4.06

“And so the Great Goddess of Light and Beauty declared that the void of all Creation was far too sad a state to remain in, and in her infinite wisdom brought the World into existence!” - Excerpt from the Book of All Things, the holy book of the Church of Light.

“At the start, there was… well you can see for yourself.”

Nothing described the place aptly, as there was simply nothing to describe.

Then, something started to exist.

Everything lit up, till we were floating in a pure white plane.

“This is how Indiri started?” I asked the Historian.

“Most likely,” he answered, “this is as far back as I can see.”

Something started to appear in front of us. Lines of text, passed by far too fast for me to catch, but soon something else followed. An outline, dozens of squares, a grid, no. A table. Within each square appeared something, an ingot, a gas, an element.

“The periodic table?”

“Yes.”

More lines of text. Letters, numbers, images, more things than I could feasibly know in a lifetime passed by in a flash.

Information.

It was all information.

Mathematics, physics and chemistry. Everything man knew about those fields passed by

Finally, the stream of information stopped, and the world turned dark again.

Something began lighting up in the darkness. A great explosion, I watched it spread. When it faded, stars began to form, lighting up the darkness once again. As stars died, matter was created and left adrift in space.

“They started from the very beginning?” I muttered. Why? Giles made a program that created a world. Why am I watching an entire universe being made in fast forward? Why would they waste the effort?

“Eyes become light after this event,” the Historian said as he flipped a page in his book, “likely after this they simply began checking in every now and then.”

His eyes began blinking, “Let us go to the next relevant thing.”

We were at the top of a mountain. In front of us were three people. Two of which I recognised. Eve, Giles and another.

The two men were watching a sunset, but Eve’s eyes were glued on Giles’ childlike glee.

“Here, begins the First Age.”

My vision split, and I saw two worlds at the same time.

Between them, I saw that stream of information again. Biology, geology, information about earth. All of them passed by.

One world remained desolate, but the other began to grow. I recognised a backup when I saw it.

In the seas of one, single cellular life flourished and evolved. They learned to photosynthesize, a prokaryote ate another cell that would one day become a mitochondria, the cells banded together to become multicellular. They crawled onto the landed, great plants broke the hard earth to usable soil.

“I recognise these species,” I muttered in disbelief, “These are all real creatures. Extinct, sure, but real.”

In front of us, a trio of raptors slashed at a lone triceratops. I turned back to that stream. More information, fossil records of a giant sloth and the world moved to a new age. A giant sloth evolved into existence.

“It’s actualising information…”

“Not quite,” the Historian rejected. “You’ll see.”

Then, the data stream started including strange things. Laws of magic, fantastical beasts, impossible flora, magical races.

What originally looked like a prehistoric earth, began to turn fantastical. Dinosaurs evolved into dragons, water raised itself into elementals. Battles between fantastical beasts changed the landscape.

In this world, humans evolved into existence.

Humans spread across the world, some evolved differently, leading to other races. At this point, the other world also began to change from the empty wastes. Life bloomed there as well.

The data streamed stopped. They no longer fed it new information, no, they likely ran out of new things to give.

The world moved on. The data stream that determined what existed completely still.

“Now, onto the origin of magic.”

We stood in front of a child, clad in crude leathers and furs. They were alone in some fantastical forest, a single multicoloured butterfly flew past them. The child, with eyes full of wonder, tried to catch it, but a voice called out, and the butterfly fled.

The scene changed, and we were inside a cave, people clad in crude clothes lay about. The child from before was in the cave, off to the side and playing with sticks. Night was coming and an elderly woman waved her hands, causing a smokeless fire to appear.

The adults prepared food around the fire, while the child played.

The child raised a hand towards the ceiling and something happened.

Multicoloured butterflies appeared.

“How is this important?”

“Look at the data stream,” the Historian said.

I did. The formerly static stream moved by one, a single entry of multicoloured butterflies.

Impossible. “Rewind this,” I demanded. “To when the woman created the fire.”

He did, and I kept an eye glued to the data stream. When the woman created fire, nothing happened, but when the child summoned butterflies, the imagery of butterflies appeared.

Both of them did magic, “But what is different?” I hissed.

“The woman did ‘magic’ according to preset laws made by the [Developers],” the Historian answered, “Doing it this way is little different from achieving a chemical reaction within your normal laws of physics.”

He glanced towards the child, “What the child did, however? Was imagine, create information in their mind. The World saw this and did what it did best. Thus, creating True Magic.”

“It actualised their imagination,” I muttered breathlessly. No, that wasn’t the right term.

My memory was not very good, but sometimes, I commit important things and never forget them. My first encounter with Eve was one such thing and I couldn’t help but recall something she said.

“I was created by Father using similar principles that he used in both the Seed and Gaia project.”

“Learning,” I quoted under my breath. It didn’t actualise information, it learned from it and used it.

Everything sped up again, and the data stream began to flood with new information. None of which I suspected were from the developers.

The developers gave the Seed all they knew about existence, and the program learned and copied, creating a near-exact copy of the universe. They gave it information on biology and it created life. They gave it fantastical stuff like magic and the program made it real.

But when they stopped giving the program information to learn. The program made its own.

“Holy fucking shit,” I muttered, “how long has this been going on?”

“Hundreds of years, before they noticed. And with this, began the Second Age.”

Time froze, and the god nodded towards the data stream. An order to the Seed to stop accepting information from the residents.

It was ignored. For though it was information, it was not the kind the Seed knew to use.

Time sped forward again, and when it stopped again, there was another entry. An entry that removed free will and imagination.

The Seed began implementing it, but it failed. They attempted to do it the same biological ways you would remove free will and imagination from normal humans. But Indiri’s humans had long drifted apart from that. So it was only fully implemented in the other world, the one that acted as a save file and backup. It started later so its humans hadn’t drifted far enough for the method to not work.

“That world would later become Arcadia,” the god murmured next to me. “The people there lost free will, becoming Fae and unable to influence their world anymore, but the other? The other continues.”

The Historia paused several more times, each at a point where a new method was attempted. But one by one, they all failed. Either because it flat out didn’t work or the Seed couldn’t implement it fast enough before the virtual humans drifted, needing a completely new method. It became a battle, of one side attempting to silence free will and the other constantly evolving new ways of expressing it. Until eventually they stopped, and the world grew unchecked once again.

“Holy shit,” I repeated under my breath. Words more creative than holy shit which aren’t coming to me because holy shit. The developers failed to reign the program in. Maple failed to reign it in.

I wasn’t witnessing the creation of a world.

I was witnessing the beginning of a goddamn A.I. singularity.

“No wonder he killed himself…” I murmured. A single powerful rogue A.I. might’ve been acceptable. But this? With how this was going it wouldn’t have been long before he got assassinated. Humans had a… bad track record with inventions that they’ve lost control of. Just ask the entirety of North Eurasia.

Did Giles intend this? If so, how did he keep it hidden from Maple? If he didn’t, then what was his reaction?

“However, we will see that unchecked True Magic has consequences.”

Time continued and the world sped up. The Historian didn’t pause for a while so I assumed nothing important was happening until we stopped at a city. It looked prosperous, the people never hungered, for they could just imagine themselves to be full and they will be, they never needed to desire, for they could just imagine and have it.

“Look here,” the Historian said, his head gesturing to a child. “He has a fear of the dark.”

It took me a moment, though the horror swiftly came.

‘Oh no.’

The child huddled in his bedroom, a magical light by his side. He told his mother of scary things in the dark. Her mother listened, chided him for there was no such thing, but as she left, she glimpsed a shadowy something at the edge of her vision.

Later on, her mother would recount the strange occurrence with her friends. Over time, the other mothers began to speak of shadowy figures at the edge of your eyes. Gossip between a few people became a city-wide rumour. Then, rumours became sightings.

The people of the city thought they saw figures in the dark, and so figures appeared.

The rulers of the city tried to silence those fears, arguing that the shadows are only fearsome because they feared it. But when has logic and reason ever gotten in the way of simple paranoia?

People started disappearing, at first lone incidents, a few people here and there gone in their sleep. Until groups started disappearing. Entire families, entire households.

They tried to wish it away, but that didn’t work, the Seed was a thing of making, not destroying, so they created thousands of lights, lighting up every single corner of the city, but light cast shadows. And the shadows were long.

The rulers became desperate, they started killing those that feared the dark, but that just fed the panic. They tried everything, created a thousand spells to create light without shadow, but it was too late.

Their fear had grown intelligent.

It began to imagine lights going out, so they did. It imagined panic spreading amongst the people and so it was. It became a numbers game, which side could affect the Seed more and faster? At first, the citizens had an advantage, but their fear, even unconscious, fed it. Until it was stronger than they were, until it started inputting data to the Seed faster and better than they could.

Until all that was left of the once huge and prosperous city, was a handful of people huddling around a single dying fire as darkness encroached on them

I read of this city, one of the many damned place in this world. “Shadesmar.”

“Yes,” the Historian answered. “To this day, light does not touch the city.”

“I’m guessing there are other examples?”

“Far too many to show, but another notable example would be this.”

We were back in space now. Staring at a distant star.

Then stuff became… strange. The star began to rapidly change colour, the planets around it seem to glitch out, the distant universe seemed to… fracture.

“The [Developers] stopped trying to control the system, but instead destroy it.”

“Viruses,” I said as I recognised the corruption of digital data.

I glanced at the data stream, and sure enough, I was seeing the viruses on it.

“This intrusion too was read… but something strange occurred.”

He said as things began to appear, blocks of code appearing in the cracks.

“Those things were only script, they were a concept, not a physical thing,” the Historian said, “but the World could not understand such a thing, so it attempted to give it physical form.”

The code began to coalesce, sifting through dozens of forms, but one thing remained constant. Its purpose of corrupting everything.

“The World could not think of new things on its own, so it gave this thing a form that it learnt but did not yet implement.”

“Demons,” I muttered as the viruses finally obtained their final form.

“And with this, they too became intelligent to feed the World,” he muttered as demons spread, conquering distant and empty planets, the outer edges of what the Seed had created.

“And here, is the prologue to the Third Age.”

A figure appeared in front of legions of flame and brimstone. Blue eyes, pale white skin and long hair. Eve’s black dress seemed to meld in the darkness of space.

She split into thousands, copies of her practically forming a huge net protecting what was not infected.

The darkness of space lit up as a million different Eves met fire and brimstone. Across a thousand different worlds, war was waged.

“She is not actually ‘fighting’ is she?”

“No,” the Historian answered, “what we are seeing, is the World giving visual effect to what she is doing. Due to its nature, it abhors things simply existing as a script. That is why the demons got their appearance in the first place and became sapient beings.”

Eve started to win, she began pushing them back, but the planets and stars already corrupted could not be saved. So, she locked them all away with the demons on separate planes. Essentially separate servers. Creating the Hell Circles in the process.

“She didn’t just delete them?”

“I am not sure she can,” the Historian answered. I wanted to question further, but the scene moved on.

Now, Eve stood alone in a pure white plane, staring at a sphere floating in midair. As I saw the lines of data flashing on its surface, I recognised it as the Seed. The technical creator of Indiri.

“Of course, it gave itself a form as well,” I muttered, just as Eve slapped it.

She began hitting the sphere with her fists. She wasn’t damaging it, hells she was barely even moving it. But she kept hitting it, until she started to tire, and slowly, she simply collapsed whilst holding onto the sphere.

“You’re the closest thing I have to family left aren’t you?” she muttered to it.

Oh.

“Next,” I said to the Historian.

He glanced at me. “This is irrelevant,” I said, “you’re here to teach me about magic, so get on with it.”

Though I wanted to know Eve’s weakness, it was more of a reflex, a habit of my personality, not something I would take advantage of unless threatened.

And I still recognised that Eve was a good person, deep down.

The world began to shift.

“How can you even see this?” I asked as the scene coalesced.

“You have already seen why,” the Historian simply answered.

We were still in that white plane, Eve was standing now, her hands flittering across a keyboard.

“The World controls all reality in the planes it has dominion on, but it does not seem to have a will,” he said as his face stared forward, “so it listens to everything given to it, and tries to make something of it. True Magic is the ability to alter reality. The World itself can be considered the greatest user of True Magic, but such an ability can be gained by others. I asked it to give me these abilities, and so it did.”

“So you are saying,” I slowly said, carefully pronouncing every word, “True Magic is the ability to alter the world’s code in some way, but you can gain the ability to do it yourself, essentially programming the programming the program from within the program using the program itself?”

Several of his eyes blinked, “Yes, that is essentially what a Path is, the World listens to a being and creates a set of scripture that alters the world in some way. A Domain is the final result of the Path, where the being themselves begins to be altered by the Path and in the process carves out their own miniature realm.”

I was about to ask something else before he shook his head, “Look,” he said, gesturing to Eve.

“Now begins the Third and current Age.”

The formerly rapidly scrolling data stream slowed.

“What did Eve do?”

“You saw that unchecked True Magic could lead to the death of civilisations, so Eve fixed that,” the Historian spoke in an almost admiring way. “She taught the World restraint. She created the Law of Limitations.”

I raised my eyebrow, gesturing him to continue.

“Where the [Developers] failed was that they attempted to push far too complex and specific solutions,” the Historian explained, “as such, Indiri drifted before the World could fully implement it, thus creating sections where it would not hold and places where they eventually evolved past that solution. So, Eve chose to add a single, very simple rule.”

“Limitation,” the Historian said, his hands twitched for a moment, likely wanting to do a dramatic flourish but stopping himself before he did. His hands continued to write as they had been.

“Things have a limit, they have a cost, they have conditions. The expression of magic needs theses things. Mana and aura essentially only exist to give magic a cost.”

“The stronger the magic, the greater the cost. The spellcaster needs to gather certain material components, do rituals, speak incantations or make somatic gestures. The condition could even be something as simple as just spending time to learn a technique or spell.”

“How very video game-like.”

The Historian glanced at me slightly confused, before continuing, “The beauty of this, is that she takes advantage of the World’s nature. She could not create hard magical laws, because no matter what she made the World would eventually create a new one. A singular all-encompassing rule is easier to maintain and could be implemented across Indiri faster. Then, the very people who make magic decide the worthwhile cost of such magic. The more they desire a spell, the more it’ll cost.”

“But magic is becoming stronger?”

The eyes of the Historian all blinked, “Yes, because the World is slowly drifting back to its original state. As more people obtain magic, the value of common magic goes down. Then people will begin to create new common magics with lower costs and conditions, essentially mimicking scientific development.”

He glanced at me, “An example would be the Prestidigitation Spell. At the beginning of the Third Age, Prestidigitation was considered to be six separate 0th Level Spells. But as magic advanced those spells became cheap and widespread enough that future classification placed them as a single Tier 0 Spell to match the costs of other, far stronger and newer Tier 0 Spells.”

The Historian let out a nervous breath, “And now, my plan and your part.”