A Jaded Life

Interlude: Telephone Game

If there was one thing Maggie considered herself an expert in, it was the game of whispers. It had been her passion during her time on Mundus, when everyone thought this was all a game, and even before that, the spread of information had been incredibly intriguing to her. Evaluating sources, listening to gossip and sifting the facts from the spin, it had been her bread and butter, quite literally. Sadly, she had never been able to make it big, merely uncovered a few small and medium-sized scandals, nothing that would put her name on a larger map.

Those experiences were something she had been drawing on when organising their little community. Handling delicate information and understanding how people reacted to learning frightening facts were key to organising a larger group. Fundamentally, people wanted the same thing: to be safe, to be fed, to have shelter and the ability to fulfil their individual desires. Those were the lowest common denominators among humans, the very basic needs everyone wanted fulfilled; everything beyond that was just gravy, so to say. If you could convince them that your way would fulfil those needs without forcing them to take actions they considered unpalatable, they would follow.

That interest in information and secrets meant her ears were highly attuned to the various rumours floating around in their little community. Or maybe not so little any longer. By now, they had over two-thousand people, almost three thousand, which was quite the number. The problem was that the sheer number meant people were congregating in smaller, different groups, bound together by a wide variety of factors. While most people formed groups out of shared interests, some people stuck together due to holdovers from the old world. It might be their old social status, their heritage, or some other, largely irrelevant idea. In other cases, the grouping was based on some innate characteristic, such as race, even if they were all human; sexuality, or something as simple as their age or sex.

All those different groups meant that the gossip circles and rumour mills were just as varied, with different groups spreading different ideas, making it quite difficult to stay on top of it all, though she couldn’t say she disliked the difficulty. It was incredibly interesting, especially since all gossip had to be done in person, which made it even more difficult. And Maggie was relishing it deeply, especially as it pushed her abilities in Darkness Magic beyond what Jade had taught her. Far beyond that, though, she was confident that the unhinged Sorceress was aware of the possibilities she was abusing. She had demonstrated as much when she had demonstrated her ability to teleport through shadows; in comparison to that, Maggie’s trick to listen through shadows was fairly tame.

Incredibly useful for someone who wanted to gather information, but tame nonetheless.

However, sometimes, she wasn’t overly happy with the ability. Oh, sure, it was incredibly useful, but, at the same time, ignorance could be bliss. She didn’t really want to know that someone seemed to be spreading rumours about Jade, even if her rational mind insisted that this was important. And, sadly, the rumours she was now hearing had to come from a deliberate act of manipulation; any other explanation was too far-fetched.

The rumours were too uniform to have spread by word of mouth. Normal rumours were distorted in every retelling, their focus shifting from the original story due to the biases of those spreading them, but here, the rumour was consistent across a number of different groups within their little community. And not just groups with a large amount of overlap, due to people moving between groups, but also completely unconnected groups.

What’s more, the speed at which the rumour had come up was unreal. She had heard the first whispers late in the previous night, but now, within less than twelve hours later, it seemed that half of their population had heard the rumour. Sure, gossip could spread faster than any disease, but this was just a little too quick to be natural. Unless the rumour had started at different points and infected different minds, giving it multiple origin points.

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Which was contradicted by the rumour’s uniformity and the consistent message. Unless somebody made sure that these different people all started that one rumour within their own social circles. Someone who was manipulating her community, likely for their own ends, risking significant damage in the attempt.

The message was rather simple, implying that Morgana was hoarding magical knowledge, trying to keep the people of their community from learning so they would be stuck under her thumb forever. It was, quite frankly, utterly ludicrous, and everyone who had spoken with Jade for any real length of time would immediately disregard it, but that was the problem. Jade Morgana was an incredibly private woman. One might even call her taciturn, generally only willing to speak if it was necessary. Thinking back, Maggie couldn’t think of a single time in which she had seen Jade have small talk with anyone. No, if Jade decided to speak with someone, she had a reason. Or was talking with her daughters, but that hardly counted.

Due to that, the people who would immediately see through the rumour were basically only those who had been taught by Jade during the last winter. And while Jade had been quite the prolific teacher, she had taught few people a lot, not many people a bit. So, there was a small number of people, too few to dispel that rumour, especially because the people who had been taught magic were generally those who were the busiest. Meaning that they didn’t have all that much time to gossip and deal with rumours, so this rumour would almost certainly stick around, no matter how false it was.

And that was where the issues would begin. Given the deliberate manufacture and spread of the rumour, the person who had done the deed undoubtedly had an agenda, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out what that agenda could be. Namely, to force Jade into sharing her magical abilities, to teach additional people or maybe to teach somebody something Jade didn’t want to teach.

That, in and of itself, wasn’t an issue, even if Magige was incredibly annoyed that somebody was trying to manipulate their community and use public opinion to force Jade to do their bidding. Sadly, that was almost expected of people. Peer and social pressure tactics had been a staple forever; hell, there had been animals using them before the world broke.

No, the issue was the target.

Jade was the worst target for such shenanigans. No matter how many people demanded that Jade do something, Maggie doubted that Jade would acquiesce, just to appease the masses. It was much more likely that Jade would simply leave, or, if she got annoyed enough, do something to the masses.

Jade was regularly demonstrating that she could create solid houses with just a bit of magic, using rock she drew from the ground or something like that. Maggie had no doubt that Jade could destroy houses even faster, or simply shift the bedrock beneath their community and let the resulting earthquake, or maybe sinkhole, take out their homes.

And Jade’s daughter, the usually adorable Luna, was just as big a danger. Sure, she usually only used her magic to turn the trees they were chopping down into mulch her mother was then incorporating into the soil, but that was obviously only one application for such magical abilities. Most likely, it would also work on people, turning them into some goopy, flesh mush with little more than a touch, if that was even needed.

No, those two could bring down their community if they so wished, and Maggie had no reason to believe that Carnelia, Jade’s other daughter, was less of a danger.

Sighing, Maggie started considering the best possible outcomes of this situation, trying to figure out a way to avoid any disturbance, especially the sort that might lead to widespread destruction. She would rather see Jade pack up her things and leave, as the damage that would cause was much more manageable. Thinking of it, maybe being ignorant of the current issue wouldn’t be all that blissful, as it could blow up in her face. Being ignorant would only spare her feelings if Jade decided to deal with the issue herself, though she wasn’t sure how Jade would do so.

Hopefully, she could figure out who had started those rumours and deal with the person before Jade was put under pressure, or things would get messy. Oh, and she would have to deal with the rumours themself, somehow. Which would likely be even harder than dealing with some fool who decided to use her people as pawns.

Some days, it really wasn’t worth getting out of bed. A thought that seemed to be eternal, as she had felt the same sentiment quite a few times before the world had broken.