Sid did not answer at once. I could still see the greed in his grey eyes, and I let it sit there. I think this was not something that I could rush; it either followed my will, or something else would happen.
I held my ground and let the silence linger; the decision now rested with him.
"A million times," he said at last, turning the words over. "You would fight me a million times."
"I’d lose a million times." I kept my voice flat. "And come back a million and one. That’s the part you keep not accounting for, Sid. You’re used to things that break. I don’t break. I just start over."
In this moment, I decided to bring out my big guns, and my eyes glowed golden. I had called down Tribulation from the heavens, and stood before its judgement... everyone else turned to ash, and I remained standing, and even the heavens could not judge me... who was a Sovereign before something of that magnitude?
I don’t know what he saw in my eyes when they glowed with the light of heaven, but the greed in his eyes vanished. There was something there, but I could not understand it, and for a moment, I wondered if someone could live so long that they begin to experience emotions that I could never understand.
Another ten seconds passed, and then he spoke, "Everything breaks," he said. "I have made a study of it for thousands of years, and I have not met the thing that does not eventually break."
I did not bend my head. "Then I’m the first." I did not say it as a boast, but with the full weight of my convictions behind it, because I needed him to hear that it was not defiance talking. I had experienced things that no one else could understand, and that had shaped me into what I had become.
I gave a small smile, "You could take the oath by force. Maybe it holds, but you’d be betting your one road out on a spell nobody’s tried on a soul like mine, and if you’re wrong, you’ve spent your chance and got nothing but your greatest enemy. Or..."
"Or I trust a boy who will not remember trusting me."
I paused, "Or that."
The darkness churned around him. I could almost see him doing the arithmetic a mind that old does, every branch, every outcome. I thought it was almost familiar; it reminded me of how I read the branches of an Inscription.
"You have thought about how this looks from where I stand," he said. I cocked my head, knowing it was not quite a question.
I spoke slowly, "I’ve had a lot of loops to think about it..."
"Here is what I see," the Sovereign interrupted me, as the darkness around him settled, leaving only the tired old shape of him. "I let you go without an oath, you... come and you go, and you begin to learn in my house, and you grow... and you will grow, I do not doubt that part; you frighten me a little in that regard. And one of two things happens at the end of it."
He raised one hand, palm up, as if weighing something.
"Either you master this Celestial flame and the anchor, and you stand at my chains, and in your mercy you set me free." The other hand came up. "Or you master them, and you look at everything I have kept running in this place, and you remember that your fate was to be like everyone else here, and you decide the ruler of Darkness does not deserve mercy... and you walk out and leave me in the dark, and I spend the rest of eternity knowing that freedom came and went and chose not to touch me."
He lowered both hands, and I understood that the Sovereign had cut to the core of the matter, skipping out all the drama, showing me the picture that I had unconsciously pushed away.
"That is the deal you are offering. A chance, and a judgment. You will free me only if, when the day comes, you have decided I am worth freeing."
"Yeah," I said. "That’s the deal."
The old man smiled, "You do not soften it."
I nodded, "No. Softening it would be a lie, and you’d smell it."
He looked at me askance, and his smile became a deep laugh, and the pressure I had not fully noticed thinned out of the air. I had been on the edge of his blade all this while, and if he had decided that what I was saying was not enough, I did not doubt that he would have tried to keep me here by force.
"Do you know," the Sovereign said, "how long it has been since anyone offered me a thing they might take away? They give me commands and maintenance schedules. The fucking Soul Flayer gives me silence and pain. No one has offered me a chance in many years, since any mage of great standing deals only in certainties. Remember this truth, young Celestial. Chains, walls, oaths... these are the tools of power and domination." His grey eyes fixed on me. "And here is a child offering me the one thing they never would... the possibility of a no."
He paused and did not speak for a while, and I asked him, "Is that a yes?"
"It is the reason it is a yes." He said it quietly, and I felt the ground of the whole loop shift under me. "A certainty, I would refuse, from you, that would be a lie, and I have had my fill of lies. But a chance... a real one, that you might withhold... that I can believe."
He smiled almost with sadness, "Only a true thing carries the risk of failing." He tilted his head. "You have offered me the one bargain in eight thousand years that could be real. I would be a fool to kill it in the cradle."
I did not let myself feel relief, since I did not trust Sid, and I was not going to start.
"So we’re agreed?" I said.
"Not yet." The Sovereign raised his finger, "Not until you see the full scale of what you want to challenge, and at the end of it, I want you to use the same truth that you stand by, look me in the face... and tell me you will succeed."