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His journals are the ramblings of a madman.
Anaxa doesn’t rightly care what others think about his research. Hunched over coffee-stained parchment, his pen flies, penning his thoughts. “Titans,” he murmurs, the ink smudging slightly as his hand follows. “Titans and prophesies. Foul things. What makes a god a god? A man a man? That’s the question, no? Age old, undefined—”
His pen runs out of ink mid-thought. Anaxa sighs, irritated. It takes no time to dip it into the inkwell, but it’s still time spent away from his hypothesizing and planning. His thoughts have already derailed. He’ll have to refocus to find that train of thought again, which, while doable, is just a waste of a quarter-hour. Part of Anaxa knows that he’s being unreasonable, but the rest of him—oh, that rest of him—aren’t the Titans more unreasonable?
“Or men,” he mutters, tapping his pen against that inkwell, ensuring that the excess drips off. “Men and their need to explain away the unknown. Why must we ascribe power to higher beings? Are we so dull and stupid that we find ourselves incapable of such compounding achievements?”
There are many variables to this idea. Anaxa has written volumes on this subject, has spun together tome after tome of theories. Hypothetical nonsense, others call it. Drivel that goes forwards and back, making no sense—but in Anaxa’s head, it does.
And that’s all that matters to him. Anaxa doesn’t need others to understand for the moment. Eventually they will. Yes, yes, eventually they will. But Anaxa is no fool, and he knows that it takes time to spin together a paper worth its salt. Theories, yes, he has plenty of those, but he’s yet to the point of acting upon them, of putting them to the test.
So, for now, it’s just putting pen to paper, jotting down his errant thoughts. Later, they can be pieced together. Later, Anaxa can tug at the strings and make it make sense. As long as he’s left alone, that is. Anaxa doesn’t pause in his work when the door to his office opens with a slow creak.
“Professor Anaxa?”
“Professor Anaxagoras,” he corrects. Hyacine might receive less of his ire than most, but even he draws the line at the shortening of his name. It’s too childish, too—
“You’re late to your own class.”
Anaxa stills, his pen hovering over his journal. A class? Since when? He looks at the calendar and sees that it’s the second day of the week. Right. Nousporism, level one. He’d forgotten entirely because this year’s batch of students has shown little to no promise, let alone interest in his class. In his opinion, of course.
The clock shows that it’s late into the midafternoon. Enough so that he even forgot about lunch.
His pen still hovers there. Drip, drip, goes the ink, splashing onto bright and crisp parchment, blotting away his last thought.
“Well?” prompts Hyacine when Anaxa says nothing else.
“I—” He pauses, chewing on his next words. “I got caught up in my work and lost track of time. I didn’t realize that it was so late in the day.”
Hyacine waits a beat before clicking her tongue in disapproval. “Regardless of your side work, you’re still a professor with responsibilities. Could you imagine if I forgot about my nursing classes?”
Comparing the two of them is a laughable matter. Anaxa is… Well. Hyacine isn’t entirely wrong; Anaxa should, at least, attend his own classes. Otherwise, his budget might be lost. And then what? He can hypothesize anywhere he can exercise his mind, but the Grove of Epiphany has too many uses to risk removal.
He should play nice. With a sigh, Anaxa sets his pen aside and shuts his journal. Later, he thinks. Later he’ll resume this pattern of thinking. Later he’ll revisit these questions that plague him. It’s for the sake of man. Their betterment. The less that they rely on Titans, the more they can thrive.
“Apologies, Hyacine,” he finally says as he stands. “It wasn’t my intention to forget.” When he meets her face, Hyacine is watching him back with a shrewd look.
“Yes, well, tell your students that, not me.”
“The flock this year is useless,” he mutters—but not so quietly that Hyacine doesn’t catch it.
Hyacine snorts in amusement. “You say that every year.” She gives him a wave and then disappears from the doorway, leaving him to his devices.
Anaxa casts one last look at his desk and, with a sigh, turns to leave.
#
A great sacred tree stretches towards the sky in the Grove of Epiphany.
“The Bough of Rift,” murmurs Anaxa to himself as he stands at its roots. These ramblings are as well-known as his books. Other scholars and students keep a wide berth as Anaxa sorts his thoughts, staring upwards with a hand against his chin. “Born of the void, they turned nothingness into prosperity.” His words melt into soft whispers. “Nothingness…prosperity… No, no. Men speak their own truths, no? Titans aren’t needed for this. And the prophecy, that Flame-Chase Journey—it’s useless. Men make their own paths, which aren’t predetermined.”
That is, at its core, the entire part of his research. What is the point of having a soul if the Titans bear one’s future? What good is living if a man is to walk a predetermined line? None of it makes sense, and so the only correct hypothesis is that the Titans are not the divine beings they are touted to be.
“They can die,” he mutters. Then, Anaxa’s gaze dragging across that grand, sacred tree, he continues with, “You died.”
Or, so the stories say. Anaxa isn’t one for mythology, but it’s had its uses when studying the plight of man. Heretic, he’s called. How distasteful to imply that he’s corrupting today’s youth. Anaxa has no bearing on what others believe, despite how he wishes he did. But if he could prove it, if he could just talk to a Titan—
He stills. Why has he never thought of such a thing? If Flame-Chasing Chrysos Heirs can steal away Coreflames and become demigods, then surely, surely Anaxa can resurrect a Titan. A conversation would prove his theory: that Titans are nothing more fantastical than mere mortals. That it’s mankind who pedestals them unnecessarily.
What a wild, mad plan.
But it’s a plan.
And, frankly, Anaxa has done worse experiments.
#
An experiment, of course, requires preparation. Anaxa spends weeks and months pouring over books from the libraries. Titan and religious philosophy, personal accounts from Chrysos Heirs of old, even his own theorizing from years prior—but even then, he isn’t much closer to a solid plan.
How does one summon a Titan? Anaxa has the golden blood of Flame-Chasers, but it’s not as though the Titans roam Amphoreus for any and all to speak with. Cerces themself is a damn tree.
“This book,” he mutters whilst poring over a handwritten volume one day. It’s familiar. Something about the neat and tidy letters catches his attention. “This is…” Anaxa is fairly certain he’s seen this before, which would track. He’d found this volume tucked away on his corner shelf.
‘Even up till today, I still disagree with that bizarre Flame-Chase Journey,’ the book reads. Anaxa skims until he reaches: ‘After I had proposed the theory that the nature of souls of Titans and humans are no different, and that souls are constructed from seeds of wisdom, I have been waiting for a chance to prove it once and for all…’
Anaxa leans back, his chair creaking under his weight. So, he isn’t the first to think of such a thing. This journal is unsigned, leaving the author unknown. And it’s possible that he’s flipped through it before because hiding it away, his research didn’t used to pertain to his current theory, so it isn’t so much a stretch that it wasn’t useful to him before.
It’s blasphemy to consider that Titans and humans share the same type of soul. Nousporism touts a similar ideal: that all beings originate from the same source, but that does not mean they are the same. But, to exist in this realm, mustn't their souls have the same composition? That’s the age-old quandary that no one agrees upon.
Madness. Madness—that’s what his fellow scholars already say. Anaxa is a madman with mad ideals, and worse yet, now he wants to prove them. Just a talk with a Titan, a simple conversation, that's all he needs. But how does one even begin to approach what’s considered a divine being?
His gaze falls back to the book. Who was the author?
“Nobody,” he says to himself—but, again, there’s a tug at the base of Anaxa’s neck as he smooths his hand over the worn leather cover. Familiarity pricks at his being. “Alas, the author remains elusive. A pity. They and I seem to share similar theories and concerns.”
How can one create a proper hypothesis if they can’t truly examine every variable? One could argue that it’s merely a thought exercise, but, if given the opportunity, Anaxa would enjoy picking Cerces’s brain—from an academic standpoint, of course.
But, ultimately, a tree is just a tree, and a Titan is nothing more than a man. This, thinks Anaxa in that profound madness of his, renders the prophecy and Flame Chase Journey entirely bogus. Anaxa just needs a moment—one moment—to prove this theory true.
Back to the book. ‘I once smiled like this, when I first created a mechanical bird that could fly in the sky’, he reads.
And then Anaxa has an absurd idea. Thumbing at his chin, he says, “I suppose there isn’t harm in turning every stone, as ridiculous as it sounds.”
#
Anaxa goes to the great sacred tree and asks for its attention.
In one hand, he carries that old leather journal, the one that shares his similarly blasphemous thoughts. It’s become a comfort to him, its strange kinship grounding him in his lunacy. Others do not understand, but this nameless author, oh, he knows him, doesn’t he?
Desperation drives him to the roots of Cerces. It’s a tree, a damned tree. And Anaxa feels particularly stupid speaking to a tree. His request is simple and polite. “Bough of Rift,” he says. “Creator divine, I wish to have a discussion of philosophies with you.”
The moment stretches. Leaves rustle gently in the soft breeze, but nothing happens. Anaxa waits and waits before he determines this leg of the experiment a dead end. But, just as he turns around, someone speaks, a quiet, ageless voice wafting through the space.
“So quickly you demand my presence but are even quicker to lose patience.”
Anaxa stills. He did not expect this outcome. He’d thought he’d need an experiment. He thought he’d have to resurrect old dry bones with lightning rods and a prayer. “It is not a loss of patience,” he says tartly. “I just do not enjoy being ignored.”
“You were not ignored. It takes great effort to hold a presence here.”
He turns to find a shapeless, non-corporeal being before him. A shadow gilded in gold, neither here nor there, but more so in between. It flutters as it speaks, wavering in and out, but remains solid enough for the moment.
“Child of humanity,” prompts Cerces, “you wish to speak of philosophy?”
“I wish to pick the brain of a so-called god.”
Silence. And then: “So-called.” Cerces, at least, seems more amused than insulted.
“I have a working theory that I wish for your opinion on. Others call it madness. They think that I’m insane, but I’m not—I’m not. These are not the ramblings of lunacy, it is higherbrow thinking. It is the future as we let go of these lesser myths that hold us back. We, mankind, and Titans—we are one in the same. Same beginnings, same souls, same flesh. Neither is better than the other. Neither is—”
Cerces laughs. That amorphous being cackles, shuddering, beside themself. “You said the very same thing the last time we spoke.”
The last time? Anaxa tilts his head, regarding the Titan with a narrowed, wary gaze. “We have never… I’ve never… You said it was difficult for you to come here, to hold space in this grove. How could we have—”
If Anaxa speaks madness, then this Titan is the true embodiment of insanity. “It doesn't matter,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair. “I am here to carry on a debate.”
“And did our last debate mean nothing? Did you not write your findings down in that very journal you hold?”
Anaxa looks at that leather-bound book, the one he’s been attached to from the moment he cracked it open. Its words, the theories it contains—
‘Today, I can finally make up for the regret, akin to a calamity, from numerous years ago.’
“Oh,” says Cerces, then. “Oh, I see, now. Perhaps I had made a mistake then. I should never have placed my Coreflame in one so dead.”
Dead. Dead. It’s only then that Anaxa remembers: a wave of the Black Tide descending upon the Grove and razing it to the ground. Anaxa, alongside the others, had defended it to the bitter end until his golden blood soiled the round. Cerces felt it, that blood. Cerces—
The handwriting is his. This journal is his. He’s a dead demigod housing a flame that barely keeps him alive—but that second chance has come at the cost of his sanity.
But doesn’t that mean a Creator remade him? Doesn’t that mean that the Titans are more than mankind? No, no. The warmth of that Coreflame further proves his point—he’s an alchemist who’s come full circle. He’s been transformed and ascended; he’s become a god in his own right.
He wrote about this in the journal. ‘My body shall become the vessel to forge the Coreflames of gods, and my soul shall become the chains that force the gods to bow!’
Cerces answered his call. They are there, witnessing his madness turn to might firsthand.
‘Use me as the firewood to ignite the flames that will bring light to the truth!’
Anaxa laughs at the irony of it all. “I’m my own evidence,” he claims, growing more manic by the moment. “I’ve proven my theory. Man can ascend to their fullest potential. We can be on par with gods. It’s here, isn’t it? It’s all in this journal, it’s all…”
He forgets the Titan is there. Cerces watches in regret as Anaxa falls into his maniacal rant. He’d forgotten this entirely, that he’d been dead. But he’s revived, still flesh and bone, still contemplating the state of man and their place in the Cosmos.
“‘Do not fear blasphemy,’” he reads, flipping to the end of the journal. “‘It is already a sin to transcend the gods, so what if you become a god!’”
There are notations. Red marks of madness and other iterations that Anaxa pores over. He’d forgotten. Death has driven him to derangement, but that is where he’s found the truth. It’s been here the entire time, right under his fingertips, penned in his own hand.
When he looks, Cerces is gone. Or, maybe they were never there to begin with. The Grove is empty and overgrown, no longer sweet-smelling and serene with leaves rustling in the breeze. There is no Hyacine or a litany of other scholars giving him space. Death shrouds this place, which is as decayed as his mind, a mere shell of the school it once was.
Anaxa finds that he no longer cares. He’s lost once again in his supreme delusion, and oh, isn’t that a divine revelation?