Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (73/?) (Patreon)

“In the beginning, there was nothing.” The fox began with a certainty and absoluteness of unassailable academic authority. “And I don’t mean this in a metaphysical manner, nor in a literal sense, but from a historian’s earnest and pragmatic perspective. For in the beginning, as any good historian can tell you, there was nothing - by virtue of there being nothing present from the time to infer from, nor anyone present at the time whose records we could likewise draw conclusions from. So I am afraid I will be unable to touch upon the matters of what some may strictly consider as: the beginning. I will, however, be able to tell you what sources tell us of said beginning. Of the tales and stories passed on by those closest to that time, by those who might have heard whispers and echoes of a time before time.”

The end of that monologue had me yawning hard.

And it wasn’t even five minutes past o-ninehundred yet.

I was quickly starting to dread what the rest of the class was shaping up to be. Because if this first impression was anything to go by, then there was little hope for much in the way of anything even remotely resembling excitement in this class.

“We begin our story-” Articord continued, her voice deepening, as its formerly grouchy undercurrents gave way to an epic score of narration. “-with creation.” Several mana radiation pings suddenly hit me at once, the first marking the amplification of the fox’s voice, the second coinciding with the sudden manifestation of an emerald-encrusted staff, and the third… plunging the entire room into complete and utter darkness.

Gasps and startled breaths quickly followed, echoing in the emptiness that was the vast and all too familiar darkness. "They say that the time before beginnings wasn’t so much time at all, as it was a formless and vague state of nonexistence." True to the professor’s words, there was indeed, nothing around us; save for her and the rest of the student body hanging listlessly in the void. “This nonexistence manifested itself as a state of unbearable heat-” The professor’s staff shifted from its natural shade of green to a brilliant and vibrant shade of ruby-red. “-of chaotic and violent manastreams-” The ruby-red gem started glowing abruptly, eliciting both sharp breaths of shock and wide-eyed looks of confusion, as the heads of a hundred different students cocked every which way in as many axes as they could turn. Their eyes focused on something in that dark, jumping and darting from invisible object to invisible object, seeing something that my human eyes and human-built sensors just couldn’t see - manastreams. “-set within a space so small you could rest it comfortably upon the tip of a pencil.” Sure enough, the diffused glow of Articord’s staff shrunk whilst its intensity only grew. It shrunk to the point where the light was the size of a dot, yet it continued to glow so bright that it forced those among the crowd without auto-tinting lenses to shield their eyes with a mix of magic and a good old-fashioned squint.

“They say that in this smallest of smallest spaces, came the birth of a powerful force that no apocalyptic cataclysm on record could ever, or will ever contend to.” She raised her staff once more, the pin-prick dot of intense light continuing to grow brighter and brighter until finally…

It could glow no more.

ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 500% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS

And an explosion rocked the once void-filled space.

This very-real force knocked many students from their invisible seats, buffeting them back with wave after wave of successive shocks, eventually forcing the smaller amongst the crowd to be flung back to the back of the lecture hall itself; eliciting screams and wails that were mostly drowned out by the heart-stopping thumps of this visceral explosion.

My gut twisted more than it should’ve during the whole episode.

The shockwaves, the blast, the suddenness of it all took me out of the classroom, placing my mind back in a time and place that I tried desperately not to think about.

Anxiety started to well up in the form of this sickly nausea, this sense of disconnect… but ended just as abruptly as it started leaving me dazed, confused, but otherwise unharmed.

Articord, all the while, maintained this genuinely merry smile. “Such a force would have been the final moments heralding the end of time and yet… it instead marked the end of that nothingness that came before. For following this point, came the ceaseless expansion of reality as we know it. A reality consisting of the realm of the gods, and the realm of mortality, with the latter coalescing into what we recognize today as the Nexus.”

Upon de-tinting my lenses, I was met not with the featureless void like before, but instead a large expanse of green beneath our feet, and an equally expansive bright blue sky above our heads.

It was as if the whole class was now floating above one of those pre-alpha test-maps for some immersive VR-sim, but one that was quickly being populated by all sorts of things, with life below us growing, changing, shifting, with trees and forests rising and falling by the second.

It was around the same time that a hand was finally raised.

Auris’ hand.

“Yes, Lord Ping?”

“Professor, what you are saying is sacrilege.”

Here we go again. I thought to myself with an internalized sigh, the bull’s predictable stubbornness being the thing that finally grounded me after that whole experience.

“How so, Lord Ping?” The Professor urged, crossing her arms.

“You mention nothing of the gods. You mention the myth of creation without any utterances of the Gods which played a role in its formation.” He continued, prompting the Professor to respond in a way I wasn’t expecting.

A small, yet sly, smile.

There was something she found amusing in Ping’s comment.

“Indeed. And I do in fact applaud you for taking proactive note, Lord Ping. However, I would request that you reserve your judgment for the very end of the story; at least with your grievances as it pertains to the Gods.”

This sentiment was more or less confirmed by her response, as it was clear there was something she wasn’t addressing just yet. Something that made it so that she didn’t have to dock points from Ping, which meant that there was something else there to her story that hadn’t come up yet.

“I will obey, Professor.” The bull dipped his head low in acknowledgement, before sitting back down.

With that out of the way, Articord continued, bringing back the blackboard behind her as several floating pieces of chalk were now busy not just writing down her talking points, but illustrating it; or at least illustrating something.

That something eventually started resembling a timeline of sorts, a fact that was confirmed by the label at the bottom denoting it as the: “Timeline of the Beginning.”

The further the diagram was developed however, the less it started resembling a traditional timeline.

Instead, it started resembling something eerily familiar, yet not quite the same given its magical flourishes and absurd contents.

Starting on the left farside of the board with a single chalky dot, the ‘timeline’ expanded rightwards, flaring out wider and wider like a sort of cone or funnel. This cone-like shape was quickly segmented into different ‘sections’, and within each section were what looked to be different visual representations of anything from intangible concepts to physical objects. With the ones closest to the small chalky dot consisting of wave-like squiggles, which I interpreted to be manastreams, and the ones furthest from the dot consisting of anything and everything from sketches of rocks to dirt and water. Eventually however, this weird ‘timeline’ ended at the very right of the board with what looked to be two bubbles - one containing a flat top-down view of a map, and the other consisting of a realm of clouds and starless darkness.

It took a while, but the moment that last piece of chalk had retreated from the board, was the moment I was suddenly struck with an utterly crazy realization.

One that I knew for a fact wasn’t possible.

“EVI…” I began, turning to the only other… ‘person’ here I knew could dispel my insane conspiracy theories. “Is it just me, or does that ‘timeline’ resemble one of those super simplified interpretations of the timeline of the universe following the big bang? Like those ones they teach in like primary school with the big bang starting from a single dot then expanding outwards into the formation of like: particles, nuclei, light, stars, galaxies and stuff?”

I hoped to everything that the EVI wouldn’t immediately decide that I’d finally passed the psychological threshold of being fit for active duty.

“Error: Unable to provide a sufficient answer within current operating parameters. Cause: Insufficient data for inference and extrapolation within the given question parameters, Cadet Booker.” Was all the EVI had to say on the matter however.

Prompting me to breathe a sigh of frustration at being the only person who was seeing this.

“Suggestion: manually lower the Abstraction-to-Veracity Tolerance Value (AtVTV) to allow for a lower-fidelity, but higher than tolerable margin of answer abstraction.”

“Alright.” I nodded, my eyes flying across my HUD to do just that. “But only temporarily.” I reiterated, setting a limited time window for just this one instance.

“Acknowledged. Parsing… Superficial likeness detected between Artifact Snapshot C02-001a [Timeline of the Beginning.] and that of the common graphical depiction of the ‘Timeline of the Expansion of the Universe’.”

“I knew it.” I whispered internally.

“Disclaimer: the answer is abstracted beyond tolerable working limits (TWL) as dictated by IAS and LREF joint data analysis protocols (J-DAP).”

“Acknowledged, EVI. Still, the resemblance is uncanny.” I muttered out, just as Articord began shifting the whole scene once more, moving the whole class into what was essentially a bigger version of the sight-seers Thacea, Thalmin, or Ilunor had shown me thus far.

We were now in the middle of an untouched woodlands, with birds chirping, wolves howling, and a great many more insects performing a whole host of natural orchestral symphonies; all of which would’ve made Kolby Digital’s 10DX sound systems blush.

“Now with that prologue out of the way, we can begin our story in earnest. Our story starts, as with many stories, with the birth of sapience, and the emergence of cultures. We start with a collection of people.” The immersive VR experience that was the classroom illustrated this point rather vaguely, revealing a bunch of elves that had popped into existence, looking more like your typical fantasy wood-elves more than anything. “The formation of the earliest cultures were forged through mutual strife, and a collective desire just out of mere survival.” Torrential rains battered this would-be group of hunter-gatherers, buffeting them with wave after wave of unrelenting winds and deafening them with heart-stopping thunder. “These peoples, despite being as sapient as you and I, did not start off as particularly mighty. Nor did they start off with the more obvious gifts endowed to the other creatures of the world.” The professor paused, as a carousel of animals resembling a character selection screen appeared before us. Highlighted by a beam of sunlight penetrating the thick forest canopy. “Neither claws for slashing-” A Bear. “Nor teeth for gnashing-” A sabertooth tiger. “Nor wings for flying-” A bird of prey. “Nor legs for leaping.” A… giant frog. “Or even eyes for stalking-” A bird-wildcat hybrid. “These peoples that were destined for greatness, did not start out as particularly great. They had none of the obvious gifts which would otherwise save them from nature’s wrath. Save for one exception, which they harnessed to their fullest potential.”

The scene soon shifted, to the group of wood elves forming primitive stone tools, building early shelters, and hunting wild animals… all with the help of magic.

“The gift of the sapient mind, and the will of the enlightened spirit. For the gift of sapiency is the gift of creation with intent. Because unlike any of the beasts of the forests, whether magical or typical, they did not merely fight for survival. No. They were fighting for a higher calling, a greater purpose, a desire that prevails to this day.”

The group of elves finally took a step back from their projects, and out of the thick impenetrable world that was the forest, they’d carved out what looked to be the start to an actual proper home.

Although a modest one, consisting of what Ilunor would happily describe as mud huts.

“A desire for civilization-” The professor announced with a degree of finality, before shifting to what looked to be a funeral procession, with the group of elves pouring mana into the body of a deceased older elf; in what Thacea had formerly described as harmonization. “-for the preservation of legacy.”

The next few minutes were spent in silence as time sped up. In a scene reminiscent of my own NYC timelapse, this timelapse of the early Nexus proceeded with the same breakneck pace, and the same intensity of industriousness… barring the industry, of course.

The small village quickly evolved into a proper town, its buildings growing in size as it was in complexity. From simple huts to log cabins, to stone and brick buildings, to fully masoned houses, things progressed rapidly, through the aid of what could only be described as a mix of basic tools and advanced magical spells to make up for the lack of certain technologically inclined apparatuses.

Cobblestone roads gave way to roads that looked bizarrely smooth. Having been flattened and reformed using a combination of heat and other unknown magical means. Streetlights appeared, lit by a combination of oil lanterns and magical orbs. Carts, wagons, and even what looked to be a horseless trolley appeared floating above the smooth cobblestone road, all pieces of anachronistic technologies and implements seemingly out of place, but working in cohesion through unseen magical means.

Eventually however, our perspective shifted once more, zooming out higher and higher still as we saw that the heart of what was formerly that small village was now merely just a fraction of a fraction of the bustling town that had since taken its place. The woodlands around it were gradually, meticulously, and with great precision, being torn down mile by circular mile. Treelines were felled left and right first with the aid of simple tools with magic-use filling the gaps where those tools had underperformed. Until finally those mana-less tools were replaced by a fleet of floating magical saws wielded by a handful of mages. Eventually, this too was replaced by the arrival of a particularly well-dressed mage, floating above the forest itself, who simply uprooted an entire spherical mile’s worth of trees with the flick of a single wrist; the trees, the plants, and the animals hidden within all floating towards a portal that simply swallowed them up to some unknown destination.

There was a precision and an ordered chaos to everything, with a lack of any true standardization embodied by the rapid development of clashing architectural styles, haphazard zoning, as well as what looked to be a fierce series of land grabs marked by the occasional battle, duel, and skirmish that whilst violent only lasted for barely a second given the pace of this timelapse’s speeds.

“This is just one of many such groups that emerged from the dirt. Yet no matter where you go within the nexus-” The professor paused once more, her staff flashing every few seconds, causing the sights around us to radically shift from location to location, teleporting us from city to city to city to city just to illustrate the sheer number of similar such kingdoms dotting the Nexus at this point in time. “-you will find similar stories highlighting the triumph of sapiency.”

The professor promptly brought us back to the original village-turned city, traveling towards the outskirts of town that now bordered a mountain range harboring a tiny enclave of untouched woodlands. There, she focused on the carousel of animals from before. Their forms have since become emaciated, probably due to a destruction of the local ecology. “A thousand generations, and we see that the only true way forward, the only true march towards success, lies not with the mindless animal, but the enlightened sapient mind. As is written in the oldest of oldest texts: On The Nature of Sapiency and the Disillusionment of the Animal; The Necessity of the Obliteration of the Animal from the Sapient Being.”

“And why exactly is that?” The professor asked, although I couldn’t tell if it was rhetorical or not.

The raising of a few hands clued me in to the answer. As the professor once more picked out a random member from the crowd.

This time, it was the bat-like Airit from Qiv’s group.

“Because the sapient mind is capable of living not just for the sake of survival, but for higher values and aspirations.” Airit answered with a bright smile.

“Five points.” The professor responded. “But only if you can answer exactly what higher values and aspirations you are referring to. Which one above all else? Chivalry? Loyalty? Vengeance? Selflessness?”

“Remembrance. Legacy. A fealty to what came before and the understanding that it is the responsibilities of the present to forward the stories of the past.” Airit spoke out in that high-pitched bat-like manner, yet managed to hold her own all the same despite that.

Articord paused as she pondered that answer, her one hand rubbing the gem of her scepter, whilst the other went to soothe a crease forming on her temples. “Five points. But I will not award points for the bare minimum of answers following this first class.” She warned, before moving on just as quickly, zooming back from the small patch of forest as we now looked down upon the Nexus from high above.

Cities dotted the landscape.

Each one rivaling even the capitals of Aetheronrealm, not to mention Havenbrockrealm.

Along with that, monuments and magical megastructures were placed either around, within, or all along the paths that connected each and every city.

“This is the story of our legacy. This is the story of a people who understood the values of permanence, of their responsibility to never drop the torch.” The professor announced not with pride, but solemnity.

A pause punctuated that brief aside, as we watched as the cities grew closer and closer together, and in what felt like one of those informational animations of the Acela corridor forming into a cohesive megacity; except they didn’t.

They simply stopped expanding horizontally, and simply decided to continue going vertical.

Spindly towers erupted in the span of what was probably weeks, and eclectic designs sprung up that ranged from appropriately-tall cathedral-towers, to what was ostensibly just a circular castle tower rising far beyond what should’ve been physically possible.

Some of these projects seemed to have been just for show. Clearly just extensions of palaces, towers, or other such wasteful noble endeavors.

Whilst others seemed to serve some strange magical purpose, at least, I assumed so judging by their sameness and ominously glowing tops.

All of this development eventually came to a head in one spectacular night.

As large plumes of light shot up from several of the major city centers, painting the sky in a dizzying array of colors similar to a fireworks display that spanned the breadth of not just a city, but an entire region.

More time passed following this triumphant moment.

But as it did, that pace of development, that rate of expansion, was suddenly interrupted.

First by what looked to be specks of light erupting from the farthest reaches of the the most far flung of cities.

Then, by plumes of smoke emerging from all around the region.

The frequency, intensity, and ferocity of which seemed to wax and wane with each passing second, captivating the eyes of the entire classroom as they darted back and forth between different sections of the map. So much so that a few of them completely missed the start of something completely new.

The birth of a large, sickly-black fireball that had erupted suddenly and out of nowhere from a quaint countryside town. A ball of luminescent dark that grew larger and larger, encompassing more of the landmass beneath its circumference until finally… it’d gone beyond just the confines of that town, consuming farms, roads, towers, and eventually, half of an entire city.

Following that, was what I could only describe as a torrent of destruction.

As fire.

Lava.

Storms of lightning.

And fireballs of atomic proportions began peppering the once idyllic landscape.

This… war? Continued without a single word uttered from Articord. As she simply allowed the class to watch as the timelapse went on for a full five minutes.

Battle lines were drawn where storefronts had once stood.

Trenches built up by magically-augmented conventional (for the eclectic pseudo medieval-renaissance era) armies, only to be covered by magically induced earthquakes and avalanches.

Mountains… toppled over atop of some cities.

Whilst others were simply swallowed into the bowels of the earth itself.

Eventually, after a full five minutes of carnage, we returned to that first city.

To the middle of what was formerly the first village.

To what remained of the fountain that stood silent atop a pile of rubble.

To a timelapse that continued on relentlessly, showing unrepentantly, the bodies of fallen soldiers and noblemen alike, withering away into nothing but skeletons; with the marble and granite of their legacies crumbling around them.

Until finally, that forest we’d started off with eventually returned.

With little in the way to remind the unobservant viewer that anything man-made had once stood here at all.

“And yet… they did.” Articord managed out with a pained, hurt-filled breath. “They dropped the torch.” The professor took a moment to compose herself, before finally re-establishing eye contact with the class.

A single reluctant hand was raised following that whole debacle.

One that belonged to A98 Navine Ladona.

“Professor… if I may… I… I’d initially assumed what we were witnessing through this sight was the birth and evolution of the Nexus?”

“You would be correct in that assumption, Lady Ladona.”

“Then… why is the Nexus in ruins? What-”

“The story isn’t finished yet, Lady Ladona. So if you would please allow me to continue, we are near the end of my first tale.”

“We learned of these first Kingdoms, by unearthing what remained of their failed and pitiful state.” The fox continued on, unabated. “Just as we learned of the second-” She paused, gesturing towards the world around us. Time once more hastened into speeds previously  unseen… as yet another village was constructed around us, evolving into a town, growing into a city, and then rising up high into the heavens… where it abruptly, and almost unceremoniously, crumbled back into the dirt. “-the third-” The cycle once more repeated, this time just across the river. Village to town to city to fantastical heights… to ruin.  “-the fourth-” And it repeated. “-the fifth-” Again. “-the sixth-” And again. “-the seventh-” And again. “-the eighth-” And again. “-the ninth-” And again. “-until finally… the tenth.” The professor breathed out a sigh of strained frustration, her eyes not even hiding the sheer ire welling within.

“Now tell me, class. What did we lose from these failures? What exactly was lost to time from these fallen civilizations?”

A hand was raised.

Qiv’s hand.

“Knowledge, professor. The knowledge of the ancients, the artifacts of unknown potential, the great and learned means of magical acumen that has taken us so long to regain.” He spoke with confidence.

A confidence that was definitely not reciprocated by the likes of Articord as she stared down the reptile with a look of indifference.

“Knowledge now, is it? Artifacts, magical acumen? The utilitarian things in life, yes?”

“That is precisely what I mean professor.” The nobleman nodded deeply, as if expecting himself to be rewarded with a flurry of points, as he had been in Vanavan’s class.

“Then you are a fool, Lord Qiv Ratom.” Articord began with a barely restrained contempt.

“I beg your pardon, Professor?”

“Knowledge, pure knowledge of the magical arts… is easily replaceable when status eternia is applied. In time, given enough time, knowledge will reaccumulate, will be rediscovered, will be found and reimplemented within society. These are the concerns of the short-sighted, the power-hungry, those same peoples who led the way to the destruction of those early kingdoms. They are the concerns of the typical adventurer looking for the next lost artifact of old, the concerns of those who see the past only for its utility and not its philosophical quandaries. But with that being said, you technically are correct Lord Qiv, and as a result, I shall deduct no points.” The professor cautioned, before turning her eyes back towards the class.

Several hands were raised up high.

Two of them from the gang.

Thacea, and Ilunor.

The pair stared at each other for a split second, as they mimed the same word from the corners of their mouths in a way that prompted them to both nod.

“Yes, Lord Rularia.”

“Stories, professor.” The deluxe kobold spoke with a hint of knowing satisfaction.

A sentiment that was proven to hold some weight if the professor’s raise of both brows was any indicator.

“Elaborate, Lord Rularia.”

“What is lost to the sands of time, by these… pathetic excuses for Nexian civilizations, are stories. From the stories of fiction crafted by the minds of brilliant poets and playwrights, to the compositions of the great composers and orchestras, to the beauty and majesty of the canvas and even the recordings of whatever constituted for sight-seers back then… these are the true tragedies lost with time. These are the legacies forever lost - the beauty torn asunder by the unfeeling, unforgiving, cruel and animalistic tendencies of a world left without the enlightened rule of the sapient hand.”

Articord’s face beamed great at the start of that little monologue. However, the further Ilunor got, the more she seemed to be teetering on the edge of praise, only to recede the more he went on.

Still, her face was at least satisfied, at least when compared to that of Qiv’s answer.

“Five points.” Was all she said at first. “Lord Rularia, you were very nearly there. However, your appreciation for the spirit of the answer, and your conclusion hinting the necessity of the sapient hand in the taming of the savage natural world, elevates your answer beyond a mere technically correct one.”

Ilunor bowed deeply, before taking a seat as the professor eyed the tens of other arms that had been raised since then.

She ignored it at this point, unlike Vanavan who would’ve entertained each and every answer.

Instead, she pressed on, finally getting to the point. “What is truly lost is the unbroken chain. Lord Ratom is correct, in that knowledge is in fact lost. Lord Rularia is even more correct in pointing out that which cannot be replicated: the arts and the sanctified expressions of the sapient mind. However, what both have not touched upon is the loss of the unwritten story. Legacies of fathers passed down to sons, of mothers passed down to daughters, of Kings to Princes and Dukes to Barons. It is not just knowledge or the arts that is forgotten, but eons of history, of the stories of everyone from the greatest of Kings to the humblest of peasants that is forgotten. This… loss, this great and tragic loss is something far greater than the loss of any grand spell or mystical artifact. For what truly is civilization if not the greatest creation of the sapient mind in its ceaseless and endless quest to derive meaning from meaninglessness? It is the stories we create, the lives we lead, the experiences of our day to day that make up meaning in this cruel and unforgiving universe. It is in the legacies we leave behind, and the lives we touch along the way, that our lives derive meaning. The loss of a civilization is the loss of that living history, and is the admission of the defeat of the sapient mind to that of the forces that should be beneath it.”

Qiv raised his hand following that monologue.

However instead of allowing him to speak, Articord simply glossed over it.

“My point, as it stands, is thus: not all of history is written and recorded. Utilitarian knowledge is but a sliver of a civilization’s collective identity, the recorded works of a civilization’s culture are a larger but still modest fraction. What we truly have lost, is the collective legacy of all, the living history of civilization - the avatar of sapiency itself.”

Auris finally raised his hand once more, his eyes practically ready to spout out whatever dumb idea of the hour he had bubbling within.

“Yes Lord Ping?”

“And what of the gods, professor? I assume your story is at an end, and yet not once have you mentioned the matter of the gods.” He urged, though this time his tone was different. As if he was speaking like someone who knew the answer to the very question he was asking. “Where were they throughout this tale of tales?”

“Everywhere, Lord Ping. They were always everywhere.” The professor paused, a small grin forming at the corners of her face.

“And what were their contributions? What have they done to prevent these most heinous tragedies from befalling the mortal realm?”

A small pause punctuated that question, and the professor’s anticipated answer.

A pin drop could be heard now, amidst the static backdrop of the magical forest around us.

“Nothing, Lord Ping.” Articord spoke with a resting rage that threatened to spill over at any moment.

“And is that why you refuse to make mention of them just yet?”

“No, Lord Ping. I refuse to mention these insipid creatures for the most part because there is only one true being worth his title in the divine right to rule. Only one being I see as the one true god above gods - His Eternal Majesty.”