He rose from his chair, along with Aliria. "Well, if you want to know the truth, then come with me."
I finished the last of my drink, slammed the glass down on the table, and stood, walking with them out of the dining hall.
Magnus led us through the hallways. The sameness of it all made me think I was being led in circles. I doubt I could find my way out of this place if my life depended on it, holy hells. Magnus knew right where to go, and before long, we'd arrived at another plain unmarked door. Without a word, the door opened for Magnus, and he strolled inside.
It was a study, well-furnished with extravagant decor, lit by a chandelier that hung above our heads and by several other candles that hung on the walls or in holders around the room. A desk sat in the corner with a plush leather chair pushed against it.
The center of the room was dominated by a scale model of the Isle of Nexus. Crafted with such incredible detail that buildings and towns were recreated almost exactly. Near the center of the map was a model of Castle Gloom-Harbor nestled against Lake Gloom. To the west of my home were the Compass Kingdom and the outlying villages.
I just stared at the detail for a long moment; it was incredible. I could even pick out the capital of the elves, Yllsaria, nestled deep in the Emerald Ocean.
As I continued to gaze at the map, I noticed a few things — places on the map that I'd never seen before. Far in the Northern Mountains, Magnus had mapped the location of the home of the rabbitmen, the Pale Everlands. Which I'd never been to before, but I'd heard it was located on one of the four great mountains. If this map was to be believed, the Everlands were situated on the smallest of the four.
How does he know all this? This is more detail than I've ever seen before.
"What is this, Magnus?"
He grinned at me. "The work of dozens of years and far more gold than I expected."
I leaned over the table, still taking everything in. "For what purpose, though?"
He ignored my question for the time being, instead he was busy showing off his map, rambling about its construction and the time it’d taken. It was a little disconcerting to see the most powerful man I'd ever met nerd out over his creation. At this moment, he reminded me so much of Adam that it was almost funny.
He pointed down at the Rolling Hills that were located next to Castle Gloom-Harbor. I'd traversed across most of them at one point or another, but there was something there that shouldn't be.
"The hell is that?"
"Crystal Court,” Magnus replied, nonchalantly.
I whistled. By the nine kings of hell, that's close to home, far too close. "Does The Alice know?"
"Of course she does."
The queen of the fae usually doesn't take kindly to interlopers into her domain. Wonder how he managed that?
Magnus scratched at his beard. His eyes were someplace else, lost in thought. He probably won't tell me, but I've got to know.
"How'd you manage to glean the location of the home of the faeries?"
"I bargained."
At that, Magnus pursed his lips, making it clear he had said all he was going to on the matter. I relented; I probably didn't want to know anyway. I left the gods of this world to their own devices. But in showing me all this, there had to be some point. As amazing as it was, Magnus didn't strike me as the type who showed off on principle. I was here for a reason.
"So why don't you tell me why we're here?"
Aliria spoke from the doorway. "How much are you going to reveal to the boy?"
His eyes flicked to Aliria, and a warning flashed in them. A tint of anger that was gone as soon as it came. So quick, if I hadn't been looking, I'd have missed it.
"As much as he is willing to listen. My payment for the burden I've caused him." He turned to me. "Are you sure you want to know? I owe you a debt, but this is a poor payment. I can send you home with enough money to live in luxury for the next seventy years, if that would be preferable."
Hell yes, that would be preferable, but I don’t get a choice in this. "Tell me."
Magnus let out a breath, long and slow through his nostrils. Not the answer he was expecting, but he would honor my wish even if it wasn't my godsdamn wish at all.
He moved back to the table, stretching his arm over it. Fingers splayed out in all directions as he conjured magic from out of nowhere. In an instant, a spell formed in his hand. No Script circle or incantation, Magnus bypassed the laws of magic and just willed his spell into existence.
I don't get how he's doing it, but worry about that another time. The better question is what the hell is that spell he cast?
It wasn't a spell I was familiar with, and I'd seen most of them. A shimmering wave appeared over the map, like the heat that rose off buildings on a hot summer day. It drifted over the table and condensed into a small circle the size of a dinner plate made of pure glass. I peered over to get a better look at it.
Magnus noticed my interest and decided to demonstrate the function of the spell. He brought the glass lower over the map. Right over Castle Gloom-Harbor. From within the circle, every single detail of my castle was clear, as if I were standing directly in front of it. Magnus manipulated the spell to circle around the castle, showing it from all angles. Light and movement on the ramparts of the castle drew my attention. Several men-at-arms were patrolling around the castle, torches in hand. Was this in real-time?
I shot my head up to stare at Magnus; he was already looking at me with a wide smile on his face. He had anticipated my question and had the answer at the ready.
"Yes, you are seeing your home as it is right now."
Not possible...illusion magic or some other explanation.
"There’s no spell that can do that!"
With a flick of his wrist, Magnus canceled the spell. It fizzled out with a pop, and he backed away from the table, walking over to his desk and pulled out a large roll of parchment. He rolled it out and beckoned me over.
"For you and the rest of the players, you'd be correct. It's a little creation of mine."
"You can't create—" I shut my mouth. I was getting really tired of Magnus shattering my worldview.
Magnus kept doing things and showing me impossible things, breaking the rules of the game that we'd been living with for thirty years. Over and over again, he was crumbling all the beliefs I'd come to know as fact.
"So, tell me, how can you create spells, something that's impossible or the rest of us?"
A hint of a grin turned the corners of Magnus's lips. "I helped design and program the Ouroboros Project; as such, I gave myself a few perks."
I leaned against the table and blew out a short breath. "So that's how you can do so many incredible things. You're cheating the system."
His face darkened as I accused him; a fire raged in his eyes before he composed himself. "It's insulting to call someone a cheater, though I understand how you came to that conclusion. But no, I am not, nor can I cheat the system. I may have given myself a few advantages, but not even I can cheat the A.I."
Bah, I don't know whether to believe him or not, but I guess it doesn't matter. He can do these things, and I can’t. It’s that simple.
He picked up a couple of paperweights and sat them at the corners of the parchment. "Player-created spells cost a tremendous amount of mana to use, and it's not something I'm capable of anymore, regardless, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."
I went over to the side of the desk to look at what he'd unfurled. It was another map, though not half as detailed, and it was mostly unfamiliar to me. I recognized the Isle of Nexus, but there were other landmasses entirely new for me on this map, including a continent that was well over double the size of Nexus. It was labeled “Summervale” in rough scribble.
I pointed at the unfamiliar location. “What’s this? I've never heard of it?"
Magnus ran one hand through his shaggy length of hair, his fingers gliding through his golden hair while his other hand drummed in a staccato rhythm on the parchment
. He wasn't looking at me; he wasn't even looking to Aliria, who stood silent as a wraith, her cold eyes drinking in the scene unfolding before her. Magnus was looking from his hands to the wall to stare into the soft lambent light of the candles. Anywhere but at me.
His behavior was stoking my curiosity. If he was going to play coy now, after all he had shown me...must be something big if it's got Magnus so nervous. My impatience overrode my fear at the answer. "Well, what is it?"
Magnus blew out a breath, long and slow. "What you are looking at was the true size of the world."
I didn't understand. "Was?"
Magnus Inclined his head. “Yes, this is the original map of the world for this server of the Ouroboros Project."
I backed up from the desk. That was too much information at once for me. I was already reeling from his earlier statements, and he went and threw me into even deeper water. I paced around the table, sorting through and dissecting his words. Okay, you can do this...Gods, I need a drink.
I stopped my circling and faced Magnus. "Okay, walk me through this. So first off, pretty much everything I know is wrong. Not only was the world much bigger than I realized, but there are other servers than this one?"
"Pretty much."
"What are they like?"
Magnus shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't a clue; I was only involved in creating this server."
"Fine. Whatever. What happened to the world?"
Magnus paused, his face grew slack as if he were nothing but a statue. He stayed quiet.
"Magnus?"
"...I don't know."
What the hell? No, seriously, what the actual hell?
"Okay, okay, okay..." I ran my hands over my temples; the alcohol in my system wasn't enough to stop the pounding headache that was trying to crush my skull. "Okay...not okay, so not okay."
Godsdamn it, I so don't want to know any of this. Magnus took note of my freak out and spoke to Aliria. "Would you have Magnolia or Jasmine bring him a drink? I'm sure he could use it."
Aliria turned and left without a word, leaving me alone with Magnus and with my thoughts.
I faced Magnus, my head pounding. "What do you know, then?"
He picked up the paperweights and neatly stored them in a drawer on the desk. He looked at me with eyes that held the weight of a dozen lifetimes and sighed. "All I know is, something happened just over three hundred years ago. A massive system crash nearly destroyed the entire server. Because I had admin access, I received advanced warning from the governing A.I. But things spiraled much quicker than we could repair it."
Magnus bent over the table and conjured his magnifying glass once more. He brought the lens over to the very edge of the map, way out into the Eclysian Depths, the deepest part of the Azure Seas. Where I expected to see endless ocean, I was met with an incredibly strange sight. A creeping darkness at the edge of the sea, water rushed to fill the space but was swallowed whole.
"What is that?" I asked dumbfounded.
"The void, or some variation of it."
I gestured at the table. "I can see that, but what's it doing there?"
"What it does best: devouring everything."
Magnus canceled his spell, and the image before me disappeared with a pop. "When the system failed, we had to make a drastic choice: sacrifice a few for the good of the many, or let the whole thing unravel. You can guess which choice we made.
“Right now, best I can tell, the damage was contained, but it destroyed most of the hard drives. Right now, we're operating on about twenty-five percent of what's left."
"So the system devoured the other continents to save space on the remaining drives?"
Magnus shook his head, holding a very forlorn and pained expression on his face. "Not just the landmasses, but NPCs, players, memories, and even history itself. Anything that was deemed non-vital."
"What?"
He cast his eyes towards with a raised brow. "Have you not wondered at the current state of things? The fact that we don't have an accurate record of history or any concrete time system?"
I coughed, turning away from the weight of his eyes on me. He expected a reasonable answer, which I didn't have. I tugged at my ponytail. "I mean, I guess I've thought about in passing, but there was always something better to occupy my time with than sitting around reading books or theorizing." There was always something else to worry about. Some new job or quest. Some dungeon to explore while I made the climb to level one hundred. I didn't have any inclination to sit still; it always brought up old memories—my past failures.
Magnus sighed at my answer before chuckling. "You and most others in this world, though I suppose it's a blessing. If too many people learned the truth, it would be chaos."
"I'm used to dealing with chaos, nothing new for me there. But this. This is beyond anything I could imagine."
Magnus was about to retort but was interrupted by Magnolia, bringing a large silver tray with a large bottle of liquor and two glasses. She set the tray down and bowed to Magnus. My mood picked up at the sight of the bottle, and I walked over and poured a too-generous measure into the glass. I knocked it back and poured another. The booze quieted my rampaging thoughts that were haunted by what I’d just been told. It was too much, way too much for me to handle, and I downed glass after glass in the hopes of finding some sense of normalcy in the world.
It didn’t work, and I got nowhere but drunk. And at this point, I'm okay with that. Damn it all to hell.
I stood off the ground, how I'd gotten there was beyond me, but I managed to stand after a few tries. The room spun, so I leaned against the magical spy table and tried to focus on Magnus; there were three of him in the room. Was there always three of him? Odd that I never noticed.
My vision swam again, and I blacked out.
***
I awoke to pain. My head pounded with the remnants of the overabundance of alcohol in my system. My hangover made even moving a challenge, but the light currently blinding me made it a necessity. I sat up slowly, pushing myself out of the blistering light, and when I got up, resistance clung; soft and warm hands held me.
"Good morning, love," I called to Eris.
I reached down to unstick her from my side, only to find short auburn hair obscuring her face. Eris doesn't have red hair...wait a second. Oh, no! Tell me I didn't. I slipped the heavy slate comforter off me. Okay, still have my pants on. That's a good sign.
The events of the previous day came crashing into me, and I put the massive existential crisis out of mind for the moment and focused on the naked girl in bed with me.
I poked her gently. “Jasmine?”
A low mumble was her response, and I tried again. She lifted her head. “Yes?”
"What are you doing?"
"Cuddling."
“Why?”
“You asked me to,” she said, pressing herself to my side.
“Why did I ask you to cuddle?”
Jasmine shrugged and nuzzled into me. “I don’t know. I thought you might have been joking, but I wasn’t sure.”
I let out a long sigh and tried not to get upset at the maid. It’s not her fault I'm an idiot. "Okay, well, you do not have to cuddle me again. Best not take anything I say when I’m drunk seriously.”
“Okay.”
“So you can let go of me now.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
"Because you're very warm. It's nice."
I tried once more to pull away, but it seemed she was adamant about not letting go of me.
"Jasmine, could you let go of me for just a second?"
"No."
I gave one final attempt to pull myself free, but without putting a considerable effort into it, I wasn't going anywhere. How the hell do I get her off me? I was about to resign myself to be this girl’s pillow for the next few hours, when a delicious thought struck me.
It was mean and childish, but I couldn't help but smile at what I was about to do. I reached over for the pitcher of
water on the nightstand by the bed.
"Jasmine, will you please let go of me?"
Another shake of her head, and she clung even tighter.
I gave her ample opportunity. It's on her now. I moved the pitcher over her sleeping form, snuggled so soundly into me. What a rude awakening this is about to be, I thought and dumped the remaining water on top of Jasmine.
The result was better than I could have hoped for. As soon as the cold water touched her skin, she bolted, her eyes open, just in time to be drenched as the rest of the water landed all over her. Jasmine let out a half gargle, half screech of surprise and flung herself as far as she could away from me. The bed was more than accommodating, and she found herself with plenty of room that wasn't now soaked with water.
I stood off the bed and threw on my shirt. While she glared murder at me. I undid my hair and quickly retied it before walking to the door.
“Have a good morning, Jasmine,” I said and hastily left the room.
I found Magnolia a short walk later. She asked me about Jasmine, and I admitted where she was, but I hastily assured her again that nothing had happened between us.
“I was worried when she didn’t return to her room last night, I’m just glad she’s all right.”
Without another word, she led me to the dining hall.
Magnus sat in the same spot as last night, in front of him on the oak table were an array of dishes hardly touched. He sipped from a porcelain cup and picked up a piece of parchment, though his eyes rose as I approached.
"Good morning, Duran, I trust you slept well."
I groaned a non-reply and sat down in the same chair as last night, resisting the urge to lay my head down and sleep. Magnus was cheerfully awake, dressed in a vibrant, butterscotch tunic, looking like a man who’d gotten a full night’s rest.
I didn't get more than three hours, and he was still wide awake with Aliria when I blacked out. That thought brought a question to mind. "Where's Aliria at?"
He picked up his cup and took another sip, ignoring my question for the moment. As he sat his cup down, he spoke.
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