I stared, enchanted.
It was magic. Not some trick! Real magic. This world had magic in it.
Amazing. Amazing. I was genuinely excited by what I had just been shown.
You might ask what’s the big deal after ghosts, mummies, and reanimated skeletons, but I would argue that a proper magic system is an entirely different thing than horror and supernatural elements.
“Was that clear to you? Drawing the pictographs for Ignis defines fire to exist in that place, and the air will instantly burst into flame. If you speak the Word of Erasure for extinguishing fire, the flames will vanish.
“This is what I mean by the Words of Creation, and what is most commonly referred to as magic.”
What came to mind then was not “magic” as I knew it from computer games, but from your more old-fashioned fantasy novels. Not simply another skill to be casually fired off if you had enough points to expend, but one of the world’s most ancient secrets, never to be handled without careful forethought.
That was the atmosphere this hook-nosed old ghost evoked in this dimly lit stone room as he spoke with pride about mysterious powers.
“It’s important to understand that the Words of Creation are inconvenient things. Their power is a hindrance to both writing and speech. It was the Creator’s own use of the Words that led to the evil gods which took the Creator’s life.”
Yeah, no kidding. Even taking notes would be a risky endeavor if the paper could burn up in an instant just by writing “fire.” That would be inconvenient in the extreme, and would have to be an obstruction to the advance of civilization. It would even have to get in the way of ordinary people’s daily lives.
“In consideration of this, the one-eyed god of knowledge, Enlight, selected twenty consonants and five vowels. In order that the Words of Creation should not exert their power, he simplified the characters and their pronunciations, and created the corrupted language we call the Common Tongue.”
Got it. To draw an analogy with Japanese, the Words of Creation would be the complex kanji characters. Writing the kanji carelessly was dangerous, and could cause fire to erupt and things to explode. To avoid this, a wise god simplified the characters, and made the other Japanese character set: the kana, which represent sounds.
There was a difference in that the Common Tongue used phonemic characters, not syllabic ones. It was more like an alphabet than the kana, really.
In any case, I now understood that those characters were not from an entirely different language family, and had not just been thrown in for symbolic purposes. They belonged to the same language, similar to the way Japanese was a mix of kanji and kana.
“What you were reading was the Common Tongue, and what you could not read were the Words of Creation, written in the Signs of the gods, and used for the great magics of ancient times. The ones engraved around the temple were written so as not to activate. Some struck through, others intentionally mistaken in places, and yet others incorporated into elaborate designs.”
I see. If corrupting the symbols prevented them from activating, then it made sense that you could engrave them in a form just wrong enough to still be able to identify the original.
I wondered why they needed to go so far to record the Words of Creation, but the more I listened, the more I felt like I understood.
“The Words of Creation bring a man closer to God than the Common Tongue, you see. It stands to reason that the Words should be engraved in a temple for revering God and praying to God. Do you understand this?”
“Yeah, I get it.” I nodded repeatedly. It made perfect sense.
“Hmm. All right, Will, how about this. Do you know why the Words carry such power to begin with?” Gus posed the question with a grin on his face.
Uh, so what Gus was trying to make me think about here was…
“So like… why we think a stool is a stool, right?” I asked. “Hmm…” I had the feeling I’d read about it somewhere. It was something I had heard even in my previous world, in a place where they had talked about perceptions, representations, and concepts.
Basically, when we look at a four-legged wooden stool, no matter what color it is, or what wood it’s made of, we think, “This is a stool.” We think that even about stools that aren’t, on the whole, identical. Inside our heads, we categorize it by sticking a “stool” label on it.
We don’t normally perceive it as “four legs and a board,” nor do we think “table,” even though a table has four legs and a board. Moreover, if we see a person sitting on a stool, we don’t think “a combination of wood and a human.” We perceive it as “a stool and a human.”
Of course, it is possible to see the stool as “four legs and a board” instead, if we deliberately try to look at it differently, or even as “a mass of wood fibers.” We’re also capable of distinguishing “this stool” and “that stool,” telling apart different things in the same category.
In any case, what it boils down to is that we affix these labels we call “words” to things. That lets us categorize this chaotic world, conceptualize it, and break it into parts to make perception easier. It wouldn’t be possible for us to survive without that ability.
Language is the power that separates the world from indistinct chaos, just as it was in the creation myth I’d just heard.
It was time for me to sum up my rambling thoughts.
“It’s because Words are what separate parts of the world and set out the way it is,” I said.
Gus seemed greatly surprised by my answer. His eyes were opened wide, and his mouth flapped open and closed.
I looked down guiltily.
Gus’s astonishment made me feel shame more than pride.
Because I had memories from the life I’d once lived, I had knowledge—however shallow—that should have been impossible for a toddler like me to attain. It made me feel like I’d cheated a little.
If a “talent” was a gift you had since birth, then maybe these memories of mine did count as a talent. But it still felt wrong.
Gus flew out of the room, phasing right through the wall. He located Mary and Blood in the main hall, and before even reaching them, he burst out, in a flurry of stutters, “Th-Th-Th-Th… The kid may be almost as gifted as me!”
I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable.
“Goodness. Is there something the matter, Old Gus?”
“Ohh, Mary, that boy! Why, I—”
I watched from a distance as Gus relayed excitedly what had just happened. With his pale blue spectral arms gesturing wildly, he explained how my ability to form an argument was extraordinary for my age, how I was insightful, how the ability to grasp something’s true nature equated to magical talent…
Mary the mummy listened placidly. “Really.”
As for Blood the skeleton, he was leaning against a wall, looking in another direction. He didn’t seem remotely interested.
“If we train him in a few things early, he might actually be good for something! Personally, I prefer not to pick trash up off the ground, but perhaps this kid is different. He could—”
I froze.
“Old man!” The voice lashed at him like a whip, before I even had time to form a thought.
It was Blood, still by the wall. Pale blue flames roared in his empty eye sockets. “Quit running your mouth. The kid’s only a couple years old. What you just said is going too far.” I could tell Blood was glaring at him.
“He was found on the ground! Am I wrong? I didn’t want to get involved with him.”
“Not the point.”
“Now that I know he’s got some talent in him, I’m not saying I won’t teach him a thing or—”