“The Codex Wars?” I repeated questioningly. “Does this have to do with my quest?”

  Isaac held up a finger to his lips and looked around as if he was afraid that the walls of the Codexium itself were eavesdropping on us. “Not so loud! But yes, I think it does. Now tell me, what do you know about the Codex Wars?”

  Isaac stared at me with such intensity that I was almost afraid he might try to blast me with lasers. I didn’t think that Isaac had a laser spell, but I’d heard about Codexers who could use such spells, and it was a realistic concern in those situations. His bloodshot eyes didn’t help matters much.

  But I could sense that Isaac was definitely expecting an answer from me, and I couldn’t avoid it. Not that I wanted to, seeing as I was also curious about that quest I had received and hoped that Isaac might have insight into it that I didn’t have.

  Plus, I still needed to fill out my paperwork with the SNA and complete my initial setup as a Codexer. That was all supposedly part of Isaac’s job description anyway, so I would have to interact with him regardless.

  Running my thumb along the surface of my portable, I said, “All I know is that they were a conflict that happened five hundred years ago, before the Collapse of the Node Network.”

  Isaac raised a questioning eyebrow. “That is more than I expected you to know, given how few people know about the Codex Wars. Where did you learn that information?”

  I didn’t appreciate the way that Isaac was treating this like a criminal interrogation, but I also had no choice but to answer his questions as honestly as I could. “My dad was a Codexer, and he had some books about the history of the Arcane Codex lying around that I would read. Most of the history books covered the time after the collapse, but they still made occasional references to the Codex Wars, though they never went into great detail about them.”

  Isaac tapped his chin thoughtfully. “That’s right. I sometimes forget that Michael was a Codexer. He doesn’t talk about it very much.”

  Michael, of course, was my father, though I was surprised to hear Isaac speak his name with such familiarity. Granted, we all lived in the same small town, but, in my experience, Dad rarely interacted with Isaac. It didn’t help that Isaac spent most of his time holed up in the North Forest Codexium drinking and occasionally doing his duties as a Codex Keeper, though given how few Codexers came to the Codexium, I wondered exactly what Isaac did here all day other than drink. He wasn’t cleaning or repairing things. That was for sure.

  Isaac pointed at me again. “Then I take it that you don’t know very much about the Codex Wars. If so, that answers some questions I had, but raises a whole bunch more.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on the spot, rubbing my right forearm, which was burning for some reason. “What are you talking about? Do you still think that I hacked the Codex to get that quest or something?”

  Isaac shook his head. “Not anymore. I had considered it a possibility because you already showed that you could fix a portable, but you are way too ignorant to be a hacker, at least a competent one.”

  Isaac spoke about hackers like he had personal experience with them, though I wondered when he could have, since he seemed to spend all his time here. “Well, what else is there to know about the Codex Wars?”

  Isaac raised two fingers. “One, that the Codex Wars led to the original collapse of the Node Network five hundred years ago and the fall of the Tenth Kingdom… and two, that the Codex Wars ended five hundred years ago, too.”

  I rubbed my forehead as I tried to make sense of what Isaac just told me. “But if the Codex Wars ended five hundred years ago, then why did the Codex give me that quest to end them?”

  “Check your quests on your user interface,” said Isaac without missing a beat. “Tell me if the quest is still active or not.”

  I briefly hesitated before pulling up my user interface. There was a lot there already, but I did find the tab for Codex Quests and clicked it. A list of active quests scrolled into my vision. “It’s still there.”

  Isaac nodded. “I figured as much, but wanted confirmation. This means it probably isn’t a glitch. If it were a Ghost Quest or a glitched quest, then it either wouldn’t show up on your list of active quests at all, or it would appear underneath your list of inactive or completed quests. That means it’s real.”

  Isaac sounded supremely disappointed when he said that, as if he had been hoping that the quest had been either fake or glitched.

  Dismissing the quest list, I said to Isaac, “Why would the Arcane Codex assign me a quest to end something that already ended on its own a long time ago? It must be a glitch, right?”

  Isaac folded his arms in front of his chest and glanced at the North Forest Node. “That’s what I thought at first, maybe an issue with the Kernel or something. But then I also got that notification, even though the quest is not bound to me. That means it isn’t my job to complete the quest, though I can’t imagine why the Arcane Codex shared that same quest with both of us unless it wanted me to help you or something.”

  I licked my lips uncertainly. “But that still doesn’t explain why the Codex gave me that quest. Or why you are acting so nervous about it.”

  Isaac laughed. It was a snide laugh mixed with a hint of nervousness. “Kid, it isn’t every day that you get to see a live Codexed Quest in person. Those are the types of quests you only hear about in legend. In my seventy-some-odd years on this planet, I have never, ever seen a Codexed Quest or known anyone who has been lucky enough—or cursed enough—to get one from the Codex.”

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  I tilted my head to the side. “Am I one of the lucky ones or one of the cursed ones?”

  Isaac glanced at my portable again and smirked. “Depends on whether you can complete this quest or not. Assuming this is even a real quest at all. Your second quest, the one about stopping the bandits, is a lot more in line with what new Codexers get for their first quest. That Codexed Quest you got is unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

  I looked at the timer in the corner of my vision and frowned. “What about the timer and the Ten-Year Reset Protocol that it mentioned in the quest log? What is it counting down toward? Have you ever heard about something like this?”

  Isaac shook his head. “No, but it reminds me of the legends of the Collapse. Specifically, what caused the original Collapse of the Node Network.”

  I scratched the back of my neck, frowning. “What caused the original Collapse of the Node Network? None of my father’s books ever mentioned or talked about that. Lots of talk about the Collapse and the period afterward, but nothing about what caused it.”

  Isaac walked over to the North Forest Node and placed his hands on it, though I got the impression he wasn’t syncing with it—just using it to demonstrate something. “This is mostly legend at this point, but everyone agrees that the original Collapse happened when the Grand Codexium of the Tenth Kingdom, the center of the Tenth Kingdom’s Node Network, exploded. This set off a chain reaction that blew up most of the Codexiums in the Tenth Kingdom, while merely shutting down the Node Network connecting Codexiums across the other Nine Kingdoms.”

  Isaac looked over his shoulder at me, a serious expression on his face. “When the Grand Codexium of the Tenth Kingdom exploded, not only did it destroy all of the active Nodes in the Tenth Kingdom, but it also killed the vast majority of the Tenth Kingdom’s inhabitants and warped the land and climate of the Tenth Kingdom itself. That’s why no one lives there anymore. Only the very bravest—or perhaps the most foolish—even dare enter into the Codex Ruins. But that is a long way away from here, so it’s not our problem.”

  Though I listened closely to every word that Isaac spoke, a chill went down my spine when he described the destruction of the Tenth Kingdom. I had heard legends about the Codex Ruins, as well as the Tenth Kingdom, but this was the first time I had heard that they were the same. I was especially concerned about the explosion of the Grand Codexium. It made me look at the North Forest Node with far more concern than before. “I didn’t know that Codexiums could explode.”

  Isaac patted the North Forest Node gently. “Only if they are either filled with more mana than they can hold or if you deliberately try to break them. You don’t have to worry about this Node exploding. It’s more stable than it looks. Has a pretty stable Kernel.”

  “Kernel?”

  “Term for the core of a Stationary Node’s operating system.” Isaac drummed his fingers against the surface of the North Forest Node. “Each Node, Stationary or Portable, has one. It’s how they operate at all and what explodes if the Node does. But don’t worry. This one has a stable Kernel, despite how glitchy it is.”

  I bit my lower lip. “But if the North Forest Node did explode, how big an explosion would it be? Would it be as big as the explosion that destroyed the Tenth Kingdom?”

  Isaac laughed again. “Hardly! This is a Basic Node in a Minor Codexium. It barely has enough power to function as it is. If it exploded, it would probably just destroy the entire town and everything within a ten-mile radius, which would then leave the land utterly uninhabitable for a few decades. But the rest of Shinar would be okay. Honestly, those jerks at Hebron would probably not even notice if North Forest got wiped off the map.”

  Isaac must have been drunk if he could speak so freely about the hypothetical destruction of our entire town. Of course, it sounded like the North Forest Node was not in danger of blowing up anytime soon, but the mere fact that it was possible at all made me nervous. It also made me grateful that nobody had thought to try to do that. Otherwise, we would all be dead.

  I decided to drag the conversation back to the Codex Wars. “Is that what happened to the Grand Codexium of the Tenth Kingdom? Did it get so overloaded with mana that it exploded?”

  Isaac tapped his fingers against the smooth stone surface of the North Forest Node as if considering my question. “Historians and scholars disagree on exactly what happened, but pretty much everyone agrees that the Codex Wars caused the fall of the Tenth Kingdom and the collapse of the Node Network that led to the Chaos Century afterward. There aren’t many records from that period, but it was a time when lots of people were fighting over the Arcane Codex.”

  I bit my lower lip. “Why were people fighting over the Arcane Codex? There are lots of Nodes everywhere. Plus, we have rules and laws like the Codex Constitution to help us when we do have disagreements over how it’s supposed to be used.”

  Isaac chuckled again. “And where do you think all of those rules and laws came from? They came after the Chaos Century, when the Node Network started up again and people realized just how fragile this power source was. When the Nine Codex Kingdoms rose, they came up with a bunch of laws and rules called the Codex Constitution to govern the use of the Arcane Codex. This is also when guilds came into existence, to help regulate Codexers, and when my Discipline was created.”

  I raised an interested eyebrow. “Your Discipline? Do you mean the Codex Keepers?”

  Isaac nodded without looking at me. “Yep. Like I told you, it was an extremely chaotic time. But that is also what makes that Codexed Quest you received so strange. The Codex Wars are over. Everyone involved is dead by now. And the fact that it is a Codexed Quest makes it even stranger. Because that is the highest possible difficulty level that any Codex Quest can be.”

  I had heard from Miriam a while ago that Codex Quests had difficulty tiers associated with them, but I didn’t know exactly what they were. “So Codexed is the highest tier, while Scribbled, I assume, is the lowest. What other tiers are there for Codex Quests?”

  Isaac counted them off quickly. “From easiest to hardest, they are Scribbled, Inked, Etched, Engraved, and Codexed. You should have just gotten a Scribbled Quest as your first quest, gradually working your way up the difficulty chain until you started getting Etched or possibly Engraved Quests. That’s why I was freaking out earlier. A Chapter One, Page One Codexer like yourself shouldn’t be anywhere near ready to take on a Codexed Quest. So that leaves me with a couple of options.”

  Isaac turned away from the North Forest Node and started walking toward me, arms folded behind his back. “One, this is a glitch caused by the malfunctioning North Forest Node giving you a Codexed Quest too early. Or possibly it is giving you a Ghost Quest that originally was assigned to someone else in the pre-Collapse era but was mistakenly given to you.”

  Isaac took another step toward me. “Two, someone hacked the system and deliberately gave you this quest for their reasons. This is pretty unlikely because I haven’t detected any tampering with the North Forest Node, and, anyway, I can’t imagine why someone would want to assign you an impossible quest unless they really hated you for some reason. You wouldn’t happen to have any enemies who want you dead, would you?”

  I shook my head. “Other than a handful of childhood bullies who have probably forgotten about me, no.”

  Isaac took a third and final step and stopped in front of me, gazing down at me with a rather darkly amused expression on his face. “If you complete your Inked Quest, then that will change pretty quickly. But there is at least one more explanation for this strange phenomenon that might work, although I don’t consider it very likely myself.”

  I gulped and looked at Isaac nervously. “And what would that explanation be, Isaac?”

  Isaac stroked his white beard and took a moment before responding. “The Arcane Codex wants you dead.”

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