Jaden moaned in misery as he massaged his legs. The trio had been walking for what he guessed to be the better part of a day, and seemed to have gotten nowhere. The endless plains seemed to stretch into the horizon, though the definition of horizon in this case was rather limited. The sun had never risen, leaving only an endless gloom barely lit by two moons. The hangover wasn’t helping Jaden’s mood either, sending sharp lances through his brain with every step he had taken for the last hour. Niko was leaning against his shoulder, snoring quietly as she used their break for a quick catnap.

“What’s up with that? If she thinks you’re gay, why is she hanging all over you?” Lois asked Jaden, stabbing a finger at Niko.

“Hey man, don’t ask me. I still haven’t managed to break the news to her that I’m straight.” He replied, throwing up his hands in surrender slowly so as not to wake her. He had tried to explain the situation to her several times over the past day, but her understanding of the English language had simply been insufficient to convey that he was not, in fact, gay.

“So what now, great leader? Do we keep walking?” He complained sarcastically, staring in irritation at the deep black horizon. Hunger gnawed at his stomach as they both looked into the distance.

Lois sighed, and collapsed to the ground. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like we’re making any progress. I’m not entirely convinced we’re even still on Earth anymore.” She punctuated this by pointing up at the twin moons.

Jaden shrugged. “Agreed. This whole thing is too trippy. I wish there was someone around to tell us what’s going on.”

“So you’re trying to figure out where you are. Want some help with that?” Asked a nasally voice next to Jaden’s ear.

Instinctively he jumped, and turned toward the voice. Niko squawked as the movement dislodged her from her perch on his shoulder, waking her up. Squinting into the gloom, Jaden found something unexpected. Lois’s eyes went wide as she saw it too.

“Clippy?” He asked in confusion at the vision of a floating paperclip.

“Well sort of. I chose this form from a human cultural database as the most accurate representation of what I wished to be in this phase of the process.” The paperclip said cheerfully.

“Nominally helpful in an unhelpful way, while being obnoxiously cheerful about not really helping?” Jaden guessed.

“Exactly! Gold star for the human.” Clippy shouted, twirling excitedly in place. Jaden watched as a physical gold star floated from Clippy, and lost his view of it when it sunk into his forehead. A small screen similar to a computer screen appeared in front of him.

*************************************

+1 Max Mana

*************************************

Jaden blinked. “What’s this?”

“Ah, I see I accidentally unleashed a manifestation there. My mistake. You’ll find out more if you reach the Nexus.”

“What? Where is the Nexus?” Jaden asked in exasperation.

“To the East.” Clippy cheerfully intoned.

“Wait, which direction is East?” Lois interjected, finally deciding she wasn’t hallucinating.

“It is not for Clippy to give you the information you want, nor the information you need. I only give you that which you neither want nor need, so that you may infer the rest for yourselves.” With that statement given he winked out of existence without fanfare, as if he had never been there in the first place.

“I’m assuming we all saw that right? I’m not going insane?” Lois asked, voice shaking.

“Nope, I definitely saw that too.” Jaden responded.

“Floating clip? Why?” Niko asked in horror.

Jaden patted her shoulder. “I’ll explain it later.”

Lois sighed. “So which direction is East?”

“Fuck if I know.” Jaden said, shrugging.

“East that way.” Niko said, pointing in a direction.

“How do you know that?” Jaden asked in surprise.

“Moons rise from east. Moons more that direction now.”

“I don’t think the Moons have actually moved this entire time.” Jaden said mournfully.

”It’s better than nothing. I say we go that direction.” Lois stated firmly.

Jaden shrugged. “As long as there’s food when we get there, I’ll go wherever.”

Lois frowned at her stomach. “Agreed.”

………………………………………………

The journey stretched on for two more days; leaving the party starving, and irritable. Luckily they had passed a stream, which helped to stave off major dehydration. When a massive pyramid appeared in the distance, the trio almost missed it due to incessant bickering.

“I’m telling you, Magigio is definitely a sport. There are rules, tactics, strategies, and luck. You have to master all of those just to have a chance in professional play.” Jaden argued passionately.

“How do you master luck? Anyway, it’s not a sport unless you’re physically competing. Football will always be better because you’ve got real humans testing their limits against each other. What limits are you testing? How many card packs you have to buy before you have the best cards?”

Niko tugged on Jaden’s arm, interrupting the argument, and pointed. The trio turned, and the appearance of the structure in the distance ended the argument as it put a new fire into their limbs. Adjusting their trajectory, they beelined for their new objective at a speed walk. That fire was soon quenched when an hour’s hard march barely seemed to have any impact on the remaining distance to the pyramid. An hour after that, they stopped to rest, staring at the pyramid in the distance.

“If it’s that far away, why can we see it in the gloom?” Lois muttered.

“I think it’s… glowing?” Jaden suggested.

"Bright." Niko agreed.

“Shall we keep going?” Lois asked.

“The sooner we get there, the sooner we eat.” Jaden agreed.

“Food.” Niko confirmed.

With that, they resumed their journey. As they approached the base of the pyramid, they encountered a milling crowd of disgruntled humanity. In fact, there seemed to be thousands of people sitting, standing, or in some cases laying down. Many spoke unfamiliar languages, or didn’t want to speak, but it was apparent from the brief conversations the party had with them that none knew where they were. A few minutes after the party had given up on learning anything new or useful, a blinding light erupted from the pyramid, followed by a sound reminiscent of an angelic chorus complete with trumpets. As the chorus subsided, a ten-foot tall nude male with glowing white eyes stepped from a hidden entrance in the top of the pyramid, and began speaking. Somehow, the sound boomed from him as if he were speaking through a megaphone.

“Greetings humans. It seems that the final stragglers have arrived, and with only a minimum of deaths. Congratulations on the impressive display of tenacity. You have been selected as representatives for the continuing evolution of your race. Before you ask if you can go home, know that with your selection we have wiped the universe you know from the continuum of reality. The world you knew no longer exists, and the same is true of those humans that weren’t selected. It would behoove you to accept this truth in the interest of your continued survival; as any interference with the fabric of that continuum will be punished severely.”

The god-like being stopped to take a breath before continuing.

“Aside from being given the opportunity to survive the pruning of the world tree, you will all be given education, and power far exceeding anything you could have imagined in your previous existence.”

The avatar closed his eyes, and exploded into thousands of tiny motes of light. Like a horde of glittering fireflies, each mote stopped in front of a single person’s forehead. Simultaneously, the motes burrowed into each person’s forehead before anyone could react. Jaden felt his body fall to the ground in unconsciousness, even as he opened a second set of eyes on a white room. The nude male avatar sat in a chair in the center of the room, one leg crossed over the other.

“Hey Clippy, do you mind covering up? No one wants to see your sausage.” Jaden groused.

The avatar-like being blinked, then sighed. “How did you know it was me?”

Jaden shrugged. “Your opening sentence sounded exactly like something the clippy avatar would have said. Besides, how many supernatural creatures can really be wandering around here?”

The avatar laughed derisively. “Though you arrived at the correct conclusion, your base reasoning is flawed. There are far more existences on this plane of reality than fit into your limited philosophy.”

Disconcertingly, the avatar seemed to flicker, the derisive mirth being replaced by a judgemental seriousness. “Enough foolishness. I am here to educate you about your new world, and I expect you to listen as you are far smarter than you pretend to be.”

Jaden nodded in resignation, as the being continued speaking. “First of all, stop referring to me in your head as the ‘being,’ or the ‘avatar.’ In honor of you catching me in my games, I will name myself Clip. I would prefer you call me this. You may now ask me whatever questions you wish, and in this place I am obligated to answer them as best I am able with no games or tricks. Some information will be restricted based on your level of evolution, but I will inform you if this comes up.”

Jaden nodded again, mind swirling with possibilities. After several seconds, he sorted out which question to ask first.

“Why did you destroy the universe?”

Clip nodded. “A common question. Your world had the concept of multiple branching universes. You understand this concept, yes?”

Jaden nodded. “Every time we make a decision, the universe splits into multiple branches, each representing one of the things we could have done at that moment.”

Clip nodded. “Exactly so. Now, consider this. The source of the universe, the force that binds the many branches of that continuum into being, is magic. At the base of your reality lies a single font of mana which generates a mostly fixed quantity of magical energy. This amount is tremendous. Truly a stupefying amount of energy, but not infinite. You can imagine then, what might happen if the universe continues dividing this energy across an exponentially growing quantity of fully realized universes.”

Jaden nodded. “At some point, the energy would be divided too thinly, and the universe would fall apart.”

Clip nodded again. “Precisely. In essence, the world tree would become too top heavy, and come crashing down. What would you do to prevent this from happening?”

“Reduce the number of universes? Probably by cutting them at the base to get a lot of them in one go.” Jaden guessed.

“Yes. As such, your universe was chosen as one of the… less desirable outcomes. The entity that governs the broader universe selected your branch for pruning. I do feel sympathy for your loss, but these are the facts.”

Trying not to think about the friends, and family left behind, Jaden moved to his next question. “If that’s the case, why are we still alive?”

“All of the people and places that were selected have been chosen because they inherently generate a little bit of their own mana. Essentially, your soul has evolved enough to sustain sentience in the absence of the universe feeding you mana. More than that, this potential mana generation is unlimited. Given time to develop this attribute, an entire universe could sustain itself purely on your magical emanations. We harvest the passive emanations of your soul, and nurture you in your growth. In this way, each pruning of the world tree allows other branches to reach even greater heights.”

“Then does each of us come from an alternate universe? Will I meet copies of myself if I look hard enough?”

Clip shook his head. “In the interest of avoiding chaos, the entire collection of your race and planet are taken from the same moment on the single most desirable path on the branch. You can understand that we as an organization have no desire to make this transition more difficult than it needs to be. Now, I can see the questions swirling in your head, but we have limited time for the moment. This experience is fueled by your own mana, and teaching you to use magic will require most of what is left. There is a cooldown of one week, after which you may visit me here again.”

Jaden nodded, and began his lesson. Magic turned out to be surprisingly simple; requiring only imagination, and will. According to Clip, most casters used incantations to focus their minds. Others used physical objects as a focus. While it was possible to use pure thought, Clip referred to this as “chaos magic;” because the effects were extremely vulnerable to being altered by random fluctuations of the casters thoughts, or emotions. Naturally, no matter what you envisioned for your spell, you needed to then use the necessary amount of mana in order to cast it.

During this process, Jaden was also given access to his status page, a kind of magical app that came as a perk from the nexus. The Earth nexus was currently classified as level zero, meaning it provided only the most basic functionality. According to Clip, the nexus would level up by absorbing magical energy from the people and places that had been taken to form this world shard. In other words, it would level up more quickly if the human population increased their own strength since that would also increase the strength of their magical emanations.

“What about increasing the power of the land? If it’s generating energy, shouldn’t we be able to make it stronger?” Jaden asked when they reached this part of the discussion.

Clip shook his head. “The land has a soul for each region, but lacks consciousness. Without consciousness, the magical energy can’t be directed, and thus can’t be trained. Remember that you will not be able to use the mana inside another being. Each creature emits a slightly different wavelength, so there is simply no way to interact with the magic of the land unless you filter it through a nexus first.”

The discussion devolved from there as the pair talked about the intricacies of magic.