Chapter Fifteen: Another Kind of Trip
“It happened when I was quite young. Older than you are now, of course, I suppose all things being relative, it can be hard to see things with an even perspective.” Rynan had a calm sadness while she explained.
“It was an accident. I was a new scholar, excited and eager to prove myself. But I was also handicapped. I told you that a Space affinity is hard, in many cases impossible to master. I was not gifted or special and had made little progress. But I didn’t mind. I enjoyed studying and learning and when I had an opportunity to join the Tower as a researcher I was overjoyed. Of course, reality never quite meets up with dreams.”
Marc thought back to how he felt when he joined the customer support team for a popular video game. At first, he couldn’t believe his luck. It wasn’t long before the fog was cleared from his eyes and he started to dread even getting in his car to go to work.
“Because of my lack of magic talent, I was relegated to mostly manual tasks. Cleaning and sorting the library, organizing research notes, and things like that. In retrospect, I would have been much happier in the Academy. They focus more on teaching young Mages, but my lack of usable magic ruled that out as an option. Ironically I would go back as a professor many years later, but as a Water Mage instead.
The work itself wasn’t torture. I wasn’t particularly mistreated, although I wouldn’t say I was treated kindly or with compassion either. Someone like me was below concern or contempt. I had given in to the fact that I would spend my life in a dusty old library, accomplishing nothing worthwhile. While disappointing, I didn’t feel I had any other option.”
What she said continued to resonate almost painfully with Marc. How often he felt crippled despite there being nothing wrong with him. He wasn’t broken in any way, but he wasn’t exceptional in any way either. He wasn’t smart, or strong, or talented. The worst thing was that he wasn’t lucky. He never had that opportunity to appear where he could stand out. At least not until after he managed to get himself killed.
“That all changed when I got assigned a job to clean and catalog a large number of artifacts recently procured from a trader. They had been rumored to come from a ruin found in the deserts of Sett. Long ago, a disaster wiped out the most advanced magic civilization on the planet, and from time to time various artifacts would turn up. The lot that I had been assigned had already been checked for anything valuable, and most of it was useless trash, fakes without any obvious value. This was just a garbage task that no one else wanted to do, that wasn’t important enough for anyone to care. It wasn’t that bad for me. I was able to work alone and it at least somewhat resembled research, so I poured myself into the task.”
Her demeanor had started to change. She was getting more lost in her story, reminiscing of events long past, filled with nostalgia and regrets. Marc was fully invested in the story, having finally found something that he felt even a remote connection to.
“Nearly everything in the batch was junk, forgeries for the most part, so I passed over the stone at first. It was a small stone tablet, just larger than your palm, and it had very intricate runes etched into every face. If it had been a true artifact, someone would have pulled it out a long time ago, so chances were that it was a fake or a model or a failed product. With artifacts, there is usually a node for a Mana Crystal to be attached to power it, otherwise the user would constantly have to provide Mana to operate it. Even without this, someone would have tested it with mana to see if it was still functional, but it seems that it hadn’t responded to anything. After having set it aside, I finally came back to the tablet and was surprised by how intricate the runes carved into it were. It was far more detailed and complicated than artifacts that are commonly used today. This alone practically confirmed that it was of Altairan origin. But the fact that it didn’t respond to Mana meant that it was either incomplete or broken. I was enamored by the detailed work and continued to scrutinize every angle. Then, on a whim, I tried to push my Mana into it. You can’t know how shocked I was when my purple Space Mana slowly drained into the stone surface. I didn’t quite know what it did, but it was doing… something.”
As she spoke, she reached up with her left hand and the ice pyramid on the table started to float up. The ice quickly melted, but instead of dripping down onto the table, it formed a sphere floating between them. Then it started to form into the shape of a brick, about the size of a large paperback book. Marc could see markings all over the block, looking something like circuits on a computer motherboard. Then Rynan reached out with her right hand and purple rivers of light started to fill the lines on the brick. She placed her hands back on the table, but the floating object continued to hang in the air, purple veins of power cutting miniature highways across its surface.
“I did something for the first time in my life that day. I stole something from my work.”
Marc guiltily remembered the pads of Post-Its, teabags and sugar packets, and the sweatshirt that had been left behind by a coworker who stopped showing up to work one day, which had ended up in his home at the trailer park. Maybe not the same thing, but still he felt connected to this story.
“I had finally discovered something. Something that I could use my Mana with. I was obsessed with it instantly. I told my bosses that I was sick and took it back to my dorm room and studied every inch while hiding under my bedcover. I put every drop of my Mana into it, but nothing happened. It would just glow, like this.” She pointed at the object in the air between them and the tattoos pulsed with a purple glow.
“Initially nothing happened. The stone would just absorb more and more Mana. Since there wasn’t a crystal to absorb and store the Mana I didn’t think it was particularly dangerous. It was something of a godsend. In order to increase one’s overall Mana capacity you should exert as much Mana over time as possible. I started to use the artifact to train my own Mana and help train my ability until I had enough to start using higher-level spells. Throughout the day I would pour my Mana into the store as soon as I had recovered and repeated the pattern. I kept the stone in a pocket I had sewn into my robes so I could always keep it with me. I forgot about its mysterious origin and the fact that I hadn’t figured out its true purpose and started to think of it as my personal Mana gym. That naive thinking would lead to the biggest mistake of my life.”
Stolen novel; please report.
At the wave of her hand, the stone replica started to break down its shape and slowly took the form of a 3D replica of a group of large buildings. Marc looked close, fascinated as the water took the shape of what looked like a medieval version of the Pentagon, no, it was six-sided, so that would be a hexagon he thought. It was beautiful and he was surprised by the detail he could make out from the structure including trees and bushes around the buildings. It resembled the Christmas crystal things girls seemed to like to collect that were cut to look like small animals. The building was several stories high, and while at first he thought it was one continuous loop, he could see enough detail to see it was six identical separate buildings forming a circle around a central space, and in that space was a… pole?”
“Do you have any knowledge regarding the Towers?” Rynan asked, slowly rotating the floating diorama-like a character in a sci-fi movie manipulating a hologram. Marc shook his head from side to side.
“The Towers are a mystery in themselves. There are sixteen Towers spread throughout the world. No one knows what they are for, or where they came from. They appeared suddenly over 20,000 years ago, fully formed in random locations. We don’t know what they are made of or even how big they actually are.” She pointed to the tall pole in the center of the floating diorama.
“They seem to go into the sky forever, and we can’t dig below them or mark them or damage them in any way. Force, magic, prayer, nothing done to them had any effect on them in any way, but there is one thing that we do know about them. Shortly after they first appeared, Mana was discovered and people learned how to use magic.” She enjoyed explaining this part of the story.
“Most of our history is dominated by these objects. They are central to all the myths and religions, and yet despite relentless study for thousands of years, we know next to nothing about them. They watch us and share nothing about their purpose. The Tower Academies are built around each Tower just like this. “ She pointed to the hexagon-arranged buildings surrounding the pole. “I was working at one such facility at the time and spent my time next to one of them. It was such a constant presence I gave it no thought, only using it as a landmark to navigate while walking through the city. It was a constant presence that had no impact on me or my life. That is until I became the first person to ever enter a Tower in history.” She stood up suddenly and walked over to the kitchen. Grabbing some fruit and a small knife, she began peeling and cutting up the fruit as she talked.
“This was over a hundred and fifty years ago. Some beings on this planet can live quite long, Elves for instance. But humans will usually live for little more than a hundred years. I should be an old woman by now, but I decided to stick around for a while. I look quite good for a woman of my age, don’t you think?”
Marc froze. He doubted this question was any less of a trap in this world than it was in his home dimension. He employed the well-rehearsed expression and response that he had been trained into him by the neighborhood matrons.
“You look great!” His response was far too practiced and quick to carry any sincerity.
She looked at him nonplussed. “I had been assigned a regular task to measure the distances from the inside walls to the base of the Tower. This had been done hundreds of thousands or millions of times around the world and every single time the was no change, not even a tiny fraction of an inch. Still, research is like that sometimes. Especially when there are plenty of young recruits to assign tasks to no matter how pointless or time-consuming.”
Again, Marc could only nod in agreement at that assessment.
“I remember it all clearly. It was morning and I could still smell the bread that had been baked in the kitchen for breakfast. The grass still had dew as the sun had been obscured by clouds all morning. I was busy taking the measurements and I felt that my Mana had recovered. Out of habit, I started pouring my Mana into the stone when something new happened. Instead of just accepting my Mana, the stone started to pull it from me like it was a starving baby. I felt my Mana quickly drain into the tablet then suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to touch the Tower. This is not acceptable to do. The Tower had strict rules about who and when can a researcher approach the actual Tower. Still, as no one had ever affected them in any way, it wasn’t considered a Taboo forbidden. It was simply a rule. Many of your scholars will sneak out to try it at night, including myself. All I can say is that it was disappointing. One expects that it would be ice cold, or burning hot, or pulsing with Mana, but in truth, it felt like nothing at all. It didn’t even feel like touching anything, except that pushing against it your hand can not penetrate it. It just stops but without the sensation of touching anything. If anyone had seen me reach out to the Tower that morning I would surely have received a lecture from one of my seniors, but no one saw anything. No one saw me when I reached out again to touch the Tower, only to disappear.”
She brought over a plate of the cut fruit, some slices of cheese like a loaf, then went over to the kettle and refreshed the water, and placed it back over the fire to warm up.
“After that happened, I appeared in a white space. There was no source of light, but I could see. there was no floor, but I could stand upright. There was no end, no walls, nothing at all.”
Marc remembered having been in a place just like that. Just after he had died.
“Of course, I panicked. I ran, I screamed, I cried, I did everything I could. But nothing changed. Nothing at all.” Her eyes took on a faraway look and her voice trembled a bit.
“I didn’t get hungry, I didn’t get tired. I couldn’t find the end, I couldn’t do anything. I spent days I think trying to find a way out. I spent more days curled up crying. To this day I have no idea where I was, if I was inside the Tower itself, or sent somewhere else. I don’t know.”
Marc couldn’t help himself. For the first time, he interrupted her and asked questions. He wanted to know what that place was.
“How long were you there? How did you get out?” He asked with impatience in his voice.
“I don’t know how long I was there. A very long time. A very, very long time. As to how I got out…” She trailed off. “It felt like I had been there for days, but maybe I was going crazy. I had nothing to look at. I had nothing to mark my time. Eventually, I remembered I had the stone and thought I could use it to get back out. I started pouring my Mana into it, but nothing happened. It would light up as before, but soon the glow faded. I tried again and again, but nothing changed. It was strange. I didn’t get tired, even if I ran for hours, but I could still exhaust my Mana, and the mana would recharge, although perhaps a bit faster than normal. I used that to try to measure time. It would typically take me a few hours to completely recharge my Mana so I would keep pouring in my Mana and then letting it recharge. Still, I could only count in my head and I would often become depressed and stop counting altogether. I think I lost my wits many times, but for some reason, I would keep coming back to myself after a while. As though I could not even go insane in that place. I could only repeat that one single task over and over again. I still don’t know exactly how long I was there. Even using my method of recharging mana became unreliable, but as close as I can guess I was in that space for somewhere between eight hundred and two thousand years.”
Marc stared at his new teacher with wide eyes, the gravity of this revelation chilling his entire self, mind, body, and soul.