---Maddy---

  “Things are heating up in the game and I’ve kept you long enough. If you want to make a universe, you’ll need to start as soon as a possibility is accepted and end before the choosing is finished.” R spoke while leading Maddy through a changing space.

  Maddy nodded slightly as she followed, then watched as ‘her’ R seemed to swap with another identical clone of himself. A different R was going to teach her? Sure. Soon they came to what appeared to be a meadow covered hill surrounded by chaos and began to climb.

  It very vaguely reminded her of her plateau – the one that sometimes looked like a valley, sometimes a clearing. That had been the place where she had transformed into a fae and returned several times after to observe her magic…but something about this hill in particular looked strange. Unnatural. As far as hills went it was far too round – like someone had scooped dirt with an ice cream maker and then covered the top of the placed dirt with grass and flowers.

  “This is a representation, my regular space is much larger and costs more to handle.” R answered her unasked question. “Okay!” he spoke with a clap of his hands striding to the top then turning to look at her. As soon as she met his eyes, R began.

  The first thing he did was begin gesturing about in quick rushed sweeps.

  “To create a miracle beyond your means. What I’m about to teach you is to true magic, what your reversed shaping is to mana based magic...or more accurately reversed shaping is closer to this magic than anything else. This isn’t done lightly. You can’t use it for everyday goals. It will permanently strengthen you and permanently weaken you. Are you ready?” R asked continuing to speak in a rushed and clipped manner.

  Maddy nodded then stepped closer towards him.

  “Perfect. Do you know what this metaphor is of?” R asked pointing downwards then spun a finger in a circle about them.

  “Your…domain?” Maddy asked.

  “Domains are structured things of mana. This is yet another simile where domains are to what we are perceiving, what structured magic is to true magic.” R jerked his head to the side In a quick no.

  “Essentially it’s close, but different enough it bears mentioning. No. What this is, is what I’d consider the sum total of what I can achieve.” R clarified while pointing about.

  “Magical. Physical. This space here represents all you can accomplish. This represents everything you have control over. Everything you know. Your finite power. On the other hand, everything out there?” R turned and then waved towards the swirling chaos.

  “That represents all you don’t have control over. The infinite unknown. The other.” R reached across and held Maddy’s hand, then slowly the world warped.

  The hill rippled and inverted.

  In all directions, the edge between this hill and the chaos seemed to rip and flex like an optical illusion before separating. As it peeled off of its position below them, the grassy plane pinched down and pulled away into the form of a green ball.

  The surrounding chaos did a similar inversion, the inward dome twisting and becoming the face of an outward sphere. It was a trippy sort of twist as their perspective shrunk the surroundings and fell back into a new postion.

  R pointed to the two spheres now the size of large beach balls – one a swirling ball of chaos, the other a grassy sphere like a planet. Surrounding them was a dull nothingness that Maddy’s perception refused to acknowledge. An emptiness purer than the black of space, that seemed to highlight the two spheres as if drawing her attention towards them.

  “This can be done in as many steps as you need, with as many layers as you want and in whatever order you please.” R began, dragging Maddy’s attention back towards him. “We are speaking purely in metaphors, so the steps are simple. Step one. Close your eyes. Blind yourself to reality because the truth will cause this form of miracle to fail.”

  Maddy nodded slowly. Easier said than done…she tried closing her eyes, twin perceptions flicking off. She tried focusing, tried straining herself. Slowly but surely reality faded and the dream grew more vivid.

  They had been right beside the space station when she last looked. Now they could be anywhere.

  As soon as R noticed she was done, he moved on. “Step two. Gather as much of the infinite ‘other’ as you can bear. All of the unknown is the same, for you do not know of it. There is no point searching for something specific. Quantity is the only part that matters, but quantity is merely a metaphor… You want to hold a portion of infinity which by definition is infinite.” R plunged a hand into the swirling chaos then pulled out what looked like a wispy chunk of stardust. His hand crackled and burned with sparks as he held it.

  “Step three. Find and shape that which you control into a sacrificial dagger. Only include that which you are willing to lose.” R shoved his hand into the grassy planet this time. The metaphor bulged as dirt was pushed aside. His hand soon emerged with a block of metal ore, then flashed and in a single motion that metal transformed into a smooth handleless blade.

  For a moment R showed Maddy his two hands. One was filled with crackling stardust, visible burns appearing on his skin before healing. The other held a blade, a single small cut marring his skin. Inky black blood dripped from the hand gripping the blade. Black spots and tiny streams of smoke floated off the hand filled with the unknown.

  “Swap the order of those two steps if you think you’ll spend more time figuring out what you are willing to put on the line.” R nodded towards his blade then continued.

  “The final step is simple. Cut what you want out of the unknown and allow both what you want and don’t want to exist by bringing them into the known.” R spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Before Maddy could picture what he meant, R sliced his blade through the stardust near his hand. His blade carved the lump with an eerie screech and puff of smoke. In the same moment the stardust split, it warped and transformed. From the side he was holding, a rose suddenly existed.

  The rest of his stardust turned to soft slimy goop that fell to the ground below.

  R caught the flower with one hand and offered it to Maddy. The blade he was holding in the other hand was slightly melted and covered in pockets. She watched as he crunched the damaged metal into a ball and shoved it into the planet beside them then roughly scraped the dirt over top.

  Maddy turned back to R staring down at the offered flower then hesitantly reached out and accepted it.

  Both the goop and the rose remained. New shapes in the surroundings. They lingered despite the surrounding nothingness, leaving no room for anything but them and the spheres.

  “Do you understand?” R asked his gaze lingering on Maddy’s own as she stared down at her rose.

  “I think so? The unknown is split by the known. On one side you get something like mana. On the other side you get something like essence. Mana is the part you control. Essence is the part you don’t control.” Maddy responded after a moment of thought.

  R nodded. “Correct, this is the sort of process that created mana. True magic leveraged some authority in the past and cut out a slice of power from the unknown. Now. Are you ready to return?”

  Maddy hesitated for a moment. “How do you know where to cut? What have you given me?”

  “The infinity of the unknown contains everything. After you closed your eyes it even contains the known but unrecognized. As I mentioned before, you can take as long as you need and do this process in as many steps as you want. I slice by what feels good and might slice dozens of times for something more important. All you have to understand is when you make this cut you are trying to push as much of what you want into a single portion while giving as much of what you don’t want to the remainder. The longer you take, the more likely you are to make the perfect cut but the more damaged you will be by this process. Because of how the unknown is shaped, you’ll probably always cut some of what you don’t want into your ‘want’ pile. Those are the side effects. You’ll also probably miss some of what you do want, those loose bits of control landing in the ‘remainder’ pile. That is power given to the enemy. Paths they can use to strike at you. ‘consequences’ in other words. Just remember you are cutting everything in existence. Absolutely everything has to fall on one or the other side of your slices.” R glanced down at her flower.

  “As for that. That my dear is a rose. Nothing more than a flower to remember this date by. I hope…” R suddenly looked embarrassed before he rushed through the rest of his sentence. “I hope In a few decades or centuries you’ll look down and see it wilting. I hope you’ll see it. You’ll remember this date and consider having another. That’s all. I’m good with taking things slow and I know you’ll be busy in the near future, but I hope you’ll reach out when things settle down.”

  Before Maddy could react, R pulled them to the side. Around them the world warped and twisted in a reverse of the steps they had taken to reach this point. Within moments R had stopped holding them in the metaphor. Maddy was given a light push and she found herself stumbling forward in reality.

  A blue box blinked into view.

  As she looked around she noticed she had come out beside Richard.

  He was staring forward at what looked like an illusion of a stage his eyes dilated slightly in the light of the space station.

  “It's time,” she called causing him to suddenly jerk as he noticed her.

  “Where have you been? Doesn’t’ matter. All supplies are on that table. Give me a moment to open a path.” Richard turned and held out his hand. On one of his fingers, a ring flashed and stone began to form as if extruded out of nothing.

  Why did everyone consider her only ‘here’ when she brought her body? There were over a dozen of her eyes around…really Maddy had been here the whole time even if a chunk of her perception had been talking to R.

  Before he finished “creating” stone, Maddy spoke. Around her, nearly all her eyes jumped towards the hidden portal in a flow of pops. Directed sound impacted the stone vibrating it with a visible buzz as she tunneled into and through the matter.

  Through the stone, through the microscopic portals. And into an new reality.

  …

  Maddy’s sound transportation did not like her ‘landing’ in a spot that couldn’t hold her.

  It wasn’t a spell that let her accidentally teleport halfway into a wall – if she tried normally it would end with her appearing somewhere on the side of it as she popped into the safest spot nearby.

  Her spell actually had to be modified to let her perform this feat.

  Maddy pushed into endless stone her eyes nothing more than little lump of energy loosely linked to stored information.

  Points were randomly chosen as her mana sunk past the gate then settled. Dense balls of void melted through soft stone pulsing in tiny orbs of power. Melted stone was fed into reinforced shells and light liquid water was conjured in the vacuums from the remainder. Finally her eyes landed in the dark bubbles.

  Everything hurt – her eyes themselves were damaged, as bits of her power and information were spent or caught on the trip in. Life mana infused each of her selves healing missing bits of flesh, but the problem was deeper.

  This universe was hostile towards her.

  It only supported a limited set of scientific elements. Bands of solids and composite solids from the middle of the periodic table. Richard had shown her something about orbital shells and which configurations were stable… but all she remembered from the science lesson was that this place was full of stone and nothing else. Around her the water she had conjured slowly froze despite being insulated and created with her water concept.

  This wasn’t the first time she had done this, but it sucked every time. By default, this was not a viable place to live – let alone thrive in.

  When she was done, that hostility would become a strength.

  Slowly Maddy sent smaller tendrils of destruction out. Void mana in the shape of worms each designed to tunnel and return.

  Maggots had been her favored attack as they had a link to death affinity and a strong shape due to how frequently she had used them…but at their core they were meant to harm living creatures not build or damage the inanimate. A simple shift to a very similar looking shape was a large improvement. As a bonus, worms had ties to digging through earth and digesting what they ate.

  Time passed relatively slowly in this initial stage. Void worms left tunneling into the surroundings in a repetitive cycle – like clockwork they left, returned. Left, returned.

  They left through closing tunnels or began to dig new ones. They returned along instant transference pathways. The tunnels they dug nearly instantly shrunk when unsupported as the pressure of stone on all sides squeezed them inwards…but slowly but surely the paths were reinforced and remained stable as they were re-dug over and over again.

  Separated bubbles linked with one another through dozens of small finger sized tubes. Each of her eyes regained a connection to each other – the tubes filling with lines of mana, life force and bits of Maddy’s existence that could only be called ‘everything else’.

  The entire system began to look almost like bloodstreams. The worms heading out and returning were like blood cells cycling between a body and a heart.

  The separate eyes connected and exchanged the metaphorical equivalent to nutrients…and slowly the colony of Maddy on this side of the barrier transmuted herself into a creature that could live here.

  All of her ‘old’ flesh was replaced with flesh created solely from the environment, the destabilized atoms in her pseudo flesh swapped out for new stable ones sourced from the surroundings. The ‘reality’ of her existence was bonded to the ‘reality’ of this universe as she digested the meaning of the environment and adapted in a way only fae could.

  Soon Maddy ‘awoke’ once again and like a colony receiving care packages from the mainland, began to transfer items through the still open portal.

  A simple self powered Hydrolysis engine to convert her water into oxygen and hydrogen.

  A self expanding metallic structure for additional reinforcement.

  A box with most of their class system equipment.

  A seed of the hidden system.

  A stabilizing rod Richard had made to help suppress the suroundings.

  A beacon.

  Monster parts.

  The line of items kept coming. Each teleported through in a way that damaged them before they were quickly shoved into stabilizing storage rooms. Maddy shoved melted bits of this new reality into some of the biggest cracks she saw but everything seemed to be surviving the journey.

  As she continued to expand and carve out rooms her focus began to change.

  She grew strong enough to shift her perspective and begin working towards her first goal.

  This area she had transformed herself in…this area she was expanding was not what she would consider the ‘higher’ realm. No this was the transition. Entering and leaving this place would be a ritual. All beings who ‘ascended’ would appear here. They would then follow in her footsteps transforming themselves into ‘higher realm’ beings in a one way process boosted by this setup.

  Then, even in the incredibly unlikely case they were somehow able to find a way back ‘down’ to the ‘lower realm’ they would find the reverse happening. The original universe would be hostile towards them and this time they wouldn’t have help adapting.

  There were many different ideas that went into this transition area. Two main ones standing out.

  One was an active transition by Maddy – she would use a her own magic and a copy of the path she had taken to help transition creatures with attacks. Her dark void life eye and three life adjacent mini eyes accepted the burden and became wardens. Destructive void rain would damage and heal all who entered in apocalyptic cycles. Food adapted to this reality would fill the room so creatures could eat and integrate the matter of this realm into their bodies.

  The other main idea was something a bit more abstract. A shape built with true magic designed to fill with the experience of all who passed through. Right now it was nothing more than a seed but over time it would grow into a massive tree.

  The idea was that everyone who ‘used’ this area would contribute to it. Every way someone transformed themselves would help becoming a path and foundation for those who followed. Each new magic used would become part of the area strengthening it. Using the ‘help’ of this area was all the consent she needed for this and while it was currently weak, over a massive amount of time Maddy could tell this would become a pillar of power.

  Creatures could of course refuse…but that would spit them out in the higher realm without help. Would remove the protections of this area – the stabilizing rods from Richard. Without a safe transition, creatures would be at the mercy of all who had taken the transition.

  Some of what this transition would apply, was dependent upon decisions made below.

  The requirements one would need to get here for example. As a group Maddy and friends had discussed their goals before this point and they had some points they wanted to hit.

  The early goals they had, were than any creature at or above rank 4 would instantly be brought here by both the system and the magic they were creating here. As far as metaphors went it was like the people were standing on water held up by their ranks weight. If they grew too heavy they would fall into the waves. They would then sink to a point where they adapted and finally reach a point where attempting to forcefully swim back up to the surface would give them the bends.

  Using the same metaphor, anyone or anything under rank 4 but meeting any requirements they placed could be brought here as well. For example, something or someone just under rank 4 but disruptive enough with the weight of their actions might be dragged here early unless they fought it hard enough.

  On the other hand people could purposefully ascend even sooner as long as they met enough requirements.

  An immortality skill or sufficiently strong life saving ability was the biggest example. If you could survive up here against most of the threats the higher realm might pose…well than as long as you wanted to come you should be able to. Right? It should at the very least drop the requirement down to rank 3 at a minimum.

  ...and maybe immortality was too dependant upon your affinity. Fairness demanded equally impressive feats give those underleveled a similar opportunity even if the original intent was different.

  Built into this transitionary ritual Maddy began to lay the groundwork for helping anyone who embraced all the rules. If they arrived here without immortality she would help give the option for it. Once again some of Maddy’s eyes split off – this time her life-light eye, her dark-death eye and a dozen life and death adjacent children.

  Protected and far away from everything, Maddy began to build the framework for this side spell. Anyone who ascended and accepted could have a tiny part of their soul and or their cores, ripped out and bound to a modified tree in a forest preemptively called the forest of immortals. Assuming their magic allowed, their lifeforce would be combined with that of the massive trees, extending their age by a vast amount even if not technically an endless one. Having a bit of their soul separated and protected would also reduce the amount of permanent damage creatures could gain and Maddy could set up a process to send healing mana down the ‘connection’ to help clients regenerate upon lethal damage.

  Theoretically in the future she might be able to retrieve the rest of someones soul upon full body damage then send them off with a new body in a new location.

  Because the bound object was living, the side effects were much less drastic than typical philanthropy styled soul protection – no ‘undead’ side effects with decaying flesh.

  This, like a lot of Maddy’s inspiration, was something based on necromantic spells she had read about. It’s a path she had considered before ending up on the path that had led to her current power. One of the major negative side effects was an increased desire to hibernate for years or months at a time.

  The other side effect was simply a consequence of her helping people with this spell and forcing part of them under her domain.

  It would prevent them from gaining something better.

  After all, while theoretically this could give creature a lifespan in the millennia…the trees would eventually fall. Her giving people this boon would also theoretically hinder most from gaining a ‘better’ form of immortality and despite her true magic shenanigans, the fact they hadn’t achieved that improved lifespan themselves could forever chain them down.

  All of Maddy focused on this transitionary area for a while – building the bare bone shapes of goals into it, with the goal of those seeds improving in the future.

  If part of her client’s magic and domain centered around them remaining as they were, she could help them frame the transformation as something more akin to them protecting that which they ‘were’ while remaining the same in the ways that mattered. On the other hand, this transformation was an opportunity for anyone that passed through to improve themselves, reshaping their body into something better if they so chose. If someone had something massive about themselves they wanted to change, this was the perfect time to do so. Appearance, gender, maybe even species in the future.

  By default, this transition was meant for individuals. They should be isolated from others as they adapted…but Maddy left some gaps in that structure just in case pairs or groups were so bonded they would want to ascend together. Maybe lovers or people with tamed creatures? Clones like she had?

  Finally the pressing timeframe forced Maddy to move on.

  The transition wasn’t complete and would truly never be complete considering its self improvement setup but she had done enough for now.

  Maddy began to dig away from her early rooms. Further and further into the unknown she struck out before finally she picked a position to start the ‘real’ creation.

  She was ready.