The rest of the year slipped through my fingers like the mist I now commanded with a thought. Twelve months dedicated to unraveling the intricate mechanisms of the two new Sequences that had opened to me. Mastering the Clown was like learning a new body language – a language of ultra-fast reflexes, of sharpened perception that foresees not only danger but the intention behind a gaze, and the ability to transform the very Paper into blades as real and deadly as any steel dagger my grandfather kept in his collection.
As for the Trickmaster... that was a deliciously complex puzzle. They weren't just spells; they were cosmic tricks. Learning to create faint shocks from my fingers, or making a coin float were abilities that went far beyond the mere act of passing through walls.
And that made me think. Am I truly an Outcast like the others? I plunged into my grandfather's archives, into the obscure reports and bestiaries of Pariahs. I found nothing that mentioned creatures or individuals with the ability to simply ignore solid matter as I do, or who possessed a set of abilities so... diverse and seemingly disconnected.
Seers read the future, Da Vincis manipulate matter with their minds, Werewolves transform. But me? I walk through walls, have visions, transform something as normal as paper into a physical weapon, and perform tricks that confuse reality. Some factors I've studied point, with growing certainty, to me being something different. A new type of Pariah? Or something that transcends even that classification?
In terms of raw power and versatility, I clearly possess a larger arsenal than any other Outcast I know of. My own grandfather, Daniel Edgar, a respected and feared Da Vinci in certain circles, acknowledged this. I remember our... controlled "tests."
Despite his formidable telekinesis, he couldn't even react in time when I used my abilities in combination. A Paper dagger before his eyes, a step through his own shadow to appear behind him, the momentary confusion caused by an illusory trick... His abilities simply failed to take hold against me. There was an interference, an intangible barrier.
And then there's the issue of Spirituality.
From what I could deduce, what defines an Outcast's strength in combat isn't just the ability itself, but the size and efficiency of their spiritual reservoir. It's the gasoline in the engine. Because of this, in theory, it would be almost impossible to defeat someone with Spirituality as colossal as mine in a pure contest of brute force. They would simply exhaust their resources before scratching the surface of mine.
Almost impossible.
Because if the sheer quantity of Spirituality were the determining factor for victory, my grandfather, with his vast power, would be unquestionably the most powerful man in Europe. And he is not. There is another factor, perhaps even more crucial: efficiency.
How you apply your spirituality. The precision, the creativity, the control—it all depends on how you apply your Spirituality, expanding your options to greater numbers. A man with a bucket of water can put out a campfire, but a man with a syringe full of water can kill his opponent in many ways. It's the difference between a baseball bat and a foil. Both can hurt, but the elegance, economy of motion, and lethality of the foil, in the right hands, are unmatched.
I have the bucket. In fact, I have the ocean. But I'm learning to use the syringe. And the foil. And any other tool I can imagine.
Setting speculation aside for a moment, I focused on what was tangible: power. And my immense arsenal of Trickmaster abilities from the Path of the Door has been a fascinating field of experimentation. Mastering these tricks wasn't just about learning what to do, but about internalizing how and why they work. They are, in essence, acts of cosmic bad faith. They are small lies told to reality, persuading it to accept an illusion as truth, even if only for a moment.
It was this deep understanding that made me realize, with crystalline clarity, what is needed to advance to the next level on the Path of the Door. It's not about brute power, but about art. The key lies in performance, in the act of deceiving others so convincingly that even the universe momentarily believes, and, crucially, in the self-deception necessary to sustain the farce without a hint of doubt. It's a dance on the tightrope of perception.
"The key lies in performance, in deceiving others and in self-deception," I murmured to myself, the phrase sounding less like a discovery and more like a fundamental axiom. My mind, always cataloging, had already mentally noted the nuances of this principle. I picked up the physical piece of paper where I had scribbled these insights minutes before and, with a deliberate motion, threw it into the dancing flames of the fireplace. I watched the fire consume the evidence, turning theory into ashes. Some knowledge is too dangerous to be left lying around, even in the safest of mansions.
As for the Clown, from the Path of the Fool, it was a different puzzle. Its method for advancing the Sequence had taken me longer than I imagined. At first, I thought it was about pure skill, about refining clairvoyance or combat ability even further. But I was wrong. The Path of the Fool is more subtle, more introspective. It's about the posture before the abyss.
"Although the Clown is capable of knowing a little about fate, one remains helpless before fate; therefore, one can use a smiling face to hide all the pain, sadness, confusion, and depression."
The truth of that phrase echoed within me like a bell. I, who saw fragments of what could be, who felt the weight of possible futures and shadowed pasts, was profoundly powerless to alter the majestic and relentless course of fate. All that remained for me was the mask. The ability to shroud all the internal turbulence—Ethan's pain, Noah's confusion, the Living Mystery's loneliness—beneath the unshakable facade of the Clown's smile. It wasn't about denying the pain, but about mastering it to the point where it became a secret so well guarded that not even its shadow could be perceived.
I did the same as with the other paper, condemning it to the fire. The flames licked the parchment, consuming the confession.
Between the two, the Path of the Fool is the primary one I aim to advance. I feel it is the trunk from which the others are branches. The Path of the Door, however useful, can wait. Its tricks will be useful, but the Clown's resigned wisdom seems more fundamental to the creature I have become.
And today, ironically, I will use this very Path. My grandfather has been invited to one of his tedious social events and, for some reason, has absurdly insisted on taking me. A gala dinner full of boring aristocrats and perfumed magnates is not my idea of fun.
I can't fathom the genuine reason for this. Is it to show me off as his "greatest acquisition"? To begin introducing me into his circles? That man is decidedly mysterious, although, I must admit, not so much to me. I can see the sparks of worry and pride behind his decisions.
....
The gala dinner was, in a word, pointless. A grotesque display of opulence and falsity that served for little more than feeding the egos of decrepit old men and their bland progeny. The air was thick with the smell of expensive perfume, reheated food, and veiled prejudice. And I was the unspoken focal point of that entire comedy.
I could feel them. The stares. They pierced me like pins. Some of the old men, the shrewder ones, stared at me with a calculating interest, as if I were a new business to be acquired or a weapon to be aimed. Others, more transparent in their ignorance, couldn't disguise the disgust on their wrinkled faces, as if my mere presence contaminated the air they breathed.
And there were those who felt fear. A primitive fear, the kind one feels in the presence of a predatory animal let loose in their living room. Being an Outcast was this: a constant ballet of visceral reactions. Those of us with power inspired fear and disgust. Those who didn't... well, those without power suffered at the hands of the "normals." To be honest, these aristocrats were lucky I wasn't in a worse mood. The temptation to cleanse the human race from that room with a snap of my fingers was, I admit, a seductive whisper in the back of my mind.
I let my gaze sweep the room, passing over my shoulder. There they were, seated with their families—spoiled grandchildren, young sons with dazed expressions, nephews who stared at me with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. A smile sharpened on my lips. It wasn't a smile of joy, but the smile of the Clown, a polished and sharpened mask.
"Lost something?" I asked, my voice a thread of cutting silk laden with poisonous sweetness.
Before they could formulate a response, the air around them came alive. Playing cards, materialized from nothing by my Paper, appeared in a whirlwind of motion. They didn't attack, not exactly. They buzzed dangerously close to their faces, so close that the cutting wind of their passage snatched strands of graying hair from heads and silver threads from well-groomed beards. The cards vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving behind a stunned silence and the smell of sudden fear.
I let out an exaggerated sigh, a sigh of profound boredom, and rose from the table. While everyone remained seated, bound by the rigidity of etiquette and shock, I began to walk through the hall. My steps were light, almost dancing.
Whispers escaped, fragments of conversations they thought were low enough.
"Are you sure he's Daniel's grandson?"
"He has Asian features... Did he really not even choose a British boy?"
Ah. Xenophobia now? The supernatural creature in their midst was less acceptable because of his ethnic traits? Change the record, you decrepit old fool, I thought, the smile on my face becoming a little more fixed, a little more dangerous.
And then, the final straw, from a particularly corpulent man with an expression of absolute disdain: "A monster like that is a reason to be abandoned. This Outcast doesn't deserve to be among us."
I felt a vein throb in my forehead with an almost violent force. Anger, cold and controlled, bubbled within me. Enough.
I summoned my Spirituality, feeling the ocean of power within me respond instantly. Not with a roar, but with a silent command. I used one of my favorite tricks from the Trickmaster.
From my foot, as if leaking from the sole of my shoe, a black, viscous liquid began to emerge. It wasn't oil, it wasn't common grease—it was liquefied darkness, an anti-gravitational substance that spread rapidly across the polished marble floor. I stepped onto the nearest table with a fluid motion, as if stepping onto a stage. The liquid spread, forming a dark, gleaming puddle that extended for a six-meter radius around me.
And then, without transition, I combined it with another trick: Object Manipulation.
With a thought, all the chairs within a five-meter radius simply moved. They weren't pushed; it was as if the floor beneath them had slid. Solid oak wood and velvet upholstery toppled with muffled thuds and shouts of surprise. Bodies dressed in expensive suits writhed on the floor, trying to get up and slipping on the black liquid, which was absurdly slippery.
Of course, my grandfather and I remained unharmed. He, with a slight gesture of his hand, kept his chair steady, a small, invisible telekinetic force field protecting him. Me, because the trick was mine. I was orchestrating it.
The hall plunged into chaos.
"What is this?!"
"It's grease!"
"Who did this?!"
The shouts were a symphony of desperation and confusion. I stood on the table, looking at the scene with my bicolored eyes, the Clown's smile still plastered on my face.
I'll give them three guesses, I thought, with a coldness peculiar to me. But I doubted any of them would have the courage to point a finger. After all, who would blame a child? Especially a child who was, clearly, a "monster."
What can one really expect from a gala dinner like this, anyway? Profound intellectual discussions? Meaningful connections? No. The only fitting conclusion for such a pretentious farce was a comedic finale. And I, as the resident Clown, was the perfect master of ceremonies for this spectacle of absurdity.
With a movement of pure Clown agility, I acrobatically leaped from one table to another, my soles finding firm footing on the islands of wood that still stood amidst the sea of black grease. My feet barely touched the surface before I propelled my body to the next safe point, an elegant, dancing figure in the chaos I had created. As I moved, I extended my will.
The black, viscous liquid, obedient to my spirituality, spread even further, dripping from the edges of the tables and forming new gleaming puddles on the floor. And then, with a mental touch of my Object Manipulation trick, I didn't just knock over chairs. I made the silver centerpieces slide, made the cutlery fly from their positions, made the crystal goblets topple and roll, spilling expensive red wine that mixed with my supernatural grease, creating a cocktail of destruction and humiliation.
The scene was gloriously pathetic. I watched everyone angry and unhappy, their once-haughty expressions now twisted by impotent fury. Men in custom-made suits were now with their expensive clothes stained and filthy, the grease penetrating the fabric like a poison. Ladies with elaborate hairstyles saw their impeccable hair come undone, strands of gray and platinum blonde sticking to their sweaty foreheads. Smeared makeup ran down their faces in grotesque streaks of mascara and blush, transforming masks of beauty into paintings of despair. And at the center of it all, I watched them, my face lit by a court jester's smile, wide, fixed, and deliberately insane.
It was then that one of the old men, braver (or more foolish) than the others, pointed a trembling finger at me. "What are you laughing at, you monster?"
You wretched old man..., I thought, the cold anger forming a knot in my stomach. But the mask didn't fall. On the contrary, my smile became even more radiant, more artificial.
"Nothing, sir," I replied, my voice an innocent, cutting falsetto. "I just see that you're in well-greased sheets."
The terrible joke, delivered with the solemnity of a stand-up comedian, had the desired effect. His face, already red with anger, became even redder, a shade of purple beet that promised an imminent stroke. He choked, speechless, fury suffocating any coherent response. As a Clown, I understood the rule: maintain a smile and the fool's role, no matter how deep the cut. The silliest words can carry the sharpest poison.
My gaze, however, drifted over my shoulder, seeking a specific reaction. And there he was. Daniel Edgar, my grandfather, the nominal host of this calamity. He wasn't angry. He wasn't embarrassed. He had his hand covering his mouth, his shoulders trembling slightly. His other hand was pressed against his stomach, as if trying to contain a convulsion of laughter. His eyes, above his hand, met mine for a fraction of a second, and in them I saw not disapproval, but a glint of genuine amusement, of perverse pride, and of absolute complicity.
In that moment, I knew. Playing the fool has its advantages.
A subtle tingle ran down my spine, a sensation of pieces clicking perfectly into an internal mechanism I was only beginning to understand. The icy fury channeled into the Clown's performance, the fixed smile mask hiding the disdain, the way I turned the humiliation of others into an act of vengeful art... It all amalgamated into a single, clear realization.
"Hmm... I think I advanced on the Path of the Fool. Excellent."
The phrase was an almost inaudible murmur, meant only for myself. There was no fanfare, no explosion of light. Just the quiet certainty that I had climbed another rung on the ladder of fate. The progression didn't come from study, but from enactment, from living the Clown's philosophy in its purest and most caustic form.
I turned, my back to the scene of chaos I had created—the drenched and furious nobles, the black grease gleaming under the chandeliers, the air thick with shame and anger. My exit wasn't a flight; it was a stage exit, the perfect conclusion to my act. My grandfather, Daniel Edgar, disentangled himself from a group of vehemently protesting guests and came right after me, his firm footsteps echoing on the marble beside my light, dancing ones.
At the exit door, he stopped for a second, turned slightly towards the hall, and said, in a voice that was a masterpiece of British politeness tinged with an unmistakable hint: "Good evening, gentlemen."
The tone was ironic? Without a doubt. It was the cherry on top, the verbal coup de grâce.
What a surprise, I thought, an internal smile forming.
The old wolf appreciated chaos as much as I did.
The car door closed with a soft, solid thud, isolating us from the outside world. The vehicle's interior was a cocoon of fragrant leather and muted silence. As soon as the driver began to move, smoothly and professionally, taking us away from the scene of the crime, something clicked in my mind.
"Grandfather," I said, breaking the silence, my voice sounding strangely practical after the performative madness. "Do you have a spare vault?"
He turned to look at me, and I could see, even in the car's gloom, one of his eyebrows slowly arching in an expression of deep and amused curiosity. It was the look of a man who had already learned to expect the unexpected from his grandson.
"May I ask for what purpose?" his voice was calm, without judgment.
"I'll be storing a few things," I explained, keeping my tone casual, "that I would like to be kept secret. Items of... personal value."
I need to store the things I looted from the gala dinner.