Secrets! Rami yelled.
Ruwen tried to slow his heart rate and wondered if he needed to drop into a level three meditation to make his brain work again. Rami didn’t make things any easier, as she pleaded with him to let her free.
“Secrets?” Ruwen said casually. “From the Book of Secrets?”
Blapy tilted her head. “Yes.”
“How do I owe Pen my life?”
Blapy tapped her chin. “In the Spirit Realm, I had to make a decision about you. Eventually you’ll be a danger to me, but there are some things I value more than my own life, and I didn’t want to risk them. But your actions in the Spirit Realm confirmed my suspicion that you were in Pen’s books.”
“Suspicion? It’s not clear?”
Blapy laughed. “Gods are never clear when they can be obtuse. Even Pen. Worse, he found a type of poetry he adored and coded his secrets in them. They’re not even good poems, but he was proud of them. My time with him made the meaning in the first three secrets understandable. But the fourth has always been a mystery.”
Blapy stared at Ruwen and remained quiet. Rami’s voice had turned into a long scream to set her free, and Ruwen triggered Last Breath to give himself some freedom from his raging curiosity.
The silence between them stretched, and it took all his training to stay relaxed and not run around the small library screaming in eagerness.
“Would you like to see for yourself?” Blapy asked.
Ruwen thought he might die from relief, and even Rami quieted down. “Yes, please.”
Two pedestals replaced the chair in the middle of the room, a book on each. From the descriptions Ruwen had read earlier, he knew the Book of Secrets sat on the left, and Pen’s Journal on the right. He forced himself to stay still and not jump toward them.
Blapy walked over to the left pedestal and a stool appeared under her feet, raising her up to Ruwen’s chest. She opened the very thin Book of Secrets to the first page and waved him over.
Ruwen tried to act casual as he strode toward the pedestal, but it was impossible to hide his excitement. He looked down at the three-line poem, the only writing on the first page.
the first axiom
heralds darkness, ensuring,
the last axiom
The handwriting was fluid and beautiful, as if the author cared as much about the way the words looked as he did on how it sounded. It didn’t seem that exciting for a secret, though. Rami tried biting Ruwen’s hand again.
Promise not to do anything stupid and I’ll take my hand away so you can see, Ruwen told Rami.
I never do anything stupid.
Before we got here, I would’ve agreed.
Fine.
Ruwen dropped his hand and Rami looked down from behind his ear.
Blapy looked up at him. “You look disappointed.”
“Sorry, I just don’t understand it.”
“That’s the way of obfuscated secrets. The clues only make sense once you’ve figured it out yourself. Which makes the whole thing pointless. Although I have to admit his fourth secret borders on clever.”
“Can you tell me what this first secret means?”
Ruwen waited through the tense silence and forced himself to breathe when he realized he’d been holding his breath.
Blapy looked back at the book. “All Pen’s disciples would understand the first two secrets, as they lived through them. This first secret is actually quite profound as it forces you to expand your understanding of reality.”
“Over and over again, the last two months have done nothing but expand my understanding.”
“Yes, you are like a snail, slowly moving from your tidal pool toward the ocean,” Blapy said, not in a mean way, but a matter-of-fact tone. “But this first secret shook me, and at the time I had already explored the deepest parts of our metaphorical ocean. It is hard to comprehend.”
“I would like to try.”
Blapy looked up at him. “You’ve studied dimensional math, but how much star math did you learn?”
“Not a lot. I understand the concepts of star systems and the grouping of them into galaxies, which our universe holds. The scale of the universe, honestly, is difficult to grasp.”
“Exactly. The first Secret Pen discovered,” Blapy paused and took a deep breath. “Is that his birth triggered the destruction of our universe.”
Obviously, the universe still existed, so Ruwen waited for Blapy to continue. When she didn’t, Ruwen prodded her with a question. “But Pen stopped it?”
“The Universe’s size, as you say, is hard to grasp, so the destruction went unnoticed for a long time. The darkness moved across galaxies like a giant wave. When Pen discovered it, calculated when it had begun and connected it to his birth, the darkness had become too big to fight directly.”
“Something capable of destroying entire galaxies is frightening,” Ruwen said.
Blapy pulled her pigtails. “Yes, but you are missing something even more frightening.”
What sent the darkness, Rami whispered.
Blapy looked at Rami and smiled. “Yes. Something outside our Universe is monitoring us, monitoring all Universes with significant Spirit in them, for the existence of an Axiom. Once one is born, that Universe is destroyed.”
“Why?” Ruwen asked.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that, and while power is a component, I think it might be as simple as controlling chaos.”
“That seems a little harsh,” Ruwen said.
Blapy shrugged. “If there are uncountable Universes, and Axioms had the power and control to affect other Universes, you would eventually have uncountable Axioms creating chaos if you didn’t limit it somehow. It makes sense from an organizational and order standpoint.”
Ruwen tried to wrap his head around an entity outside their universe with the power to destroy it. It made his head hurt.
Ruwen re-read the poem.
the first axiom
heralds darkness, ensuring,
the last axiom
“It makes sense now,” Ruwen said.
Blapy nodded. “The second secret is related to the first. It was the mechanism we used to stall the darkness and save the Universe.”
Blapy turned the page and Ruwen read the second secret.
Fall’s harvest ablaze
bright flames scattering shadows
sowing our sunrise
“This makes as much sense as the first one,” Ruwen said.
Blapy nodded. “The quickest way to
