Chapter 204 Ancient Tongue

Ancient Tongue. The history regarding its origin and source is heavily contested across multiple published texts. Some believed it to be a language spoken by a precursor - a more magical - race that inhabited these planes. Opposers argued that if this were true, 'what led to their extinction?'

Based on Guy's conceptualisation of magic, one could say that Ancient Tongue is as close as anyone can get to the absolute truths of this world. No, to be more precise, Ancient Tongue IS the TRUTH. Even if what is spoken is false, it becomes the truth.

"*cough* Urrro," Marie vocalised with difficulty as she combated the pain flaring down her throat.

"Wrong," Krish said while shaking his head. "The sound has to be formed from your lungs, not with your tongue and mouth."

"How are we even supposed to do that?" Marie whined.

"Use your mana," Krish instructed. "Humans aren't designed to speak the Ancient Tongue. We don't have the organs required to create the specific sounds that comprise this language."

"Can you please repeat the sound?" Marie asked while scratching her forehead. This would be her eighth time doing so, which exasperated her to no end, but she was helpless. There were no shortcuts in this.

"Listen carefully," Krish said without a hint of irritation or disappointment in his voice and reproduced the sound.

The sound was guttural and reverberated with a mechanical grind. Truthfully, Marie could not put the flavour of the noise her Master made into words. It both hurt her ears and soothed them at the same time.

"How many more sounds do we need to cover?" Marie groaned.

"Thirty-two," Krish answered. "That's just the start. You need to then cover over fifty compound sounds, vocabulary, grammar... All in all, it is an intensive process."

Marie released a loud moan of defeat, "Why don't you write all the sounds down and we can go through all of them at once? It seems highly inefficient to go at it one at a time."

"There is no textual form for the Ancient Tongue," Krish replied while shaking his head. "And even if I did transcribe it using the Common Tongue for ease of understanding, it would introduce bias which will cause you to deviate from the true pronunciation of the sounds."

This was also the reason why it was essentially impossible to derive Ancient Tongue using modern chanting-based spells as reference. The years of written transcription, reinterpretation and mispronunciation had bastardised the language to such as extent that the Ancient Tongue used in these chanting-based spells barely resembled its true form. It was far too detached for linguistic experts to make logical interpolations and rediscover the original. Nowadays, although the chants worked and produced results, they were merely low imitations that only resembled a minute fraction of the spells' true power.

"So there is no alternative in this matter. And even if there were, I don't recommend that you pursue it. Disclosing the existence of Ancient Tongue is extremely dangerous and could lead to disastrous consequences. As I've repeated time and time again, this language was supposed to be extinct. It cannot exist! The only other language that is in use now which is close to Ancient Tongue is the Dwarven Language, but they have deviated to a more symbolic and prose-based form which has dissipated most of its potency."

"You've met Dwarves?" Marie shot back.

"The Age of Isolation was before my time. But our ancestors were present when the planes were conjoined. In fact, there have been a few Dwarves and Elves amongst our lineage as well!"

Marie hummed in light contemplation before shaking her head and redirecting the conversation "Be that as it may, how do you know the Ancient Tongue? By this, I mean how do we as practitioners of the Heavenly Eye know this?"

"We've always known," Krish responded. "The Heavenly Eye has a rich and far-reaching lineage. Once it's time, I will show you just how ancient it is. We were there when Ancient Tongue was the norm!"

"But do you not see the irony?" Marie exclaimed. Noticing Krish's confused frown, she coughed and expounded, "As long as someone still speaks the language it cannot be considered extinct. We still speak the Ancient Tongue, how could it go extinct?"

"It just did," Krish shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

"There had to be a conscious effort from our side to let it go extinct," Marie clarified. "While we still existed, we could have still taught people how to speak it, right?"

"Of course," Krish agreed.

"So why didn't we interfere?" Marie emphasised.

"We did. There were a few of us that tried to teach the Ancient Tongue to others, but the world didn't let us," Krish revealed with a sigh.

"It didn't let you?"

"We started to receive a backlash from the world every time we attempted to instruct others. At first, it was only mild - a sprain here, a cut there. But over time, it started to grow more egregious - a laceration, a fraction, even dismemberment. After a point, we started to catch on and realised that the world had deemed Ancient Tongue extinct," Krish finalised. "Although, we were still allowed to continue learning and propagating the language within our lineage."

"That's not right," Marie said with a disconcerted frown. "How can the world just decide when an entire culture should go extinct?"

"It's just a language, Marie," Krish commented.

"It isn't JUST a language, Master. It is the crystallisation of a way of life. Everything a group of people believe, how they perceive their reality, and what they find to be moral, immoral, ethical and unethical can all be determined by learning these people's language. But now it's just all... gone. And it isn't even fair because there are still people who can speak it but aren't allowed to distribute this knowledge!"

"Fate works in mysterious ways," Krish affirmed. "No one can go against it - at least not anyone living within this world. We are just in the unfortunate position of knowing how fate is going to rear its head. Sometimes it truly is bliss to live in ignorance. But this is the burden we bear, there is no other option."

"I guess so," Marie muttered.

"Let's stop wasting time and try to make some progress today, shall we?" Krish said while clapping his hands to boost Marie's motivation. "On the bright side, once you can perfectly pronounce one sound from the Ancient Tongue phonics, the others are extremely easy to grasp."

Marie shot a dubious look before humming, "I will believe you."

Krish rapped the back of her head and sneered back at her.

____

Just like her Master indicated, grasping the first sound was the greatest hurdle. After four days of fruitless crooning, Marie finally replicated the first sound. Then came the next, which was grasped in a single day. Following that, she breezed through the predetermined thirty-two in three days. The additional compound sounds took even less time, and she quickly found herself cruising through the grammar, semantics and vocabulary of the language. Even she was surprised by the ease with which she assimilated the language. It was surprisingly intuitive and flowed out of her mouth naturally. After learning newer vocabulary, she could readily place it into sentences without a hint of hesitance.

Marie was confident that her pace could have been faster if she were allowed to practice outside the confines of her Master's cottage. There were times when sleep evaded her, and she was tempted to hone her language drills, but she reluctantly held her tongue - she was rebellious but not reckless. This was assisted by the myriad of truly horrific stories her Master would tell her to caution her against any ill-advised indiscretions.

One story to note involved a Heavenly Eye practitioner, who found their skin burning off and disintegrating. Another had their genitals twisted and subsequently exploded due to excess mana accumulation - although she lacked the extra 'appendages' to empathise, she imagined that it would not feel particularly pleasant. Some of the recounted afflictions were hard to fathom and sounded downright implausible, but her Master assured her that they were all in fact true.

On this particular day, which was exactly two weeks after she started learning the Ancient Tongue with her Master, Marie was back in her Master's cottage in the so-called upper dimension, holding a workable conversation.

"|Today is a pleasant day|," Marie said, and suddenly the room grew brighter as if the occluding clouds in the sky had all disappeared.

"|No, it seems that a light drizzle is just around the corner,|" the brightness dimmed as rain clouds manifested out of nothingness.

"What does |drizzle| mean?" Marie asked.

"A direct, and crude, translation would be light rain. However, it has a much, much deeper meaning to it. Imagine that the surrounding temperature decreased suddenly causing the sudden formation of low-hanging clouds. A brisk wind picks up, causing these clouds to break and release their contained water like a light mist. Now that is what |drizzle| means," Krish clarified.

"That's a lot of meaning for just one word," Marie whistled.

"But you should be able to see just how powerful it is with the limited vocabulary in your belt," Krish reminded. "The dimension we are in isn't completely real, but the way the world behaves and reacts to your actions are faithful to the real world. Just a short sentence caused the sky to clear up, and then make a complete one-eighty and become cloudier all within the span of a minute."

"What will we be learning today?" Marie inquired enthusiastically. After witnessing the potency of Ancient Tongue first-hand, her earlier apprehension and disappointment had vanished altogether.

"I think you are proficient enough," Krish declared. "It is time for us to start your transformation."