The Secret Sea - (Chaptered Version)

19*

"I don't know if this will make sense, but here goes," says Eve, pinching her brow. "In its infancy, Earth was completely covered in water—"

"Wow, we're really starting from the top, huh?" I interrupt.

"Shut up. You want to hear this or not?"

I nod. "Yes, sorry. Go on."

VarnLiqn snores, fast asleep in his cloak.

Eve clears her throat. "After a billion years, the Earth's water stopped boiling and the first organisms emerged. These single-cell creatures weren't exactly great thinkers, but they did possess the capacity for self-preservation—the prototypical desire. Even though the creatures' collective will lacked sentience, their shared desire for survival proved potent enough to birth the first speck of magick."

"Huh?" I groan.

"Desire is a key element of magick."

"What are the others?"

"It's difficult to explain. Magick is a funny thing. It doesn't obey the rules of time and circumvents as many physical laws as possible. Magick isn't sentient, but tends to meander far from its source. When Earth's first creatures set off on a path of rapid evolution, their fate became set in time. Magick essentially 'surfed' this new timeline of evolution until it reached a future beset by intelligent beings, the distant descendants of the very first organisms—humans."

I force myself to keep an open mind but it's difficult, even in the company of a talking raccoon. "Magick time traveled. Gotcha. Sure. Makes perfect sense."

Eve ignores me and continues. "Magick continued to ride the loop of time, building strength with every pass, until primitive man detected its invisible but potent energy. Graced with imaginative power granted by magick, these early humans began telling the very first stories, forever changing the mystical and physical planes."

"Stories?"

"Yes. Stories were once powerful, sacred things—honed by each subsequent generation until they weren't just words; they birthed wonders. With humanity giving shape to magick, it was no longer some nebulous entity. Gods, demons and legendary creatures spilled into the magickal realm, creating a world beyond the world."

"Hold up," I protest. "So, if I think about...a purple basketball with bat wings and 17 eyes, it becomes a reality in this plane of magick?"

"No," says Eve, shaking her head. "Even when magick was at its most potent, simply imagining something wasn't enough...you had to believe in the story you were telling. The power of belief—especially collected belief—is what gives magick its energy. Some of these stories became so powerful they were able to pass through the veil of reality and enter the physical world—a rare occurrence in the modern age of science and reason."

"So, science and magick don't mix." I say. Eve sounds like someone else as she recites her history lesson. I wonder if Pteridophia is peeking around her soul.

"Not easily. There was a time when magick was needed to explain the machinations of the physical world. Ancient people devised gods and monsters to raise the sun each morning or change the seasons or grow the crops. Zeus hurled lightning, Quetzalcoatl birthed the earth and sky, Baal shepherded the dead, Agloolik provided fish and game."

"You're telling me all these gods and demons or whatever...they were all real?"

"In a way. Most of these entities rarely touched foot on the physical plane, but they were real enough to give people the means to mold the world around them in subtle ways. The power of belief is the power of magick."

"So, what happened?"

"Science happened. Knowledge made magick obsolete. Astronomy, chemistry and physics pulled back the curtain on an invisible world. Graced with knowledge, people no longer required magick to explain forces beyond their observation. Now, almost everything is observable, and if not, can be theorized with reasonable accuracy by nothing more than a few math equations. The modern world has caused magick to recede. Gods and legends no longer have the power to remain on the physical plane unless they are incredibly strong or utterly innocuous. Even entities as powerful as Suzy require a borrowed human soul to remain on the Earth for an extended period." Eve looks over at VarnLiqn. "Those who attempt to stay on the material plane as if it were the days of old become corrupted...like our friend here."

"Okay. I think I'm getting it. I'm still waiting for the whole 'this is why you're in a pitch-black cave on a freezing, desolate mountain' part."

"You wanted to know what happened, so I told you," says Eve. "If you don't want this to get long-winded, stop asking questions!"

"Right. Sorry. Go...just go," I say.

"In the midst of the age of magick, five entities rose to supremacy. Some were aided by human belief while others achieved it by their own means. They developed a tentative alliance with one another, referring to themselves as the Five Antecedents. These five beings learned how to ride the flow of magick through time and traveled all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth. Upon arrival on a water-covered planet, they rose a single landmass from the depths—a small, star shaped continent they used as their personal paradise. They called it the Isle of Ascendency."

"Neat," I say.

"Yeah, but after a while the Five Antecedents grew bored. Realizing it would take another billion years for life to develop on Earth, they decided to jump-start the process by creating a paradox. They leveled and burned their paradise, and from the ashes grew a solitary tree."

"I know this one," I chime in. "Yggdrasil: the tree of life"

"Nope. Different tree."

"Oh, I was kind of hoping Thor would show up."

"Shut up," barks Eve. "Once mature, the tree was harvested and made into a single sheet of papyrus: The Scroll of the Secret Sea"

"What was the name of the tree?" I blurt.

Eve raises an eyebrow. "I don't think it had a name. It might have been a sycamore. Do you go around naming trees?"

"Well, no."

"As I was saying, this scroll was magickal, containing what might be referred to as a pocket dimension by physicists. The paper was placed in the waves lapping against the shore of the Isle of Ascendency. Five oceans-worth of water were absorbed in an instant, uncovering the great supercontinent of Pangea."

"Beat that, Bounty."

"Not funny," says Eve. "This simple act sped up evolution to untold degrees. The Isle of Ascendency became the Earth's tallest mountain, where the Five Antecedents observed the unfolding of the world.

"Mount Everest?"

"No, a magickal war came much later that leveled half of the mountain. It's no longer the tallest."

"We're on the Mountain of Ascendency right now, aren't we?"

"Bingo," says Eve.