The man and the boy stood in the tower in silence.
Fara took a few slow steps closer to an open window as if to get a better look at the view below. What he saw was rather different from what his grandson would see. During his borrowed time, he had begun to see all layers and time zones of the ether without concentrating. His vision was filled with overlapping layers of script in motion. A sense of sadness and tiredness overcame him. He couldn't reason why he felt that way. The tiredness he understood as he looked underneath the Daelan script attaching his essence to this world. He should not have been alive at all. But the sadness, what would he make out of it? He knew exactly where he was going after the Otto nearby would release him from time and escort him to other worlds. Was it a human reaction to feel sad when there was nothing to be afraid about? Was it a pathetic and self-righteous attempt to convince himself that there was still work left to do here? Would the Masters still grant him another year or two? He banished those thoughts quickly as returned his focus on Sola who had been standing behind him quietly.
Sola ran his hfingers through his thick black hair. He thought of years past, the years without a care in the world, when adulthood seemed like a distant nightmare and responsibility was a joke. His mind worked feverishly trying to figure the task handed to him so suddenly. The terrible faces of the Daelan crept into his mind. He thought of the Eldar, the other mighty progenitors. The tales and legends he had heard and read as a child had come alive. They were as real as he had always suspected. It frightened and intrigued him at the same time. Could he trust his own intuition to separate the myths and half-truths from the absolute and undeniable truth, from the way things are?
"No, you cannot," came the solemn answer. Fara placed a hand on the boy's shoulder while continuing:
"You mustn't trust intuition although we are blessed with greater knowledge than those who came before. We see more than our ancestors but the human mind works in mysterious ways. It takes a great deal of work to recognize which things in your vision are actually real and which are the fabrication of your own mind. Your desires, wishes and dreams leak into the ether, and in a subjective way, they are real, but they are not manifest in this time. Only the Daelan and Eldar can transpose their thoughts truly into being. They participate to the creation that way. We humans are not allowed to do such nor do we have the power to do so."
"So, if one would want something to be changed around here, the only way would be to ask the Masters to do it," Sola asked.
"Exactly," Fara answered without hesitation, "This is the very reason they keep to themselves. During thousands of years they have been flooded with requests, even demands, to have something altered but the world cannot, and will not, change for a single human. We can shape and carve the physical nature, transform even its subtlest energies to aid us, but we cannot change the fate of this world. We cannot rewrite the scripts from where all this once came into being but the masters can to some extent. Some foolish men in the past have thought that they could gain power over these beings and I fear that our beloved Grand Council is planning to do the same. When you embark on your journey, first you must find out whether someone in the entourage is working for the Grand Council. Your quest is not to be jeopardized by those maggots."
Sola, while looking thoughtful, asked, "Why does the Grand Council think the masters will heed to their demands?"
Fara pulled a troubled smile on his weary face and said: "Human arrogance, dear boy. Human arrogance, pride and the lust for absolute power over the creation are the primary reasons. Understand that there is no good or evil here. Those are subjective and artificial attributes. At this day and age there still are people who think that good or evil are somehow absolute or some sort of unchangeable values. What might appear good to us might be abomination to others. We are an opposing force to what the Grand Council represents. Thank the higher powers, we are in a world where we can speak our minds and hearts freely. In my opinion, we must coexist with the beings and forces here, but we cannot rule over or exploit them. We can always ask for guidance and help, but we must be prepared for a negative response. We must be able to find the answers ourselves. This is why you must complete my task and, in your turn, pass the knowledge and the mission to your heir."
"If I understood correctly," Sola mused, "the Masters actually know everything but they are not telling us. Why don't they release all their knowledge and wisdom to the world at large? You have always told me that knowledge must be passed on to those who have ears to listen and heart to understand. Has the mankind in whole not evolved enough to learn and appreciate these things?"
"If there was a simple answer to that I would share it with you," said the old man, "the legend has that the Daelan have a library where everything man has ever learned and everything he would ever learn are recorded. Do you remember the painting of the Daelan in the Council Room where the Master and the Mistress are holding together three books? Those are the true world chronicles but the volumes are curiously made; the nature of those works is not fixed. The books write their own content as time progresses. They deal with finite possibilities of past, present and future, and as present is passed on to yesterday shaping the future as it goes, so does the content of the books change. Therefore, the reality, if we can fathom such thing, is in constant motion and cannot be recorded as a solid unchangeable truth. You cannot, in absence of a better expression, preach that, for example, to the tribes in the south who still cling to their ancient barbaric ways. They need mysticism and supernatural beings in order to explain the uncertainty of existence. They simply cannot accept the fact that there is no simple one-syllable word to explain the nature of the universe! They need faith, and it doesn't matter whether the content of the faith is true or not, since it's, well, faith. They do not see what we do and they think of us as sorcerers and witches. The lack of understanding often leads to hatred, and hatred will only lead to violence. The only thing keeping those savages from marching here and burning our beautiful cities, and us for that matter, is Tyrus and his merry men, who constantly push them further away from our borders. Here is a valuable lesson: to those arrogant and lesser minds it actually doesn't matter if things are right or wrong as long as they believe, or someone tells them, that they are right."
