with radiant light, the grey-black mist now turning to a mist of pure black brilliance. The lotus drew in that dark mist hungrily, even as its roots released an uncountable spray of colored light, nourishing the great tree above, which sang out with a beautiful sound, something close to the music of the heavens itself. Without realizing it, Evan entirely forgot he was meditating at all. He felt the mountain and the trees somehow existing within his own body. He had no idea what this meant, and yet it felt entirely natural — his breathing had stopped altogether.
Xiaoshuang's eyes snapped open. She stared at Evan in shock. In that moment, she felt as though he had merged completely with the mountain and the sky around him. She could no longer sense his presence at all — as though Evan no longer existed in the world. She could see him clearly enough, and yet felt he was no longer the lich she knew.
She'd signed a contract with him, and by rights that contract should have let her sense him regardless. Yet now it failed her entirely, leaving nothing but emptiness. Evan sat plainly before her eyes, and yet the moment she closed her own, there was no trace of him at all. The phenomenon left her utterly baffled.
Evan, meanwhile, saw with perfect clarity a written contract floating within his mental sea. The great tree's blossoms remained tightly closed, not yet in bloom. He had no idea why, and felt no need to ask — a deep, indifferent calm had settled over him, beneath any concern for what the flower might be.
He simply watched the tree in silence, entirely content, the whole of heaven and earth held within his own mind. A thought surfaced, unbidden — was the tree even a physical thing at all?
He seemed to already know the answer; everything felt perfectly clear. His awareness projected outward into the surrounding mountains. Hm — someone was there. A wave of distaste rose in Evan at once — the man struck him as filthy, somehow no longer quite human. He was camped out in the open some ten-odd miles away, a fire burning before him, a short knife at his belt, and beside his hand on the ground, a long-bladed hand-axe, its head curving downward at one end, glowing faintly with magic — an enchanted weapon.
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The man was filthy — filthy down to the bone. Shouldn't he be washed clean? The thought surfaced entirely without his willing it, and above that stretch of ground, dark clouds began to gather.
Evan didn't know his name, but seeing him stirred an instinctive revulsion, and something like a sense of threat besides. This was the madman Bilden, who had tracked Evan's trail this far, thanks to the information Agass had given him, quickly picking up the traces Evan had left behind.
Aside from his handful of teleports, Evan had otherwise pushed his way through dense mountain terrain, and a path like that inevitably left plenty of marks behind. Evan hadn't imagined anyone tracking him, and the madman Bilden had followed the trail with ease. He knew well enough that Evan was no easy mark, and with night falling, he had no wish to travel further in the dark — tracking a trail like this was far harder after sundown than in daylight.
So he made camp, building a fire, running back through the details Agass had given him. He knew Andrew was a lich — which meant, simply put, a mage limited to necromancy alone — and he turned over how best to handle things when he finally caught up with Evan.
Moonlight fell across the ground. He hadn't seen the moon in years, and tonight's light was particularly fine. Thinking of the killing to come tomorrow, the madman Bilden felt a rush of excitement — six or seven years without a kill, and any longer without one, his hand would start to lose its edge.
While he sat there thinking, the storm clouds had already gathered overhead. He frowned faintly, sensing nothing amiss until, abruptly, a flash of lightning tore the sky, and rain crashed down without warning, snuffing out his fire and drenching him through in an instant. He shook a finger at the heavens, cursing loudly. "Damned sky. I finally get out here, and you have to do this to me..."
His cursing seemed to work, in its way — before long, the clouds broke apart, moonlight spilling down again like water, though he was already soaked through. Watching the rain fall on him, Evan couldn't help a small, satisfied smile.
That satisfaction faded from his awareness almost at once, though — the rain had done nothing at all to wash away the filth clinging to the man.
Evan gave him only a passing thought before losing interest entirely, his awareness drifting elsewhere. In this state, he cared for nothing beyond the natural turning of heaven and earth itself, sparing only occasional, idle attention for anything smaller.
His awareness turned back to himself, and he noticed scattered points of light flickering — the glow of his own cells, living cells this time. The number of glowing points had grown since last he'd checked, still a vanishingly small fraction of the whole, but proof enough that his body continued its slow recovery. Pleased, he withdrew swiftly from the state.
Xiaoshuang felt the familiar presence of Evan return at once. "What were you doing just now? Why couldn't I sense you at all?"
"You couldn't sense me?" Evan sank into thought. Had he simply exceeded the limit of her own perception, or had he genuinely ceased to exist within the world during that state? He leaned toward the former — though on reflection, consciousness was such a strange and subtle thing, did this world even have a single, correct account of it at all?
He found himself thinking again of his old high school physics teacher — a genuinely disreputable man, and yet the memory carried a certain warmth now. He had to admit the man had left an indelible mark on his own view of the world. Once, instead of teaching the actual lesson, he'd simply talked at length, and one particular thing he'd said had stuck with Evan ever since, striking him now as genuinely wise: Scientific theory, in an absolute sense, is never actually correct. We can only falsify it. However many countless examples support a theory, all they can do is raise the probability of its correctness — but a single contradicting case is enough to end it. And in the meantime, the same set of facts might admit any number of different explanations. That's fine. All that matters is that the explanation guides our practice effectively.
Which meant that whatever had happened with Xiaoshuang's perception, several explanations might account for it equally well — and absent proof against any of them, it made sense simply to treat them all as valid for now.
"Right, I don't know what happened either. It really did seem like you weren't there at all," Xiaoshuang said.
"Then let's just say I wasn't there. Maybe this universe holds mysteries people simply can't ever fully explain. Let it be, for now," Evan said.
"How can you just say that?" Xiaoshuang huffed. "What about your fantasy-born theory, and your work on electromagnetism? Those turned out fine, didn't they?"
"Who told you they were absolutely correct? They're only approximations, valid to a certain degree," Evan said. "At the very least, I've yet to find a single, all-encompassing theory of magic. Humanity's understanding of nature, and of magic both, still has a very long way to go. Get some rest."
Xiaoshuang settled onto a stone, pulling something like a thick handkerchief from her own storage space — Evan noticed it glowed faintly, something he didn't remember ever giving her, clearly her own possession — and wrapped herself in it, drifting off to sleep.
Evan remained seated on the rock, turning over the day's events once more. Coming to Eton, he didn't regret — but he had to admit it had been reckless, undertaken without proper thought. The Church's strength was formidable, well beyond anything he could hope to stand against. He'd drawn its attention now, and it would surely send someone after him. The thought brought that filthy man back to mind — not filthy in body, but filthy in spirit.
He found himself regretting, faintly, that he hadn't killed the man while in that state earlier. The man had seemed to be coming for him specifically — and yet, in that particular state, no thought of killing had been able to stir in him at all.
Never mind. If the man truly meant to kill him, tomorrow would settle the matter one way or another. He didn't much resemble a typical Church agent, but if he'd come for Evan's life, he had to be working for the Church regardless — Evan had never once assumed the Church's own agents were pure of heart.