Codigo Simian wasn’t exactly what I would call an ordinary fellow.
He was raised in a village with no name near the barely named town of Tuygi. His mother was an underrated seamstress and his father died in a pointless war when he was ten.
Then again, none of these things were out of the ordinary at the time.
Those things weren’t what made me interested in Codigo. It was the way he’d sit and watch a stream for hours on end, observing the ripples and eddies form and disperse over and over. Or how he would look at the sky and smell the air to know how to avoid a storm.
Most of all, I started gaining interest in him when he first picked up that bag and started noticing me.
I called to him. I was compelled to act.
The first couple of weeks with the bag, I would rush home from my journeyman post with the smith and pull out the Warhammer to patrol the road to Tuygi from town. My old fear of the bandits and ghouls was replaced with a sense of purpose. Now they had something to fear.
On my eighth night patrolling the road, I noticed something strange. I was resting at my fire when a squat ghoul tried sneaking up on me; luckily, I heard his clumsy approach. Just before he could reach me, I spun and launched my Warhammer through his face. As the life was leaving the ghoul, I felt it. It was as if I was being watched, but from all directions, almost as if the air had noticed what I had done.
It wasn’t like a universal sense of judgement, but rather like a sense of knowing. It was unsettling and invigorating all at once. What was it?
I kept to my nightly patrols, training my senses towards anything out of the norm, trying to find this strange force. As I prowled, I would feel it now and again—such as when I escorted a lost merchant to safety or found a group of bandits that hadn’t gotten the message that the road was unsafe.
One night, I collapsed into my bed after a patrol, and that was when it called to me.
I didn’t dream, but had a vision. I saw the entirety of my world enveloped and connected by raw energy of power and light coalescing into a single point. It looked like an hourglass, but instead of sand, it was the world’s experience funnelling into a single point. Every action was contained and observed, and at the bottom of the hourglass, a vast temple was absorbing the energy.
It was the most glorious sight I’ve ever seen.
Just as quickly as the vision came, it left. I woke up shaking in bed, skin colder than the Ik Nupay mountains. Mom was there to comfort me. She was trying to hide it, but I could tell she was frightened by my sudden terrors.
I barely had the energy to say, “I’m sorry. I have to go find it.”
“Find what?” she cried.
“The Rift.”
I left home forty or so days ago. I can’t really remember.
I didn’t exactly know which way to go to chase my vision, but I wasn’t lost; I was following a feeling. That feeling took me northwest, away from the sea and in to the desert. Every time I slept, I would search for this place and hope for additional direction, but I found nothing. All I had to go on was the subtle feeling that I was getting closer.
By this point, I was fully in the desert’s grasp. When I’d first stepped onto the sand, I’d considered myself well prepared; I had twelve days’ worth of provisions and a strong feeling that I was nearing my goal.
But it was my ninth day, and I was no closer to finding it. Had I been walking to my own death? Maybe this bag was just a curse, and the exact same thing happened to the unfortunate person who found it before me!
Night was falling and I was exhausted. I reserved most of my travel for the night time, as I figured it was safer to sleep during the day, but this warm night was too much for my beaten body to resist. I needed rest.
I laid on my bedroll and began to close my eyes. Then, on the horizon, I saw a faint glow! I looked at it for a few minutes, partially to soak in what I was seeing and partially to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.
I finally got up, not bothering to pack up my little campsite. I just grabbed the bag and walked towards the light.
I walked the entire night, excitedly noting as the glow took up more and more of the horizon. When the sun rose, I could finally see a familiar-looking structure in the distance.
It was real!
I increased my pace, although I knew my worn body couldn’t keep it up forever. Still, I pushed and pushed and pushed, and by dawn, I had arrived at the Rift.
I saw a large stone temple with light emanating from the top. It had long—seemingly endless—steps going up to its entrance. The stone was etched with what looked like hundreds of different languages, including the common tongue.
It read, “ . . . ENTER AND KNOW AND ENTER AND KNOW AND . . .” repeated over and over.
I walked towards the steps and placed my foot on the first one. Next thing I knew, I was inside of the temple, standing at an elevated doorway that opened into an atrium. The light was flowing into the room from above and concentrating in the centre of the space. Behind me was a long hallway that led to the temple entrance and the desert I’d just left.
Dozens of similar doorways surrounded the atrium and all of them connected to similar hallways, but there wasn’t desert beyond those hallways. Of the few I caught a glimpse of, each led to a different looking place.
And yet, all of this was barely an afterthought compared to that light.
I stepped towards it and it began to grow.
It started to take shape as it stopped flowing from the sky, eventually taking the form of a large, hooded being.
I dropped my bag, petrified—not because the being looked frightening, but because I had never felt the presence of such pure power.
Instead of a face, the hood contained eternity, and I knew—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that this was what had brought me here.
“HELLO, CODIGO SIMIAN,” it whispered, but with such powerful intent, it was like thunder was rolling through my body.
I didn’t hear the words; they just echoed through my mind.
“Who are you?” I wasn’t surprised it knew who I was.
“I AM THE RIFT,” it spoke in my head.
Isn’t this place the Rift? I thought.
The Rift echoed, “WE ARE ONE. WE ARE THE NEXUS OF EXPERIENCE. CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE.”
I thought back to my vision those many nights ago, the one showing me the entirety of the world’s actions and experiences condensed to a single point in this very place. The vision in my mind’s eye started shifting and evolving; I was no longer in control. The condensed world expanded in every direction, taking up the entirety of my vision.
I was high up over the Earth and I could see faraway lands in every direction. It was so big. I flew towards the Earth and floated over a landscape. Near the horizon to the East, I saw the sea and my village. Across the horizon to the West were rolling hills dotted with other villages, and in the far West were the Dead Lands.
The same glowing energy that had created the Rift connected all of it.
The villagers tilling their land caused the light to glow a little brighter over them.
A pair of adventurers fighting ghouls from the Dead Lands exuded even more light.
And brightest of all was the light coming from the top of the craggily mountain.
The vision began to morph again. The sun began to rise and fall over the landscape faster and faster, as if time was accelerating.
I could see the light over the pair of adventurers split as they went their separate ways. The first one went back to one of the villages and stayed there for years, during which their light only grew a little.
The other adventurer seemingly sought out the energy, growing it exponentially by venturing into crypts and caverns, and patrolling the roads just as I had. Eventually, their light was the brightest one I could see.
Then the light over the mountain stirred, and out burst a red dragon flying straight towards the adventurer . . .
It all made sense now! The whole world is connected through its experience! That experience is power that anyone can harness. I just have to seek it out.
That’s when I opened my eyes.
Back home in bed, it was daybreak.
I stood, grabbed my bag, and stepped outside into the light.
Now my adventure could begin.