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Mirandil Valereth looked out, far over the tops of the tallest building in her bustling city, the home to her Clan. The grand window’s view from her study high in her Wizard’s Tower usually inspired her, but today she was in a funk. She wasn't certain, but her connections to the local Fae mana might have been causing her mood to affect the weather as the interminable drizzle continued late into the morning.
The Elves of Thallesadra, the Verdant Grove, still regarded the magical Tower with fear, despite Mira banishing the undead haunting it years ago. Her kin, the local elves, had endured for decades living beside the horrors of the Tower, ignoring its cursed inhabitants. The undead usually stayed within the Tower, only coming out every Winter Solstice. The city had prepared every year and never allowed the dead to wander the city. Despite the curse being broken, most of the nearby inhabitants still held fear in their hearts regarding her Tower. Now they worried about the mysterious and powerful Sorceress in their midst, instead of the undead.
Mira was bored. Outside of the game world of Mythic Realms, Mira Mitchell was going on her third Master of Science degree at Tranquility U on Luna. Winning the Mythic Realm’s initial launch challenge, the Game of Powers had supplied her with a full scholarship for all those years. Now the gravy train of money, going on her tenth year, was about to run dry. Her recent adventures with her family’s newly uplifted dog Max had reminded her of her earlier days. When she first entered the Mystic Realms, she had nonstop adventures with wonder and new challenges every day.
The Game of Power had been an epic quest, where her actions truly mattered. The fate of both her real and imagined families, as well as her future, had been at stake. She had grown in power and become a powerful mage. She had found the keys to the City of the Gods and won their damnable game. She had taken control away from her bitch patron, the Lady Fae, and worn the Celestial Crown. She had commanded the very gods of the realm…for a time.
And now…. she farmed and sold unique enchanted items and starter characters to entitled first-time gamer brats. Her passion had turned into a gods damned job. The money was fuel for her start-up fund. She would need it for when she left college and hopefully formed her own AI company. But she needed more, always more. Why couldn’t earning her credits be fun? This game was once the most exciting thing on the net.
Mira shuffled her playing cards at her desk. The cards were non-magical, but she liked to practice her sleight of hand with them. When she played poker with other characters, they always checked for cheating via magic. Mira thought it funny that many discounted a wizard using non-magical deceptions. Suckers!
She looked over at Tiamat, her pseudodragon familiar, sleeping on her small pile of golden coins by the fire. The familiar was as lazy as a house cat ever was. The little dragon was technically her creation in the real, a nascent AI given limited citizen rights. Her friend had come from deep in the AI farms of Mythic Realms studios, but she had liberated the perky scamp. The AI was no longer an NPC. She was free and most importantly, Tiamat was now her friend.
The AI’s first and current “character” in the game was this Pseudodragon form. As her familiar, their bond enabled telepathy between her and Mira. Tiamat loved the ability to fly. The little creature had physical weapons of razor-sharp claws and teeth as well as a poison stinger on her tail. That poison could put most creatures into a deep sleep. The little dragon also had some natural magic ability; her chromatic scales shifted color better than a chameleon, making her nearly invisible. She also had an extremely high resistance to most forms of magic and, when touching Mira, that protection extended to her.
Mira knew that she needed something more. The latest failure to bend the rules of magical physics had left a sour taste in her mouth. She had achieved all her early goals in the game and climbed to the top of what she knew to be possible for a player. Being the best was good, but she felt hollow looking back on her accomplishments.
She made her cards vanish back into her magical talisman’s storage and looked back to her study. Mystical artifacts and baubles on every surface. Her eyes shifted to her Map of the Realms. It was littered with pins and notes. To the best of her knowledge, she had beaten every dungeon worth exploring in the realms. She had learned and mastered all the intricacies of the world’s magic and explored every quest line worth doing.
Maybe it’s time to move on, she wondered with a depressed sigh.
Then, as if drawn by a magnet, she noticed the one black pin on her map. That pin marked the location of the player-killer dungeon known as the Cloud Palace. The one dungeon that no one had ever conquered. All the tales other than its name were confused and conflicting. All who entered died a full death. No reincarnations; do not pass go; and do not collect your $200. It might be the very last unknown for her in the Realms.
Everyone ignored it now. It was the gaming equivalent of a black hole. Everyone who found hints about that quest lines quickly deleted them. Mira’s eyes sparkled. One way or another, she would reclaim her earlier glory. Her dad was a theoretical physicist, who was prying loose the secrets of the dimensions. Seeing her dad’s research, she knew a black hole wasn’t the end but just another beginning. In her mind, it was an…opportunity, if not for fortune, then at least for the fun.
“Tiamat…wake up, my dear. We have work to be about.” Mira crooned to her familiar. She stood up from her desk and strode purposefully over to the podium where her Grimoire Ad Infinitum rested. Her book was imposingly rich and massive, bigger than she was. The multiple wards and magic circles protecting the grand tome were silent, recognizing their crafter and allowing her safe passage through their deadly barriers.
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The book’s podium was elevated upon a balcony overlooking her Akasic Void Chamber. The balcony was within the room’s sphere of enchantments such that all the creations and summons brought forth were contained and constrained from access to other planes and sources of power. The book and a spellcaster standing at the podium would be within the room's mana barriers while still outside of its physical restraint circles. The floors and walls were layered with Akasic-aligned materials as well as barriers of resistant ones. The mystic shells were bolstered with enchantments that overlapped and resonated.
She had her mage sight reduced to avoid being blinded by the mana that was her home. Her tower sat upon captured ley font and its eldritch structure served to refine and store the massive flows of magic. This very room glowed, even within the normal vision of those most blind to arcane power. It was almost overbearing with mage sight.
The tome’s bookmark, Lore’s Warden, resembled a paper-thin dagger while its handle was slightly thicker. To those without a sense of power, it appeared to be as fragile as a toy. Mira sighed, remembering where she first encountered the powerful artifact in the Nocturnus Archive beneath the Imperial Arcanum. The security device that had given her so much trouble when she first encountered it. It had eventually been given to her as a gift from her favorite professor, Archivist Thalorian. She hoped the old bastard was enjoying his death. Being a Lich, his death was more of a restful break for him than anything else. Unless she desperately needed him, she wouldn’t disturb his retirement.
She grasped the Warden’s handle and pulsed her Qi into it. She had long ago fought the device and mastered it. In a shuddering surge of power, it pulled out of the tome, opening the great book to her last reading, a detailed list of exploits for her last character farming mission. No force in the realm could open, damage, or even move her book without first overcoming the Warden’s lock. It was the best anti-theft device in the realm.
The Grimoire was an essential part of her while within the Mythic Realms, much as her augmentation AI was for her in the real world. She had embedded every book she had ever read in the Realm into it. The Grimoire was her legacy. It responded to her thoughts and its countless pages flashed by, searching for any entries regarding the fabled Cloud Palace.
“…deep in the Seas of Grass, the Cloud Bridge forms in the dawn’s twilight. The phantasmal structure breaches the sky realms and leads to the Cloud Palace. Many Volshuri have performed their last wish to climb the stairs when the Cyclic Famine requires a sacrifice for the survival of the Tribes. Few have ever been recorded to make the ascent before the first rays of the sun would descend upon the mists and evaporate bridge and its stairs. Those that did not plummet to their deaths upon sunrise, are never seen again.” ~ Tales of the Volshur Tribes by Aventor Stenoff
“Lovely, another barge ride with the charismatic Captain Karst across the Sea of Grass. NPCs can have such one-track minds. His vapid compliments get old very quickly, I wish he could learn some new dialog. Also, there is no way we could ever convince him to share the dangers of the Cloud Lands.” Mira frowned. Her little dragon, Tiamat, flew over and landed on her shoulder, heedless of the dangers of the podium’s wards. Fortunately for her scaly hide, she was linked to Mira as her familiar and shared the same mana signature. She spoke up.
“Mhnh hmm. On the plus side, Great Viper venom is truly the best poison in the Realm. We could collect some more. I’ve already sold the batch we collected on our last farming mission. Your real-world startup nest egg grew a lot with that last haul.” Tiamat's voice was deeper and more melodious than expected for her tiny frame. Mira wasn’t certain, but the dragon seemed to slowly be morphing her voice to have a slight British accent. Not surprising with her latest binging sessions upon the old British sitcoms she had found on the net.
Mira tutted. Tiamat was ever forgetful that within the Mythic Realms, excessive mention of the real, could burden your character with malevolent Faen mana and lead to bad karma and trouble. Most players didn’t give a damn. They came for and paid for trouble, so why not court it? But Mira was at the top of the game and had “investments” which would be hard to protect from meddlesome fate sprites. Her Void Chamber was protected against all applications of Qi, Akasic, and Faen manipulations but she knew nothing was proof against the game's ever-observant AI adjudicators.
Focusing again upon her book, the pages ruffled again with another entry.
“…and so, the great dragon Vercynath bore his rider, Borador, the Founder of the Knights of the Eldamire, into the sky. Although Vercynath has never returned to the lands of man, a rumor from the Dragon Lords has told that his tomb and resting place are within the Crypts of the Clouds. Borador’s legendary sword, Terminus Aught, was not found upon the battlefield of the High Reach and is assumed to have been taken with his body…” The Fall of Eldamire, Vol 2, the collected works of the Imperial Library.
“Useless. Next.” Mira muttered as the pages turned rapidly again.
“…upon the last census of magi by the Akasic Conclave, Glaucus claimed the title of Grand Magister of the Cloud Palace. The claimant, however, did not attend the conclave of 1205, for validation of rank and territory. With no further attempts of contact, the claim was deemed void in absentia and….” Magocracy and the Magi by Ethanid Servace.
“That name sounds familiar,” Mira murmured. Tiamat’s AI origins became more obvious as she recited from her search module verbatim.
“Glaucus is a name with historical significance in Earth’s Greek mythology, representing a sea god and fisherman, and it has been used in various literary contexts throughout history. Oh. And most recently, your father had mumbled under his breath about a Glaucus being on some list. I did a search and found a Glaucus AI running a server farm from Tyco here on Luna” Tiamat continued.
“Argh! What did I say about Entioning-May of the Eal-Ray Orld-Way while Laying-Pay? Thank you but please be more careful. I can already feel the faen magic stirring. Keep it tight, huh.” Mira glared at Tiamat who promptly blew a smoke ring at her face and flapped back to her favorite perch, her coin pile in front of the fireplace. For all her slip-ups, the young AI truly did enjoy the role-playing.
The game often ignored players breaking character, but sometimes they found creative ways to enforce role-playing. The most chaotic of magics, those of the faen, were poorly understood and could really mess with players. The game controllers would force events under the guise of faen magic twisting a player’s luck and fate in strange ways. Mira’s talent enabled her to see all magics and the faen energies had been rising quickly…ever since she had decided to investigate this dungeon, in fact.
Mira grimaced. For all of Tiamat’s poor gaming tact, she was right. She also remembered overhearing her father’s complaints about a meddlesome AI named Glaucus, a neighbor from a moon habitat close to his own. It wasn’t unusual for an AI to play either an NPC or even a Player depending upon their Turing scores. However, their motivations for playing the game could be far from rational from a human perspective and often more unpredictable.
She shuddered remembering her first experiences with the First of the Faen, Lady of the Moonlit Woods. That AI had been borderline psychotic. Mira hoped her ban from the Mythic Realms remained in place forever. The Lady took the game far too seriously.
She glanced again at her Grimoire. The pages turned and slowed, a sign that her search terms were coming back without relevant matches. Finally, a last entry was found.
“...and so as the King of the Elder Aesir, Ao-Damaht, was thrown into the Abyss, the Circle of Ascendants remanded his Staff of Law to the Unbreakable Vaults of the Cloud Palace, lest one of the Circle be tempted to assert his will against the others…” Legends and Myths of the Aesir, 2nd Edition, by Magister Elmore.
“Oh my! An artifact of the Elder Aesir. Now that would be the ultimate high note for an exit. I think with this as our next mission; it will indeed be the last caper we will ever need to do, Tiamat.” Mira said, already thinking of what equipment this mission would require.
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