Cycle of Catastrophe

Leon wanted to go and hole himself up in his room, but he couldn't. He had to stay and oversee the research now being done thanks to the grand lie that he told. He was the one who made this mess, so of course he had to take responsibility for it. Even so, he found himself in the bathroom down the corridor, alone and staring into the mirror above the row of sinks. He hadn't looked at his own reflection too much since he first came here. He'd been busy doing other tasks, but he also avoided doing so. Staring into the mirror only to find some child's expression staring back at him was unnerving. Still, Leon could see the traces of his self etched into the boy's features. The solemnity, the hard, tired eyes, the perpetual grimace. Any traces of boyishness or childishness this child may have had at one point was certainly gone. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. Leon hoped it made people take him more seriously.

He sighed, knowing he'd have to go back soon. Some of the researchers wanted more information on Morda's magic weapon, though he dreaded having to interact with them more. He couldn't just leave, unfortunately. He wanted to, sometimes. To run away from this place, these people, and pretend to be a boy for a day or two, to not have to face all of his responsibilities. But he couldn't. Where would he stay, where would go? This is the same world he had lived in all his life, and yet, it was so completely different. He may as well have stepped foot onto a different planet. This tower was the only place he knew of.

He dried his face with a small white towel, one of many which were placed in a white stone bowl in the center of the counter of sinks. He left the bathroom and headed back to the research room, the one they'd taken over for this particular mission of theirs. As he came closer to the door, which had been commanded to stay open due to the constant stream of researchers entering and leaving, he overheard some researchers speaking in hushed tones.

"Do you think… … harness… energy reserves?"

"If… -orda, then…."

Leon frowned and rounded the corner. He glanced at the two that had been speaking, and they waved at him in greeting before walking in a different direction, their conversation turning to the current research.

That was weird, Leon thought. Why were they speaking of harnessing energy reserves when their topic of research was something entirely different? He didn't have a good feeling about this. No sentence with "harness energy reserves" could mean anything good. No one had told him a word about anything like this, either. He could only assume they were talking another project of theirs, maybe one to do with minerals. He pushed the thought aside, having other things he needed to focus on.

He walked up to the podium, and tapped the sound-amplifying magic circle etched onto the surface. Clear, loud sounds echoed across the room, catching everyone's attention. "I was told earlier there were many who wished to know more about the details of the magic weapon, the cause of the catastrophe. Please gather here for those interested."

Everyone in the room, of which there weren't as many as when he first spoke here but still no less than thirty, came up to the space in front of the podium. "Well, as you can imagine, we didn't have anything concrete concerning the details of Morda's magic weapon. It was by pure coincidence that when researchers were combing through the Kaital ruins, they found a letter, preserved through time by a magic protection spell, that was addressed to the king of Kaital, from the ruler of Morda. The letter told them that the magic weapon Morda had been building had failed and gone out of control. Morda's ruler had been trying to warn the Kaital king of this so he could evacuate his people before a catastrophe, not unlike the one we're struggling with, befell them. They didn't appear to know when this would happen, just that it would. They never gave any other details about this magic weapon, and we never found anything else that mentioned it. If other records mentioning it exist, then they would either have been taken by time or are still somewhere in the lost Morda ruins."

A researcher Leon didn't recognize spoke up. "Even if a magic weapon they tried to make had failed, how could that lead to a global cataclysm? The amount of energy it would take.. Not even a dozen Greater Sorcerers gathered together could produce that much magic and energy."

Leon nodded. "It plagued us, as well. We didn't immediately assume this magic weapon was responsible for the catastrophe, of course. But at some point, when all of our existing theories reached dead ends, we reexamined other clues to see if it would lead anywhere. A magic weapon, though not that powerful on its own, could certainly lead to global catastrophe through a discharge of magic energy it gathered over time."

Leon stared at the crowd, looking at their thinking faces. One woman gasped, her eyes lit up. He recognized her as the woman who introduced herself as Olara earlier. "Right. One of the basic ways to make a magic weapon is to make a mechanism that draws in magic energy from the environment and converts it to a more solid form, or adds it as a supplement to a solid object. If their magic weapon was one that had this mechanism, it's very possible that the specific function that drew energy from the environment broke and went out of control, continuously drawing energy, never stopping. Eventually, all of this contained, overflowing magic energy will start reacting violently to itself, since magic by nature isn't something that likes to stay still and unused for too long. Over time, this restless energy will continue to build, alongside the still increasing magic energy, and at some point even something as small as a breeze or falling leaf will be enough to disrupt this and cause an enormous discharge of energy, in the form of an explosion."

Leon smiled. "I couldn't have said it better myself. It can be assumed, also, that this breaking point comes about every 2,000 years. There was no way of knowing this in my time, since that was the first time the catastrophe had posed a threat, but now that it's here again, 2,000 years after the first catastrophe just as the first catastrophe took place 2,000 years after Morda fell, we can certainly pose such a theory. Unless we find Morda and stop the magic weapon for good, this same cycle will repeat itself 2,000 years in the future, and there's no telling if they'll be able to summon someone such as me, or have any way of stopping it."

Leon's words left a grim, sobering silence in response. He hadn't thought about the future much lately, since he was already living in it. He had enough to deal with without having to worry about the fate of humanity 2,000 years from now. But he was right. If this really was a cycle, if they didn't stop that cycle this time around, this would happen all over again. And so it would continue, with the planet being threatened with extinction every 2,000 years until eventually, the threat became reality, and humanity was no more.