Thereafter Chapter 6: Meeting the Magus
Some people are unaware of their importance. In their minds, they’re just like everyone else, and this despite how they wield knowledge or power that most people could only dream about. The man who entered the room was not one of them. It wasn’t so much that he seemed imperious, no, it was more like every visible thing about the man hinted at knowledge of the esoteric and ethereal. That the bald, dark-skinned man was clad in purple robes decorated with bands of cloth embroidered with what seemed like runes or some other antediluvian alphabet and wielded an hones-to-god staff topped with a blue orb of indeterminate material, did not hinder this impression.
Before this new arrival had said a word, Michael felt like he had his number. This was a man who was used to being taken seriously, not without reason granted, even beyond the way his accoutrements promised arcane knowledge, there was a glint in his eye, the sparkle of true curiosity uncowed by age and experience. The world was still a place to understand and wonder over for this man, and although there was profound tiredness in his posture and how he held himself, there was no avoiding the unquenched thirst for understanding. It was of course possible Michael’s cold read was entirely wrong, he didn’t know the color of this guy’s soul any more than anyone else, but the vibe was strong with him, there was no escaping that.
“Ah, Most Exalted Hero Michael, I assume?” The Magus said, his voice a resonant baritone. In a world where there were no magic, he could’ve made for a powerful public speaker, or perhaps priest.
There was a slight tension in the room at this. Not like there was any actual risk, as much as it was the slight static-y tension of a running joke Michael was not privy to.
“That seems like an awfully big title, but I’m Michael Sørstrand. Nice to meet you..?”
“Ah, yes. I am Grand Magus Eltern of the M… ah, I suppose it is of the Council of Thereafter now, isn’t it?”
Michael found himself nodding, even though this so clearly was a rhetorical question. Eltern seemed briefly pensive, but recovered admirably.
“Do forgive the stiff titles, it is a tradition of my mother-world, and I am loathe to give up on it,”
In the corner of his eye, Michael could see Lex nodding slightly, but he wasn’t sure if it was in recognition or in ceding some sort of point.
“Regardless, I am sure you have many questions at this time, Exalted Michael, mind if I sit?”
“Oh, no, not at all, I should sit myself. I just had a look at… the view and I could do with some context.”
The little group moved with a certainty that felt somewhat rehearsed to Michael, like making room for storytime was a routine they had observed before. Despite this, it seemed like the rest of the group wasn’t going to pay attention, Lex and Alicia both disappeared into books, while Felipe started idly shuffling a deck of cards as Michael and Eltern found their seats.
“So,” Michael said once he was settled in. Eltern was quietly appraising him, like the first statement had to come from him. “I understand that Caveworld is destroyed.”
“I’m afraid so, yes. Caveworld, my world of Aurelia, Merlinus, at least thousand others, but we don’t have any reliable numbers. We don’t know how many there were originally, nor how many remain.”
Michael swallowed, hearing it confirmed didn’t exactly help the lump that was building in his throat, but at least he didn’t have to wonder.
“I see. What… uh, do we know what did it?”
“In a way we do, in another we do not,” Eltern said, his voice lending the seemingly nonsensical statement some credibility.
“We call it The Calamity,” Eltern continued. “Very few have seen it and lived to tell the tale, and the few who have give conflicting reports. Some of the molefolk called it The Light That Burns, the Skyclan called it The Everstorm. I didn’t see it myself, but… hm… sources I have no reason to doubt described it as a living void.”
Michael found himself nodding. “Blind men describing an elephant,”
“Excuse me Exalted?”
“Uh,” Michael hadn’t been fully aware he had said it out loud. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with elephants, but they’re animals native to my home-world. Big grey things, long prehensile trunk, large ears, tusks, and so on, very visually distinct animals...”
Eltern nodded, Michael still wasn’t sure he was familiar with an elephant or not, he was hard to read like that.
“Anyway, there’s this parable about a group of blind men trying to figure out what an elephant is like by touch. One touches the trunk and concludes an elephant is like a snake, one touches the leg and concludes the elephant is like a tree, one touches the ear and concludes an elephant is like a sail, one touches a tusk and concludes an elephant is like a spear, and so on.” Michael cleared his throat, he was really killing it with this half-remembered story from kindergarten. “Anyway, the point is that none of the blind men are wrong, they are just making the mistake of assuming an elephant is only the aspect they themselves can perceive and not the cluster of aspects that make up its totality. An elephant is like all of those things, but also more, and an unified whole they’re unable to fully perceive.”
Eltern nodded, there was more than a touch of mentor-ly approval there, Michael thought. While that was better than disapproval, Michael really had no patience for the Socratic dialog. He made a mental note to ask the others if he was making an ass out of himself later.
“Perhaps The Calamity is like that,” Eltern conceded, “we are also looking into the possibility that the Calamity somehow shields itself from perception, or…”
Eltern took a deep breath, it was no doubt in Michael’s mind that the reluctance to bring up the alternative explanation, but whether that was from disapproval or the fear that on some level speaking about it would somehow bring it into being
“if the Calamity can change its shape or nature at will, although that does imply a terrifying level of cognizance to the damned thing.”
“A natural disaster with a mind of its own, yeah, it does seem like it chose especially things that would terrify the inhabitants of at least those two worlds you mentioned…”
“At any rate,” Eltern clapped his hands as to formally change topics. “While puzzling out the exact nature of the calamity is an important task, it is not what we have brought you to Thereafter, Exalted.”
“Yes… I understand some… saving of the world is called for?”
Eltern’s laugh was measured, but pleasant, like a half-full thimble of fine whiskey.
“Oh, nothing quite so dramatic, I assure you, but to explain it all, I better start at the beginning,” and with the cadence of an experience storyteller, Grand Magus Eltern of The Council of Thereafter started his tale.
Grand Magus Eltern wasn’t the first to come to the lonely rock that would eventually become Thereafter, but he was among the first. After failing to halt, or in any meaningful way impede The Calamity, he found himself drifting in the void between worlds, keeping himself alive with some hastily adapted spells originally designed for travel underwater. As far as hastily improvised spells go, it was a decent effort, but the haste Eltern had to show in putting it all together made it unstable, and while the basic working wasn’t too complex, Eltern had put more energy into the protective wards circling the thing than what was called for. It was one of those things that it was hard not to do in a panic, the human mind is, after all, primarily concerned with keeping itself safe. The irony that Eltern had essentially constructed a magical time bomb, where the protective field would eventually start dissolving its own protection and ignite the air he conjured inside the once protective globe, was not lost on him.
It was as he pondered this cruel irony of fate that Eltern came across the two people that would be his savior.
Leowin The Hermit had been a silent mover and shaker in the medieval magical world of Merlinus, content to granting boons or cryptic advice to the occasional adventurer, but his humble countenance hid some truly staggering magical power and arcane knowledge. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that he managed to salvage most of his single-room hut when the Calamity came to Merlinus. This lightly singed log cabin became the rock upon which Thereafter was built, as Leowin weaved a complex working of rune magic to start hewing together whatever piece of detritus in the void between worlds he could fit.
It did not take long before the Hermit was a hermit no more. While he had always been reclusive and slow to trust, Leowin was no monster, and allowed all he could dredge from the void on his rock. “If they could help I’d appreciate it, if not stay out of my way,” as Leowin himself had put it. The first of these helpers was Deepspeaker Lia, religious head of the united tribes of Steppeworld. While Lia’s connection to the Deep Song was considerably weakened by the destruction of her homelands, she was still considerably more fit for physical activity than Leowin who up to this point had sustained his continued existence with berries, mushrooms and herb liquor and had a physique to match.
It had been Lia who leaped between the fragments of destroyed worlds in search of survivors and salvage, and came in contact with Eltern, who had been forced to forego propulsion in order to prevent his spell turning into a minor magical catastrophe of its own. With help from Lia, and a bit later Leowin, Eltern had managed to defuse his spell, and immediately offered his services to his two saviors.
Many days surely passed in a blur as the three worked together to create as much of a world as could be expected under the circumstances, but it was not exactly easy to keep track as the void had no sun, and predictable movements like the orbit of a gravity well to base a day on. In order to save their sanity, Eltern devised a spell that would produce a reasonable facsimile of sunlight for about twelve hours in a 24 hour cycle. It was arbitrary, and based on Aurelia’s hours, but it beat having nothing but the stasis of the void.
As something resembling the city of Thereafter as it stood today took shape, the trickle of survivors that could be located and extracted from the void kept up, and it wasn’t long before adding additional chunks to the city to expand it was a daily or bi-daily occurrence. The salvage parties in particular would inevitably bring back a bedraggled soul or two, thus further complicating the algebra of survival.
Eltern sighed. “There was nothing for it though, we couldn’t turn away those that had survived the Calamity, we were all in agreement about that, in the council I mean.”
Michael nodded, “You, Leowin and Lia, I assume?”
“Yes. It kind of happened while we were too busy building and casting I think. The people of Thereafter came to understand us as a governmental unit of sorts. I suppose they figured it looked like we knew what we were doing. Now we run the show, as it were, with the help of whatever functionaries and bureaucrats we’ve managed to save from the Void.”
“Huh.”
“I won’t lie, Exalted, it’s not the tidiest administration, but I like to think we’re doing admirably under the circumstances, and that’s where you come in.”
Michael shifted in his seat, he noticed that Felipe had put down his cards, and Lex and Alicia peeked over the edge of their books in Eltern’s direction “Oh, how so?”
“We’re doing our best, but make no mistake, this city is in a state of crisis, every bit as much now as when we had just figured out how to keep an atmosphere. The main problem? If you forgive my candor, it is the people.”
Felipe snorted at this, but if Eltern noticed, he gave no sign of it.
“Morale is low in Thereafter these days. Now that people have found a decently safe space, the question of what the future may bring comes up. Will we be able to transfer from scavenging to farming as planned? What if the Calamity comes back? That kind of thing.”
“I can imagine,” Michael agreed. “So that’s what we’re here for? Keeping up morale?”
“When you say it like that, Exalted, it sounds less than flattering, but in practice yes.” Without waiting for a follow up question, Eltern continued. “You see, the peoples of Thereafter, they need something to rally around, something that important to them, or rather, should I perhaps say, someone that is important to them.”
“I mean I suppose that’s fair,” Michael said, “but do you figure we’re really that big of a deal? We saved some worlds twenty years ago, but…”
“Twenty? Exalted Michael, it has been more than a thousand years since you saved Caveworld”
Michael blinked. Then again. Then once more. Then he spoke. “What?”
It was Lex who spoke up. “Time flows differently in the Magical Worlds it seems, probably here too. It’s why nobody ever noticed we were gone for months at a time.”
“So I DID return on the same night…” Michael said to himself. “I was so sure that was impossible.”
“It’s a whole thing, I’m working on a theory to explain this bullshit, but goings are slow.” Lex went on.
“It is true as Exalted Lex says,” Eltern said, wresting control of the conversation again. “Your deeds have passed into history and further into legend. From the little scholarship exists on the topic, it seems the… ah, scope, of your exploits have crept somewhat through the centuries.”
“Oh you can say that again,” Alicia said. “Just the other day I heard a Nomad girl tell me about that time I smashed the Dragon Clan’s shield wall to splinters with a tree root I had found that morning.”
“Well, did you?” Michael asked, a stupid question he realized. Alicia shrugged.
“I did get the drop on a shieldbearer with a piece of wood at one point, but it wasn’t a tree root, and I didn’t “shatter a shield wall” or nothing. We flanked them, and it was a group effort.”
Eltern cleared his throat. “At any rate, this is to say that you are held in some considerable esteem.”
“If you say so,” Michael said. “But I do have one question: You said there’s thousands of worlds right? Does that mean there’s been thousands of heroes as well?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Right. Then I guess the question arises naturally from that. Why us?”
Eltern hesitated. Up to now, his posture had been open and frank, but there was a closing at this question, like something within him wanted to, but would not, say something very specific.
“The process, or the spell, rather, that we use to summon you is highly experimental and working with a medium nobody has any experience with. Magic is all over the place after the calamity and we’re still figuring it out,” Eltern said at last. “It’s a small wonder it worked four whole times, if I may be frank with you.”
“So this was basically a lottery that we won?”
“Or lost” Alicia said pensively. Eltern ignored her.
“The spell can be constituted as having a bit of a mind of its own but… listen.” Eltern leaned forward slightly. “Whether it’s random or sorted by some kind of magical automation, the spell was made to seek out those that wanted to return across the void of time. If it has somehow snatched anyone of you from a life you’d rather return from you have my word I will look into returning you to it post haste.”
Michael shrugged “No need on my end.”
A small choir of assenting noises rose from his fellow Heroes.
“That is a relief,” Eltern sounded genuine at that. “On that note, I was hoping you’d all be willing to make a small public appearance to announce your arrival?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Author’s Note: Stuff is beginning to happen in earnest now. Initially I had this whole exposition business split into two slightly shorter chapters, but I decided it was the best to get it all out in one so we can get to the story. This is not to say all of this is just TCB, though, the mental image of Lia leaping between floating pieces of shattered worlds like some kind of superhero is pretty cool, and I just enjoy Leowin just staying weird just at the edges of the narrative, like an anxious magical squirrel. Eltern kind of is the go-to guy for plot things for this first bit, but I’m sure we’ll get around to Leowin sooner or later. Lia also has some fun plot and character things coming up. Watch this space for more on that.