I woke up in the early afternoon and sprang out of bed, full of energy. I usually never woke up feeling so good. Checking the time, I was surprised. Especially after only 6 hours of sleep. The improvements to my body were truly amazing!

I looked at the drawer where I had stored the Vision Crystal in anticipation. Unfortunately, my body had a more pressing need. After going to the bathroom, I forced myself to go downstairs first. I quickly cleaned up the rest of the house. I didn’t want Mum to have to do it when she woke. Luckily, nothing else was broken. There were just a number of things that had fallen down.

Once that was done, I went to the kitchen and quickly made a peanut butter sandwich to quiet my rumbling stomach. The fridge light came on when I checked, which meant the power had come back on some time this morning, but I didn’t trust that the contents were still safe to eat. I’d sort through it all later. I wolfed down the sandwich on the way back to my room, finishing it off in record time.

I made sure my door was firmly closed before pulling out the crystal. The rainbow mist was still swirling around inside. “Are you ready for this, Cax?” I asked quietly.

The excitement I felt from him was answer enough. “Yes. First, though, I would like to apologize for last night. I realize I was a bit short with you. My pursuit of knowledge can get the best of me at times.”

“Thanks, mate,” I told him. “I appreciate that. But it actually turned out to be a good thing. It made me work some things out for myself. I might not always have the time it takes to get your advice, so I think it’s important I learn to handle these kinds of things by myself as much as possible.”

“I’m glad to hear that, and I completely agree,” he replied.

“So,” I continued, “what did you find out?”

“If you don’t mind, please activate the crystal first. The information it contains might provide more context to what I discovered.”

“Fair enough.” I laid back on my bed, remembering what he said about it being mentally taxing to use one of these things. "But then no more stalling!" I told him firmly.

“Agreed. Now, place the crystal against your temple and activate it,” he advised.

I raised it up to my head and held it against my right temple. Concentrating, I imagined some of my mana leaving my center and entering the crystal.

This [Vision Crystal] contains memories from [The World Spirit of Earth].

Do you wish to activate it?

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. “Looks like the people on your world were spot on, Cax,” was all I could think to say. “World Spirits are real. I can’t believe they even got the name right! Or is that just my interface giving it the name I am already familiar with? Maybe it’s not possible to translate the …”

“Stop wasting time and confirm it!” he yelled at me, unable to contain his excitement.

“Alright, alright! Settle down before you have to apologize again,” I told him.

“There will be no apology. Last night you didn’t deserve to be treated poorly. You deserve it now! Who hesitates when they are told they can see what the World has done and wants to …”

Yes, I thought at the prompt, effectively silencing Cax as he stopped mid-sentence when a new screen appeared.

Incompatibilities detected. Adjusting…

I frowned. What?! Damn you, Cax! If this thing fries my brain and… My internal ranting was cut off as my interface finished preparing the crystal and it activated.

Immediately, the ceiling I was looking at disappeared. It was replaced with a scene so vivid it was like I was actually there. I could feel the wind and the heat of the sun shining down. I could see towering trees, with trunks so wide it would take ten people linking hands to encircle them. They reached up far into the sky, attaining heights not even the tallest skyscrapers could match. The vegetation between the trees was so thick that I wondered if anyone would be able to make their way through it. This is Earth? I thought in disbelief.

Suddenly, the magic in the memory overpowered the enchantments running my interface. My senses expanded until I was no longer just seeing a single point of view. I became aware of everything around me.

I knew exactly how many insects were crawling through the ground and could somehow feel all of them at the same time. My mind followed each gust of wind and felt them stir the individual leaves on the trees. My mind could barely comprehend a fraction of the information that was pouring in, and even that small part was overwhelming me, causing my vision to darken.

My interface reasserted control and the sensation ended immediately, returning me to a simple perspective that my brain could make sense of.

I turned around, or rather, I was turned around as the memory guided me towards what it wanted to show me. I saw some people battling massive creatures. Are they dinosaurs?! They looked so similar to the images I’d seen of them that I was sure they had to be. But then, who were the people? There weren’t any people back then.

As I watched, I saw one of them launch a fireball into the side of one of the beasts. Especially not people who could do that! Then I realized they weren’t human. Their shapes and dimensions were off. If I could still feel my body, I was sure my mouth would have been hanging open. How many years ago was this?!

The memory focused in on a thick stream of mana that continued up into the sky and kept on going, beyond the ability of even the World Spirit to follow. Its energy signature was different, somehow of the world but apart from it at the same time. Through the magic of the memory, I knew that this special mana stream was connected to the universe itself and linked all the planets within it together.

The perspective zoomed out until I could see multiple streams of this energy connecting to the planet at various points. I could see people arriving and departing near them. They were using them to travel to and from Earth! That must be how Cax got here. Whatever other function they may have, they were obviously like some kind of pathway or tunnel.

Multiple scenes played quickly before my eyes, showing me different races of people traveling to Earth and fighting the beasts on it via these energy pathways before departing. Was Earth some kind of a safari planet?

Those scenes ended and the memory carried on. I was looking at a different part of the planet. I was aware that a large amount of time had passed, but exactly how much was beyond my brain’s ability to comprehend, even with the help of my interface.

Suddenly, I was aware of some kind of message coming through to me. Or rather, the World Spirit. Have to remember this is just a memory. It feels so real though, like it’s actually happening to me right now. Thanks to the magic behind this vision crystal, just as the World Spirit was able to understand the message, so too was I.

It was a message from an incomprehensible distance away, traveling along the network of energy pathways, sent by another World Spirit. It was a distress call. No, that wasn’t right. As the message progressed, Earth’s World Spirit recognized it for what it truly was, and so too did I. It was a warning, sent by a being that knew it was beyond being helped.

The message contained images, just like the vision crystal I was using now, and my mind was pulled inside them. This is some Inception-level shit!

The images showed a world under attack. A jagged tear had suddenly opened in space close to the planet, just within its atmosphere. It was pitch black, and nothing was visible through it. The Spirit of that world examined the edges with its senses but couldn’t determine what it was. It tried sending energy through the tear in an attempt to find out what was on the other side, but the energy couldn’t penetrate the mysterious rift.

The rift increased in size swiftly until there was a long, black tear covering most of the planet. It was fairly narrow, leaving plenty of regular sky visible. Whether by coincidence or on purpose, the rift avoided all the mana pathways leading off into the universe.

The Spirit could sense the inhabitants on the surface become extremely agitated at the appearance of the rift, but it wasn’t too concerned by this strange occurrence. It was confident in its power and control over its domain.

It became aware of an unfamiliar energy coming from the rift that radiated down onto the planet. It couldn’t work out what the purpose of the energy was. It had never encountered anything like it before. Through the memory of a memory, I could sense the Spirit observing curiously.

The next images that came through showed the same black substance I’d seen in the forest begin manifesting in the lifeforms on the surface of the planet. It began in the areas directly beneath the rift, but quickly spread out until every living thing on the planet was affected.

Unlike what I had observed here on Earth, the flora and fauna didn’t die. Instead, they became altered. It must be because of the higher levels of mana in them. That was the only obvious difference between this world and Earth that I could see, and it lined up with what had happened to the squirrel and me in the forest.

There were plants that became able to uproot themselves and move around. Animals that tripled in size or grew additional limbs. People of an unfamiliar race suddenly developing strange powers or changing in appearance. The alterations were extremely varied, with no rhyme or reason to what the result would be. The only thing that seemed to be standard was the behavioral changes, with almost all of the altered lifeforms becoming extremely aggressive and attacking each other.

The Spirt began to fight back as soon as it realized the effect the foreign energy was having. It reinforced its inhabitants with all the mana it could to help them stave off the effects, but it was too late. The levels of foreign energy within them were already too high. The World Spirit continued its efforts to fight back as the rift continued pouring more energy onto the planet. I wasn’t sure from the memories how long this went on for.

One last thought came through with the message from the other World Spirit before it ended; ‘Beware the Void’. I hadn’t seen what happened in the end, but the World had been fighting a losing battle, so the conclusion seemed inevitable.

Even with the magic keeping me in the memories and being unable to feel my body, I swear I still somehow felt a shiver run through me. It was one thing finding out that planets actually had consciousnesses that oversaw the lifeforms living on them. That was enough to blow my mind and make me feel incredibly small and insignificant. But to then see an entire planet overcome? That instilled dread in the very fiber of my being, along with an immense sadness at seeing so many lives lost.

I wanted nothing more than to return to my body and put an end to all this, but the magic had me wrapped up tight and kept me in the memories of Earth’s World Spirit. The Spirit was worried about the message but not sure what the rift represented or what to do about it. Finally, it just assumed that this was a one-off occurrence. The universe was full of strange and inexplicable things.

An unknown number of years passed with life continuing as normal, and then it happened again. The cries of another world were sent through the universe on the flows of mana as a rift suddenly formed and drowned the planet in corrupting energy.

This time, the problem couldn’t be ignored or denied. The Worlds were under attack by the Void. It wasn’t clear who, or what, that was. It was clear, though, that they needed to do something. A solution traveled along the mana pathways, giving all the World Spirits a course of action. Defend and hide.

Earth’s Spirit took an extremely large portion of the mana stored in the planet and formed it into a defensive bubble around the world. The outer layer was designed to keep a rift from forming, using the information on the rifts that had been transferred by the two planets that had been overcome. The inner layer was setup to mask the mana on the planet so it would seem to be just an empty area of space.

The mana pathways that connected all the planets together were still active and unaffected by the barriers. They were of the universe itself and beyond even something as powerful as a planetary consciousness to dismantle. Instead, the Spirit simply built the barrier right up against them, leaving no gaps.

There was concern among the World Spirits that these energy pathways could be traced and used to locate the planets, but since nothing could be done about it, they would just have to trust in the shield to protect them if that was the case. The fact the second rift had also avoided touching the mana pathways gave them hope that they wouldn’t be able to attack through them at least.

Earth’s environment eventually regenerated all the mana that had been used in the creation of the planetary shield, once again giving it an abundance of energy. It was more than enough to keep on supplying the energy required for the shield’s upkeep and for life to thrive once again. The planet prospered in a mana-rich environment for millennia with visitors from other planets regularly traveling along the mana pathways. Life had returned to normal and the rifts became a distant memory.

The next image I was presented with showed me the end to that normality. A rift had overtaken another planet. It seemed like whatever was behind the rifts had discovered the energy pathways and had worked out how to use them to overcome the planetary shield. There was a disturbance in the barrier where it touched up against the energy pathway as a traveler went by.

On this particular planet, at that exact moment, a rift had formed, forcing a hole in the shield and immediately increasing its size, much faster than previously seen on other planets. The rift pushed the barrier apart, giving it access to more of the planet’s surface before the World Spirit could reinforce the sides of the barrier and halt its growth.

The Spirit tried to reform the barrier beneath the rift to block it, but the void energy tore it apart before it could get settled in place. Since the rift didn’t cover the entire planet this time, it took longer for the planet to succumb, but the final result was the same as the other times. The Spirit had been unable to come up with a solution to the problem.

All the World Spirits immediately sealed off the energy pathways connected to their planet. They couldn’t block the flows of mana completely, but they were able to do enough to close them to travel. Whatever was behind these rifts was clever. It was too risky to allow interplanetary travel to continue. Unfortunately, the seals on the mana pathways also halted communications between planets, so it was impossible to know if the Void had managed to attack any other planets.

There were occasionally impacts against the seals on Earth’s mana pathways. The World Spirit assumed they were powerful travelers who had managed to break through the seals on their home world. They had been unprepared for the ones at their destination, though, and perished as they came up against the seals. The Spirit worried for the safety of the worlds they left from, but there was no way to find out what was going on in the universe without opening itself up. Eventually, all such incidents stopped.

They probably worked out something was up when not a single person returned, I thought, sad at such a senseless waste of life.

The memories flashed forwards thousands of years before stopping on another image. One of an inconceivable disaster. An asteroid hit the planet. The shield was only designed to manipulate energy, not to protect from physical objects. The asteroid passed harmlessly though the barrier and impacted the surface.

The devastation caused was immense. Life on the planet was decimated and the sun’s rays were blocked by clouds of dust for an extended period, preventing new growth from occurring. This loss of life immediately impacted the amount of mana the planet was able to produce.

The memory flashed forward, and I was privy to the conundrum facing Earth’s World Spirit. It had to decide what to do about its decreased amounts of mana. The first choice was to use almost all of the energy it was still producing to maintain the barrier protecting it from the rifts. This would mean it couldn’t repair the damage done to the ecosystem and wouldn’t be able to return to being a planet rich in mana.

The second choice was to collapse the shield and repurpose its energy to help recover the ecosystem to the levels it was at before the asteroid hit. This would eventually allow it to get back to high mana levels and then be capable of restoring the shield.

Seeing how quickly a rift had formed on the last planet to be lost, and fearing complete annihilation if it were to be discovered, the World Spirit chose to prioritize the shield. As a result, Earth endured. But with low-levels of mana, it was never able to get back to the original wonders possible with a mana-rich environment.

I guess that explains why our planet has no magic, I thought.

The memories flashed forward. I saw modern day scenes, with cities covering every inch of the planet and levels of pollution increasing every year. The World Spirit was worried and considering what to do. Humanity’s impact was damaging the planet’s already reduced ability to produce mana, resulting in the shield and the seals on the energy pathways weakening. It wasn’t too worried about the seals, though, as nobody had attempted to travel in millennia.

The Spirit was unable to communicate with anyone on the planet directly. It sent natural disasters to try and convince humanity to change its course, regretting the amount of mana it took to do so. Mana that could instead be used to bolster the shield. Nothing changed.

It was getting to the point where the World was preparing to wipe the planet clean and start over. It would take a lot of energy to do that. It would mean collapsing the shield in order to use the energy contained within it to eradicate humanity and reseed the ecosystem, but if it could go unnoticed by whatever was controlling the rifts while the planet recovered, it would eventually be able to restore the barrier. It just had to hope that the rifts weren’t monitoring the planets so closely anymore after such a long time. It was a gamble.

The alternative, letting humanity live and continue on as they were, would result in the inevitable collapse of the shield with no way to restore it or the planet, which would be a guaranteed death sentence. It knew what needed to be done.

Before it could act, the decision was taken out of its hands. After all these years, a traveler suddenly arrived on Earth from another world along one of the mana pathways, managing to break through the weakened seal but becoming extremely injured in the process.

Rather than panic, the World Spirit saw this as an opportunity to test if the rifts were still a threat. I could sense its anticipation through the memory. Instead of quickly strengthening the shield where it had been disturbed by the traveler, it waited to see if anything would happen. It needed to know if it could safely bring down the barrier to repurpose its energy.

Almost immediately, a rift began forming in the disturbed area, pushing the barrier apart as it tried to expand. The World Spirit rapidly reinforced the shield around the rift, halting its progress. To do so, it had to quickly pull some energy reserves from beneath the planet. It was careful to draw from everywhere so as not to cause major damage to one area on the surface. Anything that impacted its ability to produce mana at this point could be catastrophic.

It pulled the energy up from directly below the rift first to rapidly strengthen the shield in that area, and then spread out to get it from everywhere else on the planet. It was aware of the tremors that were sent through the ground by the rapid withdrawal of energy, but it was certain they were small enough not to cause harm.

The rift was exerting pressure on the shield as it tried to expand. The World Spirit held it firmly wedged where it was, not allowing it to grow. The information from the fallen planets had given it the knowledge it needed to contain the rift. It couldn’t do anything to stop the void energy from reaching the surface directly beneath the rift, but it wasn’t affecting a large area. Yet. The Spirit had time to plan.

It knew it was in immense danger. It had the rift contained for now, but its low-mana problems were still the same as before. Worse, actually, since it had to reinforce the shield to restrain the rift from growing. It was still on course to run out of mana before too long, at which point the barrier would fail and the rift would rapidly grow.

The Spirit suddenly sensed the emergence of a presence on the surface. Focusing on it, it was surprised. An awakened human! There hadn’t been enough energy in the atmosphere for anyone to naturally gain use of their mana before. Looking closer, the Spirit saw that the human’s aura was odd. It had merged with the traveler, the dungeon core, that had just arrived!

Woah! It’s really strange to actually feel the fascination the World Spirit has with me. Not to mention unnerving. I’m not sure I want such a powerful entity to be interested in me.

The memory continued. The Spirit saw that the human was already able to understand the flows of mana despite just being awakened. It felt irrepressible joy at the sensation despite the seriousness of the situation it was in. It hadn’t had someone to communicate with in so long! Was there some way to make use of this?

It was still considering what to do when some unknown physical object exited the rift and somehow transported immediately to the surface. Its abrupt appearance and whatever it had done to transport to the ground destabilized the energy around the rift, allowing it to grow a little bigger before the World Spirit could stabilize the barrier and contain it again.

The shard came through the rift?! Why not the mana pathway that Cax used?

The Spirit could feel the object drawing on the energy stored beneath the surface of the planet, and then noticed that the void energy that had already started to take hold in the area was pushed back. The Spirit felt hopeful. Was this some kind of ally?

Then, the draw on the planet’s energy increased. Instead of pushing the void energy back further, the mystery object used it to create a minion that it sent out into the forest. There, it began killing creatures.

Well, that explains why the forest was so quiet. Between the skeletons and the void energy, most of the wildlife was probably dead by the time I got there, I thought.

The object was taking a miniscule amount of the world’s energy, all things considered, but the Spirit couldn’t afford to lose any at the moment. Especially if this thing was going to be using it for itself instead of focusing on defeating the void energy. The World Spirit analyzed the mysterious object, and what it found made it think it might not be possible to allow it to continue its actions. Frustratingly, the details weren’t included in the memory.

Probably thought I’d already know after absorbing it, I thought.

The Spirit needed help to work out what to do about the object. It located the being it had sensed earlier.

I saw that the Spirit wanted to reach out to me for assistance, but my mind was closed in sleep. Desperate not to waste time, the World Spirit stirred up the energy in the area under my house, trying to shake me awake. It calmed the earth before the tremors could travel too far, not wanting to waste the energy.

The last image I had was an external view of myself bolting upright in bed, a scared and confused look on my face, as the World Spirit sent me a quest. The magic ended and my senses came back to me. I looked around at my bedroom through squinted eyes. As amazing as that experience had been, being able to see everything as though I were there, I could see why it wasn’t a common way to exchange information. My head was killing me!

I healed myself and was relieved when the pain disappeared. I swung my legs off the bed and sat up on the edge of it.

“Did you get all that?” I asked Cax, not sure if he had been able to view the memories along with me.

“Yes, everything.” He sounded awestruck. “To actually be able to see it all. To know that World Spirits are real and not just a theory. And there was so much more than that! People used to freely travel between worlds! Amazing!” He wasn’t his usual articulate self, and I couldn’t blame him. I, too, was overwhelmed, but I latched onto the last image I had seen.

“I can’t believe the World Spirit caused an earthquake just to wake me up! People were injured in that! Couldn’t it have found a better way?” I exclaimed, a little annoyed. I knew I was focusing on arguably the least important part of what I had just witnessed, but it was the easiest for my mind to handle at the moment.

Cax agreed with me. About the importance, at least. “And I can’t believe that’s what you want to talk about! And you should be careful. Don’t question the World’s methods, or you might find worse things happening to you than being shaken awake.”

After getting a glimpse at how the World Spirit thought and acted, I was sure it had better things to do than punish me for some comments.

“Don’t be so sure about that. The magic involved with the vision crystal would have presented the events in ways you could understand, just like how it changed the perspective so your mind wouldn’t be damaged. Thinking you know how a consciousness as vast as a World Spirit reasons and what motivates it could be a dangerous mistake.”

I looked around a little nervously after hearing that and then changed the subject, wondering if the Spirit was focused on me at that very moment. There was plenty to go through in what we had just witnessed, but I stuck with the most relevant thing.

“So, I couldn’t see what the World Spirit found out about the shard. Fill me in.”

“Ahh, yes. There’s a lot to go over. Many things make more sense having just witnessed what we did. You should get comfortable.”