"Magic is an expression of one's soul. To master it, one must first master thyself, thereby taming thy soul to thy mortal whims."
Cere Rathrehk - Teacher of 1st Year Magic
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When Roland woke up, the first thing he realized was that he was not alone. A woman was staring at him from two feet away with a deadpan expression. “Oh, you’re awake.” She said.
For a moment everything seemed normal, like he hadn’t just been through the most excruciating pain of his life. Then he remembered he had, and any thoughts of the woman left his mind. Instead, he was more concerned with the softball sized hole in this chest that was rapidly stitching itself back together.
Roland was familiar with devastating wounds. Suffering them was just another part of his life. He’d been shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned more times that he could count. Fortunately the apocalypse had hardened his body as much as his mind, and he always managed to bounce back. Most of the time his injuries weren’t even enough to make him bleed.
This wound was different however. Dried blood in the soil was liquifying and flowing back towards him. It ran up his arms and legs as naturally as a river flowed downstream.
His injuries were rapidly healing as well; hearing was returning to one of his ears, vision coming back to his other eye, and missing fingers rapidly growing out from bloodied stumps on his hands.
These are definitely not my hands. He thought. The scars that decorated them were missing and they had a glow of vitality that had been missing for years.
“I gave you a numbness pill.” The woman suddenly said.
Roland’s attention turned back to her. It was a meaningless gesture, he hadn’t experienced pain since the apocalypse started…no, that wasn’t right. He had just experienced it a moment ago. It was excruciating.
Why was that?
Something was strange. Not just with his body, but with his mind. He was thankful to this woman for helping him.
When had he last felt like that? Before the apocalypse? In retrospect, when was the last time he’d felt anything at all?
“Thanks” He tried to say, but whether it was the numbness in his mouth, or just his injuries, all that came out was the incoherent smacking of flesh. He reached up to touch his jaw and found a mutilated mound of flesh and bone that squished like puddy between his fingers.
Surprisingly, he was horrified. An emotion now alien to him. And although that was the case, his psyche did not falter. The horror was somehow muted. Like a distant siren. Something he could, and did, choose to ignore.
Leaving the traumatizing thoughts behind, Roland instead calmly inspected the rest of his body for injury.
There was a lot to find. Lacerations that went bone deep, ripped tendons and muscles, fourth degree burns. The worst of it all were the entrails spilling out from his gut looking like a bowl of spaghetti. Roland stuck the torn ends together and was pleasantly satisfied when they fused together as easily as the rest of his wounds were healing.
At first the woman watched on with morbid curiosity, thought it wasn’t long before she turned away in disgust and began retching.
“Fuck.” She said when she finally finished. “You don’t die easily do you? You make it look like this is just another day for you.”
Roland didn’t answer. He was laser focused on getting his tract right. He’d messed it up once before and he couldn’t shit right for months.
“My colleague is off getting the rest of our squad. I’m Alicia by the way.”
She casually backed away to lean against the cave entrance, keeping a watch outside. She looked young, but had a steely countenance that gave the feeling of a seasoned veteran. In one hand she held a spear. Roland thought it looked ceremonial, if all the gems, engravings, and other decorations were anything to go by. Given the untamed jungle just outside their cave however, he felt it was probably anything but.
Roland gave Alicia no answer as he fused together the last of his digestive tract and shoved it back into his abdomen.
He did want to talk to her. Desperately in fact. But reaching up to massage his neck he found injuries so severe that he was sure his vocal cords were gone.
It had been so long since he talked to anybody. After the apocalypse, things were different. He’d tried to talk to people, many times in fact. But whenever he did, they never made any sense. Their words were always an incoherent and rage-inducing gibberish. It was demonic. He felt like the only sane person left in the world.
Alicia continued. “If you’re wondering where you are, this is the Vencian jungle. Badar and I dragged you into this cave in case the monsters came back. Easier to defend.”
Huh? Roland froze for a moment. The Vencian Jungle was a place of fiction. One of his own creation. How could he be there?
Alicia continued. “Excuse me. Lord? I don’t know how to address you. What exactly are you? Are you one of the Immortal Monarchs?”
Immortal Monarchs? Again, an element he recognized from his world building. One coincidence is just a coincidence. Two coincidences a clue.
Was he inside his fiction? The thought was ridiculous, yet one he couldn’t help but entertain. After all, here he was. How could he believe otherwise? The idea was tantalizing. More so than even when he found that mechanic he thought could fix his elevator.
Of course, the natural explanation was that this was all just a dream. But if that were the case, why hadn’t the shock and pain woken him up? And even if it hadn’t, Roland was no silent sleeper. His Viceroy Max would have noticed something was wrong and jumped on him until he woke up. It had happened more than enough times in the past that he was sure of it.
No. This was no lucid dream, the feeling was unmistakably different. This felt as real as his previous reality.
There was a voice in his head that told him the whole idea was absurd, but it was no match for Roland’s active imagination.
The universe was vast and unknown. Anything was possible, and anything could be rationalized. Perhaps the world he’d created was no creative work at all, but rather he’d somehow peaked behind the curtain and into another reality. Considering the mind bending experience he had just been through, the idea was considerably less crazy than he’d otherwise thought.
Or maybe this was all for the entertainment of a god, one who’d enjoyed casting creatives into their fantasies.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Alicia asked. Waving her hand in his face.
Whatever the explanation, it didn’t matter to Roland. Most likely he would never know the truth. All that mattered was that he was here now. He accepted that as a fact.
Then on to Alicia’s question. Was he an Immortal Monarch?
Absolutely not. Roland wanted to spit the idea out of his head and stomp it into the mud. He shook his head no aggressively.
The Immortal Monarchs were products of his unimaginative mind. The history of Roland’s world was packed with disasters of such cataclysmic proportions, that he couldn’t think of any way humanity could survive.
Of course, humanity just dying like that wouldn’t be all too interesting. His unimaginative solution? A small group of people who were literally immortal. A group who couldn’t be killed even if every cell in their body was vaporized. Even if everyone died, this group could collectively be Adam and Eve and repopulate the world.
It was a solution, but not one he was proud of.
Worse than that, however, was that the Immortal Monarchs were crazy, and he was not crazy. In his past life he was sick of constantly being called a ghoul or a feral just because he didn’t go down after getting shot at a few times. Those monsters were crazy, always killing people for no reason. He was not crazy.
Still, it was reasonable for Alicia to think he was one of these Immortal Monarchs. After all, even he, this world’s creator, could not think of a way to recover from beyond death as he had other than this. How was it even possible that he'd had thoughts with no oxygen in his brain? He'd been underground for some time after all. Hell, even if there was oxygen, he'd been completely bled out, there wasn't a drop of blood in his body. The more he thought about it, the worse it got; did he even have a full brain? One hemisphere of his head felt decidedly lighter than the other...
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
That thought freaked him out and Roland quickly shook it from his mind before he could think about it any further.
The Immortal Monarchs were a consequence of Astral Quarks; anomalies that were also responsible for such things as wormholes. Likely, an Astral Quark had brought him here, it was probably what was healing him as well. But these anomalies also repelled one another; so, whilst one very likely had brought him here, it also precluded him from being afflicted by any others.
Besides, now that he thought about it, he could very distinctly remember dying after being hit by a truck.
“How do you explain that then?” Alicia asked, pointing to the hole in his chest that had now stitched itself up to be around the size of a baseball. “Some sort of unconventional necromancy?”
Again, Roland shook his head no.
“How about a divine treasure? Are you some bigshot?”
Roland shrugged. How was he supposed to answer when asked two separate questions like that? He didn’t know anything about a divine treasure, but he certainly was a big shot. Was there any other way to describe the King of the Apocalypse?
“Do you even remember who you are?”
Roland nodded.
“Well that’s surprising, half your brain was sticking out and turned to paste when we found you. Usually even a sliver of the amount of damage you took would be enough to turn someone into a vegetable.”
They continued like this for a few more minutes, but Alicia soon got bored of playing twenty questions. Roland didn’t blame her, there were a million things he too wanted to ask about, but without the ability to speak it was a rather annoying affair to discuss anything. He was also withholding information until he got a better grasp of the situation, much to Alicia’s annoyance.
Thankfully, the lull gave him a minute to think about the situation.
The first question on his mind was could he perform magic?
Roland thought about it for a moment, and then laughed at himself for even questioning it.
Of course he could! He was the Apocalypse King! How could such an illustrious and noble personage such as himself possibly lack the talent for magic? It was out of the question!
Still, despite these self assurances, there was a voice in his mind that was not satisfied. A voice which he had not heard clearly in many years, since before the apocalypse. It was the same voice that had been so horrified by his injuries. The same voice that so desperately wanted to talk to the first rational person he’d met in years. That voice he had chosen to discard.
Now it was back, and this time, in force. Try as he might, he couldn’t so easily dismiss it. It was an annoying gnat which hovered in his thoughts and refused to leave him alone. It was a voice of doubt.
The both of them knew that everyone in this world had the capacity to use magic. But the both of them also knew that Roland was not from this world, and so the voice doubted.
Roland countered that he had used augmenter magic to escape his earthen tomb, but the voice pointed out that they couldn’t be sure that was his own power.
It aptly asked how they had gotten here. It was no deliberate effort on Roland’s part. Some outside force had done it. Would whoever or whatever that was go through all that trouble just to see Roland die immediately?
Probably not.
His miraculous escape and recovery could be this unknown entity casting spells on him. And besides, Augmenter magic didn’t interest him all that much. Sure it was nice to have, but what Roland really wanted to know was if he could fling fireballs and shoot lighting. On this point the voice agreed. That was way cooler.
Such magic was a completely different expression than augmenter magic. Roland knew all sorts of magic theory from creating this world, but naturally, he'd never actually done it. It was akin to trying to control a limb you never had. It wasn’t something he could just do. Roland would have to learn the same way as everyone else in this world; by experience.
Eager to dispel the voice’s absurd doubts, Roland drew a spell circle in the dirt with a stick. Whispering Glow, a common spell of the Central Astricon, it produced a faint glow of white light that lasted for as much mana as the caster supplied.
He waved to get Alicia's attention and pointed at it excitedly.
“You want me to cast that?” Alicia asked.
Roland nodded. Alicia gave him a strange look. He supposed that was to be expected considering even children could cast Whispering Glow, but that was exactly why he chose it. There was no chance Alicia wouldn’t know it, and considering how even children could cast it, it had to be easily learned.
Luckily, Alicia didn’t protest, she pressed her hand in the dirt and instantly there was a glowing ball of white light hovering a foot above the spell circle.
Learning spells was done by sharing a medium while casting, so Roland too pressed his hand against the spell circle.
Instantly, the world changed. Roland could suddenly see and feel projections of the astral world in the physical one. A phenomena which did not map in a way that could be adequately described; for the astral realm and the physical world did not overlap in a way that could be perceived in three dimensions. And yet, in fleeting flickers of understanding, he grasped it anyways. He could feel the connections the spell formed in the astral space around it and felt the weave that they came together to form.
But this perception was imperfect; its scope limited in range and detail. The more time he focused on it, the more reality warped. There was an irreconcilable schism in perception, a chasm that eroded his very existence.
Roland took his hand off the magic circle and quickly he was forced to collapse down to a single entity. Relief overcame him as he felt himself return. The effects were not permanent and rapidly his headache dissipated.
What he’d experienced was far from normal. The usual response would have been no sensation at all, or a vague tingle at most, not whatever trans-dimensional trip he had just been on.
It wasn’t a bad result however. Quite the opposite. He had been expecting to feel nothing at all. It was only the exceptionally gifted that had even the slightest glimpse into the astral world but instead he'd been treated to a front row seat. No it was more than that, he was on the stage, in the crowd, and manning the lights all at the same time. A fitting talent for the King of the Apocalypse.
Roland excitedly drew a new circle for Whispering Glow and pressed his hand into it. He pulled on what he'd just felt, willing his soul's power into the world. It came as easily as breathing, a task that was supposed to take years to accomplish yet he'd just executed without even thinking about it.
Roland didn't dawdle on this achievement, rather, he immediately set in order all the connections he'd felt when Alicia had cast her spell. The time dilation in the astral realm meant that, while only a second had passed, it felt as though he'd been at it for several minutes.
A glowing orb slowly grew in front of him. It was the purest white light he could imagine, slowly it grew brighter and brighter, eclipsing the brightness of Alicia's and only growing more.
It was a bit strange that it behaved so differently, but nothing outside the bounds of the spell. After all, casters could tweak spells slightly to suit their needs.
Curious, Roland pressed his hand against his spell once more and phased into the astral realm. What he found was a turbulence in the weave of mana he'd just created. New connections appeared, and others faded. New colors and modes of vibration appeared forming completely different emergent patterns.
“What the hell?” Alicia said. “What did you do?”
Roland pulled his mind back to find Alicia perplexed with her own orb, slowly growing brighter and radiating a shifting light that gradually grew into a pure white.
The pieces all came together in his head, like a lightning bolt, he was struck with the realization of what had happened.
Whispering Glow was a spell which utilized the Akashic Records, a intertwined web of understanding within the astral realm that connected all beings. When Roland had cast it, his soul made its contribution to the records.
Ordinarily, even if his mind understood light perfectly, the soul wouldn't, it wasn’t rational, and any contribution would be diluted within the billions of souls who'd made their marks within.
But Roland now realized his soul was rational. It explained how his mind persisted in a new brain, it explained how he could think even when that new brain was missing, it explained why he could perceive the astral realm so clearly.
And it explained this too. His soul had effectively opened the Akashic Record for Whispering Glow, torn out the pages, and in bold letters on the first page, written everything he learned about photons in high school physics class. He'd figuratively turned a verbose and winding poem into a concise and exact definition of the physics that would describe a glowing orb.
He'd probably just turned Whispering Glow into a spell that eclipsed its higher tier counterparts.
The voice in his head was in a panic, yelling at him that he’d effectively announced his presence to the entire world. Worse, it was one of the most common spells in this world; even a complete recluse who lived in the middle of nowhere would notice when they cast Whispering Glow in the dead of night to light their way to the bathroom.
Roland thought this voice was being stupid. So what if he announced his presence to the world? That was how it should be! After all, he was a king!
The rational voice tried to reason with him, warn him that the oldest and most powerful beings would seek him out, seeking to quench their bottomless thirst for knowledge and power.
Roland thought it was only right that even this world’s most elite should come to him for consult.
The rational side argued he would be enslaved.
Roland answered that he would like to see them try.
A magic circle suddenly appeared before Alicia pointed at him. Roland recognized it, Harmonic Rejuvenation.
Buffing spells were a tricky thing. Because of Astral Domains, unless overmatching was involved, it was impossible to directly cast a spell on someone without them allowing it.
Roland chose to allow it. Who would dare harm a king anyways?
Alicia snapped her fingers and instantly a new energy flowed into him.
Then another spell appeared, Lifeblood Rejuvenation. And another, Mend wounds.
More appeared, though Roland lost focus, it was an excellent opportunity to learn which he wouldn’t let slip. He was pulled into the astral plane, memorizing the formations.
He didn't know how much time based when he came to, and Alicia was shaking his shoulders violently.
"What did you do? How did you do that?" She kept asking.