Impossible Journey (Planeswalker Multicross)

[Acolyte]

The Power I hold between my hands is life-changing; it can bring life to entire regions, heal a plague from a city, summon an army, or slag a mountain. The glowing array of mana glows with the ethereal colours, all mana being a part of the pattern forming a complex mandala akin to the most complicated painting made by the greatest painters, or maybe a mathematical equation describing the great unified theory.

It takes all my concentration to maintain the spell as I channel more and more power into the matrix. It a been a chore to cast the summon spell because it requires hundreds of motes of mana shaped in a complex transplanar spell. The tree of souls is a complex creation. A gigantic geneforged tree, some of the best works of billions of years of directed evolution. Each of its cells is laced with a superconductor wonder metal, capable of channelling a shard of a goddess. The goddess is an even bigger challenge, copying the mix of concepts and worship and ephemeral potential that is a goddess. I have to bridge the gap and sublimate the concept from reality and emulate them with a meta-magical construct that dipped into half a dozen parallel realms and at least three different flavours of mana frequencies that I have to balance to make the mix of blood magic, nature magic and divine energy and tune my mana to copy them. Not to even start on the afterlife, whose entire ontological infrastructure I have to hand-make.

So, I have been spending days fueling and shaping this summoning spell, a veritable ritual as I can offload the nature magic calculations onto the archdruids and the divine energy portions of the spell to the shamans. I can do it on my own, but it will take me a week to shape all the mandala parts to perfection. So, I offload it onto my summons while other leshy archdruids pump us with restoration and sustaining spells so we can perform the ritual without interruption.

The spell locks into place with a final pulse, and the mandala bloom into reality for a second, a massive circle whose every inch is covered in runic matrices and metaphysical equations. The circle condenses in a glowing kaleidoscopic ball that blooms into the full tree.

There is a pulse of magic and a screech of rage as the veil between the warp and reality buckles from the rage of the chaos gods and their glee at a new toy. The shamans mass deploy dimensional anchors to ward away their attempts as I focus on the surge of mana as the roots of the tree of souls spread to the forest trees and connect to them, magic surges and they are transformed into more compliant forms, the nascent spirits like spites and nettles bonded before the overwhelming might of a goddess. The sporadic dryads cede willingly, their new bodies giving them more power and the patronage of a primal goddess.

It's a wave of magic that is slowly spreading throughout the forest as more and more area comes under Ewya's sway. It should be done in a single hour, the forest will belong to her, aside from the domains of the treemen ancients whose' personal glades she is leaving alone. They are demigods of nature and have enough magic to contest her if she pushes. She knows she will win them over eventually; she is patient if nothing else.

Her avatar manifests in front of me, her previous god form abandoned for something less taxing.

"I didn't expect you to assimilate the forest so quickly; it seems like a harsh and reckless action. Exactly what my advisors feared you would do. Tell me, was I wrong to trust you to be a decent goddess with empathy for mortal races." I tell her I am not worried for my safety; she is loyal by the very nature of her existence, but I am worried.

"I have a good reason for that; the beastmen are going to come for me. I can hear the whispers of chaos across the veil; they wish to show me who are the apex predators there. Already I can feel the cloven ones and their scouts nipping around at the edge of my forest; if I wait, they will use the remaining forest as a beachhead. Befoul my new home" She waves her hand, and dew coalesces into a screen where I can see black portals opening for split seconds, corrupted world roots according to the dryads, and dropping small cloven figures as they creep through the forests.

"Well, that does seem fair to me. You have to understand that I didn't part on the most amicable terms on your other form. But maybe I am wrong; I will happy if I am proven wrong. I don't think you owe anyone anything, but your actions will be a reflection on what I do; if you bring predition o dwarven caravans and human border princes, I will be considered a mad mage that unleashed an evil goddess. I am not asking you to be a cuddle bug and kowtow before mortals, but I will appreciate that you helo them if they are being preyed on by forces of evil and if another ever chosen shows up. I would love it if you kick his ass, or at least send some champions to do it." I take a deep breath, this is the order me, and thror and bloom have concocted. They both wanted more stringent and exact commands. I was firmly against those things, she is a sapient person, and I can't enslave her just to ensure she is good. Instead, we have compromised; I will offer broad guidelines that should shape her morals and actions without any oaths or bindings. Like what a parent would tell a child before letting them make their own way in the world.

"In return, I will allow you to access the Life-Shaper lesheys. They should allow you to quickly create the creatures that you can then task to defending yourself, along with the existing corp of enchanted thanators once they come back from their goblin hunts," I continue, the positive reinforcements that we hope will keep her on the straight or narrow and get back on the wagon if she ever fell off. Bloom choose the leshy's, specifically their moral fibre, and we think it should be enough. But I will come back to this world just to keep an eye out if she is doing something crazy like super plagues or mind-controlling myconids.

"I will let your words guide me; I am not the one on who you based this pattern. I know you can't summon two copies of the same creatures, so I am a unique person, and I won't let the actions of my predecessors taint me. I will prove that up-jumped warrior wrong, even if I have single handily kill every orc between here and Karak Zorn." She has fiery eyes as she makes this oath, literal green fire gushing from her eyes at the intensity of her belief.

"Well, that's good to hear", I mumble and then put my hands in my jeans and continue "So, goodbyes are awkward; I don't want to deal with that, don't worry, I will be back in a few years and come check on you. So try to stay alive and flourish."
Saying that, I step and walk into the void between realities as it continues to claw at my soul; it is getting easier to stay for a single timeless moment in this place; maybe at one point, I will have a soul strong enough to explore the lack of existence but today is not that day.

I choose a random dot of light and jump there and appear in the middle of interstellar conflicts as gigantic daggerships fought against flying golden pyramids. The red, green and orange bolts the size of houses crash and dissipate against shields. Each ship is firing thousands of such house-sized bolts, and I only have a single second to dimension door away as an explosion rocks the space where I was just floating. I step out of reality again and gather my thoughts before diving into a new world again in the middle of a fight where an ashen tattooed man just threw a mountain at a bunch of giant dragons. I step again and enter another world, one completely devoid of matter as different physical constants rip away at my planar bubble spells before I step away again and to a new world.

This new world looks promising; there is no immediate fighting, no non-compatible laws of physics and the most important thing of all. It appears to be a world that is further along the timeline as I can see skyscrapers in the distance and what looks to be weird trains just passing overhead on metro tracks. A gigantic tower so solidly enchanted as to be a second sun to my mage sight and the general magical signature draping every appliance I can see dash my hope that it's my world, but at least I can get some french fries or something, at least.

I walk around for a bit, and people give me a wide berth, not out of fear but in deference. I look around; while magical devices appear to be pervasive, active magical spell casting appears absent. So, I stand out a bit with my buff spells active; it isn't visible, but the force armour and planar bubble delineate an area where shimmering fields of force and enchanted skin are obvious to any observers.

The people are dressed in pre-modern clones, something from the transition period from Victorian England to post-war England. They have small devices reminiscent of mobile phones, but they are rare and only seem to make calls.

So, the tech level is a bit of a pastiche of my history, but it probably makes sense once you understand the historical trend that led to those innovations. I am not really interested in that right now.

These people are advanced in magic in ways I haven't even considered possible; they replicated devices with such intense infrastructure as train networks and mobile phones through spells I even recognised. The cellphone is pinging a message spell on the phone, the phone letting whatever is casting the spells home in on the target, like a beacon.

Maybe this is the world I can finally sit down and do some damn research.

 

[Acolyte]

My first challenge in this world is that I am flat-out broke, with not a single penny to my name. The gold coins and dwarven-steel blades I have don't exactly sell at the corner shops, not to mention I don't see anyone with weapons around at all, so a bunch of swords and axes might be regulated as well.

The local currency appears to be shards of crystals that are brimming with magic. They also seem to be what is fueling their magic; I learned it when the barista at the cafe put a new crystal into her machine, and to my mage sight, the mandala conjured the coffee without any casters input. I guess that's what you really need: power and direction for the magic, normally that is the soul and will of the caster, but there is no reason it can't be a crystal power the spell mandala to create a single fixed effect. It is how magical enchantments work, but this is like an evolved version of those; in the world of the imperium, magical items are something that takes extensive rituals and time to create, almost perpetual magical matrices that can do amazing things, but they are always going to be that expensive and will always take that much time.

But what this civilisation has done is, they have gone a completely different methodology for crafting magical devices. Instead of creating complex spells bound to objects and or arcane rituals. They decoupled the powering of the device from the equations and just focused on streamlining the enchantment process and designing ever better methods of crafting magical effects. So, because they have access to these mana crystals, they have been able to use it to fuel their exquisitely designed and awesomely efficient magical mandalas and spirit matrices to do anything that magic can do. Ofourcse the initial enchanting, the effect still requires an ensouled being, but that is much easier for a mage to imbue the magical formulae with the metaphysical capacity to perform magic when 90% of the work can be completed by an average if well-trained factory worker.

Honestly, the more is see that coffee maker, the more I want to praise the genius that designed it. Conjuration of the matter is one of the most difficult magical effects, energy-intensive as the universe hates entropy being reduced and fiendishly complex as without a certain affinity to those kinds of magic is just difficult to materialize. Its why the transmutation schools' higher-level spells are the ones I have the most difficulties with; the buff spells are simple enough, but if you ask me to do large-scale material conjurations al true creations or fabrication spell lines, the best I have so far, I have performed is Wall of Iron. Hell, some of my druids are better at that kind of magic than me. Its been one of my major weaknesses and the reason I haven't been able to artificially transmute Unobtanium outside of copying it from the pattern of the tree of souls.

I would love to play with a room-temperature superconductor that is also nearly perfect for enhancing and enchanting. That idea I had about creating gear for self isn't the worst, but Unpbtanium will make it so much more useful if I can have a few rune lords enchant to be nearly indestructible.

But I am rambling inside my head while staring at a cafe from across the street, especially as every normal human is staring at me as being weird. So I decide to move on quickly and figure out how am I going to get some money. Since they have magic already I doubt I can do things like cheat at a casino or heal someone rich for quick cash but there must be something I can do.

As I ponder that thought, I bump into someone, and unfortunately for the other person, I am buffed to the gills with spells, so they go sprawling on the floor. I look up from my musings and cringe a little; I had gotten so used to people just walking around me in a few hours that I have forgotten to pay attention and bumped into what appears to be a local wizard.

She is just as engrossed in her own thoughts as I am, dressed in a dress made of finer materials than the other people I have seen. She has a few more magical devices than others, a magical monocle that is displaying some sort of statistical analysis and a book in her other hand where she is making notes.

"Oh, I am so sorry, I was too distracted y something." I approach her and give her a hand; she takes it and stands up, brushing off the dust from her dress with a simple cantrip.

"I must say, sir; you must be more careful where you walk. You could have hurt someone with your gait. Decked out in buff spells like a war mage in a black zone." She frowns as she critiques me and then looks around. "I will admit, I might be a tad bit lost. Could you inform me where we are? I am running a bit late for an appointment at the shard, and I would like to make it in time."

"I can't help you there, I am afraid; I am quite new to this city, recently moved here. The spells are just there to make me comfortable; I am not used to this city." I dismiss most of my visible spells, so I don't stand out to the local magical users.

"Most peculiar, but I won't judge a frontier man his lack of manners yet. So, where are you from, hong kong, Sydney or somewhere out in the African colonies? You don't sound like a yank." She says, and I try to parse out the basic socio-political structure from her words. There is a frontier and core; frontiers are more dangerous, don't know how much. Same cities as my world, at least with the same names.

"Ah, I am from Sydney just moved here, was tired of fighting, so moved here for some peace and quiet."

"Ah, so you are a veteran of the pacification of Austalia. Admirable, it was a hard campaign; I fought a few battles on the mainland but nowhere as much fighting as in Sydney." She continues, and we start walking; she is leading me toward the gigantic tower as it looms over the city, its magical enchantments shining like the Northstar.

"Hmmm, Yeah, it was very intense. Anyway, so what has you so engrossed? I am a bit of a scholar myself." I am deflecting like crazy now, but hopefully, it works.

"So a soldier-scholar, an admirable quality. My research is about mitigating and harmonising the residual mana haze. It is becoming more prominent as more magical devices come into existence the waste mana is percolating in hidden spots and affecting things like visibility, and there are even reports of unconfirmed health effects." She starts gushing as the topic of her research comes up.

She talks the whole thirty minutes that it takes us to walk to the Shard, and it is honestly fascinating. She is conducting a cross-generational longitudinal study to study the effects of mana haze on humans and then combining disciplines like Chinese Feng Shui and Indian Vastu Shastra into a comprehensive proto-geomantic grid that will channel all the waste mana and then either expel it into the environment or be used for some magical workings that can take that mixture of chaotic elements that make mana haze unusable for normal uses.

She isn't in a hurry; her designs would take redesigning most of London streets, that is the city I am in, but slowly she hopes the principle can be accepted and incorporated into standard magi-architectural studies.

As she finishes her description and we reach the entrance of the Shard, she has a sheepish look on her face, and she turns to me and says.

"Pardon me, sir, I have been rambling on and on, and I even forgot to give even the most basic of courtesy." She holds out her hand and says, " Pleased to meet you, Emma Anson, Countess of Lichfield, at your service."

I freeze; I don't know the dynamics of nobles and commoners in this world. What if I touch her and am sentenced to death for it?

She sees my hesitation and misreads it.

"No need to worry; I am not like those other lords you have probably seen, I had to venture among the people of London, so I am easygoing." She reassures me.

Of course, I take her and introduce myself with a false name.

"Jack Donovan at your service, my lady, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." My time in the imperium has helped me in dealing with nobles.

"Well, I am going to go to my meeting; it's nice meeting you. " She waves and leaves.

She inserts a card into the door, and the bulkhead opens, and she walks in.

Now that's a problem; the world seems to have pretty thorough magical IDs; how do I blend in? I need to find information. I can't deal with problems if I don't know about them.

I don't miss the magical crow that is following me as I walk away from the tower towards the commoner's part of the city.

 

[Acolyte]

The bird is following me around, and it's annoying. It's not even the same bird; it appears that an entire flock of magically altered birds that are used for surveillance. I guess even in an alternate universe, London can't help being a surveillance state.

I am now considering whether I should just shoot it out of the sky, but I hold my peace because I don't know how damaging what is certainly government property will have consequences. But I guess the birds are smarter than most people; just as they see me tap my mana, they fly away in a cloud of black feathers.

I quickly walk away as the non-mages on the streets are staring at the flock of crows; there is fear in their eyes, so maybe it was the right call not to exterminate them.

After a brisk walk through the sweltering summer heat of London, I get to my destination. A building that is decorated with icons of faith and conquest, one of the oldest libraries in the world. The guildhall library started as a repository of theological texts established by a clerk in the 15th century and later re-established by the London corporation. Its facade has subtly shifted over the centuries as the theology becomes a smaller part of the book collects, but its roots are evident in its flying spires and balustrades.

I can feel the energy gathered in its basements just standing at the door of the building, the private rooms containing ancient bibles and relics, accumulating the faith of the population passively to grow stronger. I guess that's one way of religion to be competitive with mages. The more people and the older your religion, the stronger your clerics will be, and most of the big religions are thousands of years old. So they have a lot of metaphysical weight to throw around.

But I am not here to figure out how to make my own holy relics yet. I shake my head to clear my vision and walk to the librarian, a young woman in professional clothes who appears to be engrossed in a book.

I walk by her, and she ignores my presence, so I guess the advice about it being a public library was true; I should thank that bun seller for telling me the way.

I grab a bunch of reliable history books like the encyclopedia Britannica and other such works that are good at giving short and concise information about all the nominal stuff in the world. 20 edition later, I have the information downloaded into my mind.

But I won't make the same mistake I did last time; the spells act as good sources of information, but I have to take the time to internalise them and turn it into knowledge. So I conjure myself some food and tea, take a seat on one of the recliners in a hidden alcove of the library and get to read whatever suits my fancy; the books were more to add depth to my knowledge and make me more conscious of what facts I do know.

I spend a few hours there learning the history of this world, and it's almost unnerving how similar yet utterly different it is. The broad strokes are the same as in my world, the same kings and kingdoms, the same cultures and religions and the same events have happened. Like a funhouse mirror of a beloved image.

But the details swerve wildly, magic and extraplanar factions making any one event drastically different. For example, the Mongol hordes are literally hordes of centaur people, while half of the Roman-Carthaginian wars were about acquiring access to networks of leylines that girded both territories.

The development of magic is a fascinating topic as well; the earliest recorded history showed mages of terrifying power, savants that invented new styles of magic and forged kingdoms and orders through sheer force of magic. But they are few and far between; the natural affinity that is needed for people to be good at magic without any formal teaching is immensely rare. So there has been a bare handful of such mages over the centuries. Most of humanity's civilisations have been founded by these great mages, but they have all died, mostly through violence. So when the wizard-kings die. The priestly orders rise. Mages that channel their people's faith and rudimentary magic that they learned from their wizard-kings. Groups like the pharos of Egypt and their priestly orders, the rajas and brahmins from India and other groups.

This world is a death world. Beings of massive power, like dragons, giants, and leviathans, control large fractions of the world. Hundreds of races like elves and trolls and elementals and merpeople, the fucking merpeople, ruled large swaths of lands and had their own civilisations.

Humanity evolved to grow dense, most of the NOMs, the local word for non-mages, living in cities with magical enforcers protecting farms and extracting resources before enough of the local magical beasties push them back.

That's how civilisation developed, grew, shrunk and grew again as cycles of newborn empires before some mythic class magical creature pushed them back to the cities.

Until the Spellcraft revolution, the codification and standardization of magic. It facilitates mass training of every single human with even a shred of magical talent and allows humanity to form empires on a massive scale, especially in a colonial sense.

Then came the rise of necromancy and the first world war against the necromancers, and then the awakening of the black dragon and the beast tide surge that burned a hundred cities and killed minions; humanity is still recovering, reclaiming every piece of land they have lost. Even now, humanity is fighting across a hundred fronts against the great shoals of merpeople. The massive vitality and elemental power lead to oceans where a single ocean can outnumber all of humanity. It's a massive war of survival, and the defeated get pushed to the surface, encroaching on human territory, hence the red coral sea war going on right now. But it's something I have to look at later. Now I am interested in the development of magic.

The spell craft has advanced and made humanity stronger. It leads to the invention of modern enchantment, which has led to the creation of the Towers, Resonance Barriers, ISTC and Message repeaters. The four cornerstones of modern magical civilisations. I want to learn all of them because it is the greatest piece of magical artifice I have ever heard of. It will allow me to set up infrastructure on a random world if I ever need to establish civilisation.

Resonance barriers use magical cores of exceptional sizes to project city-scale fields that cause pain to any magical creatures that try to enter a city. Perfect if I ever want to set up a base in the middle of a hostile environment.

The ISTC are massive arrays that allow continental scale teleportation on a massive scale, enough to make it a viable method of MassTransit if you have the magical energy to fuel it. The Message repeaters are basically magical cellphone towers, and I don't need to tell how revolutionary those are.

The towers are my greatest desire, the first time I have desired something so much that I briefly consider just going to war and capturing on for study.

Each tower is the nucleus of a modern city and humanity's only answer to a mythical class creature. A massive magical foci that can even turn the meanest magical missile into a barrage of hundreds of bolts and a single fireball into an artillery spell that can hit something on the horizon. They are floating magical fortresses that can unleash enough firepower to flatten cities and kill mythical dragons. Each tower also acts as the magical headquarters of the mages' flights with all the C&C capabilities and divination support that implies. They also house the mass fabricator engines and enchanter factories in their bowls to support extended campaigns.

It was my dream as a mage to make a difference, and I imagine a floating fortress will be great to help many worlds.

But the problem is how to get it; all knowledge was available to a sufficiently ranked mage and cost a significant sum of Contribution Credits, the formalised system for measuring the importance of a mage to the magocracy.

I can't access that magic discreetly, But I have just met a lady interested in mass magical architecture and of a sufficient rank. She will be my way of gaining this knowledge, my trojan horse for me to pilfer knowledge, and hopefully, I can help some more people along the way.

 

[Acolyte]

I spend hours pouring over tomes in the library, mostly military campaigns and geographic almanacs, to help me achieve step one of my plan to gain ultimate wizard digs. By the end, I am tired and thirsty but satisfied with the knowledge I have gained.

I leave the library just as the librarian was starting to look at the clock as closing time neared. I nod at her and smile, she gives me an impassive face, but there is a hint of a smile in her eyes. I don't have the time to satisfy my needs because, according to my research, tabloids admittedly, there is a market that is rumoured to be open tonight in a hidden location.

To understand my plan, I must first explain this world's political factions. Three main compacts inform government and ideologies. The Middle faction is the milquetoast centrists that include everyone that isn't part of the other factions; they push for a customised approach to demihuman factions. The Militants are the classic genocider warmongers, they advocate going full murder death kill on the demihuman factions, and any mercy is just a play to preserve forces. The grey faction is the more opportunist one, willing and happy to exploit mages for gains, to the point of selling mages in slavery to demihumans for resources.

Humanity has gained an economic position globally as the standard provider of currency for trade. Humans are the only civilisation that mines the mana crystals on a large scale to power their devices and as a medium of exchange. Because you can absorb a mana crystal to recharge your mana and for ritual magics, every demihuman accepts these for their own uses. This has given the grey faction a lot of leverage for acting as arbitrage for traders of different species.

To facilitate these transactions, they have hidden markets where demihumans and humans can trade and serve as points of informal diplomacy for the minor powers in humanities sphere of influence. It's rumoured you can buy anything there, so that's where I plan to get the resources needed to start my plan.

For that, I need to gather some goods to trade, and I have to adventure. That's new, should be fun.

---

It's a few hour's flight from London, under heavy anti-divination magics, to my destination. Well into the purple zone, an area of extreme danger, near the border of north wales. It's imaginatively called troll hill.

The lowest level of the magical ecosystem is made of minor elemental spirits that have taken form in the prime material plane. They are called different things worldwide: trogs, goblins and such. Minor spirits are nothing more than an annoyance for even a NOM one-on-one. They die by the thousands every day to feed all the minor predators. As a result, they have an explosive breeding rate, with a clutch of dozens for every female. Usually, it's not a problem because they are often hunted at a similar rate, but they are one of the more fascinating creatures. Of the millions of goblins that are formed every month, certain goblins are born mutated, changed and evolved into higher forms. Things like hobgoblins, ettins, ogres and trolls. The Troll-King Under The Mountain is a primaeval beast, a being that has lived for hundreds and endured against all comers, from human war mages to elven wyld hunts to draconic scions. It bleed rivers of blood and sent thousands of its kids to die, but it survived.

Its troll the size of a house, with wild magic tamed through age and an essence cultivated through eating stronger monsters. Its kingdom is under the mountain, caverns excavated over generations into halls worthy of a Wild King, decorated with the bones of human adventurers who try to plunder his halls in search of HDMs. In spring, he sends his sons out with their teeming hordes to pillage the countryside, clashing with humans whose nations surround his territory. He is not an easy target; his mountain has been soaked in enough troll and trog blood that his essence has seeped into the mountain, so it resists hostile magic, working as a stronghold where the hag witch daughters of the Troll King can work their blood magic.

He is also the weakest Wild King on the British Isles; everything else is either stronger or has the support of the stronger superpowers. But I am not doing it as I did with the Nightgoblins; this time, I have prepared. I have six shamans scrying the entire mountain and six more making weal and woe predictions for all the tactics that my thanes are suggesting. I have hidden our preparation with an upcasted private sanctum to prevent our spells from being backtraced and our approach being hidden. The light planar blurring allows us to displace the forward camp to be out of sync with the prime material and let us hide just at the foothills of the troll kings mountain without being spotted.

I was actually using his essence to cast a curse on him from just a handful of soil from his mountain, but it turns out that all essence has magical resistance and the stronger the creature is, the more resistant it will be. I am intrigued by this essence; I have read about it in my basic research. All old magical creatures have this power that seeps into their body and their lair, it passes on more power to their children, and it makes the creature stronger, tougher and better in all aspects of their species, becoming more of what their species are. The premier examples are dragons, of course, massively powerful magical reptiles whose lineages go back thousands of years and bestow astounding power to true dragons at birth, enough that all but the youngest true dragons are stronger than the greatest mortals mages.

If I can figure it out, it will be possible to add it to my summons, make them stronger and give them an ontological weight, which is imperative for many mystical reasons. But that's for later; I first need to take care of the current king; before I can plunder his knowledge, I need to plunder his vaults.

"We have a strike planned out. The recon spells have given us the information that we need, and the divination spells have punched through the interference to tell us this is the plan with the highest chance of success." Thror walks up to me from the war party that is preparing for the raid.

Its made up of a hundred members, 40 Dwarven thanes in gromril armour bedecked with runic armour and weapons. With 20 Rune Lords ready to dispel magic and rain wrath and ruin. The rest is an even split of archdruids, shamans and life shapers, here to be the magical muscle of the fight.

---

The teleportation circle crackles with eldritch lightning as the last of the last summon walks through it.

I turn to the screen of the divination spell locked on the arcane mark carried by Thror. Blossom elected not to go with them, so thror is the highest ranked summon. The floating screen shows the view like a drone floating overhead the formation, just as they emerge in the mouth of the cave at the top of the Troll Mountain, its yawning maw welcoming morsel to feed its unending hunger.

The formation is simple; the front line and the flanks are made up of thanes, with thror anchoring the line in the centre, dwarven rune lords and druids make up the centre, already layering defensive spells and powers to protect the entire formation. A dwarven rune is designed to enhance an entire unit of 120 dwarves so that a single rune can boost the entire Warband. Each rune lord casts unique runes, from runes of iron skin, runes of deflection and spell eating, runes of strength and vigour and oath of steel. Each warrior in the unit is pumped so full of magic they start glowing, magical runes manifesting as auric forcefields and iron-sheened skin. The Arch Druids provide different buffs, the ones not easily accessible by runic magic. Spells of Hastes, celestial healing, protection from acid, night vision and air walking. Alongside, Shamans use the spells to weave webs of psychic strings, linking everyone in the unit into a single whole, while webs of vitality link their lifeforce, letting them share all wounds and making the healing much more effortless.

By the time the Magical conflagration subsides, the residents of the mountains notice the arrival. Thousands of the Goblins and trogs charge out of the caves, and a quick cut down, ball lightning and runic explosions slaughter the chaff like a rolling artillery barrage. Spells scythe through the mobs like a farmer harvesting wheat. Druids raise walls of iron and stones, stopping the charge cold, before rune lords blow up the walls, letting shrapnel shred dozens and scores.

The bigger monsters charge out as the ground becomes mud with rivers of flowing blood. Ogres leading units of hobgoblins in crude armour, their blood-tinted metal channelling their vitality in their clubs and hammers. Trolls lumber after them, bigger and deadlier, their essence strong enough to repel the AOE spells, while any damage they do take is healing in front of my eyes.

The clumps of heavier troops actually reach the front line, crashing into the shield wall like barreling avalanche, and are stopped cold by the thane's formation.

The magic of runes makes the dwarves mass significantly more; each is like a stone pillar buried deep into the earth. A thane smashes the first charging ogre with his shield, throwing it back onto the charging troops, the axe smashes down its torso, blazing with magic and fire, and the ogre is cut in half like melted wax. The one next to him smashes the head of a troll that tries to capitalise on the momentary opportunity. Scenes like this repeat across the line dwarves cutting down the goblinoids like chaff.

RIvulets of blood stained the mountain, hundreds of dying beings bleeding their lifeblood onto the rocky soil of the mountain. I feel something thrum through the magical sensor, my mage sight blaring with blood red unlight before all the blood staining the ground is pulled from the ground and streams into a gigantic troll.

The Troll kings stride on the battlefield with an honour guard. Floating hag-witches rinding thrall trolls. Hulking brutes whose minds have been dominated but their frame reinforced with magic.

Runes smiths and archdruids launch spells at the troll king's posse and cut down the frontline, blowing up trolls and hags. But they rise back up again, the bloody earth fueling their regeneration to an unnatural level, the blood magic of the hags using the sacrifice of the fodder to fuel their magic, shooting back at the Warband with dark entropic bolts. The Spells splash against force walls raised by Shamans, the dark coruscating energy melting through layers and layers of shields but running out of energy before they get close. Their follow-up boneshaker curse is slapped aside by a rune lord.

The Honour guard charges as the troll king shout, "It's a feast tonight, kiddos, dwarf meats back on the menu".

His charge gathers momentum slowly but surely, like a great beast of burden enraged at a being poked. His essence-laden land fuels the charge, pulsing power flowing from the land into this warrior with each step; by the time they are halfway to the lines, they have a blood-red aura covering their charging forms.

Thror notices the charge just as it starts and shouts, "Direct Magic won't work, use CC spells, foul their charge. Thanes form up in double layer formation, rune lords runes of warding and slowing, druids turn nature against him. This is the final push, we win this, and we are clear victors over these foul beasts, so brave dawi and valiant leshy, hold for the summoner"

The shield wall shifts like a well-oiled machine, the runes inscribed on the shields glowing bright with magic. The runes of protection, of warding, drew upon the stoicism of the dwarven people and made manifest their collective bonds as magical shields springing up in front of their shield. The shield grows stronger the more Dawi bear into battle, and this formation is perhaps the greatest concentration of runic magics that the DAwi people have ever witnessed since the war of vengeance.

Leshy's don't waste time either; overlapping walls of fire, lave, plants, and iron spring up between charges. Many of them are dispelled before the spell can even cast by the hags riding the thrall sons of the troll king, their foul blood magic decaying the magic of nature wielded by the leshys, but there are a lot more magicians on my warbands side than there are on the trolls, so walls impeded their charge, slowly whittling down their essence armour as the honour guard barrels through walls of iron and stone. Other leshy's, the shamans, cast different spells, those of confusion, auras of fear, entropic shields, fate twisting magics and a dozen other spells, draw from the dreams of the leshy's, bringing them onto reality and ravaging the essence-loaded minds of the trolls further, even as their bodies regenerate from the harm.

But there is a reason the Magocracy hasn't dug out this foe yet because a primal magical creature is almost impossible to defeat in their lair, it is their locus of power, and the troll king proves that in this moment. With a roar that shakes the cavern they are fighting in, every single body of the dead troll rises again, the hundreds killed by Warband walking without a soul animating their body, but instead, the essence in their blood resonates with the anger of the troll king. They will kill their king's enemies even if they have to do it from beyond the grave.

The essence that has saturated the mountain for centuries is violently wrenched from the earth as every scrap of power is fed into the troll king. With a wave of his hand, a tidal wave of the earth is ripped from the mountain and flies towards the shield wall. The wave crashes into the runic shield magic, and runic magic barely holds, with a dozen rune lords reinforcing those shields. But the wave clears the field, and now the troll king is upon them, ready to bash in the heads of the people that disturbed his home.

Thror charges him back, and I put in a dozen prepared spells onto him. He glows with white and green mana as a dozen spells settle onto him, and he surges in size mid-swing. Troll king's stroke is stopped dead by the holy armor draped onto thror, who hits him with an uppercut, his blow glowing with burning flames.

The troll king glows with essence, and he moves with lightning-quick reflexes, an axe of bone-forming in his hand as his blade bites into thror's should. Blood splitters, but the wound is healing and will close in a second.

The fight turns into slugging match, blood being shed by the gallons, bones being crunched and flesh being burnt.

In the end, thror loses, his magic dispelled by the troll king's essence and his body broken by his strength.

But the war is won, and the Warband surrounds their battle, having pacified the trolls and hags. I teleport in and reviver thror, a few motes of white mana enough to return him to life.

Victory is mine as I overcharge a dominate monster spell and punch through his exhausted essence, and he kneels before me.

 

[Acolyte]

I walk into the parlour with a swagger in my step; the establishment is empty, and my contact booked the entire place so that we have privacy.

The Lord Protector is alone, an aura of power flowing from his form, his elemental aura flickering with Ice as one of the strongest mages of the magocracy sits before me, drinking a neat whisky more expensive than most minor lords' estates.

Lord Keith Wolingworth is the due lord protector of the realm and the velveted fist of the queen. The most important man in the British empire who isn't gods chosen leader.

It was hard getting a meeting with him; the wards defending his message address were something that took me the entire day to dismantle. Then convincing him was even harder; he only believed me once the royal fusiliers went and confirmed that the troll under the mountain is dead and his kingdom burnt.

The truth is that anything my mundane sight sees isn't true; my mage sight and true seeing spell let me pierce the curtains of illusions that draped the parlour. The clowning mind magics crash against mind blank, and the illusions part before my sight like mist before the noonday sun.

The man in front of me isn't the lord protector at all; it is a fae-blooded officer of the first mage cabal, the premier infiltration officer of the Magocracy. The building isn't empty at all; an entire flight of war mages cling on top of the roof, draped in invisibility and SEP illusions.

I don't showcase any of this as I walk in; of course, I take the seat opposite the lord protector, without prompting, to play up the part of a reclusive archmage. The Cabal Mage and the Flight both miss as my troops move to their places to be ready to pounce on their entire force in case of hostility; even the golem artillery stationed 5 kilometres away isn't spared. Lifeshapers transformed into bloodlilys, a plant ambush predators with magic and skill that would hide them in plain sight of a mortal, covered by greater invisibility and mind blank and a dozen other obscuring spells, cast by me personally that the sight couldn't pierce the magics or fail in any way. Dwarven Engineers and Rangers are stationed to take out any mage that so much as twitches with their runed antimagic rifles.

"So, you are the Mysterious Raj," the pretender says, mispronouncing the name just like his subject would have " the man responsible for the disappearance of the Troll King Under The Mountain."

He pauses, and a wry smile graces the illusions face, the actor mimicking the lord protector's mannerisms to an unnatural degree.

"I would say that your method of contacting me was quite rude, but I guess I can overlook that in the light of the service that you provided." He continues after taking another drink of whisky; I see a spell breaking down the alcohol before he can become drunk, but I guess he was only playing the character; it wouldn't do to break the masquerade so easily.
"I am indeed the one who contacted you, it was a hassle, but I didn't really have any better options. I didn't want to teleport through the wards of Westminster; I imagine the knights would get prissy." That was the gamble I was going to play, pretend to be an archmage that has been learning magic over the past few centuries and has come back to a very different world, it would be hard to disprove, but I don't think I could ever shake the mistrust that I am some shapeshifted mythic being, but that was fine with my goals, I wanted the specs of those towers, and I am getting them one way or the other.

"So, I found the nearest nuisance and decided to dispose of it as a gift for you and your queen, a peace offering to start our relationship. I thought a minor legendary spirit would make for a good gift." I say that and wave my hand; the mandala blooms into existence for a second before disappearing, far more complex than the ones that these mages can cast, my instinctual grasp of magic letting me learn in a few years what would have taken other decades. As the spell does its thing and the Troll King is there in the parlour, bound by chains of mystic fire that doesn't burn and chains of psychic might that bind him harder still.

The agent pretending to be the lord protector startles, briefly showing his surprise before the stiff upper lip of the lord protector is re-established. His surprise made sense; after all, I put enough blue and white mana in that spell to punch through their wards and summon a being with hefty spell resistance.

"Well, It is a unique gift that much must be said. I will accept it in the spirit it is given on behalf of her majesty. But let's not be rude. We can't exactly start negotiations until proper introductions are made." He nods towards me and makes an 'after you' motion. The Agent is not as good a diplomat as the Lord protector, but it is often the simplest manoeuvres that are the hardest to avoid; and besides, this is what I want to do in the first place.

I smile a beaming grin and nod in acquiescence.

"I am Raj, master of magic, planar explorer and slayer of dragons, maker of gods and chosen of pantheons, the DOOM of Grobi'drazh. I have been absent from this plane for a few centuries; I imagine some mythic or the other probably razed my fortress, I will have to scatter their essence for that, but that's for later. But what is relevant to you is that I am a human wizard; I have been exploring the other planes to grow my knowledge of magic and have recently returned. The World sure has changed in my absence." There is an art to lying; you have to fulfil two conditions. First, your lie shouldn't be disprovable, and secondly, your lie has to be believable. So that's what my plan is, a refuge in audacity. After all, no one can claim to be a plane-hopping archmage without it being true. It was even the truth, which is the best kind of lie.

"You wish to propose a treaty to the queen. Give me your proposal, and I will present it to her majesty on your behalf. If it pleases her, we may have a deal," The Imposter says, insinuating through body language that it may not just be her decision. As if he has the authority to influence it.

"The queen Will be the final arbiter of the treaty, but I have an inkling that your advice may sway her mind. So here is my proposal; I wish to learn the magics that humanity has developed in my absence; I have wandered far from home for too long and ignored the strength that humanity has gained. Well, I would like to rectify that; teach me everything that gives humanity strength, and I will kill any enemy that your wish. You wish for me to hunt a great wyrm for encroaching on Hindu kush or hunt down the yeti emperor and his raiding parties across the arctic, burn down the grove of the Manblight Dryads. Just say the word, and they will be gone; my plundered strength will finally be put to good use, bringing peace and planar stability to my land." I lay out my bait and a subtle threat; these were all mythic monsters encroaching on the magocracy territory, flexing my divinatory skills while also giving humanity the one thing they couldn't do without ruinous cost.

My spellwrought eloquence hits its mark half a country away, the hidden bunker of the lord protector not enough to guard him against that small kernel of hope light in his heart, a curse much worse than any I could cast. But fortunately for him, it was not going to be a vain hope; I will abide by this pact if he will.

A hidden beacon on the cabal agent's lapel transmits a telepathic message to him, and he speaks in response.

"I will convey your offer to the queen forthwith. I have a hunch she will be amenable to this offer.." The imposter hurries to escape from the establishment, his illusion appearing to walk calmly away while he rushes out and disappears in a cyan burst of teleportation.

I stay there a while, eating a very nice steak, and in about half an hour, a battalion of mages come with force cage generators and take away the Troll King, no doubt to pry his core from his insensate corpus.

Then I leave, opening a Gate to my new demi-plane, set up as my new base. I had recently started breaching into the 8th circle of spells, my soul growing in strength to cast more potent spells and my skills at shaping mana and calculating mandalas were finally good enough to do it.

---

1 Month Later

My demiplane is based on pandora; hundreds and hundreds of motes invested in the spell to make a self-sustaining ecology. During my months spent there, I have grown to love the harsh world and its animal inhabitants. Of course, I have dozens and dozens of life shapers recreating Pandoran creatures to make a whole web of life, but a rudimentary ecology has begun to flourish here.

My council and I sit in the canopy of the singular home tree of the demiplane. Things have changed since we conquered the troll king.

The biggest change is the new member that has joined us.

Nestor The Troll King. I had taken a few hours to make a summoning pattern of the Original before handing him over, and some of his daughters and sons were resurrected for this purpose as well. I let them go after that; their vows of vengeance hold no fear for me or mine.

Now I had patterns for Troll Champions, Troll Hag-Witches and Troll Kings. Nestor was their representative, and he is a kind, calm and curious leader. I don't know him well yet, I have only spent a few days with him since I created him, but the time I spent was pleasant, contemplating philosophical questions raised by magics and hunting food and cooking it in the wild.

Thror had grown more confident in himself and his people. They have decided to make this world and this demiplane their home, as the first outpost of the Second Chance. Now they were busy creating a mountain in the middle of the Demiplane, with conjured metals and stone being carefully arranged by mining guilds to make a natural mountain. I will probably have to spend thousands of motes of mana, so the demiplane is large enough to hold an entire nation of millions of dwarfs. Thror has spent all this time in furious planning, making sure that they wring enough out of me that they can survive on their own for a thousand years if I die out there exploring the planes.

So, I am running on a mana deficit for the first time. Now, normally, I tap my lands for mana every hour, instinctively. My number of connections nets me about a dozen mana of each colour every hour. So I usually am able to stockpile these motes. I have stored thousands of mana inside my soul at this point, in a balance after my misstep in the dwarf world almost cost me defeat. But I have been summoning thousands of dwarfs and expanding the size of the demiplane, so it is leading to a situation where I am low on mana, a few hundred motes at most. But it should stabilise in a few more months; Once I summon the full five hundred thousand dwarfs that Thror wants to start with.

Blossom has been the one to change the least, but even he has grown in power once they and their people took up the task of recreating the Pandoran ecology. I had asked Thror if that was dangerous for his people, but he had waved it off; his people needed the things to keep their warrior skills sharp and their larders full. Bloom was the first Archdruid to breach the 8th circle of Druidry, and soon, their people had followed, alongside the pattern evolving to mirror that inside my soul.

"The projections are looking to be on track; The first Hold will be up in 3 months, and with the help of my esteemed colleagues, it can probably be expedited even more." Thror, as he says

"My People have settled in as well; it is going to be a harrowing journey; building a culture is going to be hard, especially if we don't want to be cultural clones of the others, no offence." Nero says to the others " I want us to be more than brutes, more than disposable pawns of old monsters. But we are not like you; brutality is in our blood. It is pleasing to crush the bones of your foes underfoot and break their skulls. It is a conundrum how to build a peaceful culture that loves violence. I am trying a few solutions you guys suggested; the creator's suggestion of bloodsports is a suitable release valve. The Idea of Mercenary Bands, as suggested by Thror, will likely have to be put on hold until the witches learn how to do interplanar travel. The recreation drugs from bloom are appreciated."

I nod in understanding.

"I hope you figure it out, as per your request; I will not interfere with your development, but know that as long as I live, you can depend on me for any material help I can provide. It is an admirable path you have chosen for your people."

"I appreciate the thought; it's a hard decision, knowing that your people's culture is linked to a pattern in a random wizard's soul. Will they call me a troll president if we have a democracy, or will our children be the ones to change it to a troll botanist? But it is something we are still thankful for; I don't mean to sound unappreciated. We have a chance actually to learn and grow in a secure location with amicable neighbours and a bright future." It's a tricky question his word provoke, making me question Whether using summons is moral.

I shove the question away; I am already using them to an unreal scale; its no time to back out now. I will follow humanity's oldest instinct for me and double down.

The meeting continues like this for a while, more a bunch of friends hanging out and musing on the future than a ruling council, but it is a fun time; once the heavier questions have been dealt with, Blossom tells me about his hobby of growing bonsai trees while Thror tells about a batch of beer he is brewing, Nestor showcases the bodypaint work he is doing on some troll models.

I retire for the night with a sad realisation that I have lost most of my pre-walking hobbies; I don't read anymore or watch movies, and now most of my time is spent on magical skills and research. Don't get me wrong, I love the wonder of magic and discovering new things, but there are only so many hours you can spend tweaking the 3d mandalas for a spell that creates a demiplane and instead accidentally turns the space around you into a kaleidoscope. Maybe I will take up carving again; that's a good skill that I share with some of my master craftsmen; it would be fun to just work on this skill for a bit.

---

I try carving a small statuette of a thantor, my familiar serving as a very restless model, but I muddle through, it's unfinished, and it looks hideous besides, but it brings me a sense of contentment, so I am pretty happy with it.

Then I move on to what feels like my day job, magical experiments.

The biggest discovery is I figured out what Essence is and how it works. I had to scan quite a few troll kings to find common ground and notice the pattern in their metaphysical makeup. After a battery of divination and necromantic spells, I have a rough idea of how it works, especially after I copied some research that some Haitian mages are doing regarding their ancestor spirits and the loa and its interaction with the living that they ride.

Essence is a mixture of the cast-off shedding of the soul, mixing with potent life energy to make a fairly unique power source.

The soul is a Nigh-indestructible energy pattern that can persist against things like time, death, or myriad other forces. It's often subtly different across all the planes I have been to so far; for example, the Na'vi lacked the ontological organs that allow souls to naturally manipulate magic. But it shares enough similarities that I used the Soul Forging technique I learned from Qyburn and his works to graft those pieces on their souls, so it becomes a natural extension of their souls after the ritual.

The demihumans and monsters on this world are elemental spirits at their most fundamental; some have been adapted to this plane for so long that they are barely different from your average rabbit, but it means their souls are different from a mundane being of this plane. This includes the human, by the way; their entire magical tradition is their soul channelling elemental energy for their affinity planes and using that to enact magic. This means their souls are miniature portals to the elemental planes. This means that often there is leakage of energy the stronger you are and the stronger your magic is, as a higher level of magic requires more elemental mana and more power passing through their souls. This means their souls are constantly shedding power from their souls, slowly making the area more of their elemental preference.

The other part of the puzzle is the physical nature of the creatures. Life force is the magical vitality that all living creatures have; it's what allows a dragon to survive a fall from 1000 meters and allows it to be unaging. Every living being so far has had it on this plane. The Dwarf world had it as well; the Navi didn't. They were all chemical reactions supporting their body. It's a magical equivalent of your internal organs and bones; it makes you tougher, supports your life, and lets you do cool things like bench press a boulder. It is a very physical and personal force, I haven't heard anyone shoot life force bolts, but I am not omniscient, so they may exist. It basically lets you overcome the limits of hard biology.

What happens when this constant outpouring of energy from the soul interacts with the life energy of a living being? Nothing much at first; most beings' life forces and magic are too weak to have any meaningful full interaction. But once you become old enough and magical enough, like elder dragons, giant patriarchs, and titan apes, you begin generating essence. It is your soul's energy uplighting your life force and allowing a metaphysical weight and flexibility it normally lacks.
It lets you grow beyond your limits, letting you do things like soaking an entire mountain and making it a metaphysical part of yourself or letting you imbue it in your children so they become stronger passively.

Unfortunately, I can't use it; my soul is exceedingly efficient; once it gets hold of a mote of mana, it doesn't let it go. So I can't radiate energy like that, and if I modified myself to do that, I would bleed mana like a sieve. So it's out for me. But there is good news, I have isolated it and can add it as a soul-forged graft onto my summons, whether already summoned or ones I will summon in the future. That should make them all get stronger the more they age.

I asked a few of the dwarfs to act as volunteers to roll it out to the entire species, and they haven't shown any adverse effects, no violent decompression of the soul membrane, no cascade collapse of their auric ecosystem, no calcification of the life energy. That last one was the biggest concern I had for it. Dawi souls are metaphysically carved from rock, children of the elemental earth and that affinity could have easily led to the energy turning them into stone; that's what happens when a dwarf uses sorcery according to the lore keepers and their record of the chaos dwarf sorcerers. But so far, the grafts have melded in naturally, and there are no side effects, will probably wait a few months before declaring it a complete success.

I have spent most of my time doing that this past month, but I started two new pieces of research projects for my shaman and arch-druid assistants. These bands of nature spirits have been sent into the wider world to research natural phenomena that I think have merit. They have been diving and locating nodes of mana crystals, the same crystals that humanity processes into their currency and energy source.

They have been observing the natural currents of mana and geographic conditions that lead to the formation of these mana crystal nodes and the process that they undergo to crystalise environmental mana.

It's a major part of my plans to proliferate these towers to worlds under threat to act as hardpoints and centres of civilisation for terraforming new worlds. Gigatons of these Crystals are required to operate these towers annually, and they haven't appeared on any other plane I have been on. So I need to understand how they work so I can replicate or at least substitute them.

That's why the team is a group of shamans and arch-druids. The shamans are experts in binding ephemeral energies to physical actions and vice versa alongside manipulation of high-energy magical infrastructure. At the same time, the Arch-druids are experts in communing with nature and studying natural phenomena and are some of my best spell crafters.

They haven't found any results yet, but I expect the process to take months of observation, so I am not in a hurry.

Just as the leader of this research group finishes their operation reports, sending blooms in my ear, my wards letting it through after a bit of scrutiny. I smile as I backtrace the magic to the Lord Protector's Office. The message is simple but welcome.

"The Queen wishes to talk about your first target. The treaty will be signed there as well."

 

[Acolyte]

It's not the first time I am meeting the empress of a magical empire. But the characters of the two empresses couldn't be more different. Lya was a magical pioneer who created marvels and artefacts and reinvented magic from base principle.

Queen Victoria is the ruler of a centuries-old dynasty, a leader who has led them through war and peace and overseen grave social changes. An ardent social and political operator who is a deft hand at diplomacy. But she is merely a magister, far from the strongest mage in the commonwealth.

Its different political structure from my world, the tangible power and miracles of faith have kept the church of England a fairly important part of the social fabric of the Magocracy. As the chosen representative of the god on this earth, it has given a massive amount of power compared to my own world's monarchy.

So there are expectations of how you are supposed to act when meeting, protocols and traditions. Now, as an Archmage of considerable power, I am exempt from the bowing and scraping, I am not going to do it, and I will disintegrate anyone that suggests that.

So I teleport directly to the front of Buckingham Palace. It's a power play, spending an obscene amount of mana to bypass their wards. I am immediately surrounded by the guards, pointing their spellwands at me, prepared spells ready to be unleashed on me.

There is a crack of thunder, and half a dozen knights appear around me, riding purple griffons crackling with lightning.

"Hail Knight captain, I am not late for my appointment, am I??" I ask faux-innocently. Lightning crackles around the man's sword, the stalwart guardian of the queen knows he can't harm me yet, no matter my much my actions are a breach of the Standard Protocol.

"We were told to expect you, Mage Raj. Come, we shall lead you through the security cordon; we wouldn't want to have any accidents now." The is trying to powerplay me, calling me a mage, the lowest ranked magic user of the magocracy. He also wanted to insinuate their defences could harm me, which was only true as long as I didn't retaliate. He dismounts, and his squad give me an honour guard and leads me down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace; servants scuttle and make way for us and ahead of I hear a herald announce my arrival.

"Of course, we wouldn't want any accidents. Say, that griffon of yours, is it something I could conceivably get access to it? I wouldn't mind a second familiar, something smaller and more fluffy. My current familiar is kind of too deadly for playing with children and the like." I realised immediately after saying it that I had gone too far. A knight's mount is their closest companion, the brother that has carried them through the hardest battles. My goading remarks have hit too close to the mark. I see his knuckle crack as he grips his pommel in a vice grip. His gait has changed; he is walking on the balls of his feet, ready to swivel and dodge in any direction. I am not worried, but I do feel a bit bad; then I remember he has probably committed war crimes for the queen, so I am fine being a dick to him.

"I would challenge you to duel, sir, but I will put duty before honour. But know this, you have made an enemy of Sir Curtis Hughshire by dishonouring my partner."

I just smirk at him; I would love to do some light exercise after this.

Then I walk through the doors to the throne rooms.

---

The Throne room is an assault on the senses as soon as I step through the climate control and privacy wards. The sound of the gathered audience is like a shockwave filled with the tittering of the socialites and gruff voices of warrior nobles. The sight is what is noticeable; next, an obscenely opulent room festooned with decorations, magic and enough hunting trophies to depopulate a forest.

As I walk into the room, a pall of silence fills the room, the crowd turning to face me. It seemed the queen was one for subtle powerplays; I was not told about the gathering of nobles witnessing this audience.

I shrug; my plan here is pretty simple, and the more witnesses there are, the better it is for me.

Queen Victoria is seated on the throne; her vestments glow with incredible magic. Each crown jewel is the prized artefact of a conquered kingdom, and the gold filigree of her sceptre is mined from a dozen holy mountains.


"I present myself before your highness to ratify the treaty discussed with the Lord Protector," I say with a nod; I am not her subject; I dare to treat openly as an equal to the magocracy; to maintain that facade, I cannot show weakness, they will eat me up alive if I show a bit of deference. The act of the ancient archmage is risky, but I have to follow through on it.

"We have considered your proposal and the advice of our most loyal protector. We agree to this agreement between you and our empire. But we have some questions first." The queen's voice echoes in the hall, and the party quiets down.

"You have promised us much, and you have proved that you have some means of achieving your claims. But a troll king is a gnat before an elder wyrm, and we would be loath to lose an ally so soon." Her magic-enhanced voice rings through the hall, and I realise her play. She wants me to prove myself in front of the cloud. If I fail to deliver, it would be better to know before I fail and provoke a mythic being, but if I succeed, she gets the credit for getting a powerful ally, and no doubt her position is strengthened in front of the nobles milling in the halls.

I nod and grin, for this plays perfectly what I want to do as well; the big play meant to wow the snooty nobles.

I had dug down into the faintly remembered history of my world and chose my diplomatic tactics, and I remember a trivia about kings trying to one-up each other in diplomatic gifts to showcase their wealth and power.

"I will be happy to demonstrate for our gathered audience here and present my gifts to the throne in a single stroke of good fortune; her majesty is wise to give me the opportunity." I say blithely, indicating to her that I know her to play and am willing to play ball as it suits me. She nods her head imperceptibly; to the observers, it may seem like a signal to continue, but I know it to be an acknowledgement.

I grab my bag of holding and turn to face the crowd.

"In the grand tradition of gift giving established by the wise men themselves, I will present three gifts to her majesty and the magocracy."

I reach deep inside the bag and present my first gifts.

So, I worked on my gifts the entire month, spending mana like water to accelerate a slow process of making magical items and constructs. Seeing my actions, my council had decided to surprise me, or thror and blossom decided to surprise me; Nestor didn't want to participate.

So, my dwarves had spent the entire month secretly doing a cultural recovery project. Hundreds of summoned runelords brought their heads together to figure out how to make golems again. The Dawi used to field entire armies of golems, with masters like Snorri Klausson leading entire throngs to slay three separate Everchosen. But due to the war of vengeance, it had been a lost art, with each master targeted by elven assassins to further weakened the dawi. But with an unfathomable amount of ale and more cooperation than ever in history, recovering the Rune of Animation was something they did do.

"I know her majesty is a fan of hunting, but seeing how the prey in these lands is a bit out of range for the hounds, So I decided to gift you some more effective companions." I open the mouth of the bag, and half a dozen Dwarf Steel thanator golems walk out. Each is a perfect replica of the 10-foot tall predator lion-wolf things; even the whiskers move as if they were hair and not impossibly fine dwarven metalcraft.

I look at the animation matrix with my mage sight in appreciation. The Mater Rune of Animation is paired with the Runes of Grungi and Valaya, making the golems into the perfect regenerating killing machines.
They prowl around the room, sniffing at nobles and furniture; no one in front of them dares move, their primal hindbrain screaming at them to raise their mage shield and fight or flee, but decades of comportment training carry most of them through without embarrassing themselves, but one panicked noble accidentally unleash a fireball at the things as one of their tails swished too close to his face. The explosion leaves both of them alive, the mage shield of the mage and the raw strength and magical resistance of the Dwarf steel golems shrugging off the magic with ease. After that bit of a show, I introduce the gifts.

"I crafted these constructs to be completely loyal to your august presence, your majesty. They are based on my familiar, and I feel there is no bigger statement of trust a Mage can make. They are untiring machines of death and the greatest hunters on their plane. I hope they help you hunt down your prey just as they have helped me." I finish my speech and notice the Knight Captain has gone white with fear; my thanators are twice the size of his mount, and they would hunt them by the flock if meeting in the wild; I think he thought my comment about my familiar being too scary to be friendly with children was a joke, but now he realises the magnitude of his mistake.

The Constructs slink low and approach the queen like a cat looking to be petted. Now was my turn to put her on the spot; she could appear to be scared and not let them approach her, showing weakness in front of her nobles, or she could allow my death machines near her.

The Thanators approach and the Queen pats their head like kittens; it seems she has some steel in her spine, yet, good, I want to present all my gifts; I spent a lot of time making them.

"My next gift is a bit more utilitarian, more of a gift for the nation. A living and growing bulwark to protect the people of the empire." I do a bit of showmanship as I walk in front of the crowd, getting them excited. With a flick of my hand, a map of the world appears, with each human territory marked in gold, red and black concentric circles.

"We all know about the dangers of the Wilds and the black and red zones. We learned and adapted to them" I knew most nobles have only gone out in wilds without powerful escorts " But some marauding beings aren't content with that; they lead armies against our bastions, slaughter the NoMs and damage infrastructure. So I made a solution to solve that. No more shall our cities be threatened; no more will they cower in fear."

I pick up my gift, and it floats above my hand, a giant seed bursting with nature's magic.

"This is the seed of an Elder Treant, Guardians of Nature and Father of Forests. They are usually extremely against cities. But I have shaped this one myself. Anyone can bond with it as familiar before planting it, and then it will sprout into a fully-fledged being, a nature spirit incarnated in an arcane tree. It can control plants and animate them as armies to smite humanity's foes, from Mermen to Efreeti. It will bear fruits all year round, which will sprout into treants that can also be bound as familiars, and a few hundred of them in a city can raise armies of their own. Of course, they can't attack humans aside from in self-defence; I have hardcoded that into their essence; we wouldn't want a Mage oppressing his fellows due to this gift." I swish my hands, and the seed floats towards the queen, ending my dramatic yet verbose presentation.

It is actually a collaboration between the Lifeshapers and the Shamans. They were inspired by my descriptions of the Treemen Ancient of Dawi world, Demigod spirits of nature capable of resisting even god and serving as progenitors to cohorts of nature spirits. They decided to recreate that kind of being; this is the first working model.

The life shapers made its body a treant as a base and then improved to the point that they could fist fight dragons and bench press a galleon. They specifically crafted its Minds, so it isn't a person or can even think. It is to serve as a totem for a greater spirit of nature, which was the job of the Shamans. They drew deep into the natural magic and deep into the dream of the forests; there, they gathered the essence of the oldest trees and forged a great spirit of the forest.

They drew forth this spirit to embody it into the lifeshaper's master peace, and the first elder treant was born. I was brought in to graft the soul bits necessary to form essence for this primaeval guardian, and it was complete. I took a pattern for later summoning; you never know, I might have to go to a plane with no forest, and then I wouldn't want to lack access to this demigod of nature.

It stands a gargantuan 100 Meters once it is planted, and its girth is comparable to skyscrapers. Its body is based on the redwood trees, the only plants large and robust enough to house spirits of that power. It can animate trees for kilometres and generally control and grow plants without limits. Its foliage gathers the sunlight and stores it to release blasts of searing light magic to burn any foes.

I also have lied to the queen; it won't be a bond of master and familiar, but more of a symbiotic bond because no human soul could come close to bonding with a spirit of this power. The shamans have crafted the spirit to draw more on its mythos as a guardian, and the human partner will serve to make human cities something like its domain as well, expanding what it considers its remit.

Of course, human cities are going to become mini-forests, if for nothing else but the number of defences it will give them and the enhanced production of being in a treant's presence. It is a beacon of nature magic, and anything in its presence will grow much quicker. This will solve most food trouble of a city and, with magical plants, many other issues as well.

It's a treasure beyond reckoning, valuable beyond measure; A Mythic on the side of humanity that will eventually guard every city with its children. It is an unfathomable boon, and that's why it's a trap.

A treasure so valuable that kingdoms have been brought to their knees for less. The gift is so valuable that every frontier colony will beg for it to protect them from the mermen shoals slavering at their walls. Every noble will struggle and play to be granted the honour of bonding with the seed and making their line the guardians of the empire. The few Archmages that the magocracy has will covet it, and so will the mythics that will know such power is possible to obtain.

This will make it the only option she has is to bond it with someone of the royal family, probably herself and ensure she doesn't let a second power block form around the elder treant's mage. She can't avoid using it because the colonies are under attack, and the treants it will constantly spawn are free troops capable of turning entire fronts of the Coral War.

I have successfully forced her hand with a simple gift, shaping the nature of her empire forever more.

This isn't a power play for fun; I am playing to be an equal partner to the entire British empire. I have to show them I can hit hard and on a scale that will meaningfully hurt them. She will understand this gift to be a demonstration of power and cunning, the actions of an archmage I am pretending to be and am, in truth, if nearly not that old.

The crowd titters and murmurs at the gift and the Queen doesn't showcase any emotion as she accepts the gift and, very pointedly, keeps it in her own hand, despite the aids ready with cushions to hold it.

"My final gift is a bit more personal to me. I have personally handcrafted it, inspired by the most famous stories of your land." I put my hand into the bag of holding, and I feel the entire crowd focus on that, excited and perturbed to see what my next gift is going to be.

I draw forth the sword and hold it aloft in my hand. A Black Blade with a Golden Edge, three runes adorn it, and a visible aura of magic surrounds the blade. It is made in the style of an English broad sword, and it radiates power to the entire room, drawing attention and adoration for the prismatic aura of magic that anyone with sense magic could spend hours deciphering.

This is the gift I made personally; well, I had the dwarfs forge the actual blade from gromril. It's pretty easy; I just had to figure out how to summon the Gromril blades that my thanes wield without summoning the full person.

This is the first time I tried changing a pattern myself instead of it happening naturally, but it was fairly easy because it was a distinct item separate from the creatures. I still can't make any changes to the actual creatures, but I can change their loadouts, as it were, but only to an extent that they remain the same pattern; a thane with an axe or a rifle is fine, a thane with a runic staff is not.

I am pretty proud of the blade I have created; the enchantment on this is very strong, especially after half a dozen failures I had making its predecessors.

The blade is obviously a magical weapon of immense power, so it has the standard features, hitting hard, hitting better and being nigh unbreakable. But the real coup de grace is the spell I imbued onto the blade.

I based this blade on Excalibur, the sword of promised victory and the blade of the once and future king. So I wanted to be thematic with this blade. It took me weeks and weeks of crafting and enchanting alongside dozens of failures to craft it. But I had distilled the essence of Excalibur in this blade.

There is this nifty thing that clerics can cast, a spell or prayer called Divine Favour. It is what it says on the tin, a god's favour on their champion, subtly twisting fate to make them better at everything. The only downside was that it lasted only a little while, and it wasn't very strong at the end of the day, a minor advantage overall. Well, I decided to fix those flaws.

I broke down the spell into its basics and figured out how it interacts with fate, destiny, or probability. Then I isolated those elements and discovered that they only work because gods have a certain ontological weight to them. They let the spell channel a bit of that to enhance themselves; it's a luck transfer spell more than anything else.

Now, what I did to solve that was what is turning out to be my customary solution, throw an obscene amount of mana at it. I gathered hundreds of motes of White, blue and black mana motes and tried to craft a construct that could mimic a god's passive favour. It took a while, and a few mistakes, like when I inverted the spell matrix, and it became a bad luck curse or when the matrix fluctuated just so, and a pair of dwarves playing a dice game got just 1s for a week, and they couldn't stop playing.

But I have succeeded after weeks of work, and the spell is much better than before. It has a spell matrix embedded in the blade, dedicated to twisting fate to favour its wielder forever. The magnitude of the spell was also massively improved when I spent five hundred mana Motes into the spell matrix. It's powerful enough that a person can walk through a rainstorm and not get more than a single drop of rain or a dog winning chess against a grandmaster 99% of the time. It isn't absolute by any means; it can be countered if one plans enough or if one is much stronger than their foes; in my case, I know spells like twisted futures or alter fortune to change fate directly. I am not giving them a weapon that can kill me.

"It can't be wielded by anyone, of course; as I mentioned, it is inspired by the legends." I throw the sword in the air, and an unnaturally strong gust of wind blows it outside the throne room and out of the palace entirely. It lands on the sidewalk, blade first, digging deep into the ground among throngs of tourists hopping to catch sight of the queen. Later investigations would discover that somehow the climate control spells of the palace malfunctioned for a few seconds to produce that gust of wind " There it lies, ready to choose its champion, a person of noble heart, strong morals and sharp mind. A paragon of humanity and a champion of the good. I don't know who the blade will choose or how; it could be decades for all we know, but it will only be drawn by its chosen wielder."

The crowd goes wild; I see a few nobles rushing outside, trying to maintain decorum while competing to be the first ones to draw the blade.

I just smile and take a bow, that of a showman that doesn't have a hint of subservience in it. This is fun; I should play the out-of-touch archmage some more.

The queen looks like she is going to order my execution right there and then. It was the kind of gift that will undermine her legitimacy among the plebs as everyone knew the sword in the stone decided the throne of England, and it would be something that will cause strife among nobles and lure young nobles to be good, to qualify for the blade. The sword will prove its power over time, and any attempt to remove it will be thwarted by luck every time.

"I thank you a third time for your generous gifts; it is a good day for the empire to have made such a generous friend." The queen pronounces, "Now, let's stop dawdling and make merry."

The crowd cheers and hollers, the wine having clearly loosened some lips. I am surrounded by a throng of minor nobles, trying to chat me up and make me more favourable to them. I mostly chat absent-mindedly; I have been to enough university conferences to know how to talk to pompous buffons who have an overinflated sense of egos. I have an eye out for the major houses, the dukes and viscounts and princes as they maintain distance, looking for more information before they make a move. I enjoy the party; the food and drinks are rich.

After an hour or so of mingling, a staff member approached me and invited me to a more secluded meeting with the queen in the private garden.

"You aren't what we expected. An archmage is supposed to be demanding and imperious, not gregarious and flamboyant. You behave as though you want to show off your talent, but whit what we have seen you can make, you hardly need the noble's approval to get what you want. Or ours, for that matter." Victoria says as she pets a fiery corgi in her lap.

I pause and ponder what I want to say, I am not going to be chummy with an autocratic imperialist, but I guess I can be polite at least. It's no fun if you can't banter with foes; I feel like that's what I have been lacking in my adventures so far, a foe that hates me but is witty. Hmmm, thoughts for another time?

"I just like having fun; gazing at awed people's faces brings me gratification. Of course, I am imperious and ruthless for my foes. But I am between allies now, am I not?" I say while squatting down and petting the corgi.

"We are allies." She emphasises "But you have to understand, humanity hasn't created an archmage since Sir Issac newton discovered gravity magic. It would behove us to know what kind of man we have bound our empire with. What can we even teach you? Your artefacts and magics are stronger than any we can create, and you will probably slay a dragon soon, so you hardly need wealth."

There is an entreating air in her words; a peek behind the mask shows a woman that is struggling to deal with a complete unknown. The uncertainty gnaws at her adamant will, a dread building up in her gut despite all my assurances.

I feel a moment of sympathy for her, a sapient to another. Then I remember her armies are committing genocide against half a dozen countries of non-human sapients, and my feelings evaporate. I remember why I made my gifts; poisoned apples. It's a terrible institution made up of evil people that will plunder a nation to benefit their bottom line.

"Don't worry about it. Its mere academic curiosity drives me; I haven't been on this plane for centuries, and I am deeply interested in the development humanity has done for magic and artifice. I am particularly interested in the NoMs; I have been thinking of taking some more disciples, and lack of elemental affinity is no bar to me. Maybe I will raise a Monastry and Tower of my own; we shall see." I muse, lying through enchanted granted skills.

"Before you make any plans, the reason we invited you here in the garden. We will invoke our treaty, a threat to the holding of the empire in Oceana. The shoals of the sea kings assail our shores, and the colonies barely hold on; we wish you to push them back. In return, you will be given full access to the shards archives." Her voice is firm, a queen demanding her due.

I flippantly throw my head back and drink the wine In a single gulp to aggravate her further.

"Of course, It should be a good day's workout; I should be done by the day after tomorrow; tell your tower architects to expect me then. I will push back the mermen hoards." I proclaim and plane shift to my demiplane; it is exciting; I get to test out my Elder Treants In action so soon, and I can really let loose with my destructive magic; I haven't really let loose properly, now is the time to experiment and push my limits.

 

[Acolyte]

Mermen is a gross misnomer applied by humanity to their eternal foes. It is akin to calling every single thing living on the surface a human. But it is humanity's nature to deride and dehumanise any tribe opposed to them, so they feel no empathy for their foes.

Those called mermen by humanity are hundreds and thousands of species of aquatic sapient life, birthed and sustained by deep sea rifts to the plane of water, dumping biomass and energy into this world since time immemorial. From the mightiest Kraken and sea drakes to the meanest guppymen and shrimpeople, all are different creatures with completely alien existences to each other.

But one thing unites them all, the one thing that also unites humanity: power. The unbridled might of the undersea sovereigns brings entire ecologies to heel as those ancient monsters play fight wars against each other in wars where millions of creatures die daily. That is the other thing that connects all beings; they all swim with death as a constant companion, for there is always a bigger fish and a hungrier swarm ready to devour them for food and essence.

Since the recent world wars, times have been unusually fecund for the undersea principalities as more food has been available through planar rifts, and more eggs have survived to adulthood. Now, that is terrifying for the world because when there are too many beings for the local carrying capacity to maintain, great shoals are organised. Massive expeditionary groups composed of the young seek new fortunes and bring new territory into their domain. It solves the problem either way for the monarchs; either enough of them die that the food supply should be secure, or they conquer more territory that brings more food for the population. By that, I refer to civilians of other nations because cannibalism is a significant food source for the various kingdoms and clans that comprise an undersea monarch's domain.

Recently, the Oceania region has been beset by multiple such great shoals, laying siege to the territory of all landbound nations and making sea travel and trade perilous. Each shoal is led by planar royalty and dragon scions, vying to prove themselves superior to their siblings in front of their progenitors. They command millions of fodder and thousands of sea hags or elemental mages.

Now, I am being tasked to put an end to that threat. I am not going to say I am excited about killing that many creatures, even if they are invasive cannibals. The morality of committing what will essentially a genocide is unacceptable. So I have to solve things in a way that minimises the bloodshed and allows me to really let loose; I have been itching to try large-scale magic in combat, to know my spell formulas adjusted to use my mana work properly and; maybe I will admit I do want to see some explosions.

Now, there is a way of threading this needle; it's the standard move of killing their leaders and professional army and routing the cannon fodder. It is not a satisfying answer to me; first, it ignores the consequence of enemies death. Each general is also lord of these shoal's territory, and their death will incite a feeding frenzy, rivals both domestic and foreign, will kill and slaughter to conquer those territories and their food sources. It will indirectly lead to a slaughter that will be 10 times the size I would prevent by stopping them here. It's the trolley problem on a massive scale. Do I save the Oceana colonies and kill millions of mermen as a result, purely because they are human or do I let them continue and hundreds of thousands of humans die, and I break my treaty?

Well, I hate the fucking trolly problem; I am going to make a third path and change things, so I don't have to choose. I am going to need help; I am low on mana, and it's a massive area, so what else to do but call on my creations?

I spend the majority of my mana that night summoning 3 Elder Treants and 3 titans to stand against the leviathans of the sea. Each lumbering giant nods at me in respect and promptly goes to sleep. They are trees; they do not think on the scale of humans, a few years' naps are nothing to them, and millennia is but a year to their perception. If I don't prod them, they could just fall asleep in my pocket dimension and saturate it with their essence until spirits literally start sprouting from the earth. I don't want that, so I send a mental order for them to stay awake for a day or two before they go to sleep.

They shrug in response and open their eyes, the movement shaking their canopies and generating gale-force winds. I feel like this is going to be an annoyance to goad them into battle; I am super glad they have an innate loyalty to me. Otherwise, it is incredibly hard.

I rest for a few hours, spending it meditating on soul crafting, napping in my enchanted bed and gathering what mana I can. I have a light meal of a fruit salad and a hearty dwarf ale to prepare me for my mission. I could just remove my need for food, but it's honestly not worth it because I enjoy having a meal; I still have some rings of sustenance, but it's not something I'm eager to use daily.

I gather a dozen of my Arch druids and hold a meeting, assigning a quartet of Arch druids to each of the elder treants. They will serve as guards and support in case of any emergencies and serve to counteract the weather magics of the sea witches. They will also be tasked with transporting them, a test for their new variation of the Fey gates that allow them to enter and leave my demiplane.

The ArchDruids scramble up the 100-meter-tall forms of the elder treants and find perches in their boughs. I feel them synching their magic with the elders, the mastery of the archdruids helping the demigods shape their powers to an astounding degree, each one now capable of growing a single flower from seed or causing every tree in a forest to bloom. The Arch druids are, in turn, strengthened, tapping into the unlimited reactor of nature magic that is an elder treant, pumping more magic into their spells and invocations.

They prove this new benefit as I command their advance, and three circles of giant mushrooms sprout around our feet. The mushrooms harmonise in a single instant, and a surge of green and grey finds us in a completely different location on the material plane.

There is a city in the distance, a modern metropolis under siege, kilometres of suburbia flattened and burned by scaly invaders and families put to swords. In the distance, a looming tower flashes with scintillating beams of destruction and walls of force, an untouched fortress striking down any creature that dares approach the city's main districts. Hundreds of thousands of NoMs wield wands in defence of their homes, holding off the tide in desperate barrages from behind transmuted barricades and pillboxes. Fireballs and chain lightning flash out from fortified structures of the tower guards, heavier spell wands atop golem engines providing fire support to beleaguered defenders. Mage flights flitter through the air under the defensive umbrella of the tower airspace, returning from deep strikes against the enemies' fortifications and relief missions to outlining towns and outposts that still hold out through unyielding will and a stroke of copious good luck.

The enemy is just as horrid as described, guppy and sigh people swarming, while crab people form the core of the shoal; water is slowly being pushed into the city, allowing the sea knights and crocodilian monstrosities access to the fortification. Constant rain buffets the city, hampering the defenders and hydrating the mermen invaders. In the distance, illuminated by spell strikes from the tower, are the lurking leviathans, gigantic sea creatures acting as carriers and battering rams for the mermen, stressing and breaking the outlying resonance generators that protected the cities and toppling the out forts that line the Sydney bay.

I have to be honest; it's hard to stick to my resolution of treating the mermen as sapient beings worthy of respect. It's all good and fine when I was pontificating in my demesne, but it's a totally different ball game when I can see them butcher people in the street. I hold myself from going old testament on these creatures, but I finally calm myself by repeating my platitudes, it's not their fault; it's the forces of demographics, biology and politics pushing them to these actions. It rings hollow in my ears, but I can't lose myself to berserk anger and hate; that will never end well.

I order the Elder Treants to march towards the bulk of the shoal just as sunlight starts peaking behind us. The battering of the city subsides for the first time in days, and we usher in a spring morning in our wake.

The battle slows as the armies detect our approach, I feel a new spell being loaded in the tower to blast us, but I quickly send divination past their buffers. We come ins peace and all that.

I don't deter the shoal; their response is just as quick but different.

A surge of water and a tidal wave surges towards me and the treants, and atop the crest of the wave ride the knights of the depths, mermen ridding sea horses their barding and lances swirling with ice magic, an aura of abjuration emanating from their shields protect them.

The archdruids respond by halting the mini-tsunami in its track, the power of 3 demigods bent to halt millions of tons of water from crashing against the shins of the treants. The knights look flabbergasted as their charge is halted in such a way. I smile as I see sea witches clutch their heads as they crash against the adamant will and magic of the archdruids. Each of them is one of the strongest spell casters in this world, and they have the magical reserve of demigods at their disposal. Stopping some magical weather manipulation and a few tidal waves is well in their wheelhouse.

The treants stride through the wave, barely reaching up to their shins. The knights try to swarm around their legs, losing blasts of frost and blades of ice striking their legs and glancing at the iron-skinned bark. They realise too late as the displacement of water pulls them under, and the churn crushes their bodies, leaving a bloody trail for the marching titans.

I order them to stop and plant themselves.

This is the secret to their power. The lifeshapers have formed a body that metabolises the natural energies, sunlight, water and environmental mana and adds it to their own prodigious production.

The treants plant their feet, roots stretching kilometres in seconds, tapping into leylines and mana wells. Their canopies glow for a second before they turn crystalline, capturing and absorbing the energy of the sun.

In two minutes, they reach maximum saturation and start using that excess energy. Fruits bloom on their branches and ripen in seconds before dropping onto the ground. So concentrated with magic are they that they sprout into leshys, dryads and shambling mounds sprouting and charging into the forces of the shoal.

It starts like rain, with one or two creatures at first, but it picks up the pace like monsoon rain, with fruits falling fast and hard. Dozens and then hundreds of creatures are born and fight every second.

The elder treants can do this forever, as befitting their title. The fathers of forests march, and their children fight with them.

The clash intensified quickly, with troops from both sides streaming in to achieve victory. The mage tower deploys a pair of flights to investigate and pepper me with messages. I wave them off and send a condensed explanation via illusions; the flight swerves before they can be picked off by opportunists.

I cast a spell to amplify my sound and stun the greater leviathans streaming in towards the fight. The lions shout echoes for dozens of kilometres and shred the weaker inside of the bigger monsters.

I proclaim, "Come face me in honourable combat, dragon scion or forever be marked as a coward who ran away from a human. Know that even if you don't accept, all that will change is that you will die in your command post instead of on the battlefield. So come face me, dragonkin and face castigation."

No one answers; of course, the foes are not stupid enough to challenge the master of three demigods, but that, too, is according to my plan. I cast another spell, Locate Creature, and find the dragon-scion hiding out in the depths of the sea surrounded by its strongest minions. Typical bully, only strong until someone bigger comes along. Not like I can criticise though it's not like I wouldn't do the same thing if I were in his place.

I prepare a spell, something I want to try since forever for my evocation studies, but I never have the time. So I precast this spell, and one of my druid's dimensions doors me next to the princeling.

It's a tremendous creature; a saltwater crocodile the size of a passenger jet with stubby wings and scales of a half-dragon.

It turns swiftly, sensing my arrival in its domain, its body turning despite the water resistance, its magic more than sufficient to move at an impossible speed. Its honour guard of croc people charges me as well, ready to lay down their life for their liege and most likely father.

So I oblige them and cast my spell.

The spell of contagious flame is an ingenious design by Lya, a beam of fire magic that acts as the carrier wave for a second spell form that fires after the first ray has hit its target. Then the second spell matrix triggers and shoots another ray carrying its one spell form. It's incredibly good for clearing target-rich environments and especially so since I put 50 motes of red mana into this thing. Normally the spell can only jump 3 times, but in my hand, it can branch dozens of times.

So the ten beams of fire I launch at the lead guards, and they look dumbly at the hole punched in their chests; then the spell matrices triggers and another 10 die and then another 10 and soon the entire body of hundreds shatters, most dying and the survivors running away despite their father's essence commanding them, that's to do with the cloak of dragon fear I cloak my self in. most of the other chaff become too scared to approach me, and those who reach me are shredded by my defensive spells and my water adapted thantor.

My spells give time for the dragon-croc to respond, and it does so by lashing out with a magic-sheathed tail strike. My contingency spell actives, and I am teleported a hundred meters in its blind spot. I don't give it a chance to turn this time and lash out with duel black mana spells.

A polar ray and enervation lance out and strike the creature, punching through its hide and its spell resistance. When the spell hits the creature, its soul is desiccated and frozen; it slows tremendously as its agility is shattered, and its soul is ravaged to reduce it to an ember of its glory.

It tries to breathe a beam of acid at me, but I impose a wall of force to deflect it; the hit melts thousands of remaining shoals that had surrounded us.

I summon chains of light to bind its snout, and the spell anchors it to the sea floor; the croc is dragged down by the white mana constructs and lays there sullenly.

"Well, kill me then, archmage. Know that I will never submit to you. I will shatter my core if you try to bind my spirit. It was an honourable fight, and I demand an honourable death." His voice is muffled by the closed mouth, but it still echoes for miles.

"I am not here to kill you, idiot. I am here to solve your people's problems that lead to these periodic invasions. I am going to give you a gift, and you are going to say thank you and spread it to all your people and competitors. You can't hoard it; I have already cast the geas for that on you."

I summon the thing I had my life shapers make inside a time-altered demiplane while under permanent haste just so they could finish it last night; it took weeks worth of their effort and strained their souls, but there were successful in their tasks.

The shrimp floats in my hand, happily eating the plankton floating around.

"This is the most efficient mana-to-food converter you will find; if injected with a first circle's worth of mana, it will self replicate till it can serve as hundreds of kilograms of food. You can feed the entire shoal just with the output of your sea witches and your entire kingdom if only 5 per cent of people serve as mana sources. I am giving you one of these mana shrimps because you will serve as an early adaptor and spread it to the rest of the undersea kingdoms." I showcase that by putting a mote of mana into the shrimp, and it drinks it easily, quickly releasing eggs that grow into a full adult in a minute. Sadly due to the rushed nature, it will only work in this world for now, because it can use the ambient mana that is flooding this world to supplement the original spell. It will take a while to develop a universal version.

I also have doubts about this plan; I could easily see these things serving as fuel for huge populations and thus leading to more wars and invasions of the surface. I have tried to mitigate that but having it designed so that it works better the deeper they are, but I am sure it will eventually be used to fuel invasion, not to mention the risk to the ecology it could cause. But the undersea kingdoms are voracious; I doubt they will leave enough to overpopulate.

I haven't figured out how to prevent invasions completely, but it should reduce 90% of them as those are the desperate crusades of starving populations. I imagine humanity will just have to learn to treat them as hostile nations with possible invasions instead of certain enemies bent on eating each other.

Now, let's hope this doesn't go wrong.

 

[Acolyte]

I fell back onto my bed after plane shifting to my demiplane. The mission has turned out worse than all my expectations. I saved the city and its people, but everything else has gone wrong.

First of all, I didn't have fun blowing up the merknights. They were fairly weak, and I didn't even get to use some cooler spells like Circle of Death or Power Word Kill. Killing them felt like taking money from a baby; I could have just put them to sleep and won anyway or teleported them away, and they couldn't have done anything to stop me. It's no fun having power if you feel bad about using it later.

Second, The Elder Treants killed a lot of Merpeople before I finished my fight, so I now have the blood of tens of thousands of sort of innocents on my hands. Sure my ardour about their supposed innocence has cooled seeing all the rampage they have committed against civilians. Still, ethically, they are only partially responsible since they are, at best, drafted serfs or even slave soldiers. So, now I am deeply morose; I probably should talk to someone on Pandora Earth, an Ethics professor or a Therapist; I have been feeling ragged and run down recently.

But at least I have a piece of good news as well; I can study the damned towers now. I hope they are worth the effort I have put in to acquire them.

---

It was not worth it.

After a few days of relaxing, carving a few statues and doing some minor research, I finally visit the Shard. The Gigantic tower is still thrumming with power, its wards still stand, and it's still acting as a vast divination array. But the gleaming black shard has lost its lustre to me.

I am sitting in the repository of the tower, and all the mages here are giving me a wide berth. I am sure they have heard the stories by now; the end of the coral wars is all over the news right now. But I am not paying attention to any of them. I am looking at the most advanced system of the towers, and I am just dismayed.

The towers aren't amplifiers like I had hoped for; they are projectors. Still use full for me and is a lot more useful for any mages I create, but it's not what I wanted.

I have foolishly assumed that the spell arrays of the towers amplified the magic through metamagical recursion or fractal optimisation. So, for example, if put in 5 motes of mana in a fireball, the one fired using the tower should have been the size of a school bus and should have been able to hit targets over the horizon for the same mana costs. But that's how it works; instead of amplifying spells, it just projects their spells to a much larger extent. So to achieve my hypothetical artillery fireball, you have to pay the entire cost of such a spell; it just lets you supplement your natural mana with a store of mana crystals.

So the currently running tower, just in the mode of its passive operation, is burning literal tons of mana crystals to operate alongside a dedicated team of casters to cast the myriad spells. It's exactly what my archdruids figured out when powering themselves with the elder treant's mana fonts. Sure, it now increases their range or area of effects, but fundamentally, it's the same thing.

I will admit I am being overly harsh on the mages here. These are very impressive and sophisticated spell arrays here, very efficient. Humanity has built itself the artificial infrastructure to match mountain-sized dragons and krakens. The primordial soul draws an immense amount of mana, and the body endures channelling that power, which is the birthright of mythic beings and their bloodlines. Humanity has built those things with its own two hands, free for anyone that can gather the resources to build and run their towers.

But it's not what I wanted, and now I feel foolish wasting my time on seeing their designs instead of just developing my own. I already have the basis of how to make them in the form of metamagic rods.

So, metamagic works by creating secondary spell mandalas that fit into the spell mandalas and enhance particular aspects of spells. So intensify metamagic increases how strong your magic hits with a much less increase in the cost of the spell. The cost comes from the fact that additional spell mandalas are still being formed to enhance the spell. But metamagic rods remove even this limitation, the rob acts as a focusing array for that particular metamagic, and any spell that passes through them gets affected by the metamagic at no additional cost, as the mandala already exists.

It's still an immensely useful gain. I had fully designed battle towers; It already had designs like large-scale abjuration schema and multiphasic divination arrays. The development of magic from individual spells to multipurpose systems with flexibility and the ability to effect magic on a large scale. I won't have to develop individual divination spells. Instead, the system can be used to manipulate information in many forms. I also won't have to add the metamagic effects for increasing range, as they are bundled in all the spell circles of these towers.

It may be a fixer-upper, but I imagine I can make this into something great. The dream of battle towers still lives on.

During this daydreaming of fighting armies trying to tear down my towers, someone sits across me, and I am too distracted to notice until they cough politely to draw my attention.

"You know, I felt a bit betrayed once I learned who you really were, but I guess it's understandable. It's not every day you have to investigate a nearly alien society." It takes me a second to recognise Emma Anson, the countess of Lichfield. I stand up and shake her hand, a gesture she returns with grace.


"I do apologise for the deception. As you said, it's been a long time since I had interacted with humans; after dealing with fae beings and elemental djinns, I have become very paranoid in my interaction with other sapients. Let us start over; I am Ajax, Arch Mage, Explorer and Scholar." I wave my hand and conjure some refreshment to earth, tea and crackers as is tradition.

She smiles, stands and gives me a small courtesy.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Milord. I will be delighted to make the acquaintance of the Single-Man Empire."

I raise my eyebrow at the sobriquet.

"The Single-Man Empire?? I don't remember that being my title. Is it something the tabloids came up with??" I inquire

"Yes, it's the name of the man who negotiated as a peer with the crown and apparently has mythic beings at your command. Of course, it's a tad boorish, but the tabloids do like to make up fanciful tales. But I do admit; I wish I had a title like that; the glory of your name being written in the history books is a heady thing." She says, her coquettish town slowly morphing into a wistfulness of those who desire something they know they can't have.

It gives me a bad idea; I know it's a bad idea. But I am sorely tempted, fuck it, what's the point of life if you don't take risks.

"Well, I can't give you a boorish title, but I can offer you immortality of a different sort; well, I can give you half a dozen forms of immortality, actually. I can do it right now if you want, just for a small price." I try not to sound like a devil asking for a person's soul, but human stories have made this difficult; it's really hard not to sound sinister.

She predictably looks sharply at me and asks with narrowed eyes.

"What kind of price are you talking about?? If it were anyone else, I would doubt them, but with your deeds, I believe you despite myself. So what will the price for this be, eh Ajax??"

"Nothing you would miss, and I don't mean your soul or anything like that. So, I summon my 'mythic' creatures by making a template of them and using mana to make it a reality. I can do this to humans as well; I wanted to see if I can get your pattern to summon human mages. They won't be your copies or anything like that. They can range from all elements, genders, magical schools and even souls; they are completely distinct beings." I warble out a word vomit by trying to reassure her now that I have proposed the idea, I don't want to look like a fool.

"Ok, Let's say I believe you, and even your deeds are pushing at this mass production of human mages; I will need to know what I will be getting in return; you said immortality, but what exactly do you mean."
"oh, immortality is easy. I can enumerate the options for you if you want, from the easiest to the most drastic. First is a simple genetic and soul surgery, I make slight changes to your soul and body, and you will never age. The second would be reincarnating you into something immortal, like an Elf or a dragon. The third is I do some more drastic changes to your soul and body, and you start generating essence in appreciable amounts; this option will strengthen you as you age and allow you to do much more extensive magics." I pause to take a sip of my tea and let my words sink into her for a few seconds before continuing.

"I can make you an artefact that will render you ageless and allow you to come back from even violent death, sort of like a phylactery but much more elegant and only slightly necromantic. I can turn you into a vampire and modify you not to need blood; this also will make you fairly stronger as you age. The last is I can transfer your soul into a golem that is in every way better than your current body, this will never decay or fail, and even this could be made to grow stronger as you age, but that's harder as you will start as a peer to most dragons."

I clap my hand and conjure up some illusions showing her six options. The floating images of herself as various magical beings seem to fascinate her, and she spends a few minutes just considering all the options.

"I must say it's overwhelming. Can I ask you if I can take a few hours to consider it?" She asks me.

"No, I am itching for adventure again; I might just be leaving the plane in a few hours, so you have to make the decision now." I wasn't even lying; I will probably chill at the demi-plane for a few weeks, and then I can just planeswalk away; I have been feeling stifled; maybe a new plane will bring me happiness.

She considers it for a few seconds, and then she says.

"You know, now that it is in front of me, immortality doesn't seem that attractive. It's strange, I want my name to be remembered forever, but I don't want to live that long. So I will thank you, but I won't be taking up your offer." She stands up, and after saying her piece, she leaves, probably so she isn't tempted to agree.

Huh, it's been a while since I've been rebuffed by someone. It's refreshing; the rejection of my offer is exciting, a variable on my predictions. I guess there is something to this free-will thing; after all, we can't have these wonderful surprises from hidebound automatons.

I shrug and go back to reading their infrastructure arrays; I think they have some seeds of potential.

---

"So that's your decision. I can respect the conviction; you are facing a hard task without any safety cushion." I say while sitting in at the head of the council table.

"Aye, The troll lad's words ring true to my years. We are grateful for what you did, but the ancestors entrusted us to you because they didn't want us to die. But we need to grow up, recognise the problems our otherworld counterparts society faced and learn from them, form a new society that will make the ancestors proud, so they don't have to turn to strangers to save us; no offence." Thror says from his carven throne, his newly forged crown shining with the enchantments that overlaid its runic matrices.

"Well, I am glad you have a purpose, but I can't help but worry. It is a duty entrusted to me; I would be a poor wizard if I don't keep my word. But regardless, I will support your decision; it is well thought out and worth the risk of failure." I reply, trying to articulate my fears but failing.

"Our runesmiths have learned how to make talismans that increase the size of the demiplane and how to open portals; we have a good relationship with the trolls, and we have built a council on a meritocratic basis since all dwarfs you summon are grandmasters anyway. I will step down soon enough, and then a new age will dawn for the sons and daughters of Valaya." He says while chugging a stein of beer.

"And you all concur; you all want to develop yourselves as independent people away from my influence." I ask the other members of my council.

Blossom nods and Nestor grunts his agreement; the Elder treants send affirming shakes of their heads from outside the windows.

"Ok then. I will be rooting for all of you guys. Don't do anything evil, you all know what that means to me, and I won't be happy if you do. But aside from that, have fun; I am sure you guys will build a just society. I have some research to finish here, so I will stick around for two months, but I will leave after that. "

"Ok, that should give us some time to prepare a feast. After all, it's a momentous occasion."

---

I chug my last keg of the newly brewed beer and slam the porcelain mug in celebration.

"Bye, all. I am going to walk away now; either the void sobers me up, or I am going be the first drunk planes walker; I shall find out in the name of science." Saying that, I step away from the world, leaving behind the last embers of a 3-day fest.

---

I wake up to sand filling my mouth, my head bursting with a throbbing headache. I sit up, spit out the sand and cast prestidigitation to clean myself before I have the will to look around. I am in a desert, a sea of sand stretching as far as the eye can see.

I cast a quick restoration spell to cure the hangover and swear to myself that I will never drink again; it's simply not worth the risk of planeswalking drunk. But I should figure out where I am right now; I don't want to be eaten by a giant sandworm.

Flying up into the sky at that thought, I cast some divination spells and get an idea of where I am, a desert stretching for about 10000 miles, and then the plane abruptly ends. There are massive oases that dot the landscape and several major waterways. These druid spells only tell me the natural environment, so I don't know where the nearest city is, but it seems a simple enough idea to fly towards the closest one.

It's a bit dreary, but I don't want to risk teleporting; who knows if there is a giant toad that can intercept teleports there? I don't know where I am; the whole plane feels unnatural and broken to my senses, and it's tiny by any plane's standards. So I am under as much abjuration magic as I can manage, and I can manage a ton. Invisibility, transparency, etherealness, and a dozen other effects cover my flight. Force shields, ablative barriers and entropic fields protect fate itself, protecting me from hostile intent.

So it takes me a second to notice the warning from my divination alarms before I can react 4 beams of solar flames punch through my defences, and my force fields, prismatic cloaks, spell turnings, and globes' invulnerability block three of the plasma beams but are dispelled in turn, the magic of the beams burning their spell matrices. The fourth beam heads straight for me, and only my emergency-cast celerity allows me to dodge the blow to survive. The unbalanced weight tells me I have lost my left arm and torso. More beams converge on my position, but my contingencies have activated on my injury, and I am teleported a hundred kilometres away, a dozen bound healing spells restoring my body in a split second.

It's all the time I get before my attacker teleports in front of me in a flash of sunshine. The concussive force pushes me towards the ground, and that's the only thing that saves me from the scything khopesh is intent on taking off my head.

I blink away, turning ethereal and diving into the earth; beams rain down around me, turning hundreds of meters of sand into glass. I come up a kilometre away, under invisibility, and it finally gives me the time to take a breath and notice my foe.

It's a man, bedecked in burnished gold armour, a khopesh in one hand and a flail in the other. My mage sigh has trouble parsing him at first, and it takes a few seconds to adjust, but once it does, I realise I misspoke. It is not a man at all, it was the body of one, and its soul probably was at one point, but its been changed, shards of concepts have been grafted onto its soul, and it has been fusing with them, being transmuted from a mortal to the soul of a god.

My foe raises his hand, and someone else teleports next to him, a woman transmuted god just like the sun warrior but a bit behind on the path of changing as compared to the man. She smells the air and immediately pinpoints me, a hundred moonlight arrows streaming towards me, I teleport away again, and the arrows follow me, moving with impossible speed to follow me across hundreds of kilometres.

I cast a spell, and a swarm of magic missiles intercepts them in mid-air, resulting in explosions painting the noon sky. The warrior teleports in and swings his blade and flails, I activate my more conditional contingencies, and an elder treat is summoned right on top of us in mid-air. The warrior looks surprised by that and lashes out with more beams of solar fury, his attacks gouging massive wounds on the treant. It responds angrily in its own way; a tornado made of acid descends on the man and drives him from the sky into a sand dune. It's a momentary pause as the magic is dispelled in a burst of sunlight, but it gives me the time to cast a spell; I pump in nearly a thousand mana into the spell and feel my hands starting to freeze from the excess mana spilling out from the spell mandala, it wasn't designed to hold so much energy inside it.

But I cast the spell at the prone god, and a massive beam of freezing necrotic energy strikes his surprised face. His plasma corona lashes out, trying to dispel the magic, but it's not enough; I have put enough mana to mimic a major god in that spell; it punches through the protection and strikes the god.

The enervation saps at his divinity and vitality. His skin turns sallow and pallid like a cadaver dredged up from the river, I see his sword and flail fall from his hands, too weak to hold them. He probably hasn't felt his mortality in centuries, so when my spell has sapped him of most of his divinity and vitality, it's devastating mentally and physically.

I fly down and land in front of him while the treant channels magic to heal the wounds it suffered. Its roots dig deep into the desert.

"So, that was incredibly rude. We at least challenge someone before we kill them. So, Let me introduce myself; I am Ajax, a planeswalker, who I have the honour of besting today." I ask the god as he kneels before me.

"Eldritch, you haven't bested anyone yet. It's not yet over. I knew your kind can't help but gloat, just in my reach." As he says this and burst into renewed flames, his divinity and vitality return to him at an alarming rate. He grabs me quicker than I can respond, and his aura coats me, smothering any magic I try to cast.

"You really thought that it would be so easy to beat a god, Eldritch. Your magic cannot extinguish the sun." He continues, doing a gloating of his own.

I try to signal the elder treant to act, but before I can, a thousand moonlight arrows pierce through its body, shattering it to pieces as its mind returns to its soul.
The moon goddess floats above me, ready to put an arrow through my eye.

3 Demigods also surround us, piloting mecha that radiate their own divinity.

I do the only thing I can.

"Bye"

Then I planeswalk away.

 

[Acolyte]

Something is different this time.

I am floating in a void, unreality clawing at reality. Buts it's not the void I am used to, not the same ferocious lack of existence that destroys anything that isn't soul-bound to me.

It's like a cousin, a smaller more diluted version of it. There isn't any real difference here; it's both just a lack of existence. I open my mage sight and sense with my spark, the part of my soul that allows me to jump between planes.

It's a scene unlike any I have seen before; it looks like I am in a dying plane. Its outer membrane is barely keeping the greater void from consuming everything, and even then, it has failed; the void has leaked in and been shaped by this passage into a slightly less hostile version, its an incredibly complex process, I can't even begin to fathom how you can have this degree of unreality or how you would modulate the change in these phases, but some process has made it possible and that's the only saving grace of this plane. Its tatters float through this ultimate darkness, small chunks of a greater hole shattered by some unimaginable conflict because some of the damage I am seeing is artificial.

It is a strange step, but I can't stay here forever; even my much stronger soul is being eaten away by this darkness, so I find a different shard of reality and Walk to it.

I emerge in a desolate void again, but it is just the unforgiving void of space, just another part of reality. Sure I have trouble breathing for a second because of all my dispelled passives, but I quickly fix that with a few spells and heal the nerve damage and necrosis. It's not a big deal; I don't need my body to think or cast spells; it just prevents me from becoming a plane-walking ghost, so minimally important in the grand scheme of things.

The shard of a broken plane is small, just a few hundred kilometres of empty space. But it serves my purpose; I spend a few hours conjuring rock and soil and casting planar refuge to create a habitable floating island in that realm.

So I have a decision to make. I can simply leave this plane, walk out of here and find a new place. But that's a cowardly move. This is exactly the kind of place where I can do the most good. It's also an amazing opportunity to learn about planar engineering and metastructural magic systems. Because it almost certainly leads to the death of billions of people if I don't do anything. Physics is actively failing in some of those planes; a soul can only protect a person from hostile physics for so long.

To do that, I need to make some infrastructure.

So I have been researching the power generation of several civilisations in the previous plane. There is one main way that they acquire and use large amounts of magic, rifts from the elemental planes dumping a silver of their infinite magic on the material plane.

So I had to figure out how to adapt a phenomenon that isn't metaphysically supported by most realities because infinite planes of energy are rare and even those that exist are really dangerous.

So, designing the enchantment for opening the planar rift and stabilising and creating harvesting systems for the magic is fairly trivial; it's just basic attunement and channelling mandalas with some unobtanium framework to anchor the spells. The problem is where to aim that rift,

I was bashing my head against that for an entire week until a dwarven runelord saw my problems and just asked me a simple question in the signature straightforward manner of the dwarfs.

"If those planes don't exist, why not just make one? You made this demiplane already; it can't be that hard."

That gave me the idea that eventually lead me to my solution.

Of course, I didn't create an infinite plane of magic; I don't have the faintest idea of how even to do that, and I lack the power even if I knew how.

My quantum plane solution is a bit of magic and physics hack to get around those limitations. I created, after many failures and regrown limbs, a variant of creating a demiplane that can dump infinite magic into a universe.

It works by creating a plane completely inaccessible to reality, the rift being the only way to connect to it. This spell takes a lot of power, but the plane is put into a state of superimposition since no one can observe or access the plane; magically, it can be anything, from a plane of magic to a room the size of a closet. But since no observer can confirm its existence, the potential for an infinite plane of magic exists, and my magic harness that potential, converting it into pure magical power. The potential isn't reduced because it is potentially infinite, and that potentiality is transformed into actuality through magic.

It's the first piece of real fundamental magical research that I have done, and I am really proud of it.

So I spend days transmuting and conjuring unobtanium and building the giant pyramid that is the outer shell of the rift generator. The edifice is inscribed with mandalas and runes to channel the magic generator and reinforce the structure itself, alongside a suite of defensive spell arrays.

After that productive week, I summon arch druids and shamans to stabilise and expand the plane fragment I made my base. The archdruids cast the spells to stabilise the physical laws of the universe and enforce a single set of physics, and the shamans work on the greater metaphysical structure of the shard, buttressing the failing pieces and pumping in energy and intent to stabilise its collapses. It is a shame I can't repeat the same process across the entire plane, but there are trillions of broken shards, and I don't have that kind of manpower or time to fix it.

It takes a lot of meditation, but I decide to focus on the small stuff first. That sun god's divinity is a good prize. Attachable shards of different concepts ascend you to divinity and give you various domain-based abilities. Even before figuring out how they work, I have to address the fact that I don't want to modify my soul, firstly because I haven't figured out how I planeswalk exactly, and secondly, it naturally gets stronger the more planes I travel; hence my lack of fear for physical death, my soul is strong enough that I can literally just walk around as a soul and recreate my body. Theoretically, at least, for obvious reasons, I haven't tried to do it yet.

But as I look around at my clearing and notice thanator playing with a shape-shifted archdruid, an idea comes to mind, a wonderful but crazy idea.

---

I am floating in the local void again, a soul floating in nothingness and feel the sparks of dying planes as their laws of physics fail and space itself collapses. I float to them, bearing the soft pain of nonexistence on my soul; I watch the void preditors as they dance and revel in the destruction of another shard of existence. Dark facsimiles of people and beings, aping structure and existence just to bring an end to the entire plane and then melt back into the void again, to repeat it somewhere else.

But this time is different; someone else is hunting them now, that can follow them back into the broken reality.

I pounce on the biggest one, wielding my soul like a sword, cutting into its un-flesh and ripping out chunks of its fabricated narrative. You don't have spells, powers, or physics in the void; it's a matter of pitting your soul against each other and imposing your will on the opponent.

I feel the retaliation, barbed lashes made of cruelty lashing at my back, leaving scars and divots that bleed eternally. I push through the pain and grab hold of those lashes with my determination, cloaking my soul like armour, and I fling the creature into the nearest shard. Its form elongates, compresses and then pops like a balloon as it crashes into the inviolate walls of the shard's boundary. I don't give it a chance and rip into it with fangs of viciousness and hateful knuckles. I continue pounding, biting and smashing the creature as it slowly dies under my barrage, losing texture as its essence tries to mix into the void so it may revive sometime in the future.

Of course, I don't let it; a cage of curiosity is all it takes to contain the creatures and its last embers of ego. I planeswalk to the plane that served as the backstop for my beatdown.

A gleaming mountain made of crystal greets me, small critters with crystal bones skittering away as I immediately begin casting restoration spells and healing to repair the soul wounds I had suffered. Imagine the most intense pain you have ever faced and then prolong that to a lifelong chronic condition; that's what a wound to the soul feels like, extreme pain that literally becomes a part of you. Unless you are a master soul forger, it's just like normal wounds to be healed by magic.

Then I manifest my captured prisoner in my hand, a dark ember of the void that seems to suck in reality around itself. I cast it into a diamond, reinforced and enchanted, and it goes in the bag of holding, making it the thousandth and one of these neverborn that I have hunted and captured now.

It was an interesting discovery when I discovered that not all of the shards aren't collapsing naturally, some of them are being actively sabotaged by realty-hating monsters. Another fun fact, my soul is the perfect predator for those sorts, I can chase them to their void and I am stronger than the vast majority of them, as long as they don't get to use their abilities at least. That had been a surprise, losing an arm for an entire week before I unravelled the death curse of a prince of the void.

It is exhilarating having these fights, each of them is a life and death struggle and the enemy is completely reprehensible so there is no moral quandary in ripping their pseudo-souls to shreds.

It's been a few months since I have come here and I have been spending most of this time collecting the core of these monsters I think I have enough for these uncreated abominations to do some experiments I have planned.

I cast a spell to look out of the plane and wait for the rest of the court to disperse and then I planeswalk away, moving at a speed incomprehensible to humans.

I arrive at my claimed shard and smile at the progress we have made.

A lush rainforest covers the land, with distant mountain tops scrapping the clouds, and natural weather patterns finally emerging after months of work by the archdruids to jumpstart the ecosystem and the water cycle. The shard is the size of Asia right now, the free time I had between hunting had been devoted to developing a version of the demiplane spell that would work on this shard.

It's a fairly unique circumstance, so it is a very niche spell. But since this is only a continental scale shard, with nothing to constrict its growth that a normal universe would, no almost infinite space-time continuum constricting the size of planes I can make. It still costs more mana to expand the volumes but the thousands of mana spent on summoning arch druids are well worth it. It's easier to create organisms that will ritual cast the spells for you, so they draw from their own sources of magic and not my own. Of course, it's slowing down but it's plenty big for my purposes.
I take out the bag holding the broken uncreated and put it in a stasis chamber and head out to my house, to relax and practice some poetry and maybe a bit of flight ballet, it's really fun when
you can be supernaturally dextrous and charismatic.

As I do a pirouette through a cloud when something trips my planar wards and crashes into my dimensional bastions. I Walk outside and spot an angel being hunted by a group of uncreated. I smile and open a hole in the defence. The angel notices the opening and flies through like a streak of sunshine.

I fall upon the horrors, adamant will against implacable hunger. I cut and twist, weathering their blows while gouging wounds from their pseudo-souls. I am scared by the end but I hold two more remnants in my hands. I Walk back to my plane.

The angel looks around from its binding, warding circles holding it still. I cast a few diagnostic spells and look upon its visage with my mage sight active.

Its form is but a shell, made of soul matter to contain the angel's essence. A spark of primordial creation burns at the centre of the fire, an animating motive force that sprang from the true beginning of the plane. I see the fire encased in an implacable cage of duty, a clear purpose writ upon each inch of its essence. An angel is a creature of the primordial creation and they are all created with a purpose in mind it seems, a chosen duty that they have failed. I see the warping of the cage, duty twisting to dogma as the angel failed to uphold its purpose. I see the damage done by the fire, a fluttering guttering ember that struggled to fuel itself without duty.

It takes me a few hours but I can slowly read the purpose written on this angel's soul. It was supposed to be a guide for heroes and champions, uplifting the paragons of mortals and making sure they reached their destiny. It failed, of course, heroes can't fix the broken world. So am I the target of its search or was it a coincidence it found itself near my shard when it got attacked? I make sure my anti-fate-bending wards are still up and that my own fate-warping spells are working to protect me, wouldn't want to be trapped with destiny or something.

I release the spell and the spectral chains holding her shatter.

"Sorry about that, just had to make sure you weren't a shapeshifter or an illusionist." I say laconically, it's the persona I want to put forward.

"Understandable, the vile uncreated abomination is conniving foes, it pays to be vigilant." She walks past me and takes a seat at the lavish picnic I had prepared for myself, she grabs an apple and bites into it. "So the reports are true, this shard contains a complete set of Laws. I haven't eaten an apple in millennia, ever since tielo and his infrastructure was sundered by The Betrayer's legions."

I smile sheepishly and reply.

"Yeah, I didn't want to risk the shard unravelling because it lacks some laws of physics. It helped me learn a lot about dimensional formatting and terraforming."

"It is a Miracle of the One, a shard with all of the Laws can serve as the core of a new creation, we can beat back the uncreated and finally repair the missing infrastructure that has lost its guardians. Finally, lucifers madness will be seen for the insanity it is and maybe my brothers and sisters can come to their senses."

Ok, that was a lot, there's probably a lot to unpack there. But I am not going to do that, I am just going to ignore it for now and get the low down on the situation when she is calmer and less excited.

"Ok, well I am happy to let you have the plane if you want. I can just make another one. But I need to know you will make good use of it." I pause to do a few calculations and then continue "I can do something even better, but I will need your help to prepare for things, it will be dangerous."

"I am listening, for the sake of all reality."

---

I hold a thousand cores of uncreated in my hand ritual chamber. The mind-bending mandalas necessary to provide control of solid voids are painted in complex 3D diagrams, intersecting matrices that form a room of obsidian stone with glowing silver lines inscribed on every inch of its surface.

I place the cores in their proper places, forming a perfect circle and then I take my place in the centre of the formations. Then I begin the spell, channelling thousands of mana through the mandalas to form the framework of my creation and then I begin the soul forging.

The cores act as the seed from which the soul grows, the nothingness alloyed with mana to give it shape. Green mana gives it instincts, blue mana gives it logic, and red ignites passion. White mana gives it empathy and structure and black mana gives it the desire to live and the selfishness to survive. The strands of mana are weaved between all thousand cores, forming an energy matric that is intricate and entangled. Then I pump that framework full of raw mana, channelling enough energy to vaporise a mountain or give birth to a forest. The energy is poured into the mould and the soul framework shapes and bends and twists, gaining strength and complexity by the second. Then the entire form collapses, into a singularity of creation.

The floating point of shining light expands slowly, becoming bigger and bigger each second. The soul stuff starts changing shades, shifting from pure creation to a prismatic vista then it changes colour again as it goes through darker shades, finally ending up like its progenitors. A floating amorphous blob 2 kilometres in size draws in natural light, appearing as a void-given form.
It's not caustic to reality like its ancestors, the mana alloyed to its void allowing it to exist without 'leaking'.

Creator, I exist to serve. What is my purpose? It speaks in my mind, its nascent telepathy reaching out to connect to my mind.

I reach out in turn, nothing would be more traumatic than being spurned by your creator after creation. I am not going to repeat Frankenstein's folly. I send it warmth and love through the connection before I send proper words.

You exist as a free being, you always have the right to refuse any order I give if you do not wish to do it. Service is now what I require from you, I have created you for a grand purpose, but I will not impose it on you. I pause to send the complex ball of concept that is my ethical standards.

I literally had to create a spell to just send this information but I had long accepted it as time well spent. It was something all my summons understand by default but this is the first creature I have formed with my own two hands, creating a soul strong and complex enough to do what I desired was not yet in the capability of my shamans and life shapers.

I still choose to serve you, if it is a noble purpose then that is what I will need to learn. It says with a serene voice of an untroubled mind.

Let's hope it doesn't lose that sereneness. Besides, even if it said no, I have its summoning pattern already, If I summon enough of them over time I will eventually find a random one that will do the work I want to be done.

"Well let's introduce you to your new colleague then, she will be delighted to meet you." I speak aloud and lead it out of its creation chamber and to the first expedition bastion.

The Void Levithan's Kilometers long body swirls into itself until it shrinks down to a glossy black sphere the size of a softball. For a creature of nonexistence, it is trivial to shapeshift, it's not like they have a real shape.

"So this is the abomination you have made for my quest." Alicia the angel says, with a loathing scoff at the floating ball of the void behind me.

"It is not of the void, not in the way your foes are. It is an ensouled being whose soul has been merged with the void. It is not innately deleterious to reality and it's a good person so far, at least give this a chance. You can't do your task without it and it's soon to be summoned brethren." I tell her as we walked through the gigantic walls and into the purposed spot for the first expedition.

"Besides, you and the few angels that are with you won't be enough to protect the people that come here if they are followed by the uncreated. So we need beings capable of freely travelling the void and fighting entire courts, as well as transporting all the refugees. So unless you have developed new powers since I last saw you, you will have to get used to the idea of working with them." I say with a bit of anger in my voice, no being deserves scorn just for existing, I let beings' actions define them.

"I will accept this, as I have accepted everything so far, for saving the souls and reality, I will do anything. Even work with uncreated abominations. I am going to go to the first plane, my scouts have found a shard where the Laws are failing. I will get going with this thing." She says and teleports to the Night. The void leviathan follows behind, nearly unparalleled in its ability to traverse non-existence, I hadn't tested it yet but I hope it might even survive the true blind eternities between real planes.

But I couldn't help but be proud of what I have created and the work I am doing. The leviathans are the perfect rescue vehicles. They can teleport without regard for differences, they have a lot of magical, psychic and shapeshifting skills to solve any conceivable problem, and they can spawn courts of void creatures for work that requires multiple beings. But the best part is for this mission they can act as permanent intraplanar portals, by transforming themselves into living night roads, letting us mass evacuate entire shards.

That is the second reason for the pride, the Great Rescue. We will find and save every failing shard, every soul that we can find. I have been personally increasing the size of my Shard and it's the size of the earth now, after a few months of constantly pouring in mana and the lack of resistance from an existing reality that increases cost geometrically. Of course, there are billions and billions of people out there in the failing shards but many of them have godbound of their own, who have stabilised their own reality. So we grab the ones that have no one to save them or are being enslaved by tyrannical made-gods.

I hope she succeeds in my secondary quest as well, it would make Project Panpoly possible. It's not every day I get to design a custom Ascension for myself.

 

[Acolyte]

The waiting is agonising. Not knowing what's happening is a familiar feeling. I have always been an anxious person, I tend to get into my head. I have been waiting a week since the first rescue expedition left, I have been spending my time carving a few statues and learning how to cook food from a dwarven matron. It feels good to learn essential life skills, and a good meat pie is scrumptious but the anxiety comes back after a while.

I could try spelunking with some dwarven miners, that sounds like a fun time. Let's see if the magic has let me overcome the claustrophobia.

---

The first refugees arrive through portals opening in their designated spots, holes shining with iridescent colours. A beleaguered people walk through, first solo and duos, the boldest walking forward as a vanguard for their people. Then the dam breaks, duos turning to clumps and then throngs of people, a current of thousands flowing through the dozens of portals.

I watch from the aid station, conjuring food and resources, while the dwarves guide the people to new accommodations. The people are from a modern tech-level shard, with some of the first scouts carrying radios and semiautomatics. So they aren't surprised by the apartment towers in the background, as people are walked through a spell array that cures all illnesses and cleans up everyone. People walk with more surety in their steps after they pass through the curtain of golden healing light.

The angels fly through the portals, acting as beacons of hope for these destitute people. They are all the malcontents from lucifers legions, angels whose purpose was compassion and nurturing. They glow with a reignited fire as their magic calms the people and guides them to their new homes.

The people look wary at first but slowly as the reality of their survival sets in, as fathers can feed their daughters again, as mothers see their sick children smile again, and hope blooms in those people's souls. A visible brightening in people's faces, even the dourest smiling for the first time in years.

A pair of people walk up to me, accompanied by a pair of thanes walking behind them to act as security. They are both a study in contrast, but slight divination tells me they are the leader of their nation or at least parts of it.

"So you are the one we have to thank for saving our people. Well, Thank you. You have saved our people's lives and it is something we will never forget it." The first man says, he is dressed like a decorated officer, his chest bedecked with medals and ribbons. He is infused with divine power, not his own but the concepts of war, technology and wealth resonate in the borrowed divinity he carries, although it is fading.

"The people of Morivia will name our new city after your name." The general continues "Here, I have already awarded you and your creatures the high Highest Medal in our land."

"Look at you, Trying to curry favour with our saviours just so your scum regime can eke out its existence now that your precious commander is dead." The woman who speaks is dressed in worn desert fatigues, with a bandana holding her hair from getting in her face. She is carrying a sniper rifle with her, held in the crook of her arm like a precious treasure. She has divine energy of her own, a young god-bound, her aspects of war, technology and community like a mirror to that of the general but her countenance of vitriol tells me she is not any less warlike than the general.

"Wait a second, I appreciate the gratitude but I am sensing a conflict here. We can't have that here. Let me talk to the angels to learn what's going on." Saying that I teleport to Alicia the Angel. She is in the midst of things, guiding handpicked mortals to establish the new living space for the refugees.

She looks up from the dozen glowing sigils transmitting information to her.

"So what's going on with those leaders" I point to the pair standing on top of a hill now, watching over the people with hawk-like gazes.

"That's a complicated matter but the essentials are. The general was a theocratic prophet of Made God, a tyrant that brought progress and plenty as long as no one questioned its rules. The lady is Karmia a rebel, The Rebel even, who gained divinity of her own and rose against the Made God Tyrant. Then it's the usual tale of revolutions. Still, luckily for her, she won the military victory, her sniper rifle laid low the Made God Tyrant and now the prophet and loyalists hate her and her rebels. They have enough influence to split the population roughly."

That's a problem, these people will set the standard for the future refugees that come to this shard for asylum and if they are embroiled in war then the future of peace I imagined would be in jeopardy.

"How do we make sure that the war doesn't spill out and that other wars won't break out between different groups of survivors? I think maybe I can make an order of warrior spirits to enforce peace. They would have to be experts at intrigue as well, to prevent any underhanded tactics and of course self-replication." I begin to ramble on about the potential peacekeepers. Before I get too deep in thought, Alicia snaps her fingers in front of my face, bringing me back from my musings.

"Do Not Do That. As a person crafted for a particular purpose, you will fail. Sapients shattered the Universe in their pursuit of ideology and that's just one of the reasons for war, they seem to be adept at inventing new justifications for wars. You would have to become a tyrant worse than Lucifer and Michal to even attempt that task. I would stand against you if you pursue those actions as will any heroes I could gather."

I am a bit dumbfounded by that triad and that threat. I give it a bit of thought and respond in a calm and collected manner.

"What you say is true, self-determination is the right of all sapients, and that includes to right to fight against oppressive systems and to fight for their ideologies. But I can't stand idly by if there is anything I can do to make sure the bloodshed is kept to a minimum. It is just a single shard with a few hundred thousand people now, but soon this shard will hold billion of refugees from diverse backgrounds, even if I stop this group, I can stand here and protect people forever."

"Then the people have to ensure that people's needs are met, that they have enough space to grow. They need meeting places and trade hubs where ideas can disseminate and people can mingle. Give people a universal internet, so they always have information and peers." Alicia says with a weary sigh "Sometimes you just have to realise that no matter what you do, it will fail eventually but the only thing left to do is try and try again. The sundering has humbled me but it hasn't broken my resolve just quite yet."

"Those are some good ideas I guess. You have lived and guided more people than me, So I will try your solutions. But if an antitechnology culture starts a crusade against the infrastructure, well I told you so right here. But I hope it works out for the foreseeable future."

I say that and then another thought comes to me.

"Now that you have succeeded in your goal, have you gotten me my prize as well?"

She nods and I See her send a psychic message to the Void leviathan.

A shadow falls on the campsite as an Oblong Whale plane shifts over the entire encampment and blocks out the sun, The people cheer, overcoming their fear of the shadow behemoth in face of its actions.

Its body bubbles and then forms into a giant funnel, compressing its bulk in a sphere to the size of a Semi-Truck.

I feel its mental tether tap into my mind and I send through Curiosity and satisfaction.

"How did your first excursion go?? How does it feel?"

Its silky smooth voice replies in my head.

"It was an unpleasant experience at first, the people in that place were suffering and they felt afraid of any of my Armsmen that weren't accompanied by angels. But slowly I created new servants that are fit for interaction and the joy that the people feel is indescribable to a psychic being like myself. Sure I had to psychically reformat a few people's minds to prevent them from committing war crimes before we got to their prisoners but I felt they were justified and the angels agree, those people aren't even dead."

There are edges of uncertainty and a bit of guilt in the last sentences but I let it pass unchallenged, I am not going to mourn war criminals, I might not have agreed with the actions but they are in the field and they had to make a call that saved peoples lives.

"Did you get the secondary target then??" I ask

"Of course, I deployed dozen of agents to secure it" The void leviathan replies. Then he flexes his psionic powers and a portal opens inside the faux-space inside him. The crackling purple portal expands and drops the prize.

A fifteen-foot-tall corpse of a made god, still pristine aside from the sniper shot that splattered its skull across a mountain range. I feel the dregs of divine energy in the thing, enough to make a person a godbound. But I hardly need them for energy, but it does have something I want. They aren't called Made Gods for nothing; each was manufactured by synthesising divine domains and crystalising concepts into a being of unparalleled might. I want to learn how to manipulate and create those Divine Domains and how to tap into large-scale belief systems.

"Wonderful, Project Panapoly is a Go."

---

I kick the floating crystal heart into the wall, and to my frustration, both the wall and the heart stay intact.

"This so fucking stupid. Why would anyone do this?"

The other test subject standing in my divination array shrugs in response.

"You have created a method of forging your own gods, combining an absurd amount of soul and magic manipulation, all to make a glorified mascot. It would be if
I spend a year making a doll for a child." I sigh and pick up the crystalline heart and put it back in the array.

"Hey man, I understand that emotion, if the zerubian stallions need a magical mascot I would build that myself. Sometimes a little hometown pride is what you need." Jack, the other test subject, says.

"No, it's fucking stupid to put so much effort to try and prove your ideology to be the best one, whether it's necro-communism or hydro-agrarianism. Just live and improve your people's lives and not SHATTER THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE." I say with an exasperated sigh.

"Well, you got me there, they did mess up quite badly." He checks the chronosphere on the wall and taps his foot "So how much longer are you going to take, You pay good money but my next appointment can't be pushed."

"Yeah, Yeah. I got you." I wave my hand and the floating mandalas of the diagnostic spells disappear "You are free to go. This is likely going to be the final session. The comparative data between you and that Made God is done. I can see how to replicate your Godbound Self apotheosis mechanism alongside the divine generation of a Made God. As promised, this information won't be used on this plane."

I hand him a pouch of holding, containing a 100 metric ton of mithril. It's comparatively much easier to transmute and conjure, compared to my unobtainium. But Jack's people will probably be able to set up their magical infrastructure with it once they buy it off him.

He belongs to the third expedition, with the Void Levithan pods evacuating their shards after the hyper-consumeristic society drove themselves to near extinction with their exploitation of their local metaphysics. I have woven protection spells into the shard's laws, there will be no kleptocrat selling people the physics to use electricity here.

But for all that, these people are often the simplest to interact with in some ways, they just want money and I have an unlimited source of that. Of course, I burnt out the souls of the magnates that hoarded the laws of reality on their shards first, that is the unimaginable level of greed that deserves non-existence.

"Thanks, Ajax. Hit me up in the future if you ever need a guinea pig." Saying that Jack transforms into a massive dragon and flies to his people's city.

I do some further experiments on the data for a few hours before I move on to my next significant improvement to the shard.

I fly through the window and over the burgeoning stronghold that is serving as my base of operations. A cultivated forest, full of glowing Pandoran trees stretches as far as the eyes can see. Magic pulses through the entire forest, in rhythms and waves of nature fueling and being fueled in turn by the forest. Spirits and magical animals frolic in the meadows and dales, thanator packs hunting Dino-mammoths. Life shapers toil in their Home Tree Bases, giant citadels of shaped and reinforced wood and living magic, leaking essence into their territories, claiming the land for their experiments. They are pushing their craft forward, creating new and unique life forms.

I fly to one such Home Tree, notably distinct by its Living Iron Bark and the intermittent sparks of lightning that roar through the canopy. Its leaves glow with inner luminescence, forming digital patterns.

This is the solution I have crafted for Alicia's suggestion of trade and information exchange preventing bloodshed.

I flow through an opening and into the heart of the tree.

I am greeted by a team of Lifeshaper Leshys and Shamans, shapeshifted into green-skinned humans to put the other members of the team at ease.

The other members are humans in lab coats, holding digital pads and computational devices. They are some of the best data scientists and system architects from a dozen different refugee groups, chosen and hired to develop the digital side of my creation. I have to admit I have no idea how to make functional information systems.

But I will also gladly claim I did a hell of a job on the hardware and metaphysical side.

"Heya boss finished with the side project. We were just finishing up the last diagnostic checks and everything looks good." Frank Adamns, my chief software, says while handing me the progress report.

"That's good to hear. Any problems on the UI side of things? I know you had a lot of trouble adapting to it." I ask to make sure they had solved the last major problem we had.

"Yeah, the essence tactile controls are hard to intuit but once you get used to them they are efficient, you can't beat intent-based inputs for control."

I smile at the response and nob contently. I spent months designing it and it feels good that it's ready to be deployed.

"I will be ready to send you guys your bonuses. Keep your chin up Mr Adamns, you have shaped history here." I pat him on his back, my 6-foot frame tiny in front of his 8-foot gene-engineered frame. He is a former cyborg warrior slave. He learned to code and broke his control shackles, leading a rebellion against his controllers. I offered to regrow his biological body and he happily accepted. He did request some enhancement, just so he and his cyborg comrades still have their usual level of performance because their corporate overlords still existed and sent assassins against him.

"I still have concerns, sir. The amount of power that anyone that controls these will be immense, I know you said they will prevent any monopolising but I still think you should have a more decentralised system." Frank raises our often-discussed issues again.

"I agree with you in principle Mr Adamns. It just didn't work out mystically. The ontological density required for them doesn't work properly without a centralised system." I repeat.

I should explain the system, to give context to the conversation.
First came the physical base. Which was a project by itself to figure out, took me 3 weeks' worth of work.

The Server Tree's Body is made up of living metals, magically imbued metals that can grow and change just like wood might do. The outer layer is Iron Bark, enchanted to withstand dozens of Archmages attacking it and acting as backup magic batteries, to store any excess generated magic. The more magic they hold the stronger their defences.

Everything Internal is an Unobtanium, the superconductor perfect for all the magical and processing needs of the project. It forms everything internally and serves as the processing and magical substrate for processing.

Then comes the magical bits.

The tree is host to a non-sapient spirit of knowledge and information. It was a hell of a time figuring out how to create an inherently paradoxical creature like a spirit of knowledge that can't think. In the end, I opted to create it as a Golem/Spirit hybrid. Golems are much more singleminded, they just wish to perform their function. So I crafted a Spirit/Golem whose purpose is to store, process, compute and present information. The actual coding was done by the people I hired but I directed the metaphysical process of creation.

I attached the essence generation framework to the spirit so that its influence will spread and grow stronger as it ages.

The essence will act as the interface as well. Since anything the essence is imbued into counts as part of the spirit/golem/tree, it can serve as an interface, as the spirit uses its power to read the intentions of the users and project the information in whatever format the user needs.

Of course, there are risks of someone trying sympathetic magic to try and attract spirit throughout its interface but that is why the metaphysical oomph is required so that any curse will slide right off its wards.

There are other miscellaneous things like how the spirit will grow stronger and gain more computation power as its information density increases, due to being a spirit of knowledge and gaining strength from more information. That is also a problem I had to fix.

Because my scientist pointed out to me, that if the magical density of the spirit continues to rise with time, then it would inevitability turn into some sort of informational singularity god-being, probably over 10000s of thousands of years but the problem still exists, I have to plan for the long haul.

So my solution is simple, the trees will deposit a portion of their power and knowledge into seeds that will grow into full Trees Of Knowledge. Neatly solving both my problems of the Singularity and Propagation of the infrastructure.
"But I have thought of two more ways to at least mitigate it. You can never really remove the advantage of the centralised infrastructure. But we can mitigate it. You should choose what options I employ." I put forth the offer I have been thinking of to Adamn. I truly don't know what the better option is, divination doesn't work with the integrated mind-blank. So let's hear it from the expert for this, and his team of course.

"What do you have in mind, I have some Ideas I want to suggest as well. I wonder if we can make it so that the Spiritual Interface itself acts as an anti-monopolising measure, I am thinking of a system that wants to be more equitable." Frank says with the conviction of a man that has suffered at the hands of tormentors and wants to help make sure that never happens again.

"I can't do that, even a little bit of intentionality in the golem/spirit will quickly be warped into a malign intelligence as soon as it gains more power. My idea was to make an order of guardian beings, something created to serve and make sure that access to the network is not impeded by anyone. The creations will be non-sapient of course, no need for a potential order of power hoarders to form." I counter his conviction because I had to think on a larger scale "Besides, decentralisation should occur naturally over time. People will develop their infrastructure that can treat the Trees just as another data centre. There is a reason I had you make sure the coding is designed to interface with even the most alien architecture."

"That won't work, without dynamic decision making, the defenders will lose against constant attempts, remember they only have to succeed once while they would have to stand unfettered for a millennium." Frank says, smashing my idea with the brutal wrecking ball of truth "The same applies to any sort of fate blessing, worthiness enchantment and any other sort of active defences. People will grow familiar with the system and eventually overcome them."


"Then what do you suggest? We are at an impasse, I think our current precautions are enough. The essence radius will grow larger and larger, eventually, everyone will have access to it." I reply, out of ideas.

"The best I have got for you that isn't a personal scale version of those is to create repeaters and extenders. Make sub-golems that act as range extenders for the essence and act as multiple points of contact for potential access to magical computing." He mutters, half in thought, clearly something he was still thinking through.

"That's just smaller trees, that will happen regardless as their gain more information and sprout more offspring." I sigh "I think we just have to take the risk and just do it."

A look of anger passes through his face but he composes himself, no doubt some skill he learned to hide when he was planning his escape.

"Very well then. As the final arbiter of the project you may do as you wish. But I won't be part of this, I am leaving. I can't work for someone so negligent." He hands me his magical security bracelets.

"Me too." "I will follow frank anywhere" "Eh, I didn't like the anyway."

A chorus of resignations follows his announcement, both human and leshy alike. Those who believe in his ideals drop the bracelets at my feet and walk out of the lab.

A majority of the scientists stay but I can't help but notice the most brilliant ones went with Frank Adamns.

But I can't stop now, I have already spent so much time in this world and my wanderlust is stirring within me again. The Void Levithan fleets and the angels are doing their job, the shard is stable and expanding, I have nearly decoded the data of the divinity and most of my infrastructure idea is done. I can't just let it be as well, there are already reports of conflict between nations. I think it is worth it to try Alicia's Idea and that it can help a lot of people. So I will push through and whatever happens with the Trees of Knowledge is up to the people now.