The map was… confusing.

Granted, Snooze was still under the whims of her wily rage, and as such, was only partially able to parse through the details as they sped through blank nothing at top speed. Trying to wrap her mind around their situation would have been almost enough to make her head spin if her cast-iron fury hadn’t been so consuming.

But, back to the map.

It was strange to a mortal mind. The previously mentioned swirling vortex of colors occupied the space as a cube or something like it. Ribboning all the way through the image were the swatches of vibrant iridescence, much like if you filled gelatin with squirts from a syringe full of various puddings. While tasty, the complexity of the crime against good sense that you just demonstrated would bestow a notable lack of comprehension and possibly cheapen the experience of dessert consumption ever after. And so, much like pudding, the colors that streaked through the multi-dimensional map were indeed numerous sizes and shapes with their own distinct quirks. Snooze had learned that each of these colors represented a different order of dimension.

The first dimension was curiously represented by straight, vibrant yellow lines--not quite gold, but very impressive in a garish, show-off kind of way. That was indeed how the first dimension liked to conduct itself, but that’s not something you need to be told. Everyone knows the first dimension is a bit of a drama queen. There were possibly millions of fragile canary-colored strands, and each represented a different point. The locations that the 1D lines connected were always in a straight path from one another but were never the same length. Lo, they often changed in their size and occasionally switched positions with one another.

The second dimension was represented by puke-green squares that warbled along the edges. However, those shapes were hard to spot, and that is because Dimension Duo is incredibly shy. In fact, even speaking its name can cause it to change from a puke-green to a puke-ultraviolet, which is the universal color of embarrassment. Shame on you.

The third dimension (that which they were currently utilizing) was voluminous and full. Different manifestations of the sparkling blue amorphous dimension occupied the vast majority of the map’s visible space--but not in a rude way. No, it was quite the opposite. It’s said that the third dimension is famously friendly and very frank. You might say it was an open book. Hence why it was invited to the dimensional summit in the first place, even despite its obvious shortcomings of being filled with depth. The third dimension was dependable, governed by a majority of the laws of every form the multiverse took. As such was usually the designated driver dimension when the others had too much to drink.

The fourth and fifth dimensions were a pair (as expected). They consisted of interweaving spectra of metallic black, twinkling amethyst, and sparkling gray. The latter was, of course, the non-alcoholic version of hard gray.

On and on the hues went, swishing, swiping, stabbing, sliding, swooping, soaring, and making a general befuddling confluence of so many different varieties of dimensions that it was indeed a perplexing thing. Most curious of all was that Snooze and her wingmen were represented by a tiny white dot resembling smeared or frayed paint surrounded by wispy black space. Further, they were not within the realm of the map at all but floated outside of it. Their little symbol would dip and dive and appear at different points around the cartographical gelatin but never within.

The outer area of the map was tinged with a color called secura. As represented on the color spectrum, it was halfway between the color red and the letter ‘H.’ It bled in with the shadowy tendrils of black that comprised the dark pockets Snooze and her companions danced between. The Scroll of Currents explained that these surrounding navigational environs were called “the Bulk.”

“Is it incredible?” Snooze asked dryly.

“It might be described thusly,” the Scroll returned with a half-hearted chuckle. “It’s the stretch o’ pleasant pastures betwixt the Braneworld.”

Though Snooze was a god, she was not all-knowing. Not quite. So she clarified.

“Braneworld?”

“Indeed. It’s a bit complicated, but you’re quite the brilliant biscuit, so I’ll elaborate.”

Snooze absolutely adored being referred to as a ‘brilliant biscuit’ and made a mental note to name a chapter as such if there was ever a story written about her escapades.

However, just as the Scroll began explaining the complex nature of spatial physics, Meat interrupted it. The beast beneath their own bulk began glowing red and released a peal in a low pitch, something that anyone who has been following along so far would know was a very bad sign.

Before Snooze could even react, a fantastically unwholesome, brightly burning beam of light shot at them from the darkness. It resembled a comet and blazed through the empty space so quickly that all Snooze could do was cringe away desperately as it bee-lined directly toward them.

However, Meat was quick on the draw. He dove to the side, performing an expert Archangel barrel roll, and the assailing asteroidal missile shot right past, a long tail of spitfire in its wake. Snooze found that though she had anticipated it, there was no heat emanating from the projectile, and so, she breathed a sigh of relief, learning that there would be no unfortunate infernal end to her short trip through the multiverse.

Truly, if you’d have told her thousands of years ago that she would be riding on the back of a celestial mount--who was also her best friend and loyal sidekick--through the cosmos accompanied by a sentient supercomputer that had the personality of a cattle driver… she’d have been too distracted to pay attention. But if she hadn’t, she would likely not have believed it. Unless, of course, the information had come from her certified phone psychic, Monsieur Mysterie. He was far too well-paid to be inaccurate about anything other than the weather, the afterlife, lottery tickets, and anything involving peering into the future. No. Anything further would have been a bridge too far.

Coincidentally, a bridge was the unfortunate catalyst to the end of Monsieur Mysterie’s life when he rode his bike over an opening drawbridge. Apparently, he’d forgotten to paranormally predict both the strict timetable with which the bridge separated each day and the typical effects of physical gravity.

But, back to the problem at hand.

“Woah!” Snooze shouted, watching the starburst zoom behind them into the darkness. She checked the map to see if the object appeared and found that her suspicions were correct--it did not. She turned to the Scroll of Currents.

“What was that, and why isn’t it visible on the navigation blob?”

“Seems to me that is because it is proliferated by some rotten fashion of Godspell utilizing, I’d reckon, either the eighth or ninth dimension.”

“What? That’s a godspell?!” Snooze begged the question, staring again at the shimmering streak fading rapidly in the distance. “One that uses a dimension? Like it’s made out of one?”

“Almost right,” the Scroll said. “It is the dimension.”

“Yeah, Scroll of Currents, we are going to have to boil that down into Snooze-sized digestible tablets because I haven’t the faintest clue what that means. In fact--”

SHOOM!

Meat lunged to the side again as another comet appeared out of nowhere. This time was even more sudden, and Snooze almost lost her grip on Meat’s back but was able to find her balance and clench her knees together again.

“What is going on!?” She screamed. “Is this an accident, or is some nincompoop actually trying to shoot us out of the sky? All of this movement is terrible for what I’m starting to believe is an inner ear infection.”

“It seems intentional, little lady. Malignant, even. Capricious, malicious--”

“--and definitely suspicious!” Snooze chortled.

“As due north as you may be on the nose of that fox,” the Scroll stated in maybe too deep of a cowboyism, “we may ought to want ter figure out a pinch of this monster’s merit.”

Snooze thought she understood. She scraped her mind for her list of details, trying to summon the likelihood of a miracle of some sort. As she focused, another beam flashed at them, and Meat lurched.

“Scroll!” Snooze yelped. “Can you access my details?”

“I can!” The Scroll responded. “But I can’t shift my grip on my current task! I will lose her if I ain’t concentrating on a rough beacon of Grotto’s current whereabouts. It’s a tenuous link at best, and I can’t wrangle much beyond what I got in front of me, currently.”

Snooze scowled. Just great. She’d have to think of a plan on her own. But how could one plan for something they couldn’t see the relative location of, nor react fast enough to not be hit by whatever those blasts were.

“Scroll!” She called again, keeping an eye out for any subsequent suspicious flashes.

“Yes, ma’am,” The Scroll of Currents asked.

“What would happen if we got hit by one of those?”

“You and I would be just prim and proper,” it responded. “At least, we wouldn’t die outright. Meat, though, would be turnt to a smoking nothin’ faster than a chili bean on a hot rock.”

I’m pretty sure Scroll is just making this stuff up as it goes along. That only sorta made sense.

“Why would we be fine, but Meat not be? What is this stuff?”

“They’re Runcinated 8-demicubes!”

“Now I know you’re just making things up! What is that?”

“A shape that can only abide in the eighth dimension!”

“Then how is it here?” Snooze was shouting now, as Meat was whirring and buzzing and whistling so low and loud that it was almost impossible to hear anything else.

“We are meanderin’ through pockets of different dimensional goo, little lady. Beings like you and me exist partially in that dimension at all times--the curse of our nature. But Meat, well… that ole boy ain’t got an ounce o’ eight in ‘im! The minute one of those things so much as glances him, it’ll be curtains.”

“What? Why?”

“On account of the way you split him, all them yonder years afore. He ain’t got the meddle.”

Oh. No.

Not for the first time in her life, nor in her previous life, nor within the last two minutes had Snooze regretted some critical decision that brought new and untold consequences into her existence. With a pang of newly-forged anger, she growled. It did not sound as intimidating as she thought it might, but that didn’t matter. It was her determination that was truly a feat to behold.

“So that means someone knows not only where we are, but who we are,” she said thoughtfully. Her mind was working over something, but she hadn’t quite fully formed it yet.

“I’d reckon that’s a might accurate,” the Scroll returned. “Further, though. It ain’t typical for a creature--god or otherwise--to be… prescient enough to wield one of them demicubes. That’s a bit of high spellcasting if I do say so, m’self. Matter o’fact, if’n my calculations are mean, I’d reckon there’s less than one percent of existence that could gussy-up enough practical experience and specialization to even form one o’ those miserable cusses. It would take a harrowin’ amount of time, energy an’ resources to find sommat that could cast it. This seems poignant.”

“Which means this isn’t accidental,” Snooze said, realizing there was precisely one individual in existence that she could think of that might have it out for her enough to employ a specialized attack like this.

“They know that Meat is in pursuit, which means they know that I am here as well. They’re trying to stop us from the chase, and they want to knock Meat out of commission. So whoever is doing this is either the one who set the trap that snatched up Grotto in the first place or working closely with them.”

The Scroll of Currents didn’t say anything. It simply orbited her shoulder slowly as if chewing over some information. Its silence was aggravating to Snooze, and her rage returned full force.

“How can we stop it!?” She demanded, glaring into the darkness beyond Meat’s powerfully warbling bass. “Where’s the ‘off’ switch? I’ll unplug every eighth dimension appliance I come across if I have to. I don’t even care if someone is mid-microwave on a celestial burrito.”

“The only way to ascend to that loft is to locate the source that’s huckin’ these fearsome fumes at you and ask it to... knock it off. Possibly permanently.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do!” Snooze patted Meat’s head and cooed at him, but because of her level of immediate super-fury, she was stilted.

It’s important to note that while Runcinated 8-demicubes were utterly harmless to view for those living in most dimensional spaces, actually being in the path of one was inherently deadly. Like the difference between seeing a lion on the television and offering a real one a lick of your ice cream cone in the middle of the Savannah. High risk, non-existent reward.

It is only mentioned because, at that moment, the high-velocity, eighth-dimensional version of a lion’s probing ice cream-seeking tongue shot out of the blackness and hit Snooze right in the chest.

It hurt and almost unhorsed her but wasn’t just quite enough to do much other than that. She breathed a sigh of relief as she ascertained that she was not instantly vaporized in a cloud of intelligent microbits--not like KARBART KARBART.

KARBART KARBART was the ROISK scientist who had the distinct honor of discovering the existence of the eighth dimension before anyone else in existence. He’d done this, quite dramatically, after a harrowing tumble into a well and dying. Before he could be reincarnated (as was the nature of his god’s chosen Afterlife), his soul--taking a detour before final destination at a quaint little breakfast joint in the Keb Super Cluster--collided with a Runcinated 8-demicube, and that was that. Most of the time, you never know what your last meal is going to be. Fortunately, we do know what KARBART KARBART’s last meal was. It was death. And pancakes.

However, there’s one curious effect that Runcinated 8-demicubes have when it comes to their general makeup. They like to cuddle.

Snooze shuddered as the spiralizing vector of light dissipated around her and felt quite strange. The light seemed to be moving inside of her and confirmed this when she opened her mouth. A spectral illumination glowed from within her esophagus and reflected against the sheen of Meat’s head in front of her. Immediately, this conjured a horrendous scenario in her mind of the time in her old life she’d accepted a dare to eat an entire package of spoiled hotdogs for cash. She’d come out of the experience three dollars richer and with a severe case of tapeworms that required medical intervention. At the time, she’d believed it was worth it, but in this particular instance--she balked.

“Ah! Get it out of me!” She cried, pounding on her own chest in an attempt to coax the horror out. “I am not going to eat charcoal again! I refuse!”

“Easy does it now, little lass,” the Scroll of Currents said in a calm tone. “You ain’t got nothin’ to be fearin’ by this measure.”

Snooze paused, mid-punch, and looked over at the orb.

“What do you mean? Isn’t this part of the attack?”

The Scroll chuckled.

“No, it is decidedly not,” there was a long pause before it made a shocked sound. “Goodness! Well… I’ll be!”

“You’ll be what?” Snooze demanded. The light inside her was fading and receding, gathering within her body with a worryingly pleasant warmth.

“Ha! This is a development I’ll admit to not have been expecting. Boy, howdy, do I love when something surprises me!”

Snooze whirled on the orb now, fully intending to give it a stern, verbal once-over, but stopped as something seemed to physically click into place within her very soul. It was like a piece of her that had been long vacant was suddenly whole again, but she didn’t know what that could be.

“This better not be a love potion or something! Monsieur Mysterie said they wouldn’t work on me anymore ever since I paid him for that protective Amorous Exorcism Powder.”

You will be left to your own devices in discerning the precise nature of why Snooze had assumed she’d needed a phone psychic’s expensive defensive tinctures against affection--but do note that the explanation is very amusing.

The Scroll of Currents shifted, almost vibrating in excitement.

“Sharp as you are, little lady, can I assume you don’t have wind of the particulars on Runcinated 8-demicubes and their attachments?”

“What?!” Snooze replied, clearly mistaking the Scroll’s words as confirmation of her fears.

“Fair enough. What you’ve got there is quite the serendipitous happenstance. These demicubes specifically are naturally curious creatures, fearsome though they may be. They hold the quality of wanting--nay-- needing affection. Not in the typical way of sentience, but in a more abstract, spell-focused way. If someone has a space in their heart, they happily leap into that void and set up shop.”

“So it IS a parasite?!” Snooze gasped and started wretched, attempting desperately to purge the manifestation of pure evil from her innards.

“Not exactly,” the Scroll said, humor woven into the very fabric of its response. “You just got handed a little slice of luck that I think will brighten the muddy waters of your emotional swamp. You’re complete again.”

Snooze stared uncomprehendingly at the orb, her mouth open again, but this time from shock rather than forced regurgitation.

“I’m whole? What does that mean? I didn’t think I was incomplete.”

“Maybe not, but you’ll have to remember that you lost something. Long ago, you made a sacrifice of one thing rather than another--quite the inspiration among many godfolk, if’n I do say so, m’self. You gave up that there Earth Element to save the life of your Archangel, something that pulls on my heartstrings--an’ I ain’t alone in that regard.”

The Scroll paused, and Snooze tried to process what its intent was. Yes, she’d sacrificed Earth for Meat’s livelihood, but why was the Scroll bringing that up? Why would that matter when being hit by a…

“Oh, my ME!” Snooze suddenly exclaimed, the proverbial lightbulb above her head turning on with such intensity that it would have blinded passing star systems.

“That’s right, little lady,” the Scroll cooed. “That empty spot never healed over, nor could it have. It sat, open and naked to the ‘verse and woulda stayed that way, but for a coincidence so vast, it's hard to believe it weren’t on purpose. Existence is strange like that.”

Snooze stared down at herself. The Scroll had said those specific demicubes filled a void. So that meant…

Snooze probed her own soul, letting her mind settle on the spot where she’d have summoned Earth if she’d been able to. It should have felt empty, a little cold, and maybe with an itchy, forgotten feeling. But it wasn’t barren at all. Now, there was a cozy, warm presence that felt like an Element for a godspell, but different.

“Did I somehow gain access to a forbidden art?!” Snooze demanded, wild-eyed.

“It ain’t exactly forbidden, but it is a touch rarer than the average type you’d have access to at your level and Godpath. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that your circumstance is a perfect storm of coincidence to foster such an unlikely outcome. That there is an Octonion Element, and it’s going to change quite a bit for you going forward.”

Snooze was bewildered. Meat dodged another blast and then returned to his deep, angry whistling, prompting the little god to pat his head gently.

“Is using it going to destroy me?” She asked the Scroll.

“Naw, little lady. It is quite fond of you; it wouldn’t bite the hand that benefits it. But one of its properties is that you don’t have to set it as a ritual. It ain’t bound by no usual metrics.”

“What can it do?” She asked, still trying to understand how yet another aspect of the unknown world in which she lived had been revealed--even slightly.

“Well, I could tell you…” the Scroll said, and then Snooze heard an excited snort. “Or, you could test it and find out.”

Snooze paused for a long moment, but eventually, a smile began to creep across her face. She had a rare Element, one that gods--especially low-level ones--usually didn’t ever see or seem to know existed. This would indeed make things very interesting for her. She settled back on Meat, her rage taking a backseat to the excitement and weird calm. Then she allowed the power from the Element to flow from the spot in occupied and through her limbs, extending her hand in front of her as she did so. She aimed her fingertips out into the void just as another Runcinated 8-demicube began to appear in the distance.

“Octonion,” she said softly and felt the power gather along her knuckles, pushing through to the ends of her digits.

“Activate.”