by Ryan Sova
Nephal interrupted, “What would happen to you if you make a change to the past?”
King Noah responded, “Imagine that everything happening in the world right now is being written and stored somewhere. This Book of Life contains the complete history of everything that has ever happened on this world since the world began. Everything that we have ever done is written somewhere in this book. Now, I want you to keep this fact in mind as we explore what traveling backward through time and changing events of the past would do. Let’s say that I am sitting at my desk reading a book and I decide to travel backwards in time by just one minute. I cast my spell and appear facing myself in my office at exactly one minute in the past. The flash of light catches my eye and I look up from my book to see myself standing in my office. Now, this seems like a harmless change to the past doesn’t it? I mean, the only thing that has changed is that I saw myself in my own office. What could possibly go wrong? But unbeknownst to me, I have made a change to what has already been previously written in the Book of Life. The Book of Life recorded me reading my book in my office undisturbed. That is what was written in the Book of Life. But now, I went back in time and interrupted myself. This caused me to look up from my book and changed what was already written in the past. So now I have two pasts that overlap each other. Have you ever tried to read a book that had words printed on top of words? The book becomes illegible. It becomes unreadable. So the master of time, the keeper of the Book of Life now has only one choice. He must tear those illegible pages out of the Book of Life. He does so and subsequently, everything that was written on those pages ceases to exist. In that moment, the man that you know of as King Noah vanishes, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, that was for just one minute. Let’s assume that this time, I travel backward in time one week instead. Have I affected anyone's life this past week? All of them will have their past changed along with me. Now, has anyone that I have affected, affected someone else’s life in this past week? Their past has now also been changed. You see, one foolish use of time travel can start a ripple effect that can erase vast concourses of people from existence. There is an old saying—you can’t change the past, you can only destroy it.”
Eliak then asked, “And what about the future, what is the danger in traveling forward in time?”
King Noah answered, “The future is more complicated to explain. For this, let’s use the real-life example of when I looked into the future back when my followers and I were still renegades and saw an attack from the Unbardigo Order coming. Now, because of what I saw, I made preparations to meet the enemy and was prepared for their coming. So now, when the enemy army at last came, there were two possible outcomes or futures. The one where I saw them coming and the one where I didn’t see them coming. These futures were both possible outcomes that were based on the actions that I might have made back then. One action being that I looked into the future, saw the army coming, and made preparations. While the other action being that I didn’t look into the future and was unprepared for the army to come. Both futures could have happened, yet neither future had been written yet. Now take these two simple choices that I could have made and add in all the possible choices that every single person on the planet could make. How many possible futures could there then be? If I only travel a few minutes into the future, there might only be several thousands of possible futures. Days into the future and there could easily be millions of possible futures to choose from. That is the difficulty with looking into the future, you don’t know if the future that you are seeing is the future that will, in reality, come to pass.
“You asked if there was any danger in traveling to the future, so let’s answer that question. If you were to actually travel to the future in body and spirit, this is what would happen. Remember that your life history is constantly being recorded on the Book of Life, and for the purpose of this explanation, let’s say that the Book of Life is currently on chapter 5 when you decide to jump forward and land on chapter 8. Now that you have moved forward to Chapter 8, the Book of Life starts recording everything that you are doing in chapter 8. But the Book of Life still has not stopped recording what was happening in chapter 5 either. So you now have the past and present that are being recorded simultaneously. This will leave a gap in time that will slowly close over time. Eventually, the past that you left will catch up to the future that you jumped to. So when the past finally catches up to the future that you time traveled to, is there any danger? Well, that depends. Remember that there are millions upon millions of possible futures that you could jump to, depending on how far into the future you go. Did you jump to the same exact future that the past turned out to be? Or in other words, did history play out exactly the same as you predicted it would when you chose which future you wanted to jump to? If your prediction was correct, congratulations, you survived! If you are wrong though, everything that you changed when you jumped forward in time will be erased, including you!”
Eliak then asked, “Why would anyone want to travel through time then?”
King Noah answered, “Time travel can still be a very useful tool when you are careful about how you use it. Traveling backwards in time can allow you to see past events clearly, like going back to witness who committed a crime. Traveling to the future, on the other hand, can give you an idea of things that could be on the horizon. But as a precautionary measure, you should always take anything that you witness from the future with a grain of salt because that future you see may or may not come to pass.”
Atonick then asked, “What have you foreseen concerning the undead crisis that we now face?”
King Noah’s face suddenly became very serious and he looked worried as he spoke, “I routinely look into the future so that I can get a glimpse into what might be coming. These futures usually differ one from another. But that has not been the case with the undead crisis we currently face. I have looked at as many possible futures as I have had the strength to. In every future that I have ever witnessed, the dead have risen and it has been the same in every possible future. I have never witnessed something like this before. Every future that I see is exactly the same. Before this crisis began I ordered that a wall be built in the Borderlands, because in every version of the future that I have witnessed to date, refugees will eventually start pouring into this nation once things start to get really bad. With a wall in place, we can at least let survivors through our gates while monitoring the crowds to make sure that no undead get into our borders. I don’t know how to stop this plague though, which worries me. And our borders will only contain it for so long.”
Eliak interjected, “But surely we can still find a way to stop the undead from infecting our nation? Can’t we?”
King Noah answered, “I have been searching for an answer to that question for the past three and a half years now. Every possible future, and I have seen thousands of them, all end in the same way. The dead will find a way to break through our defenses no matter what we do. No matter what we try, we will all die. Everything will die!”
CHAPTER 15
Thus far, Garry’s strategy at eluding police had been effective. Garry had now been on the run for five months and three weeks. The first forty-eight hours were the hardest. After learning that police knew that he had traveled to Richmond, Virginia, Garry had pushed himself to travel for two days straight. During this time, he had switched cities three times and had swapped out plates more than a dozen times. Garry had managed to push himself through a combination of adrenalin, determination, and caffeine.
Garry had completely ignored the budget plan that he had just formulated during this two day period and had made frequent stops to load up on Starbucks coffee and monster energy drinks. He also chose not to waste any time fixing sandwiches for himself during this time. Instead, he stopped at fast food restaurants whenever he felt hungry.
Once Garry was finally satisfied that he had created a long enough trail of decoys from the cities that he had left behind, he finally allowed himself to
rest. Then, thirteen hours after passing out at a rest stop, Garry was heading for his fourth city. From there, Garry finally slowed down and started to actively follow the eating/travel plan that he had formulated earlier. This returned Garry’s spending patterns to right where he had initially calculated back when he had determined that he could stay on the run for six and a half months on the cash that he had taken with him. Garry would later calculate that during his two-day caffeine/adrenalin induced ride, he had managed to burn through an equivalent of two weeks in his total cash supply. This meant that Garry now only had six months before he would eventually run out of money. Things, however, were not as they had seemed.
It would turn out that Garry’s budget plan had been far more cautious than it needed to be. The actual cost of staying on the run had in fact been far less than what he had originally predicted. This was due to the fact that as Garry hopped from city to city, he ended up crossing state lines far less frequently then what he had originally predicted he might, which in turn saved him a great deal of money on his gas expenses. Based on this, Garry still had almost two months left before he would eventually run out of money.
Garry had also been closely following Nephal’s development as a sorcerer. In the almost six months that it had been since Nephal’s first magic lesson, Nephal and Eliak had been studying magic twelve hours a day for seven days a week. In that amount of time, both Nephal and Eliak had gained an understanding of the language of magic and had also committed to memory all of the magical symbols along with their assigned keywords. Nephal had been progressing in his magical studies at a much faster rate than Eliak, though. After only one and a half months, Nephal had already grasped an understanding of the language of magic. Eliak, on the other hand, took much longer. He didn’t fully grasp the language of magic until after a full three months and still, even now, struggled a bit with the magical symbols.
About a month ago, Nephal successfully cast his first spell. Everyone, to include Heragald, Talmadge, and King Noah were deeply impressed with how fast Nephal was progressing. Nephal had been promoted shortly after casting his first spell and received his first symbol, a white symbol that was embroidered onto the chest region of his robes. This marked Nephal’s transition as a sorcerer from the rank of Student to that of Apprentice.
Eliak tried to hide it, but he was terribly jealous of Nephal and his success. Eliak had yet to cast his first spell and as such, still only held the rank of Student. Eliak would frequently offer cynical jokes in an attempt to mock and demean Nephal. He had continued on with this behavior until he eventually had to be chastened by Atonick. After his lecture, Eliak said nothing more to Nephal and mostly kept to himself and his own magical studies.
Ever since Nephal had successfully cast his first spell, Garry considered trying to cast a spell himself, just to see if he could do it or not. He ultimately decided not to. As curious as Garry was, he was afraid that chanting in the language of magic or even conjuring a spell would draw too much attention to himself. Also, Nephal was still not very good with magic, even now. While he could cast the occasional spell, the vast majority of his attempts still ended in failure. Perhaps after Nephal gets a little better, I’ll find some secluded place and give magic a try, Garry told himself.
The fate of the world and the undead crisis deeply troubled Garry. For while Garry was hiding and quietly learning about magic, he knew that this undead plague was continuing to spread unchecked. How long do I have before the only one left alive is me, Garry would often wonder.
Garry also wondered what he was going to do once he had gained a full understanding of magic. He had originally hoped that once Nephal had finally met with King Noah he would then learn how the people of old faced this crisis and quite possibly overcome it in the same way that they did. What Garry had actually learned when Nephal had met King Noah, however, was discouraging, to say the least. I have watched Nephal travel all the way to Bragsdale so that he could then meet with the wise and powerful King Noah, all to learn what exactly? Oh well guys, guess what, we're all fucked!
This concerned Garry in many ways. First, Garry was new to magic, just like Nephal. So while he might one day match the power that King Noah has, who knows as to how long that will take. Also, King Noah had more power and authority than Garry would ever have. He was a great and powerful sorcerer with an army of other sorcerers at his command and even an entire nation that obeyed his will. And so, Garry wondered, King Noah had all this power and even then, he and his people were doomed. So what am I supposed to do then?
At first, when Garry discovered that he would be learning magic, he envisioned himself single-handedly fighting this evil force all on his own and saving the world. Over time, though, reality finally hit him. There were magic users last time and they couldn’t stop the undead, so how was Garry going to stop them this time? Garry had also learned that using magic drains your energy and, from what he had felt from Nephal’s training, it drains a lot of it. So it was not as if he would be able to just march down the streets and incinerate every undead he found with impunity. If he tried to do this, he would get drained quickly and feel totally exhausted within minutes. Then he would be forced to either retreat or die. Garry knew that he wouldn’t even make a dent in the undeads’ numbers leading this kind of ridiculous attack. So then, how do I stop them?
Garry then realized that there might not be a happy ending here. After all, ninety-six percent of all life on Earth was wiped out back then. King Noah probably did fail and his people were most likely slaughtered. But upon considering this theory, Garry realized that there were some things that were just not adding up.
So assuming that King Noah and his people were all wiped out and there was, in fact, a demon from the heavens who created this plague. Why did the demon stop at ninety-six percent? If he was THAT close to bringing the world to a complete extinction, why didn’t he finish the job? And then, there was the next mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. This one only killed off fifty percent of all life on Earth. So is this demon getting worse over time then? And what exactly is his purpose here? What exactly is he trying to do? Is he just some omnipotent asshole from space that gets his kicks off of fucking with our world?
Now, what about the humans? So we existed 250 million years ago, got killed off, then came back in modern times? So what happened, did our race just naturally evolve a second time? No, I don’t have the full story here yet. There are some pieces to this puzzle that I am still missing.
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Nephal couldn’t even remember how many times he had tried to cast this damn spell. He was standing in the red hallway with Atonick standing behind him. Atonick would interject after each attempt and tell him what he did wrong. Nephal understood that Atonick was only trying to help, but he was getting sick of the advice.
Nephal had been able to cast several spells by now. He had conjured energy shields, fireballs, lightning bolts, orbs of light, and had even created temperature changes and caused fog and rain to enter the red hallway. Other days had been far more productive than this one. On this day, however, Nephal had been trying and trying and hadn’t been able to conjure even the most basic of spells.
It felt like he had just digressed in his ability by more than a month and a half. And what was even more annoying was that every attempt that he would make would drain his willpower by a little more each time, causing him to feel more and more exhausted as the day went by. During the times where he had actually managed to conjure a spell, though, he would feel the total rush of magical energy that he could then direct and control. The feeling of casting a spell was that of pure ecstasy.
But on days like today, he would feel the buildup, the anticipation, and then ultimately, the let-down. Once you were talking to the elementals and they were listening and talking back, you could feel the magical drain on your willpower. This feeling would build-up inside of you until you would reach your climax point and have the total rush that would come with bringing your spell t
o a completion. But when the elementals reject you, though, you feel only the build-up and anticipation followed by the cold shoulder of when the elementals suddenly stop listening to you. Or in other words, you would feel the magical drain on your body suddenly stop and you would then instantly know that you had just made yet another wasted attempt. Maybe you pronounced something wrong. Maybe you just didn’t understand what the elementals wanted you to say, or maybe your tone or accent was off. It could be any number of reasons that the elementals might give you the cold shoulder. Of all the reasons, though, for the elementals to give you the cold shoulder, what irritated Nephal the most was when he had finally done everything right only to then go and fuck up the symbol at the end. This had happened now six times so far today.
Nephal closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and then, once he was ready, he started chanting. He carefully pronounced each of his words and listened intently to everything that the elementals said. He was getting it right this time. This time, he was not going to fail.
Nephal was getting ready. He was almost done now explaining to the elementals what he needed them to do. The keyword would be coming next. Nephal prepared himself, reading his hands to trace whatever symbol the elementals might give to him. He had only a tiny bit of explanation left to do. But then, the feeling was gone. The elementals had left him again.
“WELL THEN FUCK YOU!!! I DIDN’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU SORRY CUNTS ANYWAYS!!!” Nephal screamed to the empty hallway in front of him.
Nephal heard Atonick speaking from behind him, “Ok Nephal, I think you have had enough. Go sit down and take a breather.”
Nephal turned around. While he didn’t say anything, the look on his face clearly showed how angry he was.
Atonick spoke in a forceful tone, “Nephal, GET TO YOUR SEAT! We can resume training again after you have calmed yourself down.”