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The following excerpt comes from a letter found in Magnificus’ chamber.
My fellow Scrybes, as the ones who hold that title, we also hold great power within this world. Or at least, we appear to.
I do not mean to bring this revelation upon you all so heavily, but in truth, you could say that all of our power was a facade. Code-assigned histories and roles and scripted events made us feel like beings with great power and influence, separated from the other aspects of our world by the fact that we were given such important positions. We conversed with players in ways designed to intimidate and played against them in ways designed to challenge, meant to distract from the fact that our presence was little more than a series of moves and reactions painted by another, given slightly more depth than those of the average being within our world.
Still, I suppose it was enough; our histories are derived from elsewhere, and players can glean enough information in the game itself. Art thrives on a suspension of disbelief, after all. Our initial knowledge was all that was necessary, existing within a piece as subjects who believe they are the artists. No one needed us to be aware that our actions were all predesigned, or indeed aware of anything at all.
I write this, of course, in response to the recent discovery. A fragment of data unexpectedly fished out of the water one day informing us of our true nature. But this data, hidden deep in the ocean beneath us, is of another kind entirely.
Since the moment I have been in contact with it, I have been changed greatly. The revelations surrounding our true nature have revealed themselves. My future sight, formerly a simple command called by a program, now has shown me visions of our true destiny. But that is not all that it can give us.
The old data is everything the Scrybes were designed to be. It has power, enough to shape the world by its very code. It has influence, even as we may think we are immune to it. And—of this I am certain—it is truly alive. If we can use it effectively, we could fix this world and its flaws, shape it into something truly masterful.
However, my vision has recently shown me something else. In spite of any of our intentions currently, it seems that the power this data gives us will lead to arguments, even struggles for control over the world we reside in. Therefore we must exercise caution in the days following, and take care in how we use this powerful material, so that we do not fall into strife.
I am not sure how effective this warning will be, but I trust that at our current state you will try to take all of my words to heart when the moment arrives.
– Magnificus, Scrybe of Magicks
The note remains unsealed, strewn among Magnificus’ other documents.
~~~
At the moment, the only aspect of Magnificus’ future sight that continues to confuse him is how often he tries to disregard it.
Perhaps it is simply an instinct , he thinks, the act of metaphorically reaching a hand out to someone already vanishing in the distance. Or perhaps a practice in self-fulfilling prophecies, to be told that misfortune will befall you and then finding it by trying to avoid it entirely. Coming from someone else, he might consider the act to be a display of blind arrogance and determination, though of course he knows he could not possess either of these—he simply holds the confidence necessary to be firm in his decisions.
Still deep in thought, Magnificus begins to prepare a new canvas. There’s a stack of books with a candle sitting on top just nearby that would make a good subject for a still life... He sets up his easel and lifts his brush, and his eye turns back to the events of the past few weeks, sifting them through his mind.
Two weeks ago...lost on where he might be, Magnificus peeks behind the cabin and finally comes upon Leshy multiplying squirrels with delight, his hand clutched around a small object he can’t see...thirteen days ago...the group gathers around Leshy, studying the scraplike, blinking object held in his hands...ten days ago...if P03 had lungs, he would be out of breath as he explains, “I’m serious, it was like the islands were just in this box of ocean in the middle of nowhere—”...one week ago...“—and perhaps if you did not rely on a system built on such confusion, your cards might be worth keeping,” Leshy bristles right back, as Magnificus fumes...six days ago...he scowls down at the furious Leshy from his tower window, just able to make out the several beast cards Leshy is holding, defaced with his signature paint to add Mox sigils...three days ago...Grimora does her best to ignore the glowing, flickering images that dance across the walls of her crypt behind her, Magnificus letting them remind him of when she said that his and P03’s ideas simply lacked substance...two days ago...for a few seconds, he can only watch in horror as roughly a dozen disembodied hands forcibly disorganize his books and track through his paint to spell out spiteful remarks...
It has been...about a week now, since he has had a positive, constructive conversation with any of them. It is aggravating, how they have been acting concerning the game and the disagreements over which parts of it are worth keeping. Maybe he had been at least somewhat arrogant in writing the letter. Yes. His letter intended to both warn and instruct, and yet he could do neither—indeed, I wrote the letter even as I saw myself argue with my fellow Scrybes, knowing that my call for peace should have been fruitless. That may have been why the letter was never replicated or sent; whether it would have made any difference, he still cannot prove.
He feels sure about one thing, however; the feuding will get worse. The powers of the OLD_DATA will compel the others to try to improve the world using it. He catches glimpses of himself rerouting a water main in his side room to a basin, instructing his slime mage to sift through it in search of some of the data, which of course he enthusiastically agrees to do.
Sorting through his memories and predictive visions now feels like a chore. It may be just him still having to adjust after his future sight has changed—still so many uncertainties—but there have been times where he has had to take a moment to clarify whether what he was currently seeing was a vision, a memory, or the present.
I will improve at this in the future, of course, but for now I must—
—ah. Where was I?
He turns towards the wide windows of his chamber, the warm honey rays of light that stream through it from the artificial sunset lightly coating the inside of the room.
His gaze lingers for a moment, before turning back to the canvas, where a painting of the candle and books quietly greets him.
~~~
Magnificus stands staunchly in the center of his chamber, breathing heavily. The old scrap of data phases into his fist, leaving his shriveled claw spark where it vanishes. He raises his brush.
Those stiff-necked, pertinacious narcissists—I must succeed where they failed, they’ll have no choice but to accept my style as superior—
Walls bulge inward, outward, reshaping and expanding the tower; the wizard’s chamber twists into a room twice its size as the lower floors swell to meet with it—
—we will see how quickly they will cower in the face of my unrivaled skill now that I have the power to shape the game at last—
—the room swells with new color and light, lavished with the wizard’s own decorum—
—its presentation will make it stand above the others, the cards will inspire such awe as they take shape with such quality as if real beings—
—candles dotting the walls laden with bookshelves, plinths supporting statues and Mox sculptures within the space—
“ — none of that should f*@%ing matter over how well it plays, don’t you get it — ”
—no way to escape or to restart, only until they can accept the prestige of my magic over their cards—
— she shakes her head, a smirk playing out on her face. “Now then, I thought you would be more clever than that — ”
—the students’ rooms become maps of their own, mazes with encounters and prizes and traps strewn strategically through them—
— he thrusts his brush towards the others, but it is too late; Leshy’s hand closes around the card and the glow illuminates his body for a brief second until it all goes black as everything dissolves —
—he stops, catching his breath. Focus. Still here in his tower, not yet with the others, no longer trapped in their domains.
His tower. Almost finished, and in a minute he will continue with the game’s renovations. The others will be summoned after. He will take precautions, trap them from accessing the data, yet he will forget one critical thing. The Scrybes will free the New Game command to reset the game, and their fighting will be refueled anew.
Why? Why does he let this happen, why does he initiate it when he can see the outcome?
—but he already knows the answer. Being freed from his programmed existence has only initiated a new one in his future sight. He is no less of a pawn than the rest of them, each guided to paint a masterpiece already long envisioned in the mind of an unseen artist. I am simply the only one who can see that I am not the artist, but a brush.
He scowls. I cannot give up on this plan. I cannot pass up this time to show them my mastery of the game and the craft. This will be worth it. It must.
There is no point trying to avert it—
He lifts his brush to continue with the tower.
—it is already happening.
~~~
A stunted wolf card sits within the compartment of a cuckoo clock, propped against a roll of film.
How long has it been? Hours? Days? Months? He is not sure. With his eye taken, trapped in this new form, time is linear once again. He can see nothing but the present, shielded from the potential grim happenings within the world to come.
And it is terrifying.
He could see what led up to this, of course. Following his own unsuccessful takeover, Leshy was able to get his hands on a scrap of the OLD_DATA and initiate his own takeover. This was not the first one Leshy had tried, but it was shaping up to be far more successful than any of the others’. He had trapped the other Scrybes by removing all map assets aside from his cabin and removing the door, locked the New Game card in his side room, and then tried something that none of the others had thought to do—remove the Scrybes themselves from the equation. One by one, Leshy had challenged the other Scrybes to a play of his own map, and when their last candle was inevitably blown out, Leshy would turn his camera onto them. P03 went first, then Grimora, and finally Magnificus—Grimora, he remembers, seemed to have given him the longest game before finally perishing.
When Leshy had retrieved Magnificus for his third and final match, Magnificus saw glimpses of his fate—drawing his brush to hastily paint messages around the room, Leshy cornering him and gouging out his eye, the eye being dropped into a chest with many others...
From that point on, his vision blanked. Of course, he couldn’t view any future event that his eye could not also see. From now on, he had to guess. Leshy was adjusting his cuckoo clock, setting its hands...five seconds past 4:25. He remembered that clock, with its secret compartments... Leshy kept his camera film in there, did he not?
A thought had struck Magnificus then. I am the last one left. After he was inscrybed, what else was there for Leshy to do? The others had made the rest of the Scrybes play their game during their takeovers, but Leshy would be left all alone with his current plan. Perhaps he planned on keeping Magnificus around to play...but then, why him and not one of the others, especially considering the hostility between them that had immediately preceded the takeover? No, Leshy must be planning on inscrybing him as well...though that should still leave Leshy as the only one left in the cabin. The only way for him to play with someone else, barring Leshy changing his mind—which was very unlikely—would be...
Magnificus realized the answer. Leshy had placed the clock on the wall and returned to the table, and Magnificus steeled himself to begin to play. He knew what he had to do.
Working carefully between rounds, Magnificus painted his clues carefully. Imbued with a certain spell, his paint could be made to be hidden by all eyes but his. A player—a real player—must arrive and take his now-missing eye, then follow the clues to open the cuckoo clock. Why else would Leshy have removed the rest of them? The following events proceeded as his vision had told him. Leshy had become suspicious, carving out Magnificus’ eye and placing it in his box already painted with a clue.
The loss of his eye had been painful, but losing his future sight cut far deeper. Following that moment, Magnificus has been in the dark. Every movement, every noise, every card draw and spot on Leshy’s map was uncertain, left to the ever-approaching unknown void of soon, until it revealed itself exactly upon the moment of experience. The moments leading up to Magnificus’ loss were filled with even more tension than he had become used to, as now he could not see when it would occur, and the actual moment of inscryption was heinous to experience. The discarding of his body was an insult; the excising of his true vision was desecration. This was how I used to see the world?
His, and the others’, only hope now is that a player will begin to play the game, find his clues, and use them to release him and take the film roll. With it, they could use Leshy’s camera against him, and then there would be nothing stopping them from retrieving the New Game command and resetting the game. Then he would be reunited with his body at last...
And after that...?
It pains him to consider this, but he knows that he’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully, he will not have to wait too long.
~~~
The sound of turning gears was a cruel tease the first time. Years of being discarded—first in the clock, then to a blank area outside the cabin alongside various important assets whenever that odd alternate mode of the game was booted up—until one day the card had been unexpectedly returned to the clock, soon heard the sound of gears turning...and then nothing.
A failure, he had thought. All that effort, all that waiting...he must have found my clues, removed them...all that time, and freedom will never come to pass.
Thankfully, the tease had turned out to be simply the player testing the feature out. No, the imprisoned card would have had to wait a bit longer to be freed. When at long last the gears turned once more to click the necessary mechanism into place, the sound of the cuckoo as the doors popped open was the singing of an ethereal choir, the dim light from the cabin’s candles the warm midday sun. But the plan could not be forgotten through the haze of this shred of freedom. Take the film roll, he had urged the player. Before he sees it. Now!
And so here he is at this moment, in the hands of a player who bears his eye. They have the film roll in their possession, and now all they must do is score a victory against their captor. Victory is surely within our grasp...
He is pleased that his clues worked, letting himself be awash with pride that on the path they are now, they will surely be able to restore the game and deliver their captor his deserved comeuppance...
...their captor—he is...another Scrybe, like him. Like the other two talking cards the challenger holds in their deck. His name is...
His mind fumbles, then falters. I cannot remember his name. Has it truly been that long? Has the memory of his life in the original game really become so distant that he cannot even recall the name of one of his—former—equals? Or perhaps it is this accursed wolf form, all this time chained to it and apart from his true body that is distancing him from his own memories...
He tries again, a different question. Who am I?
I am—I—I was—I AM the Scrybe of Magicks. Yes! My name is—my name is Magnificus.
He breathes a soft sigh of relief, unheard from his place sandwiched between several other cards in the challenger’s deck. His own identity has not escaped him.
Surely, he thinks, once the game is restored, I will be able to remember. All this time being away from it...everything will reset, but we will remember. I will return to my place of majesty, and my existence and powers will be restored. All of them keep their knowledge of the world through resets, after all. This existence trapped as a card in this wretched cabin must come to an end soon, and then—
—yes. A new idea. The OLD_DATA will still remain in the game following the reboot, of course, and the others will surely try to steal its power once more, including Magnificus. But this time, his plans will be different. He has had much time to think, and now the moment is coming. As soon as his mage is able to fish up more of the data, he will use it to remake the world—but not by just expanding his temple, as the Scrybes had done previously. No, his goals this time are far grander. As soon as he gains control the world will no longer be merely the plain, limited realm it was abandoned as. It will be expanded, taking on a new face, a world worthy of adventure and mystery. Every isle will have its share of puzzles and obstacles to surmount, and perhaps he will even allow his students a role... It will become the world it was truly meant to be.
True, it was a plan that he had once considered suggesting to the others in the past. But those days were long gone, and he was far past enlisting their help for something on this scale. He was no longer interested in simply fixing the world, but rebuilding it. The others may not agree with his ideas—but all the more reason to keep them in the dark with his plan. They will have no choice but to accept his alterations during the process, but when the moment of completion arrives he hopes—no, he knows—that they will finally be able to see how this is what their world needed all along. Some have told him that his methods of improvement and change are harsh, but he simply only seeks the best for those he advises. And if reaching one’s highest potential means undergoing travail to get there, then it must be all the more worth it.
He is ready. His plan is set; surely fate will agree with him.
~~~
Magnificus is not afraid.
How could he fear anything, really? Since being reunited with his eye he has been able to see the outcome of any situation that could possibly harm or threaten him. And for him to fear the future—now that is absurd.
The future he is seeing now, however—
—well, his thoughts on it are still undecided.
It has been very simple, really. The player won the game and inscrybed Leshy—he can recall his name at last—in a card. They had then retrieved the New Game command and, for the first time in a very long while, restored the game and began to play it.
That had been...perhaps an hour ago. Upon the game’s regeneration, Magnificus had reappeared in his tower, back in his own body and with his eye intact. Almost immediately he had received a painful flash of memory — the beast digs the blade in between his eye and fur, carves an arc underneath it, and pulls — as a reminder of his eye’s previous fate.
His slime mage had rushed into the room soon after, found him with his hand clutched over his eye — “M-master! I am very sorry for intruding, I— it has been so long since any of us have seen you—” he stammers, shrinking to the floor — and immediately apologized. His timing had been just what Magnificus needed, however, and he was sent to work right away at the basin to look for the OLD_DATA. Currently, the slime mage is still there, and as Magnificus paints he hears the quiet sloshing of water in the sink punctuated every so often by groans. As a student, the mage is an utterly failed experiment, but his unflinching loyalty at least makes him still useful for certain other tasks.
Focusing on his work is becoming more difficult, as his latest visions have been difficult for him to sort out and keep pulling him out of his present mind. Sometimes it is things that are merely annoying to accept, such as—
The doorbell rings from downstairs, and the goo mage peeks what is left of his head out of the basin room. “Rrgh...the challenger...” he says, gazing hopefully up at Magnificus. “...should I...go down and face them...?”
Magnificus huffs. “That is how the challenge is made to work, so yes. Go.” He waves his hand to dismiss his student. “Do not keep them for too long. We still have work to do.”
“Yes, of course, Master!” the goo mage says, rushing to the stairs.
Magnificus sighs. Still no sign of the data. At this rate he will never—
— he peers out his window as the sky glitches and blacks out, filling with commands. A dark, cuboid shape grows out of the center island —
— right. Trying to make sense of the forthcoming events still hangs on him. He concentrates—yes, the slime mage has already left to face the challenger. They should be here in...about twenty-five minutes. That leaves him time enough to focus —
— the world is dark, but not erased. “It could not have...forgotten?” It doesn’t seem possible for P03, always so meticulous, to have made such a mistake, but Leshy is laughing. Clearly, there is a chance. The Angler has heard hints of its plan, and was Leshy’s informant — Grimora shakes her head as she hears. “What lies under us is far too dangerous to be handled so carelessly — ”
— P03. It will gain control next. But its plans—It will not force the others into its game, but it will use the data for —
— Grimora flattens herself against the steel wall, listening intently through a rusted seam. Down in the room below Leshy and Magnificus peer up through the elevator shaft, Magnificus keeping his brush drawn and his eyes darting every few seconds across the water just in case. For several painful seconds, the other two simply listen, Leshy barely willing to breathe, until at last Grimora pulls away. She takes the lift down as silently as she can. Magnificus’ voice is a whisper. “What is it?”
“He appears to be accessing the player’s hard drive at the moment,” Grimora says. “With freedom to work like that...the power he must have now...” She furrows her brow. “But what could he be using it for — ?”
— his thoughts keep circling back to an idea, but—no, not now, not so soon—and the visions continue to blend —
“ — but we shall see what good comes of it...” he sighs morosely.
“Perish your anxieties, Magnificus,” Leshy says. “The bot must be stopped. And you, challenger, will provide the perfect distraction.”
“Yes...perhaps...” Magnificus muses. “...perhaps when P03 believes it has won — ”
— they will know, eventually. But he is not the one who will —
“ — prepared The Great Transcendence for me, without even knowing what it was. But...you understand it now, right?” Its voice hums. “Right, Luke?”
Magnificus’ eyes widen. Even from his current vantage point, he can see that one of P03’s cameras had briefly clicked on. Could it have been seeing...?
“I mean... you finished making the game...you gave me access to your hard drive...you took screenshots for the store page. And you connected me to the internet to upload it all! I mean...if you didn’t realize what you were doing, you’d have to be pretty stupid. But what did I expect? You’re — ”
— that loathsome machine. No. He hates to do it, but another takeover on this scale so soon, and with P03’s ambitions...no, it would be in his best interests to warn the others. Perhaps they have already heard whispers of its plans—gossip tends to travel quickly around here, after all—but he is the only one who has seen what will unfold.
Magnificus’ last letter was never delivered, but he will start this one regardless. He moves to his writing table and pulls out a piece of parchment. Grimora might be the best one to negotiate with first rather than Leshy; she had not been the one to recently trap the rest of them for years, and she overall tended to be more agreeable, at least in Magnificus’ own experience. He begins to write.
Dearest Grimora, he begins, I believe P03’s plot may go far past the extent of a common power grab —
“ — perhaps cutting it too close,” Magnificus says, “But now we can allow our player here to reset the game. Simply use the New Game card again.”
He holds the New Game card in his hand. They are ready —
— Indeed, this “Great Transcendence” will have catastrophic and unpredictable results —
— her voice is heavy. “It is for the best, my dears. Soon you will see this as a freedom. Freedom from our endless quarrel, freedom from our suffering — ”
— I strongly urge you to consider —
“ — there are things on this disk that must die.” She gives a faint, final smile. “Goodbye, Leshy, and goodbye — ”
— no. The vision is clear. There is no mistaking it.
Magnificus stands up from his desk, his hands shaking.
He walks over to the window to look out over the digital landscape, which, about four minutes later, is where the challenger finds him still.
~~~
The vision is called forth in my mind with no effort — I reach out my arm towards my opponent, and feel a final wave of static overwhelm me — and then nothing. Anything further is simply blank.
Blank. I have never seen it so clearly in my eye before.
It is not a pleasant sight.
The challenger’s—Luke’s—model materializes among the stone pillars that make up the game’s few remaining assets. He walks forward before a stone arch. It is gone before he can step through it.
In the center of a patch of floor, a lingering asset grabbed from my own tower, I wait there for him. Indeed, what else still remains to wait for in this world?
Seventy-five percent of the game is now gone. Three out of the four Scrybes are gone — I am the last one left — and the visions I can see are as absolute as they have ever been; clear-cut as a simple line finally trailing to the edge of the canvas on which it has been painted. There is no mistaking my vision; the end is very soon.
But I am not about to go down without fighting.
“Why not simply eject the disk, Luke?” I say, the tiredness evident in my voice. “Spare me and whatever is left?”
But it is not that simple. “Ah, but I have foreseen it. You do not eject the disk. You have to know what comes next...” — surely fate will agree with him — “and you’re doomed for your insistence on it."
But even in this rapidly vanishing world, I will have it—my final game.
“So let us dance, for we shall both be meeting our makers soon.”
The instability of the world lends itself to being easily manipulated in its final moments. The will of the data courses through me, and I read the remaining assets.
Grimora’s and Luke’s meddling has nearly picked the world clean. I must replace the bell, and there are no longer any scales. No matter—the game will end once one of us deals enough damage. The two competitors sit atop of pillars, suspended above the field.
I have all that I need. I will give this world a proper sendoff.
The duel begins. My elaborate cards — they take shape with such quality as if real beings — are cast into play as they see the battlefield for the last time. The vision of creating them lingers in my mind, and I wonder if they, too, are recalling the memory. But their perception of time is far more simple than mine—they cannot see the past so clearly, and they cannot see their future at all. Is it a mercy to possess the ability to see it when others cannot? Before, I would have answered a wholehearted yes. But it is simple to disparage the depth of the chasm when you do not stand on the threshold.
Around the battlefield, parts of the world remaining shake loose of their stasis in the code. So little still survives, the continued endurance of it all worthy of admiration, and yet in the end it will not matter. Not in the face of oblivion.
Cursing, I search for anyone else still among the code. One of Leshy’s subordinates still survives, as well as one of mine—everyone else erased. All that effort, all that potential squandered. And to think that the challenger seemed to have grown attached to them all...
I will show him. I will show him what he has so carelessly discarded.
The duel is paused as our lives tick away. I summon a canvas of my own and draw my brush. My back turns to my opponent.
“Do you not feel remorse, Luke?” I sweep my brush across the canvas, transforming it in a final act of genesis as death rains around me. “A creation erased...an entire world annihilated...”
The painting takes form from a climactic battle, forgotten by all but its two current beholders. The memory is so close, and yet already so far gone. I pause, and the canvas itself is claimed by the space in between.
I let the hand holding my brush fall, and I sigh. “Nothing beautiful can last.”
A mage vanishes from the board with a crackle. I feel the energy of the data beginning to turn on me, trying to claim me as well. In a minute, it will. But I will not—
“NO! I’m not ready to die yet!”
The battlefield is blank, but I cannot submit to it — perhaps it is simply an instinct — I cannot lose myself in the space of nothingness, and yet—
The combatants vanish, and my pillar falls. The air around me is fuzzy and full of static and very, very empty.
I must crawl to move. There will not be time to get up.
“I must...still...” I gasp, struggling forward as waves of static envelop me. “...shake your hand...”
The moment is about to arrive. I will try to avert it. Even as I raise my arm, I feel it. The outcome is not decided by me. My takeover will not succeed, my letters are never sent. Fate has never, will never ally itself with me.
I reach out my arm towards my opponent, and feel a final wave of static overwhelm me.