Long ago, the ruins of yet another destroyed town smoldered on the main screen in the control room of the gods.

  “That’s the fifth town destroyed by monsters this season.” Earth stated the obvious that none of the other gods wanted to voice aloud.

  “We can’t expect our people to live the peaceful life we want for them if this is going to keep happening!” Water glared at Fire, who usually championed letting the people ‘learn’ to deal with the monsters. “It’s time we do something to protect them or we will have no people left! The Chaos magic fluctuates so much that the few who can take on the most powerful monsters are never able to make it in time to save the villages!”

  “Response times from the strongest temples range between 4 minutes and 3 hours 14 minutes with an average response time of 1 hour 72 minutes.” Time touched a control to display a graph of response times per temple.

  “I don’t need your silly numbers, Time!” Fire waved a hand at the screen dismissively. “I will concede that the current circumstances are not optimal. But what do you want us to do about it? Port down there ourselves and handle the monsters? We agreed to and selected a non-intervention system to allow our people to take responsibility for themselves. Only non-corporeal manifestations are allowed!” Fire crossed her arms and stared at the rest of the gods and demi-gods in turn.

  “I do not believe that Water would advocate for us fighting the monsters ourselves,” Aether spoke softly, his calm voice taking control of the situation. “But I agree, something must be done, or we will be left with a ruined planet and be forced to reset at great penalty to our power, and our options will become even more limited.”

  Air stood, “A reset would severely limit our options. We’d be stuck with unmodified templates! I spent too much time on my Kaseta to lose them.”

  “Well, we need to do something about this then!” Water cried in exasperation.

  “How can we do anything about it? We can’t control Chaos magic!” Fire glared at the screen showing the smoldering town as if it was a personal affront.

  “But what if we could contain it?” Space leaned forward, “I think that we could define boundaries of a space that confines the magic and prevents it from leaving.”

  “How would that help anything? We can’t just wall off the whole world from magic.” Earth’s voice held a note of confusion.

  “We would need to direct it or attract it to some space, not the whole planet, like a gravity well but for magic.”

  “Space, you’re a genius!” Water stood up excitedly, “We could develop a system to direct the flow of magic into the spaces, like how water slowly journeys back to the sea!”

  “That could work,” Aether mused. “We would need more than one pool. If the magic takes too long to collect, or has to travel too far, it may become strong enough for monsters to spawn along the way.”

  “But the world needs Chaos magic,” Essence countered. “Without ambient Chaos magic, our peoples will no longer be able to absorb the energy needed for their own magic. Each person converts ambient magic into magic that resonates with their affinity. It is critical for the regeneration of mana and for ability use!”

  “We would need to design the spaces carefully to soak up excess, just enough to prevent magic from coalescing into dangerous monsters and effects,” Aether replied. “There is enough magic used every day that some magic would always remain ambient. It would be a slow siphon.”

  “We could arrange it so that some magic could perfuse back through the barrier if the spaces collected too much magic relative to the surrounding area.” Essence suggested.

  “This is going to be too difficult to program,” Air grumbled

  “Well it’s better than sitting back and doing nothing!” Water snapped as she swiped at the screen in front of her, pulling up one of her designs. ”We can use my water cycle as a template, and then alter it for magic!”

  Aether nodded, “Essence, Space, you will be critical for this, but we will need everyone’s assistance in developing this system. We need more information on Chaos magic. We likely should have sought more information on it in the past, but it is never too late. We will reconvene when we have more knowledge and work to contain the magic.”

  ---------

  Anika closed the book and put it down on the couch. “I’m glad this book was intended for younger kids. The simplified explanations were helpful, but even then, I feel like I still have a lot to learn. I had no idea there was so much involved in how magic works. This Chaos magic sounds powerful.”

  “It is the magic that powers everything. It is everything at once, and can become anything!” Lily adjusted herself on the couch so she could look at Anika, having enjoyed a nap while Anika read the book.

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  “So if I understand right, the gods erected magical barriers to create dungeons. The dungeons collect Chaos magic, but some Chaos magic remains outside of dungeons as ambient magic, and that is what we convert into mana and use to cast our own magic. And then once we use the magic, it dissipates back into ambient Chaos magic. Some of the magic drains into the dungeons, and some stays ambient. And when the magic drains into the dungeons, the higher concentration of magic causes monsters and magical creatures and magical plants to spawn.”

  “Yup! The dungeons will turn the magic into magical things so that it doesn’t overflow. But if there is too much magic and too many magical things inside, then it gets bad and people have to go in and kill monsters.”

  “I don’t really understand how killing the monsters helps… don’t they just absorb back into magic?” Anika understood the basic idea of the cycle, but the details were not very clear in the book.

  “I think when the monsters die, the magic takes time to turn back into ambiant magic. And when they take parts of monsters back for crafting, magic is removed from the dungeon. Same with when we harvest magical plants! So the magic is removed from the dungeon that way too.”

  “I guess that makes sense. If we remove magic from the dungeon and turn it into other things, then it prevents the dungeon from collecting too much. But doesn’t that imply that magic is finite? If the people here make a lot of magical items, won’t that just eventually use up all the magic so there is none left?” Anika didn’t want to return to a world of no magic, or have her magic go away now that she had discovered her power.

  Anika also thought about how this ‘cycle of magic’ was similar to the water cycle of evaporation and precipitation on Earth, just using some ethereal substance she couldn’t see. But there were lots of places on Earth that didn’t have sufficient water, so were there similar areas here that didn’t have sufficient magic? There were deserts, and sometimes droughts, so wouldn’t this system acting like the water cycle have the potential to have areas of magical drought? Anika wouldn’t want to enter an area where suddenly her magic didn’t work. And weather could also cause a flood - can the same happen with magic? Nilendi had mentioned Chaos magic erupting from dungeons and that was what the heroes were here to help stop. Would it be like a tsunami of magic rolling over the countryside, spawning monsters to destroy everything in a giant wave of destruction?

  “There is always magic flowing through the cosmos, and so more magic comes in!” Lily twirled around like a dog chasing her tail as if to emphasize the movement of magic through the universe.

  Anika tried not to giggle at Lily’s way of illustrating her statement. Magic was always flowing through the cosmos. If that was the case, how did Earth have no magic if there was always magic flowing in. Maybe there was some barrier around Earth that prevented the Chaos magic from entering? That would explain why there were no monsters and why no one could see their stats and why no one knew they had magic. “So if magic is always coming in, doesn’t that mean all the dungeons would just get too strong? Is that why they had to summon us?”

  Lily looked thoughtful, “I don’t know. Magic comes and goes, but maybe too much is coming in and that is why the dungeons are getting too powerful.”

  “Based on what little I understand, it seems as plausible as anything else. Maybe the magic is getting caught on the planet, like the dungeons are making a bottleneck. Maybe it can’t leave the planet when it’s in the dungeons and it’s just building up and it’s eventually going to pop like a balloon with too much air and be a big explosion.” Anika emphasized the word ‘pop’ with a flourish of her hands in a boom motion.

  “I hope the magic doesn’t explode! That would be scary!” Lily bolted up like she had been shocked and sounded aghast at Anika even suggesting that a dungeon would burst open.

  “Well, some more magic outside wouldn’t be all bad. Then some of those advanced status reporting features would work outside of dungeons too! Though they still don’t have a lot to offer. I really wish I had a minimap.”

  “What’s a minimap?” Lily settled back down on the couch in a posture similar to a loafing cat, but with one webbed foot out in front of her where she rested her head. She acted like a child settling in for story time..

  Anika somewhat appreciated the change of subject, as trying to understand the magic cycle and dungeons was a lot to wrangle in her brain. She would much rather explain her favorite hobbies to the absolute example of cute in front of her. “A minimap is something they have in a lot of those video games I told you about. It’s like the big map we can see in dungeons, only it’s tiny and like, to the side? And it always shows what is around you, like red dots for enemies and white dots for people in your party. Kind of like your big map shows you. But it’s open all the time for you to see it out of the corner of your eye. It makes it easier to keep track of what is around you and makes it harder for monsters and bad things to sneak up on you! It’s really helpful when fighting a lot of creatures, because we don’t have eyes in the back of our head!”

  “Wow, that does sound really useful! I had to open and close my map a lot when I was looking for the Scurry Captain. It would be much easier to see where I am going at the same time as I look for the dot on the map! The dungeon needs more video games!” Lily bobbed her head excitedly.

  Anika laughed, “Well, there are certainly more features of video games that would be nice if the dungeons had them. Like loot, so when we defeated bosses we got cool new items or weapons or potions and other helpful things. And it would be really cool if the name of the monsters showed up in addition to their aura - then it would be easier for us to find them in a reference book and know how to fight them! There are a lot of other things that you can do in video games, but each one is different and has different types of status reporting. The dungeons here are pretty basic compared to games, but I guess I can’t expect real life to be too much like a video game. This is already more like a fantasy game than I could have ever imagined, but I wish all the game skills I acquired translated to real magic.” Anika spoke the last with a little sadness and a lot of frustration motivated by her most recent lack of success with her magical practice before dinner.

  “You said you were good at the games, so you will be good with the magic! You just have to practice. You weren’t good with the games when you first tried, were you?”

  “Well, no, I guess I wasn’t.” Anika admitted. “I always picked them up easily but every game took some amount of practice.”

  “See!” Lily jumped up and put her front feet up on Anika's lap to get closer to bring their faces closer together. “You just need practice and you haven’t even been here for five days yet! You’ve done a lot of practice with a lot of things! You will be just as good with magic here as you are with video games” Lily ended the statement with a matter-of-fact nod, giving Anika no room to argue.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Anika yawned. “But for now, I think it’s time to sleep. I just have to figure out how to return this library book…”

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