"What you need to focus on now is improving your combat abilities. When the next Tolling occurs, plants and animals will begin to be mutated by the energy. The mutants become aggressive towards humans and attack. If you cannot fight, you will die."

The last sentence Kanshou had uttered bounced around and around in Mitch's mind, both literally due to the fact that Kanshou was communicating mentally, and in the more traditional sense of being hard to deal with. He was now facing a two-pronged attack. The increasing energy level with each Tolling was still a threat, sure Kanshou was saying he would survive this one, but what about the following? And now he also had to worry about mutated plants and animals, a very immediate danger and one that would be much harder to predict.

"You may ask questions now."

The words jerked Mitch out of his thoughts. He could ponder the implications later; right now what he needed was information. Start with the most important.

"You are absolutely sure I will not die because of the energy at the next Tolling?"

"Quite."

"How do you know?"

Kanshou pondered for a moment.

"I believe I can tell you this," he said before stopping to think a bit more. When he began speaking again, he did so slowly; not in an unsure manner, but in a way that let you know he was considering each word carefully.

"But, I think it will be best for me to give you a brief primer before I answer that question."

He looked at Mitch to gauge his reaction; rather than appearing annoyed Mitch's expression was interested. Relieved that he would not have to fight him on this Kanshou continued.

"What we refer to as a realm you would call a universe. There are a great many realms."

Mitch had sort of been expecting that after Kanshou's earlier comment about how many people were in the next realm, but it still kind of blew his mind. If only Stephen Hawking could have been sitting in on this conversation. Mitch truly wanted to know what he would have made of all this.

"In addition to realms, there are planes. A plane is best described as a collection of realms, although that is not the whole of it. The realms within a plane are divided into tiers. Your realm is in the third tier of this plane. There are several lower tiers, but they are not accessible from this realm. The term "tier" can be misleading as it seems to indicate a position, but that is not actually the case: what determines a realm's tier is the density of the energy within it. In general, a higher tier realm has a tenfold increase in energy over a lower one; although, there is some variation and in some cases may be slightly more or slightly less. Do you understand so far?"

Kanshou looked at Mitch again. Mitch paused for a moment to think about it before nodding. It was mindblowing but not that difficult to understand. Yet another thing to worry about later, after he had gotten what he could from Kanshou. This didn't seem to have anything to do with how Kanshou could be sure he wouldn't die but sounded like it might be relevant later.

"Someone from a higher tier going to a lower tier will be much weaker than they are in their own tier, but still immensely more potent than any denizen of the lower tier realm. I tell you this so that you can apply what I am about to say next to it. What your people call the Oort cloud is actually the spell compass that is blocking the energies. Each Tolling its efficiency is reduced by a calculated margin to allow a precise amount more energy through the barrier than before." Mitch tried to interject but was forestalled by another raised hand. "Things are done this way to maximize the survivors, although no one expected the massive population growth of the last few centuries. You must have found the energy channels in your body by now right?" Mitch, exercising a fair amount of restraint, nodded silently. "I cannot easily explain the process so I will use an analogy. Think of the channels of the people here as atrophied muscles and the energy outside of the formation as an ocean. Now imagine that we take a man whose entire body is severely atrophied and throw him into the ocean. What will happen?"

At first, Mitch thought the question was rhetorical, but Kanshou was looking at him and waiting for a reply.

"The man would drown." Such a man would barely be able to lift his hands, let alone swim.

"Precisely, although you should think burning instead of drowning, and multiply the scenario by every human on earth. Now, if we were to have the man complete physical therapy first?"

"Then he should be able to swim, at least for a while."

"Yes."

"So wouldn't a more gradual increase be better and allow people to survive?"

"I theory yes, but the compass would lose integrity if we attempted to do that and we would be back at the first situation again where everyone dies."

"What did we do to earn the punishment? It must have been serious to merit all this trouble. The Oort cloud is supposed to be composed of trillions of bodies millions of miles from the planet. I can't even imagine the effort needed to accomplish that."

"It took one compass master from my realm slightly longer than one of your days."

Now Mitch's mind was truly blown. He had known incredible things, incredible to the people of this world at least, would be possible but this was ridiculous. The Oort cloud had been built, and it had been built in just over a day. By one person. What. The. Fuck.

"If it was just a question of power, it might have been done more quickly, but compasses are delicate things."

Oh great. It took a day, but only because you had to handbuild the clockworks, not because someone really needed to put in that much effort to make the components. Mitch couldn't help himself and closed his eyes and hung his head, clasping his hands behind his neck and rocking back and forth slightly. This was utterly shattering his worldview. Just what could people accomplish now? If you counted one grain of sand per second, it would take someone almost 32,000 years to reach one trillion grains with no sleep and no breaks. If you made it one person's full-time Monday through Friday job, it would take over 133,000 years. The Oort cloud was supposed to be multiple trillions of icy bodies.

Mitch spoke without changing his position. "So, if someone from your realm wanted to create a planet?"

"For just a rock the size of Earth? Moments. Although a life-bearing planet similar to Earth would take much longer."

"So, someone from your realm could create a planet like Earth?"

"Yes"

"Was Earth created by someone from your realm?"

"Yes."

"So what about us? Did they created the humans here as well?" Mitch had never been a believer, but having the idea of God or gods destroyed put him ill at ease. He did not want to know that he could literally meet his maker.

"No, this world was created for a group people from my realm who had little to no talent for utilizing the energies. The group wished to emigrate to a lower tier and were gifted this world by someone sympathetic to them."

Ok, existential issues out of the way. Now, back to the question at hand.

"So, what was the crime?"

Kanshou sighed, and Mitch saw the first signs of hesitation he had ever noticed from the man.

"Someone from this realm was having an affair with the wife of one of the most senior personages of my realm. This punishment was ordered when they were discovered."

Mitch couldn't speak. For a moment he couldn't even think. That was nothing! Just how petty were these people? He understood being pissed, but by God, punishing an entire world for a millennium and killing billions just for a personal issue? What in the name of the nine rings of Hell is that?

In fact, he couldn't resist standing up and shouting. He was halfway shouting at Kanshou, and halfway just yelling. All of this pain, the immeasurable loss of the people on this world, the lives destroyed, the families broken, his own suffering: all because some asshole wanted to be a cunt about his bitch getting some strange.

Afterward, he wasn't even entirely sure what he had said and didn't really think it mattered. He tried to storm out when he had vented to the point that yelling didn't help anymore, but there was no door. He glared at Kanshou, his intent obvious, but Kanshou did not respond or even react for that matter, so not knowing what else to do Mitch settled himself in the spot he felt was the furthest from Kanshou and sat, barely resisting the urge to break down.

"Your realm is full of maggot munching shit-stains and yeasty cunts. And you are one, I just haven't decided which yet," Mitch said with as much venom as he could.

For the first time, he saw anger from Kanshou. It was slow and unending and implacable. It was the most terrifying expression Mitch had ever seen.

"I will not destroy you this one time in understanding of your distress, but speak to me or of my realm in that manner again, and I will annihilate everything you have ever touched."

Kanshou's eyes had a fire in them that would burn worlds, and it finally really hit Mitch who he was talking to. This was a man who had lived at least one millennium, probably more, and had spent that time walking the edge of the knife. A man who he could somehow tell was a killer an uncountable number of times over. It felt like he was standing in a sea of blood staring up at Kanshou from the foot of a mountain of corpses. He could almost smell the iron, death, and rot.

Mitch had gotten too comfortable. He had forgotten the viper; the hidden, secret danger. He would not do so again. Still, his own fury refused to be wholly abated. He continued to meet Kanshou's gaze for a moment, meeting fire with flame, before he nodded. Not submissively or ingratiatingly, merely an acknowledgment. There was nothing he could do now; their difference in strength was too significant. But, that might not always be the case. Now that Mitch knew the heights that could be climbed we would stop looking at the weeds and aim for the summit.

"Fine. Let's keep going."

"Very well."

Despite this exchange, they sat in silence for a while longer until tempers had cooled to a smolder.

"Why did you even bring me down here? We could have had this conversation in the main building."

"For starters, there was a tiny chance someone might overhear us. Even a minuscule chance was unacceptable. The second reason was that I expected things might get heated, and if they did, I wanted to show you something I thought might help you calm."

"Show me what?" Mitch said irritably. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing on Earth this man could show him that would put him at any kind of ease.

Kanshou waved his hand and the walls, followed by the ceiling, dissolved. With the ceiling, left the light, and only a starscape remained. It was unbelievably realistic. The black was mind-numbingly deep, and the tiny pinpricks in the fabric of infinity that were stars contrasted so distinctly that it was indescribable.

Looking around he started to think that maybe this wasn't an illusion.

"Are we...?"

"Yes. This is real."

"But the gravity..."

"Artificial. I can turn it off if you like." Speechless Mitch nodded.

Almost as soon as the gesture was completed, Mitch felt his stomach lurch as the tension in his calves from maintaining his balance suddenly pushed him into the air. Words could never convey this sensation. Not even if he had a thousand years to think of the right words.

"Turn around. What I brought you to see is behind you."

Mitch slowly air-swam around to be greeted by something he had only ever expected to see in pictures.

The Pillars of Creation.

"Go past the floor. I will extend the field to protect you."

Clumsily Mitch tried to move forward but with no surface to push off from was left flailing. Suddenly a force pushed him out beyond the edge of the illusion of safety.

Suddenly, he was standing in forever.

There was no space suit, no space station walls. Whatever was keeping Mitch's blood from boiling was completely intangible and imperceptible. It was just him and heaven's Mona Lisa.

He let his troubles, both newfound and preestablished, fall into the background and just looked at the impossible thing before him.

Mitch was not sure how long he stayed like that, but by the time he felt the force pulling him back in his mind had calmed. The anger and heartbreak were still there, but it was no longer threatening to take control.

"Thank you," he said. "This changes nothing."