Culmination


Early in his sixteenth year, Ranma came to the decision that it was time
to try and free the Lady Alana. He told her not to invite the next
Master. He was going to need the next three months... She acquiesced,
though he did not tell her why he wanted this. The rest of that day he
spent wandering amongst the halls, looking for the right place to do
this. Finally, he selected a room. It was deep in the castle, it could
be readily warded from scrying, and it was large enough to hold the Lady
Sylie. He hoped that Alana would not be much larger, though it would be
able to handle some difference. 

That night, at dinner, he was silent, responding in mono-syllables.
Though unresponsive, he was not unattentive. In fact, he spent most of
the meal staring at the Lady Alana, his eyes flickering with blue fire.
She guessed what he was about, and did not press him about it. He was
examining her chains, looking more closely than before, trying to follow
the courses of the threads, and predict where the other threads would
need to be, to complete the pattern. He was still wholly unable to see
the other threads, but he had some reason for hope.

The next morning, he spent several hours in the study, sketching the
bonds from memory, and then drawing possibilities for the feminine bonds
on thin onion-skin sheets, laying them over the male bonds, trying to
guess the best match. When he could remember no more he went to the
gardens, and practiced a kata to clear his mind, and prepare himself. He
noticed once again the small, low-walled garden, that held only a single
column, on which sat a single vase, in which rested a pure white rose, a
promise still unfulfilled.

Filled with resolve, he went to the room, and spent several hours
cleaning it, removing all foreign materials. He scrubbed the stones, and
then used his ki to create a wind that dried the room quickly. Then,
locking the iron door securely, he sat in the center of the room, in
lotus position, and released his hold on his aura. 

It swelled, and filled the room with a blue glow. He relaxed his seventh
sense, and focused on the sixth. He reached outward with this sense, and
whereever he came upon life, he held it with his ki, and using a single
thread of magic, moved it to the outside of the room. If it was too
small to thus grasp, he focused his ki, and burned it out. 

He relaxed his sixth sense then, and focused his seventh. He focused on
the small holes and pores in the stones, and filled them with his aura,
until it truly filled all the room, down to the smallest crack. Then he
focused, found his center, and began meditating. He meditated for five
hours, letting the rock bathe in his ki, becoming steadily more attuned
to him. Then he stood, and still bathing the room in his ki, he used his
ki claws to carefully care glyphs of warding and protection into the
stones, one after another.

He began selecting the purer stones, and put glyphs of power on them.
Over the next several weeks, he would steadily charge them, that when
necessary, he might release their power to replenish his own. 

That evening, he again watched the Lady Alana with his ki gaze from the
moment she entered the room. This time, he did not proceed to his bed,
but went directly to his study, where he again drew the chains from
memory. He did not look at the previous drawings he had done, at all,
nor did he try to draw the possible female chains. That would wait until
the morning. Finally, he went to his bed, exhausted, and slept a 
dreamless sleep.

The Lady struggled, as she tried to get to sleep. She was striving to
fight her growing feeling of hope. She knew he could not free her. He
could not see the female principle still, she knew that. But he knew
that too, and yet he was still determined to try. She had heard from
Mardo and Liliana. He had opened the door, finally, without destroying
it. He had become the cat again, just to be able to let out the roar of
triumph, but that power had not been necessary. It was hard to hold on
to her hope, but she knew that she had to. When he failed, he would be
crushed, and if she too were crushed under a weight of disappointment,
she would not be able to support him. So she focused on the fact that
he had watched them cast the door. It must have made the difference.

When she finally slept, though, she dreamed again of flying as a
dragon, only this time, Ranma was with her, a dragon himself, flying
about her as if born to it. She felt again, in the dream, the ache of
wanting him, so long buried under maternal love, but she recognized it
for what it was, even in the dream, and it did not trouble her.

The next morning, Ranma again spent several hours working on his
drawings of the chains, trying to picture where the strands and threads
of invisible magic would need to go to have the appropriate effect. When
he again went to the garden, to practice his katas and clear his mind,
he noticed that the Lady was on a balcony above, watching him.

He smiled to himself as he powered through the motions of the kata. He
knew that she knew why he was behaving as he was, and he admired her for
remaining silent about it, and allowing him to proceed in his own
fashion. She was so unlike the teachers at the Mage Towers. She never
tried to force him to learn theories that might or might not be anything
like the truth. She merely urged him to learn what he needed to know,
and he had quickly come to respect that in her. Everything she had
pushed him to learn, had come to have importance to him shortly
thereafter, in sharp contrast to the theories of the Mages of the
Towers. He had done his best to forget much of what they had sought to
teach him. 

He knew that she did not believe he yet had the power to free her. He
knew she was wrong in that. He did have the power... he just wasn't
certain of being able to use it without harming her. He was no more
sanguine than she about his ability to succeed in this. It was founded
on hope, the hope that once he began, and after having seen for himself
the innumerable ways that the feminine principle could be wound about
the male threads he could see in her chains, he would be able to find
the true weaknesses. It was doubtful, but he had to try.

For nine years this coming event had been the single overriding goal of
his life. Everything he had done and learned had been focused towards
this day. He would pour everything he had into freeing her, and if it
killed him... well, then she would be free, and he would have achieved
his goal. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but he knew now that he
would not hold back from it. He would give absolutely everything he had,
and more, if it meant her freedom.

He completed his kata, and returned to the inner room. There, he spent
two hours charging the first of the power seals, pouring his ki into
the spiritual battery in a slow steady trickle. Then he meditated again,
bathing the room in his ki. With his ki penetrating the stone that held
his power bound within it, it felt like he was holding a glowing ember
in his hand, and he welcomed the pain of holding that concentrated
power. He knew he would feel pain when he reabsorbed the power, and he
wanted to be ready for it.

He went around to each power stone, and carved into each four runes of
strength, to prevent the power one held, that shortly all would hold,
from overcoming their structure and destroying them before he could use
them. This took considerable time, as he had to draw up the magic and
bind it into each rune after drawing it. 

Finally, he spent time on each of the scrying stones, carving in smaller
runes to strengthen each individual stone against one particular variety
of scrying. One he bound with a rune to strengthen it against the use of
water, the bowls and pools that were the delight of some. To another he
added a rune to strengthen it against the use of mirrors, the province
of the truly strong. Another he bound against crystals, yet another
against the power of the mind. So he went, to each in turn, and added a
strengthening rune, drawing up the threads of magic to power each.

He left the room, locking the iron door behind him, and binding it, as
he had done the two days before, and would each day after, with a
powerful spell of holding, modeled after the work of Mardo, and a spell
of warding and shielding. 

The uses of iron in magic were among the few things he had learned in
the Mage Towers that he had retained. He had learned how iron was
anathema to channeled magic, where the magic-user drew on the power the
threads held, and used his body as a conduit for that pure power, rather
than using the threads themselves. He had learned how to use iron to
combat true spells, though to do so was often to destroy everything
around them, as well as the spell. He had also learned the proper ways
to truly enchant iron, to bind the threads into it, and how much power
could truly be held by the iron. An iron-bound spell was extremely
difficult to cast for most mages, but worth it to those who could, for
the iron's resistance to magic would then fight the dispelling of the
power it held.

This pattern of silent dinners eaten with burning eyes, late nights
spent drawing on parchment, mornings spent sketching on onionskin, katas
watched by the Lady, and long days spent slowly increasing the power of
the room continued for nearly two months before all was in readiness.

Finally, Ranma came to the Lady Alana one morning, and told her that he
was ready to attempt to free her. He took her to the room he had
prepared, and in spite of herself, she was in awe at the power it
exuded. It was powerfully warded against every manner of outside
interference or scrying, and large enough to hold her true form. 

She could see the immense power held in each of the spiritual batteries.
She was aghast at it, in fact. Each held nearly as much ki and magical
energy as Ranma's body, and she had never seen him as exhausted as he
should have been from filling them. She realized he must have been
filling them a little each day. There were ten of them, so this room
held more than ten times the raw magical power and spiritual energy that
Ranma held himself.

There were numerous cushions in a heap on the floor, and he bade her
make herself comfortable upon them. When she did so, he sat before her,
on the stone floor, and she noticed with surprise that the stone he sat
upon was itself heavily ensorcelled. He pulled his calves onto his
thighs, lotus style, and began to meditate. In moments, his ki began to
flicker, blue tongues of flame licking about him, as his eyes
burned with blue fire. 

Ranma released his hold on his aura then, and once again, it filled the
room. Alana stifled her gasp of awe... his ki was easily dragon 
strength, and he had no dragon-blood, she knew that. She knew he had
grown steadily more powerful... she hadn't realized how very much,
though. She still didn't truly know. He had not yet released the
eleventh dan, and she could not see the power bound up in it. He focused
his sight, looking beyond the physical, until he could again see her
bonds. He could see the dragon curling in her ki. It seemed stronger and
more vibrant as it bathed in the light of his own, and the chains that
held it seemed even blacker in contrast.

The chains reached out from her to lace about him as well, as they bound
her to him. He looked deeper, until he could see where the threads were
coming from. He selected a single knot, and examined it, seeing in his
mind the innumerable onion skin overlays that spoke of how the female
threads might mingle and strengthen the male threads.

He reached out with his ki, tapping lightly at the obvious weak point.
He knew this would not succeed, and indeed it did not, but he watched
carefully, how the knot began to fall apart, and where and how it seemed
held together. He focused again on the onion skins in his mind,
considering which ones might result in that kind of a pull, in those
resisting forces. He tapped again, at another point, a lesser weak
point, and again watched the interplay of the visual threads, gaining
clues as to where the feminine threads must be. 

He teased steadily at the knot touching here and there, watching the
reactions, searching for clues to the invisible threads that held it all
together. Finally, he began trying in earnest to break the knot,
picturing in his mind the complete tangle, male and female threads, and
guessing at where the weak point must be. 

He could see that he was closer now. As he hit these guessed points, the
knot came ever closer to falling apart, but always it resisted in the
end. Finally, after hours of exploration, he concluded that the final
weak point must be located amongst the female strands, where he could
not see to touch it.

Refusing to even consider feeling despair, he moved on to another knot.
Surely they could not all be thus. Again he began the delicate process,
tapping the knot here, and there, and watching as it tried to fall
apart, but was held together. By the time he had given up on that knot
as well, he was feeling weak and drained.

He reached out and released the first of the power stones. He bit his
tongue, and tasted his blood in his mouth as he fought to stifle a
scream. The energy, fresh and rich, burned through him like a fire,
through limbs that were too tired to contain it. He lost some of it,
burned off to the air, before he regained control, gasping for breath.

He fought down the pain, and grimly selected another knot, that seemed
to have more male fibers, less room for the female threads to
intertwine, and began again. 

Over and over he repeated this process, and each time, his body grew
weaker, as the fresh energy raced through his tired system, ever on the
verge of collapse. When he released the tenth stone, tears were openly
running down his face, but his eyes still burned with blue fire.

Knowing this was his last chance, and he was failing, he desperately
tried to reach deeper. He pushed his ki sight deeper and deeper, 
striving to reach the beneath the layers of male threads. If he could
just see the source of the female power, he could trace it upwards, into
her bonds. He sunk ever deeper, and as he did so, he slowly released
the eleventh dan, giving him the power to reach further still, searching
for the ultimate source of the power, until finally he reached too far.

He lost himself in the immense scale of what he was sensing, the deep
throbbing power that lay far beneath the tapestry of his world. It was
vast and grand, and he was nothing compared to it. Looking on it, he
ceased to exist, and became one with this final ultimate power, the
power that lay behind all that was, that went beyond this world, or the
world he came from, that lay beyond all possible worlds, beyond the
planes where the gods dwelt, beyond the pits where demons warred, beyond
everything, and he lost himself in it, until finally he heard a voice, a
single soft voice, gently calling his name, and he remembered finally,
who he was, and why he was, and for its own reasons, the power released
him.

He came back to himself then, for just a moment. His eyes suddenly
cleared and he could see the Lady cradling him in her arms. "You should
have let me go," he said in a harsh whisper, the words tearing his
throat as he spoke, "you would have been free, Lady." Then the darkness
took him, and he fell into blessed sleep, as his body struggled to
recover from his ordeal. He did not feel the Lady's tears on his face as
she held him to her.

She had known that he would never give up, unless he finally failed,
utterly and completely, and so she had let him try, hoping that when the
time finally came, he would be able to move on, to live, finally, for
himself, and not for her. Had she ever imagined that he would be so
selfless as to willingly accept death to free her, she would have never
let him try. "How could I live," she asked softly, knowing he could not
hear her, "if I let you die for me?"

She took him in her arms, and lifted him up, and carried him to his bed.
Then she called out, in her mind, to her sister, and knowing that she
was coming, the Lady sat there by his bed, holding his hand. He looked
dead, she thought, were it not for the slow rise and fall of his chest.
His skin was nearly black all over, and in places it was burnt and
charred, split from the heat, the searing and charring reaching even to
the bone. 

She had felt him go beyond her, for an endless moment, and when he had,
his body had burst into flames, real flames, as it burned from the
inside. It was a miracle he had not died. She could feel that he had
been changed. There was a fire burning in him still, that she could not
put out. Not a fever, really. It was more like a fire in his ki. She
didn't know what it was, or what to do about it. So she just sat, and
held his hand, hoping.