I fell.

  In the waking world, it was a short trip resulting in a knock on the head. In the unconscious dream which followed, the plunge lasted much longer. Down, down I tumbled. There were no handholds to find purchase, no sights to orient myself. Lost to an inky void with only my momentum to give it shape, I shivered at the infinity of the place. Despite the complete lack of visuals, I knew where I was. I had been there before, after all. In fact… I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.

  I existed there as much as my own body.

  Two eyes appeared in the darkness, a vibrant purple hue gleaming out from within. Unlike the past, they were not huge and overbearing. Floating before me without care for my still-plummeting form, I felt the gaze of the Aspect upon my soul. It judged me harshly, wordless and somehow scathing regardless. The scorn I saw there made me explosively angry and I let the Dragon know exactly what I thought of its opinion.

  “Fuck you,” I spat, reaching for my skills. It was only when they remained out of reach, even Mind Palace, that I realised I was still unconscious. That knowledge didn’t make me feel weak, though. Lucidity bloomed and I caught myself in the impossible expanse. The pair of amethyst eyes remained in their spot opposite me, unblinking and unreactive.

  You draw too greedily.

  Instead of sounds which I heard, the words shook my soul with vibrations that I could understand with far more clarity than simple speech. I was immediately abashed as the scornful expression was reframed as disappointment and fear. It wasn’t that the Dragon disagreed with any of my actions or choices - they were the same the Aspect would have made in every situation.

  Yet, to the Aspect of the Dragon, there was nothing more important than itself. I had found that the pride of the dragon was as potent as it was storied. From those four words, I understood not just the grievance of the Aspect but my own missteps on the path to this situation. Sheepish, I forced myself to abandon stubbornness in the face of my own soul. I recalibrated my thinking.

  “I’m sorry,” I tried again, the reaction feeling more genuine. The anger hadn’t been real. It had been the dream. In a dream, I could pretend that none of the actions which caused me harm were my fault. I could scream at the dragon in my mind and blame it for all my woes if I chose but the dragon was just me. Like Tag in the Mind Palace, the Aspect of the Dragon held an echo of personality and identity based on my own.

  We are broken.

  “Again?” I grumbled, not needing to be told. It was a problem I had been ignoring for a while. I pictured the cracked and fragile world of the Dragon, bleached white from Reysault’s poison. Being in control of my dream, the world itself appeared between myself and the eyes of the Dragon. It watched with interest and without speaking.

  I inspected the desiccated place with a grimace. The final clash between powerful magic within the tower had required a lot of energy. More than I had access to in the moment and to overcome that deficit, I had leaned on a skill. I could easily admit that I had no true understanding of the concepts at play with Dragonburn but I had also known it was my own chance to survive the incoming attack.

  I sighed and tried to forgive myself. The noise echoed strangely, a deep rumbling breath mirroring my own from all around me. When I breathed, the Dragon did, too. I calmed myself down by simply inhaling slowly and exhaling just as slow. I listened to the relaxed breathing which pervaded the world. It had a cost, but using Dragonburn at that moment had been important in surviving.

  You drew too deep.

  This time when the dragon spoke, I didn’t react like a child. The words washed through me and I bowed my head. I had. Of all my skills, Dragonburn still carried the most damage from Reysault’s poison. My activation of it hadn’t done further harm, but the skill itself had acted like an electrical circuit without a fuse. Instead of deactivating upon running out of mana, Dragonburn had kept pulling from the only source it could find.

  The Aspect itself.

  My hubris, my inability to be patient and my penchant for overplaying my magical hands had all combined like a chimaera. I had ignored the signs, too. For days, maybe weeks even, I had known that I was neglecting the strange artistic requirements of the Aspect. I had thought when Tag arrived I could leave it to him, but he was a reflection of an echo, contained within a skill. Tutting, I completed my inspection.

  Any actual maintenance was my job.

  A task I couldn’t actually complete while sleeping, as I couldn’t mobilise mana to the work. Still, I was actually grateful for being pulled here as I realigned a little with the Dragon. We weren’t enemies, I reminded myself. Nor was the magic of the Aspect a tool without its own needs. It wasn’t even a world for me to explore, though I was keeping that mental imagery all the same.

  If anything, the Aspect was like-

  “Oh my God!” I shouted, waking myself fully. Distraught, I tried to continue the train of thought which had awoken me but it was scattered to the ether as conscious thoughts muscled their way in. The pain in my head did a good job of knocking away the rest of my incredibly profound thoughts and useful insights. As I pushed myself to my feet, I hissed. I pulled my cheek from the frozen floor and rubbed the damage.

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  Almost all of the detail from my unconscious state was banished but I remembered the focal point. I had been metaphysically pulled to the side and told off by a version of my psyche because I had forsaken maintenance of my inner world. After moving around a little to get warmer and making sure that I was recovering health and mana at my normal rate, I got to work.

  “I’ll need your help here,” I told Tag. As a constantly updating shadow of myself, he had also had the same dream and I didn’t need to explain what we were going to do.

  “I can handle the skills,” Tag promised from his seat in my new favourite ‘room’ of the Mind Palace. As a skill, Mind Palace was incredible. It worked a little like a virtual space I could alter at will. The floating sphere we were currently hovering was technically still within the Mind Palace but we were not limited to staying there. Sitting in a pair of comfortable chairs, Tag and I scouted the planet below us and mapped the stars above.

  “They just need to stay where they are,” I nodded. Like my level, my attributes or even my mana control, the Aspect also grew and changed over time. I knew that if I wanted to, I could tear down the planet in my mental imagery and start over. That would be the easier choice. Yet I also knew that such an act would handicap my mana forevermore.

  There was a power in the imagery I had chosen and I refused to start from scratch. Easy wasn’t necessarily better. It often wasn’t better at all. I knew that I had taken a bountiful garden and neglected it. Without active input and guidance, the garden had become overgrown and now I needed to get down into the weeds.

  With the ever increasing complexity I had layered into my inner world, each separate detail of the Aspect had become intrinsic to the continued growth of the rest. If one thing slipped, the rest was thrown into chaos, as I was finding out for myself now. Except, the issue now was larger than some discoloured grass or an unrealistic skyline. Reysault’s poison had scarred more than my psyche, it had cracked my inner world. My own actions had pushed it even further.

  The work would take a long time. I felt my body freeze to the floor in the physical world but ignored it once I was sure I wasn’t taking any damage from the cold. My muscles locked up and I knew I would be in serious pain when I finally finished. That would be the cost of my idiocy for letting things get so bad.

  I didn’t have a lot of practice making a world, but I expected I had more than most. With an arguably practised hand, I began with the obvious. The visible damage to the surface of the Dragon World. Pulling the energy from the Spirit Well, I didn’t stop until it made a more permanent connection with the Aspect world. The light from the Spirit Well would now truly act as a sun for the magical inner world. The well’s light would cast upon the world growing shadows, but also warmth and the potential for more growth in the future.

  This part of the process was by far the most arduous, as I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything before moving on. When I was finished the world below was a clean and unblemished white. The damage Reysault had done to me was a permanent mark which I couldn’t ignore. It had changed me on a deep level, and my anger at that fact caused me to avoid dealing with the desecration.

  Well, no more.

  I could respect the scar she had left but I didn’t need to let it define me. Once I was certain I hadn’t missed any gouges or pockmarks left by her power, I began to cover the world in life once more. Dirt, rock, soil and water flowed out from my imagination and directly onto the planet below me. I encased the flimsy alabaster sphere with caves and oceans, rivers and more. Grass and flowers and trees followed. A natural world to cover my damaged magical one.

  Once I had nothing more to add, it was my partner’s turn. For myself this meant taking over with control over the stars above. Mechanically, I had to take manual control over the movement of mana and keep the skills in my channels from altering. The skills wanted to change in relation to what was happening in my core but that would have been regressive. My core was currently catching up to my skills, and instead of letting the patterns shift, they had to be filled with mana to maintain their shape.

  It was easier than it sounded really, like pumping a heavy lever over and over again. Tag had the more interesting task and I watched his actions with wonder. The world I created was our ‘base’. It was created from my mana, which was presented as the natural world. Tag didn’t alter that but added to it. The denizen of the Mind Palace had spent time dissecting the features of mana from outside ourselves and if we were going to incorporate its use outside, we needed to include its presence inside.

  Miles of angry black clouds streamed out of Tag’s fingers, and the world began to fill with sound and motion. Not the playacting it had been before, but real thunderclaps. The slamming patter of rain and more as Tag continued. His experiments with cold mana and its off-shoots became poles of ice at either end of the planet. Sharp edges appeared in the corner of the world as he added danger to the mix.

  The finest level of detail I had placed onto Dragon World came to fruition under the guidance of our hands. With watchful eyes, we were critical and exacting upon each other and the result was more than I expected. I could feel approval from the Aspect as well as something else. Each time I tried to question or understand this hidden feeling, the Aspect pulled it away. With surprise, I realised it was keeping a secret.

  “How very like me,” I frowned. Was this what it felt like to others when they knew I had something planned but I refused to explain it to them? I didn’t actually like the feeling and realised it would take some time to reconcile with that part of myself. Since the System arrived, there were dozens of things about me which I wanted to reconcile. None of them could be more easily done within a dungeon than outside, I imagined.

  With that thought fueling me, I stood up.

  Then I fell again, the frigid muscles in my back and legs sending me to the floor in howling cramps. From within my Mind Palace, I heard two sets of laughter and I did my best to ignore them, Tag and the Dragon. “Yuck it up, you two,” I sarcastically encouraged. They could have their fun, it was fine. We would all need to be serious very soon. I flexed my hands and rolled my neck. Everything felt flawless. “It’s nearly claimant time.”