A giant worm was talking to no one. There, at the edge of the realm, lay only a pile of brownish sand before it. Yet it talked all the same.
It had many things to say, that worm.
It said: "The balance has shifted."
And its voice was barely perceptible. Because this land was so deprived of mana, there was not enough to carry sound. So it spoke with its thoughts. It let words take shape and anyone catch them if they had the strength.
Words, in a magical realm, held so much more potency than they should.
Just a few of them carried more knowledge than a whole scroll.
So it was telling no one about how mana had accrued in the realm, in defiance of the drought that devoured it or, rather, in compliance with it.
It was a story of numbers. A poetic tale that, in reality, was void of all but melody.
Once upon a time, there was a realm with so much magic that the stars lasted hidden even through the day. Then a spell was cast on it, a phenomenon that impossibly deprived it of mana and that realm should have shriveled to nothing.
Yet it didn't. Some remnants stubbornly persisted and how much did, and how it did, explained in itself what this plague the humans had called the calamity really had been.
The worm's words had presented it thus: the realm was merciful. Magic listened and followed the will of those it birthed. Those who wished for the drain had simply wished to live.
But naturally, that was just the rambling of a solitary worm facing dead plains.
He had to wriggle, to slither back and forth just to keep itself in existence, at the edge of the void. Chitinous insects forming its body died in droves to sustain its shape. All just to align words no one would ever get to hear.
And just had no one listened to it, that calamity answered to none. Reality was much, much more indifferent.
The mana drain was just that, a mana drain. A common spell to punish wizards who abused their art in battle. Its realm-spanning variation required mana itself and so, under a certain threshold, it ceased. Then magic flowed back and revived the spell with it.
Would the realm not experience ripples? How could the balance even change then?
Yes. Because it took infinitely more magic for the spell to erase an existence than to burn the skin, the drain itself ebbed and flowed.
It burned through the powerful like flames on dry leaves! And choked pitifully on the weak.
So, when only weak creatures remained, the realm reached a balance. All that was needed to change the balance, then, was the number of creatures itself.
"The balance has shifted." The worm repeated to nobody.
It was looking at a tiny stone tablet slowly emerging from the sand, getting exposed to the invisible winds that would in time erase all inscriptions on it and then, turn it to smoke.
Why, then, had the number of weak creatures not increased? They had. The fluffy worms, the rapts, had thrived in this unforgivable environment. And caparaces, the weakest of the weak, were simply uncounted.
But a sum of zeroes struggled to reach one, and the rules of the realm had not changed.
Magic still naturally pooled to the strong, the talented. It puddled where they had resided. Because it was in the nature of monsters to absorb mana, to hoard it, they still did so under a calamity. Even if it killed them, they had no idea and survived in the only way they knew.
Dungeons had the strongest beast mastering it, with all its peers squirming under it. Those peers in turn dominated their own. This was only natural.
And so they hunted and killed the weak, and the more successful they were, the less magic remained for them, until their own threshold was met and they fell to their own might.
How unfair...
What sick and cruel realm this was where the successful was punished. For doing everything right, and winning, the drain scarred it such that it might as well have eaten its own limbs.
Such was the tragedy that had befallen the best of the best.
And so this added to the balance. The weak thrived, and naturally turned strong; the strongest among them dominated and the weak died; the strongest fell soon after, allowing for the next sovereign.
No one had noticed. No one could.
They were too busy hunting for their life.
Had they known, what would have changed? Nothing. The weak had to live, the strong had to stand, all would defend their place to the last. Any other way was abhorrent. For the strong, to be forced to delve into the mud, for the sake of the puny?
This, and only this natural order locked the balance firmly in place.
That giant worm, at the edge of the void, was saying nothing anymore, but still moved in wait, in a conversation of one. Waiting for a response that would never come.
Its colony of caparaces had piled up on the stone tablet to shield it. Mana left their frail life to filter in the inscriptions but it was not even dry droplets. It did nothing to stop the erosion.
The stone was indifferent.
What had changed? Humans had. A human had come back with more mana than the whole realm combined. And the drain had caught like a spark on oil. A human had been nothing but a ripple.
Humans followed the natural order. They were meant to be on top... The strongest of the strong. And among them the same law applied. Their strongest naturally deserved the highest place. They could be no less...
So their threshold, the mana they required to stand, was still kindling to the fire.
... And yet, impossibly, those humans defied nature.
At some point, they had disrupted the natural order. Under their uncanny influence, fewer beasts sought potency. Creatures renounced their earnings. Hungry masses agreed to starve.
... This could not last. A monster's very instinct, repressed for so long, had to burst free eventually. Balance would be restored in a violent rebellion of the mighty... Even the humans themselves could not suffer the change they were bringing.
... But it did. It did last.
Misery replaced misery... Madness rejected the hunt. In the friction of desperate monsters, the mighty bowed to the dirt...
... From start to finish, all the fights, all the struggles, all the hopes and all the tears had just been that, an abstract melody of numbers.
... What are you looking at, Veleter? You worm.
... You never got the void you wished for after all... You never wished for that void after all. A void monster was too weak to wish for much... All you had ever cared for was learning.
Ah. Ah ah.
... You never cared how the balance changed. You were just learning... Answering others' questions... The plight of a legion.
... And now as the balance shifted, the void receded before you... You were going to die too, weren't you? Veleter... As magic spread out, more abundant... You would have nowhere left to hide. And being a void monster, when too much magic touched you...
... You really don't care? Are you even a monster, or some force of nature?
... The weakest among the weakest... turned out to be knowledge incarnate...
... And that was all the worm said...
"The haven will open. Humans will die."
... Mh? It was still speaking... Still stringing words to the nothingness... Its chitinous insects were trying so hard to keep the sand to cover that tablet...
... What about the humans?
... They had fled... Taken with them twenty-one orders of magnitude of mana... They were fine...
... When the balance would grow high enough... Their shelter, Earth, would become visible... At that point, monsters would be free to assail it if they so wished...
... And even if monsters didn't use that... golden hour... the Earth would then open... Begging to be burned by the mana drain... But so what? As long as they adapted... As long as humans chained themselves to this abhorrent cult... of weakness...
... As long as humans ceased to be humans, they would live...
... Eh, Veleter... The realm is tired...
... There has to be winners... and losers... That's how things work... That's how things always worked... Whether humans lose... or prevail... It's fine...
... So stop... Shielding that tablet...
... Stop dying for a stupid rock...
...
Ah! It hurt, it hurt, it hurt it hurt it hurt!
I regretted everything! Get it out, get it out, make it stop! The pain was so much worse than everything I had experienced!
"It will pass." Said the great voice.
No it wouldn't! Every single one of my nerves was being ripped by that stupid stone! Ah! And it was bleeding my stomach! Okay I didn't have blood and I didn't have a stomach but if I did, it would definitely be bleeding!
It hurt so much! My whole body throbbed! I was so desperate that I was scratching my belly with my tiny legs to try and get it open, just so the stone would fall off!
You didn't tell me it would be agony, great voice! You liar!
"It will pass."
You butt! As if the hunger and wear were not bad enough! Now on top of a cracked shell I had a stone tearing at me from the inside and giving me the worst fever of my short life!
I didn't need this at all!
Ah! Ah! I had fallen to the ground, exhausted by the searing pain. Ah! The realm was starting to stabilize around me. It still hurt! But not as much.
Okay, great voice, maybe you didn't lie after all, please don't abandon me!
"Take the stone to the human."
What even was a human?! Give me a break o great one! That thing better had to be close because I wait! Wait! I knew what a human was! Yes! I was the best! And hurting, so much hurting.
All the other caparaces around me were poking my shell to see if I was okay.
"The voice has spoken." They insisted. "You need to go!"
"Give me a moment!" I complained.
We were all dying here, but I was the one with a stone the size of my whole living tissues here!
"You can't stay here, you are decaying!" They pressed me.
Like I didn't know that! Okay, okay, it wasn't so bad anymore. Terrible, absolutely terrible, just the worst but maybe I could move now.
Ah! Just moving hurt! I couldn't tell if it was the stone making it so hard or just the natural bite of the air on my body. But I could drag myself back up, shake my heavy shell and get going!
I was doing it great voice! I would carry the stone to the human!
"Where is the human?" I naively asked.
Please tell me he was close, please tell me he was just hiding past that windy dust!
"He is super far!" Another caparace told me. "You will never make it!"
"What?! No! The voice said I could!"
"Idiot! Just bring the stone to another, he will carry it further."
"Let's warn those at the fault!"
Okay! Okay that sounded more doable! Just go to the fault, give the stone to another and then the realm would be saved! Yay me, let's go!
Ah! It still hurt. I had to slow down or the throbbing would kill me!
No, seriously, I felt so weak that it was physically possible for the throbbing alone to rip my chitin.
Would it really end? The devouring pain in my entire body? When I gave the stone to another, it would still have to travel far, right? And then, when it reached the human, more stuff would have to happen, right?
But the great voice said he would save the realm! We were saving the realm!
So the pain would go away, and I would live forever and get to feast all the time!
Wait for me, realm!