The Game

When it happened, I was floating in nothingness, looking into the ruby-red eyes that I knew (somehow) were the eyes of the Universe.

“Who are you?” I had just whispered, even though I knew the answer.

“Who are you?” the echo had whispered back. “Who are you?” it whispered again and again, as if asking the question of me rather than merely echoing it back.

“I don’t know,” I had said, answering the echo. “Who am I?”

This time, the Universe said, “You are the Game. Are you ready to play?”

“Umm, I guess?”

“You’ve been Gathered,” said the Universe. “But the Game plays on. We made it quite complex.”

“Don’t I get to ask a question at the shrine?” I asked. “Isn’t that the whole point of the pilgrimage?”

“You’ve already asked it,” said the Universe. “Come. I will tell you who you are.”

***

Suddenly, I saw Lilly. She was walking naked in a field of crops, presumably tobacco, but I had never seen tobacco, so I wasn’t sure. “Lilly!” I cried.

“She can’t hear you,” said the Universe’s voice. “Just watch.”

Lilly walked slowly, brushing the green with the tips of her fingers. I saw her from above, a disembodied perspective, as if I were a ghost haunting her. I found myself thinking that I was glad to be disembodied; otherwise, seeing Lilly naked might have been embarrassing. “I’m ready to ask my question,” she said. “Enough of these cryptic visions. I know who I am. I’m Lilly Overlai, and I came here for a reason.”

The Universe (whom she apparently could hear) said, “Then ask it.”

“Who killed my father?” she said.

And suddenly, the scene changed. We were in a cave. Machinery droned and whirred, powered by necromantic magic. Her father toiled in one corner, and in the other, a cage full of corpses. I knew precisely what would happen, having heard the story from Asuana. In fact, when I looked up, I could see Asuana peering out from a vent in the ceiling, right where she’d said she’d been. In came the shimmers of Father Ori, precisely on schedule. Lilly screamed when her father died. She tried, of course, to rescue him; but she was no more substantial than a ghost, failing to change a story already written.

When Lilly’s father was dead and Father Ori had gone, she screamed with a kind of rage that gave me chills. “I’m going to kill you! You fucking morl, I swear—”

“Lilly Overlai,” the Universe interrupted, “I’m afraid I must tell you that Father Ori beat you to it.”

“What?” she whispered.

“While you were in shrine trance, he escaped, walked across the bridge and killed you,” said the Universe.

“That’s impossible,” said Lilly, shaking her head.

“It’s true,” said Asuana’s voice from the vent above. Startled, I looked up to see Asuana calmly removing the metal grate and climbing down. As always, she was wearing her hunting armor and moved as gracefully as a cat. When she was standing at the bottom, she handed Lilly a dress just like the one she had worn on the first day of the pilgrimage. “Here,” Asuana said. “You might want to put this on. Nial is actually standing right here. We’re all in the same shrine-trace. Can you see him yet?”

Lilly peered in my direction, squinting as if I were a morl. Then, suddenly she gasped and covered herself with the green dress. “Nial, what are you doing in my shrine trance?” she demanded.

Averting my eyes so she could dress, I said, “I don’t know. I just asked the Universe who I was, and then it said I’m supposed to play a Game, and then suddenly I was in your shrine trance. By the way, since when did we start calling it a ‘shrine trance?’”

“That’s the technical term,” said the Universe. “Lucky for you, you were Gathered during the shrine trance, which triggers a small subset of the Game’s rules that have, thus far, never been triggered. For one thing, we still have a little time. Father Ori is just entering his own shrine trance now.”

“Wait, are you really the Universe?” I asked, suddenly skeptical. “That made sense when I was floating in infinite nothingness for all of eternity. But now I’m realizing that I don’t know how I know you’re the universe.”

“I’m not, technically, the universe,” said the Universe. “But I am a being of great power, an architect of the Game. And my name, in my language, roughly translates to ‘Universe.’ You felt my name resonating around and within you when I first spoke to you, and you got confused. Don’t get too caught up on the details.”

“Are you going to show yourself?” demanded Lilly.

“Technically, I am showing you myself,” said Universe. “I am all of the dream-stuff you see, hear, and feel around you. I am the shrine trance. I am the cave. I was the fields of tobacco. I was your father and Father Ori. I am the dress you wear. I am the body you feel yourself to have.” I realized at that moment that I had a body again, clothed (thankfully) in the same clothes I wore on the first day of the pilgrimage. The voice went on. “I am the voice you speak with. I am the ears you hear with. I am… Look, if you want me to explain it in great detail, I can. But there are probably better uses of our time.”

“There are,” said Asuana. She snapped her fingers and suddenly there was a map in her hands. She unrolled it on a table that stood beside the body of Lilly’s father.

“Can we do this somewhere else?” murmured Lilly. And suddenly they were somewhere else: Back in the tobacco fields, with a table. “Not here,” Lilly said. And then they were standing on the bridge of the shrine, again with a table. I looked down and saw my own dead body, throat slit, eyes glassy, staring up at me. “Gross,” said Lilly, toeing her own dead body. Her toe went through it as if her toe were smoke.

“How’s this venue?” asked Universe. “I, for one, think it helps underscore the magnitude of your problem.”

“It’s fine,” said Asuana impatiently, jabbing her finger at the map. “Nial and Lilly, pay attention. This is the South Sea Nations.”

The South Sea took up most of the map. The Northern desert occupied a smaller portion above it. The shrine itself was marked with a red X at the very top of the paper, where the mountains formed its northern boundary and curved around to form the eastern and southern boundaries too: the Morl Mountains. The western boundary was the ocean, across which (it is said) humans and morls arrived thousands of years ago, presumably from somewhere more to the north, for it had been called the “South Sea” since long before recorded history. As one nursery rhyme puts it: Walls of earth to every side, and water to the west.

Asuana pointed at the eastern mountains that had once been called the Lopesan Mountains, but which had been generally referred to as the Morl Mountains since the invasion. “Father Ori’s people came across these mountains fifty-four years ago and split the nation of Lopesa in half, down the middle.” She drew her finger down the map, and a line appeared, dividing the biggest of the three nations in half. “In my shrine trance, I asked what could be done to save our people this time around.”

I felt a pang of guilt. My own question now seemed a bit juvenile in context. My eyes met Lilly’s; she looked like she might be having the same thought.

Asuana continued: “In my shrine trance, I flew through the South Sea Nations. Universe showed me three troop deployments. One is here at the Great Academy, where Lopesa borders the Morl Nation. The other is here in the sea, where morl ships seek to dominate the waters around the island capital of Seadom.” She gestured at the smattering of islands called Seadom strewn about the South Sea. I had been to over a hundred of them, more than half. Books were in high demand everywhere. “And the other prong has pushed northward, around the northern edge of the South Sea, seeking to capture the capital of Drymar.” She pointed to a city we had all been to. It contained the cathedral whose rocks had supposedly been carved from the very mountains that contained the shrine.

“So did you find out how to save the nations?” I asked.

“No,” said Asuana. “After the tour, Universe told me that the only hope was to play the Game, and that it was time to collect the rest of the players. That’s when he brought me into Lilly’s shrine trance.”

Universe cleared its throat. “If I may interject,” it said, “there are still three more players to collect.”

“Why us?” I asked. “And what if we refuse to play?”

“Nial,” said Universe, “whenever you ask a question, the rules state that I have to give a full and complete answer. And sometimes a full and complete answer takes multiple scenery changes, considerable narration on my part, and… time. Are you sure you want to know?”

“No,” said Asuana.

“Yes,” I insisted. “I want to know! Why us?”

“Me too,” said Lilly.

“Universe,” said Asuana. “Can’t you give them an abbreviated answer, just this once?”

“Fine,” said Universe, sounding annoyed. “Lilly, Gwen, Jonny, and Otto are here because the four of you are highly gifted magic users, and the morls wish to use you to secure the nations before the Emperor’s main troops arrive. Asuana is here because she’s been planning to be here for many years. Nial, you are here, just because…”

“Just because…” I said, heart sinking.

“We built a lot of randomness in the Game,” said Universe. “That’s why it’s impossible to predict how it will end. Honestly, I didn’t expect you to make it this far, Nial. But now, you’re one of the ‘sputtering candles that stands against nightfall,’ as those with the prophetic gift put it. Lucky you.” Universe didn’t sound happy about it.

“I was hoping that somehow I was the First of the Five,” I confessed, still holding out a tiny bit of hope that the big reveal was coming.

Asuana and Lilly just looked at me with pity.

“You’re not,” said Universe.

“Okay,” I said.

Into the moment of awkward silence, Lilly interjected: “But who is it, though? It’s been bugging me since I found my father’s book.”

“It’s not you either,” said Universe. (I thought I detected a small deflation in Lilly, which made me feel strangely better.) Universe went on: “Remember that the Five is a morlish construct. Throughout the ages, the morlish operatives have kept track of humans with great power and ranked them accordingly. You may, indeed, turn out to be more powerful than your father, as is often the case with the seeds the morls plant. But Father Ori’s organization didn’t know about you, so you’re not in the book.”

Asuana was tapping her foot impatiently. “Just tell them who the First is, so we can move on.”

“Maybe you should tell them, Asuana,” said Universe.

“I knew it!” I said. “It’s Asuana. I was wondering how you seem to be good at literally everything.”

“It’s not me,” said Asuana. She speared me and then Lilly with an intense gaze. “I will tell you. But I need you both to promise that after this, you’ll shut up and stop asking questions.” When we both nodded, she said, “The Order of the Mad Morl goes back thousands of years, technically. But it used to be called the Order of Pain. Just after the first invasion, and long before I joined the order, a woman of great power came to the Order of Pain and gave them a new mission. She was our founder and visionary…” I was amazed to see a tear sliding down Asuana’s face. “She was the First of the Five, the first to bear the name Asuana ‘morl trapper.’ And the gifts she secured for us are what make us the sputtering candles that we are.” She choked. “Universe, can you just show them?”

“Of course,” said Universe, and suddenly we were drifting like ghosts through the monastery we’d all left not so long ago. I saw bodies lining the walkways, dead monks, some face down, others face up, their eyes staring at the flashing gray skies. We drifted into the chapel, where more dead bodies were clustered near the fighting pits, the prayer circles, the wall of whips and chains. It was as if they had all dropped dead during whatever activity they had been engaged in. Asuana was looking out a stained-glass window, unable to look at the bodies.

“How did they die?” I asked; then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be asking questions. “I mean… I guess they must have died for some reason…”

“My Order, your Order, Nial, is what stands against nightfall,” said Asuana. “And the time has come for us to burn as brightly as we can.” The look in her eyes when she turned away from the window was enough to give me chills. “Of the gifts that she secured for us, one of them has already come into play. When one of us is Gathered, so are those of us nearby.”

“But the shrine-trace,” said Universe, “is an amplifier for the gifts. So now, although he doesn’t know it yet, Father Ori has gathered not only six pilgrims… but also seventy-seven brothers from the monastery of Drymar.”

“And,” said Asuana, “He has gathered forty-two sisters from the Sisterhood of the Lighthouse in Seadom… Where I was born and trained.”

“And twenty-nine priests distributed throughout the small farmland churches of Lopesa,” said Universe.

“We share a set of strange gifts,” said Asuana, “and a single secret purpose. To defeat the morls, from the inside out.”

With that, Universe returned us to the bridge, where I found myself standing in a pool of blood coming from Lilly’s corpse. I looked around and tried to phrase my question as a statement, “So we’re all in Father Ori’s head right now. Hmmm. I don’t see a bunch of monks and nuns and priests…”

“They are in shrine trance,” snapped Universe. “And it’s really quite taxing to guide over a hundred simultaneous shrine trances while also answering all of your questions phrased as statements, Nial.”

Asuana took me by the shoulders and looked in my eyes, not exactly unkindly, but very seriously, “Nial, I think I speak for everyone since the pilgrimage began. You are a nice guy, but you’re also really annoying. I’m annoyed. Even Universe is annoyed.”

“Umm,” said Lilly, “I agree that Nial can be annoying. We all know that. But I’ll admit I also have a lot of questions.”

“Let me ask you both a few questions,” said Asuana. “Question one, do you know what’s going to happen when all the shrine trances end?”

Lilly and I shook our heads.

“You’re going to find yourself in Father Ori’s mind,” she said. “It’ll feel a bit like the shrine-trace, except Universe won’t be in control. Father Ori will. Universe, could you demonstrate what that might be like?”

“Certainly,” said Universe.

And suddenly, the bridge beneath my feet turned to smoke, casting me into fire. I screamed as long as I could, until my lungs burned to a crisp from the inside out. And then, it was over, I was back on the bridge. And it happened again. Falling, screaming, burning. Then it started over again. And again. I never even had a chance to beg for it to stop because every time my lungs healed, I began to fall and scream and die again.

Finally, the cycle of death and pain stopped, and I was back on the bridge. I trembled and fell to the ground amidst the corpses. The shimmering form of Father Ori lay to my right. Both Lillys (the living one and the dead one) were to my left. The living Lilly’s knees gave out. She too clutched at her lungs and gasped for breath.

“Get it?” said Asuana. “Right now, you’re in the antechamber to hell. Universe’s shrine trance might be the last good thing you experience. Ever. And you’re wasting it all asking stupid questions.”

I didn’t even try to stop the tears. Lilly crawled to me and held me tight. On my knees, I held her back as if she were my lifeline, my last hope for salvation.

“Ah, I see you like being with Lilly,” Asuana added. “Lilly do you like being with Nial? Well, in a few minutes Father Ori will legislate when and if you ever see each other again. If he wishes to make one of you watch the other scream in pain, he will do so. If he decides you get to spend a few minutes with each other every decade or so, he’ll do it. He. Will. Be. Your. God.”

“But why?” I said, through trembling lips, “It’s not fair.”

“The Game,” said Universe, “wasn’t built to be fair, just balanced.”

Lilly recovered before I did from the shock of dying several times in quick succession. She let go of me and sat there shaking. I tried to look at her but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“How much longer do we have in our shrine-trace?” asked Asuana.

Universe responded by creating an ominous-looking hour-glass, hovering in the air just off the edge of the bridge, lit from the bottom by the magma beneath. The sand looked to me like it wouldn’t last an hour. If Asuana was terrified, I couldn’t tell. She just nodded grimly.

“Okay,” she said. “Then, Universe, if you wouldn’t mind, please spend the rest of our time answering my question. How do we save our race?”

Everything except the hourglasses and the pilgrims disappeared, and we were suddenly floating high in the air over the South Sea Nations, high enough that the land below looked much like Asuana’s map. Four places on the terrain were designated by a spike of light shooting up into the heavens: The volcano in the north, the cathedral from which we had departed for our pilgrimage, an island directly in the middle of the South Sea, and a spot in the middle of Lopesa. I noticed that where there had been desert, there was now a sprawling city of gray stone buildings.

“The shrine and the three capitals,” said Universe. “Each contains a structure we built long ago, from slabs quarried here in the mountains. As you call them: The Cathedral of Drymar, the Lighthouse of Seadom, and the Great Academy of Lopesa. Now that Father Ori has taken the shrine, he will be able to communicate with any of his people stationed in the other structures. It is an ancient communication network built by my people.” I wanted very badly to ask about this, but Asuana gave me a stern look the moment the thought crossed my mind. “When his shrine trance ends, his mission will be complete. His colleagues control the other three locations already. There’s no preventing him gaining control of the shrine. The network will activate, so the only hope you have is to use that fact against them.”

Asuana nodded and fell silent as she gazed across the nations. “In my training,” she finally said, “the sisters taught me that the morls can trade their Gathered with other morls, much like children play cards. Is this true?”

“It is,” said Universe, “and if you are wondering whether this can be done across the network, the answer is yes.”

“So hypothetically, if I could, say, convince Father Ori to trade Nial to whoever is manning the Lighthouse of Seadom,” said Asuana, “then Nial would be inside that morl’s mind instead of Father Ori’s.”

“Yes,” said Universe. “And that morl could trade Nial to any morls in the vicinity of the Lighthouse.”

“What’s the point, though?” I burst out, unable to help myself. “I won’t be able to do anything.”

“Not unless,” said Universe, “you can convince that morl to play you face up.”

Asuana explained, “A morl can swap one of their Gathered in place of themselves. And you don’t swap back unless you die, or agree to it.”

“But why…” I started, then bit my lip. No questions.

“Why would they do that?” said Asuana. “Universe is there anything else? Any way around the rules? Can the Gathered somehow destroy a morl from the inside out? Or can we maybe force the morls into playing us face up? Is there any piece of lore or any secret mechanic of morlish magic that we’re missing?”

“Unfortunately not,” said Universe. “Your organization has been quite thorough over the years. The only new rule subset that has been activated is that you six, because you were Gathered during your shrine trance, will be forever linked, able to communicate with each other regardless of who has Gathered you, even across great distances, even if you exist in the minds of different morls. The communication network is inside you now, permanently.”

“So…” I said, meeting Lilly’s eyes. “We’ll never really be apart.”

“Except when one of you is being tortured,” Asuana pointed out.

“I know you said no questions,” said Lilly, “but are you basically saying that we have to convince Father Ori to trade us to his friends, and then we have to convince those friends to play us face up, and then once we’re in play, we still have to somehow win an entire war against the morls, and the one thing we have up our sleeve is the ability to communicate during it all?”

Universe didn’t answer, presumably waiting for Asuana’s cue.

“Universe?” said Asuana.

“Ummm, yeah, that’s the gist of it,” said Universe. “But remember, we built balance into the Game. The morls can give gifts, but to use them, they have to Gather you and play you face up. And all the pilgrims (minus Nial) have gifts that the morls wish to use. That’s why Father Ori brought you here. Also, the morls have been playing this game for thousands of years, whereas you just found out about it a few minutes ago.”

“Is that supposed to make us feel better?” I said.

“My point,” said Universe, “is that they won’t expect you to be making a play of your own.”

“The game doesn’t exactly sound balanced,” muttered Lilly.

“We may not have gotten the balance exactly right,” admitted Universe. “Look, nobody’s perfect.”