Chương 12: Chapter 1.12: Routines and Revelations

Favius studied the pink light painting the clouds before sunrise on his way to the gymnasium. As he appreciated the world's natural beauty, he traced the outline of his round owl eyes with taloned fingers and reflected on the scroll he had read yesterday. The author hadn't exactly been racist, but definitely biased. What he had read was interesting, yet discouraging. Shifters relied on clans and shamanic traditions to learn the skill to metamorphose into their animal form.

Usually it was a week-long process requiring enormous discipline, though different practices could help develop a wide range of traits in shifters. He looked up, stretched out his arms, and spun on the spot. One day, I'll be able to fly through the sky. A broad grin spread across his face at the thought. Bird shifters fully developing flight was rare, even though bird shifters as a group were among the more successful species. The various animal bloodlines achieved vastly different fortunes.

He looked east to the sea and recalled the Lireni soldiers with their grey skin. Shark-, seal-, and sea-lion-shifters dominated the coasts and had allowed humanity to conquer the oceans. In what the book's author had sneered at as barbarian tribal nations, large mammalian predators tended to make up aristocracies. He looked towards the siluet of Cindrath in the distance. The Triumviate Republic tended to purge and replace those ruling castes with senates in conquered cities.

Apparently, various civilizations to the east were ruled by "beasts". The author's vitriol about the quality of their civilization ran through Favius's mind as Caliga approached from behind the building. He nodded a silent greeting, and she fell into step beside him as they walked toward the gymnasium. She glanced sideways at him, and he felt oddly exposed in nothing but his loincloth and a cloak against the morning chill.

"How long—" She swallowed.

"How long have you been trained to fight?" Favius chuckled.

"For as long as I can remember. Brutus started roughhousing with me as soon as I walked, and then—" Favius shrugged.

"Things just came together." As they approached the gymnasium, Caliga got visibly more nervous and tryed to work up her courage to ask something. Yet as they turned the corner, where Brutus sat cross-legged in front of the entrance, she took in a sharp breath and ran off. The Magnicultor got to his feet, smiling as he studied Favius. The boy shook his head.

"I don't get what's her deal." Brutus chuckled.

"You don't need to. She'll either tell you or she won't. It's not your problem." Favius hummed as he followed his mentor into the gymnasium. Following another round of fighting, the two of them were again in the bathhouse's back pools. After soaking for a long while, Favius cleared his throat.

"So what exactly is an insight?" He leaned forward in anticipation. If it just requires knowledge in this particular subject, then maybe I can become a powerful cultivator with what I remember from Earth? Brutus chuckled.

"I can see that you're plotting something by the glint in your eyes." He stretched, arcing his back, and exhaled deeply.

"An insight can be anything sufficiently profound. People like to talk about the Ten Noble Paths of Cultivation, but—" he shrugged.

"For someone of your station, only four matter. You will either become a charismatic, martial, arcane, or scholastic cultivator." Favius frowned.

"I will?" Brutus snorted.

"Obviously. You've been fed spiritual foods weekly since you were old enough to eat them." Several questions ran through Favius's head, and he settled on the most important one.

"You're obviously a martial cultivator, but if everyone who's rich enough becomes a cultivator, what about Marcus and—" he swallowed— "Severin?" The thought echoed through his head, though he didn't find the strength within him to say it. And mother. Brutus was silent for a bit, his hand trailing through the water.

"Your father made it to the third rank and comprehended a mixture of martial and charismatic insights. Marcus?" He sniffed disdainfully.

"He's a Precultor of the charismatic tradition." Favius hummed, and the two of them studied the sun rising over the eastern hills as it illuminated the endless grain fields of the Cindrathi Plains, which were still covered by banks of fog.

"So," Favius ventured, "if I somehow knew how certain things worked, that means I would be a very powerful cultivator, right?" Brutus stroked his wet beard and studied him with an unreadable expression. Favius controlled his breath. He's definitely noticing something. Goddammit, why is it so hard to act like a proper fucking child? But then again, I don't want to spend ten years acting like a stupid young aristocrat. Before he could continue that train of thought, Brutus let out a rumbling chuckle.

"So you talked to someone or read some scroll? That's not going to cut it." He held up four fingers.

"Just learning about something, that's mere propositional knowledge. But the philosophers recognize four kinds of knowledge. And only an insight constructed out of all four of them is fit to challenge the heavens." Favius frowned.

"What other kinds of knowledge can there be? You either know something or you don't." But Brutus shook his head.

"There is a difference between knowing how to do a thing and merely knowing of it. No matter how well someone describes to you how to forge a blade, you will never match a master craftsman. What is missing is the procedural knowledge." Brutus rais his hand and rotated it while droplets fell off it into the pool.

"Then there is perspectival knowledge—what it's like to experience something. This one is hard." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Favius narrowed his eyes.

"How is perspectival knowing different from procedural knowing? If I know how to make a sword, I know what it's like to make a sword." Brutus nodded.

"Ah. But tell me this: can you truly understand the nature of an object by only looking at it from one angle?" Favius frowned.

"Well, I could just rotate it," he said with a cheeky smile, but Brutus shook his head slowly as he studied the dissipating fog over the plains.

"You need not only know what it's like to forge a blade, but also what it's like to observe someone forge one, to care for someone forging one, and to assist them." Favius nodded, considering propositional, procedural, and perspectival knowing. He wanted to consider it longer, but the cold temperature of the water was getting to him, and he felt a shiver running up his spine.

"What about the final one?" Brutus chuckled.

"Participatory knowing is by far the hardest. It comes from embodying your understanding of the first three. What it's like to be the insight, to enact it." Favius frowned and opened his mouth to ask what the man meant, but Brutus shook his head and got out of the pool.

"There's little point in me explaining it. It's something you will grasp when you experience it, and not before." As he dried himself and they walked from the bathhouse towards the library, Favius considered what he had learned. Seems like I won't be able to become a powerful cultivator just because I know physics. Then an idea hit him and he studied Brutus, considering what he had learned. Unless I'm mistaken, there's a connection between propositional and perspectival knowing. What if I can share my perspectives?

Perspectives on ideas like biomechanics and kinetic energy with him? Could that help him? Before Favius could pursue the thought further, Tiro intercepted them at the side entrance of the estate. The man bowed, and a slight tightness returned to Favius's chest. It was so easy to just accept it when I thought of them as servants, but now that I know... He sighed and made the conscious decision not to think about it. No use worrying about something I can't change. Doesn't matter if they are servants or slaves.

All I can do is treat them well and not abuse my position. Tiro continued only after Brutus nodded at the man.

"I took the liberty to prepare a light breakfast in the library, if it pleases the young master." Favius looked sideways at Brutus, and his bodyguard shrugged. Soon they were in the library, and while eating at one of the desks, Favius watched Tiro move along the shelves, check scrolls, and finally select one to place beside two others on the desk he had used for reading yesterday. He finished munching down a piece of fish before addressing his personal slave.

"Tiro, what are you doing?"

"I took the liberty to look for some works the young master might consider practical in nature." A faint smile played over the middle-aged man's face. A genuine smile spread over Favius's face, and he let out a chuckle.

"Thank you, Tiro. If I had to read one more piece of epic poetry—" He shook his head. After finishing breakfast, he walked over and settled down to read for the rest of the day. The first text, On the Founding of the Republic, was a semi-mythological account of how Cindrath, Rhexion, and Lirene united after a long era of wars. By founding the academy and trading of tin and copper, they gained strength and conquered the other city-states of the Irilion coast.

The conquered were subjugated under the senates of one of the three cities, though both Lirene and Rhexion were in turn subordinate to the Senate of Cindrath. Favius chuckled occasionally as he read the account because the author tended to invoke divine providence and inspiration to explain any historical fact he didn't know. Favius shook his head.

"Is there anything that can't be attributed to the gods?" he said to himself, but Brutus replied, looking up from the scroll on shifters that Favius had read the day before.

"What is there beyond providence?" he asked in the tone of a teacher. Favius was about to scoff, but then leaned back in his chair, considering the question.

"Well, that depends on what providence is, doesn't it?" Brutus hummed and nodded, finally looking up from his scroll.

"And what do you, young Favius, believe to be providence?" Favius furrowed his brows. Dammit. I know there was an entire discipline of theological philosophy back in my world, but— I've always been an agnostic.

"The will of the gods," he ventured.

"Why would it be the will of the gods?" Brutus replied. Favius scratched his neck and considered the issue.

"Because..." He trailed off.

"The gods are almighty and decide our fates?"

"Ah," Brutus replied, "so you consider the gods to be above the Fates?" Favius let out a chuckle as he replied, "Who knows?" He put down the scroll and took a look at the next one. Something unreadable crossed his mentor's face, but soon the man refocused on his scroll. It was a chronicle of the houses and the magistrates of Cindrath. The first part of the scroll was actually interesting.

It explained how the Senate was the center of power and selected the three consuls that would act as the executive and judiciary. Meanwhile the Magisterium acted as the intermediary between the Familias, Collegia, and Temples that formed, as the scroll put it, the bricks of the Republic, while the magisters were the mortar holding it all together.

Beyond that, it devolved into a record of the histories of the major familias, whose author was just as fond of invoking various divine influences as the one who had discussed the founding of the Republic. Apparently his own familia, the Ovinius, had the blood of the mountain god in their ancestry. Favius sneered and shook his head, refraining from thinking too deeply about how exactly the genetics of having a god's bloodline worked. Before he could reach for the third scroll, Tiro placed a fourth beside it.

Both were guides on the proper management of estates. The first one, "On Household Authority and Obligation," laid out the household structure and how the entire familia was organized under its patriarch. Favius frowned as he reread the sections on adoption.

"Interesting," he murmured. Apparently they consider adoption before the altar more legitimate in terms of family rights than bloodlines. So even if Marcus and Hesnia have a child, I will still be the legitimate heir. He smiled for a moment, but the expression quickly fell away. Of course, Hesnia might decide that I and Marius are obstacles to her own child's future, and then things will get nasty.

He was finishing the final scroll, On Vines, Olives, and Tenant Obligations, which described how a majordomo was to organize the dependents of a farming estate, when Caliga burst through the door. She was dragging a crying Urania behind her. Brutus instantly tensed, and Tiro melted into the background. Favius was on his feet before he knew it and ran to his sister, hugging her. It took him a minute to calm her down enough to talk. Then she finally looked at him, took a deep, snotty breath, and spoke.

"Hesnia told me I can't see Marius and Lia. She said I'm a bad influence."