127. The Elemental Law of Fire (II)

Zane could feel the shape of the Major Law he was working toward—could feel what he was missing. There was something between Emission and Absorption, a missing link.

Frowning, he honed in. Started paying special attention to the way heat seeped into him.

He sensed a Law there. But it was hiding, too small to make out… the heat wasn't strong enough.

He stood.

Time to turn up the heat.

He started wading deeper into the Lake.

If you only had his Fire Laws, he'd be forced to turn back fast—right about where the reds started changing color, flickering yellow. The Fire Laws there got too intense; they ran over his own.

But he had Elemental Steel. So he shoved on ahead.

The deeper he went, the more they lashed at him, roasting from all sides; it felt like you were stuck in the middle of a churning furnace. The heat grew oppressive, all-encompassing.

But Elemental Steel held firm, stood proud; it warded off the flames. The Fire Laws, thicker and thicker, raged against it. Tried burning out a weakness, tried melting off his skin. But Steel held strong.

At some point, he crossed a clear threshold. The fire was now equal parts red, yellow and white, flickering back and forth. And now he felt deep underwater; a blistering pressure started mounting over him, running down his neck, licking down his arms.

He kept going.

Another few dozen feet and everything was going yellow. The flames began to shine; it started to feel like he was under attack—like he was stuck in the middle of a crowd of Level 80s or Level 90s, and they were all launching Fire Skills at him at once, slapping all over him, and breaking against his skin, singing his hairs, watering his eyes…

He kept going.

The farther he went, the clearer he felt those Laws—it got him excited; it pushed him on.

Soon he passed the deepest yellow dots on his mini-map. They were two other Signed—he felt them sense him. He felt them perk up in shock—wondering who this was breaking into the Lake's deepest depths. Depths no one there had dared to go.

He was almost at the very bottom now.

There he saw a pit.

A pit of pure shining yellow-white fire; it grew so thick here it was like a second lake at the bottom of this one. Here the fire clumped so thick it seemed an incandescent swamp.

Curious, he waded into it knee-deep.

In retrospect this might not have been the best idea. But with how big he was, Zane had learned he could get away with a lot. When he was curious he just poked his head into things; usually it turned out fine.

The moment he stepped into the pit, it attacked him.

Elemental Fire latched on, raking molten claws down his skin, scorching, blasting at him—Steel had to work to fight it off. For the first time his leg actually felt like it was on fire—felt in danger. His Laws couldn't block it all out—it was just far too hot. He could feel his skin coming off him already, feel his skin going raw. And it was Perfect Steel Skin, so it didn't peel off. It melted off.

He winced. Even he couldn't take this long, he knew.

But something weird happened as he stood there. The deeper it burned him, the more fiercely it burned him, the clearer he felt its Laws. Zane had never been one to flinch from pain. He shrugged it off; he was too fascinated to stop right now.

So though he seemed to be melting a little, he waded deeper in.

He got thigh-deep, then chest-deep, then neck-deep—and by then, it was like being flayed. He was literally neck-deep in it; he almost couldn't help but comprehend it. And with how hopped up he was on Law Fruit—and with that Phoenix Feather in hand—

It didn't even feel like comprehending anymore.

He closed his eyes. He opened his mind—

And it felt as simple as looking—and seeing.

He got it; there was no need to think about it, really. He saw the way the fire tried taking over his body, the way it tried to spread heat all over him. The way his Steel resisted it—the way it moved through anyways, but slower, seeping through the skin and the muscle and the bone… the way it moved slower and slower through each layer, through each material—

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖

Huh. Nice.

It almost felt like cheating. Getting two A-rank Law treasures around him, plus a bunch of Law Fruit, plus his comprehension…

Then there was one left.

He started searching. And searching. And to his surprise, he couldn't find it—even with his head so primed for it, so crystal clear, he could see every little strand of Fire Law streaming around him. … Weird.

Then he had a thought.

He got the feeling he wasn't seeing it because it wasn't there. Not yet, at least. He had to let himself roast for a bit first. It just felt right. He wasn't even really sure why. But he trusted his intuition; when something felt right, it almost always was.

So he did. He sat there, cooking in that brutal heat until all his skin started sloughing off his body—until he was raw all over, and a burning blanket of pain spiked up all over him. His muscles were coming under attack; the Fire Law was breaking through, starting to ravage him, pouring it on—he felt it everywhere, viscerally, spreading even to the core of him, a brilliant heat, a heat like nothing he'd ever felt—

𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!

ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕌𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%

And then he felt it. He scanned the landscape of his body and saw it pop into view, so easy, so simple. He saw it and how the heat inside him was like the heat outside. The exact same temperature. The way they flowed into each other, absorbing, emitting, in perfect balance…

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕝 𝔼𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕓𝕣𝕚𝕦𝕞

It really was like a 'eureka' moment—he saw it, and it clicked. So easy.

Then he felt a numbness down the whole left side of his body. He blinked.

It seemed his nerve endings were melting straight off his body.

…Probably time to get out of here.

He waded his way out, splashing that ultra-hot white fire everywhere, and came to a smoking, panting halt a few feet out from the pit. There he sat, breathing heavily, and that Fiery Renewal flared up; ghostly flames burned up and down his whole body.

Slowly, painfully, scraps of skin grew back on. He let it do its work. In the meantime, he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and smiled.

Now he had everything.

Heat Absorption.

Heat Emission.

Fire Resistance.

Thermal Equilibrium.

They came together in his mind, making the shape of something greater. He was so mired in Fire right now it came as easy as breathing. He knew how it worked. And the powers of heat were his.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕒𝕛𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕝 𝔽𝕝𝕦𝕩

Man.

He was pumped up.

It really was almost unfair. With how stoked he was right now he pretty much just had to make contact with a Minor Law. Then he had it.

Which meant he had three Major Laws: Scorched Wrath, Ethereal Flame, and now Thermal Flux.

He wasn't far from Elemental—just a few more to go. Two, maybe? He was a little winded, soul-wise, but still eager to go.

He leaped right into the next one.

First, he closed his eyes and just put out feelers. Tried to understand what in his Elemental Fire was missing. It was a lot easier now that he had so much Elemental Fire around him—when he put his fire up against it, it soon grew clear what was lacking.

He had a lot about fire's burning—even fire's beginning, with Ignition. What about how it ended? What happened then—and after?

He frowned. Then he kept probing. Just groped in that direction, all around him.

He got the feeling this wasn't really how you were supposed to do it.

Even for someone like Avery, who seemed to have a very strong sense of Laws, she had to do some careful mapping of what it was she wanted to comprehend. She had to know exactly what Minor Law she was shooting for; sometimes she studied up on it, memorized a bunch of facts about it, that kind of thing. If she was studying how water flowed she might spend a few days squinting at a river, drawing diagrams, studying the science, then swimming in it a little, feeling it out, that kind of thing. She understood it every little bit of it. Only then could she have a solid foundation to break through.

When Zane told her how he went about things, she started hitting him with a spoon.

Once Zane saw some poor electric cultivator hooking himself up to a battery treasure with jumper cables and shocking himself over and over until he couldn't take it anymore. Another few months of this, he said, and he'd be ready to tackle the Minor Law of Shock.

This all seemed a bit much to Zane. It was the same Law Zane had gotten in an afternoon by scratching his head and thinking about it a bit. When Zane suggested it to the guy he'd gotten a blank stare.

Zane usually kind of just blundered around until he got the Laws he was looking for. Which hadn't failed him so far. So he kept doing it.

Anyway. He was having trouble finding it around him—but when he put out a probe, the Phoenix Feather in his hands started calling out to him. It had something it wanted to show him.

So he opened his mind to it.

A vision unfurled before him, smudged like an impressionist painting. But the Laws he felt as vividly as though they were real.

It was a world reduced to mounds on mounds ash, running into the far distance—still smoldering from recent fires. Above hung a blanket of slate-gray clouds streaked black. And far above even that, essence flared up in massive spikes.

A battle was underway.

There was a furious dragonlike roar—a blast of essence.

Then a shrill, mournful cry.

A streak of flaming red hurtled to earth. It was a phoenix—a magnificent creature, sleek and bright-red all over—except for a few streaks of yellow under its eyes. Somehow he knew it was the same phoenix his feather had come from.

It was spinning out of control; screeching, struggling, failing; huge gashes tore up its body. Gashes infested with some unknown Law, gashes that cut to the heart of it. A Law so complex Zane couldn't even understand what he was seeing. It had something of Darkness Law in it—but also Water; and when the two came together, they made something totally different, uniquely destructive…

The phoenix bled sputtering dying flames as it fell.

Then it crashed, at last, into plain desolate earth. And lay there. It closed its eyes for the last time.

It erupted in brilliant flame.

When they burned out, there was nothing left. Just ash.

And yet… the scene didn't fade.

Now that Zane looked close, he saw there were still Fire Laws lingering in the ashes—shimmering, powerful Laws.

He frowned. Paid closer attention. The Laws didn't go away. They'd stay there forever, he suddenly knew. Because they represented a simple truth—what was destroyed in fire cannot be returned. Fire was the great leveler; it made ash of everything. Flattened all the wonderful uniquenesses of the world in a single dull pile. Gone, forever.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔼𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝔸𝕤𝕙

But then—

A fuzzy little head started poking out of the ashes. Two big bright eyes peeked out. A phoenix chick.

How could a phoenix defy the Law?

But it wasn't defying the Law. Because this bird was not the same bird that died a few seconds ago; you could see it in the markings around its eyes, bright yellow, streaking up, not down. This thing was reborn—because though what was destroyed cannot be remade, its remains, its legacy, can help spur the growth of the next generation. With phoenixes and wildfires alike—sometimes you had to burn down the old to make the new. That was a basic mechanism of the Universe.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔸𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕟 ℝ𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕨𝕒𝕝

It was a cute little bird. Zane kind of liked it. It was once they started flying when they became trouble, he decided. This one was okay.