An awkward round of introductions ensued. The new additions were in wedding attire, which the Inspired promptly told them to get rid of. Maxwell and Annelise had been saying their vows when the Shift hit, and the best man and maid of honour, Likhwa and Sabine had been caught in it as well, being close friends with the almost-weds.

The Inspired introduced themselves as Alexander and Connor, Alexander being the assertive blond and Connor being the dour redhead.

“Now that we’ve got this out of the way, let’s cut to the chase. The seven of you are about to become some of the most powerful people in the world. This is a Narrative Shift and you are now Archons. Once you fall asleep, you’ll truly connect to the zeitgeist and receive your Archetype as well as the plot driving this Shift, at which point we can move out and start defeating conflicts. There are four types of conflicts, Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, Man vs Self and Man vs Society. One of these will be woven into the overarching plot of the Shift, we’ll find out which later, and the others will be challenges to be conquered leading up to the final battle. They will appear in waves corresponding to the five act structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and depending on whether we’ve resolved the plot or not, either a catastrophe or a denouement. Questions?”

The entire group was caught off-guard for a second, before everyone started talking over one another, trying to get their question heard. Alexander sighed and quieted them with a raise of his hand.

“We’re all adult enough to realise this won’t work. I’ll take questions one at a time. Sabine?”

“What the fuck!”

“That’s not a question.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just… I haven’t really had time to process any of this and needed to get that out of my system. Umm, what did you mean by ‘truly connect?’ As far as I know, everybody connects to the zeitgeist when they sleep, it’s why we dream.”

“You’re technically right, but there’s a reason Archons and Muses have powers and everyone else doesn’t. You learn in school that it’s the collective human consciousness. Our combined creativity, ingenuity and beliefs, a plane of pure imagination made manifest by the sheer number of people. That’s only half of the truth. To give an incredibly simplified explanation, every human, or maybe just any sapient species, produces a tiny amount of what we call raw ego, or subjective energy. This energy is generally used for extremely low level unconscious reality warping; it is what causes the placebo effect for example. Beliefs, ideals, preconceptions and the like have real world implications, even if those implications are incredibly small scale. But then what happens when that one human becomes a million? 100 million? The zeitgeist emerged as a sort of shared thought construct for storing all this energy once we crossed a population threshold, we think it was around a billion humans, as a survival mechanism.”

“What the fuck!”

“Sabine, seriously.”

“Sorry! I’m so sorry, it j-just slipped out…” her voice trailed off in embarrassment.

“Don’t do it again. Anyway, the zeitgeist gathers the immense amounts of ego we create and because of something called the law of Intersubjectivity, Archons and Muses can convert it into refined ego or objective energy. Before the 1800s, when we hit that threshold, manifestations were incredibly common. The amount of raw ego floating around was pulling monsters, magic weapons, spirits, anything a large enough number of people believed in directly from their heads and into reality. At some point, there would have been enough ego to manifest an actual world-ending threat without the zeitgeist. Think of it as a giant dam which normal humans fill in their sleep by depositing the ego they’ve generated that day, maybe dipping a toe in if they’re lucky. Archons and Muses metaphorically stand below it, running turbines to produce electricity. And a few very talented individuals can blow a hole in the dam wall, causing events like this. Thando?”

“What the fuck is the law of Intersubjectivity?”

“You guys swear way too much. I can’t answer your question right now though, it’d take too long. If we get out of here, I’ll happily explain it in detail but it’s not relevant to our current situation. Like I said, that was a very simplified summary of this whole thing. Chandragupta?”

“Ugh, please call me Chan. Why does the Shift follow the five act structure?”

“When the zeitgeist was young, it was a lot more malleable. Around that time, Freytag released his Die Technik des Dramas and the idea of a dramatic arc really entered the public eye. Enough people believed that this is how stories should be structured that any story made manifest through a Shift follows it precisely. It’s the same for the conflicts. Likhwa?”

“Why is this all information hidden? People have a right to know.”

“Actually, it’s better that they don’t. A few governments tried weaponising this knowledge with their populations, brainwashing them into believing untrue things about their countries in order to manifest them in real life. Unfortunately, by then the zeitgeist had a bit more inertia, making it harder for newer, smaller beliefs to change it, and all it resulted in was a higher density of raw ego in the area and a corresponding rise in the number of hostile manifestations. We cannot consciously control raw ego, only once it’s been in the zeitgeist can it be purposefully manipulated. People thinking that they can will things into fruition will only bury any major city in manifestations. That’s why we keep the true nature of the zeitgeist hidden. Annelise?”

“So like, can’t we find the writer guy who did this and like, make him let us go?”

“It’s better that you forget about him. He achieved Afflatus, another thing you don’t know about. Like I told Thando, I won’t go into this now, but it means we have no way to reach him while we’re in here and despite what he’s done, in fact, because of it, he’s incredibly valuable to very powerful people out there. As such, he’ll get off scot-free.”

At that, everyone started shouting at the injustice, but Alexander simply went quiet and raised his hand again. When that didn’t work, he sighed and, hand still raised, turned his face away. As he did this, the hand turned the dark purple of heavy bruising, then violently burst in a small explosion of gore. Even as the splashes of blood were still mid-spatter, muscle fibres shot out of the stump and quickly resolved into the shape of a brand new hand, his normal skin tone fading in from the pink of exposed muscle. The spectacle was gruesome but effective, the group had gone dead silent. He wiped a few drops of blood off his cheek.

“Now, since we’re all up to speed on everything relevant, if there’s no other burning issues that simply cannot wait, Connor and I will be putting you guys to slee-“

“Wait,” Thando interjected, “You still haven’t explained why we have to leave Piet.”

“The Man vs Society conflict. When the scene finally sets, all these people will become background characters. They’ll wake up and go about their daily lives as if nothing has changed and anything out of place is ordinary. They won’t recognise you even if they’re your own flesh and blood. I’m sure you can guess what happens when Man vs Society activates.”

“No way Piet would attack us.” Thando stated, Willem and Chan nodding behind him.

“It won’t be up to him. Here, the plot is king. Depending on when it activates, this could be a small problem or a big problem. Conflicts that activate during the climax are the toughest and killing innocent people may be unavoidable, depending on how hard they come at us. If you keep him with you, either you will have to kill him, or he will kill you. And regardless, he’ll get teleported randomly when this is over anyway, we have no control over that. No more questions, we really do need to expedite this. Sit down on the ground. Connor and I will touch you, and you’ll fall asleep. While asleep, you’ll understand this entire thing a whole lot better. The scene will be set and we’ll have an information sharing session before heading off.”

Without even waiting for a response, the two Inspired walked through the group, giving everyone light touches and leaving snores in their wake. Thando watched them walking closer to him, glanced at Piet still sleeping peacefully, and closed his eyes in anticipation. He didn’t even feel the touch when it came.

Instead of his normal dreamscape, Thando felt his awareness expand into a vast nothingness and strengthen in a way he didn’t realise was possible. During his usual dreams, his entire environment was malleable, but only with effort, and the general narrative of the dream still ran, he was just a more active participant. This, however, was more akin to a soulscape. His very consciousness was baked into the space. He was the ultimate master of every aspect of this place. There was nothing in it simply because he hadn’t willed it yet.

The emptiness of the void unsettled him, so he removed it. With barely a thought, the void had disappeared, instead appearing as an impractically large white room. Better, but he was still a disembodied consciousness. With another instinctive flex of his will, he materialised a body for himself. Looking down at himself in appreciation, he manifested clothes and began figuring this place out.

The human connection to the zeitgeist had been studied extensively, and they learned in school that it happens during REM sleep, when people entered the dream plane that the zeitgeist provides. Of course, he’d just learned that a lot of his ideas about the world were severely incomplete, but here he was. Though as far as he knew, REM sleep didn’t happen immediately. Maybe this was simply an intermediary stage.

As he had this thought, he felt a massive shudder ripple through the space, as if this entire piece of reality had been in motion and had come to a stop. A slick, “fizzy” sensation started sliding down the very edge of his awareness, slowly enveloping it. Once he was completely enclosed in this phenomenon, the edge of his bubble of reality popped and an invigorating sensation rushed in.

Curious, Thando watched this energy, manifesting as cracks in reality, growing towards him and spilling forth a bright golden light. One of these cracks touched him and his vision was dominated by a golden screen.

Name: Thando Nkhosi

Archetype: [Writer] (Primary)

Effect: Literary Devices

Acclimation: Poor

“Writer? What the f-“

He was cut off as several blue boxes of text appeared in front of the screen.

Warning: You have entered a Narrative Shift. Objective reinforcement limited according to plot. Warning: You have entered a Narrative Shift. Primary access limited according to plot. Congratulations! You shall now passively reinforce your reality. Congratulations! You have been granted Primary access. Congratulations! You are The Writer! Using your mastery over language, you seamlessly weave together a tapestry of what is and what could be, rewriting the narrative of the universe itself! Compatible Archetype found: [Writer] Scanning for compatible Archetype... Warning: You have entered a region of subjectively altered space. Warning: A subjective reality has been asserted upon you.

He silently read each of the notifications and mentally dismissed them, before starting to pace in front on the giant screen still suspended in the air.

“Okay. Okay then. Could’ve been better, but also could’ve been worse. I have no idea why the fuck I’m the damn writer and not the fighter, but at least it’s a Primary archetype. If I get out of here, I could become one of the strongest people in the system.”

There were only ten other people on Earth, Venus or Mars who could match up to the theoretical maximum potential of a primary archetype. The Nine Muses and the only other Primary alive, The Gamer.

The sole reason he wasn’t overjoyed was that acclimation score. He knew raising it would be his only way to survive this place, all the movies were very clear on that, but he didn’t know the first thing about being a writer. To avoid situations like this one, a few decades before Thando was born, non-fiction writing became heavily regulated and fiction writing was banned entirely across the system as Narrative Shifts were just too destructive. Schools no longer taught creative writing and actively discouraged writing down fantasies, goals and anything that could construe enough of a narrative for a Shift to form, instead teaching them to dream connected to the zeitgeist and simulate them there. Writers were reviled socially for risking everyone around them and the only fiction nowadays came from black market authors. Like any curious teen, he’d tried it and enjoyed the feelings it gave, but it was so heavily illegal and rightly so, that he couldn’t in good conscience support the fiction trade with his money.

“Shit, everyone’s going to hate me.” he grimaced as he remembered the stigma that the few legitimate writers left were subject to whenever they had to land to avoid space syndrome. They were writing within the strict bounds of the law and still weren’t allowed to live permanently on one of the planets.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. I just have to be strong enough not to care, right? It’s fine.”

He remembered he wasn’t just there to complain about his new superpowers but to look for their next step. He didn’t see any indications of the plot around him so he simply thought Plot and another massive screen materialised, to the side of the first.

Narrative shift: Save the world

A group of unlikely heroes bump into each other at a tavern. Talk is tense and hushed. A pact is made. They’ve all heard the rumours swirling around and the telltale smell of burning on the air. An ancient evil has re-entered the world. War is coming. Though each is powerful in their own right, they know they lack the individual strength to stand up to the might of the adversary. But together? Together they may have a shot at victory! Quest: Defeat the [Demon King].