Book of The Dead

For a time, Tyron drifted in a field of white. He expected visions to assail him, strange truths and esoteric knowledge, as they did when the Unseen granted him a mystery, yet there was nothing.

What was happening to him? He’d reached level eighty, but the status ritual still wasn’t complete. After making his choices, he’d expected to select a new Class, to step into the unknown realm that lay beyond, and yet here he was… in a void of… nothing.

Clearly the Unseen had something to show him, but what?

He blinked.

Until that moment, he didn’t realise he had eyes. Wasn’t this a vision? Wasn’t he inside his own mind? He looked down, there were hands, his hands, resting on his lap. Seated on a strange, woven cushion he didn’t recognise, he was wearing the same robe he’d had on when performing the status ritual. This was so odd, nothing like what he had expected.

He blinked.

Before him, seated on the same sort of cushion, with a low table formed of shimmering light, sat a creature unlike anything Tyron had ever seen before. Basically humanoid, but with blue, leathery skin and a single, golden eye in the centre of its face. Dressed in simple, even humble robes, it gave the impression of simplicity, if not for the intricately woven and enchanted ornaments it wore around both wrists. A long beard grew from its chin, the hairs a sea-green colour, but what really caught his attention were its hands.

The strange being raised a hand to stroke at its facial hair, a seemingly unconscious motion done out of long-established habit, and Tyron fixated on the strange arrangement of its digits. There were six of them, but oddly arranged, into two sets of three, each set with its own opposable thumb.

It didn’t take him long to realise that this creature could use a single hand to form many of the sigils Tyron needed both hands for. What an advantage!

“You aren’t really here, and neither am I,” the strange being spoke into the stillness. Its voice was deep, yet oddly musical. Tyron tilted his head, thinking. There was no question in his mind who this was sitting in front of him. Only one being could create a vision like this and embed it within the Unseen: the creature who had created it. In a way, this individual was the Unseen.

“Nor am I speaking your language, but you should be able to understand me just the same,” he said, shaking his head. “Language analytics and acquisition weren’t easy to build in, I assure you. Thankfully, I had help I could rely on. Linguistics was…” the Unseen pulled a face, “not my strong suit.”

“Can you hear me?” Tyron tried speaking, wondering if he would get a response. He didn’t, and he hadn’t expected one.

If only he could actually converse with this person! The secrets he would learn! He genuinely felt as if his heart was breaking at the lost opportunity, but he listened intently, not wanting to miss a single word.

“I don’t want to take too much of your time,” the Unseen continued, still absently stroking his beard, solitary golden eye half-closed as he seemed to consider something. “Technically, I’m not taking any time at all, but… you know what I mean.”

The creature sighed, shoulders slumping just a little, and for a moment Tyron could see the impossible weight that pressed down on those shoulders.

“I have created this message so that it would appear to you at this time, as you took more of the power into yourself, you are ready to learn just what is happening, and why this system was created in the first place.

“It began with the magick. That’s how it always starts. It came to our world, much the same way it came to yours, I imagine. Trickling through the weave, little flashes of energy, pockets of potential, growing stronger over time until the first of the rifts appeared.”

Chuckling to itself, the Unseen shook its head.

“We took to it like male sexual organs to female. Hah! How are you going to translate that?” he jabbed a finger randomly in the air, addressing someone or something that Tyron couldn’t see.

“Magick was… a seemingly infinite and malleable source of potential. With the right controls, it could become anything, do anything.”

Flowing like water, the Unseen’s hands shifted through various sigils, and Tyron almost choked as he saw the perfection of each movement, the effortless control.

“We were a fairly advanced society when we discovered magick, and we were good at it, very good. When the first rifts opened and arcane energy flooded our world, we rejoiced. What an opportunity, we told ourselves. What sort of blessing had come to our world, with this new power, and these new worlds which we could make our own.”

The Unseen shook its head at the foolishness of it all, but Tyron’s brows only rose. Conquering the worlds beyond the rifts? They’d done that?

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“It may have been the same in your world, perhaps even now you sit in a realm beyond a rift, wondering what this ancient fossil is rambling about. Believe me, for hundreds of years, we did not see the danger either.

“Of course, there were the monsters, there’s always the monsters, but we could handle them, did so handily, in fact. Once we conquered a new realm, we found ways to pacify it, or to… manage the uncountable kin that were created. From there, we went through more rifts, extending backwards. Obviously the original people of the worlds we had taken had fallen, we understood that, but they simply weren’t as strong as us, not as wise or as capable.”

The Unseen dropped its hands into its lap.

“Hubris is so easy to recognise in hindsight. Magick corrupts at a fundamental level. It took us too long to understand that. Once we did, our entire society had become built upon it, we depended on arcane energy for everything. Our need was so high, we siphoned it across worlds, bringing more and more back to our home to power our endless hunger. All the while, our home realm was changing, bit by bit.”

Regret and grief filled the voice of the Unseen as he recalled these times, the slow and inevitable fall of his society.

“When the first kin spawned, it was a shocking moment for our people, but we eventually pushed it to the side. The High and Wise said they were small, and weak, easily dealt with. There was no need to change course, to throw away the prosperity and power we had found.

“But it doesn’t stop there, does it? Eventually our world was just as wild and dangerous as those beyond the rifts. Measures we had taken to pacify those realms were now used on our own. Still, the expansion rolled on, outwards we went, like a plague. What we saw out there should have given us pause, should have stopped everything. If you think what you’ve seen beyond the rifts is as far as a world can fall, then you are sadly mistaken.”

Raising a hand, the creature conjured a sphere between them, or at least, the image of one.

“I could show you the things that I myself say, but my advisers think you are less likely to believe this message if I do. Suffice to say, when a world is corrupted by magick, it initially becomes like those you have seen already.”

As Tyron watched, the sphere, which he now understood represented a world, began to change. A familiar corruption swept across it, breaking the land, consuming life. Wild and uncontrolled magick roared across the surface, warping and changing everything, wild phenomena creating strange and unpredictable environments.

“This is only the first stage. Kin are created, creatures formed of pure energy, and it is they who make the rifts, scraping at the fabric of the weave through their very existence. Eventually, through random chance, or perhaps by a design I haven’t found, they break through and find another realm, passing through and allowing the magick to flow through with them.

“Meanwhile the realm they left behind continues to change. It’s a slow process, but it is gradually being converted, warped and transformed. The process takes thousands upon thousands of years, but my people went through so many rifts, tracing the corruption back towards the source. I can’t imagine anyone got closer than we did, saw the fate in store for our home.”

With a sad, wry smile, the being flicked away the image of the world as it continued to warp and twist.

“We tried to prevent it, tried to turn the ship around. When that proved too difficult, we tried to save what could be saved. It was a shitshow. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, we failed. We fell.”

An unfathomable depth of emotion welled behind that single eye, and the Unseen paused for a moment as he gathered himself.

“We were so rich with magick, so fat with the stuff, we were irresistible to what came next. Our civilisation spanned a hundred worlds, and it was snuffed out in a handful of years. I can’t even imagine how many of my people have been lost. Consumed. Truth be told, I don’t want to think about it, there’s only so much pain a single old man can take. We live now in the dying days of what was once a glorious civilisation, a remnant of a remnant left behind, huddled in the darkness, waiting for our turn.

I’ve spent my time, along with my team, creating… a weapon of sorts, using the nature of magick against itself. Our grand working will be embedded into the energy itself, a tick burrowed into its pelt. When the magick reaches your realm, so will we, in a sense.

“This weapon is designed to help acclimate you to the magick, to give you the tools to fight back and prevent your world from being overrun in the initial stages.

“The levels and abilities you have earned up to this point were intended to help condition you, to change your flesh and mould your mind into a vessel of power. Be aware, you are now bound to the magick and can no longer live without it. It is the source of your strength and infused into every cell of your body.

“Which is why it pains me to ask you to destroy it. Only by cutting your world off from the flow of magick can it be saved, and only when every world infected by it makes the same choice will the cycle ever end. I know this is hard to accept. I know I just told you that you will die in the process, but only someone who has reached this stage has the necessary power to do what must be done.”

Tyron watched as the Unseen implored him, conviction, compassion and understanding ringing in its voice. Such a strange thing, this one-sided conversation. It confirmed many things that Tyron himself had long suspected, though it brought up just as many questions. His own world had floundered in the face of the rifts, and now teetered on the brink of being overrun by the kin. He couldn’t imagine how the Unseen had dominated a hundred realms, nor the dreadful fate that had befallen such a mighty empire. As much as he wanted to ask questions, to seek the wisdom of this creature, he had no choice but to sit and listen.

Leaning back, the Unseen sighed once more.

“I don’t know who you are, maybe you’re just some prick who gets off on getting stronger and you want to whack monsters harder or something. If so, I want you to know that you possess male parts in the centre of your face and I didn’t make this system for you. If not, if you actually want to save your world, then that’s good. You are exactly the type of person we wanted to reach.

“Because from this point on, the training wheels are off. As saturated with magick as you are, you’re a dead entity walking. No point in holding out on you anymore. When I’m done with my little rant, you’ll go back and finish the process of Ascension. Well, the start of it anyway.

Before then, there’s just one thing I have to teach you.”

The blue creature brushed down his robe and sat back.

“I will impart the knowledge of how to destroy magick itself and save your world from destruction.”

Tyron frowned.

“I already know that,” he muttered.