Chapter 9 Journeys
Clear cold air. The rich colours of nature. The silence that was only accentuated by the cold breath of the wind and the murmur of a brook that still dreamed of one day turning into a massive stream. Julin Ganris loved it this was her escape from the pressure of everyday life at the Order of Reason which in her case were even more severe than that of most others. While she had transferred to an adult body for the first time about two years ago her soul was very old. One hundred and twenty years ago she had been a High Savant of the Order of Reason a leader both in research as well as in political matters.
Julin remembered nothing of that time as her soul had wandered aimlessly for to long to retain any memories nevertheless she was constantly reminded of her glorious past. A past that might as well have belonged to any other stranger. Just to make matters worse she was in the very strange position of being her own spiritual great-grand-mother as her past life that cast such dark a shadow over all her new life was Kana Ganris of whom she was directly related by blood. While every kind of superstition was forbidden in the Order many could not help but feel that this fact was meaningful. She had pointed out that this was simply a coincidence this had only led to being scrutinized even further to test the 'Ganris Hypothesis' named in her honour and to her dismay. It postulated that souls were after they had been liberated from their bodies were attracted towards their own families thereby retaining the unity between the hereditary characteristics with those of the soul. The worst part about it was that Julin could not help but admit that the hypothesis was at the very least plausible.
Now there was an entire work group toiling away trying to track the most powerful souls in the world to see in which way they migrated into new bodies. A research field that was rather thankless and would probably not yield any decent results for a couple of generations as most powerful souls carefully migrated into new bodies long before they were due to die a natural death. While those liberated into the great open world did so usually under rather violent circumstances. Being present in such a time as well as having both time and equipment to track the freed soul was bound to be a very rare occurrence. There was the idea of tracking lesser souls that did not warrant a rebirth into an adult body but where left to the natural cycle, but those souls were feeble to begin with dissipating so fast that tracking them was neigh impossible with the current generation of instruments.
As Julin wandered alongside the brook feeling the wind caressing her face she wondered if her soul hand wandered these mountain ranges near the Pinnacle of Cognition where her past life had died valiantly protecting the values of the Order. She stopped, normally roaming the mountain plateaus in which the Order of Reason had established its university state cleared her mind. Yet to day it kept returning to the burden that she had inherited from the stranger that she herself had been. She turned around. Facing the Pinnacle of Cognition again which hovered freely above the other, lesser mountains, turning around its own axis at a tranquil pace. It was the centre of the Order, were it had turned from a secular order that was spread among many nations but home at none into a sovereign state of its own. The site had been chosen because it was located far inside of the no man's land of the Eastern Ranges, had abundant stores of resources and as it was a slender rock with steep cliffs on all sides easy to defend.
It was still a fortress but now it was not a shelter any more, instead it had turned into the very symbol representing the Order. It was the first mountain that had been made airborne by man. While the circumstance had been very favourable as the mountain was extremely rich in flow-stone which will start to float if imbued with the tiniest speck of power it was still a massive undertaking to break the foundations of the mountains. So was balancing out the flow-stone deposits within so that the mountain once liberated would not simply tip over when starting to hover, or fly to high and crash into the sky-shell. The spin was added in later generations long after a the beacon was installed on its top burning in a artificial fire so bright that its focused brilliance rivalled the sun turning the Pinnacle of Reason into the largest air-beacon the world had ever seen through shaded eyes. With the added rotation which as it turned out could be used to power the beacon itself, it was now a proper lighthouse.
Julin sometimes wondered if the symbolism used by the Order was not counter productive. After all their main goal was to advance reason and banish all traces of superstition as well as bring the light of knowledge to all. However as time passed the marks and motives of the Order had become so overwhelming that they had the strange effect of fostering faith instead of critical thinking. As long as the High Standards of Research where followed though there really wasn't any real danger of straying from the Path to Enlightenment. Besides the common people were so awe of the Order that any knight instantly commanded their respect. A reaction that was greatly enhanced by the Order's many symbols.
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