Austin Grossman - You

You found a lot of in-line comments, like /*okay but fuck you*/ or /*but why??*/ or just /*IM SORRY*/. Some of them were written for an aborted licensing deal with the Labyrinth franchise, so there were functions everywhere named things like DANSE_MAGIC_DANSE and DRAW_CONNELLY. The more I played Black Arts games, the more they started to feel like they’re all part of one huge, sinister rat’s nest of fragmented worlds, like bright shards of mirror lost in the tangle.

It was five in the morning and I was playing alone when I got sick of the entire business—the struggle, the mess, the tears of the Third Age.

Leira walked away from the city the Four Heroes had built.

In the long years since Realms III, the ocean had risen and the city was a half-drowned island in a wide, shallow inlet. Weeds covered the great statue of Elbas; thieves had stolen his jeweled eyes. I paddled through the streets and the flooded palace.

Then I left the whole point of Realms IV behind and walked south. WAFFLE could generate as much detail in the landscape as I needed, giving it warmer and greener colors.

Later—I couldn’t really say how much later—I reached the bottom of the continent itself and looked out over the simulated seas of Endoria. Then I piloted a single-masted boat to islands that became increasingly remote. It was late November, and tacking slowly upwind, watching the bands of orange and purple on the water through the night, was better than sleep.

Even at the eastern limit of the world they’d heard of Mournblade; one man claimed his father’s father was killed with it. They said an ancient hermit knew everything there was to know about it. They gave me a map.

I turned when someone sat down behind me; I thought it was Matt but it was only Brennan. He’d been killed a couple dozen times during the past few games, but in the way of video game characters he’d managed to walk it off. Now he sat in an empty office chair with a ridiculous amount of animal grace. He smelled like leather, horses, oil. His hands were dirty.

“Tallyho, gents,” Brennan said sleepily, halfway through a bag of Doritos. He wore a maroon T-shirt with a griffin on the front. “For the honor of my house!”

“Hey, there,” I said.

“You suck at this game,” he said.

“You suck when you’re first-level too, you know,” I said. I didn’t mind Brennan; he’d been through a lot. I’d decided he was in love with Leira, too.

Leira and I found the sage living within earshot of the Last Meridian, where the still ocean picked up speed and slid off the great disk of Endoria and down among the stars. Far out in the mists that rose from below, one could distinguish the Castles of Dawn, where cloud giants lived, but where no one had ever been.

The sage was ancient and wizened but oddly familiar, and after a moment I saw it—it was Brennan, but a different version of him, impossibly aged. I glanced back at Brennan, who was watching himself on the screen in the video game he also lived in. He was mesmerized.

“I was there,” the Brennan-sage told us. “We all were, down in the tombs at the end of the Age. Me, the elf, the mageborn, and you, too, Princess. We beheld Mournblade, and it was the wizard who first betrayed the fellowship. He called things from the stone to bind us. After that it was each of us for ourselves, you understand? Mournblade was too much to resist, the idea that we might accomplish all our primary quests and rule the Fourth Age. We fought up and down the levels, hide-and-seek, the four greatest heroes of the age.” He spat and continued. He let his gray hair fall to one side and showed his missing eye.

“You gave me this mark, Princess. You thought I was done for—but I was warded. I finished the wizard, held his mouth shut while I put the blade in. He took a few of my fingers with him—the old man showed a little grit in the end.

“After that, I saw what you and Prendar had done to each other, and I ran for it. The Soul Gem took me back in time, all the way back to the start. The black blade is down there in Adric’s Tomb, yes, it is, along with a thing that wields it like fury. Don’t go, Leira. None of us should. Let Mournblade lie there forever and let the Third Age end in peace.”

Young Brennan looked stricken, his stubbly face pale in the monitor light.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“I hate this game,” he said. And I woke to the fluorescent lights coming on at seven. I was asleep at my desk, my head cradled in my arms. I got up and went to the kitchen to find some Skittles and went back to work.

Lorac and I walked up Oxford Street together. He smelled like jasmine and ash. His eyes gleamed with the unnatural intelligence that could retain twelve different daemonic languages in as many alphabets; he’d done Sanskrit that afternoon. I wondered if he had been born with the talent or if he had paid a price, and what it was.

“Lorac, how does magic work?” I asked. He sighed, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes a little.

“It depends what kind—they’re all different.”

“Your thing, then. Conjuration.”

He plucked at the hem of his robe. His hands were spotted with age but quick and limber, and they looked strong. He saw me watching and stopped.

“Well,” he said, “I bought a level-eight specialization in it, if that’s what you mean. But it’s… you have to realize, when the Houses of the Nine were sealed, words were spoken and signs were engraved that cannot now be unsaid or erased. When I speak, when I make the shapes, I take part in…” He trailed off, muttering in a language I didn’t recognize.

“Start again. What’s it like to cast spells?” I asked.

“I’ll just say—when your body and your voice can shape the world…” he said. He was more animated than I’d ever seen him. “There are ways in which I have cracked the secrets of creation. The joy, the sense of belonging—I can’t explain it to one like you.”

“Okay, so why can’t I do it?”

“Because you live beyond the end of the Third Age. In your time, magic has retreated and even the ruins of the ruins of the Firstcomers have been dust for aeons, long after their knowledge has been lost to humanity. Long after the last of my kind read the final prophecy of the Earth’s Heart and broke his staff across his knee and cursed his art and was never heard from again.”

“Great.”

“Also because you grew up in Newton.”

“So that’s it?” I said. “I’ll never do magic?”

“There are certain scrolls—of doubtful authenticity, mind you—that claim that once in a millennium, a young person of talent and matchless courage will have the chance to rediscover the world of magic—certain words, at least, and one great sign. This person will bring the return of magic and remake the world in an age of splendor that will come. Madness, yes, but great splendor, too.”

“But that’s not me.”

He laughed. “Ah—no.”

“So… magic. It’s nothing to do with… the way you dress.”

He was wearing what seemed like a worn maroon bathrobe over a bright blue blouse thing. His long gray hair was tied back with a faded ribbon. He had slippers with pointed toes that curled upward, and they weren’t coping so well in the slush and mud of a New England sidewalk.

“The way I dress?” he said, looking puzzled. “No.”

“Then how come you dress like that?”

“Because I can do magic.”

“So how come you can’t use metal weapons?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Lorac, you’re really powerful now. Why don’t you go back to that fancy kingdom you left? Maybe the king would take you back.”