Nati

It was a new day, a new adventure.

The orc chieftain took me on another expedition in the afternoon. We set out in the opposite direction, heading for a lake. The stream from the village met with a few creeks, filling up a shallow valley.

"Magic is everywhere." She shared her vast knowledge with me while we approached a marsh by the lakeside closer to the tribe.

"It was called many things during the times. Magicules, Ether, Substance, Force, or Mana, but anywhere you find life, you'll find the magical elements too." She continued my education. "It's not spread evenly though, there is a lot of it where life's abundant, like dense cities and forests. It is much thinner in deserts and barren places."

"She was the personal assistant of a Mage," Hana whispered.

"Personal slave." Charlotte corrected them, pointing at all kinds of herbs that grew here. They stopped by each, but my brain erased all the additional information as I was only interested in magic. "Well, it was the same if you lasted long enough, and I served him for thirty years."

The only thing I noticed was the dark riverbed. Even though the water was crystal clear, the bottom was black. Some kids gathered reeds, others played in the lake with a few women escorting them.

"Can you use magic too?" I asked the chief curiously as we went.

"No, only our shaman can. But I know more about the theory than he can ever hope." She claimed with a straight face. "You need affinity, and only about one in a hundred people has it."

"Do you remember that cold you felt yesterday?" Hana asked. How could I forget? "It was because you have that affinity, I have felt it too."

"What? So I can use magic?"

"Not by a long shot." Charlotte was merciless. "Hana was a gladiator with a life's worth of experience, yet couldn't cast a single spell."

"The spirits never answered my calls." They complained, flexing those crazy muscles. "I'm more of a brute, learning magic was not an option."

"Spirits?" I repeated as the kids ran towards the village. They whistled when they saw me, but I tried not to miss anything my escorts said.

"Spirits are amalgamations in the mana. The two types of magic users are the ones who manipulate mana, and those who borrow this power from someone. Spirits, gods, or nature, the principle is the same." Charlotte lectured me. "Learning how to cast magic is extremely difficult."

"Only the brightest minds got accepted into Cranta's Magical Academy," Hana interjected. "One in twenty finished the decade-long training who became wizards, the rest maybe shamans or priests."

"So how do they use magic?" I asked curiously.

"Shamans ask spirits to cast," Hana explained. "But they despise humans, while gods only answer their priests, so it's a human thing."

"What about the Goddess of Luck?" I asked, surprised. So far, she was the only god I knew, but she certainly wasn't human.

"She is the only exception," Charlotte said. "And look where it led..."

"Calling her the Goddess of Luck is ironic, to say the least." Hana let out a heartbroken laugh, walking silently for a bit. A lot needed to sink in, but new questions filled my head. "But she has no priests."

"And so the old capital has no mana left whatsoever?" I asked, still shaking whenever I thought about it. "How did that happen?"

"It disappeared with everything else." Charlotte shrugged.

"Was it the Collapse, that you mentioned before?"

"Not exactly..." Hana answered, but the chieftain took over.

"Depends on who you ask. Some people call that very moment the Collapse, but in reality, it happened after that." She claimed. "It probably won't make much sense to you without understanding its history, especially since you came from a world without magic..."

"Oh, I'm all ears," I said, trying to stop my tail from twirling.

We circled the lake by this time, it was quieter now, and the kids and their guardians long returned to the village. My ear picked up the polyphonic chirping of grasshoppers signaling the arrival of the evening.

"The Empire consisted of seven smaller kingdoms, their capitals built around ancient teleportation circles. They were created before humanity even existed, probably by the elves." She started. "Nobody understood how they worked exactly, but it's needless to say how beneficial they were. Trade bustled, and the population of these cities grew at an exceptional rate. But so did the concentration of magicules in them."

"Too much mana can lead to all kinds of mutations," Hana interjected quietly. "Or it can reanimate the dead, and even open rifts in reality."

"That sounds ominous," I noted, waiting for them to continue.

"This is how the Lesser Races came to be," Charlotte revealed. "Some academics think that humans came from corrupted elves similarly too. But there are so few of them now, that generations might pass without meeting one. So this theory was never confirmed by the elves..."

"I don't think Nati is interested in academic theories." Hana interrupted her, and I couldn't agree more. "Just stick to the facts."

"Right. So as I said, having cities this dense led to the emergence of the Lesser Races. Cranta forced them to work for their empire." She explained. "While humans concentrated in the main cities, the lands were soon populated by their slaves"

"So Cranta was an evil empire?" I asked curiously.

"Evil? No, I wouldn't say that." Charlotte shrugged. "Humans before them simply eliminated all who got corrupted by magic. The forerunners of Cranta realized how we could be of use, which meant slavery but enabled us to survive until now."

"So what does this have to do with the Collapse?" I rushed her.

"Well, as I said, Cranta depended on the Gates and its vast slave empire to function." The chieftain continued. "It allowed them to centralize power and swiftly deploy their modestly sized armies if needed. The last Emperor wanted to expand on the Gates though, as they barely kept up with the demand, and this is where Alexandra comes in."

"The emperor asked the Goddess to do something about it?"

"Yes and no," Hana explained. "She wasn't a Goddess back then, but yes, the Emperor wanted her to crack the secret of teleportation."

"She used to be the slave of an eccentric noble. Was mostly free to do as she pleased though." Charlotte said. "A rumor went around that you'd get lucky if you treated her to a meal. Soon some sort of personality cult formed around her in the gambling dens."

"That's not why the Emperor asked her," Hana interjected. "Thanks to her master, she got a free pass into the libraries of the Magic Academy and became the first beastfolk who performed magic on her own. She was quite gifted too, which elevated her status further..."

"Yes, I was about to mention that." The chieftain claimed. "They rumored she deciphered forgotten magic techniques, and the Emperor invited her to expand the Gates. I wasn't there, so I don't know the exact details, but you can probably guess what happened next."

"The capital disappeared..." I answered, a cold shiver running down my spine. "She said the Inquisitorias was after her because of an accident."

"Hah, so that's how she sees it." Hana laughed, but it felt forced.

"To be fair, she set out to search for the victims, but the Inquisitorias had none of it," Charlotte explained. "Their sole purpose was to enforce the pact, and once Alexandra became a Goddess, she had to go."

"Wait, when did she become a Goddess then?" I asked confused.

"Nobody knows exactly. Either before, during, or after the capital disappeared. It matters little..." She said, but Hana disagreed.

"There is no way she could have performed magic on that scale before becoming the Goddess." They argued. "I'm sure it had something to do with her cult. Or she knew some other ways to elevate herself."

"Elevate herself?" I asked, heading back to the village now.

"If mana is concentrated over an area, that will lead to corruption, but condensed within a person, it can elevate them to a higher class." Charlotte quickly explained. "They used to call students of magic initiates, who ascended into wizards once they learned this technique."

"Long story short, it is possible to reach the class of a mage, but that is as far as humans could go on their own. To become a saint, you'd need a sect following and praying." Hana interrupted, adding. "Which she had..."

"And, to become a God, you'd have to go above and beyond." The chieftain nodded. "Whatever way she did it, we might never know, but with the capital gone, things happened quickly. The rest of the Gates shut down too, the centralized government was all but wiped out, and so was the royal family. Even the slave contracts suddenly broke."

"Everyone speaks the same language on the continent, but the actual distances are vast," Hana explained. "Without the Gates, the remnants of the armies could not hope to hold the empire together. First, it split into kingdoms again, then they started to crumble too. Only Nordhaben remained, called Sanctuary now. Most humans retreated there, although I heard dwarves merely isolated themselves in the northwest..."

"What about the other gods? Couldn't they intervene?" I asked.

"No, the pact prevents them," Charlotte said. "If anything, the Church sped up the Collapse since different kingdoms favored different gods."

"Wait, what pact?" I interrupted her.

"Right. So a millennia ago the gods still walked among us." She explained. "The Cranta Pantheon already splintered and disagreements were settled through wars between gods. Such wars were devastating, and the Inquisitorias was established."

"The last Pantheon War created storms that still rage to this day, isolating this continent from all the other landmasses," Hana added. "We don't know what's beyond these shores."

"So the gods signed a pact that forbade them to set foot on the continent," Charlotte concluded. "They exert their power through priests and prophets, but that couldn't prevent the Collapse. And it was the job of the Inquisitorias to enforce it."

"And they chased Alexandra into my world." I realized. We returned to the village in the meantime, just as the sun fell below the horizon...