.
As I walked along the path leading away from the portal, I again felt my mind opening up as it basked in the rich energy of my small world.
I– as Senhion– built this place following instructions from Oranos in order to achieve this result.
Most of the Descendants of captain rank and above arranged some sort of abode before our Descent. We had seen it as a necessity in the early days, in order to give ourselves a stable base in a world which would be changing at a speed no celestial maiden could be accustomed to. The captains would lend their abodes as retreats for the rank-and-file, while the higher ranks would stay ready to implement other uses for their independent small worlds, as new needs became apparent.
But Oranos had a certain concern about the celestial maiden with the most unique background. All the rest had come up from the Mortal Realm at some point in the distant past, usually as Entrants though Samsara. In some corner of their memory, the experience of that very different reality survived.
Even though he had enthusiastically recruited me, he was worried that I had no such experience. I was that rarest of birds, an Immortal who had begun from the very inception of her soul as an Immortal.
In order to expand their wisdom, my parents sought to study the male and female forms that defined the archetype for the human clade, even when those at their level normally grew out of them. Together, they investigated living as a pair, an essential component of that definition. After a few tens of thousands of years of research, they decided to carry that experience forward to its next step. Thus, they descended from their home in the Harmonic Realms down to the Fundamental Realm, a place where they could safely bring a newborn mind to life.
When I write, it sounds cold and clinical, but I assure you it was not. My parents may have done all these steps with a carefully selected partner out of intellectual curiosity, but what they had chosen to immerse themselves in was a process that can only be described as Love. It might have been a consciously created condition, done for the purpose of broadening their understanding of being human, but they were deeply and devotedly in love with each other.
While I haven’t been in contact with them for ten thousand years, I have no doubt they still are in love. Ten thousand years isn’t that long. My original mother Ascended from a race in the Mortal Realm that has been extinct for a half-billion years. My original father is considerably younger, but he is still over a hundred million. Ten thousand years, for these people, is barely a fling.
In particular, Oranos worried that the stress of living in the Mortal Realm would be made worse for me by the terribly thin levels of spiritual energy. I had lived in a deep sea of it since conception. Could I even breathe in the rarified spiritual atmosphere of Huade?
That’s why we made this world. It was not just as a retreat, but a potential lifeboat, should it prove impossible for me to live long-term on Huade. I could use it to recharge when I needed, or, if it became necessary, as my survival shelter until Oranos could release me from my Mortal Realm body and carry me back to the Fundamental Realm and my stored Immortal body.
That plan was all well and good in theory, but one problem remained in practice. How to create such a refuge? The other small worlds and immortal abodes were simply extradimensional pockets connected to the universe in which Huade exists. Their mana was Huade’s mana, and their spiritual energy was Huade’s spiritual energy.
We did it by finding a universe with nearly the same mana structure, but close to the highest spiritual density in all of the Mortal Realm. It has two extra mana types, Metal and Wood, but they map together with the Earth of that universe into the Earth of Huade. We built my small world in that universe, then connected it through the Void to a miniature small world of Huade’s universe, which then connected to Huade.
That fact has some advantages. Little Jia can move the portal location around, and play games like teleporting an entire air boat across. She can do so because the Huade small world is about a thousandth of an inch thick and a mile in diameter… but getting into the extradimensional geometry of the thing is digressing a bit, isn’t it? We discovered that advantage after the fact, after all.
The advantage that we meant to achieve– the high spiritual density– gave us something that didn’t exist anywhere else on Huade: a place where Fundamental Realm spirit beasts could exist. Also, a place where Immortal avatars were far easier to create.
We used the avatars for the obvious purpose; to easily have meetings with the supervisors, Oranos and company, in an intermediate location where the entropic backlash could be buffered. And if I am to be frank, we also used it when Oranos and I agreed to conceive a child. We didn’t have the many long decades that were normally required to create an avatar on Huade, you see, so Oranos visited me here, where the avatar build time was a matter of hours.
I also used it for one other thing. I had a beloved spirit beast pet, and, while spirit beasts cannot survive on Huade, they can survive here in my spiritually-dense small world.
When we Descended, Little Jia was aware enough to understand that she had been evolving and becoming smarter through the centuries, so when I explained to her that she could grow faster if she helped me with world management, she was eager to do it. I would have brought her here even if she didn’t agree to that, because the environment allowed her to live here as a regular spirit beast, but Jia has the same helpful, want-to-be-part-of-the-work-and-the-play attitude that most members of the dog clade possess, so she agreed with enthusiasm.
Speaking of helpful doggos, mine came running up the path toward me in her canine form after I walked only twenty paces.
Commander! You’re back! she declared just before repeating the leap-into-my-arms maneuver. After we had confirmed our bonds with an appropriate amount of fluffage…
… well maybe I went a little long with that part, but after that, I asked her, “What’s the elapsed time since I was last here?”
Her head tilted at a quizzical angle. Can’t you retrieve that yourself, Commander?
I gave her a sheepish smile. “I still have many things buried too deep in the past. Don’t forget, I’m dealing with a Mortal Realm brain. I’m made of matter right now, not spirit essence. It affects my mind.”
Her brows wrinkled, which as you probably know is adorable on a pupper. The spiritual vessel of an Elder should protect you from that.
“Only if it is whole. The Affliction destroyed the one I possessed originally, and I lost whatever amount I had regained through the millennia when somebody forced me down into one of the lowest-ranked Mortal Realm worlds during my last reincarnation. All I have right now is what I’ve regrown in the last couple months.”
Jia’s eyes widened, then her head and ears dropped. I’m very sorry, Commander. I did not realize how severe your condition was.
“It’s part of what I came to fix, Sweetie,” I told her while rubbing her head to cheer her up. “And you can help me with it while I’m here.”
Whatever you need me to do, Commander, just tell me!
I smiled and assured her, “I will. For now, just tell me the elapsed time since I left.”
She let out a small “wurf”, then answered, It is slightly more than three complete days. I ran the time compression at seventy to one until the requested interval had elapsed, then ran compression in reverse to speed the time until you arrived!
Worried, I asked, “And what about right now?”
If she still had the compression reversed, making us experience time dilation, and she was using a high enough value, months could be going by on Huade while we chatted.
Once you entered, I set it to the default 1:1 ratio, awaiting further instructions, Commander.
Relieved, I nodded. “Please resume the seventy to one ratio. What’s the in-world time?”
Approximately sixty three percent of the daylight period.
We had initially expressed time in the Elder Age as a stated fraction through the day side or the night side. Since that varied with location and season, we soon learned to divide the day into constant units, but the initial system never ended, here where the day and night were constantly the same length. We were currently sixty three percent of the way from when the daytime half of the day began. In other words, it was early afternoon.
“Right now, do you have a home location set up for me?”
I reconstructed your old cottage for you, Commander! she declared, looking proud of it. It’s in the same location, and it has the patio and garden that you liked so much.
“This body has acquired a strong Water mana component, similar to how I became when I adapted to working in the oceans. I have to take frequent baths because of it, so can you have the pool added to my garden, like I had during that time?”
Certainly, Commander! I’ll have it done in thirty percent!
“Uh… For now, let’s use hours and minutes, like the locals.”
Yes, Commander, then it will be a little under four hours.
I nodded. “I need a dip now, so I think I’ll go for a swim in the ocean. Have the others gather at my home for dinner once the construction work is done.”
Will do, Commander!
She jumped out of my arms and scampered away. She could have converted to spirit form and went where she was going in a matter of milliseconds, but dogs love to run, after all.
I hopped briefly into the air to reach the edge of the island. At this location, I could see two of the neighboring islands, floating on a nearly invisible, placid sea. I had landed on a grassy lawn with a slight rocky drop-off of a half-dozen or so inches down to the surface. This close, I could see the nature of the ‘water’ in my fairy sight.
It was a substance that simply cannot exist on Huade or Earth. It was nearly the same physical makeup as the atmosphere I was breathing, but dense with intensely thick Water mana. The mana stayed on its side of the surface; the air above that surface was heavy with Wind mana, and the two mana types simply didn’t mix because the rules of the small world were forcing different ratios on either side of the surface.
The light was crisp and warm today. I cannot say the same about the sun, because this world has no sun. The source is the stars surrounding us, both above and below. They decrease to mere pinpoint night-lights at dusk, and intensify to fill the sky above and the ocean below with blue at dawn, with each transition passing through the spectrum between cyan and indigo. Without the diffraction of a curved atmosphere, there’s no reds, oranges or yellows here.
The intensity varies day-to-day, as does the cloud cover. Today was like a gentle summer day, just right for a swim.
After removing my sword harness, I undid the clips holding my gorget and the strap across my back for my cuirass. A couple buckles associated with my arm armor and lower parts later, and I had slipped out of almost everything. Doffing my gauntlets, sabatons and thigh-high stockings… I mean, greaves… I stepped down to the water’s edge, glorying in the warm daylight on my skin.
The sense of being home almost overwhelmed me as I dove down into the ocean-like sky.
