Ice Vapor Goddess

Chapter 19 Clinical Analysis (Part 1)

Seeing Aldridge's expression, Xiren's heart stirred.

He met the rune master for the first time after the train accident, but knew nothing about him except that he was rational and organized.

He was a man of few words, sparing with his words except for essential matters.

He always had a blank expression on his face, and even when he was most tired on the road, he would only frown slightly.

He never mentioned himself, and Xilun didn't even know where he was from.

To most people, he's just an introverted person; many people don't like to talk, and that's no big deal.

But for Xilun, this meant more untold stories. A person's silence could hold many implications, but his information was still insufficient.

But when faced with that armor, he revealed complex emotions for the first time: admiration, sadness, and perhaps even some pain.

“You’re very familiar with it,” Celen said.

Aldridge remained silent for a long time before softly saying, "Many people are familiar with it. When it soars through the air, everyone who is wailing in the fire will recognize it."

Siren thought quickly, steer the conversation toward Aldridge, but refused to make himself "present" in the conversation, yet expressed a kind of anger and accusation. It seemed to be accusing the Steel Angel, but in reality, it was accusing the Other behind it, that is, the Church.

But Aldridge is clearly a rune master of the church, and his trip to the north was ordered...

Xilun immediately understood.

For a psychoanalyst, silence is not just silence itself; it can have many underlying reasons. In the context of Aldridge's behavior, it may signify a resistance to the symbolic world.

The semiotic realm, one of the three realms proposed by Jacques Lacan, consists of the realms of language, law, rules, social structure, cultural symbols, and order. For Eldridge, this would be the laws, ethics, commands, and authority of the Church.

He maintains an imagined distance from the symbolic world through "silence," refusing to have too much contact with it, and even in conversations, he tries to make "himself" absent. He refuses to incorporate his subjectivity into the order of the symbolic world.

Or to put it simply, it's "I don't want to play by your rules, but I can't refuse, so I remain silent and distant."

“So… he didn’t come to Speyside voluntarily. He was transferred here but he didn’t want to, perhaps because of some violent act by the church… combined with the Iron Angels… war? Yes, he is likely anti-war, he refused to build war machines…” Siren thought rapidly, a flood of thoughts surging like instinct.

Aldridge may not have realized that a simple action and a single answer had almost completely exposed him.

But Siren doesn't express it. The psychoanalyst's analysis of the client's words is neither a sense of superiority that "I see through you" nor a sympathy that "I understand you".

"Soaring through the skies...and howling in the fire?" Siren repeated the two most vivid phrases from that passage. "When have you ever seen such a scene?"

He deliberately omitted the "you" in "when did you see..." The omission and absence of the subject would satisfy Aldridge's desire for his own subject to be absent, and would not touch his sensitive heart.

Words gave him a space, rather than an aggressive other trying to enter his mind. “When…” Aldridge’s rough fingers traced the steel armor, “Many times, every time… that war, the Fourth Crusade, and the Fifth Crusade, and even now…”

Siren quickly flipped through his memories. The Fourth Crusade had taken place fifty years ago, taking ten years to destroy the Dwarven Mountain Kingdom, and the Church had acquired rune technology.

The fifth Eastern Expedition took place twenty-nine years ago, when the Iron Angel Knights made their first appearance. Their massive war machines swept across the world, their target the Sindora Empire further east, but that empire had been a colony of the Albion Empire for a century.

The Knights fought their way through fourteen kingdoms, clashing with Albion's musketeers in the primeval tropical jungles of Sindora.

That was a famous war in world history, and the last Crusade. The most powerful empire, Albion, suffered a crushing defeat on land, but sank 90% of the Church's ships in the Battle of the Starshine Ocean, forcing both sides to sign a peace treaty.

That was the last Crusade, where the Church demonstrated the strength of its old hegemony, while the Albion Empire proved its authority as the First Empire in naval battles.

The steam-powered steel ships, steel angels, steam tanks, and breech-loading rifles used during this period showcased the cutting-edge technology of the superpower and became enduring research targets for major military academies for the next two decades.

Countless innocent people must have died during the two wars, but there are two problems with Aldridge's words—one is that the Iron Angels had not yet appeared during the Fourth Crusade, and the other is "until now."

The Fifth Crusade lasted for three years, and the scenes of steel angels soaring through the sky and people perishing in flames occurred during those years. Even if there were some minor wars during that time, it's impossible for them to have continued "until now."

Slip of the tongue!

As if he had caught a mouse by the tail, Xiren secretly smiled; he had completely embraced the role of a psychoanalyst.

The slip of the tongue was not just a slip of the tongue, but it exposed the unconscious mind of the person seeking advice. As a rune master, he may have been one of the designers of the Iron Angels, or he may have witnessed the brutal killings during the Fifth Crusade. That scene has been haunting him in his subconscious and dreams.

That pain and entanglement retrospectively went back to the Fourth Crusade, the moment the Iron Angels were born, and has continued to this day.

“Until now?” Siren interrupted Aldridge.

He suddenly realized: "No...it was during those three years, but I...I..."

His face contorted with pain and struggle. Xiren had never seen a patient in such agony before. The expression pierced him deeply, but he could not show any emotion, for expression is also a form of speech, even a performance.

At this moment, Aldridge regarded him as the Other—the personification of the symbolic order in his eyes. He used body language to describe and perform his own pain, trying to get the Other to answer.

Xiren heard his deafening roar, the kind of questioning and pain, but he had to play the role of a background character.

Joseph and the guards nearby heard the noise and came to investigate, but Siren gestured and looked at them to leave and keep quiet.

Looking at Aldridge kneeling on the ground, Celen realized that he might have encountered his most difficult patient yet.

(End of this chapter)