Magical After: Dark World Book 1 Part 1

by David Gunter

The book went silent for a moment, and then it emitted the telltale sounds of someone changing the dial on a radio with all the squeaks and static associated with the action. Suddenly the book landed on another station, and another voice was heard coming from the book. This, however, didn’t sound like a radio station at all. The voice coming from the book was instantly familiar to David. It was Mark’s voice he heard.

  “This little piggy went to market. This little piggy had roast beef. “Mark’s voice paused, and a little child’s giggles interrupted the chant. Those were London’s giggles. David would recognize the laughter and tone of his youngest anywhere.

  “London? Mark! Are you guys there?” David shouted at the book. The voices on the other side went silent.

  “Uh, David!” Mark’s voice could be heard saying. “Is that you? What the.. How the”

  “Mark, it’s me, David. I don’t understand this, but I’m standing in a cold dark cave at the top of a mountain holding a book which up to a moment ago was acting like a radio. Now I’m hearing you count toes. I don’t understand it, but I don’t care. How is everyone? What’s happening in the real world?” David paused to hear a response.

  “David? You’re break…. a bit but this can’t…..pening. Or I… believe this …. ning…. said you were dead. How… happening? You’re… king to us from… dio next to Lon…. bed.” Said Marks’s voice. David could just make out some of the words and was still processing them when he heard the sweetest words ever.

  “Daddy! Daddy! Its ..lly you Daddy! I …iss you” London’s words came out of the book last, and the weight of what he was hearing started to weigh on him. Something was very wrong. They thought he had died. But he was very much alive, at least in this virtual reality world.

  He held up the book as he imagined that it was acting like some kind of CB radio. As he moved the book around, he heard the same sounds it had made before, and then he heard nothing more. The moment had passed, and it was shut off. David screamed in frustration.

  “Noooooo. You stupid book.” He was about to launch a tirade of expletives at the item when he heard a voice and got another prompt.

  “You’ve found a rare item. ‘The Compendium of Knowledge Level 1’ has no equal in Atsia. At level one, it will tell you important facts about a place, name creatures you encounter, and show you simple crafting recipes. None have ever experienced all of its depths, and what a creative type, such as yourself, might do with it, no one can foretell. Beware! Prolonged exposure to its power as it can lead to madness.” - The Engineer

  This fellow believes himself to be the god of crafting, but none have ever seen him make a damn thing. - Narrator

  “Who just said that!” - The Engineer

  David was furious, and as he searched for a target for his anger, he wondered if this ‘Engineer’ fellow was responsible for his predicament. He felt wrong about this somehow. He was holding an item he had found in a cave he’d managed to reach through a portal. He had gotten to this land called Atsia Major, however, under the promises that he was undergoing surgery for a brain tumor and that his children would be joining him here while he recovered. A moment ago, however, it had sounded like the folks in the real world believed him to be dead. He wasn’t dead, was he? He was lying in a hospital recovering from surgery, wasn’t he? ‘Prolonged exposure to its power can lead to madness’, the ‘Engineer’s’ message had said. He was feeling pretty mad at that moment, he thought. How could a book from the virtual reality world allow him to speak to his family back in the real world? He reasoned that this was impossible. This whole thing sounded quite mad. Maybe it had all been a lie. There was no way this could be happening. He wasn’t dead or anything like that. He was convincing himself of this with every passing moment.

  He looked at the book and then saw the ornate drawings on its surface. The book’s cover was of a silver-like metal, and on it were numerous drawings, but as he looked at them in the torch light, he saw the drawings were constantly changing. He stared at the cover and lost himself in the constant changes.

  Suddenly the torch flickered and almost died. He wasn’t able to see the drawings briefly in the darkness that the flicker had brought, and he came to the present once more. He tried to move and suddenly felt aches in his legs as if he’d been standing in that spot for hours. David took a step back away from the platform and saw that he couldn’t find footing behind him.

  He fell back and landed on his backside and on a very cold and hard stone floor. He would’ve shouted in pain, but the torch landed next. It landed in his hand with the hot part directly in his open palm.

  “Holy crap!” David exclaimed as he flicked the burning torch off of his open palm and instantly forgot the pain emanating from his entire back and side rolled over and slapped his burning hand onto the cold hard floor. The immediate relief was wonderful, but the pain from both his right hand and backside coalesced into a single hurt, and he let out a yell of pain that he was sure could be heard for miles away.

  “Harrrrrrgghhh… the stupid crapidy biscuit fell on the crapidy floor” These were the only words that could express how he felt at that moment, and in all honesty, he didn’t know what had produced them other than the pain. He soon felt, however, that expressing himself in this way also helped as the words that now echoed back to him from the cave caused him to chuckle as their meaningless humor landed on his ears over and over as echoes tend to do.

  Suddenly, there was a sound from somewhere far in the cave. It reverberated closer and closer until its echoes entered his part of the cave and froze his insides. It wasn’t clear to make out, but soon the sound came even clearer, and David made out the sound which was clearly a creature’s threatening roar. His commotion had awoken something, and he needed to get the hell out of this cave and fast.

  David quickly, and in a panic, felt around the cave and found the wooden end of the torch and then near his feet felt the cold hard surface of the book. He grabbed both and, with little thought, scraped the other end of the torch against the book cover. The torch gave off a few sparks and suddenly lit up with its blue flame, though David saw that it wasn’t as bright as it had been when he’d first lit it.

  David got his bearings once more and quickly ran towards the path that led up, around the cave room, and out onto the mountainside. As he ran up the path, he heard a roar from somewhere below the chamber he was in, but he didn’t pause to figure out exactly where or how far away it had been. A few moments later and he was standing to the right of the cave entrance with his back against the mountainside, holding the torch in his shaky right hand and the book in the other. He was struggling to control his breathing as the air at this altitude was thin, and as scared as he was, he was breathing very heavily. He felt that if he could just catch his breath long enough, he would know what he was supposed to do next but wasn’t really given a chance when another sound came from within the cave.

  “Who has dared defile my home and dared to steal? You will burn with ice and fire. You will feed my brood with your cold ash.” The creature which said these things had a low and rumbling voice. Every word sounded the way a jet engine would sound if it had come home to find that someone had “defiled” its home and taken its things. It was pissed off.

  David had to get away. He turned and ran down the mountain path. He very nearly went over the edge on the turn and would’ve welcomed the fall if it meant he could be far from the creature that was undoubtedly looking for him. However, he didn’t fall and didn’t have time even to realize how close he’d come. He spotted the doorway at the end of the path and noticed for the first time that there was no more path beyond the portal. The path simply ended. Running towards the portal, however, he didn’t have time to think of the coming drop, and he had to trust that he’d be safe on the other side of the portal. He went straight for the portal, and as he neared it, he closed his eyes and jumped.

  David felt his body rise and fall through open space,
and for a moment, he wondered if he’d missed the portal entirely. He landed on the platform’s hard stone floor on the other side and felt the warmth there engulf him, surrounding him like a cozy blanket. He didn’t mind the hard surface that had met his face due to the momentum he’d carried, and the only thought he had was whether or not he had escaped his demise. He turned quickly while still laying on the hard floor and turned just in time to see the portal close and vanish. He let out a loud and prolonged sigh of relief.

  David laid down on the rock surface and was about to enjoy an even longer star gazing when the platform started to vibrate. He reluctantly sat up and looked around to see what could be happening next. Abruptly, a crack appeared that crossed the entire length of the platform and revealed the fragile footing he was on. Another crack appeared from the first to another end of the platform, and he knew he had little time. He quickly rose and limberly ran to the edge and jumped onto the watery path which had led him to the platform. A moment after landing, he heard a loud burst of what sounded like steam, and turning to look, he watched as the platform exploded upwards, sending broken fragments of stone flying high into the air and then was swallowed up by the water surface.

  David continued to run on the path as soon as he had landed and not too long after leaped onto the lake bank and turned to see numerous pieces of stone falling all about the lake. He could not help but notice that the lights that had appeared and led him to the center of the lake quickly vanished. He tempted a quick step back onto the water’s surface and yelped as he saw his foot disappear into the water. Pulling out his now water-soaked foot from the lake, he turned around and walked away from the lake and the pools towards the path.

  Well, he got about five feet away when the urge to relieve himself hit him pretty hard. He’d entered the portal and gone through all these exciting moments, all the while suppressing the need but now, and after relaxing onto safety, he felt like he might pee a ton of bricks. He quickly and without much thought went back to the edge of the lake, lifted up the gown, which he conceded not to be the most masculine pose he’d ever struck, and gave to the lake that which he had taken from the pools.

  Suddenly a loud voice spoke.

  “You’re pissing in our heavenly waters, you scoundrel. We, the gods of these lands, can only ever bathe in these pure waters and drink the water from the pools nearby. So thanks for ruining a good thing!” - The Starlight Girl.

  Um… well, you should see what this goddess does in those pools you just drank from. - Narrator

  “How dare you interrupt my holy dialogue. Who is this?” - The Starlight Girl.

  Getting a strong reprimand from some odd goddess was, well, odd. But David also noticed that besides hearing the speech, there had been a blinking purple light in a crystal-looking button to the upper right side of his vision. He thought of it, and immediately a written copy of the speech opened, and he reread the very same message he had heard a moment before. But there was something even stranger. There appeared to be a second party with side commentary in the message. And the message appeared to have more information about the goddess and a conversation between the new party and the goddess. He was not an avid gamer, but he was certain that a conversation like that wasn’t supposed to happen normally. The only thing he could be sure of was that even the gods of this place didn’t know everything, and someone was outside of their domain and possibly apposed.

  With two tired and bare feet and one foot a little muddy too, he returned to the path with what he could only guess must have looked like a stupid smirk on his face. ‘I’ve just had my first adventure,’ he thought. He briefly thought of the events and about the book he had pretty much stolen and realized that the number of mysteries was only growing, and he needed to get to a quiet place and sort out what he’d seen and experienced so far.

  He walked for a distance and was about to enter the dark forest he’d spotted from atop the snow-covered mountain when he realized that he was still holding the book in his hands. He thought of putting the book away, and at that moment, the book simply disappeared. Then, just as suddenly, it reappeared in his hands when he thought of seeing it out once more. Letting the book disappear once more, he realized that this world had a number of conveniences that could really make a difference one day. He then thought about where the book was, and he somehow saw a space somewhere on his person, though he could not really pinpoint where that contained room for things. It felt as if that space was a hollow place within him that could hold many things but was not infinite.

  Putting aside all curiosity about the book and its disappearing act, he remembered that he was still pretty far from Opal City. The image of the lakes from so far away was imprinted on his mind, but near to him in that image, he had also seen this vast forest that would come between himself and his destination.

  So instead of focusing on the fact that he was about to enter an ominous-looking forest, he decided to think courageous thoughts. He added, to courage, a few happy thoughts of someday finding Hellen, and that was all he needed.

  ❧

  Of course, courage is not an all-or-nothing kind of thing. A person may find that they have equal parts fear and equal parts stone-cold determination and rather choose to only portray one of those two emotions while only entertain the other on the briefest of moments.

  It can also be said that feeling courageous while sipping an ice-cold tea under an umbrella at the beach isn’t actually courage. So while David’s long-standing fear of large thick forests caused him to bounce from one noise to another, dashing and ducking every few feet, his overall trajectory was still one that would lead him through the woods and therefore was in keeping with courage.

  Had Hellen been observing the affair transpiring from her perch far above the world, she would’ve remembered the time when she and David had only recently met and their first camping trip, which had also been their last. The only event, as she recalled, that had nearly cost them their relationship. David’s aloofness after that trip had been something of a hurdle to them and a thing neither had spoken about for all the years that followed.

  However, Hellen was not watching the events below and the way in which David attempted bravery as she had committed herself to a scheme which now was fully in force. She didn’t know the reason for David’s emergence in this world, but she only knew that he shouldn’t remain.

  Once she saw that David had arrived at the pools of the gods, also known as the “Blue Tears,” she decided on a course of action that she knew would result in them being together but without him knowing it. She would then be able to better handle things and yet not reveal herself.

  She had many ways of continuing to influence the world she had created as she could have simply told David to go back to the real world through various avenues and even to the point of confronting him directly to do it. Of course, she knew better. David wasn’t someone that could be pushed to do something head-on. He needed to feel like he had a choice and that he had come to that choice on his own accord. Sure, she would provide him all the facts and evidence to steer him in the right direction, but he was a smart man. She’d learned how to deal with the smart ones from a young age. She couldn’t appear to prefer one plan or another but simply let the evidence do that for her, and sometimes if she really wanted to influence the outcome, she might appear to favor the worst idea purely on some made-up fancy. Of course, if things didn’t go the way she wanted, she wasn’t above making them hate their poor choice, and sabotage was definitely within her skill set. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  The carrot, then the stick, she decided. She entered the game in the most benign form she could find and gave the dice a nice toss. She assumed that David would be getting to the forest soon, and she waited for what seemed like an eternity and then waited some more.

  David, however, seemed to have been delayed. Then she heard some sounds and supposed that it was he that was nearing where she wait
ed. Yet it was not he that appeared, and she found herself just trying to survive but without many means for doing that.

  ❧

  ‘Hide behind that bush.’ ‘Run behind those trees.’ ‘Hush! What’s that noise… oh the wind’.

  These were the various thoughts going through David’s mind as he made his way through what to him was undeniably the scariest woods from his darkest nightmares.

  ‘Will these woods ever end! I’m going to die, and no one will ever find my body’, he thought.

  Poor David, you must be thinking, right? After all, the woods are not so bad. Sure, there might be bears and wolves, but these usually stay far away from humans. In most cases, animals are more afraid of humans than the other way around.

  Of course, with the way David was carrying on, an animal was bound to attack him out of self-preservation first, rather than find him as befitting a midnight snack. Then any animal will eat what it kills afterward but what if we give David a chance before we go that far.

  So David bounded about the woods, like the ridiculous human that he was, and then somewhere in the forest and not too far from David, there appeared light accompanied with loud shouting and the eerie sounds of some creature in pain. So we can’t blame David for doing what was in his nature.

  David turned and ran back the way he had come.

  Of course, instead of running in the way he had come, he actually turned around several times, fell over a few bushes, and then ran in another random direction from where he’d perceived the commotion was coming from. After running just far enough, he then spotted a tall tree and threw himself at it hugging it while at the same time attempting to bear climb it.

  No, we don’t want to imagine David bear hugging a tree in the dead of night pretending to climb it as it would seem quite silly and just a little gruesome. Well, too late, you’re probably already vividly seeing it.