***The World***

***Ascathon***

Sleep. Precious, eternal sleep. It has been so long since I slept the sleep of the righteous. Grumbling in appreciation, I shift and pull Willow closer to me, her naked form being the perfect body pillow to ward off a lonely night.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

Nooooo…

Not now! “Stay away, Lucius...”

“Miau!”

The hinges creak slightly as the accursed cat prods the door open to gain entry into my bedroom. There is the soft ‘click, clack’ of a cat’s claws on the stone floor, and then something hops onto the bed and runs across my body.

I decide to ignore the little bugger.

It moves up to my head, tickling me with its whiskers. “Miau.”

Just ignore it! I have to keep my eyes closed, showing that I am sleeping, then he will go away on his own.

A cold nose presses against my cheek and I shudder. Turning away from the mischief-maker, I try to get just a few more minutes of sleep.

Again, it moves up and down on top of me, little claws digging through the blanket, working me over like an acupuncture treatment. At last, Lucius decides to bring out the big guns and moves back up to my head, licking a wet and rough tongue over my ear.

When I continue to play dead, it moves over to my hand and bites into my finger, softly at first, but applying more pressure by the second.

“Fine!” I pull my hand away before Lucius can break the skin. Then I shove the ghost-cat away, who had decided to take the shape of a large Norwegian Forest cat in order to bug me.

His goal accomplished, Lucius morphs back into its little kitten-form, losing its ghostly shape to reassemble itself into a new one.

I get up and cover Willow with the blanket.

Five minutes later, I am fully clothed and ready to feed Lucius his milk; pure essence, fresh from the teats of a dragon. Boy, it was hard to get a steady supply of that stuff. Lucius lives on pure energy, so normal food wouldn't have much value for him. With a bit of catnip added to his breakfast, I leave my quarters and run into Karin on the central corridor.

Her face lights up with mischief when she sees me. “Hi, did you have a good night’s sleep?”

She wouldn’t ask that if she didn’t know that Willow and I did it like bunnies last night. Just you wait, little trainee. “I had a perfect night. You should try it once in a while, a little relaxation here and there wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Ah, yeah… better not,” she replies, quickly losing the wind in her sails.

Okay. Maybe poking my finger directly into one of her social scars wasn’t the nicest thing to do. “Hey, do you want to accompany me on a quest?”

“A quest?” Her expression turns immediately wary. “If it’s the kind where we journey out into the wilds of some foreign place just to get me thrown in front of some monster, then no!”

“Relax.” I wave my hands to dismiss her suspicions. “It’s nothing like that. I just thought that you may want to accompany me to the lower levels of this facility. I need to search for some books.”

“Books?”

“Yes, books. I borrowed them a long time ago, and I figure that it’s time to return them to the owner since I learned everything I could from them.” And after a decade, it’s probably safe to return to Alexandria’s library. If not for purely sentimental reasons, I could at least try to search for some more literature on world enchantments while I am there.

Karin tilts her head from side to side as she thinks about my proposal. My promise to stay at home must be a big bonus point in favour of joining my quest, but what finally does her in is her own curiosity. “Lower levels? I didn’t know that there are lower levels.”

“Oh, but there are. Or did you believe that I would store the really dangerous experiments in my workshop?” I ask.

“Yes,” she replies instantly. “The fusion bomb in the left corner strikes me as pretty dangerous!”

I wave her off and blow a raspberry with my lips. “There are far more dangerous things out there in the multiverse than a little bomb that sends you onwards to the next reincarnation. Come, let me show you the lower levels. It’s time for you to learn about a few things, and maybe, afterward, I will even teach you some mental techniques to reach the immortal-stage a little quicker.”

“Really!?” Drawn in by my offer, she follows me down the corridor and towards the dead-end at the far side, lying opposite to my workshop.

I tap the wall with my palm, popping out the secret code lock.

Karin gasps when she sees it. “Something like that was here the entire time? You haven’t even secured it with magical wards!”

I shrug. “The wards add another layer of security once someone finds this entrance. This here is enough to fool most people away. At least those who are capable of magic. They are so focused on using the magical arts that something simple, like an unguarded mundane security system, doesn’t even occur to them.” Proceeding, I punch in the code, opening the door to the hidden elevator.

We enter the elevator and I notice that Lucifer joined us on our little tour of show and tell.

“I suppose you want me to stop at your feeding pen?” I ask my familiar.

“Miau!” the kitten confirms my suspicion.

“Okay, first stop, Lucifer’s private playground,” I announce and punch in the necessary security code.

“Aren’t you afraid that someone who realizes that there are more levels in your base would just teleport in wherever he wants?” Karin asks, raising a valid point regarding my security measures.

“Yes. That’s why the whole base is shielded against teleportation and the use of pathways. There is a general interference field which messes with anyone who tries to reach the living area. Only people who were taught to adjust their teleportation magic in exactly the right manner can reach this place,” I explain. “Then there is a separate security layer for this restricted research area. Pretty much nothing can get in or out easily. Even I would have issues with leaving.”

We arrive at Lucifer’s pen and the elevator’s doors open, the two silver panels sliding smoothly to the side.

What’s revealed is purest darkness. The light from the elevator shines into the room, lighting up a few meters of a dark cavern.

It’s impossible to tell what lies beyond the darkness, but Karin takes a step back when something moves just at the edge of the light. “What’s that? It makes my skin crawl.”

“All sorts of horrible things which I let loose in here. Don’t worry, Karin. It’s a while yet until you are ready to test your powers against the things which I locked away in this pocket dimension.” Looking down at Lucifer, I nudge my lazy pet with the tip of my boot. “Get going! I hate it when they try to get in here. It’s always such a mess.”

Finally, Lucifer decides to stroll into the room, and I mash the button to close the door.

“Pocket Dimension?”

“Yes. Just like the rest of this base. I had to make sure that the things which I locked in here stay where they are supposed to be.” Finally, the door closes and I sigh a sigh of relief. “No slime or other gooey secretions to clean up today.”

“Ah, what exactly did you lock in that space?” Karin asks.

“Mostly things that pissed me off and were too hard to kill, those kinds of things. Over the millennia, I encountered some creatures which would see you as nothing more than an appetizer. In some cases, I managed to subdue them, but couldn’t find a valid way to kill them off for good. I mean, how do you kill a Lich who bound his memories and personality to his family bloodline? If you kill him, he reincarnates in one of his descendants. Their memories and ego are replaced by him.

“Soul magic doesn’t work, because he quite literally sold his soul to a devil, and all that’s left is an alter-ego which thinks it’s still the original person. I would have to find a way to travel back in time and to stop him from ever selling his soul, or I would have to wipe out three-quarters of this planet’s population because their great, great… something-grandfather was an insane necromancer.

“And I am really not willing to find out how to kill him. There are better things to do. Heck, I am not even sure if he is still alive. Maybe one of the other inmates ate him? He tried to rush into the elevator for the first few centuries after I imprisoned him. Now that I think about it, he hasn’t shown himself in quite a while; and I haven’t encountered him in the world either. Maybe one of the others really managed to off him for good.”

“That… it seems reasonable to lock a thing like that away,” Karin replies after a moment of consideration.

“Okay, we probably should get on with it,” I touch the control panel and bring us down to the next level. “This one is a little safer. I conducted my experiments on World Enchantments in here,” I explain as the door opens.

We step onto a seemingly endless field of grass. About five metres ahead is a table with a ritualistic circle drawn on it. The table is hewn from black marble and was a gift from my grandmother in this life. She was a good person and taught me most of what I now know about soul magic.

Or should I say that she re-taught me? Once I became a god, I later found out that I once already knew quite a lot about soul-magic. It’s just that I had lost those memories somewhere in the course of my many reincarnations. It's the reason why I took to soul magic like a fish in water.

The soul and the mind are a complicated thing. While the soul can theoretically hold an endless amount of information, the mind is limited. It’s like having a local hard-drive which can hold several terra-byte, while most of an immortal’s memories are stored in a cloud with the capacity of petabytes. In a natural reincarnation process, you don’t have all of your memories right from the start. An immortal gradually awakens to them over time, eventually reaching the limits of his organic brain.

“It’s huge!” Karin looks around, searching the horizon for structures. “Is this a hologram, like the beach scene in the bath?”

I chuckle. “No, certainly not. This is a really large pocket dimension, spanning several hundred square miles. I needed an enclosed space which I could purge at a whim if things got out of control. Testing self-replicating enchantments, and especially purging them, is really complicated and dangerous.”

I approach the table, making sure that there are no lingering effects from a previous experiment. Once I am sure that it’s safe, I hand Karin Yahwe’s book “Enchantment 101 for dummies!”. There are several dozen different tomes along with magical compounds and ingredients on the table, and I take my time sorting through them, passing Karin everything that should be returned to Lexi’s library. Her library was like her soul, and she would want it to be complete. I don’t want to know what she would do should she ever return and find her library in an incomplete state.

What if she actually remembers that I have those tomes? Well, some of them I secretly ‘liberated’ from her shelves, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a way to track them, should she realize that they are gone.

“Enchantment…, The Voinich Manuscript, The Honorius Codex, Galdrabòk, Ars Notoria, The Soyga, The Necronomicon, THE DÆMONIUM… Ascathon, what do all these things have to do with world enchantments?”

“Hmm. Some of them have nothing to do with world enchantments.” I search the rest of the table but find that I went through all of the old books, having loaded Karin with eleven different books. “To be honest, some of them are total rubbish… like that one! The Necronomicon; don’t ever try to learn necromancy from that shit. The guy who wrote it included so many superstitions in the text that any young necromancer who reads it will be led astray for centuries until he or she realizes where things went wrong.”

“Okay, but you haven’t answered the previous question.”

“Right. World enchantments are a very complicated matter. I think I already explained how they are essentially just miniature enchantments which use the latent mana in the air to replicate. A very nasty idea, and almost impossible to get rid of. I searched those other books for ideas on how to dispel a world enchantment because, to be honest, I still have no clue how to do it properly.” I shrug and gesture for her to head back to the elevator, whose door is embedded in a large, white obelisk which emerges from the otherwise empty landscape.

She turns around and heads back, carrying the books. “What would be an improper way of dispelling the World Enchantment which is holding you and the others?”

“One way would be to design a World Enchantment of my own which is aimed at dispelling other magical effects. The downside is that I would have to make sure that the effect reaches every nook and cranny all over the world. Designing it to only stop after it detects no more targets is potentially dangerous since I have no clue if there are places in this world where the magic can persist. My base would be just one such example. If I were to go that route, I would have to scrap this place for sure. Not to mention that it might not work. Or worse, it does work and renders everyone on the whole world incapable of using magic ever again!”

“I thought this place is heavily defended and warded.”

“Yes, but when I designed it, I had no clue how world enchantments operate. Tjenemit bound the world enchantment to freely replicate as long as its within the unique influence of this world’s nexus point. Which means that other worlds are safe, just not this one. When I entered this base after I was cursed by these idiots, I brought the World Enchantment with me inside.”

We enter the elevator and I give in the code for our next destination.

“Where to now?”

“There is one more stop before we head back. It’s the lowest level. There are more, but I’ll show you those another time,” I reply.

The door opens, and Karin has to squint her eyes against the bright light that enters the elevator’s cabin. “What’s this?”

“Extradimensional Research!” I exclaim as I leave the elevator.

“I feel sick, like something is trying to warp my innards and my mind at the same time.” Karin leaves the elevator, her face turning green. She studies the rip in reality in the middle of the large cavern, which is contained by force-fields and several rings of spinning energies in blue, red, and black.

“Just don’t barf on the books. As I know Alexandria, I bet they are originals and priceless.” I walk forward and reach the pedestal which is located in front of the magical construct. On it, is a large tome, its pages constantly flipping over, seemingly going in both directions without ever reaching the beginning or the end of the book. Just looking at it creates a nauseating effect.

“You still haven’t explained what this is,” Karin prods for an explanation as she steps next to me. She manages to take a look at the wildly changing runes inside my book, but has to quickly look away.

“It started out with me taking personal research notes. Then it ballooned to a research project about my own nature. I wanted to understand my place as a god and myself. For that purpose, I created something that reflects my nature and opens a pathway to a plane which is like me. Did Willow teach you about the colour-wheel of magic, and it’s meaning for the gods?”

Karin nods. “Every god's nature is different. How much power you have depends on how much you believe in yourself, and how much insight you have into your own person. There is a wide variety of aspects a god can personify, and the more a god realizes his own nature, the more powerful he or she gets.”

I nod and slowly close the book. With it, the rip in reality closes, the rings of spinning energy closing in on the thing which shouldn’t exist in this world until everything is a small pinpoint of light. And then it’s gone as the book’s binding falls shut, a small magnetic lock closing the tome to everyone who has no right to read it.

Lifting the big book in its black blinding, I wrap it in red cloth for protection.

“So what was the place beyond the portal? It felt terrifying. Like stepping into it would be my complete unmaking.”

“That’s probably because you aren’t meant to be there. It’s unlikely that you share my nature. Every god’s nature is different.” I purse my lips and heft the book beneath my armpit. “You have to discover your own nature on your own. That’s something nobody can help you with. Actually, when I stepped beyond that gateway, I found myself in a place which was disgustingly familiar. Some may want to stay in the place that reflects their nature forever, but it wasn’t for me. It felt too right.”

“So what was it?”

“It was neither a place nor a time. It was nothing and everything, neither good nor evil, neither dangerous nor inviting,” I turn to look at her, grinning. “I guess the most fitting way to describe the place beyond the portal would be 'Primal Chaos'.”

We return to the elevator and I enter the code to bring us back to the living quarters.

“So, how would I go about discovering my own nature?” Karin asks.

I scoff. “Girl, first we have to get you to the confirmed immortal-stage. Then you can try to discover your nature. And before you ask, no, I have no clue what you could be. Seeing how you took down your village, you could be a deity of revenge, or a maiden of insecurity because you don’t want to enter a relationship with the other gender. Your nature depends entirely on yourself. Heck, for all I know, you could turn out to be the goddess of fluffy feelings and happy unicorns.”

I wince, realizing what I just said. “No. Forget that last one. Unicorns are actually pretty scary. Karin, take this advice, and never mess with unicorns.”