The first thing Gorren noticed when he woke up was that he didn’t recognize his surroundings.

Bleary, he blinked, putting a disciplinary arranged series of voluminous book covers on focus.

Books?

With his sleep forgotten, he slowly moved his gaze, taking in the place.

He was in a corridor, its walls formed by massive libraries that leaned threateningly over him, disappearing into the darkness. A crooked candelabrum threw dim light over a cobblestone floor. Further on, there was another, the first of a long series that disappeared into the horizon. The libraries kept going as well. He couldn’t see the end of them. All was silent.

First of all, Gorren made sure of not being affected by another mind spell. The answer seemed to be no: his mental shields were untouched, and nor his soul nor his Mana presented any alteration. He also had a copy of his regular Mana flow stored into a pocket mental landscape, in case of alterations made to his own cognitive capabilities. He confronted it with his own, and couldn’t find any anomaly.

Mh. Good. No mind spell then.

The particle of Crux that he had harvested was still there as well, encased in his regenerating prison. Another relief.

His own, and his work‘s, wholeness assured, he took another look around. The libraries and the corridor remained as real as anything he had ever seen on the material plane.

He tried to move. Nothing happened.

He froze. Slowly, he brought a hand before his face. The skin looked thin and papery, the appendage looking all the part one of the two he had had during his life as a human.

He reached a mental tendril for the far feeling that he had had of his body. It wasn’t there anymore, probably because he felt it to be here, stitched to his senses.

That was… peculiar. Why did he have a body?

He stood thinking for some moments, and at the same time, he gingerly tested his newfound limbs.

His (new?) body felt taut and wiry, with stick-like limbs all muscle and not an inch of fat. It was also incredibly nimble. Testing it, he managed to extend his leg so much backward that he could grab his foot while remaining perfectly erect. All in all, it felt a tiny better than the time when his alchemical concoctions still worked at their peak efficiency on his still young body.

Touching his face, he found it different, but it was subtly so, in a way that he couldn’t put his finger on. Bah! What it mattered was that he had a human face. He still felt a jolt of pleasure at finding a beard covering his cheeks and chin. It was a short, pitiful thing but at least now he could twirl his fingers on something.

Gorren passed a few minutes to enjoy his newfound, strong body. Then irritated despondence flared.

The boundless freedom of the mental form was gone and, after the first surprise, now he felt like a fly caught in amber with that stupid flesh constricting him.

Secondly, what the fuck? Why, why and why? Why the fuck did he have a body now?!?

“I don’t understand…” He murmured under his breath, starting to walk back and forth. He hated not understanding, especially if it was about something that he had studied extensively. It made him go crazy, dammit!

He squashed the rising anger and started to think. Maybe some kind of sympathetic reaction? Maybe had the Crux reacted to his own unconscious desires and formed a body for him? And did the same creating what looked to be a massive library? No, it didn’t make sense. He enjoyed the mental state, and if he wanted for a place, he’d go for a laboratory over a library anytime. Still, though, maybe his own unconscious asked for guidance from the written word? It was possible, and then it wasn’t certain what a long-term bodiless experience could have done to his mind. So maybe he had unconsciously prevented that and feared it?

Gorren stopped, clasping both hands on his face in exasperation.

“I hate this.” He said voice muffled. He had not even the faintest idea, that was the truth. He was as ignorant as a sheep. Him! Like a sheep! He felt sick. Oh god, he was going to puke. Urk…

After recomposing himself, a few minutes later, Gorrens shoved any doubt aside with a kick in the arse and started to regard his surroundings with more attention.

A part of him almost hoped that the least probable of possibilities could be the right one: a lucid dream, simple as that. At least something would start to make sense…

Warily, he grabbed one of the books and pulled it out. No dimensional portal on the other side, just what looked to be sturdy castle walls. Suspiciously similar to his tower’s. Mmh.

He raised the book and opened his hand. The object fell obediently, a dull thud raising as it impacted with the floor. Peeved, Gorren tried to glare a hole in it, but the book insolently refused to grow wings or something. No dream physics, it looked like.

With a snort of disdain, Gorren snatched it up and read the title. And just like that, all of his hopes went up in smoke and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

“The Kingdom of Silk and Gold: A Journey” of Thren Amarrik. That was something he decidedly never had in his own library.

He snapped it open, feverishly reading the minute scripture. Realization hit him like a hammer. It was there!, word for word, the recount of the journey of the wizard-traveler Amarrik in the eastern kingdoms of Amajrai, with all its details on the magical practices and disciplines of those distant lands. Even if it was just a cursory glance before the whole, the rajas-magicians of Amajrai had never taken kindly to so many of their secrets to be known. Amajrai was a land ruled by mages and their secrets were fiercely guarded and handed down the generations inside of walled citadels, protected by the mass of serfs incapable of magic that comprised the population. So they had made sure that the author and his work were erased from the face of the earth. Their work had been so meticulous that of the twenty copies of the book only a couple survived, neither of which he had ever managed to put his hands on. The marvels that the mages of Amajrai had done! To know even a fragment of their secret knowledge was a dream!

Gorren watched the book, open-mouthed with disbelief. Such a rarity, here, like any other book!

He turned at the library, head spinning. Well, that discarded the dream hypothesis. He had never even glanced a copy of the work, let alone read it. He couldn’t have dreamed it.

Despite new questions raising, he found himself attracted back to the library. Clutching the first to his chest, with trembling hands, he took out another book and read the title: “That Which Flows And Doesn’t Stop” of Yerrik Abramalek, the mammoth manuscript of the homonym archmage on his two-centuries long research into the nature of magic and the conclusions he derived from it. Original, five copies, each written by hand.

Gorren almost fainted.

It didn’t stop to those two. That library was packed full of treasures and Gorren, scampering up and down the corridor like an over-excited rat, couldn’t take out a book without uncovering a priceless work or an unfindable masterpiece or a grimoire of a famous mage.

In the end, exhausted by the wave of emotion, he slumped to the ground. It had been nerve-wracking but he had managed to pick some personal favorites. Now he held them, both big piles, against his chest, delighting over them like a matron over her babies. What luck! What incredible, fantastic… eeeek!

His butt had barely touched the floor that cold hit him like a hammer. He jumped back on his feet with a yelp, barely managing to keep the books from spilling all over.

Only then he noticed that he was stark naked. In all the excitement, he hadn’t even noticed.

He shrugged. Ah, who cared? Clothes were but a social construct and protection from the elements. There weren’t people there, and the air was incredibly mild, or his own body was less sensible?, so they didn’t matter. More importantly, he had so much to pour over, to study, to read. Oh, he could barely contain himself!

A thought hit him, and he froze. Those books were all things he had wanted during his life but, for a reason or the other, he had never managed to get his hands on them. Now they were all there, just waiting for him to take them.

Suspicious.

Slowly, and grudgingly, he left the books on the floor, eyes darting around. His thoughts flew to the monster that had ambushed him. That thing had tried a mind spell then, imprisoning him into a cage woven from his own memories. This… looked awfully similar to that tactic, even if the proportions were astoundingly bigger and massively more complex. Still, if that creature was a dweller of the Astral Plane, who could say what height could reach? If manipulated, the Crux could bring anything into existence…

Still, something didn’t add up. If it was some sort of trap, it was as transparent as one that a child could build, and at the same time mind-numbingly complex. It didn’t make any sense.

Gorren snorted. Too many questions. Back to the basics.

All humans were born with a quantity of Mana inside of their bodies, what the ignorants called lifeforce. It acted as a propellant, allowing the body to move and act, and as a tether, holding the soul to the flesh. A mage was born differently. The Mana contained in his body was denser and larger, not only quantitatively but also spatially. To put it simply, the Mana exited the boundaries of the body, forming into an aura around it. Also, any mage was born with a kind of sixth sense, a spiritual one, that allowed him to perceive his own Mana and interact with it. When Magic happened, the lion’s share of the Mana was contributed by the internal reserve, while a minor part was taken by the aura from the atmosphere around, the reason why spells’ efficiency was influenced by the concentration of Mana in the surroundings.

With practice, or, with luck, born talent, a mage could learn to expand his consciousness through the aura and into his surroundings. With more practice, he could learn to perceive other founts of Mana and other mages. Entires branches of disciplines had sprung from these simple concepts, entire traditions of methods of perception, shielding oneself from perception, misdirection and shielding-piercing.

A good Seeker, that was the name of a mage specialized in perception, could extend his consciousness to encompass an entire room.

Gorren did just that then but on a far larger scale. Taking a breath, he left his consciousness to expand outward. Like a rising tide, it spread, running through dim-lit corridors, licking across dusty shelves and silent lines of books. Slowly, a mental map of the library started to form in his mind. Details flew easily in his expanded consciousness, like fishes into clear water.

Gorren was impressed by the magnitude of the place. It was already as large as a town of medium size and it just kept going. He picked a form vaguely reminiscing the wheel of a wagon, with long, thin corridors forming the beams of the wheel. He was just in one, but it wasn’t that that picked his attention.

Running in the same direction he had been following, the corridors converged into a central point. The more his consciousness advanced toward it, the more he could feel Mana change. It wasn’t as much as denser quantity as much as a “sharpening”, that was the closest word for it. There couldn’t be any mistakes. That was the esoterical process that brought Mana into Crux. He recognized it as the inverse of the process that he had crafted.

It was… magnificent, an inner purification that couldn’t be put into mortal words.

Curiosity rising, his consciousness raced toward the center. Maybe he would be able to witness the tipping point when the Mana shed all of its impurity and became true Crux.

Instead, he found something else, something that froze him in his tracks.

Right at the point where the paths converged, there was a mass of condensed Mana. It was big, very very big. And it moved.

Gorren felt it react to his probing and hurriedly retreated.

Forcing himself back into the limits of flesh but for a thin tendril of consciousness, he frowned. The thing hadn’t followed him. Was it guarding something? Was it waiting?

Gorren set his jaws. Instinct told him that the second was the truth and that what the thing was waiting for was him.

Slowly, he crouched, eyes pointed in the distance. The silence wasn’t as welcoming as before. Now it seemed full of unseen dangers.

Gorren focused. The crackling of the fire under a cauldron, the gentle burning of a candle, a surge of anger contained, and a moment of flair. He willed those thoughts to condense into a single hot mass then, like he was trying to push a cart only with his mind, sent Mana drifting through it. The energy picked it up, swirled around it, became one with it and…

A small flame, the size of a candle, flickered into existence between his fingers. Gorren held it before his eyes for a few moments, drinking from its purity, then clenched his hand, snuffing it out.

He turned his head back up. His powers seemed to be responding normally. Good. Problem was, combat wasn’t his specialty. He resisted pain like a champ, his focus was steel and sure as heck nobody was as quick as him to throw spells, but he lacked the training to fight. He was a researcher, first and foremost. And that beast had felt awfully big…

He needed some time to think. Thankfully, the thing didn’t seem in a hurry to move.

Time blended strangely when you were alone, and that was something Gorren was deeply accustomed to. Maybe he passed days, or maybe months, or maybe years walking that long corridor, his own mind quickly losing grasp on the passing of time. He consulted books after books, losing himself in the complexity of the words of long-dead sages and archmages. Unfortunately, and deeply satisfying at the same time, he found that the majority of the works fell short of his own knowledge when it went to his own areas of expertise. He felt a deep respect for these fellow seekers of knowledge, but couldn’t but smirk with casual disdain at their, at best, retrograde conclusions. There was this mistake repeating itself that bugged him, this stubbornness on wanting to chain the Mana to the Material Plane. Mages of all continents seemed to have shared it. Gorren scoffed at the thought. It was painfully obvious that Mana didn’t originate on the Material Plan as much as it flowed into it, and whoever thought differently was a sad sad man. Still, only a woefully small minority of the works he browsed backed that hypothesis, and they were always thought

crazy by the majority.

Vexing.

Well, at least now justice was established. He, the greatest pioneer of humankind in Mana and magic research, would use the pages of the most retrograde to scribble his notes about the most advanced works. The thought filled him with satisfaction for himself. Ah, it felt good being right. Stupid Azaeulir Rotswick, the Mana raising from the dirt my ass…

On the other hand, the books that took care of areas outside his expertise were a true boon. He could always use something to fill the blanks. He had hoped to find something talking about the Astral Plane, but, to his mixed feelings, nobody seemed to know anything about it.

On the plus side, he never had any problems with his new body. He didn’t feel hunger and his energies seemed unlimited. He only needed some sleep from time to time and that primarily to soothe mental fatigue. It wasn’t as good as being completely unfettered but he wasn’t complaining.

And those were the good news. On the bad news, the thing was still there.

He kept a constant mental watch on it, but it didn’t seem to have the intention to go anywhere. In fact, it didn’t move at all. It wasn’t even alive in the common sense from what he could perceive. He couldn’t feel its Mana flow around like with the creatures of the Material Plane. It just stood there, forming into an indistinct clump, more akin to a magical phenomenon than to a creature. Logically, it shouldn’t be alive, but logic went on vacation every time he tried to study it closer, and the thing stirred.

It was disquieting, terrifying and fascinating to the extreme.

A creature dwelling on the Astral Realm. What was its nature? How it lived? What were its interactions with the Crux? Gorren had a thousand questions about it. He would kill, burn and destroy for a specimen to study, in whatever order.

Too bad chances weren’t it wasn’t happening. That thing was waiting for him, almost a hundred percent sure.

The almost was more out of hope than anything else. Proceeding in his exploration, Gorren had found that the more he closed over the center of the library the more archaic and rare the book became. Even stranger, more and more books showed outlandish titles that seemed custom-tailored to attract his attention, only to reveal themselves to be blank inside, like whoever put them there didn’t find enough to fill them too.

Gorren was unpleasantly reminded of a toddler, putting down bigger and bigger breadcrumbs for a little sparrow to follow until it reached the waiting cage. Seriously, if it was a trap, it was the most complex, the most strange and the most mind-bogglingly stupid he had ever laid eyes upon. That creature had built an entire small world, replicated the most obscure marvels of human knowledge, stood in wait at the end of the breadcrumbs to… what? Waiting for him to come? It was so unreal that he could barely believe it. And still, it really was the only thing he could imagine with what little he knew.

He hated that.

And… he guessed that it was somewhat working since he was making his way towards it.

Well, not like he could do much else. The chance that he found something useful in one of those books felt slim, and he had no other way to go. That thing was the only one vaguely resembling a clue. Even if that clue was probably having violent thoughts about him.

Better not to think about it…

He tried and succeeded, but eventually, he couldn’t anymore, nominally because, after felt like ten years, he reached the end of the corridor.

Leaning against a library to break his profile, Gorren eyed warily where the two walls of books gave way to a larger space. He had a narrow vision of some kind of large hall but apart from that, he couldn’t see anything.

More concerning, he felt some kind of… tug, pulling him into that direction, an invisible hand softly pushing his back and a call roping him in at the same time. And that wasn’t very comforting, like at all.

What to do? Go in? That felt like a bad idea. He would play right in the hand of whoever was waiting for him there… if it was waiting... If it was for him… if if if. By this point, he wasn’t certain of much anymore. The theory of the trap felt as wobbly as the first time, and the thing waiting there wasn’t encouraging. Now that he was so close, he could even make out better its dimensions. He would guess that it was as large as a young dragon more or less, and that meant two meters at the shoulder and six meters from the tip of the tail to the head. It didn’t even bother to hide. It simply stood there, as motionless as ever. The idea of getting close didn’t felt very appealing…

So what, don’t go? And then? Wander aimlessly into that labyrinth? No, whoever or whatever had put him inside of the dimension, be that creature or something else, wanted him to go there and he hadn’t any other option left. Who knew what else could happen if he tried to refuse. No, if he wanted to hope to continue his research and find some answers, he could only step to that challenge.

“For the great work, and my murdered life. And revenge.” He murmured, trying to still the hammering of his heart. Be it childishly elaborated trap or something else, there was only a path for him.

He steadied himself.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, he left his voluminous pack on the floor. His adventuring days had helped him well: he had made ropes by shredding into stripes the sturdy covers of some books and used them to build himself a primitive backpack, that he had then stuffed full of pages used to take notes. His own blood had made good ink. For reason he wanted to understand, it didn’t seem to ever run dry, and whatever little wound he did to himself healed quickly.

He abandoned his hard-won bounty with a bit of apprehension. He really hoped it didn’t disappear.

Putting those thoughts aside, he gave himself a last encouraging and stalked toward the end of the corridor. Peeking with caution, he saw what there was beyond.

The corridor ended abruptly into a massive, empty hall. The walls were naked stone, hauntingly reminiscent of those of his own tower. The floor was covered with an enormous mosaic that, he realized with astonishment, actually depicted him! Looking with more attention, he saw that it showed him inside of his laboratory, a long-bearded, robed figure trafficking with flasks and vials before a cauldron filled with bubbling liquids while reading from an iron-bound tome. From the focused scowl to the ripples of cloth, the mosaic showed magnificent quality. Even in the dim light spread by the numerous candelabra arrayed across the circumference of the hall, he could make out the exquisite details, all to make one work worthy of the greatest master craftsmen.

Gorren swayed under a wave of dizziness. If there were doubts before, now they were dust. That place had been built using him as a template, no mistake about it. His memories and most importantly, his desires.

That demonstration of power was downright terrifying, and he fought to keep the rising fear in check. He had spent decades trying to channel the Crux into acts of creations. Whoever did this showed ability at manipulating it that left his own in the dust. More importantly, and that scared him more than anything else, it had managed to pick at his own mind so easily…

Gorren threw anger and indignation at the fear threatening to clog his stomach, pushing it back. Who dared to riffle about in his mind like that? The nerve! The insolence! He would have them burn for this!

Steadying himself, he focused, retracting his aura inside of himself. He replaced it with a thick layer of Mana that mimicked the immobility of inanimate matter. The creature seemed to be very sensitive to living Mana. With this, he hoped to trick it. Now, where it was…

Gorren slowly moved his gaze across the hall. The air was stale, deprived of smell. The silence was absolute. But it was there, he could feel it. That silent, motionless lump of foreign matter. It hung in his mind like a bad promise, just waiting.

He narrowed his gaze. There was some kind of… irregularity there, something was askew. He slowly rotated his head, while focusing his Mana into his eyes into different patterns. The being stood there, in plain sight, but a little out of line with the dimension, an unfettered thing that didn’t belong entirely to the realm of the three dimensions.

As it appeared before Gorren’s enhanced vision, the old mage felt his blood turn cold.

A massive serpentine body, made of slime-like flesh the color of a dead corpse. Spindly appendages that were a mix of tentacles and limbs. A triangular head formed only by a circular maw full of needle-like teeth.

Gorren staggered back, mind reeling in horror. It wasn’t just its appearance. That monster exuded a sense of wrongness that made his instinct scream and his mind recoil. The details of its form shifted as he watched it, in a way that defied geometry and set his head on fire.

Hurriedly, he dismissed the image and backed off between the libraries. Was he supposed to face that? He swallowed, thoughts swirling. Still, interest surfaced quickly. It was the monster that had attacked him earlier, no doubt about it. It just was much, much bigger. Some kind of inter-dimensional lifeform? How… deliciously interesting.

Gorren peeked back into the seemingly empty hall. He was scared but, as always, curiosity was an undeniable mistress. He needed to know more.

Making sure that his Mana-shielding was in place, he left his refuge and gingerly made his way into the hall. He immediately felt vulnerable, but his curiosity rapidly clubbed to death any desire to withdraw.

Slowly, carefully, he put step after step, attention spasmodically focused on the tendril of consciousness he kept as surveillance. His hope was that the monster relied only on Mana perception for tracking. He hadn’t seen any sensorial organs on it, so it didn’t feel much far-fetched.

To be sincere, he himself wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do. But he wanted, needed, to see more. Curiosity had him completely entranced.

Tensed moments passed as he gingerly made his way into the hall.

The monster didn’t move an inch. It looked dead, but Gorren knew better. Soon, he was covered with sweat.

He had made it to half of the radius of the hall when he stopped to rest.

Covering his mouth with a hand, breathing raggedly, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Gods, nerve-wracking to be sure. He felt like his heart was trying to burst out of his chest. But he was closer now. He could take another peek.

He was just about to do it, when he saw it.

Right at the center of the hall, levitating above a gilded pedestal, he saw the most glorious vision of his entire life. A thick book, its cover made of silver embossed with lines of pure Mana. It shone with soft, silvery light, knowledge made manifest.

The first thought Gorren had was absolute disbelief at how he could have missed such a masterpiece. The second was that that book existed for him to take it. There was no question, no doubt. Destiny wanted for him to possess it, and there was nothing, not the Gods not the elements, that could stop that from happening.

The beast turned to him.

It was an unnatural thing, just like everything about that monster, like a rock starting to move while remaining a rock. It felt like an offense, a violation of natural laws.

Gorren felt his survival instinct rise into a tidal wave. While an alien, cold conscience brushed his own, he felt it with iron certainty. If he allowed that thing to catch him, the same fate he had so desperately struggled to avoid, complete dissolution, would fall upon him.

If he didn’t start to run right away, it was because on the other side the tug to grab that book was almost as strong as the instinct to escape.

The beast started toward him, and the second won.

Gorren turned and ran.

As he moved, he could feel it through his hastily retreating tendril, the beast, coming for him. It glided through the air without a sound, not even a particle of air disturbed by its passage.

Gorren forced himself to remain lucid. That beast was waiting for him to get close? Maybe. But it had acted in the exact moment he had laid his attention over that book. Had it felt it? Was that what had allowed it to find his presence?

He felt it coming, the shadow of a claw grasping at the back of his neck, but forced himself to be calm. His body felt strong, his breathing ran smooth and his pace was quick. He was confident that he could reach the corridor before the beast could make it to him. There it wouldn’t have been able to follow him.

He had barely finished that thought, that something streaked toward him. He recognized it as Mana arrowed into a spell, and raised his shields. Quicker than he could blink, the dart pierced them like a knife into butter and disappeared into his own Mana stream.

Gorren was just starting to feel disbelief when the effects started.

The floor suddenly got a lot closer, and the libraries a lot farther away.

With a startled sound, Gorren lifted a hand to his eyes. It was as wiry and paper-looking as before, but it was a lot smaller!

Throwing a panicked glance around, he saw that the same had happened for the rest of his body. Had that thing transmuted him?

Any pretense of calm forgotten, he pumped his new little legs as much as he could, ignoring any protest of his muscles. Carried by his own momentum, he fell but managed to keep up going by scrambling forward on all four. Panic kept him moving at a speed that he thought impossible.

He clipped a shoulder against a library when he dashed back into the corridor but barely slowed down. He kept running, his only thought to keep between himself and that monster as much as distance as possible.

When he finally stopped, it was more because his own legs gave up on him, making stumble and fall. He remained there, thoughts whirling, the coldness of the floor almost painful against his own flushed heat. There wasn’t a muscle of his body that didn’t scream in pain and his heart beat hard against his ribcage.

Nothing came to end him.

Tentatively, he sent a tendril of consciousness sneaking into the way back. The monster was back at its post. It hadn’t followed him.

Relief flooded through him like a river bursting from a dam. He laughed, almost not believing that he had actually survived, only to erupt into a fit of coughing. When it stopped, he didn’t move, not even tried too. Instead, he did what he had always done after a failure.

He stood completely still, thinking.

Welp, that had been a fiasco. He wasn’t going to take the blame though. That monster would have scared anybody. It was good enough for him to have escaped with his life.

Except… it wasn’t.

The certainty glowed inside of his chest, as hot as lava and as unforgiving as a guillotine blade.

He needed that book. Whatever doubt he had, whatever answer he was seeking, it was there. Without it, he was done.

Simple as that.

Gorren swallowed, finding his throat dry. This was going to be a problem.