“Unfortunately, it is rather difficult for me to give you a definitive answer. Countless scholars researched it, but they all died before coming to a conclusion. Various theories came about, but none of them were proven. The general thought was that the mana throughout the world went out of balance and simply started a breakdown of established natural forces.”
“Does the balance of mana have something to do with magic?”
“Mana still exists. It fills the air and dwells within everyone and everything. Magic is merely a technique of putting the power of mana to work. We lost the technique, not the power.”
“So did the mana collapse happen because you lost magic?” I asked after a pause.
“There were certainly people who said so. Other explanations included the idea that it was a deleterious effect of the rise of steam technology. Yet another was that it had nothing to do with us and was simply a change in natural conditions. In the end, it is a mystery none have solved.”
“No one could solve it?”
I sighed. I suppose I’ll never know, then.
“Do you have an imagination?” Monty asked suddenly.
“Well, yeah...”
“Then you must never have learned to use it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
That had been just a little bit rude of him, I thought. Monty fixed his beady black eyes on mine and spoke steadily.
“The terrifying thing about the mana collapse was that no one could see it coming. If you spend your days pouring water into a glass, then someday it will overflow. In the same way, once your body saturates with mana, it will turn into crystals. You can’t hold anyone in your final moments. Not your parents, or siblings, or children, or friends. You just die.”
I knew what that looked like—waking up and seeing the person you’d been laughing with the night before suddenly nothing but a mound of crystals. I could remember the chill of finding the pile, the ringing numbness behind my ears. Just remembering it made me want to throw up.
Finally, I understood what Monty had meant about imagination. That same thing had happened all across the world. Pretty much everyone living here had experienced it firsthand. Would there be anyone that wasn’t sent into desperation by that? Would people not be so desperately afraid that they couldn’t focus to do the necessary research? Wouldn’t they all have given up from the start, accepted their fate, and decided there was nothing they could do?
I bit my lip and covered my mouth with my hand.
“The learned suffered. They had the knowledge, the will, and the responsibility. The foolish—with no learning, no position, and no influence—were at peace. They didn’t know the despair they would need to face. People searched for a method to win against the encroaching ruin facing the world. The vast number of theories is not due to their foolishness but rather to their courage as they spent their scant time left in this world searching for an answer. An answer for the people they would leave behind.”
I felt a prickling up my back, like I was lying on wet sand. An inescapable weight laid itself over me. I had never thought of that before.
Monty continued, “We don’t know why the world is in ruin. Perhaps one of those theories is correct, but there is no way to tell which one. Whether people understood that fact or not, they accepted their doom, grieved, raged...and many vanished. The survivors will end up the same way, sooner or later.”
I grasped for words. “Doesn’t... Doesn’t that make it all seem empty?”
Putting it into words, I suddenly felt a sense of understanding. That was it: I felt empty. I met people, laughed with them, took on their burdens, and continued my journey. Regardless of what I did, though, I’d someday vanish. What was the point in talking with people if the end was nigh?
“Is there any point to us still being alive if everything’s ending?” I asked.
Monty looked quietly back at me.
“It seems you’ve found what you were worried about. I suppose otherworlders aren’t all that different from us.”
Monty stood up slowly and walked over to some shelves in the corner.
“Many people chose suicide over falling apart through the mana collapse,” he continued. “To go on living, we need something more important than money.”
“Right...”
If the path I’d taken had been different, I probably wouldn’t have been sitting here either. I sat, shaken, as Monty returned. He placed the thing he’d picked up off the shelves on the table. It was a tarnished-looking metal box with a padlock hanging off of it.
“For me, that something is inside this box.”
Quiet hung between us for a moment, until I spoke up.
“What is it?”
“It’s a secret.”
I frowned back at him and Monty let out a rumbling laugh.
“You’re mocking me.”
“No. It really does have something inside it... My hope.”
Hope.
It was an ineffable thing, and a word I’d have hesitated to use. The pure, unvarnished nature of it would have made my embarrassment win out if I’d tried to. Monty had said it without any passion or pretension, though, as if doing so were a matter of course.
“I gaze at this box every night before I sleep. The contents are the only thing keeping me going. There is only one thing I can tell you, one piece of advice. Find your box of hope, and lay your heart upon it.”
I looked at the box on the table. I was in some random country in a ruined world, in a village I didn’t know the name of, in a small house by the lake, and on top of the table next to me was a locked box. A box with hope inside it. A smile welled up on my lips.
“I think that’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten,” I told him.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Monty said, softly patting the box before carefully picking it back up. “If you would take your leave, please? I’m a little tired now myself.”