Perhaps you are stronger. Will you learn the first language?”
Nicodemus took a long breath of liquid black. “I will.”
THE DARKNESS LIT up with four aquamarine characters.
“These are the four runes of Language Prime,” Chimera said behind him.
Nicodemus glanced over his shoulder to try to glimpse Chimera but saw only blackness. So he turned back to the complex cyan characters. All were three-dimensional. Two had hexagonal structures; the other two, pentagonal structures. As the runes rotated slowly, Nicodemus realized that he had instantly memorized their every detail. He could already see how they would fit together into long, spiraling sentences.
“I’ve never learned anything so quickly,” he remarked in amazement.
Chimera spoke. “You are not learning; you are awakening an ancestral knowledge. And now that I have shown you the runes, your education is nearly complete.”
Nicodemus laughed, but when the hidden creature did not reply, he realized that she was serious. “But I have no Language Prime vocabulary, no grammar.” He laughed again. “I don’t even know what kind of spells are written in Language Prime.”
Chimera’s reply came in a whisper. “Look at your hands.”
Nicodemus did as he was told and then jumped. An aquamarine glow now suffused his fingers and palms.
“Fiery blood! I’m casting in Language Prime!” He brought his hands closer to be sure. “But the runes are impossibly small,” he said in amazement. “There must be… I don’t know a number large enough to describe how many runes there must be in my pinky alone.”
He pulled back his sleeves and then peered down the collar of his robes. His entire body was saturated with Language Prime. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The other magical languages we forge in our muscles, but these runes are forming in every bit of my body.”
The darkness around Nicodemus undulated as Chimera’s voice drew closer. “That is because Language Prime runes are not controlled by your body. They are your body.”
“That makes no sense. And what is this place, anyway? Is this my real, physical body? Are you showing me illusion?”
“Only your mind is within my book. But the magical body I have given you here will behave just as your physical body does. When you leave the book, you will see that I am not deceiving you.” Suddenly her voice was whispering an inch from his left ear. “Now look into nature.”
Nicodemus turned to see a square window cut into the darkness. On the other side was an image of the nearby nighttime forest. Much was familiar: pine trees, sword ferns, a young buck picking his way among the vegetation and rocks.
But most wondrously, the deer glowed faintly with cyan light. “He’s casting Language Prime!” Nicodemus said. “But that’s impossible. Only humans can… unless he’s a familiar and…” His voice died as he realized that the ferns too glowed with Language Prime spells. Only the rocks were devoid of text.
“This must be fantasy!” he whispered.
“No, Nicodemus Weal, what you saw before you learned Language Prime was illusion. Now see the world with new eyes.”
Just then a pale emperor moth fluttered before the window. A dark tentacle shot out to encircle the moth and drew it into the blackness.
Nicodemus jerked back in surprise. The liquid darkness around him became as thin as air. The window into the forest winked out of existence.
The large moth fluttered about in a panic. Because of the dark, Nicodemus could not see the insect’s body; rather, he saw the Language Prime texts that saturated the creature.
“I have pulled this moth’s mind into the Bestiary and given it a magical body that will behave exactly as its physical counterpart would. Now hold out your hand, Nicodemus Weal, and see into the life of things.”
Nicodemus reached out and the moth fluttered about his arm for a moment before alighting on his thumb.
As the insect’s legs grabbed hold of Nicodemus’s skin, an ecstatic heat rushed through his body. He felt dizzy, almost intoxicated. His thoughts became as light and far ranging as smoke tendrils caught in the wind. Time slowed; even the movement of his blood seemed suspended.
Shining in his mind was a text longer than any he previously could have imagined. All the books in Starhaven could not have held half its length. The spell-though consisting of only four runes-contained innumerable twists, turns, and self-referential passages.
But what shocked Nicodemus most, what spawned a mystical sense of wonder, was the certainty that this text was the same thing as the moth.
Nicodemus would have thought the spell beyond human comprehension if not for the perfect knowledge of it now shining in his mind.
It was true, then. He was an Imperial. He had been born with the gift to read and comprehend Language Prime.
The moth flapped its wings once. Nicodemus looked again at the pale, delicate creature and felt its endless, intricate beauty so keenly that his heart ached.
To him the moth was both a living animal and a poem.
He tried to speak, tried to explain the awe coursing through his veins like a drug, but all he could manage was a rapturous whisper, “She’s the most beautiful spell.”
“Touch any living thing and you will find the same language,” Chimera said in a voice that had become almost sing-song. “I could provide for you the prose within an oak leaf or a trout’s belly. I could show you the miniature creatures that infect wounds. In each you would find Language Prime. That is why this tome is called the Bestiary. It reveals that every beast and every plant is made from the Creator’s language, from the Creator’s godspell.”
Nicodemus understood. “Life is magical language.”
SLOWLY NICODEMUS’S TRANCE began to dissipate. He put his free hand to his brow as the implications of his revelation unfolded. “So, if life is language… then Language Prime spellwrights could edit diseases from the sick, or close wounds by coordinating a body’s healing, or rewrite wheat plants to produce more grain.”
Chimera responded with an amused sniff. “You see why the Solar Empire was a paradise. Under the rule of the Imperial family, the continent knew neither plague nor famine.”
“How do you know this, Chimera?”
She produced a long hissing sigh. “I was the oldest and most malcontent goddess on the ancient continent. I wanted to do more with the original languages. I wanted to rewrite a new breed of humanity. I thought that the Empire’s use of Language Prime to improve the life they knew, and not invent new life, would lead ultimately to stagnation. And when Los was born, I knew I was correct.”
“You knew Los? The first demon?”
Again the sigh. “I knew him before he rebelled. I knew his plans for Language Prime. That is why I fled the ancient continent. The Empire had forbidden me from textual experimentation. So I took my followers across the ocean to this new continent. Here I transformed my followers into the Chimerical peoples.”
Something occurred to Nicodemus. “The Chthonics were once human?”
“They were. And so too were the Kobolds, the Goblins, the Lycanthropes, the Pelagics, the Incultans, and too many others. At first this continent was a paradise, but then my peoples began to fight each other. In hopes of governing them, I split my soul and impressed its parts into the many different Bestiaries. To each tribe I gave three books. But my efforts proved futile. The differences between the Chimerical peoples grew too great. When your ancestors crossed the ocean, they found my peoples divided.”
She paused and made a low swishing sound. “At first, I hoped to repel your kind. Your deities were weak then. To escape the demonic host and cross the ocean, they had to slumber within their arks. This made them forget nearly everything they had known, including Language Prime. And your Imperial family was scattered. But my peoples, as divided as they were, were no match for humanity. Once your ancestors established a foothold on this continent, they slaughtered my peoples.”
Nicodemus considered his words. “Chimera, why do you give me this knowledge? It is an extraordinary gift.”
She did not answer for such a long time that Nicodemus began to worry that she had left. “I have given you the bitterest of knowledge. This marks the beginning of your suffering.”
