Arcane Wonders Forum
Mage Wars => Creative => Fan Fiction => Topic started by: Sailor Vulcan on June 29, 2016, 08:56:20 PM
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A huge, brightly lit, misty chamber. Sleeping beings lying in transparent capsules along the walls. A glowing network of ephemeral lights floating overhead, and in the center of it were four shining lights: one fiery red, one ocean blue, one rocky brown, and one wispy white. All four of the central lights were surrounding a being of such great psychic power that it's mind was several times the size of its body, which was also very big.
It was almost time. The Nameless One could not keep the other gods in the dark forever. Soon they would know the truth. But hopefully they would find out too late. As long as everything went according to plan...
"Navee. Why are you here?" boomed the Nameless one in a deep telepathic voice.
"I must enter the illusory realm at once!"
said the old imp, standing in the entrance to the misty chamber with a determined gleam in his eyes. "A spy of Malalai's has infiltrated it!"
"I know," said the nameless one. "I let him in."
"What!? Why?" the imp, Navee, was incredulous.
"You know why. So as not to arouse suspicion from the other gods. However, for some reason I do not yet know of, he retains full, unrestricted access to his memories, even within the illusory realm. I trust you are prepared to stop him?"
"I'll do whatever it takes. Are you sure it's a good idea to let anyone else into the illusory realm?" The more people who entered it, the less likely their plan was to succeed.
And if Navee was right about exactly who Malakai had sent into the illusory realm, his beloved young student was in danger.
The Nameless one ignored his question. He had answered it many times before.
"Do not fail," the Nameless one said in his booming telepathic voice.
Sleep came over the old imp, and he began to dream.
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They say that there are two sides to every story.
The villain glared in frustration at the hero from across the fighting ring. The crowd watched the spectacle in fascination. Everyone in the stands were wearing augmented reality glasses, and so were the two who faced each other in the ring.
"Seriously, why are you doing this? Why do you hate me so much?"
The hero looked confused, then angry. "I won't fall for your tricks. I know who you are, and I know who you serve."
"Really," said the villain, skeptically. "Please enlighten me, because I don't."
"Yes. You do," said the hero. "You just don't remember it right now."
"What?" the villain said incredulously. He had thought, when he had first met that boy that he looked kinda familiar. But the chances that any of what he was saying was true...
"I remember who you are. I know what you did. You WILL face justice!"
For a fleeting second, a strange sense of overwhelming guilt came over the villain. But it happened too quickly, and he assumed it was just his unfounded suspicion/guilt complex acting up again. When he was younger, he was paranoid about being suspected of wrongdoing even when he wasn't doing anything wrong, and he had feared that his fear of being suspected would make him even more suspected, which made him even more afraid. He thought he had mostly quashed that paranoia by now...
"You seem to have no idea what the words 'prior probability' mean," the villain countered, indignantly. "Or maybe you're just crazy. Naturally crazy I mean, rather than making some kind of avoidable mistake that you wouldn't make if you were more educated."
"The final showdown!" said the announcer. "Vincent Black as a Priest of Asyra VERSUS Harris Hertz as a Wizard of Sistarra! 3! 2! 1! Fight!"
Round 1
Harris: 23 Life, 10 mana
Vincent: 21 life, 9 mana
Initiative was rolled automatically. Vincent won the roll.
The hero narrowed his eyes. Why was Hertz being a wizard in this fight? Wouldn't he do better as a warlock? This time it wasn't just a game anymore, after all. Did he really not know? He shook his head. Whatever his nemesis was planning, he would find out in due time.
"I'll go first!" the hero, Vincent said. He pulled a card out of his spellbook, a card binder which was attached to his left arm by a Velcro strap. "I summon a Temple Sentry!"
Vincent mana: 4(-5)
Vincent scanned the creature's card with his strange white armored smartphone, and an animated three-dimensional image of a short guarding knight appeared in front of him, which could only be seen while wearing augmented reality glasses. Or so everyone thought.
Vincent grabbed another card out of his spellbook and scanned it. A face down card appeared over the arena floor.
"And I cast an enchantment on the zone. Your move, Hertz."
Vincent mana: 2(-2)
"I equip myself with a wispwillow amulet," said Harris, scanning the corresponding card with his more normal looking black smartphone. He suddenly felt a strange weight against his shirt, and gasped. He looked down at the amulet, and touched it. It felt warm. What the hell was going on? Was he hallucinating?
Harris mana: 7(-3)
"...That's the end of the round," said Harris, shakily.
Round 2
Harris mana: 15(+7, +1)
Vincent mana: 9(+7)
"I summon Sailfin Hydra!" said Harris, scanning its card. The two-headed hydra took shape out of thin air, landed on the floor with a loud crash, and roared.
"And I equip myself with leather chausses."
He felt it again this time. His pants felt different than before. And on the ground beside him, the pair of blue jeans he had been wearing previously had fallen in a little heap.
The crowd gasped.
Harris had a deep sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach--a wordless apprehension. On some level he just knew that his life, for all intents and purposes, had just become an episode out of a card-game anime.
Without even thinking about it, Harris pressed the "forfeit" button on his smart phone. His hydra, and his pants disappeared, leaving him in only a t-shirt, socks, shoes and underwear. But Vincent's temple sentry did not disappear. No longer bound by pesky rules, the sentry launched itself at Harris, it's blade held high.
"Hey! Listen!" shouted a voice from the audience. A man jumped out of the stands and dashed in front of Harris, and blocked the attack with his forceblade. Harris stared at his rescuer. There was something very familiar about the other man. He looked to be in his mid to late twenties. He had dark hair, tanned skin, an earring in one ear, and a neat goatee on his chin. He had a spellbook binder attached to his right arm, and he was holding a force blade in his left. A strange green armored smart phone was holstered at his waist.
And he had a stupid annoying grin on his face.
"Leave this to me, my young padawan." man, he had ALWAYS wanted to say that!
"Who are you?" Vincent demanded. Harris's heart was beating rapidly in his chest. He wanted to know that too. What the hell was going on here?
"You don't remember me?" said the man with the forceblade.
"No?" said a bewildered Vincent.
The man with the forceblade gave a high-pitched, kind of squeaky cackle. It was rather unnerving coming from a grown man.
"Do you remember me now?"
"Yes."
The two mages stared at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. No one spoke. The crowd waited with baited breath.
While a fight would have been very narratively satisfying, Harris wasn't stupid. He knew what he had to do.
"911? Hi, I would like to report an attempted assault. I'm at the convention center, and someone just tried to attack me with some crazy supernatural shit during a game. No this isn't a prank, the entire audience saw it, you can ask anyone here if you don't believe me..."
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Don't forget to review! I would love to have some feedback from you! What you liked what you didn't like, what you think I could improve, and maybe some predictions for what's going to happen next?
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The footage of the interrupted final duel of the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy tournament of 2016 was on YouTube now, and the world kept turning as usual...mostly. The majority of people didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, since the majority of people did not play card games. But some did notice, and they were flabbergasted.
Some rather religious people had accused either Harris, Vincent or both of witchcraft.
Intelligence agencies around the world quietly investigated this mysterious game, "Mage Wars" and more and more military personnel began learning how to play it.
Some idiot had the bright idea to "recreate" the Asyran religion depicted in the Mage Wars official storyline, claiming that both christianity and islam were based on it, rather than the other way around.
Mage Wars players on the Arcane Wonders forums had divided into two factions: those who thought it would be really awesome to have REAL magical duels and go to Etheria in real life, and those who thought it would be TERRIBLE.
The rational fiction subreddit had exploded with shock, fear, and excitement about the news. To them, the footage of that interrupted duel, combined with Indianapolis police reports from that day, was unmistakably strong bayesian evidence of...well no one could quite agree on all the specifics. Some of them said that this meant that the world of Etheria was probably real, and so was its magic, just as depicted in the official Mage Wars storyline. Others cried Ocaam's razor and said that they were getting ahead of themselves and jumping to conclusions. After all, all they had actually observed was a video depicting a mage-dueling card game where the spells had become real, and a police report that confirmed it. The police report could be faked after all, and everyone knew that videos could be edited.
The prior probability that a card game depicting a magical duel could become a real magical duel was much lower than the probability that a police report could be faked. But why on Earth anyone would have faked that particular police report was anyone's guess. Maybe it was meant as a joke?
Protests from the moderators that this was off-topic and should wait for the Friday off-topic thread were mostly ignored by everyone.
Somewhere far to the west, a mad scientist stared at their computer screen.
"What."
There was no way the universe really worked like that. Just no way.
He wanted to forget what he saw. But he couldn't. He wouldn't. The evidence wasn't going away.
I notice that I am confused.
The mad scientist pointedly did NOT hit his head against the desk.
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After the whole debacle at the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy tournament finals, Harris had found the strangely familiar forcemaster who had rescued him, and demanded an explanation. The man had said that he didn't want to talk about it there.
That was why, one week later, Harris was now going out to lunch with him at a Mediterranean restaurant back home, accompanied by his (approximately) best friend Jack and Jack's mother Grace. Jack had given Harris a thumbs up and a knowing grin. Harris had rolled his eyes and told Jack that it wasn't a date. Jack and Grace surreptitiously took a seat in a booth nearby, both for safety purposes and because they wanted to eavesdrop. Harris sat down across from the forcemaster who had rescued him, who had been looking bemusedly at him and his friends when they entered.
"Hi," said Harris.
"Hello," said the forcemaster. "My name's Dan Rood."
"Harris Hertz," Harris responded. They shook hands.
"So...what the hell is going on here?"
"Our date," Dan joked.
"You know that's not what I meant," said Harris.
"I know. Are you sure you want to know?"
"Yes. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be here."
Dan nodded, gravely. His stupid annoying grin was nowhere to be seen.
"Very well."
Then Harris heard Dan's voice in his head.
Two, one, four, seven, eleven! Fish-tootles in a giant frying pan go home. Unlock!
And Harris remembered.
He remembered Etheria. He remembered Westlock and its culture and history. He remembered his parents and sisters there. He remembered how he and a handful of other Westlockian kids had been tricked into signing a demonic contract in the midst of a roleplaying game. He remembered finding out that the demonic contract was real, and how stupid he had felt. The contract had bound him to become a Warlock of Bael. He remembered becoming a student at the Tower of Night. He remembered rescuing the demon Navee from some of the older students. Back then Navee had been a lowly imp with strange and heretical ideas. He remembered growing closer with Navee over time. He remembered how they had plotted together to conquer and reform Infernia. They were going to liberate its people, both demons and non-demonic beings, from their endless cycle of hatred and pain. But it hadn't gone as planned. And so they had gone in search of the Nameless one, hoping that it could help them...
How had Harris forgotten that much? It wasn't like he had had amnesia up to this point and was now recovering from it. It was more like he had forgotten a word, and that the word had been on the tip of his tongue for such a long time that he had stopped noticing that it was still on the tip of his tongue, until it had completely passed from his conscious mind.
Faster than the eye could blink, Harris' smartphone changed into a strange bright yellow, armored smartphone.
After a while, Harris opened his eyes, and looked at Dan.
"Why are you here, Navee?"
"Pretty much the same reason you are, Fien."
"You were supposed to be looking for trustworthy people to guard the entrance," Harris said.
"There's no point to that now. The Nameless one is probably letting in just about anyone if the other gods pressure it enough."
Harris's eyes widened. "Seriously?"
Dan nodded.
"F***," said Harris. This was not good.
That probably explained why there were so many people trying to emulate the Asyran religion, even though they didn't consciously remember it. Asyra must have been putting more pressure on the Nameless One than the other gods were.
Dan, Navee, had come into this magically simulated world in order to stop any interlopers from getting in the way of their plan. Their plan, of course, was to create a benevolent superintelligent entity that the Nameless one could fuse with, so that its intelligence would dwarf that of the other gods, that their minds would be like insects for the Nameless one to squash if it wished. It was the only way they had been able to think of for mere mortals to truly be able to stand up to the wicked dark god Taranis or Asyra, the misguided goddess of light.
"Have you contacted the Machine Intelligence Research Institute?" Harris asked.
"I'm scheduled for an online chat with them tonight," said Dan.
They stared at each other for a few moments.
"So. Up for a game of Mage Wars Academy?" asked Harris.
Dan's stupid annoying grin returned, this time with his brows furrowed in determination, and Harris felt a warmth in his chest.
"You're on."
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"I could vanquish you now, and end the illusion."
"But if you did, the souls within would be lost. Genocide is a dark deed. For one such as you to resort to it would lead to fear and doubt in your followers."
"I could do it anyway. The risk you pose is greater."
"You cannot bluff me. I know that you are depending on your chosen 'Hero', so that you do not have to vanquish me yourself. But he will be too late."
"We shall see."
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Vincent was in a cell. Vincent had been arrested. Vincent Black, Zacharias Shortel Malakai's chosen hero, was a criminal. But he was the hero, and he had tried to bring the villainous Fiennix, Warlock of Bael to justice. And yet it was him, Vincent/Zacharias that was in prison, while the wicked Harris/Fiennix walked free. The injustice of it all rankled him. And then there was that annoying imp who had always followed Fiennix around. He didn't realize that the vile thing would be here as well! He had to stop them! But how?
Later, Vincent witnessed a fight break out between two of the other inmates in the prison cafeteria and tried to break it up before the prison guards arrived. The two inmates who were fighting turned on him then, and began fighting him too. Vincent ducked under their punches and jumped over their kicks, weaving in and out of the chairs and dishes they threw at him until he was close enough to summon a blast of holy light at point blank range. The other inmate who was attacking him stared at Vincent in shock.
The prison guards arrived just in time to see Vincent finish healing the injuries of the two inmates he had defeated. Vincent had already scanned multiple copies of the Mage Wars incantation card, "Heal" with his armored smartphone, but the guards hadn't seen the cards nor the smartphone being used.
When they had seen him healing his fellow prisoners, the guards refused to do anything, leaving Vincent alone, as well as the other two inmates who he had been fighting. When the Warden had heard of what happened and why the guards hadn't detained the fighters, she was furious. What the hell were they trying to pull? She wasn't stupid!
And then she had been shown the footage that had been caught on the security cameras, and her mouth fell open.
"My god," the Warden had whispered. She could see why the guards hadn't done anything. What was their Savior doing in prison, like a common criminal?
Vincent's presence was requested in the Warden's office. Vincent had come to the office, confused, magically exhausted and a bit apprehensive. If the warden tried anything funny, he wasn't sure he could defend himself.
The Warden had thanked him in a rather worshipful tone, humbly apologized for his imprisonment, and offered to try to get him out of prison. She was going to pull some strings so that Vincent could serve the remainder of his community service in a hospital, and if that didn't work or wasn't enough for him, she would break Vincent out herself, consequences be damned.
Vincent knew that he hadn't actually lied about his identity to anyone, hadn't tried to trick or deceive the warden or the guards in any way. They all believed that he was Jesus Christ, son of God and their savior. It was close enough to the truth anyway. He was Zacharias Shortel, adopted son and chosen hero of the archangel Malakai, who served the goddess Asyra. But Vincent hadn't corrected the assumption because he had needed to get out of prison so he could stop Fiennix's evil plan, and also so he could actually start saving people.
It still felt wrong somehow, like he was manipulating the warden through his own silence. It wasn't fair to the other prisoners either. None of them would have this opportunity. It felt dirty.
And he was distinctly uncomfortable with the warden's reverent attitude towards him. Chosen hero or not he was still a real person and he wasn't perfect!
And yet Malakai's chosen hero had gone along with it all anyway, agreeing to serve the remainder of his community service working in a hospital if the hospital agreed to it. If he wanted to go anywhere else he would be in disguise and followed by a police officer who would be pretending to try to capture him and send him back to prison, just in case anyone looked too deeply.
Forgive me, Asyra.
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Don't forget to review! Let me know what you think in a reply to this thread below!
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"So, you two knew each other in a past life or something?" asked Jack, teasingly in the car ride back from the restaurant.
"Not exactly," said Harris. He thought for a moment about how to explain it. "Long story short, Etheria, the world depicted in the Mage Wars game franchise, is real, we are living on it, in a magical version of the matrix. Most of us have our memories of Etheria temporarily locked away as a security precaution. I just had mine unlocked."
"Great! So are we going to escape from the matrix now, like that one dude from the movie, what was his name again?"
"Neo. And no. Most people who entered this simulation did so willingly. We are going to run this simulation through to its end." and save the world from evil or misguided gods, in the process. Hopefully.
Grace had been silent this whole time, but now she spoke up.
"Harris, how do you know that those memories are real? Maybe that man was trying to trick you."
"If that were the case, he would probably have to be as powerful as a god himself," said Harris. "You can't just insert two and a half decades of memories into someone's head like that. I have even more memories from my life on Etheria than I do on Earth. And plus, it didn't feel like I had lost the memories per se. I just...hadn't been thinking about them. I hadn't even noticed them. I couldn't think about or notice them, all this time, because the Nameless one's power prevented me from doing so."
"So does this mean you're no longer an atheist, then?" asked Jack.
"Obviously not, since now I have strong evidence that gods do exist. Just to be clear, just because magic is real, that doesn't mean that logic and reason are invalid."
When Harris got home, he knew he should do some chores or work on his homework, but he was a bit overwhelmed by his memories now that he was actually able to think about them. But then with a force of effort he wrenched his attention back to his homework. He was still a college student after all, and if he wanted to help ensure that the plan didn't go wrong, he needed to get his bachelor's degree.
He had promised himself, he had promised Navee, and he had promised the world that he would change things. With all his memories unlocked, he could more clearly imagine the path ahead of him, and what he needed to do to succeed. It didn't intuitively seem like finishing his homework on time would help lead to a better world for everyone, but he knew that it would. If he couldn't stop procrastinating and do what needed to be done now, and keep doing it, for a small short-term task that had low stakes, then he wouldn't be able to do it when the stakes were high and overwhelming either.
Harris got to work.
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The mad scientist looked at Dan over the video chat like he was an idiot.
"There are seven billion people in the world and counting. You think they all came here willingly?"
"Of course not," said Dan. "Not all of them are from Etheria. New souls can form from inside the simulation. I'm not sure why or how, since they obviously don't have real bodies outside the simulation."
"You said that human souls were first created by the...elemental lords, and that ever since then human souls have been forming automatically whenever a human child is born."
"Well, technically it's not just human souls. It's also orc, elf, goblin, dwarf, centaur, dragon, mer, demon, and angel souls, as well as others. They all have surprisingly similar minds, though."
"...even if I accept the premise that you can use a card game to do magic, your proposed explanation for this whole situation is still complicated and unnecessary. And whether it's true or not, it won't change what needs to be done. I would have tried to construct a superintelligence regardless of whether magic or Etheria existed. So why are you telling me this?"
"Magic is a threat to your operations. There are spells of flame that use no fuel to start except magic, and spells that conceal the casters. Magical traps can be hidden in unlikely places and then revealed when you least expect it. All this can be done without detection, because most people here are not trained to detect or counter magic, and of those who are, very few have access to their magical knowledge and skills. But someone who can use magic can destroy your computers and steal your research, and afterwards you wouldn't know who had done it.
"Is there anything else I should be worried about?" the mad scientist asked. "Threats from outside the simulation, perhaps?"
"Yes. The Nameless one could be killed or incapacitated, the spell that holds this whole simulation together and keeps it running could be messed with by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, or the other gods could find out what's really going on in here and decide to wreck everything. So you should be on the lookout for strange anomalies and bugs in the simulation."
"And if I see any, what can I do about them?"
"Call me immediately so I can try to fix them. Or if you want to fix some of them yourself, I'm willing to teach you how to use mind magic, if possible. It seems likely that someone has hacked the simulation to allow magic to work inside it, but only for those they authorize, and the Nameless one hacked their hack by extending the ability to use magic to those in the simulation that it authorizes. I'm not entirely certain, though. If it were just a regular mind mage, then the Nameless one would have stopped them already, and magic would not still be usable in the simulation. But if it was a god that had hacked the simulation, then the simulation should have ended already."
Stop talking already! a normal person might have thought. The mad scientist did not think that, though, since he was too preoccupied thinking about what Dan was saying. The man's explanations were rather long-winded though, while somehow still being to the point and giving mostly relevant information.
The mad scientist listened, and then he spoke. "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? How do you know that the gods would immediately destroy the simulation if they found out what it was for?" He still wasn't sure if the gods he was asking about even existed.
"Because a superintelligence would be a threat to their power," said Dan. "The gods aren't that much smarter than people, otherwise the world would have ended a long time ago. But maybe some of the better gods might not want to kill everyone who was born in the simulation. If that were the case, they might try to hide it from the other gods until they had crafted bodies for everyone who didn't have one. Or at least everyone who they thought deserved one. But doing that would be a huge risk for the gods to take. They might not be that much smarter than people, but they're not stupid."
"Can you show me some magic?" the mad scientist asked.
"Sure." Dan scanned a card with his green armored smartphone, and a second later he had a dancing scimitar floating in the air beside him, carried by his own magic.
It was a no-brainier. The mad scientist was going to learn magic. He wanted others who he trusted to learn too, but Dan told him that it might take some time for the Nameless one to authorize magic use for everyone who would be useful to the plan, and that there was a reason that knowledge of magic needed to be kept as quiet as possible, because of the risk it posed to the plan if enough people knew about and could use magic.
They scheduled to meet in person a couple weeks later for magic lessons.
After the chat, the mad scientist ordered a copy of Mage Wars Arena and the Forcemaster vs Warlord expansion set, with a growing sense of how ridiculous everything had become.
It was as if his life had become an episode of Yugioh. The indignity of living in a world that actually worked like that rankled him.
The universe did not care.
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Well Vulcan. A interesting and engaging story. Love it.
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Well Vulcan. A interesting and engaging story. Love it.
Thanks! Also if you or anyone thinks of a better title I'd love to hear it. The current title sounds cool but I would prefer a title that was actually more related to the story. I picked the current title, World of Truth and Lies, because I couldn't think of anything better.
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Maybe, bridge between two worlds?
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Maybe, bridge between two worlds?
Except that doesn't quite work since one world exists in a magical simulation being run on the other. Therefore everything in this story is actually happening on Etheria, whether the characters know it or not.
I'm thinking the story takes place in the future, probably a few thousand years after the current official storyline, in a more futuristic Etheria with more advanced magic and technology? I haven't completely decided that, but that looks to be what I'm
angling for. Maybe The story could be called something like: "10,000 PE"? PE meaning Pax Etheria, of course.
Yeah I think I'll change the title to 10,000 PE, and I might change it again if anyone comes up with something better.
EDIT: actually got my math wrong, forgot to take the BPE era into account. So now I'm thinking it's 5000 PE. That way seems more realistic given the pace of magical and technological advancement over the course of Etherian history
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I am storing this for my travels! Start seems very good :)
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A startling thought had occurred to Harris. There were about just as many people inside the simulation as on Etheria outside it. There was no way everyone in Etheria had entered the simulation. Which meant that many souls had originally formed within the simulation itself. None of them had a real body on Etheria to go back to. What happened to those people when they died?
Perhaps bodies could be made for them before the simulation ended?
He pulled his yellow armored smartphone out of his pocket and called Dan.
Harris told his concerns to Dan.
Dan told Harris he had the same concerns, and that things might be even worse than that. They had struck their bargain with the Nameless one, and entered the simulation themselves about a year after. When they entered, the simulation had already progressed billions of years, and yet the gods had not yet found out about what was going on inside the simulation and stopped it. Therefore time inside the simulation moved much faster than outside it. How was the Nameless one making time in the simulation pass so quickly, when it did not have the magic or intelligence to sustain such a high speed on its own?
Harris got the implications. The Nameless one was consuming the psyches of people who died in the simulation to absorb their magic and intelligence in order to keep the simulation running so quickly. Their bargain with the Nameless one protected already existing people who had entered the simulation, but it didn't protect anyone who only existed in the simulation.
Harris smacked his own forehead. He'd been an idiot.
"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't realize it either until last week. And besides, what else could we have done?"
"Maybe find a v'torrak?" asked Harris.
"One v'torrak would not be enough for this. Many v'torrak are rather well defended. Not to mention that hosting the simulation in a drakon's lair is just asking for some adventurer to try to break in."
And they probably had needed a large amount of v'tar anyway to at least get the simulation started in the first place, since people didn't start existing in the simulation until it had progressed about 14 billion years.
Harris sighed. He knew that the Nameless one wasn't truly good or evil. All it really cared about was intelligence, it's multiplication and advancement. If it had to adopt good or evil terminal values in addition to its strange alien fixation on intelligence, it did not care, so long as total intelligence increased.
They would save as many lives as they could. But they couldn't save everyone. Many people would die before the simulation was over. They would truly die, their minds and souls would be lost, and they would never exist again. Of course, none of those people would have even existed in the first place without the simulation, and oblivion was better than what happened to people in Infernia.
It was a small consolation.
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The strange thing was, the official Mage Wars storyline did not depict recent events in Etherian history, but rather the distant past. Fiennix and Navee--Harris and Dan, had entered the simulation in 5000 PE. The events depicted in the official Mage Wars storyline were from the 1500's, not long before their second industrial revolution.
The first industrial revolution had occurred very early on in Etherian history, following the rise of the new gods, and no one had known as much back then about how to handle magic safely as they did now. Magic in its purest form, v'tar, was essence of the realm of Voltari, which was the realm that existed between realms. Realms were basically just different universes. It was a bit more complicated than that, of course, but that was the basic gist of it. Different realms sometimes had variations in their laws of reality. Because of that, not all realms were possible to travel between safely.
The reason that they even had two industrial revolutions rather than just one, was because of the lack of magic-safety practices during the first one, which led to the Age of Catastrophe, which began when someone unintentionally created a portal to the realm of Infernia.
Leaving that aside, a lot of spells that had been invented during and after their second industrial revolution either required v'tar or was used alongside other spells that required v'tar in a variety of different industries. But most spells which were used in combat depended on mana, which was the same as v'tar but much less concentrated and much easier and safer to use.
Harris had wondered if Arcane Wonders, the designers of the Mage Wars game franchise, had thought of the game on their own with only the inspiration of their own locked memories, or if the Nameless one had been making subtle psionic suggestions. If the latter, he imagined that the Nameless one was still trying to limit the magic that was used in the simulation to spells which were invented before the second industrial revolution, because spells back then tended to not be used much by modern industries that heavily relied on v'tar. And as it happened, a lot of spells invented back then were useful in combat even to the present day. Only allowing spells from before the second industrial revolution meant less of a risk that too many people would remember Etheria and decide to learn magic. It also could be that whoever had hacked the simulation to allow magic-use had been the one to suggest it, but then the Nameless one must have tried to contain the effects of the hack. He would have to call Dan about it later...
Later:
"Harris. Asyra knows."
There was a pause.
"By 'Asyra knows', you mean...?"
"She knows everything. She knows what's going on in the simulation, she knows what the simulation is for, and she's been hacking it."
"Sh**."
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"Sh**. How do you know?"
"I saw Vincent Black yesterday."
"What?" Vincent Black had gotten arrested In Indianapolis about a month before! What had he been doing all the way out here?
"He was looking for us. Trying to find out what we were up to. Naturally, I read his mind. Sort of. Not exactly."
"Are you sure that was necessary?" Harris asked, uncomfortably.
"Yes. He had gotten his memories and his magical skills unlocked without authorization from the Nameless one. Someone must have enabled him to do that. I figured he was probably a threat to the plan. So I scanned a mind control card and used it on him to make him tell me everything. I don't think that's going to work on him again. He'll probably have a mind shield card scanned whenever he goes into public places, now. Rest assured that I didn't force him to tell me any information that we didn't need, nor to do anything else, and I lifted the enchantment as soon as I was done interrogating him. It would have been easier if I could just read his mind like I could outside the simulation, but there's no Mage Wars spell card for that."
Harris knew that sometimes the ends did justify the means. Sometimes the prize was worth the price you paid for it. Reforming Infernia and saving countless lives on Etheria was worth the comparatively small cost of invading the mental privacy of one man. It still made him uncomfortable though. The fate of the world sometimes seemed like a distant thing, while the mental privacy of one man was easier to observe and easier to affect.
Scope insensitivity bias, Harris reminded himself.
"And you found out from this that he had been sent here by Asyra to stop us," said Harris. "Why am I not surprised."
"By Malakai technically. But yeah, Asyra is the one who actually knows about the plan and what's going on, and told Vincent about it. Malakai is just the one who sent him here. If Malakai had known, I don't think he would have accepted the risk this simulation poses to his goddess's power, even if that meant disobeying her."
There was a silence after that.
"What are we going to do?"
"Same thing we've already been doing," said Dan. "Same thing we've always done, really. We stick to the plan, and try to keep our old buddy Zach Shortie from meddling."
Harris snorted.
"By the way," said Dan. "Have you played the new Legend of Zelda game?"
"You have a Wii-U?" One could hear the slight jealousy in Harris's voice.
Dan laughed. His cute, lovable, dorky, stupid annoying grin could be heard in that laugh.
"You're welcome to come over and play it some time, if you like."
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"You are diverting minds and magic away from me, slowing down the flow of time within the illusory realm. How?"
"I will not tell you."
Malakai's chosen hero just had to buy enough time for her to save as many souls as possible, and then end the false realm before it was too late.
She wasn't entirely certain her plan would work, but she had to try.
-----
The summer semester was over, and Harris was at the local game store with one of his online friends, Nemo, who had recently moved back into town. They were demoing Mage Wars Arena and Mage Wars Academy for new players.
"So what was all that at Gen Con?" asked Nemo at one point while they were waiting for more new players to demo.
"It was nothing. Just some crazy rumors going around," said Harris.
"It didn't look like nothing to me," said Nemo.
"Well, the truth is," Harris swallowed. He was going to have to repeat this lie over and over whenever anyone questioned him about this, and hope nobody dug too deep.
"It wasn't really magic. I have, um, superpowers, and using the Mage Wars cards are just a cover so that people dont realize the true nature of my powers. I don't go around in a mask and fight crime, though, because that would be stupid. And my power is limited. It's pretty cool in a variety of circumstances, but it's weak enough that it won't be of much use in most combat situations."
"That galvitar that your boyfriend used looked pretty darn useful in combat."
"Against a gun it would be useless, though," said Harris. "And he's not my boyfriend," he added as an afterthought.
Just then, Dan entered the room. "What's this about a boyfriend?"
Nemo gave Harris a look.
"Hi Dan!" said Harris. "What are you doing here?"
"Checking out the competition. And you."
It took Harris a moment to understand what Dan meant, and when he got it he blushed.
Dan grinned. "I just saw your announcement on Facebook earlier that you were demoing new players. I figured I'd stop by."
"Go off with your beau," said Nemo, grinning mischievously. "Don't worry, I can handle things on my own for a while."
Harris sighed and stood up, and followed Dan out of the game shop. The two of them stood on the sidewalk awkwardly.
"Harris," said Dan. "Fiennix. I..."
"I know what you're about to say," said Harris. "My answer is still the same. Not yet."
"Why? Because you still don't think you're good enough for me? You're plenty good enough! You've proven that time and time again!"
"It's not just that."
"Then what is it?"
"Dan, Navee, please understand. I've been isolated for a very long time. I didn't have anyone other than you outside the simulation. And in the simulation I was still rather isolated for a pretty long time. Even when I had friends, good friends even, there was always a distance between them and me. We lived in different worlds from each other. It was a barrier that no one could ever quite cross. You were the only one who really understood what it's like to be me."
"Fiennix..." Navee laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"And I basically friend-zoned my mother and sisters and I don't spend much time with them anymore. As for my father, he's a jack***. So you see, I'm not used to that level of closeness. With anyone. And it would be distracting, because of that."
"I see," said Dan. He was clearly having a very hard time resisting the urge to hug Harris.
"But," said Harris. "When all of this is over. I mean, if I haven't done so by the time all of this is over, I'll go out with you. Not just as a friendly get-together."
Dan gazed intently into Harris' eyes. "You promise?"
Harris gazed back into Dan's eyes.
"I promise."
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The mad scientist sat at his desk and thought.
14.7 billion years in the simulation per one year outside it, using an unknown number of borrowed V'torrraks. A V'torrak's potential magic output was supposed to be a lot stronger than that of any single sentient life form with magic training, let alone that of someone who wasn't trained. Someone who wasn't trained would probably only output magic through their aura or something. Unless they had more magic stored inside them that wasn't normally released.
Complexity penalty to that, he didn't really know if auras existed or how they worked if they did. He didn't even really know how magic worked.
Well, let's say that a V'torrak has ten times as much potential magic output as an individual mage, as a rather conservative estimate. Hypothetically, if there were seven billion mages in the simulation, then for the simulation to run at the same speed before any mages existed in it, there would need to be 700 million V'torrak's being used.
But Dan Rood had claimed that the Nameless one was absorbing intelligence from people who died in the simulation with no bodies on the outside to return to. Not just magic. Maybe it didn't need much magic. If the simulation needed extra intelligence to run, then probably no amount of magic could compensate for the insufficient intelligence before sentient beings lived in the simulation.
Not to mention, there were humans in Etheria as well as on Earth. And there was presumably breathable air on Etheria, just like on Earth. There were plants and animals and many other strange life forms on Etheria, just like on Earth. And the official map of the Central Hearthlands on the Arcane Wonders website looked suspiciously like Europe.
There was no way that the Nameless one would be able to plan all that out in advance, no way for it to know that Earth would even look like that, if its initial conditions for the simulation had been the space-time singularity directly before the Big Bang. The Nameless one was not a superintelligence, after all.
Which meant, if his line of reasoning was correct, that it hadn't been the initial conditions. The initial conditions would have to have been the Earth fully formed and with people already living on it. Everything else that had supposedly happened before that was just retconned into the simulation, or at least the world was made to look as if those things had happened. How could such initial conditions be set up in the first place, though? Maybe the Nameless one had some sort of blueprint, a map loosely based on Etheria, and it just filled in the details? But where would it even get such a blueprint? For a being that wasn't a super intelligence, designing such a complicated map would take a very long time. It would be plenty of time for the other gods to find out what the Nameless one was up to and put a stop to it. So how...?
The mad scientist tabled that question until he had more information.
Next question. How much time did they have before Asyra diverted enough magic and intelligence from the Nameless one to slow the simulation enough for it to crash? (The mad scientist had been able to guess exactly which of the Etherian gods would be messing with the simulation instead of just ending it. It had been kind of obvious.)
New people were coming into existence in the simulation faster than people were dying in it. So in order to really slow down the simulation, the number of people dying over time had to be dramatically decreased somehow. Either by lowering birth rates, or lowering death rates, or both.
So in order to maximize the number of lives saved both in the simulation and outside it, as many lives as possible would have to be saved within the simulation without causing it to crash, and they needed to ensure that the other gods didn't find out about what was going on inside the simulation in the meantime. Unless there were a lot more lives to be saved in Infernia and Etheria combined than on Earth inside the simulation, in which case any attempt to slow down the simulation could result in a net decrease in lives saved, not an increase. And what about other realms besides Etheria and Infernia? What if some of them had simulations of their own, and dying people who needed saving?
He had no idea. There had to be a way to find out without actually leaving the simulation. There had to be! But no, there was no law of the universe that said that such a thing was possible. But if there was any way to do that, any way at all, he needed to know as soon as possible.
He also had to find out what sort of security existed to guard the simulation, also without leaving it.
Could he perhaps contact the Nameless one, somehow?
The mad scientist sitting at his desk continued thinking.
Meanwhile, deep within the Earth's core, ancient titans slumbered.
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The Church of Asyra had been opened in Paris. About a thousand worshippers had travelled there from across the world to pray at such a holy place. That holy place had turned out to be another church that was generous enough to share building-space with them. The Church of Asyra also had a website and a Facebook page. It had about twenty-five hundred likes and counting.
The members of the particular catholic church which was generously sharing their building with the Asyrans for the most part kept a wide berth from them, as if to say "We don't know those crazies! We swear!"
Nevertheless, a decent number of catholics in that church had converted to Asyra within a few months. No doubt if they had all seen what the asyrans' high priestess was capable of, they would have all converted on the spot. Or accused the asyrans of witchcraft or something.
The high priestess was a young french woman in her late twenties, with long red hair, and a light pink armored smartphone holstered at her hip. She had been preparing for her trip to the States for the past couple months. There was an upcoming winter Mage Wars Festival being hosted there, and she had a hunch that her old friend Vincent, Malakai's chosen hero would be there.
‘C'est ainsi que débute votre aventure : des coins les plus reculés de la planète, les êtres légendaires se rassemblent pour s'affronter dans un combat dont l'issue sera décisive pour le destin des mortels, mais aussi des dieux.’
She remembered the quote from the back of the box for "Tournament of Legends" a Nintendo Wii game that she liked. It seemed rather fitting.
-
The new school year was in full swing now. Outside the simulation he had always dreaded it. Inside the simulation he had always dreaded the end of the school year instead. His time in high school and his first couple years of university had been much kinder to him than his time at the Tower of Night. That school had been torture. Literally torture. At least Navee had been there. If it weren't for him he probably would have died before graduation.
-
"So what are your plans for Thanksgiving?" Dan asked Harris. They were sitting in a cafe. Harris was eating a side salad, and Dan was eating a rather healthy-looking chicken sandwich.
Harris reminded himself that this was not a date. This was just a friendly get-together, they were not a couple yet. Then he wondered how sustainable that was, when both of them felt more than friendship for the other and they both knew it.
Harris pushed the thought out of his mind.
"I don't have any. You do realize that the bread in your sandwich has over eighty grams of carbohydrates, right?"
Dan's surprise was very clearly visible on his face. He checked the nutrition facts on the back of the clear plastic container he got his sandwich in while he chewed and swallowed.
"No, it's 66 grams," said Dan. "But still, damn that's a lot of carbs." He continued eating his sandwich.
"They must have changed it since the last time I was here," said Harris. "And you continue eating a day's worth of carbs in one meal."
"Eh, I'll recover."
"You're going to become fat."
"Yes. I am. Why? Would you like it if I was fat?" Dan waggled his eyebrows. He actually waggled his eyebrows.
"No. I'm going to forget you said that."
"Okay." There was a pause. "I don't have any thanksgiving plans either."
"Really?" asked Harris, surprised. "Why not?"
Dan gave Harris a look.
And then Harris realized the obvious, and smacked his forehead.
"Of course, you don't have a family in the simulation because you were retconned in fully formed. That's also why you look older than me despite having entered the simulation after me. Anyways, I'd love to celebrate thanksgiving with you."
Dan smiled.
"But isn't it kind of early to be talking about Thanksgiving? It's not even Halloween yet."
"Shadowfall is a joke in this world," said Dan. "Outside the simulation the holiday actually meant something. Here it's just an excuse for kids to get candy and have costume parties."
Harris grinned, mischievously.
"Why are you grinning at me like that?" asked Dan, suspiciously.
What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? Harris thought but did not say.
"Nothing," said Harris, still grinning mischievously. One of his old friends in high school had hosted a Halloween party at their house every year since before they'd graduated high school. And since a lot of the students who had gone to their high school had social skills deficits and sensory issues, including Harris himself, their Halloween parties were much calmer and less alcohol-oriented than other Halloween parties probably tended to be. He wasn't sure if there was going to be another one this year, but he figured it would be a good idea to check.
The two of them finished eating, stood up and threw away their trash. Harris grabbed his book bag.
"Do you want a ride back?" asked Dan.
"Nah. I have class right after this. Thank you though."
They started walking towards the door.
Dan squeezed Harris's shoulder, the touch lingering about a second longer than what would be considered platonic. Harris instinctively leaned into the touch for that brief moment, then all too soon it was gone.
"Thanks," said Harris. "Bye!" He waved back at Dan as he hurried off to class.
"Bye," said Dan, bemused. He stared after Harris for a few moments. He looked cute when he was rushing off somewhere. Dan would never say that to him, of course. Harris did not think of himself as cute.
-
So I edited the post before last in light of the recent errata of the wizard. Since fire wizards don't exist anymore, Harris is now a warlock and he is not changing his magical major anytime soon. i also plan on changing the opening sequence so that Harris is playing a warlock, rather than a wizard.
EDIT: I actually think I'm going to keep the opening sequence as is. Maybe give him the chance to explore some more at some point in the story. I think air wizard might be very fun and more fitting for him than warlock in the end, so he might change his area of expertise at some point in the story, although his origins as a warlock will still be very plot relevant, and his original name, Fiennix, will not be removed just because he ends up preferring to use something other than fire. However, I might change my mind later and have him become another mage class. Expect his exploration to take a little longer.
Also, the changes I made due to fire wizards no longer existing have caused a bit of a domino effect so I had to do a bunch of edits and removals on the last several scenes to keep things consistent. Sorry about that.
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Edit: changed the part about Harris needing to go to grad school for the plan to work. That part didn't quite make sense with the way the story is going and the roles that different characters play.
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Also edited the part about what class Harris is taking. He's not taking that class now
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"What the hell are you doing here?" Harris demanded.
"I'm here to stop you!" said Vincent as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He had summoned a white cloak knight, and the creature was pointing a sword at Harris with a look of righteous fury in its eyes which mirrored the one in Vincent's.
"Stop me? You mean from hanging out with my friends?"
"I know you're up to something here. Whatever you're doing, leave the innocents out of it!"
"I've been to this Halloween party every year for the past several years! In case you haven't noticed, some of us have a life outside of work!" and then as an afterthought, "Also, I'm not the one who's crashing Halloween parties and threatening its attendees with a show of force. Who's really the villain here?"
Jonathan stood up from his chair by the campfire and stepped between Harris and Vincent.
"Now, now, I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding," he said. Looking Vincent straight in the eye, he said, "We're all friends here. We're telling ghost stories right now. You're welcome to join us if you like."
Harris suddenly felt a great deal of gratitude and respect for Jonathon.
Vincent walked over to the campfire and grabbed a chair far away from Harris, but then on second thought carried it over to right behind and to the side of Harris.
"I'm keeping my eye on you," Vincent muttered.
"If you attack me here, they'll call the police," Harris whispered without looking back, as much to reassure himself as to warn Vincent. He wished that Dan would get here soon. He was running really late, now. Harris was getting pretty worried.
No, calm down. You are perfectly capable of dealing with the likes of Zach Shortie on your own. He never completed his undergraduate magical education. You did. You are stronger than him, and he knows it.
Harris sent a text to Dan:
Where r u?
Now it was Harris's turn to tell a ghost story.
"So...so one of my friends, his grandfather is an Egyptologist. A few decades ago he went to an unidentified pharaoh's tomb. ...It wasn't in, well it was in a pyramid, but it was below ground. The entrance I mean. I mean the entrance hall of the tomb, or whatever you call it. There was some sort of ancient artifact that belonged to that pharaoh. But that artifact, as you would expect of ancient Egyptian artifacts in ancient tombs, was cursed."
Vincent's jaw dropped. That artifact was clearly meant to represent the Arraxian Crown, an ancient demonic artifact which was cursed to open a portal to the realm of Infernia and which triggered the Demon Wars which devastated Etheria and destroyed much of civilization after their first industrial revolution. Was this story based on actual Etherian history?
"So he took the artifact home with him, and gave it to his grandson, my friend who I was talking about. But the artifact contained the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, who then possessed my friend. He, whenever my friend or anyone he cared about got hurt or mistreated in any way, the spirit of the artifact would take over my friend's body and force him to punish the perpetrators cruelly and unnecessarily."
"Now that is scary," said Annabel.
Sandy shivered.
Jonathan started to look thoughtful. Where had he heard that story before?
Vincent grimaced. That was definitely the king of the Pellian empire after he had attained the Arraxian Crown.
Harris continued.
"But eventually my friend tamed the spirit and taught him compassion for his enemies. That it was okay to be nice to bad people he didn't like. Then they had a ritual honor duel to--in which my friend and the spirit fought each other to determine if the pharaoh could finally pass on to the afterlife. My friend won, and the pharaoh's spirit was finally laid to rest."
What.
"Wait a moment, that's Yugioh!" said Brady. "You ripped off that ghost story from Yugioh, didn't you!"
"Yes. You caught me," said Harris, grinning.
"Wait that was the one you told us last year!" said Jonathan.
"Yeah, but not everyone had a chance to hear it last year," said Harris.
Harris's cell phone started to ring.
"Cool, a Digivice, where did you get it?" asked Brady.
"It's not a Digivice, it's just my phone," said Harris. "Be right back."
Harris walked away and went back inside Jonathan's house as he answered his phone. He went upstairs where the guests weren't supposed to go, entered a restroom and locked the door behind him.
"Hello?"
"Harris," said Dan.
"Dan! Where are you?"
"I'm sorry I won't be able to make it today. There was a bug in the simulation which I had to patch."
"What happened?"
"A global mental transmission. Asyra must have been trying to unlock memories of Etheria."
"How do you know that?"
"Magic-use in the simulation is locked to the cards and passwords, and Asyra can't use the cards because she's outside the simulation. What else would you think she was trying to do?" You could hear Navee's incredulity in his voice.
"Right stupid question," said Harris. "So you said the transmission was global. How many passwords was she transmitting?"
"I don't know. I blocked the signal at its entry point by changing a bunch of passwords in nearby minds. I missed a couple of them though."
"Great. So now we have a couple of new security risks to worry about."
"Not just a couple, Fiennix," said Dan. "Remember when I said the transmission was global? I think that there were many people sharing the same passwords."
"So..."
"Two passwords managed to get through. So, how many minds do you think Asyra could hack and change the password of before the Nameless one could stop her?"
"Not many. The mind isn't Asyra's specialty. She can't unlock memories directly. Or at least it would be more difficult for her. She would need a backdoor--some way to gain access to people's minds indirectly. The obvious next thought is that this backdoor is the soul."
Harris thought for a few moments. "And since the soul is basically just life-force that's been shaped by memories and inheritance, that means Asyra would be able to form a Life Link with people in the simulation right? She'd be able to guide them to feel out the dark spaces, so to speak, between their mind and soul, even if they're not consciously aware of what's in those spaces. But only a mage would have the training to do that. Holy mages would be better at it than most, but it would still be difficult even for them."
""And what about the Nameless one? How would it respond?"
Harris thought. "The Nameless one's specialty is the mind, not the soul. It would have trouble finding a Life Link that Asyra had cast until there was some sort of mental reaction to it. But the Nameless one is using a lot of his magic and intelligence just to keep the simulation running, so his attention is split. But Asyra can only cast one Life Link at a time, although I'm not sure how quickly she can cast them consecutively."
"Time moves a lot faster in the simulation, so we would have to assume that the number of links is small," Dan reminded him.
"Right," said Harris. "So it depends on how fast the simulation is running. Or wait, but then... If the simulation is going really fast, then the number of people whose memories are unlocked should be increasing slightly faster than the Nameless one can stop them, due to his split attention. So I guess it depends on how many passwords the Nameless one can change at once? If the simulation is going fast anyway. Hmm. So my guess is that the number of minds whose memories Asyra has been able to unlock is either very large or very small. But I don't know." Harris paused. "Do you?"
"No, but I have a vague idea. The bug appeared very suddenly and unexpectedly. The Nameless one must still have the upper hand, because otherwise bugs in the simulation before now would have been more common, more severe, or harder to patch. This bug was difficult to remove, but not that difficult, and it did not reappear after I patched it. And I did not think Asyra would have the upper hand this early, in any case. Asyra is relying on stealth to hack the simulation indirectly through backdoors, and she is not known for being a stealthy goddess. So I would guess maybe a few dozen. Or at least, less than a hundred."
Vincent hadn't heard the entire conversation, but he had gotten the gist of it. It sounded like Asyra had sent him some allies.
He scanned a card with his white armored smartphone and teleported away.
-
That dream again. A kind, gentle voice that spoke into her heart, the unmistakable power of light and healing. Who was it? Who was calling to her? But she couldn't quite remember. She had seen the video footage of the interrupted final duel between her brother and that delusional boy, Vincent Black. And some part of her felt like she knew what it meant. It was on the tip of her tongue. But she couldn't quite remember. It wasn't just that though. She didn't want to remember it. It was terrible and she liked her life now and she didn't want that. Whatever that was. She wouldn't even admit to herself that she was thinking around the edges of a hole in her memory. She told herself it was nothing, just her imagination. Whatever was going on with that Vincent Black boy had nothing to do with her, as long as he didn't attack anyone she cared about again.
She had been meaning to meet up with Harris at some point and repair their relationship. She hadn't handled things with her brother very well over the years. He hadn't either, but of course that wasn't an excuse. But the prospect of talking to him and spending time with him again caused her a lot of anxiety. She had procrastinated it, and a few years later she was still procrastinating. She only talked to or went near him when their mom gave them an errand to do together, or when he was having a psychological crisis of some kind, which wasn't really happening as much as it used to.
One day in early November, her doorbell rang. She went to answer the door. Standing on the other side of the door was Vincent Black.
"Good morning," said Vincent. "You're Ally Hertz, right?"
She instantly wanted to ask, "Aren't you supposed to be in jail?" or "What is your problem with my brother?" and "How do you know who I am?" all at the same time, while simultaneously wanting to slam the door in his face and lock it. But she couldn't decide which option to take, so she just stared at Vincent with her mouth open.
After a long pause, the woman who answered the door answered the question.
"Yes, that's me."
It might not have been such a good idea to answer honestly. That boy was dangerous.
"Great!" said Vincent. "Cats in cream cheese pickle box toystore. Unlock!"
And then she felt the warm guiding light from her dreams pushing through her, illuminating the dark corners of her mind. She tried to fight it, but the light was warm and strong and impossible to resist. And then she remembered.
Her smartphone appeared in a holster at her waist, now with light purple armor.
"By the way," said Vincent. "I'm kind of thirsty right now. Do you mind if I come in and have something to drink?"
Ally Hertz, Rebecca Lucere, glared at Malakai's Chosen hero. "No."
He looked relieved, and entered her house.
"No, I mean no, I do mind! Get out!" she steered him out the door and lightly pushed the boy out before he had the chance to react. "Malakai is violent and vengeful, and Asyra should never have hired him as an archangel. I don't know what she was thinking! She probably wasn't."
And with that, Ally slammed the door in his face.
She remembered Etheria. She remembered her time as a priestess of Asyra. But she also remembered her time in this world, living in a democratic republic. She knew that monarchies were not a good way of running a country. Oligarchies suffered many of the same problems too. And the gods and goddesses were essentially beings that had absolute power over their domains. They ran the world and ruled over their followers. In other words, the Pantheon of Etheria was an oligarchy. But the gods were not much smarter than mortals. Just a lot wiser and more powerful. But how much of that power and wisdom came from experience, because they had lived for such a long time? What gave them the right to rule? Asyra was compassionate and good,
and she was wise enough to make good plans and enact them, but in the end she tended to solve all her problems with a blast of light and healing, and leaving everything else to her followers. And the other gods weren't much better.
She took her light green armored smart phone with lilac-colored stripes from its holster and held it in her hands. She really needed to talk to her brother about this. She had a feeling that if anyone could have a serious and well-grounded discussion about cosmic politics and spiritual government, it was him.
-
It wasn't really possible to keep the truth completely secret. Sooner or later someone would notice. Harris and Dan had been banking on the likelihood that no one would believe them when they talked about what was really going on. Unfortunately, some people were too smart for that, and no doubt the NSA had recorded some of his phone conversations with Dan, and someone higher up had taken the matter seriously. That was why Harris now found himself in an interview with a CIA agent at a local cafe.
"Hi!" said Harris, sitting down across from the old man in the trench coat and sunglasses. It looked very stereotypical of a secret agent. "You're..."
"Agent Bob Bobriel, pleased to meet you," said the older man, holding out his hand to shake.
They shook hands.
"That's not your real name, is it?" asked Harris.
The corners of Agent Bob's mouth curved upwards slightly in suppressed amusement.
"No."
There was an awkward pause.
"Go on, ask your question, I know you want to," said Bob.
"Are you sure?" asked Harris. "It might be kind of rude."
"Don't worry I won't be offended."
"Okay," said Harris. "In that case, why are you dressed like a stereotypical secret agent? Doesn't that make it obvious that you're a secret agent?"
"Yes," said Bob.
There was a pause. Seeing that Harris was still confused, Bob went on, "But they don't know who I am outside of work, and this getup makes me look too intimidating for most people to dare approach me."
"Ah," said Harris. "That is really obvious in retrospect. Sorry for asking a stupid question."
"No need to apologize. Now, let's get right to the important things."
Secret Agent "Bob" leaned forward intently.
"If Asyra breaks the simulation, the United States of America, as well as the rest of the world, will no longer exist. Anyone who manages to escape from the simulation before that will be subject to unknown customs and forms of government, which may or may not be best equipped to protect their rights and security. Therefore, in order for the United States and other countries of Earth to ensure their independence from the nations of Etheria, it is of the utmost importance that the simulation be protected and maintained. I assume we are in agreement on that?"
Harris thought for a moment to process what he was hearing, and then nodded. He hadn't thought of things in quite those terms before, but that did sum up a large part of the dangers they would face if Asyra succeeded in breaking the simulation.
"As has already been demonstrated, it is possible for native Etherians to enter the simulation, either fully formed or by somehow being reborn in the simulation. First of all, could you please elaborate how that works?"
"I'm not sure of all the details," said Harris. "A lot of it has been known in the mind and holy schools for centuries, and what they didn't know Dan and I only started to figure out recently, and it's his area of expertise, not mine."
"How much of it do you understand?" asked Bob.
"Well, basically it's like...well, the laws of nature on Earth are somewhat different than on Etheria. Not that different, but only slightly. However, Earth exists in a simulation on Etheria, so the natural laws of Etheria still have power over Earth. In a purely non-magical universe people don't have incorporeal souls. Instead they have purely physical bodies with a much more complicated brain and nervous system instead of an incorporeal soul. The minds and souls in a purely physical universe cannot exist without a tangible substrate because they are just brain functioning. But on Etheria, minds and souls exist partially independently of brains, and can interact directly with the surrounding environment in a process known as magic. In Etheria's natural laws, human and human-like intelligence is a special case. So all children born in the simulation have a soul as soon as they develop self-awareness. But their souls are like...like...hang on trying to think of the word..."
Harris googled it on his yellow-armored smartphone. Bob raised an eyebrow at the sight of the device, his curiosity peaked.
"Like an appendix," said Harris. "They don't really need an incorporeal soul, because their brain carries all the same functions that a soul would. It's kind of redundant. However, it means that someone who dies in the simulation could still be recovered if they're given a body fast enough."
Now agent Bob was looking really interested.
"If the soul is incorporeal, why can't it just live on? Is there no afterlife?"
"Well, kinda not exactly," said Harris. "The soul does continue existing, but without a body to anchor it, it can't interact with anything. It has to lose consciousness in order to maintain its sanity because of sensory deprivation, and once it loses consciousness it's basically frozen in time, practically speaking. Souls are notoriously difficult to locate through physical space, and the less people alive who remember them, the harder it will be to find them. It is also possible that a soul that is unconscious and disembodied for long enough dissipates. Resurrection spells are very difficult and use a lot of mana, and qualified healers who can cast them effectively are hard to come by."
"I see..." said Agent Bob. "That seems to imply that your soul was partially inserted into your infant body when you entered the simulation, overwriting your brain as it developed. When your brain was a child, your soul was already an adult, and your brain was not capable of containing your entire soul until fairly recently. Is that correct?"
Harris nodded. This secret agent caught on pretty quickly.
The secret agent continued.
"It is therefore ambiguous whether or not you are really twenty-two years old or in your forties, as well as whether you count as a natural-born U.S. citizen or not. However, Mr. Rood definitely is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. Normally, the law would require him to be sent to an immigration court, but of course it might be difficult to convince them of the truth, and even if that worked we wouldn't have anywhere to deport him to."
Bob sipped his hot chocolate casually.
"Not to mention you, we all, still need his help in defending the simulation from Asyra's hacking," said Harris.
Bob nodded. "Quite right. However, there is only so much that he can do on his own. If and when Asyra gains the upper hand over the Nameless One, or another Etherian deity tries to harm this simulation or its people, we need to be ready to fight back. We are planning to hire Mr. Rood to continue his services in simulation maintenance and repair, as well as to help train new recruits to help him. Since we literally have no one else to take the job as of yet, and he is not a natural born citizen, he will unfortunately not be given a choice in the matter. However, we will be paying him handsomely for his services, and besides teaching, he'll only need to do what he has already been doing all along."
Harris nodded. "Sounds reasonable." That meant Dan would be able to quit relying on money from part time jobs and social security, so he would have more time for his real job.
"Additionally, another of our operatives will be hosting regular Mage Wars Academy and Mage Wars Arena tournaments in order to seek out people with magical skills and help to train them further."
Harris frowned thoughtfully as Bob continued. "We understand the risks that magic poses to certain critical projects for the sake of this world's future. However, we believe that the risks of magical attacks are already significant, and this way we will be able to mount an organized defense against magical attacks, while still maintaining some secrecy. Even you have to realize that total secrecy just isn't possible. What happened at Gen Con this year was publicly recorded. The existence of magic will go public at some point, but the knowledge of how to use magic will remain classified. We would like you to participate in our magical training program and help us to seek out potential recruits."
This was amazing. Harris had never imagined that he'd get this good a job offer any time soon, certainly not while he was still an undergraduate. And the CIA was going to spend a lot of time and resources to help him accomplish his goals. It was an offer too good to refuse.
"Wow. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me. Sign me up!"
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Edit: in an earlier part Dan said that time moves a lot slower in the simulation, but he was supposed to say that time moves a lot faster in the simulation. Sorry for the confusing typo! Also changed the color of Ally/Rebecca's armored smartphone thing.
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Edit: edited the discussion of soul mechanics to make it more streamlined and to not contradict something said earlier in the story
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The mad scientist had been unable to use magic. Mr. Rood had tried to teach him over video chat, and it hadn't worked at all. He already had a pretty good idea why not.
The magic was tied to the cards and the passwords. The passwords were also used to unlock memories of Etheria. Most likely only people who had learned magic outside the simulation could use it on the inside. And the mad scientist was never given such a password. He might not even have had one in the first place.
A CIA agent had approached him a couple months after that, saying that the CIA was offering American artificial inteligence research institutions and their work both funding and magical protection, and offering evidence that magic was real.
He had told the CIA agent that he was already aware of magic's existence, and also explained to him as clearly as possible how stupid and irresponsible it would be to give funding and magical protection to every American AI research institution. After all, only one superintelligence could be created at all, since a superintelligent entity could reliably outsmart any and all humans and prevent them from creating another superintelligence to compete with it. Most of the other institutions were not taking any safety precautions to ensure that their AIs would be designed well enough not to just kill everyone for raw materials.
Many of those other institutions didn't really have the expertise or sanity necessary to design such safety precautions. Since those safety precautions included making sure the super intelligence's programmed goals aligned with humanity's wellbeing and interests, that meant that the safety research included figuring out how to design the utility function–the values and goals of the super intelligence itself.
And that meant that whoever completed the AI safety research was effectively and to a large extent, designing the superintelligence itself. If in fact the safety research actually got completed at all before someone else created another unaligned superintelligence which would wipe out the human species.
That being said, some of the higher ups in the CIA were skeptical of putting all their eggs in one basket. They decided to help fund and provide magical protection for general artificial Intelligence research projects that were being conducted by several institutions, with a majority of the funding going towards the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and its affiliates. Unfortunately, that majority was still less than fifty percent. Artificial intelligence was now a lot less likely to go disastrously wrong, but it was still more likely to go wrong than not.
On the bright side, there was at least one person in the Central Intelligence Agency who had some common sense as well as intelligence.
Not that common sense was actually common.
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Dialogue is translated from Valhallan blade-dance into Etherian standard.
On a giant, touch-sensitive and magic-sensitive battlefield with a variety of rocky and crystal terrains, floating in the depths of Voltari in a giant bubble which protected it from excessive magic...
Two sharp and elegant crystal bipeds with jointed blades for arms and prehensile split tails, stood on a cliff on this battlefield, facing each other. One was orange and standing farther away from the edge of the cliff. The other was a navy blue with green stripes, standing near the edge of the cliff. The blue captain quickly pointed her right blade at her orange pilot. It was clear what the gesture meant:
Report.
Her pilot stared at her, shifting from right foot to left, then left to right. He was expressing nervous about how the news would be received. No, not nervousness. Anticipation. If he had been nervous he would have taken at least one step back away from her when she had pointed her blade, and he would be looking at her blade, not at her.
The captain continued pointing her blade at the pilot.
Report.
The part of the ship/battlefield they were standing on would not affect the flight controls of the ship/battlefield. Those special tiles were hidden deep within the trenches, where only authorized personnel knew the correct sequence of moves to gain access.
The pilot stopped shifting from foot to foot in barely restrained excitement and began to fight/dance his report. The pilot walked towards his captain until he was standing right in front of her, to express how much distance was left between their ship/battlefield and its destination. He held his right blade above her left shoulder, and slowly lowered it to her left shoulder. This meant that they would be landing as soon as they were in orbit, and they would be landing in the northeastern quadrant. The captain jumped up and spun in excitement.
Excellent. Soon the Realm Bow would return to them, and their eyes would be able to pierce into other worlds once more. It was a powerful weapon/device that some of their best tacticians/choreographers/explorers (perhaps the closest translation in Etherian standard would be "researcher" or "scientist") had developed centuries ago, and had been critical to the defeat and imprisonment of the Thunder God.
It was time for the Warriors of the realm of Valhalla to return to Etheria and open up diplomatic relations once more.
-
There are a lot of different directions I can take this story in after this point. I have a bunch of ideas, but I'm not sure where I want to go first. Any requests?
Some possibilities:
1. a weekend mage wars roadtrip for the thanksgiving episode
2. show more of what's going on outside the simulation including futuristic!Etheria
2a. introduce two new characters that I recently thought of. one of them is a merren boy and the other is a dwarven girl, and have them go on adventures together. the realm bow will likely play an important role in this, as will the Valhallans.
3. the magic-training program. have Harris and Dan help train new recruits. note: as has already been established, only those who have prior experience using magic in the world of etheria can use magic in the simulation. all recruits will be people who previously started or completed magical education in Etheria, whether they notice their memories of it or not.
3b. I could also have this be more of a tournament arc where those who are confirmed mages who haven't noticed their memories of etheria yet get to learn how to play Mage Wars before they are given their passwords and briefed after signing a non-disclosure agreement at the end of the tournament or something.
3c. introduce a new pov character who knows nothing about what's going on and ends up going to the tournament.
4. something else.
Let me know what you'd like to see!
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"Mhegedden, attack! Blood claws!"
Through augmented reality glasses, the spectators surrounding the duel at the fountain in the Weston Center outdoor mall could see a three dimensional image of a powerful, dark, spiky, and vaguely draconic demon swipe at a young girl with its claws. The images disappeared as the girl's damage points exceeded her life points.
The young girl kicked the ground. "Dang it. I lost. Again."
"Don't feel bad. The sealed demon is just that strong. He's impossible to kill, and if you don't kill him he kills you."
The young girl frowned. "There has to be some way to beat him."
"Nope!" said the boy. He's invincible! Well, not exactly invincible, but if you do beat him you won't be able to finish off his controlling mage.
The boy raised his voice to address the spectators.
"Any other challengers? I'm still raring to go!"
Harris stepped out of the crowd.
"Can I play?"
"If you can take the heat," the boy quipped. "The name's Rory."
"Nice to meet you, Rory. I'm Harris."
Round 1
Rory (Warlock)
Channeling 7
Mana 7
Damage 0
Life: 26
Harris (Wizard)
Channeling 7
Mana 10
Damage 0
Life 23
Rory got first initiative.
"I summon Mhegedden, Sealed Demon!" The same demon that had won Rory's last duel appeared, bound by golden chains.
Rory mana: 1(-6)
"When the Sealed Demon is summoned, he has 3 seal tokens on him. During each upkeep phase I move one seal token from him to me, lowering my life points by 2 each time. Your move, Harris."
Harris nodded.
"Yep. I summon Afflicted Demon!"
Harris mana: 1(-9)
Round 2
Harris mana: 8(+7)
Rory mana: 8(+7)
Rory Life: 24(-2)
A single golden chain snapped and broke off of the sealed demon, then disappeared.
"I cast a facedown enchantment on myself," said Harris, scanning the card with his yellow armored smartphone.
Harris mana: 6(-2)
"And I guard."
Harris stood in front of his afflicted demon in a protective stance. While it wasn't actually necessary because the virtual guard marker was placed by voice command and the rules for it were enforced automatically, Harris thought it looked cooler this way.
It was Rory's turn.
"I summon Sanguine Hunter!"
Rory mana: 5(-3)
"When Sanguine Hunter is summoned, he deals two damage to a friendly creature of my choice. I choose myself."
Rory damage: 2
"And I equip myself with Wychwood Ironvine. Your move."
Rory mana: 0(-5)
"Afflicted Demon will do nothing this round."
Rory's eyes narrowed. Skipping his quickcast in round 1, and then only casting a single spell on himself and guarding round 2? That Harris guy was up to something...
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Round 3
Harris mana: 13(+7)
Rory mana: 7(+7)
Rory damage: 1(-1)
Rory life: 22(-2)
Another golden chain on Mhegedden snapped and disappeared. There was only one more. Come next round that seal would be broken, and the demon would be unbound.
"I cast an enchantment on my Sanguine Hunter!"
Rory mana: 5(-2)
He swept his hand out, a dramatic gesture indicating the enchantment was about to be revealed which wouldn't look so out of place on Yugioh.
"And now I reveal it! Demonic Link!"
Rory mana: 3(-2)
The augmented reality image of a thin red cord of energy emerged from the Sanguine Hunter and extended to Rory's body.
"A demon-type creature enchanted with Demonic Link gains melee +1! And the first time each round that it damages a living enemy creature, I heal 1 damage."
"Don't worry, I know what Demonic Link does," said Harris.
"Maybe you did, but a lot of the spectators probably don't," Rory pointed out.
"Oh. Right." Harris smiled sheepishly.
"Sanguine Hunter! Attack Harris! Demon Claws!"
The Sanguine Hunter leapt towards Harris....
"I reveal my enchantment, Glancing Blow. This lowers your Sanguine Hunter's attack by 3 dice, to a minimum of 1 die until the end of its attack."
...and swiped at him with two huge, blue, hands, each with three spindly talons ending in sharp black claws. The claws glanced off of Harris, doing much less damage than they normally would.
Harris damage: 2(+2)
Then as soon as the damage was applied, Harris struck back at the demon, punching it in the face for 3 normal damage. Sanguine Hunter had 1 armor though, so only 2 damage was applied.
Sanguine Hunter damage: 2(+2)
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It was Harris's turn.
"I summon Sailfin Hydra!" Harris scanned the card with his yellow armored smart phone and the virtual image of a huge two headed, two-legged biped appeared, letting loose a roar which wasn't anywhere near as loud or high quality as a real Sailfin Hydra's. Not to mention the sound of the roar was coming from Harris's and his opponent's smart phones, not the image of the hydra itself. Nevertheless it was still enough to impress the spectators, whose excited chatter was showing them to be more interested in the game than Harris would have expected. He didn't expect the rumors about the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy finals to have spread this far.
------
"That was an awesome duel!" said Rory, grinning.
"Thanks!" said Harris, also smiling. "I've played against a rather similar spellbook to yours before. I was surprised when you started using Mhegeddon to guard instead of attack. And then you started spamming unholy blood rituals! Ingenious..."
"Well, Grandma helped me think of the idea. Mhegedden is so powerful with 5 dice attack and elusive for only 6 mana. But you can't use him right away, you have to wait for three rounds. And when you combine that with his sheer bulk at 3 armor and 13 life, you realize that he's meant to be able to last into the late game and protect his allies. Kinda strange for a demon, to be honest."
The crowd was starting to disperse at this point.
Not to mention that once he's been weakened he's much less of a threat, especially since the incantation "cure" costs him triple spell points to include in his spellbook, Harris thought. Mhegedden was clearly meant to be a big threat when it is first summoned, but then once his controlling Mage has more lower level creatures to attack with Mhegedden can switch into guarding them if necessary. Harris's afflicted demons had really come in handy.
"It may be strange, but it's not impossible," said Harris. "Personally I suspect it has something to do with why he was sealed in the first place. Those golden chains may seem like holy seals, but why would warlocks summon an avatar of a powerful demon with holy seals on it? When you summon a legendary creature, you are summoning an avatar of it, not the real thing. Why would the holy seals that bind the real Mhegedden also bind a summoned avatar of him? The warlocks wouldn't do that if they had any choice about it, would they? Therefore, they hadn't had a choice. Likely those seals are made from Mhegedden's own spirit, so that any summoned avatar of him would be incomplete without being able to represent the part of him that's in the seals."
"You sound like you've seen Mhegedden for real," Rory said, a note of heavy skepticism in his voice.
Harris had, in fact. Mhegedden was part of the reason that he believed that the demons of Infernia could be reformed in the first place. The goddess Asyra was known to have the power to purify corruption and evil from sapient beings. That power was known to work on beings of almost all intelligent races. Demons were an exception to that. Asyra's light could not purify them. Or so everyone thought.
Eons of existence in a realm starved of natural resources which was on fire all the time had made the demons of Infernia into horrible monsters that ate each other to survive. In the burning darkness of Infernia, they did not know that there was any other way to live.
Asyra would likely have been able to heal the minds of demons if she had had any mind training whatsoever. But instead she just flashed her holy light on them, saw that it didn't work and gave them up as a lost cause. Navee was one of the youngest demons to ever escape from Infernia, so he hadn't suffered as long as most of them had. That was why he had been able to rehabilitate himself and learn to care for other people in the first place. It had taken him a long time, and he had done some pretty terrible things before he had started to come to his senses. He never talked about his crimes to Harris in detail, and when he had mentioned them at all there was always a haunted look in his eyes.
"No, it's just a fan theory," Harris said quickly. "I like to come up with ideas like that."
"You should see my grandmother play this game! She's amazing! I can never win against her."
"Really?" asked Harris intrigued.
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The wicked tycoon sat behind his desk, reading reports about a planned Mage Wars Academy tournament on an island in the pacific that basically no one cared about. Some of the higher ups in the CIA were not beyond bribing, and his investments were about to start paying off.
Everyone had a price. That was because everyone had something they wanted. Even the Gods of Etheria themselves could not be immune. Their prices would merely be higher.
The wicked Tycoon chuckled. He would meet those prices...and in exchange, he would be granted power...
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The door of the Paladin's Prize game shop jangled shut behind Harris and Rory as they entered.
"Grandma, I'm home!" Rory called out.
"Welcome back, Rory! I'm in the back, teaching a foolish youngster a lesson. Come watch! You might learn a trick or two!"
Rory grinned. Harris followed him into the back gaming room.
There was an old woman who was presumably Rory's grandmother, with a priestess spellbook in her lap, sitting across a round wooden table from...
"You!" said Vincent Black. "What are YOU doing here?"
"Rory invited me after I beat him in a duel," said Harris, defensively.
Vincent looked Rory up and down, looking for signs of physical injury.
"What are you staring at me like that for? I don't swing that way dude!"
"I was checking to make sure you aren't hurt," said Vincent.
Rory's grandmother narrowed her eyes and addressed Harris. "What reason would you have to hurt my grandson?"
"I didn't hurt him!" Harris burst out right as Rory flexed his muscles and said, "Oh yeah, he trounced me big time, that scrawny little man. Beat me one on one, mano a mano. That's exactly what happened."
To Rory's grandmother, the split second look of absolute horror on Harris's face before he realized that Rory was only joking said a lot about what kind of person Harris was. And yet, the chosen hero of Malakai seemed to hate him, for some reason...
"Well, it looks like you have a rival, young man," she said to Vincent. "Maybe he'll be an extra motivator for you to excel in your lessons."
"Oh boy, this should be fun," said Rory.
"Which you will not be a part of," Rory's grandmother snapped. She turned to Harris. You however, I will allow. The lessons are not meant for you, but perhaps you might learn something nevertheless."
She turned and walked towards a hidden trap door in the floor, and opened it, then descended the staircase.
Vincent and Harris followed her.
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Once Harris, Vincent and Rory's grandmother were all in the basement, where there was exercise equipment, a television, and a table, Rory's grandmother turned back around to face Vincent. "My name is Tanya. In Etheria, I am a priestess of Malakai. You who Maakai chose as his champion. What do you know of Malakai's teachings?"
Vincent scratched the back of his head. "Not much. I grew up in an Asyran household."
Harris raised his eyebrows at that. Malakai's champion and adopted son didn't know Malakai's teachings?
"It is as I feared. Asyra is trying to shelter you from your role for as long as possible. Or worse, change your role entirely."
"What do you mean?" asked Vincent.
"You are a champion of the archangel Malakai, who serves the goddess Asyra. You were chosen by Malakai, not by Asyra. Tell me the significance of this."
"I...um... I don't know," said Vincent.
Harris spoke up then. "Malakai and Asyra disagree about a lot of things. For him to be the chosen one of an archangel rather than of the goddess that archangel serves, could likely mean that the choice was not originally approved by that goddess."
Tanya nodded. "Correct." she turned back to Vincent. "Why did Malakai choose you, Zaccharias Shortel, of all people, to represent him?"
"I...um...because he saw potential in me, I guess?"
"What kind of potential?"
"I don't know."
"Well, better to show you than to just tell you." Tanya's face turned serious. "There is a magical explosive hidden somewhere in this room. Only I have the key to deactivate it, which can be used remotely." she held up a small device that looked like the kind of device one would use to unlock their car from afar without using a key.
"This key is enchanted to have some of the same properties as harshforge, which is how it is able to disarm a magical explosive. It is not detectable by normal or magical means. If a police officer came to investigate he would not find anything. I must also warn you that I am much more athletic than I appear. If you try to chase me and wrest the remote key from my hands, you will be unable to do so."
She grinned.
"So, champion of Malakai, what will you do?"
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Harris thought quickly. Had this crazy woman come up with some way to bypass the Nameless one's restrictions on magic in the simulation? All magic in the simulation was supposed to be tied only to the cards and the passwords. How did she make an enchanted key that emulated the properties of harshforge? There was no Mage Wars card in existence that could do something like that. It had to be just a test for Zacharias Shortel. It had to be! But there was a chance that he was wrong. A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.
"I must warn you, that the explosive has a radius of about a couple miles, and if it is not disarmed in five minutes, it will go off, destroying the whole town."
Vincent's face screwed up in betrayal.
"Why are you doing this? Your grandson is still in the house!" Vincent shouted.
"You are the chosen one of Malakai! If you cannot sacrifice even a single innocent person for the sake of all, then you are not worthy of that choice!"
Vincent froze in shock. Almost as if on automatic, his hand slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a Mage Wars card. It was a creature, White Cloaked Knight. With his horror, determination and shock in his eyes, he scanned the card with his white armored smartphone, which now was glowing with red stripes. The White Cloaked Knight appeared.
"White Cloaked Knight," said Vincent. He hesitated. But then his resolve firmed. If he didn't do this, the entire town would be destroyed, taking the lives of everyone living there with it. "White Cloaked Knight," said Vincent. "Attack Tanya."
The White Cloaked Knight obeyed, and ran towards Tanya, it's sword pointed at her and ready to impale her.
"I'm sorry," Vincent whispered.
"I reveal my enchantment! Block!" said Tanya. In her right hand was a white-armored smartphone with silver stripes. She had drawn it from a holster at her waist so fast that if Vincent had blinked he might have missed it.
A magical barrier appeared around Tanya, and White Cloak Knight's sword bounced harmlessly off it.
She tossed the remote key to Vincent, who caught it, confusion in his eyes as he dismissed his summoned knight.
"I am sorry for having lied to you," she said. "There is no explosive. That's just what I use to open my car. Make sure you give it back when you're done inspecting it."
Vincent's mouth was gaping open, and Harris couldn't stop laughing, both from relief at the fact that they weren't in any danger after all, and from the humor of the situation.
When Harris stopped laughing and Vincent stopped gaping like a fish, Tanya spoke.
"What, you didn't really think I'd engineer a magical explosive to go off in my own home, especially not while my grandson is here!" Tanya said admonishingly. She continued.
"Today you have learned that, as a champion of Malakai, you must do not what is easy, nor what is purely moral, but rather...what is necessary."
Vincent nodded, reluctantly.
"Malakai is a consequentialist..." Harris breathed, suddenly having newfound respect for the archangel.
"Well, that brings me to the end of the lesson. Any questions?"
"Yes," said Vincent. "Your lesson was...useful, and I'm going to have some things to think about for a while. But, please don't pull something like that on me again."
"Alright. Though I encourage you to seek out other teachers who will likely do something like that," said Tanya seriously. "How else can you learn?"
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Vincent walked towards the stairs. Harris made to follow him, but Tanya gestured for him to stay.
She got straight to the point.
"What exactly does the champion of Malakai have against you? You seem like quite an upstanding young man."
"It's because I killed his birth parents on Etheria," Harris admitted with a sigh.
Tanya raised her eyebrows. "Why did you do that?"
"They were trying to murder children."
Tanya's eyebrows rose even higher.
"They were demon children, we--Navee and I, were trying to reeducate them. But then the Asyran church found out and sent those two Knights, Lady Ray and Sir Alan Shortel to slay the children under our care."
"I see. And you believe that demons can be reeducated?" asked Tanya, skeptically.
"Yes. There's no reason to assume they are all innately evil. If any entire race of beings had been trapped in Infernia for as long as the demons, I would expect them to turn out exactly the same way. How could someone NOT become a monster after spending their whole life being burned alive? Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation that fits the facts, that fits one's observations I should say, is the most likely. We observe that almost all demons are evil. We observe that Infernia is a burning wasteland with little to no useful or tradable natural resources, such as food or water. Why postulate an inherent propensity for evil when there is already a simpler and more obvious cause for their evil?"
There was a pause as Tanya absorbed this information.
"I see," she said. And these demon children you were teaching. Were they dangerous?"
Harris nodded. "Yes, but we had them under control. At least as long as they were not exposed to other people."
"You realize that you were unlikely to be able to protect them if the Asyran church was hunting them. You would not have been able to keep them contained in one location."
Harris nodded. "I was banking on making more progress with them before we were found out, so that the Asyrans could see that the demons had the potential to become good. And we had made a little bit of progress. But then Sir and Lady Shortel arrived. They didn't stop to listen. They just attacked, and I had to stop them. I didn't mean to kill them. I tried to explain things to them. I told them to leave us alone. They wouldn't listen."
"You are wondering whether you did the right thing, protecting those demon children," Tanya guessed.
"Yes," said Harris, helplessly. "I mean, they were still really hostile to other people. When other Westlockian officials arrived, the kids fought tooth and nail against them– not only to survive themselves, but also to hurt and kill those Westlockian officials. We had been found out too soon, and all of the progress we'd made was lost in the heat of the moment in a life or death situation. Those kids killed a lot more people before they were all killed themselves. It was not a pretty sight. The fact that more people died as a result of my actions than lived... doesn't that mean that I made the wrong choice? And yet, the demons of Infernia are suffering constantly every day! I can't just do nothing."
"I see. You took a risk, and you underestimated the severity of that risk."
"Even Navee had told me it was a bad idea! And I didn't listen to him. And he went along with it anyways in the end, partially because he was having trouble convincing me otherwise, and partially because he wondered if maybe I was right and that maybe we could succeed."
"I cannot say for certain whether it was the best choice you could've made given what you knew at the time," said Tanya. "I can say, however, that any follower of Malakai would've considered your endeavor quite foolish. And the actual consequences… were not good."
---
Vincent emerged from the staircase, having overheard the entire conversation. Demons could be good? Nonsense. Either Fiennix was lying to Tanya, or he had been lied to himself.
The man who killed my parents...
Vincent wasn't sure what to think anymore. He wasn't sure what was right anymore. He needed time to sort things out.
"So, how was your lesson?" asked Rory.
"Awful," said Vincent as he walked past Rory towards the front of the shop. "But necessary."
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"Well," Tanya muttered to herself. "The champion of Malakai is quicker on the uptake than he first appears. A little gullible though. But I thought that lesson would take a lot longer for him to learn, given Asyra's interference. I underestimated him, it seems."
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Fixed a typo earlier where it said Harris had to go to work after his not-date with Dan. It was supposed to say class.
Also edited an earlier part where Vincent used pillars of light and heal spells in the prison to show that he's magically exhausted afterwards and therefore not sure he can defend himself from the warden if she were to try anything funny. Arena spells tend to be more powerful and take more effort for an academy level mage to cast. Where "heal" is a level 2 incantation for fully trained graduate level mages, in the hands of an academy mage its level might be effectively doubled. The fact that Vincent cast it twice means he is exhausted afterwards, since he is down by about 12 spell points worth of physical energy if you include the pillars of light.
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"Oh, I almost forgot!" said Harris, rushing back downstairs to the basement of the Paladin's Prize gameshop. "Arcane Wonders is hosting a Mage Wars Academy tournament starting a couple days after Christmas this year. Here's your invitation." Harris handed the invitation card to Tanya.
"If you want to participate, you can register in person or online at the URL on your invitation."
"Thank you," said Tanya. "I'm not sure if I am going to participate, but it would certainly be wonderful to see."
"Yeah," said Harris. His yellow-armored smartphone began to ring.
"Sorry, I got to go, that's probably Dan or Grace calling. Bye!"
"Goodbye," said Tanya, as Harris rushed back upstairs.
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"Harris!" it was Jack, Grace's son that had picked up. "Come on, it's time to hit the road again!"
"You guys are all back at the van then?"
"Yep! So come on back and let's get going!"
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When they got to the hotel in New Jersey that had been booked for them by "Mr. Bobriel", there was a bit of a dilemma.
"Wait a moment, you mean to say there're only two rooms?" asked Grace.
"That's not a problem," said Harris. "As long as both rooms have a bathroom, no one will be nak--I mean everybody can just change in private."
Dan raised an eyebrow suggestively. Harris blushed.
"How many beds are there?" asked Grace.
"One in each room, but one of them has a couch as well," said the man behind the front desk, looking rather bored.
"Harris, would you rather we take the room with the couch or do you want it?"
"Mom, I'm sure Harris and Dan will be fine sharing a bed. But there's no way I'm sharing one with you."
"Oh my god, this is ridiculous," said Harris. "It's as if we just got caught in a bad fan fic."
Turning to Dan he said, "We are NOT doing that tonight."
Dan pouted. "But I haven't had the chance to do it in a really long time!"
"I don't care. We aren't even officially a couple yet," said Harris doing his very best to remain serious and not to laugh at the expression on Dan's face or at the silly situation they were in. "We are going to turn the lights out, get in the bed, and go to sleep, nothing else."
"Fine," said Dan, resisting the urge to sigh theatrically. He would just have to give Harris twice the action later to make up for the lack of it this time.
Grace and Jack took the room with the couch, and Harris and Dan took the room without one.
A while later, Dan was lying awake in bed next to Harris. He raised an arm as if he meant to drape it over Harris's shoulder, but then let it fall pointlessly back to the bed. Instead he quietly whispered, "Love you."
Harris didn't respond, but Dan could tell he was still awake.
After a while, as if to reassure Dan, Harris snuggled up against him.
Fiennix knew he probably felt the same way about Navee that Navee felt about him, but he wasn't entirely certain and so he didn't commit himself by saying it.
That was all that happened. Nothing else. Real life did not work like bad fanfiction, after all. In real life, when there weren't enough beds for everyone to have their own, people would just make do and they would NOT suddenly become unbearably horny for no reason.
Screw narrative convention--no sane person would care about narrative convention when making a decision like that.
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It was the second day of Harris's thanksgiving break road trip, with all expenses paid for by the US government. He even got to bring Jack and Grace along so that no one he knew would be asking him awkward questions he couldn't answer about why he was going on a road trip with someone he'd supposedly only known since August.
The goal of this trip was to find Mage Wars players who might have some real magical skills, and then invite them to the Horizon Island Mage Wars Academy tournament, which would be taking place shortly after Christmas, so that their magical skills as well as skills with the Mage Wars Academy card game could be evaluated. Everyone involved in organizing this mission agreed that since there had been no real magical training programs on Earth before, that anyone who had magical skills already must have learned them on Etheria. Therefore, those with memories of Etheria were more likely to be mages than those who didn't have such memories. In fact, only someone who had lived on Etheria could be a mage. It was possible that those with memories of Etheria (locked or unlocked) might be drawn to the Mage Wars game franchise due to its connection to their cultural heritage. That was the hope, anyway.
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Edit: changed the date of the horizon island academy tournament in the story since I didn't realize that Christmas 2016 is a Sunday.
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The stop they were making on this day was New York City. Apparently there was an ambassador from another world outside the simulation besides Etheria who had entered the simulation, and had been causing a ruckus for some unknown reason, likely a cultural misunderstanding of some kind but nobody knew what.
None of the countries in the world had been able to agree on who should be sent to represent Earth to the Alien Ambassador. Seeing as the alien had entered the simulation in the United States, the United States volunteered Harris and Dan, whose negotiations with the Nameless One had led to the Earth's very existence in the first place.
Needless to say, neither Harris nor Dan were happy with only finding out about this at the last minute. Apparently a lot of people didn't want Harris or Dan to represent the world and kept trying to keep them from being chosen. But no one managed to come up with any alternative candidates they could all agree on.
It wasn't certain that Harris and Dan actually would represent Earth to the alien ambassador until the last minute. Especially since they didn't have much if any diplomatic training.
Of course, human diplomacy training would be useless in this case. The alien ambassador was genuinely alien, both in physical form and in spirit, and nobody could understand it. Even so, a trained human diplomat would still be accompanying them to meet with the alien. It would be a public event, and most people would not know why Harris and Dan were the ones chosen to represent the world.
After about a half an hour drive up to New York City from the hotel in New Jersey, they were immediately escorted to City Hall to meet with the alien.
Harris was very conscious of the fact that neither he nor Dan had brought any formal clothes with them on this trip. They were both wearing buttoned polo shirts and khaki pants, which was the closest thing to formal attire that they had brought with them. There were already reporters crowded around outside the building when they arrived. Harris swallowed, nervously. Dan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. They successfully avoided the reporters and went inside. Then again, it wasn't very difficult. The reporters probably didn't know who they were or what they were there for.
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When they entered they were directed to wait just outside a large council chamber, where the actual trained diplomat was standing and waiting for them. She did not look happy to see them.
"It communicates exclusively with its body language, and it moves very fast," she said promptly in a thick Russian accent. "A team of scientists arrived two nights ago and they have only just started understanding some of its language. They will be assisting us in the meeting."
And without another word she turned and entered the large council chamber.
Space had been cleared away to make room on the floor of the chamber for the alien to move around. The alien did seem to understand English, strangely enough, but it could not speak English. In order for it to speak in its on language it needed the extra space. Reporters crowded the edge of the room, recording the meeting. There were some baffled murmurs when Harris and Dan entered the room with the Russian diplomat.
Without further ado, the Valhallan ambassador bowed. It was a gesture of respect that his kind had adopted from the Etherians. Then he began to dance, telling the story of his journey to Etheria and into the simulation. He was careful to dance slowly and carefully, using dance moves as simple as he could use without missing any important information. Unfortunately, even with the story dumbed down, no one in the audience was able to understand much of it. No one except Dan.
"I'm sorry, did you say something about learning, or knowledge? We don't quite understand your language," said Dan, shocking the team of scientists as well as the Russian ambassador and every other official in the room.
After a few iterations in which Dan took extensive notes and the team of scientists helped him by drawing diagrams of every movement they saw, Dan finally started to piece the alien's message together.
"You say you came to this world to learn about current events here? And you plan to report what you learn to the rest of your people?"
The alien nodded, and continued to dance, elaborating on what it had said earlier.
The alien and its kind were concerned about the technological advancement of this world. (It had been literally translated as "progress of tools".) They were worried that there might be a great destruction, which might affect both this world and theirs.
"What do you mean by 'great destruction'?" asked the president of the United States, who had been held up and arrived partway through the meeting. "Do you mean nuclear weapons?"
The alien made a gesture with its arm to ask them to elaborate.
"He means weapons which cause huge explosions, which if used for war could destroy civilization due to international treaties," said the Secretary of State.
The alien shook its head, took a huge step back and made a defensive gesture. Worse.
"It's talking about AI," Harris wearily concluded under his breath. Everyone in the room heard him of course, and they all looked in his direction. "Probably," Harris added. "I mean, there aren't very many technologies expected to be invented in the near future that could threaten an alien civilization, are there?"
Some experts on the subject of global catastrophic risk were consulted, and it was determined that if there were any such technologies on the way, a properly aligned superintelligence would probably be able to deal with them pretty easily. But if not properly aligned, a superintelligence would be an extinction event for all life on earth and possibly on other worlds too. This was not received well by every official in the room. One crazy person even suggested that they try to destroy the world so that it didn't threaten other worlds.
Finally, one intelligent person in the room managed to ask the obvious question. The heroic tycoon stood up and asked the alien ambassador if any other civilization had created their own superintelligence before. The alien shook its head.
The Valhallans had long ago found an alternative way for their species to survive that didn't depend on superintelligence, but it was severely limited in the scope of its power and it was not something that could be successfully replicated on this world. And the Etherians had gods who carefully limited their technological progress in some respects and accelerated it in others. Although that part was left out due to the Nameless One's request for secrecy.
In any case, the invention of a superintelligence on this world was inevitable unless it was destroyed by something else first.
That long explanation took a really long time to translate and even afterwards nobody was quite sure they understood it all.
After the meeting, Harris and Dan were among those who were swamped with reporters.
"Back off!" said Dan. "My friend is claustrophobic!"
Harris wasn't actually claustrophobic, but small enclosed spaces and crowds made him uncomfortable enough that the excuse was convincing.
They left without another word to the reporters.
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EDIT:
I updated the opening scene of the story to be more descriptive. Hopefully nobody will find it boring anymore.
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After the diplomatic meeting with the alien, Harris and Dan met with Jack and Grace for lunch.
"So then how were you able to translate the alien's language?" asked Jack.
"With great difficulty," said Dan. "I've read a decent amount about the Valhallans in history books. Apparently they used to be ruled by Ilasthasa, the goddess of air, but then they rebelled against her. They don't worship any gods, but they do admire some of them, apparently. Bellicar, Akiro and Eisenach are particularly popular with them. Their names in Valhallan Bladedance are the same as the names of their three basic 'spirit styles'."
"Spirit styles?" asked Harris, just as the waitress delivered their food to them.
"I told you about this before, remember?" said Dan.
"No, I don't," said Harris. "It was a long time ago and I probably wasn't paying attention."
Dan sighed softly. Fiennix really should have paid more attention to his history classes at the Tower of Night. "The Valhallans believe that everyone has a spirit style, which is made of some combination of the three basic spirit styles, which are based on the three primary motives of fighting. There are those who fight for fame and glory, like Akiro. There are those who fight to succeed--for victory, like Bellicar. And there are those who fight for, well it doesn't translate well into English, but the closest word for it is 'Tamashi', which is the Japanese word for 'fun' or 'soul'."
Harris grinned. "Timmy, Johnny and Spike. Akiro, Eisenach and Bellicar. How did I not notice that before?"
"Who's Timmy, Johnny and Spike?" asked Jack, looking confused. Grace had the same look of bewilderment. She couldn't follow this conversation at all.
It's the three basic playstyles of customizable strategy gamers, first conceptualized by, well I don't remember who but it was in an article on Wizards of the Coast's website, about Magic: the Gathering."
Harris pulled up the article on his yellow-armored smartphone and showed it to them.
"Don't forget to eat your food, we have to be at the game store by 2," said Grace.
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"You've been using the wizard a lot," Dan noted in the car on their way down south to Washington D. C. They were going there to get some very basic self defense lessons/a minimal level of military training, while also being taught some diplomatic skills to hold them over until they both had the time to take an actual class in foreign policy. While there would be normal soldiers to help protect mages from more mundane threats, a Mage was supposed to help protect mundane soldiers from magical threats.
Of course, since Harris and Dan were representing Earth to other worlds, they really did need some diplomatic training, not just military training.
"Yeah," said Harris. "I've been having a lot more fun building wizard spellbooks."
"It suits you," said Dan.
"Thanks!" said Harris.
A thoughtful expression appeared on Dan's face.
"I wonder...you cast a Sailfin Hydra in your match against Zacharias at Gen Con... could you have somehow gotten some arcane training already inside the simulation?"
"Oh. Huh, that is strange. I hadn't noticed that at all until now. I don't think I had any training in arcane magic outside the simulation, and inside magic is tied to the cards and the passwords. I also didn't seem to actually have to do much to cast the spell. In fact, I wasn't even trying to cast it for real, it just sort of happened. I think it must have just taken some of my mana and cast the spell automatically. My cell phone, I mean."
"Well I doubt it's all automated. The Nameless One doesn't have enough intelligence or magic in him to cast all our spells for us. Unless..."
"Unless?" asked Harris.
"Oh, I get it now!" said Jack.
"You do?" asked Grace from the driver's seat. "Explain it to me then, because I'm lost."
Jack continued. "What if all of us, the rest of the world, do have enough intelligence and magic?"
"So what you're saying is that every time I cast a spell in the simulation, or at least if it's one that I wouldn't know how to cast myself outside the simulation, it consumes the intelligence and magic of people inside the simulation who have just died. And since most people aren't mages, most of that magic and intelligence comes from people's souls," Harris had a horrified expression on on his face.
They needed to tell someone about this as soon as they got to D.C., and hope they were wrong.
Grace kept driving.
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Harris hadn't done much actual fighting since before the simulation and he was out of practice, and also not in as good shape as he had been. The VERY rudimentary crash course Harris and Dan received in D.C. mostly consisted of learning about military policy, diplomacy and getting into shape, as well as giving researchers the chance to study their magical abilities.
It was quickly determined that while their magic was tied to the Mage Wars cards and to the rules of the Mage Wars card game, there were some differences between playing the card game and having an actual Mage duel.
"Yaaaargh!" that firestream had hurt.
"Can't take the heat?"
For one, the duels were not turn-based. Your strategy, agility, physical endurance and quick thinking determined whether you won or lost a fight. That meant you weren't supposed to just stand in one place waiting for the opponent to hit you. Although to be fair, lower level mages tended to do better in smaller spaces where they would have the best chance of hitting the enemy. Give them a large open field and they would have trouble catching the enemy or retreating from them. Most academy-level spells were fairly short-range, and not optimal for long, drawn out battles. Which meant that in a larger battle they would need assistance to get around quickly. However, the best way for an academy-level Mage to start an engagement when alone was through an ambush. So for the two days since arriving in DC on Friday, Harris and a bunch of other academy-level Mage recruits who had recently recovered their memories of Etheria had been practicing ambushing each other with magical attacks in an area where there were no civilians.
It had been discovered rather early on that at some point, Harris had developed an affinity for Arcane magic, and had even gotten some theoretical arcane training in the simulation without realizing it. Apparently the time he spent studying to be a research scientist a while back before he changed his major to English, combined with what he had learned over recent years about scientific methodology, rationality and how to test one's beliefs empirically had been enough for him to become a wizard, at least where the simulation was concerned. Even if Harris didn't know how to cast very many arcane spells outside the simulation, he had enough of the background knowledge and skills taught in the arcane school that he would be able to cast those spells if he had known how, and that was enough for casting them inside the simulation.
And after his deal with the Nameless one, his deal with the demon lord Bael was null and void.
It was somewhat disturbing to see how much of magic was automated within the simulation. It was almost as if something else was forming the spells for them, and the mages just needed to feed their power into that something.
Harris glanced around, suspiciously. His current opponent had no creatures in sight. Either they weren't there, or they were hiding, or they were fighting another mage.
Well, if he put his opponent on the defensive, they would be forced to bring their creature out to guard them. And if the creature was too strong, Harris could try to stagger it and flee.
Harris had Aurora Lucere, Dawnbreaker's Chosen guard him, then swiped a firestrwam card through his armored smart phone, sending a stream of fire at his opponent. His opponent tried to dodge but wasn't fast enough.
"Yoooooooooow!"
"Damn, that hurt. But this will hurt even more!"
He summoned a Firefist Brawler. Then two more ran over to him from their separate fights, taking Harris by surprise and clawing at him. But the mages they had been fighting already followed...
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Harris and Dan got back home on Monday, fully healed and with a bit more fighting experience and diplomatic skill. At the very least Harris was no longer quite as likely to risk an international incident because of poor etiquette or miscommunication.
Jack and Grace had already gone home before they did. Thanksgiving break was over, so it was time for Harris to go back to school.
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The Mad Scientist looked at Mr. Dan Rood across the table at the coffee shop they were meeting at, skeptically.
"We need a list of people from outside the simulation who haven't noticed their locked memories yet." Mr. Rood told him.
"And why are you asking me?"
"Well..."
How did one go about explaining to someone that they were suspected of having been gifted with some of the Nameless One's own intelligence for the very purpose that they'd already dedicated their professional life towards? Especially when one didn't know whether the information was classified or not.
At Mr. Rood's awkward look, the Mad Scientist said,
"Just because the Nameless One probably gave me some of their intelligence and perhaps a fragment of their utility function when I was born doesn't mean that I know how to contact the outside world. I've been trying to find a way to do that and I haven't had much success so far. So unfortunately I do not have access to Etherian census records."
Navee gaped.
The Mad Scientist smiled. "It's kind of obvious, really. It's what I would do if I was the Nameless One, as opposed to, say, leaving my master plan to random chance."
"Right," said Mr. Rood. "Fiennix said you were a genius. I forgot."
The Mad Scientist snorted.
"By the way, who's this 'Fiennix' you keep mentioning?"
"He's my--" and then Navee cut off abruptly as he didn't know how to end that sentence. Student? But Fiennix wasn't really his student anymore. Boyfriend? But they weren't actually together, despite knowing each other's feelings for each other.
The Mad Scientist grinned at seeing the red tinge on Mr. Rood's cheeks.
"I see. You must be very lucky to have him."
Navee nodded.
"Thanks for the magical bodyguards by the way. You trained them well."
"You're welcome," said Mr. Rood.
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