Chapter 481: Converse
"Second: even the Ascendants who managed to remain unaligned found that at higher ranks, B, A, S, the realm itself began to resist their advancement. The advancement past B was significantly harder than the advancement to B. The advancement past A was harder still. Nobody has ever advanced past S as an Ascendant. Whether this is because the realm’s resources are calibrated for its native souls, or because there is some deeper mechanism that makes SS-rank very difficult for anyone whose body still lives in another realm, I do not know. I only know that the pattern is consistent."
"How consistent?"
"Every past Ascendant who reached A tried to reach S. None succeeded. Two of them died in the attempt. One returned to the physical realm as an A-rank soul, which is impressive but not what they came for."
Bruce absorbed this.
He had known, in some general way, that his path to SSS would not be easy. He had come here because his soul had hit a ceiling in the physical realm and needed to advance further, and he had understood that the advancement would be work. He had not known, until this moment, that no Ascendant had ever completed the climb.
He was, if he succeeded, going to be the first.
He filed this. He kept his face steady.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Because you should know it before you accept anything from anyone in this city, including me."
"That’s an unusual argument to open with. Most people who want a relationship with a promising newcomer would not begin by telling them that no one who has come before them has succeeded."
"Most people are trying to sell you something. I am not. I am trying to see whether you can be a useful ally to me and whether I can be a useful ally to you. If either of us is going to be useful to the other, we both need to be operating with accurate information. Beginning with the historical failure of Ascendants is the accurate information you need to have before you evaluate anything else I say tonight."
"Fair."
Bruce sat with it for a moment.
Kael, beside him, was very still. Theron, on his other side, was watching Elenora with the careful attention of someone who was reassessing his initial impressions in real time. Bruce noticed both of them registering the honesty of what Elenora had just done. It had been, he had to admit, an unusual and effective opening.
Or, and this was the calculation he ran silently, the part of him that his old life had drilled into him, it had been a very effective opening. A politician of Elenora’s experience would know that laying out the historical failure would make her seem more trustworthy. A politician who had planned the meeting for weeks would have chosen this opening deliberately. Which meant Bruce could not, from this single move, tell whether her honesty was genuine or performed. It could be either. It could be both.
He would need more data.
"Why did you notice us?" he asked.
Elenora nodded slightly, as if this was a question she had expected to come early.
"Two reasons," she said. "The first is boring. I keep informal networks throughout the Guild, and they flag new parties that advance faster than the average. A party that goes from harvester arrival to E-rank in five days is significantly faster than average. The Guild flagged you on day four, before your three-core alpha. I received the flag that evening."
"And the second reason?"
"The second reason is you specifically."
"Me specifically."
"Your talent. The Guild’s testing orb overloaded when it tried to grade you. This is rare enough to be noted. It has happened perhaps six times in Xiltra’s recorded history. Every previous time, the soul whose talent overloaded the orb turned out to be someone whose talent had implications for the realm’s fabric itself, souls whose talents worked on the substrate of reality rather than on discrete objects within it."
Bruce’s hand did not move. He kept it neutral on the table.
But his mind was working very fast.
Elenora Vessa knew that his talent had overloaded the orb. She knew what that meant. She knew there were six previous cases in Xiltra’s recorded history. She was, casually, calmly, in the second question of the first meeting, telling him that she had identified the specific quality of his talent that he had been most careful to hide.
She was showing her hand.
She was, in effect, saying: I know what you are. I want to talk to you anyway.
He considered how to respond.
He could deflect. He could deny. He could ask her what she thought his talent was and see how much she actually knew.
Or he could match her honesty.
Match her honesty and see whether she matched it back.
"You have researched me carefully," he said.
"I have."
"Are the other five previous cases still alive?"
"Two are still alive. Three are dead. The three who died were killed by factions in the city, two by Spire nobles who tried to bind them into service and killed them when they refused, one by a broader political action that I do not need to describe tonight. The two who are still alive are both S-rank cooks or crafters who chose not to fight for a position in the city’s political layer, and who therefore have been left alone."
Bruce paused.
"You are telling me that the two who lived are the ones who did not seek power," he said. "And the three who died are the ones who tried to remain independent while advancing."
"That is what I am telling you. Yes."
"That is a warning."
"It is a warning. It is also information you need. You are going to seek power, Bruce Ackerman, because you need SSS to return home. You cannot become an S-rank cook. You must climb. And the previous cases suggest that climbing while unaligned is very dangerous for a soul with a talent like yours."
"So your offer is alignment with you."
"My offer is a conversation about whether alignment with me, or with someone I would recommend, might make your climb possible. I am not asking for alignment tonight. I am asking whether we can have the conversation."
Bruce sat with this.
He had, before the meeting, told himself he would not accept anything tonight. The old soul had said the same. He held to that. But there was a difference between accepting and hearing, and Elenora had not yet asked him to accept. She had asked him to hear.
He was willing to hear.
"I am willing to have that conversation," he said. "But not to conclude it tonight."
"That is what I would want as well."
"Then let us continue."
She inclined her head.
---
The conversation continued for a long time.
Bruce asked, as he had planned, about the three Codices. Elenora’s answer was careful and measured. She confirmed that she knew of the three-Codex structure of the universe, that there was a Codex of the physical realm, a Codex of the soul realm, and a Codex of the mind realm, and that the three Codices were understood by the Nonagon to be aspects of a single underlying being. She did not know how much Bruce already knew. She stopped short of telling him things that might have been secrets.
"The Soul Realm’s Codex," she said, "is the one this realm answers to. It set the rules of the mist. It designed the harvester system. It maintains the cycle of purification and reincarnation. It is the authority of this realm."
"Have you spoken with it?"
She paused.
"Once. Briefly. When I reached SS-rank, sixty years ago. The Codex spoke to me at the moment of my advancement. It congratulated me. It told me nothing of substance. Since then, I have not heard from it. I do not know if I will ever hear from it again."
"Do all SS-rank souls hear from the Codex at advancement?"
"Yes. It is one of the markers of SS. The Nonagon members all share this experience."
"And SSS?"
"I do not know. There is no SSS in Xiltra at least none that the public knows... The multiple known SSS-rank souls of the soul realm live elsewhere, one in the far Tidewater, two on distant islands. I have never met an SSS. I do not know what the Codex says to them at their advancement, or whether the Codex works differently at that rank."
Bruce filed this. He would want to talk to those SSS souls eventually.
He asked about the harvesters. Elenora’s answer was more complete on this one, the harvesters were the soul realm’s processing force, the Codex’s operational agents in the mist. They collected the awakened for the cities and purified the hollows in the mist. They did other work too, work Elenora did not know all of, Nonagon members had been given some information about the harvesters’ broader duties but not all, and their aura was noticeably different from any other soul in the realm because they were, structurally, of the Codex in a way that other souls were not.