244, 1/2

The dungeon was set, the memory on the other side of the gate would hold, with all 9s listed on the timer above the path. The path lay directly in the hallway of the grand cathedral that held the Censer, so there was some worry that one of the memories of people would accidentally walk through the gate and end up in the dungeon. But that didn’t happen. The people on the other side didn’t even notice the existence of the gate, and when they walked away from the Censer on a collision course with the gate, they simply walked through the space as though it did not exist.

Because it didn’t exist; not for them. For them, this dungeon, this modern time, was immaterial and false. They were made of Darkness and mana and memory, and a whole lot of Elemental Dream, too. But then again, all the Elements within the Dark’s reality were real. They were certainly more real than the Particles on this side of the gate.

Erick announced the next task, “Now we just have to figure out how to bring things from that side onto this side. We’ll start with some of the trinkets on the walls and all of that; try to figure out how to turn Elemental Stone into granite, which is mostly oxygen, but also silicon and aluminum and potassium and all of that junk. Now would be a good time to research the Grand Translation magic at the start of the Script, I think.”

Solomon opined, “Or you could just try some Wizardry. Maybe based on some [Physical Domain] Wizardry, to inject some physicality into it all.”

Erick nodded, saying, “That sounds like a good base understanding of it all; yes. Especially for the Censer itself. That thing looks like it might be pure Destruction… And adamantium. Whatever adamantium was made of back then, anyway. It certainly wasn’t osmium like it is now.”

Debby said, “Well maybe it was, actually. There was that theory you bandied about regarding the Goddess of Knowledge and how she had to have known what Particles were, if people were transubstantiating between the Old Cosmology and other Cosmologies all the time; Planars and such. They even sacrificed her in order to get at that knowledge, so she had the knowledge, at least there at the end.”

Erick considered that very valid point. And then he said, “Well yes. She was the source of the Grand Translation magic. Perhaps she knew lesser Translations, too… Or someone did. Or someone still does… Or maybe not anymore, because Knowledge was Sacrificed and no one codified Particles until I came along.

“As far as I know, people who come into Veird from elsewhere are codified in the Script, and the Registrars have Translation Magic to facilitate communication, but people aren’t transformed into other forms. I don’t believe that the Script has any innate Grand Translation magic anymore, so we have to figure this out ourselves. But we could just ask someone? Hard to know without asking someone…” Erick hummed. He continued, “Anyway. I made that pure-Benevolence scroll a few weeks ago. Maybe I can reverse the process. I might have to, actually, since I’m getting the feeling that that sort of magic was truly Sacrificed for the greater good of Veird.”

“You know…” Solomon said, “I kinda think that’s why it took so long for Particle Magic to be made.” As people looked to him for explanations, Solomon said, “We’ve already gone over it once, but perhaps there is no memetic threat. Perhaps the Sacrifice of Knowledge is truly what stopped advancements for so long.”

Debby frowned a little, saying, “No. There’s a memetic threat out there. I am sure of it.”

“Well yeah,” Solomon admitted. “I’m pretty sure there is, too, but there is value in pursuing less obvious answers to questions about the current state of the world. So let’s all keep an open mind.”

Erick could find no fault with that, and it looked like no one else could, either.

Poi moved on first, saying, “I can already tell you that no one knows how to properly Translate mana into particles, and that the Grand Translation magic that was used at the beginning of the Script is no longer a retrievable function of the Script, because that functionality was lost sometime between the Death of all Halves and the Rage Wars. A lot of stuff was lost back then.”

Erick said, “Oh. Well…”

Poi continued, “There have been a lot of attempts at regaining… Ah. Well that’s something obvious I didn’t think of. Maybe we do still have Grand Translation Magic in the Script after all.”

While Poi had spoken, Erick’s mind spun into a thousand directions, eventually distracting the sapphire scaled man. As others looked from Poi to Erick, they wondered what was up.

Erick simply said, “The Grand Translation is just an instantiation of possibility into solid form based on this reality. In the greatest sense, we already have examples of this happening in this very day, like how Familiars become real people, or how shadelings crawl out of the shadows. One day soon, maybe 3 months away, Ophiel is going to become a real soul and he will create a real body at that time.”

Ophiel flapped his wings on Erick’s shoulder, asking, “I will?”

“Yes you will,” Erick said, “Which leads me to believe that either the Script still has Grand Translation magics in it —highly likely; almost assuredly— or it’s easy for mana to create real things, when in a proper environment. So! Here’s what I want to do: Leave the Censer on that side for days or a week, or whatever, while we research Translation Magic. We might not have to search for long, though, because I am reasonably sure that I can make a Translation happen, even without knowing the exact way all the particles go together. All I have to do is guide the Script and Particles over into that side of reality, while also calling on the mana to support such a translation.” He said to Debby, “This would probably be that mag-9 Particle Magic we were talking about.” He said to everyone, “It would be a multiversal pull using the possibility provided by mana as a baseline resource and the underlying nature of the current visual and mana-soaked reality as a catalyst or sounding board toward getting the real thing.

“I think I could send out a pulse of power, probably using [Physical Domain] like Solomon suggests, into an item, in order to make that item recognize itself along the parameters of this universe. Like using a picture of a thing in order to make the thing.”

Erick felt he was touching upon some universal truth in that statement; perhaps quite literally.

The others were less convinced.

Poi gave a concerned-yet-hiding-it, “Okaaaay.”

Solomon said, “You’re considering that ‘particles’ are the ‘mana’ of this universe, and thus a translation is possible through the possibilities provided by a multiverse just on the other side of sight.”

“Yes!” Erick said, “You get it!”

Jane spoke up, “Now I’m not one to usually suggest this, but perhaps you should just talk to Rozeta about this. Or Quilatalap. Or any of the others. Use them as a sounding board before you go doing the same with reality itself.”

“Well yes,” Erick said, “I could do that. But not yet. We’re not really at that point.”

Solomon said, “And besides. All this shit is basically just [True Resurrection] magic, anyway, and you already know how to do that.”

Erick side-eyed him, saying, “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“Explain how,” Solomon said, challenging him.

“Those people beyond the gate can be Soul Magic’d over here, sure. But artifacts often do not have souls, and so using Soul Magic on them and expecting it to work would be like eating soup with a toothpick,” Erick said. “Souls are easy to build bodies around. Souls want to be inside bodies. Artifacts have complicated magical reinforcements that are completely disconnected from each other. You couldn’t build a car from a headlight. But you could build a car from a blueprint and metals and a bunch of actual work.”

Solomon said, “Aye, that’s a complication. But do you really think that these items don’t have souls? That Censer is probably even an artifact that makes its own mana; it certainly looks culturally significant to me.”

“… Point,” Erick said.

Debby spoke up, “Bodies are super complicated, but souls can build those all the time. This is a Healing Magic problem, isn’t it? Perhaps we do need a god’s help in this part.”

Erick thought. Solomon considered.

Candice was kinda checking out of the magic conversation, for she muttered, “I thought we had gotten past the most difficult part.”

Beth said, “This was never going to be easy.”

“I think it’s interesting,” Emily said, “But I’m not sure I can help right now.”

Jane tried to cut through the gordian knot, “Make the dungeon do the work.” She added, “Or really, Melemizargo.”

Erick instantly said, “The problem with that is that no one will accept such artifacts.”

“They’ll barely accept them anyway,” Solomon said, “The chances of them working as they’re supposed to work and being what we want them to be are higher if we get divine help, yes, but then we’re beholden to gods.”

“And that’s not good,” Debby said.

“Oh! I just thought—” Erick suggested, “What about working along an Elemental Dream axis in order to reach a targeted Reality and bring it to reality? Like summoning a fae through Fairy? Or an angel or demon through Angel or Demon?” He gestured to the land beyond the gate. “That is a Dream, after all.”

Before the conversation could tangle further, Poi spoke up, “Let’s circle back to your original statement: Let’s bring some trinkets from that side to this side and try to make them real before we go after the Censer.”

Beth was very ready to get past the talking stage of this ordeal, so she instantly said, “On it!” as she started walking fast toward the gate.

Erick shouted, “There are—! … Still people on that side. Hmm.”

Beth was already through the gate, up and over in the Dark Dream within a handful of moments.

What happened next was surprising in many different ways.

The Cathedral of Destruction was what the place was known as, according to the words coming from the priests and otherwise as they gave their speech, as they watched over the continued destruction of some sort of artifact, which filled the land with knee-height heavy black smoke. There were a lot of simple facts displayed there, as all of that happened. But one of them suddenly stood out to Erick, as more important than all the rest. Those people were speaking Ecks. That fact hadn’t quite registered to Erick, or the others, until now, for some reason.

The entire ceremony had been in Ecks.

Erick knew the language they were speaking on the other side. This ancient language was known.

How the fuck?

Which made it all the more terrifying, in an existential sort of way, when Beth stepped onto the floor of the Cathedral, ignoring the smoke layered across the ground, headed straight for a pew, where some loose papers were stored in a slot behind the pew ahead. Those prayer papers were an easy target; they looked mass-produced, and there were a hundred pews in the cathedral that held similar papers. They were a good base for a repeatable experiment. She grabbed those loose prayer sheets—

And a priest at the Censer called out, “Ma’am! Worship isn’t for another cycle! You shouldn’t be in here!”

Beth acted fast, “Sorry, sir!” She plucked the papers and was already on her way out, saying, “I didn’t mean to interrupt! Don’t mind me; leaving right now.”

“Ma’am!” The priest came down from the side of the Censer, saying, “You can’t take—” He stopped still. He stared, watching as Beth stepped into the air, walking up the stairs of the Gate. To him, what Beth was doing had to be some sort of blasphemy, or something, for her to be walking into the air, maybe; Erick wasn’t quite sure. Or maybe he could see the gate? Erick hoped the fuck not. Either way, the priest knew something was up. The priest roared, “GUARDS! Seize— What… Where did she go!”

Just like she had gone too fast for Erick to tell her otherwise, Beth was already through the gate and down the other side, gripping papers in her hands. She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was following while she handed off the disintegrating papers to her father.

No one was following.

Erick took the papers in his aura and flicked a spell of Time into the air, making a bubble of Stopped time atop the ‘papers’. The papers stopped disintegrating. Mostly. But they were also just mana, and like all broken spellwork, they were trying to return to the manasphere. Erick left it there for now; it would keep for a moment while he dealt with the fallout of Beth’s theft.

The priest and his guards, and then a second priest who had been out of view, all started shouting about what they had just seen, or not seen. The priest rushed forward, down the aisle toward the gate, but he stopped halfway to where Beth had vanished.

The guards mercilessly advanced. The guard on the left was a woman with pointed ears and blood-red eyes, who had some sort of short staff in her hands. She swirled the smoke at her feet and the smoke swirled at her command, flowing forward like several tendrils, headed to the gate—

And passing right through, as though the gate was not there.

The second guard was a man with a halo of silver hovering around the back of his head, looking like a thin razor, or a sword made into a circle. He telekinetically took the razor into his hand as he rushed forward, passing through the gate-occupied space and then beyond. Erick heard the man call out ‘I don’t see them!’

“Fucking shit,” muttered the priest. “Were the parishioners followed? Was that a demon?”

“Absolutely not,” came the voice of the razor-ring man, who was still out-of-frame, and whom Erick now recognized as an alvani; a human/angel man. Before the Old Demons had caused the Death of all Halves in order to make the demon/human incani, the only sort of hybrid of souls that used to be able to exist between those old powers were of the angel/human variety. Or other angelic flavors. Angel/elf was a common one, too. The razor-ring guard stepped back into view, demanding to know, “You felt the Dark and the mana pouring off of her, didn’t you? She was a Shade of the over-god.”

The elf woman instantly fired back, “Do not speak such blasphemy without proof. All she had was a strong manasoul and…” The woman angrily gestured to the space where Beth had vanished. “And some sort of hiding magics. Maybe she was a Wizard-in-training.” She said to the priest, “I don’t believe she was a demon.”

The alvani man said, “I felt a fraction of Vile from her, but there was so much…”

“Hard to say,” said the elf, completing the man’s thought.

The priest stared hard at the land in front of him, as people poked their heads into frame, far down the cathedral. The priest breathed, then said, “I think it was a demon.”

The alvani man shouted, “It wasn’t a demon! It was—”

Erick tuned them out, because Jane was talking.

Jane asked everyone, “Anyone else suddenly finding it fucking terrifying that we can understand them, but they’re speaking other languages? And that we didn’t even think about this with the others with that Purity fountain, who spoke some other language, too?”

Abigail, Beth, Candice, and Debby all tensed.

Emily, Poi, and Solomon, did not.

Poi said, “I’m already trying to understand what happened there. All I can tell right now is that Erick realized this half a minute ago, then I was next, and then Solomon, and now everyone else. There was a clarity of thought that was achieved, that had not been there before. I have no idea what it means.”

The priest and his two guards on the other side of the gate continued to argue about what they had seen. Nothing important had changed there.

Solomon gestured to the prayer sheets, frozen in time. “And those are legible. Wheatly. Come out now.”

Solomon’s staff flashed to fullness beside him, hovering gently, the white crystal at the top glowing softly, as the image of wheat fields held reflected on the silver surface. Words were also on that surface, carved deep and strong. Solomon was already reading the surface, and Erick was, too.

Solomon said, “Don’t see any words I recognize as words, except for the ones I put down myself; ‘Repent all sinners and be spared’.”

Erick didn’t see any words he recognized either, so he moved on to the sheet of paper. It was completely legible. He gestured at the paper, “That’s a prayer to Destruction Itself. No one will be saying those words out loud except me, maybe, in order to instantiate the Censer to this reality. And not right now.”

The argument beyond the gate was reaching a crescendo.

The priest shouted, “This is intolerable and unprofessional! Not only did you two see the anomaly but you let her go! I was the one who actually acted—”

Ring-man said, “And if you would have been calmer, she might have stuck around and we would have gotten answers.”

Smoke elf spoke, “Stop,” and the knee-high smoke rippled with her voice. The other two went silent, but not out of fear; but because they respected her. The smoke elf calmly said, “Might have simply been a fair folk. We can send a letter to Wizard Hewer, with our three accounts of what happened, and then we wait for him to show. In the meanwhile, we secure the area and increase the guards on the Censer, as we would do for any anomalous activity that happened around a Destruction.”

“Ughhh,” Erick and Solomon groaned at almost the same time.

Candice voiced, “That means that if we wait to steal it, it’s just going to get harder?”

“Probably,” Poi said.

“Would another Wizard even be real?” Jane asked.

“I wouldn’t risk it,” Poi said.

Solomon asked, “Chance speaking to them? Try to prevent them from doing anything drastic?”

Emily said, “Sounds to me like they have to actually call their Wizard. He can’t just appear like you can, dad. We might have a window of opportunity here that will close later.”

Emily was right, and everyone else knew it, too.

Erick thought for a moment.

He looked across a gulf of eternity and reality, from the present, to a memory of the deepest past that could be real under the right circumstances. There were many ways to create the ‘right circumstances’. There was that Name Finder artifact from Crystal Archmage Imara, from Greensoil. That red cube was good to use on people. Erick had used that small red cube upon the Riamites who wanted [Reincarnation]s. But before the Name Finder, there was the simple act of experiencing the Other and making it real through constant exposure. The Name Finder was a fast-ways to make that realization happen, but the normal method was the second one. From shadelings coming out of their fugue and realizing they were in a new body and life, to what was happening to Ophiel right now as his soul was gradually being made real…

The smoke elf’s words were grating to the priest and the ring-man’s sensibilities.

Their argument started up again.

Anyone watching the argument quickly found out that something like ‘a person appearing and then leaving without any traces’ did not happen in the Cathedral of Destruction. The smoke elf tried some old-school mana tracing, as one would use for anyone [Teleport]ing in the Old Cosmology, but her trace ended at the gate, and she had no idea what that meant. ‘It shouldn’t be possible!’ she said, more than once. All in all, they had very little methodology for dealing with what they were dealing with.

Some priest on the other side of the cathedral, watching all this happen with the others, had already calmly walked away, saying they would send the signal. No one seemed to be in a real rush, though.

There was time to talk about next steps.

Erick asked, “Beth? How was your mana sense on the other side? Cause mine ends about at the gate, or a little bit beyond.”

Everyone’s mana sense ended at the gate threshold.

Beth said, “It came back once I was through the gate, but it was wonky. Very short.”

All the other girls nodded at that. They had all experienced the land beyond the gate the other time, when it was focused on that Purity Fountain.

“Aura control?” Erick asked.

The girls all said variations of ‘not much’. Beth agreed that this situation here was like the situation before.

Jane said, “Control in the body was easy, but mostly I just attuned to the Dark as much as my slime form allowed, and tried to constrain the mana into my body.”

Candice said, “All that flesh-flaking was our mana destroying our impure body from within.”

“Expelling our particles, yeah,” Beth said. “It’s still the Dark over there.”

Erick nodded, and said, “Well let’s see if this works… and if it does, these people are probably going to awaken as real. So that’ll be fun.”

The group tensed, except for Poi—

As Erick stepped toward the gate and threaded his aura outward, forming a thin line of white glows. His aura reached the gate, and the strange surreality contained within. It was like dipping his toes into ice and knives, and not like either of those two things at all. ‘Pain’ was not the feeling here. More like Erick was touching something that was not meant to be touched.

His aura proceeded anyway, through the gate, flickering lightning—

“Something comes!” said the priest, rapidly backing up from the empty air, almost running back to the Censer. He stopped halfway there.

The warriors had other ideas. More violent ones. The smoke elf rolled smoke at Erick’s aura, disrupting his power all the way back to his side of the gate, while the ring-man’s angelic-powered ring whipped forward in some sort of attack. That ring vanished as it passed through the gate. And then the ring reappeared, slicing back through the space again, in the other direction, to return to the man’s hand.

The elf whispered, “An intangible [Gate].”

The ring man nodded, preparing himself for the worst.

Erick frowned. And then he manipulated his aura to form the words for ‘peace’, which would have been impossible because he didn’t know the words for ‘peace’ in whatever language they were speaking, but ‘peace’ was upon the prayer sheets that Beth had stolen. And so, Erick showed them ‘peace’, disregarding the fact that there was a large disconnect happening right here between how languages got in his head and how they had gotten on the other side, and how all of that worked.

… Mostly disregarding all of that.

The smoke elf almost attacked again, but her smoke pulled back at the last second when she saw the words ‘peace’.

She demanded, “You hear us?”

“… Uh.” Erick looked at the prayer song. “I can’t answer that question based on the information I have.” He looked to Poi.

Poi spoke, “I’m working on it.” His tendrils were through the gate. The people on the other side didn’t seem to sense them, either, which was some sort of miracle or something. “Okay. I’m getting it. What do you want to write?” Erick wanted to ask about how he was making his tendrils invisible, but— Poi answered, “I’m making them not able to see me, but they are on very high alert. I can’t reach the guys in the back, and they’re going to call in reinforcements soon. I’ll give you 2 minutes.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Erick told Poi, “Say ‘I can barely hear you. We’re in another realm.’ We’ll go from there.”

Poi supplied Erick with the words he was looking for, and Erick repeated those words in his aura display, just beyond the gate’s other side.

The warriors tensed as they read, turning solid in the face of an unknown threat—

Poi pulled back. “I got the full language. It’s called ‘Imperial’. They’re in the Endless Empire, in the Farundari Stretch of the Radiant Depths. Year 12,400 according to their calendar—”

“Why are you here? Who was that invader from before? That woman?” the smoke elf asked, her voice slightly louder than before.

Erick had a thought, Poi supplied his words before he even needed to ask, and Erick wrote out, “Your realm is dead. You have been subsumed by the Dark, as a memory. We’re here to rescue you and the Censer, but mostly the Censer. We are still working on how to do all of that, but those are our goals.”

Jane asked Poi, “Do they even have minds to read?”

Poi said, “I don’t know how it works either, Jane.”

Erick left the message there. The people on the other side instantly started debating amongst themselves.

There were suddenly other concerns for Erick, though.

Erick said to his family, “For some reason, as we talk with them, the barrier is getting thicker and deeper. But also thinner, paradoxically. There’s a bigger depth, but the thickness of punching through that depth is easier. Also: according to my All-Seeing Eye, their souls are brightening. I’m pretty sure I could [True Resurrection] all of them if they got close enough to the gate. So that’s one half of the translation problem solved but I still have no idea how to instantiate the Censer.”

“You’d have to [Reincarnation] both of them, too; not just [True Resurrection],” Solomon said. “Alvani cannot exist on this side. Elves are non-grata.”

Jane asked, “Are you really going to bring the people to life?”

Candice added, “They’re not real right now. We do not have to take on this security risk.”

Erick was starting to think Candice was the bloodthirsty one, but they all were like that. Candice just let it show more than the others, when she could.

“Yes we do have to take on this security risk,” Erick said, “Besides! Who else would know how the Censer functions best—”

The very second Erick announced his true intentions, something shifted in the very foundations of existence. The Dark surrounding the slime dungeon flexed. The black ocean roiled—

Fallopolis stepped out of the air, onto the grounds beside Erick’s family. The Shade of Civilization wore a masculine-cut black suit and she held her black kendrithyst crystal staff in her left hand. Her wild, curly white hair bobbed as she stepped forward heavily, her bright eyes happily shining white, as she said, “We are glad you are making the decision to rescue people from Dark Dreams, Erick. Please allow me to witness this event, and to help with the aftermath.”

The gate deepened as Fallopolis spoke.

A pathway became apparent.