Server Migration

There were supposed to be grand gates and machines of recollection. The expansive sea should have been lined with countless masses of orbs from the beginning of time. Waves of echoing time dilation were supposed to ebb and flow against the golden shore. It was supposed to be so different. But this was it. They had reached the Shores of Time and found nothing.

Nine years. Nine years of planning, searching, hiding, whispering, fleeing, hoping. Nine years gone. Izhari’s quest had been for nothing. Somehow, at some point before now, the Shores of Time were erased. All that remembrance, gone like smoke in a windstorm.

Sorrow manifested itself into the purest feeling that had ever moved through Izhari’s mind, and it pulled her down so low she accepted that she might fall through the very soil and into the abyss below. Tomita’s own great disappointment joined her sorrow like bedmates in his chest, and he felt whatever purpose he had conjured up till now start to fade.

Empty.

All gone.

Memory star falls moved across the sky like glowing blades cutting through the encroaching darkness.

Izhari collapsed onto her side and let out one final, silenced scream of defeat. If Tomita had not been near her, he might not have even heard it. But he felt it. It tore from her damaged throat until her very vocal chords seemed to sever from their attachments. Waves of defeat crashed against her spirit until the dam finally broke. Blackened eyes clinched shut as claws returned and dug into her face like anchors. The punches didn’t return. There was no strength left to do so. All she could do was scream.

It was all for nothing.

Empty.

All gone.

Tomita sat beside her and continued to watch the post-apocalyptic scene around them. Dead trees lined the shore. Stagnant water sat idly against the sand, stretching out into the fog but never moving. A thin layer of dust had already settled on the surface, giving the water a strange matte glow.

All around them, placid water flowed eternally towards the serene cliff edges of the island. There were no ruins. No hints of society. Just emptiness and calm, hazy skies.

“W-what could have happened?” Tomita asked as he watched the memory star falls moving silently in the distance.

Izhari didn’t speak. Tomita’s mind was racing. He needed there to be a reason for all this. Even for himself. He had been denied a death and had lived in fear every day for months since arriving in this place. He needed an explanation. There had to be some sort of clue. Something they could remember.

Then it struck him.

“Izhari! The Currtasi! Didn’t he say something happened on the last excursion with Mathael?! Didn’t he say that was the last time they were asked to come here?!” Tomita pondered in desperation.

Izhari’s tale flicked, and her ears rose ever so slightly. In her mind, she recalled what words she had heard in the midst of the seething hate that day. Tomita was correct.

“I… I think so…” she replied in earnest.

Tomita looked around for any sign of what may have occurred. Beside him, Izhari forced herself to stand. She could hear Tomita shuffling about as he looked for help and signs of what may have occurred. Her blindness was a blockage for her now in the face of absolute silence from the ether. But something occurred to her. If there was nothing else to do, and this was the end of the road, she might as well expend her essence and use whatever mageworks she could.

“Tomita, I have an idea. But I’ll need your help…” she said.

Her familiar stopped his search and immediately moved to her side.

“Whatever you need, manager,” he replied without hesitation.

“I will need to use the burden sharing to draw from you again. But also, I will need you to be my eyes.”

“Always. I am ready.”

Though either of them could barely stand, and the pain of the teleportation was still ripping through Izhari’s skull like a saw blade, she set her feet and recalled what she had heard Mathael shout in Currtasi.

Her hands extended forward and to her side. A slow inhale filled her lungs.

“Show us what happened the last time Mathael visited this place with the Currtasi!” Izhari commanded.

Now Tomita understood. There was an instant draining of lifeforce between both of them as the great command pulled an immense amount of essence from Izhari. Her knees strained and nearly bent, but then Tomita was there holding her steady. His touch bolstered Izhari’s resolve, and she closed her eyes in pleading acceptance of the pain as she heard crystalline hums building around them.

Tomita watched in wonder as ghostly blue spectres began to form from the ground up. All around them, over a dozen Currtasi apparitions appeared. Stone mounts for grand machina formed in silence as pulsing wallworks rose and stretched along the shoreline. Waves crashed in distant, unseen rhythm. Mathael himself finally formed in the center, and though Tomita knew it was not real, he could not hide the shiver of fear he felt as he witnessed the ghost of the enormous mage arrive before them. Lastly, millions of memory orbs appeared around them and in the distance behind the memory wall. The recollection was complete.

Tomita began to explain what he saw.

“Mathael is here with several Currtasi. There are large machines that seem to be of interest to him…” Tomita narrated as Mathael’s visage drifted through the muttering priests.

Something felt strange. Even Izhari could sense it. It was as though the Currtasi did not want to be there. Mathael himself moved between them with a resolute scowl. His ornate crown was hiding much of the top of his face, but as he moved closer to Tomita, Tomita noticed streaks of black corruption running from his hidden eyes.

Memory orbs seemed to follow Mathael as he stalked. The machina were activated and began to whir with a guttural churn. All of the Currtasi looked to Mathael with nervous anticipation as he turned softly to face the great memory wall.

Then he held out his hand without speaking, and a horizon-sized streak of white light erupted from the sky and tore across the memory wall with an angelic scream. Before the glare of the beam had even dissipated, the memory wall had been destroyed. The Currtasi all let out gasps of terror and shock, but Mathael continued.

“The Currtasi activated some machines, then Mathael destroyed the wall that protected the Shores of Time… Now the s-sea of memory orbs is exposed…” Tomita explained.

Izhari felt the dread returning to her chest. A hazy whisper drifted into her mind as her eyes began to flutter. Consciousness was beginning to abandon her, but she commanded her essence to continue the spell.

A rogue Currtasi finally gathered his courage and spoke.

“My my my lord… This is sacrilege… The Shores of Time have existed from the founding…” the creature muttered.

Mathael paused as he heard the other Currtasi agreeing with their comrade. Then Mathael raised a single finger from his calmly hanging hand, and another beam of light shot from the heavens and covered the grounds around him. In the midst of the burning light, all of the Currtasi vanished in a united scream of suffering. It was over in an instant and now Mathael was alone.

“He just killed all of the Currtasi…” Tomita explained as he watched Mathael slowly start to wade into the sacred waters of the sea of memories.

“He’s entering the water now. Where the memory orbs are…” Tomita said.

The pain was starting to break Izhari. Even Tomita felt the strain starting to blur the edges of his vision. His feet were numb, and his legs were unsteady. The recollection was starting to glitch.

“Just a l-l-little longer, Izhari…” Tomita tried to say, but the words slurred without him realizing.

Before them, Mathael paused once he was waist-deep in the water. The billions of orbs all around them seemed to sense his presence, and a boundless tsunami of memories began to form. Through it all, Mathael didn’t move. He was whispering something, but Tomita couldn’t hear over the howl. Everything began to glitch.

“TOMITA? WHAT’S HAPPENING?!” Izhari screamed as she felt a new sort of pain that went beyond the expending of essence.

“I don’t know!! The orbs are spinning like it’s a thunderstorm! He’s chanting something!” Tomita shouted as he fell to his knees to catch Izhari, who was starting to collapse forward.

She gasped for air. He forced his eyes open. Mathael raised his hands to the heavens. The orbs spun and spun and spun until they broke from individual beings and began to blur into a single glowing beam of chaotic energy.

“The orbs are turning into something else! It’s like they’re connecting together!!” Tomita shouted as he shut his eyes for a millisecond of respite.

By the time he reopened his eyes, Mathael was hunched in strain as the storm of energy moved all around the island. Shaking hands raised once more to the sky, and Mathael let out a scream. Then the energy exploded upwards like cannonfire. The entirety of the island shook, and the sea turned as still as glass. Mathael choked and fell onto his hands. It was over. He was alone in a placid sea now.

“He… he banished the memory orbs? Or destroyed them? Or changed them into something else…” Tomita tried to guess, but the glitched recollection didn’t make sense.

The vision sputtered and failed. Izhari snarled in pain as her hands fell limp. The ghostly vision vanished in silence and Tomita held his manager.

Gasps of panic filled burning lungs while a million thoughts hurled between the two of them.

“Why would he do that?!” Izhari cried.

“Why would he do that?!!!!!” she said once more.

Tomita hated that he had no idea. This all had only created more questions.

“It looked different than his attack spells. It looked like he was trying to gather them all to himself. Or send them somewhere?... But why?!” Tomita asked.

A memory star fall struck the ground a few hundred meters away from them. Tomita never wanted to touch another, but his gaze stayed on its glowing remnants.

The memory star falls. The Currtasi comment about strain and the crowns failing. This destruction. It all had to mean something. Why would Mathael do this? Why would he want to change or move the entirety of this realm’s memories?

Izhari growled and searched the ground for her staff as her other hand tensed, threatening to begin striking her head once more. But she restrained herself.

“I… I… WHY?!!!” was all she could snarl.

Tomita cleared his mind and tried to come up with a solution. Why would they move massive amounts of data or information in his world? Safety. Security. Updates.

He began to brainstorm out loud.

“In my world, we held memory and information in this magical system called the internet. But the internet needed things called servers to store that information…” he said as he tried to think.

Izhari turned and listened.

“Servers were still vulnerable, though. So we began to use new technology a few years ago. We would call it server migration…”

Another memory star fall struck in the distance. Tomita’s mind was racing but suddenly it started to become clear.

“We called this new storage space… the cloud…” he muttered as he looked to the heavens.

“The clouds…” Izhari repeated.

“Cloud migration…” Tomita said as he watched the streaks of light falling from the cloudy skies all around them.

“I think Mathael moved the memories to somewhere in the sky. In the clouds…” Tomita posited.

“Very good,” Mathael's voice growled from behind them.

Tomita flinched and turned in terror as Izhari screamed out.

“No!” she shouted in a partial beg as she heard the footsteps of the great mage.

Tomita realized to his absolute terror that this was not the spectre of before. Mathael had found them, and now they were lying on the ground, absolutely spent, as he approached with malice radiating from his very form.