Worlds Collide is an eclectic shop that sells things like fantasy novels, many-sided dice, model spaceships, and other cool nerd loot. It also houses special gaming rooms, each decorated with a different theme, where friends can meet and play the games they love.
Turns out it’s also located at a weak point in the fabric of the universe, and people occasionally tumble through.
Who knew?
Dust motes danced in the morning light, fanned into a frenzy with the turn of each heavy, age-tanned page. He liked to think even the air respected the ponderous weight of power held within The Book. It seemed to pulse with its own energy, just as it had when was given to him by an angry god all those years ago. It was almost hard to believe he’d had a life before that day.
And in light of what he’d just read…perhaps he hadn’t.
He’d been following the activities of a group of adventurers who had won the favor of his presence some time ago. They’d promised some backwater village elder to investigate a spate of kidnappings, and they’d come to him seeking answers. Until today, they’d been progressing on their quest as expected.
Owning The Book of Knowledge tended to make one unaccustomed to surprise. The Oracle read the page again, attempting to make sense of it.
“How fare the adventurers?” he’d written, checking on items of interest each morning as was his habit.
The ink had risen to the surface of the page from within, words fully formed. “Not well.”
“Why?” he’d written, in confusion. Just the day before, they’d soundly beaten the goblin forces sent to plague their journey toward their foe’s stronghold. There was no reason anything should have been amiss…
And that was when The Book completely ceased to make sense, triggering a flood of questions and responses about the essential nature of the world that still had him reeling. If he hadn’t been utterly confident in its infallible nature, he would have chucked it in the nearest fireplace.
“They are real now,” said The Book, “and they do not know how to be real beings in an unreal world.”
Everything The Book of Knowledge had to say next had badly shaken him, but perhaps nothing as much as when he demanded accusingly, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Until today, I did not know,” it said.
Anjelica Grey 