AN EXCERPT FROM A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BUILDERS
No one knows where the Builders came from in the multitudes of worlds and parallel worlds. They were not human, but could take human form. Indeed, the Builders seemed to enjoy the human form. Flawless men and women appearing out of nowhere, almost ethereal in their perfection, and cryptic in their speech, this quality prized by the ordinary as evidence of an elevated status, of elevated minds.
In such disguises, they walked the Earths as mortals, but they were neither mortal nor exactly immortal. Nor was it possible to tell if they were moral or immoral beings. At times, the actions of the Builders were deeply humane and at others astonishingly cruel.
The Builders’ real name was too terrible to be written or spoken. To do so was to feel as if eels and spikes were writhing in one’s head. To do so was to feel as if one’s own brain was screaming. So they remained the Builders, but some disliked saying even that surrogate name. A stirring somewhere, of some strangulation of space and time, even in that simple utterance. As if there were bargains the Builders had made that had turned them hideous in the attempt.
But everyone could agree on one thing about the Builders: They had snuffed out war and imposed order wherever they had ruled. Mostly in the form of the Doors.
Before the Builders, magical landscapes had an unruly, untamed aspect. Unbound by rules. Doors between worlds, volatile, and winking in and out of existence in their multitudes. In some places, merely walking outside, through a forest, could be a fraught experience. You might come back, or you might not. Any place could be magic or no place in those shifty uncanny times. The Old Magic ruled and even a stone or a tree stump might of a moment speak to a passerby.
But after the Builders created their own doors, magic no longer ran in unruly channels that might change on a whim. It was anchored to places rather than the landscape. Stability resulted. There was no free-for-all. Inanimate objects remained so and did not of a sudden turn on their owners. Animals, on the whole, stopped talking at unexpected times. People did not get lost from walking all unknowing through invisible doors that had not been there the prior day. People did not find themselves trapped in some other version of Earth, doomed to fade away without ever understanding what had happened to them. The myriad links between places had been snapped, and while for most this was progress, for some this was a bad thing, for it meant like was banished from like and whole living systems were cast adrift, one from the other. Forever lost, bereft of what had been connection.
Where the Builders extended rather more influence, there were three sets of doors, in particularly sensitive places. Where the Builders extended less influence, the doors were simple, straightforward. Places the Builders deemed dangerous might have no doors at all, or restrictions not clear to anyone but them … until too late.
The first doors might lead to corridors of other doors or to other doors on the same world. The second doors might lead to hell or hells. The third doors … well, they led to so many places, how could one catalog them?
Some believed the third doors were a dark joke by the Builders, a joker’s card added to the deck out of a perverse sense of their own superiority. A challenge, even for them, to navigate. For there was no doubt the Builders liked a good joke, and a difficult challenge.
And, for a time, all went well.
But, over time, too, the Builders receded, lessened in visibility and effect. Over millennia they began to retreat from the worlds they ruled, leaving behind only the doors, a few artifacts, and a handful of very odd buildings.
These dwellings included what some dubbed “the Château Peppermint Blonkers,” choosing absurdity over a true name that, like the Builders’ true name, would crush a mind with sheer terror. The château, like most Builder buildings left behind, only appeared corporeal on certain terms and conditions. It only appeared in places of magical chaos or strife. Yet neither did the château’s presence always restore order, as if it had become unmoored from its original purpose.
No one knew where the Builders had come from, so when they withdrew or disappeared … no one knew where they had gone. Or why. Had there been renegade Builders who did not support the purpose of the majority? Had there been some kind of revolt, or reconsidering of priorities? Had they simply grown tired of their creations and abandoned them? Had some other force destroyed them in a sly, stealthy way?
None of these questions could be answered.
Who knew even what worlds the Builders had not touched. How would one know? Before their rule, few returned from a visit to their native world to report back. Only those worlds with Builder doors had anything resembling traffic back and forth.
In the absence of the Builders, susceptibilities and weaknesses appeared … or one could say the old magicks reappeared. Magic, on some worlds, went feral once more. In other places, magic disappeared entirely.
Over time, men and women stepped into this breach, understood the importance of preserving what the Builders had left behind. They studied the magic involved, perused every relevant scrap of knowledge, eventually formed an organization: the Order of the Third Door. Their mission: to ensure stability, if on a smaller scale, for they were not as powerful as the Builders.
The more the Builders’ doors could be preserved, the less magic would revert to the chaotic. The less travel between the doors, the less chance for reversion as well. And thus the Order was essentially conservative in its goals, one might even say protectionist. And they had succeeded now for an immeasurably long time. They had succeeded so well that kings and emperors in the know had grumbled for quite some time that some among the Order felt they knew as much as the Builders, pretended to take up the Builders’ former glory.
Less an organization than new potentates. New rulers. Taking over backwater worlds, unlikely Earths, where the mainstream of intellectual commerce between worlds rarely took place, where the rumors might be contained. Where a human might appear to be a god.
Over time, however, fragmentation continued and against the Order was arrayed old magic and new, which might make a return to chaos more possible, much more likely. Let in all sorts of things that must not be let in. Let in old magic better left to rest in the ground, in the forest, in the sky. If people understood old magic at all.
For there was a whispered prophecy regarding the Builders that was ever at the back of the Order’s collective mind.
That there would come a time when a cruel ruler compromised by darkness would come to power on Aurora. As the darkness spread, the château would once more appear and other artifacts of the Builders as well. That the magical wall of Britain would be compromised.
That the old magic would return in full fury and tempest—and all would once more descend into chaos. A new Dark Ages, for all time and all worlds.
But was it true?