“Maggy, there’s somebody here to see you,” one of the guys who had been helping the legacy commonly known as Maggy get their community up and running called out, pulling her attention away from the lists she had been pouring over in an attempt to improve their current food situation. Not that the supplies they had would run out soon, unless something seriously went wrong they should have enough to get over the winter with a bit to spare, but if she had learned one thing since the world went to shit, it was that you could never have enough food. Or water or a large number of different resources, having them was always preferable to not having them.
For a moment, her stomach clenched as she remembered the days right after things changed and the gnawing hunger as everyone and their grandmother tried to figure out just what the hell had happened, why their homes were on fire and where the massive alterations to their surroundings had come from. The comparison to chickens running around with their heads cut off came to mind. Going from a small community on the outskirts of Denver, with quite a few chickens in the area, to a strange amalgamation of towns and cities drawn together from a roughly hundred-mile radius was utterly discombobulating, and that was ignoring the rest of the apocalypse if such a thing was possible. To say nothing of mountains suddenly appearing, making some creationists’ dreams come true, though it was better to say nothing about those, mountains shouldn’t grow faster than bamboo.
Looking up from the bane of her existence, something she hadn’t been able to escape even after the world had burned and was born anew, she saw Weir, or as Maggy liked to call her the Weirdo, enter, looking slightly out of sorts. Which was strange, normally, there needed to be some serious shit going on to shake her, so unless the place was on fire, again, she shouldn’t be disturbed.
“So, Weirdo, what’s going on?” Maggy asked, both intrigued about and somewhat frightened of the news that had not only sent her normally unflappable acquaintance into such a state but was also important enough to make the two-hour trip between their communities. Sure, the Weirdo was strong enough to keep herself fairly safe but trips were never completely safe, just mostly. So, something must have happened, something serious.
“Maggy, do you remember Morgana?” Weir asked, the question almost certainly rhetorical given that there likely wasn’t a single legacy who didn’t remember Morgana, at least not one who had been somewhat active in Road to Purgatory. This was exactly the sentiment she expressed with an unamused look, even as Maggy’s mind was whirling about why Morgana would be relevant right now and the answer was already staring in her face, Morgana was relevant because Weir had learned that Morgana was in the area. Most likely, sitting in that giant tower with the big-ass ball of magical weirdness sitting on top. It made sense, a massive tower appearing out of nowhere and a powerful spellcaster arriving in the area? A connection was quite plausible.
“So, everyone’s favourite Wicked Witch is in that tower?” Maggy asked, confident enough in her deduction to make herself seem more knowledgeable than she actually was.
“Apparently,” Weir nodded, not even phased by the attempt, she had interacted with Maggy multiple times in the past, both online and offline, meaning she was somewhat desensitised to her shenanigans. This was why Maggy had long-since given up on trying to play the clueless blabbermouth she liked to affect in order to make people let down their guard.
“Well, that could be awesome or horrible, I’m not sure which,” Maggy admitted, thinking back to her interactions with Morgana during Road to Purgatory and what little she had heard about the person behind the screen, or, well, in the capsule. That disconnect made trying to predict Morgana’s actions difficult, you could never know just how much of the Morgana you had experienced in Road to Purgatory was just that, a role affected to play a game.
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Howie was similar in that regard, only that one had chosen the role of the righteous crusader, the other of the insane witch. But, to make matters worse, Maggie was fairly certain that there’d be a reverse-imprinting going on, too, where the role those two, and others like them, had affected was in turn having an effect on them. There was a lot of truth to the saying that a mask could become reality, if one wasn’t careful and after almost two years during which they had worn the mask on Mundus, they had been put into a situation in which they had to use the skills their minds associated with the mask, it was likely that the two of them would also take on some of the mannerisms, the only question was which.
“Have you met her? She seemed to have a fairly good head on her shoulders, maybe a little too invested in playing up the whole Witch Queen thing, but overall an intelligent woman we could work with,” Maggy asked, hoping that Morgana would be reasonable and not somehow swallowed up by the insane and insanely dangerous persona she had affected on Mundus.
“No, I haven't had the pleasure,” Maggy could almost see the shudder running down Weir’s back as she said the last word, “But a few of the people in Aver’s Park have, two of them were even offered magic lessons. Though, she calls herself Jade now,” she continued, making Maggy frown for a moment. That sounded like an incredible deal, at least if Morgana was able to communicate what she could do. Maggy, herself, had tried to teach a few of the people around some of the Darkness Magic she had learned to conceal herself but it had been an abysmal failure. Maybe she just sucked as a teacher or there was something else going on, but if Morgana, or Jade, was willing and able to teach others magic, it could be a huge thing.
“Not her original name, I think,” Maggy frowned, trying to remember the details she had read a while back on the forum. Something about Morgana having been Titania but some dispute over advertising, marketing or some other non-gaming-related detail having forced her out of her original team, it had been a while and not a terribly interesting thing unless one was a fan. Shaking her head, Maggy discarded the line of thought as irrelevant, if Morgana wanted to be known as Jade, all power to her, as long as she didn’t start going around and cutting people apart to become the Morgana she had been on Mundus.
“Doesn’t matter, what matters is that the probably most advanced magic user we had amongst the Travellers is willing to teach,” she paused for a moment as realisation struck her, “And apparently incredibly good at it, now that I think about it. Morgana was Darkness, Ice, Death and Blood or something along those lines, at least that’s what we have seen, though that might be muddled by that bird of hers, not sure,” making another pause, Maggy mentally went over the things Morgana had posted or been featured in, “Yeah, sounds about right,” she nodded to herself, “But the tower, that’s not Ice, at least not looking at it from a distance, that looks like rock. The magical ball on top could be anything, but the tower, that doesn’t look like something the Morgana on Mundus could have made.”
At least not from stone, there had been that video of Morgana making a giant fortress out of Ice but that wasn’t what had happened here, at least it didn’t look like that.
“So you think she already taught somebody and that person made the tower? Or she managed to teach herself, without any guidance from somebody knowing how things work, and got to the point where she could make something like that?” Weir followed the train of thought, arriving at a similar destination.
“Ayup,” Maggy nodded, “And she is offering to teach. Everyone with even the slightest aptitude should be willing to take the lessons if she is offering them freely, this could be huge.”
“You are already plotting something, aren’t you?” Weir asked, noticing a slightly strange sheen in Maggy’s eyes.
“You call it plotting, I call it planning,” Maggy shrugged, not even the slightest bit embarrassed, “It’s a huge opportunity for everyone involved, just think about it. If Morgana managed to teach somebody how to build a big-ass tower, what else can she teach? Give it a year, two at most, and we might have our standard of living back where it used to be, just instead of technology, it’ll be some sort of magitech or magic or something,” Maggy grinned, already dreaming of the many comforts ripped from her by the apocalypse. Sure, it all hinged on Morgana and what she was able and willing to teach but Maggy was willing to go quite far to motivate her. All the way, if necessary.