Myst: The book of Gehn
After all of these years, I had almost forgotten what it was like, living here in the crack in the rock. Fourteen years can be a long time.
It wasn't easy, returning to the place where I had lived for eleven years, but I had to do it. I had neglected my duties as a father for to long. It was time for me to teach my son about what he really is, and about what it means he can do.
It wasn't hard at all to find him. He was right outside the dwelling my mother and I had made, so many years ago. She'd named him Atrus, of course, after my father. But of course she'd told him nothing about me, or who my father had been, or what she had done. Later, I would have to tell him everything.
The old woman was against the thought of me taking the boy with me to the ruins of D'ni right from the start. I eventually got her to listen to reason, but then she got the foolish idea that she should come with us. I had to quickly dissuade her from that line of thinking. Teaching the boy was going to be hard enough without her corrupting him any more than she already had. In this, too, she listened to reason, but I had to "promise" her that I'd bring the boy back in three months to shut her up.
In the morning the boy and I set off, and a few days later we were back in D'ni. I brought him back to my study on the island of K'veer, where I started teaching him everything he would need to know before he could start Writing.I eventually got him to the point where he could study from the Rehevkor, which was the D'ni equivalent of an encyclopedia, without wasting any of my time.
Several weeks later I had to go down into the ruined city to pick up more Books, so I took Atrus with me. He seemed puzzled when I only wahter half a dozen blank books, until I explained about Kortee'Nea to him.
In the ancient D'ni empire, it was discovered that with a special type of paper, and a certain kind of ink, and the right combination of written words, any world you could think of could be not also created, but that the Book would also provide a passageway to that world. The Kortee'Nea were books made of the required paper, and a blank one provided the opportunity to create a completely new world.
Several weeks later, I was explaining this to Atrus when he asked me when we would be going back to his home. I tried to explain to him why it wasn't practical to go back, the told him that he couldn't trust the old woman. I told him how, on her word alone, a known criminal had been placed in a situation where he could escape. Atrus didn't seem to believe me at first, and he responded by trying to tell me that she was a better teacher than I was! Then he started speaking to me- in fluent D'ni, a lanquage I had been preparing him for during the past few months. After my initial anger at him not telling me this immediately, I realized that this would actually save me several months, even though it had already wasted three. I told him not to keep any more secrets from me and that I would send my mute servent, Rijus, to my mother with a message explaining why we couldn't come.
Three years later, Atrus had come a long way. We had visited many of the Ages that I had already created, so that he could see for himself what he could try that works. I decided that he was ready for something different.
I took him to Age 37, one of my more recent creations, which I had made shortly after Atrus came to live with me. The thirty-seventh age was inhabited by a primitive people, which was something Atrus hadn't seen yet. I gave him several phrases from the book describing the age for him to analyze their effect, then left to tend to some things elsewhere.
When I returned, the age was showing signs of becoming unstable. Additionally, the wall of mist that surrounded the island and always had was causing a large amount of distress in the natives. Although the instability had not yet shown how it was caused or might be fixed, the wall of mist was caused by the meeting of warm and cold water and was easily removable by causing the whole ocean to become warm. After fixing this, Atrus and I left.
For the past year or so, Atrus had been writing "practice ages" in plain, old, everyday books. He now had a respectably number done, and was ready to write one for real. I picked the five best ones and gave him a choice of which one to create.
I knew before I showed them to him which one he would choose. Of the five, two were not even finished, and two more barely so. Only the last one was finished, but in a way I would never consider. It was too descriptive, and the phraseology was like nothing I'd ever seen. When it was finished, we linked through.
As soon as we stepped out of the cavern I knew where he had gotten the idea. The Age was an exaxt replica of what the crack he grew up in had looked like before the buildings were built. There was no variation from the real thing. I suggested that next time he try something new, but grudgingly admitted that it was still an age. It was time for him to undergo his Korfah V'ja- the god-crowning ceremony.
The ceremony was going to be held on Age 37, to show the people their new master, but when we linked there, things had drastically changed. The lake in the middle of the island was gone now, dried up and drained through the gigantic cracks in the former lakebed. The sea was also gone. It had dried up to the point where the island now rested on top of a giant stone pillar, hundreds of feet high. The natives immediately thought that they had somehow offended me, and begged to have their land restored. They were too distracted to hold the ceremony, and as we linked back Atrus finally convinced me to undo all changes I had made.
When he came back from checking on the status of the Age, he seemed determined to take out all of his anger on me. He told me that I was not writing ages the right way, that I was making it too much of a science and not enough of an art. He said that we were not creator, but that the worlds already exist, and we just find them. He eventually stormed off and went to his room, and I decided to also get some sleep.
When I woke up, I found that Atrus was gone, that he had taken the notebook my father had made, with the maps to the surface, and ran. He did not, however, realize that I had torn a page out, and that he would not be able to make it out all of the way. Rijus and I followed immediately, and managed to catch up.
We overpowered him and took him back to K'veer, where I locked him inside a sealed chamber. I also, however, left him a single escape route; the book to my fifth age. Like the thirty-seventh age, the fifth age was inhabited and unstable. So far my attempts at fixing the instabilities had failed, but I was hoping that Atrus might prove more successful.
Unfortunately, I underestimated the intelligence of the local people. I had taught one girl, Katran, how to Write. She stole a book from my study and wrote an age in it. She and Atrus schemed against me together, and as I paid the age a visit, they destroyed all books on the age, and Atrus took the only remaining book, the one to the age Katran had written, and lept into a never-ending fissure with it, linking though at the same time, leaving me stranded.
But I can still write.