“Sir, do you mind if I use our Hall of Names?” This time, Wolf tried his luck with Headmaster Smith. After teleporting over from Northshield, he first rushed to confirm no monsters attacked his baby in the two weeks he’d been gone, then he returned to the Headmaster’s office.

“You recovered from your injury?” Headmaster Smith asked, his pupils dilating a fraction.

Wolf nodded, but offered no explanation.

He probably consumed a bunch of Monster Cores, extracting and refining the remnant Soul Force. Headmaster Smith rationalized Wolf’s condition, staring at him as if trying to strip him of his lying skin and dig his way to the truth; his thoughts more than just a metaphor.

The young True-Namer endured the scrutiny without batting an eye.

Headmaster Smith frowned. Fine. Have it your way. I’m the one to ultimately benefit from your advancement.

“Alright. Give me an hour. I’ll wake up Richard and have him handle it.” Headmaster Smith dealt with things in his usual manner, through proxy.

***

Wolf sat on the throne of bone in his second Mind Hall. Green mist thrumming with life filled the wooden chamber as Wolf looked at the only carved column. It was a caryatid. Unlike Archibald’s masculine pillar, which bore the weight of the world on his muscular shoulders, this woman had a slim figure and raised her arms towards the sky, gently touching the ceiling.

Her form was faceless. To his great shame, Wolf couldn’t remember it. The only clue of her origin were pointy elven ears and flat teeth, which offered a stark contrast with Sky’s real ones, but Wolf believed her natural teeth looked just right on his mother, who found her true nature towards the end.

While carving the figure, Wolf infused it with every ounce of warmth and safety he recalled from his scattered, blurry memories. Regretfully, or perhaps fortunately, Wolf felt no hint of Sky’s aura from the sculpture. All it contained was love and an ocean’s worth of life.

While the first Mental Aspect got up from the throne, the second one kept carving his column. Wolf started refining it yesterday, so it still appeared like a gnarled tree trunk.

Mental Aspects nodded to each other, then continued their tasks. One Wolf went back to sculpting, the other exited the room and entered the corridor of clashing colors.

“Metallic blue?” Wolf gazed at the color saturating the third hall's door, then pressed his palms and forehead against the cold, hard surface. He closed his eyes, and the metallic blue glow filled his vision.

“Light’s color is the first hint. Solid, strong, unyielding. What immediately comes to me when I touch this wind of light is ‘can light be so hard?’” Wolf paused. “Something heavy… That’s the feeling.”

His consciousness shifted while he considered the initial clues. Wolf wasn’t surprised to see his father’s ultimate sacrifice. However, what he witnessed wasn’t a human’s demise. Somehow, the same scene evoked emotions worlds apart from death.

Wolf saw his father standing in front of him. Archibald was proud and strong. Despite his withered appearance, he stood tall, imposing, like an impervious wall, shielding his son from whatever dangers existed on the other side.

The frail, bloodless man withstood every threat aimed at Wolf. He grew taller and more solid with each passing moment, becoming a grand mountain piercing the sky. Wolf gazed and craned his neck until it hurt, seeing the peak, aware that even if the heavens fell, that mountain would prop them for him, for that is the role of a father. Something inside Wolf shook, and a wave of bluish light washed over him and pulled him from the vision.

Just like with the stormy sea, Wolf faced an outline of a mountain.

“I can’t make out details, but my rough understanding seems to be correct.” He analyzed the sight before him. “Why didn’t I see this image when comprehending Death? Was it because I already knew it and I simply needed a little push?”

While Wolf wondered, a lustrous, blue wind blew from the mountaintop and another wave of metallic light washed over him.

He was a child, standing in front of an enraged rabble. Thousands of villagers shouted at Wolf and Archibald because Wolf had beaten an eye out of some random boy. Wolf vaguely recalled this scene, but he dispelled any attempt at trying to remember the exact turn of events.

The sensation and experience were important, not details. He focused on this father. Archibald stood with his back turned towards him as he faced the mob. That broad back thrummed with life, powerful and healthy, unlike the dying man from his previous vision.

That giant, muscular back grew, turning into a mountain. A peal of thunder echoed throughout the mountain and the villagers scattered in panic, leaving behind only the father and son. Then, a metallic wave dissolved the vision.

“Is my third name related to fatherhood, or paternal love? No. The color is wrong. It should be deep and matte, not light and metallic.” Wolf guessed, but when the vision of a mountain appeared, it wasn’t any clearer.

“Fortunately, I didn’t focus on those two concepts.” He now knew that understanding a True Name needed a soft approach, not a hard one. With hardness came errors, which are difficult to correct, while with softness one would drift, but still reach their destination, given enough time.

The emotionless wind blew, carrying away the confused young man.

This vision’s timeline was jumbled up. He bashed noble heads and rammed spears up noble asses in the Mage Academy’s dueling ring before feeding Mandy a healing potion and helping her recover from her wounds.

Archibald was nowhere in sight, and the order of events didn’t match reality, but the vision still told a story to Wolf. He didn’t see a mountain until he realized Mandy grew smaller. He heard sneers and insults heading her way, but he crushed them before they reached her.

“Is it some sort of love? I don’t think I loved Mandy back then?”

The wave washed away the scene, dissolving it into an unclear outline of a mountain. Wolf made no progress whatsoever.

“I don’t understand. I need more information.”

Wolf glared at the mountain’s silhouette. He couldn’t figure out what this mount represented. The wind rose from its peak, but Wolf sensed it had lost power.

The world blurred, and he watched himself save Wayde from an assassin years ago. In that scene, just like Mandy’s, Wayde grew tiny while Wolf became a mountain. “Alright. It’s about protecting. Father protected me, I protected Mandy and Wayde. The wind is emotionless and my feelings towards these three are different.”

The vision ended and Wolf once more appeared before the mountain. This time, it wasn’t a mere outline. He saw blurred features. “So, my third True Name is Protection. However, protection comes in many forms. Mine is active, while father endured whatever life threw at him. My protection is more of an attack…”

Spurred by his frustration, the wind changed. It was faint, caressing Wolf’s cheek with warmth, as it drew him into the next vision. The scene was utterly unfamiliar. Inky blackness mired Wolf’s vision, and he immediately struggled against it. The air he breathed condensed, becoming thick syrup, and the surrounding space turned solid, pressing against his chest and sanity, forcing him back. Wolf retaliated, pushing forward. Finally, the obscuring barrier broke, and through shattered reality, Wolf faced the world’s entirety. Countless glittering specks darted back and forth, moving across tiny fractions of space.

His heart shook, his mind reeled, trying to process the ocean of information flooding his mind as he tracked all manlings of his world. Then, in the impossible chaos that seemed hollow, a terror appeared. The world quivered in submission before this entity. In Wolf’s frail manling mind, she took the appearance of a peerless beauty. Platinum colored scales covered her skin, and she radiated moonlike holiness so tangible it pierced and destroyed the surrounding darkness. Through the boundaries of space and time, she glanced at Wolf. The visage was eyeless, featureless, for his mind couldn’t comprehend the countenance of an existence which could destroy worlds with a glance, whose presence endangered the fragile reality of his world.

The platinum woman’s appearance dwarfed life, making the Earthmother Vow nothing but feeble echoes of echoes compared to her Authority. And yet, that entity bled.

The woman once had four arms, but one of them was stumped. Three drops of blazing magma dripped from the raw wound before the continent-sized scales squirmed to close it. Those drops dwarfed mountains. Heavier than worlds, they fell like asteroids. They pierced the black void and smashed into Wolf’s homeworld, yet, when they touched the ground, the earth rippled, sucking them in, not letting them disrupt its operation.

Wolf watched the radiant holiness track a pitiful wisp’s wormlike crawl somewhere in the unimaginable distance. Even though she was faceless, her emotions incinerated Wolf’s wretched existence.

Pity, hope, frustration and anger.

“No, it’s not mere anger.” Wolf sensed the smoldering fury which would devour worlds and extinguish stars once released.

But he saw no object of her righteous wrath.

Far down in the mortal dust, cobwebs of darkness tangled the tiny wisp that was Wolf. His father dead, his world destroyed, he squirmed through the dirt, no more than a corpse-eating madman. A net engulfed him, squeezed and dug into his sanity, but the elegant claw grasped them between her talons. With the care of a woman trying to clean an ant without harming it, she tore the threads. The blackness ripped, and the vision ended.