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EC Book 4, Chapter 1 - A Tale Long Past
🕑 Added 2023-06-25 14:49:50 +0000 UTCA long line of wagons led the path away from Elyra, along with a long line of people. For all that there should have been sound — voices of people talking, laughing, sharing in their worries and their fears with one another — the whole evacuation was eerily silent.
There was the occasional laugh. The occasional voice that tried to break the oppressive silence that hung over them. The occasional musician, even, that tried to play a song to lighten the mood.
But no one was in the mood, it seemed. They were all still processing what had happened to their homes. Half of them could barely even remember their homes, anymore; their childhoods were a series of vaguely-shaped impressions that could have been anything. They remembered the people that were important to them, remembered the things they brought with them, but so much life and beauty had been sucked out of the lives they had lived that it was all they could do to walk.
In the midst of all this silence, Sev sat in the carriage that carried him and his friends. Helix, Vex's brother, had retreated to the back and put up a soundproof barrier so that he could not hear them; Sev appreciated the gesture, as much as he didn't mind it if Helix participated.
His friends did deserve to hear this first. He just... didn't know where to begin. He still didn't remember it all, even if the memories were slowly coming back. There were over a thousand years of memories to sort through, and even without the effect that had erased them, he'd forgotten nearly half of it all.
Start at the beginning, Vex had said. The wonderful lizardkin wizard that had been a late addition to their party. A lover of magic and the arts, he'd started out so very unsure of himself, worried for his family, and unwilling to talk to them about any of it.
Now, he'd stood up to his father. Convinced him to help. Saved his little brother from the torture that their family experienced, and found a lover. He'd grown so much.
It hadn't even been part of the plan to include him. It hadn't been a part of his plan to include any of these three.
And yet he'd come the furthest with them.
So start at the beginning he did.
"When I was first Planeshifted here, I was just barely graduated," Sev said quietly. "I can't say what I was studying. I don't remember it. Most of my memories of Earth are still... clouded. But I remember what I was trying to do. I remember trying to see if there was a use for what I knew from Earth — I was hoping to be able to change the world, you know? Help people."
"Sounds just like you." Misa gave him a little smile.
Misa was rough but warm. She made him think of a fireplace that was intentionally just a little too hot, spitting cinders out onto a fireproof carpet and making the children around laugh and giggle with fascination.
Somehow, that comforted him. "Turned out planeshifting doesn't work like it does in the stories," he said. "I wasn't the first, I wasn't special, and all my ideas were already in place. That's what Anderstahl is, by the way — the Kingdom of the Planeshifted. Research, science, technology, engineering... It all happens there."
"I haven't seen much of that outside Anderstahl," Vex commented.
"It's the Anchors," Sev said with a sigh. "It's a clever design, but it makes it hard for things to spread. Especially ideas, but not just those. Food gets lost during transportation, travellers forget what they're doing, quests disappear... it's not a perfect system."
"But it was the best that could be done," Derivan said. His voice had that calm, resonant tone to it, a gentleness that defied his size and appearance. "And the Guild helps where it can."
Derivan was the strangest of them all, really. The system had designated him as a monster; he was an empty suit of enchanted armor, stitched up with a broken system, powers he shouldn't have, and far too much kindness for someone that had been born with no friends or family.
He'd recruited him on nothing more than an impulse. In the previous loop, he'd caught Derivan just as he was dying, stabbed through the chest with an adventurer's sword. Sev had almost dismissed him, but caught the whispers of a breath.
I am sorry. I did not want to hurt anyone. I wish... I wish I could have been different.
Something about that had stuck with him. He never remembered the words, but even through the universal Reset, the impulse had stayed. Find him again, and give him the opportunity to be who he wanted to be.
Derivan had taken to that opportunity with the fierceness and ferocity of someone who wanted nothing more than the chance to be kind.
"The Guild single-handedly deals with probably three quarters of all the problems generated each Reset," Sev said. "Without it, this world — Obreve — would be much worse off. We didn't have anything to do with that. The Guildmaster built it on her own dreams. She's an amazing woman.
"But like I said... I wasn't special. Everything I wanted to do, everything I wanted to create — it was basically already done. I could figure out small improvements here and there, but it would have been the same thing I would be doing back on Earth, I think. Building on the shoulders of giants.
"I guess at some point, I figured that I didn't need to be special. I was... happy. Satisfied with my life here. I tried to be kind, I tried to help everyone who needed help. I kept my head down and just lived as close to a normal life as I could for someone accidentally transported to another universe.
"And then... we noticed the Void.
"You have to understand — we were much more advanced back then, before half of reality began to collapse. We had devices to measure objective reality. We knew when it was weaker, and we could even tell when something was erased from the universe, just by measuring the shape of the hole it left behind. It's not like the Void is the only thing that can do that. There are monsters, most of which are gone now, that do the same thing.
"The Void is only unique because it cannot be stopped. It's almost a lie to give it a name, because it's not a thing; it's just... the natural decay of this universe. It's supposed to end. We've stretched it long past heat death with magic and technology, and even further still with the Anchors. We see worms and creatures and beasts that eat away at reality, but that's all just reality working to comprehend the one thing it cannot: its own end. The Void doesn't have a form. It doesn't have a shape. It isn't something we can fight.
"And we tried anyway."
Sev sighed, collapsing backwards into his chair. "We tried very hard before we managed to invent the first Anchor. We figured out ways to use the Void — ways to slow it down. Ways to preserve information, which we now call infolocks. We used to call those Vaults — people that held precious information that was lost to everyone else, because we didn't have enough energy to let everyone remember it.
"When we managed to invent the first Anchor, there was a celebration. Global. All of Obreve celebrated. Every continent, every culture. We thought we solved the problem.
"And then the first anchor failed." Sev gripped the edge of his chair. "I was... I was there. I wasn't a healer. I was an engineer. I made little toys for people to enjoy, I didn't... I couldn't fight. I just watched the people around me die. I had a few tricks I could use to protect myself, but none of them were things I could use to protect anyone else."
Sev looked down, away. "I kept saying 'we', but I wasn't part of the team working on all this. I only joined after that first Anchor break. We had to figure out a way to fix it, and they lost some of their best scientists. They needed people to work on the problem, and I was there. I could help, a little. I could do maintenance, fix a little code, redirect some of the anchor's subspace.
"But I was never in charge of anything big. That was always other people. Someone better, smarter, faster... I felt kind of useless, I guess. Like I wasn't doing enough. Like I needed to be someone more.
"And then I got the chance." Sev's voice turned slightly bitter. "Because everyone important was gone. Sucked away through their sheer metaphysical weight, because that's what the Void is drawn to. That's why we have the Anchors. We create metaphysical weight, artificially, and give the Void something to eat. But when the Anchors fail, the first people we lose are always the most important.
"Imagine being saved because you're mediocre."
Sev paused, there. He waited for the words he always heard — for someone to tell him that he wasn't mediocre, that he'd done everything he could.
But no one said a word. Misa, Vex, and Derivan all watched him with serious expressions, and though he could tell they each wanted to speak, they did not.
Sev was grateful. He'd heard those words a million times, and they'd never made him feel any better. It was a simple fact.
"But metaphysical weight is a funny thing," he said. "It counts your actions and potential based on the raw, physical traits you have. You might be familiar with what we call those things today."
"Stats?" Misa guessed.
"Stats," Sev agreed. "We designed the system to draw the Void to the people and things that can handle it. The Anchors, and to a lesser extent, high-level individuals, which is really just a measurement and redistribution of metaphysical weight... It's a bit complicated. I wasn't behind a lot of the design, so I can't say exactly how it works.
"We didn't even know what created what we eventually called monsters." Sev gave Derivan an apologetic glance, and the suit of armor just inclined his head in a nod; he didn't mind. "You were the one to find out, Deri. Echoes of people that were already erased... We could measure what was removed from reality, but I guess we missed some things."
A small, bitter smile. "A lot of things."
"How did you..." Misa gestured, a little helplessly, not knowing how to phrase the question.
"Like I said, I was... not exactly the last one standing, but pretty close. I was the last one left with any knowledge of how the system worked. I knew we could reset it all — we had something like a save state in all the Anchors. But it's costly to activate, and we can't restore everything.
"I won't lie, the first reset was based on blind hope that things might be better the second time around. I didn't realize it would wipe my memory the way it did. I didn't realize an entire continent would be just... gone.
"It turns out your life can go pretty different when a whole continent is missing. You guys know the rest. I became a cleric, befriended Onyx. At some point, we realized what was happening. I sacrificed everything I could to try to save him. I lost everything I knew about Earth, my memories of my old friends and family... my love for making things."
Sev looked down at his hands. "He's been working in the background ever since, trying to guide me every time we have to perform a Reset. Trying to make sure we find the right people, the right minds. But this last Reset we didn't even do that — everyone we had discovered was gone."
"So we're just people you took a chance on," Misa said. She didn't sound angry. "Glad I wasn't some chosen one."
"You really hate those kinds of stories, huh?" Vex asked with a smile.
"I don't hate them," Misa protested. "But I don't feel right being... chosen. I'm just me. I love my family, I love you guys. That's all I am! That's all I fuckin' need to be."
"I think that, perhaps, is what made things different." Derivan tilted his head. "You said it yourself — the flaw with metaphysical weighting is that it does not accommodate for emotional drive. Yes?"
"We're gonna fix things this time," Vex said. "Save everyone. No matter what." He stuck out a hand. Derivan placed a hand on top of his, and Misa placed hers on top of them; the three of them looked at Sev.
Sev stuck his hand into the circle. "Or my name's not Sev," he said, cracking a half-joke.
Everyone groaned.
Comments
Silver Linings
Took a little bit of extra time with this one to try to open the new book right. I sometimes forget that new books have to open with a re-introduction of things, because for people following on published volumes it might be months before they get to read the next book. It was fun to write, though!
