Time passed while I was in my Demesne, working on weaving all that essence I had gained. A few hours were spent on purchasing a Paradigm. I reviewed the notification again.

[Congratulations! The entity known as the Wanderer has granted you access to three of his starter paradigms! Please choose: Pathfinder (Dogma: exploration); Ranger (Dogma: travel); Freeman (Dogma: Freedom)]

It was not a decision I took lightly, but on the other hand, there was not much to go on. I had a few inklings on what some of the Paradigms might have done, such as pathfinder, but in the end, it was a choice between names and themes. And that was not an informed choice at all. So I took a different approach. I chose which Dogma I wanted to be affiliated with. This was something that would influence the rest of my existence. And there was no choice here as well. Because while I very well might have become a traveler or explorer, if life had given me different opportunities, freedom as a Dogma was on the forefront of my mind most of the time. There was a little bit of a caveat with that. To be affiliated with a Dogma meant mostly two things. First, it meant that you gained an understanding of the Dogma and that would improve your ability to control, create and manipulate related Skills, and the further you went on your journey to become one with the Dogma, it even meant manipulating reality in conjunction to the core of your Dogma. Gods with the Dogma of war might influence the outcome of one, for example. And Secondly, a Dogma was a method of gaining a passive income of essence. All the energy of prayers and miracles, worship, and the sheer existence of the concept, in reality, would strengthen the Dogma and with that increase, the essence all entities with levels in said Dogma could siphon away. Again, the Dogma of war would grow and thrive if a war would break out in reality. And in that fact hid the issue of agency. I had to choose my Dogma carefully, to not turn into someone who needed bad things to happen to thrive. Or to even facilitate them. I wanted to choose a Dogma I was happy in facilitating the growth of. I felt that freedom was a good choice. People needed freedom more than they craved exploration and travel. And worship and prayers to entities of freedom would be more numerous and desperate. And last but far from least: I chose what fit best.

Now, Paradigms were prepared pathways of growth, granted directly by the experiences and the personal knowledge of a greater god. They were meant as a guide and a gateway to the world of the godlings and as such were easy to implement. I simply touched a glowing rune in my Demesne and watched as a marbled statue of ....well me...rose from the ground. The statue was pristine and so bright against its darker surroundings, that it seemed to glow from within. I felt the void of Essence in the statue, like a vessel yearning to be filled. I would need to pour essence into it, and I would not know how much I needed until the path had been walked to its destination.

I knew that the first level of a Dogma alone cost me 5000 EP and that Paradigms were supposed to be a good deal essence wise, but that was the end of my knowledge.

I did not like the statue here at my tree of lights. I found it to be preposterous. It showed me in a heroic pose with no shirt on and cut shackles dangling from my wrists and ankles. I did not fancy the idea of looking at that thing every time I came here. I willed the statue to be more weathered and less pristine and moved it down to my lake of Essence, well out of view from my favorite resting spot.

Then I willed 1000 Ep into the statue and watched the representation of my essence, the glittering lake, shrink away in front of my eyes as silvery mists started to rise and gently float over to the statue. I had just become a [Freeman] Lvl 1!

[Skill gained: Breaker of Chains]

After looking it up in my tome of skills, my way of interpreting the divine knowledge blooming in my mind, I knew the skill to be helpful for breaking supernatural spells, Skills, and inherent powers that impeded my movement in any form. Very useful and highly welcome. I had made a good choice.

"Hannibal, the unity of your Demesne went down as expected. But it is not so bad. It is now at 71%.“ Lily chirped from the side.

We had expected that indeed. How could an outside influence, like the experiences, Skills, and a Dogma of a god not change the wholeness of a spiritual representation of my own divine self? That was why we went with the expensive cost for the first level of the Paradigm first. It had only taken 670 Ep for the initial cost to buy it, but I had still filled it up to a thousand to make good use of this unique opportunity to make progress cheap before the unity would inevitably go down. That it fell 11% was on the better side of Lily`s estimate, and that was because the nature of the Wanderer was not too different from the serene scene of nature and sanctuary, I had created the idea of here. Had I brought in the Dogma of fire or something more extreme, the cost would have been equally extreme.

The next big purchase would have to be a gate. Now, this was a process Lily had not been able to explain to me, through no fault of her own. I could not even understand the problem, much less the solution. We had my Demesne, a pocket in Limbo. But there was no distance in Limbo and locations were not in any relation to one another. And that was the end of my attempt to understand how unreal locations, wrought in my own mind, could possibly connect to other thought constructs through the very manifestation of everything and nothing - meaning the Limbo, the essence of creation, and the eventual undoing of everything there is and will be. I was just not ready for that level of thought. I just did what my, obviously intellectually superior, wisp said I should do.

And that was probing. I had to open myself up to the vast emptiness of Limbo. My Demesne was made out of the Limbo, but until now it had only existed in my head. I had to exit mortal limitations of the mind and imagination and connect directly to the Limbo and the essence of creation. I would then send a construct of my divine self through the opening. To search. It would not be hard to find something. Some places wanted to be found and it was such a place I was looking for. So, my mind could not handle any of that intellectually, but in my Demesne my imagination was king. And that was enough.

I had no problem creating a doorway out on the other side of the lake, through which I sent a small glowing ball of light, looking exactly like Lily, but with no personality or sentience. The process cost me 395 EP thanks to my unity and reduced said unity further to a round 65% because even more alien influence had been introduced to my sanctuary. Somehow this light would bridge the gap to another location and report back to establish the final gate.

There was some hesitation on what to do next. I wanted my gate to reach a place of trade and barter. If I were to buy something there, that would require me to spend essence, like a Skill, now was the time to hold some of my earnings back for that eventuality. And I had been so adamant to only purchase the Paradigm and the gate! Everything I now bought would be way more expensive, because of the dropped unity. And yet, once I had started improving myself, I immediately wanted more. More Core Skills and more Mana. More everything.

But I had to be pragmatic. Essence would not lie around on the streets on the surface of the world, as it had been in the Abyss. I had to travel longer distances, more time would pass...in short my growth would slow down considerably. And I needed to account for that.

All of my musings and the work on my Demesne was not hard compared to what had to come next. Sighing deeply I stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. Because I had been stalling again. Because the Betrayer was here. With me. And he was not alone.

Once on the cliff, I could see him standing on the very edge of the space, that could still be considered mine. And he was no skeleton either. A man stood there in open space, a ghost of a man I should say, in his armor and full regalia of a Lord Commander of the Ravenguard. You could see the darkness behind him shimmer through his body, as if he was just a mirage, only half there. Around him were less substantial forms, raging against prison bars that were not there, but real enough for them. Among the chaos stood the gaunt, strict looking man with short-cropped hair of black and grey. Just staring at me. There was an intensity of hatred and contempt in that gaze, that I involuntarily shuddered when hit with it.

I knew the unspoken accusation. I felt it too. What right did I have to claim the souls of him and his? But I could not let them free. I just could not. This was the third time I had come before the Regicide, and it was the third time I failed to do what was right. These had been the worst criminals the Ravenrock had ever known. They still were. They did not deserve the peace of death, while the souls of my very own [a Flock of Souls], brave and good women and men the lot of them, were following me around unable to find a place to rest. And I knew it was wrong. So very wrong.

I always had felt too much. And still did. Too much passion, too much anger, and too much love. It had been problematic in my younger years. I had since learned that not everyone had my level of emotional responses to things, but while I had worked on ways to handle my emotions, I never had found a healthy way to do so or to make them less intense. And I felt really strong emotions looking down at those damned souls.

And here was the thing. I could not punish those that had hurt me personally. I could not win a war against the Wyld. I could not bring Sarhain the Grim to justice for the Last Flight of the Ravens. I could not seek vengeance. But I could find justice here. Or just feed my vindictiveness. But whatever it was I felt, there was no mercy to find in my heart. I knew I should have been able to.

Once more I stalled. Once more I turned away, hiding the raging souls, and the cold one, behind a curtain of fog. I was not ready for this confrontation. Or so I kept telling me.