I identified seven domains. Fire, water, earth, wind, or sound, the whole thing had rare text and it was written in a really old Gramian more to contextualize the diagrams within it than to really say anything. There was also light, dark and thought. I had inferred the book suggested the men’s masteries of the domains lead to them conquering the original continent, Panima. They didn’t call the land Panima but they described the tree of Farban being wrecked at its centre and the Mothering sea that surrounded Panima, both of which I had heard speculative mentions of in the carteology area of the tomes. So, I pieced it together. I also had a suspicion the dragon robed man was linked to the Great Sage. He had tattoos of fantastic beasts the great sage was said to have defeated.

On the back cover was a shoddy silhouette of a man sat down naked in focus. He had two white orbs in either hand and three circled around his neck. Just a black figure with a lean muscular shape. He was barren of colour.

But his midnight figure was laced with a rainbow, wrapping his body like veins.

It felt profound. I’d only looked at it for a split second, but I felt an angry headache building and my chest tightening my lungs to wheezing.

I slammed the manuscript shut in panic. That was odd. I must have not bothered finishing the book when Lunar gave it to me. I knew that didn’t happen before. Nor had I seen it in my first ten passes through the pages.

***

The first time I ever heard of the Great Sage I was maybe eight. We went to be picked for apprenticeships into the Holy Sages order by the village saint. It all felt wrong, like the beads. They preached compassion and love, discipline and yielding. That all man’s power came through the Great Sage and we should love him as the Holy Sage knew more than any man could and loved us despite knowing our faults and shames.

Yet the church lead by fear, using the great Sage and his templars to do the dirty work: flogging heretics, guarding churches, stealing orphans.

When we went the Saint told us the Sages origins. How he was once the Avatar. A man who became so powerful nature booned him with its will. But he was impure as man, and his power became unstable. He was plagued as a crude copy of a deity. The Saint said he casted his humanity into his will, gaining purity and enlightenment. His will was the power of the Great Sage and the Holy Sage was the enlightened Avatar himself. The Holy Sage, now pure gained immortality and made the Sphire, the first holy book. The saint said the Avatar left his wisdom from enlightenment as teachings for man so they too could earn his care for the afterlife.

I didn’t like the priest but his tales left me charmed, I remember being in awe, hanging on his words like a spell. As the Avatar distorted light, vanquished seas and threw balls of energy, I saw myself next to him, shaping the movements, performing the crafts. A single man who conquered ancient lands. Something there rattled the adventure within me, I could see myself growing to rule cities and empires, answering only to nature herself.

“God is a chosen kind, man should not try to be God. Man is not God.” The Saint said the words to all the orphans, but looked directly to me for the last few.

The look he gave… it’s like he saw it all right through my skull. His expression somehow held scorn, reprimand and disapproval all at once.

I saw my empires fade, my cities crumble.

“The greatest sin hence,” he continued, “Is the crescent ego. An ego so large the man becomes blinded, lost in darkness. They’ll animate the Avatar, either with hedon idols or in their minds, they’ll try and restrict his might into what they know, into mere man, maybe to try and channel his strength or defile him. Know now these men are lost. They have crossed the border of blissful ignorance to heretic arrogance. Those who question the Holy Sage, merely elemental and hedonistic, or challenge for the Great Sage’s power, are abandoned by the Avatar, as they abandon him.”

I almost shivered at his words. I wanted to slip to the back of the orphans hidden from him. But a question sprung to mind, and try as It did, it wouldn’t be subdued by fear.

“how…why does the church still have paintings and statues of the Duality then?” I could see Vam casting dark faces towards me but I kept my attention on the priest.

He’d usually be focused on Lunar or some of the more difficult older children but none of them were wanted by the priest. Lunar said she heard the priest only wanted the more callow orphans, the ones he could mold as he wished.

“The Holy Sage guides the church. Those in the order follow a pure craft, Drawing closer to God with their makes.”

I thought the words hypocritical but the flare up in Vam’s glare when my lips began to part was enough warning to stop. I nodded to the saint, but he just gave me a judging look and moved on.

The look didn’t seem to escape my peers and sniggers sounded. I buried myself into the crowd until there was no more crowd to tunnel.

***

I knew the book could help me with the mysterious beads and I couldn’t resist promise of a good puzzle.

I went through the book again. This time I noted anything that happened seven times. Like the beads. The most obvious was colours. The book didn’t really say much about them, it sometimes used colors interchangeably with the domains but there wasn’t much about the domains either.

I placed the beads into different orders, things like how many times a color appeared in the book, or the color graduation. For each I slotted the beads onto the string and put it on. Nothing happened each time. I wasn’t even sure something was supposed to happen...

I was beginning to grow frustrated. Maybe I should return the beads and string before Velma returned or maybe ask Lunar for help.

No. I felt a need to puzzle through. There was something to this, something here.

I let my fingers dance through the pages of the manuscript once more, darting my eyes between diagrams, flashing across the texts. I couldn’t think of anything. With how frustrated I was I only felt somewhat bad jumping to the picture of the meditator once more.

The preachers words once more swam in my mind. Looking at the meditator returned the headache, swirling my thoughts into a storm. ‘Man is not God’. Oww. ‘Arrogance.’ Oww. ‘Idol’. Oww. ‘Abandoned’. Ow-ahhh.

I got it. Idol.

I placed two beads in either hand and laced three into a necklace and posed, trying to match the meditator. Nothing happened. The beads felt wrong in the pose, not different, just wrong. I tried again, changing the positions of the beads and still nothing. If I just tried every combination of beads, I’d still be trying to find the ‘right’ combination long after Velma returned- long after the Holy Sage returned for Reckoning really.

‘Man is not God’. Below never above. The words seemed to peck at me in my growing frustration, a mix of the sphires scriptures and the priest's words. ‘Merely elemental and hedonistic’.

I’d never read the sphire but I’d read books discussing it. One of them theorised most of what belonged to hedon, Mother Earth, were just elemental based. Much less than God who was beyond nature.

What if earth, wind, fire and water- brown, grey, red and blue- were below a higher purple, black and white, the latter representing thought, dark and light.

I set up the beads again, lacing the higher colors on the string and posed once more. Before I could even consider any religious ramifications, the beads started to glow. Something finally happened.

The glow was somewhere between a sheath of water and the sun’s haze, I didn’t want to look away from it.

It didn’t really waiver in boldness as I held it but it seemed to grow and shrink as I moved it around.

After some experimentation I decided try and build the growth. Its brightness acted as compass, leading me back into the main floor- and I knew immediately where it’d take me. I followed the mystic guide right back to Velma’s desk. Everything was the same. I walked the guide around the table. It hit peak glow on the right leg.

I had to.

I puddled the beads on the floor and started fiddling with the leg. Last time I searched I felt indents but ignored them as they didn’t seem to matter, maybe stubbings from frustrated kicks or aggressive tapping, but this time I counted them.

My heart stirred when I realised there were exactly seven. Within seconds I had two beads in either hand and the necklace on. I assumed the meditators pose once more and closed my eyes in anticipation. My eyelids casting me into a warm orange rather than black made it clear the beads were still glowing.

Another mystery? The beads assured me there was something to find so I couldn’t give up now. But even though Velma would likely come back late or at least past closing to avoid all the embers- Lunar could be back anytime and I wasn’t sure if that should be worrying or relieving.

Did these beads link to her and Velma’s hand signs? If they both knew about all of this why wasn’t I told? And why would Lunar have us spy on Velma? Clearly Lunar knew too much, and I didn’t even know where she was. But she gave me the book and that acted as a clue, besides I couldn’t imagine Lunar doing anything bad- other than the espionage and theft, obviously.

I tried many things. I placed the beads in the holes, hoping this was just a crafted copy of the childish wooden jigsaws. I wrapped the beads as a necklace around the leg but that failed too. I picked the necklace, readying to test another guess, the chain unlinked and the beads fell. They spread like water loosed on concrete, messy in end assembly. Almost as disordered as the leg.

I lunged to the table, grabbing an ink ready to draw. The leg was on the carpet so I rolled it along the floor, a radian to a third each turn. My drawing marked the indents on the leg but mapped to a flat plane on my palm. It was a copy, a replica. An idol. From the priest’s words I didn’t think it would have to be exact.

I did the same with the beads now, mapping their configuration with the drawing. Before placing the last bead I could already tell the stubs weren’t random, my drawing shaping into an unknown character.

The more beads I placed, the clearer the symbol and the more baffled I became.

It looked old, at least it wasn’t from a local tongue nor derivatives. If it was a symbol it was either from far away or long ago.

After I placed the seventh bead, with the formed, the beads once again glowed, actuating the symbol with a heavenly quill, bathing my eyes in white.