Chapter 84: Forge by the light of the moon. (2)
If someone took a completely external observer, someone who understood the world solely from a scientific point of view, without carrying any cultural or symbolic baggage, and asked them to contemplate the universe from outside... the conversation would be very different.
If in that context someone affirmed with total certainty that "the sun and moon are opposites," most likely that observer would frown, confused. They wouldn’t see it as an evident truth, nor as a profound idea. Rather it would sound like a clumsy simplification, almost childish.
Because they’re not.
Not in a real sense.
There’s no intrinsic relationship of opposition between them. They’re different bodies, with different functions, but the idea they represent contraries is something constructed. A human interpretation. A symbol, not a property.
Lloyd understood it.
That’s why he began to rethink everything.
Even more "logical" examples failed when analyzing them carefully. Fire and water, for example, at first glance, seem contraries, but really their opposition is only because water can extinguish fire, something wind could also do.
That characteristic is more subjective than real.
The same happened with fresh water and salt water. They’re often treated as if they were two extremes, but in reality they’re still the same with a variation in their composition. More minerals, fewer minerals. Differences of degree, not nature.
Even concepts as basic as cold and heat wobbled when looking at them closely. Cold isn’t an entity in itself, it’s the absence of heat. It doesn’t exist as an independent opposite, but as a relative state caused by temperature decrease.
In fact it would be better to say that "heating" and "cooling" are opposite actions.
And among the few examples Lloyd could hold to, were matter and antimatter.
There there was a real opposition, not symbolic, not cultural.
Their very existence is as such an opposite nature, and to be more precise, the opposites would be for example the proton and positron, each particle and its anti-particle.
They’re opposite and moreover, when they come into contact they cancel each other out.
But even so there are characteristics that unite them, like being matter, or having mass, so they’re not really completely opposite.
Realizing that truth one could appreciate much better the nature of Siegfried’s ability.
The key wasn’t in finding perfect opposites.
Attributes that clashed with each other. Concepts that, although not absolute opposites, were perceived as contraries at some level. Whether ontological... or even subjective.
And if that was true...
That left him a lot of freedom without doubt.
Now, what exactly was Lloyd trying to do?
It wasn’t an improvised idea, though it might seem so from outside. It wasn’t an impulsive movement either. He had been turning it over, fitting pieces, reviewing every detail until everything began to take shape in his head.
He wanted to join Gleipnir and Belial.
Gleipnir had been created with a very clear purpose: to seal the primordial fire. Not any fire, but that base concept, that element that existed beyond the physical, as a root of the world itself, an archetype. It was an artifact designed to contain something that, in theory, shouldn’t be able to be contained.
Two essences had been mixed in doing so, the essence of a cursed artifact and that of a divine one.
They took advantage of demonic energy’s property to distort law and the divine property to impose law.
Though with time one part had gained more relevance.
Now it was there, chaining Belial, fulfilling a different function, more limited... as if it had lost part of its original meaning.
Belial, instead, remained what he had always been.
A sealed demon.
A core of power forcibly contained, whose history hadn’t changed in that aspect. The sword and demon were no longer separate things. Siegfried had united them, fusing them into a single entity to keep that seal active.
And there was the difference.
Gleipnir wasn’t an entity fused with what it contained.
It was a tool.
An artifact created with that single purpose.
While Belial had been fused with a sword to be contained, though with time Belial’s part gained more relevance.
Lloyd raised his hand slightly.
The mark on the back began to glow with a golden tone, soft at first, but increasingly intense, as if responding to something more than his simple will.
"[Oxymoron]..."
The word came out naturally, almost quietly, but charged with intention. It was more a mantra than an activation word, because it wasn’t necessary to say its name to activate the authority.
But then, a current of air suddenly burst into the room, violent, unexpected. The windows opened wide with a sharp blow, letting the light of the two moons enter without any obstacle.
Sin and Selene.
Their brightness fell directly on the scene, bathing the room with that strange mixture of pale and ghostly tones.
The shadows almost completely disappeared.
Everything was exposed, but Lloyd didn’t give it too much importance.
At that same instant Lloyd was summoning fire.
It didn’t emerge from a spark or concrete object, it simply manifested. Flames of an intense red mixed with deep yellows, vibrant, almost too alive to be normal.
The moons’ light intensified at the same time, as if reacting to that invocation.
Or as if both things were part of the same process.
Lloyd didn’t think too much about it.
He acted on instinct.
That fire... was the key. Not as a weapon, but as intermediary. As the meeting point between two different natures, the equivalent of a forge’s heat, but taken to a more abstract plane.
A catalyst, which might seem unrelated to Oxymoron authority’s true process, however it was something rather intuitive that would soon make sense.
And then he did it.
The flames began to move.
Not uncontrollably, but guided, gradually enveloping the sword and chains. First they grazed them, as if testing their surface, and then covered them completely.
Gleipnir reacted.
Its links vibrated, tensing, as if offering resistance... but didn’t retreat.
Belial too.
The eye on the hilt contracted violently, and a grave sound, almost inaudible, ran through the jagged blade.
"NOOOO! STOP! DAMN AND DISGUSTING HALF-BREED!" he screamed, shrieking more screams while his nature began to change.
The moons’ light descended even more, filtering through the flames, mixing with them.
Red, silver and a pale green.
Three different tones that began to interweave.
The chains began to sink slightly into the sword.
Not as if piercing through it, but as if both things were losing their limits. The metal stopped behaving like something solid, its contours became diffuse, unstable.
The blade responded.
Its irregular edges deformed, adapting, accepting that intrusion.
It wasn’t a destruction.
It was a union. Slow. Forced. But inevitable.
The flames intensified for an instant, enveloping everything completely, hiding both objects’ original form.
And in the middle of that light...
Gleipnir and Belial began to become one thing.
