Chương 78: Book 2, Chapter 26 — Eye of the Storm, Pt 6

Cale was aware, technically speaking, that a sufficiently powerful magical phenomenon had the potential to create a sort of pocket realm within itself. It was a phenomenon roughly similar to how dungeons were created, though pocket realms weren't anchored into one of the realm's leylines the way most dungeons were. Despite that awareness, it was so rare an event that he didn't really consider it a possibility most of the time.

Across the thousands of lives he could remember, he had encountered a manifestation this powerful exactly twice. He had anticipated that gathering all the remnants of the sacrificed mage's soul might not be enough to calm the storm. He had not anticipated that it would be sufficient to create a pocket realm, or that it would look anything like this. Only moments after they stepped into the storm, the impossible distortions around them seemed to fade away entirely.

It made way instead for vibrant grasslands thick with wild, waist-high flowers with blooms nearly as large as his face. The dark clouds that should have been gathered above them, raining a storm of aspect-attuning mana, abruptly vanished to make way for a clear blue sky. Along with two suns, though they seemed much farther away than the sun of Utelia. Naturally, Cale was immediately suspicious.

Most of the others didn't share that suspicion, but then they hadn't spent nearly as much time being subjected to various magical phenomena as he had. Syphus made a noise of disappointment at the loss of all that sand, of course. Leo, Damien, and Flia all looked around in wonder and amazement. Kazza did not. His grip on Damien's hand tightened, and his expression was one of instinctive alarm.

"Do not let down your barrier," he hissed.

"I do not know what this is, but the storm is still present."

"I know, don't worry," Cale muttered, already looking around for something to guide them. There was a massive tree in the distance that reminded him rather starkly of... Hm. He was starting to wish he had his own Damien.

"This way," he said, walking toward it. His mind was already racing. A manifestation like this was unusual enough, but the way this pocket realm was presenting itself told him in no uncertain terms that some other power was at work here. The tell was that a pocket realm generated by the Aspect Cascade would necessarily be related to the mage that was sacrificed to create it, and unless that mage was somehow from another realm... Well, it wasn't impossible, but Cale thought it was unlikely.

Interference by some other power was his biggest bet, especially since something about this realm struck him as familiar. The only problem was that the few powers he knew capable of doing something like this were all dead. He sighed to himself and tried not to think about it. This kind of interference was more helpful than not—the pocket realm, at least, seemed relatively peaceful. That didn't mean there weren't any dangers, but it was less dangerous than it could have been if someone malicious had interfered.

For now, the plan didn't change. They were here to get to the sacrificed mage's soul and help repair it. Pocket realm or not, the remnants of that soul would be somewhere near the center of the storm, or in this case, most likely somewhere around the giant tree. They had known this was a possibility.

The storm should have calmed when the soul fragments were gathered, but if too much time had passed and the fragments were too degraded, then there was a distinct possibility the fragments would reject each other instead of settling. That would cause the storm to increase in intensity, and if that happened, they'd need to head directly into the storm to finish saving this mage. That they were doing it in a pocket realm was only a minor setback.

"You didn't say anything about this," Leo said, looking around, conflicted. He seemed a little more anxious now, thanks to Kazza's declaration.

"Is it supposed to be like this in the storm? What did you mean, the storm is still here?"

"I do not know. But I continue to feel the storm's... desperation." Kazza's eyes were narrowed, his grip still fixed on Damien's hand.

"I believe this is an illusion, and the storm remains around us."

"Sort of," Cale said.

"I wasn't expecting this to happen, but we're basically inside a pocket realm. It happens sometimes if there's too much magic contained in the same location. My barrier is keeping us from slipping into it completely, so the storm is technically still all around us." The explanation was half-hearted, mostly because Cale was distracted looking around this new pocket realm. The more he thought about it, the more familiar it seemed. He wasn't sure if he'd been here before or if it just reminded him of something.

The tree was one thing, but the two suns and the grass and the size of the flowers...

"Don't step outside the barrier, by the way," Cale added absent-mindedly.

"Normally you wouldn't be able to, but with this sort of partial transportation you have to be more careful. If something looks like it's going to fly in, stay away from it and prepare to blast it. Also, don't try to pick any of the flowers." Flia jerked away from one of the flowers. Most of them simply slid through his barrier like it wasn't even there.

"Why not?"

"It's not fully there, just like we're not fully here," Cale said. He frowned slightly.

"It's hard to explain. This is a kind of pocket realm, but my barrier made it so that we've only stepped one foot inside of it. If the barrier wasn't there, we'd be trapped."" Trapped?" Leo took a step away from the edge of the barrier nervously, and Cale gave him a humorless smile.

"Not the first time it's happened to me," he says.

"But yes. Let me think..." He'd never had to explain the intricacies of pocket realms and the way they interacted with barriers before, but the subject was a convenient distraction for him. Cale carefully sidestepped yet another enormous flower, carefully pretending he didn't recognize the familiar scent intruding on his senses, then eventually settled on something he thought would work.

"Most spatial spells transport you to the target destination," he said.

"But a pocket realm has to be layered on top of an existing realm. Think of it like two bubbles connected to one another. This is how most of the Realms would exist naturally without the Leviathan to keep them apart."

"Which is why the Abyss exists," Flia said, and Cale nodded.

"The Law of What Lies Between prevents the Great Realms from colliding again," he said.

"But Lev doesn't really govern tiny pocket realms like this, so they're allowed to exist as a tiny bubble attached to the realm. Normally, when you move from one to the other, you just pop into it, except the membrane between the pocket realm and the main realm tends to be one-way. You need a specialized spell or ritual to break back out."

"Right." Leo once again stared nervously at Cale's barrier.

"But you're stopping that from happening?"

"More like I'm keeping us enclosed in our own little bubble straddling both Utelia and this pocket realm," Cale said.

"Which has the benefit of allowing us to get back to Utelia, but comes with the disadvantage of allowing dangers in both realms to affect us at once. The metaphor gets a little fuzzy there. The barrier will still protect us from most dangers, and you aren't going to snap immediately to one realm or the other if you exit the barrier, but anything that overlaps can both get through the barrier and carry dangers across."

He paused and frowned, inclining his head toward an otherwise innocent-looking butterfly with shimmering wings fluttering toward his barrier.

"Case in point," he said.

"Should we... do something about that?" Leo asked. Even before he finished asking the question, he was preparing a [Labyrinth Bolt], having paid attention to Cale's earlier warning. Cale grinned at him in response.

"Well, yes. You aren't going to be able to hit it until it's inside the barrier, though." Cale could technically shape his barrier to keep it from entering, but this would work as a relatively safe demonstration.

"Get ready. No guarantee what it's going to turn into."

"What do you mean, what it's going to turn into—" Leo cut himself off as the butterfly fluttered directly into Cale's barrier. There was an odd, twisting, rippling sensation, like two different spaces were bearing down on one another before something slipped through— —and instead of a butterfly, there was now a massive ictharian shark diving down toward them, Cale had underestimated those things.

They certainly looked shark-like from a distance, but this close to them he could appreciate that they looked mostly like a revolting mass of teeth with only the barest hint of fin and tail. Leo let out an unholy screech, but to his credit fired his [Labyrinth Bolt] with unerring accuracy regardless. The shark swerved in an abrupt panic, trying to get out of the way of an invisible, impassable wall that didn't really exist. It dropped straight toward the ground before its teeth began whirring like a drill.

In seconds, it had punched straight through the dirt and escaped underneath the barrier. Leo stared nervously at where it had gone, breathing heavily, but the shark didn't re-emerge. The hole closed itself off moments later, filling in like loose sand instead of packed dirt.

"I guess the overlap point is still in the desert," Cale muttered, frowning. Part of him still felt like there was something here he needed to figure out.

"I was a little worried the pocket realm was technically somewhere else. Sometimes the entrance doesn't line up with where the rest of the realm is. You know how it is with spatial magic. But the storm's still here, so that makes sense." Kazza, like Leo, was staring at the spot where the ictharian shark had vanished.

"Will it return?" he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

"I-I don't think so," Leo said, straightening and trying to pretend he hadn't just been frightened out of his mind." [Labyrinth Bolt] makes the target think they're in a maze. I... think? The spell description is kind of weird. But it should be diving down, toward the flickerant nest tunnels."

"If you cast it with more mana, you could turn your target into a maze," Cale said helpfully. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Leo shot him a horrified look.

"Is that what imposes the Labyrinth onto its target means?" he asked.

"It's a versatile spell! It can do a lot of things," Cale said cheerfully. Leo just swallowed, then grabbed his notebook and took a few more notes, muttering something about being very careful with the spell to himself. Kazza, meanwhile, looked troubled.

"I could sense the storm within the shark, too," he said quietly.

"It was contained, but if it had managed to make contact with any of us..." Cale nodded.

"One of the reasons I'm saying to be very careful with any overlap," he said.

"Anything with mana that overlaps between the realms is going to carry something from Utelia with it, which, considering we're in the middle of the Aspect Cascade, is going to include the Aspect Cascade. The air is safe, and the grass is mostly safe unless you try to uproot it. Same with the flowers. Anything you can touch is probably contaminated, though." Leo swallowed, looking worried again.

"How did my spell affect it, then, if it was a piece of the Cascade?"

"That's a really good question." Cale thought about it for a moment.

"I have no idea. Spatial spells are weird, and pocket realm overlaps are doubly so. I just know it works! But if you ever decide to do a thesis on it, you should let me know what you figure out." Flia hummed thoughtfully, though she looked uneasy.

"Whatever this place is, it's beautiful," she said quietly.

"Do you think it exists somewhere else in the Great Realms? Or is this just going away once we heal the Cascade?" Cale hesitated, now slightly uncomfortable. He looked up at the tree, then jerked his gaze away like the sight had burned him; honestly, how had he ended up in a pocket realm with a giant tree, of all things?

"It feels a little familiar," he said carefully.

"So something like this probably does exist somewhere in the Great Realms. Pocket realms always draw from something, usually someone's memories." The only real question was whose memories this was drawing from, and Cale was doing his best not to ask that question. He was hoping no one else would, either.

"Is this what it's like for you?" Damien asked suddenly, which was not the question he had been worried about but made him flinch anyway. Especially with the pity—or sympathy, he supposed, if he was being generous—he could hear in the dreadshade's voice.

"What do you mean?" he asked carefully. If one"When you appear in another realm," Damien clarified.

"It has to happen sometimes, right? Something looks beautiful and inviting, but you don't know what might hurt you and what might not?" Cale grumbled under his breath. Apprentices. Too perceptive by half, apparently. This was why he'd stopped taking them, except these ones also reminded him that it was actually worth it after all, and for once he actually felt like sharing.

"Sometimes," he admitted, and then he grinned.

"Believe it or not, that's not even the first time I've been attacked by a butterfly within minutes of entering a new realm."

"What was the first time?" Syphus asked curiously, rolling up beside him.

"Oh, you know," Cale said dismissively, then paused.

"Or, uh, I guess you wouldn't, huh? They were called glasswing fairies. Not relation to actual fairies, mind you, and I think actual fairies would be pretty upset about that name. Probably don't use that one around them. But basically their wings look like beautiful stained glass, and they're overlaid with perspective magic."

"Perspective magic?" Leo asked, frowning.

"Like illusions!" Cale explained, warming up to this whole talking-about-his-past thing. Especially since this one wasn't too personal, even if it had technically nearly killed him.

"Have you ever seen one of those two-dimensional paintings that look three-dimensional from certain angles? Perspective magic makes things real when you look at them from the right perspective. Costs less mana than actual conjuration and can create effects conjuration can't, but the activation condition is harder to achieve. Also it's cool in theory but an absolute nightmare to fight."

"What's fighting them like?" Damien asked. Cale had a sudden thought and glanced over at his apprentice, who returned his look with the most innocent gaze he could muster.... Was Damien trying to keep him distracted on purpose? Had he noticed the way he kept glancing at that tree? Bah. He didn't need the help! He could distract himself just fine, thank you very much. Though it was nice to have that help. Bah. Apprentices.

"If you ever have to fight perspective magic, the best thing you can do is to keep your eyes closed and use your mana sense," Cale said after a moment.

"Of course, perspective mages know this, so the more alternate senses you have, the better. Anything they can't take advantage of is good. Otherwise, you have to be really careful where you look.

"Glasswing fairies are still in the lower tier of perspective-based dangers, really. Their wings usually depict mouths and faces? Stuff like that. It's only horrifying the first few times a face rushes out of them and tries to eat you, and after that it's mostly fine." Cale shrugged.

"Though it was pretty bad the first time. One of the reasons I keep a barrier up at all times! You only need to get eaten by a magically conjured face once to decide not to repeat the experience. He paused contemplatively.

"I guess that technically wasn't the only time I got eaten by a magically conjured face..." Then Cale trailed off, noticing the expressions of his apprentices.

"What? You asked," he said, snickering.

"Like I said, it's not too bad once you know what to expect. The real danger is with full perspective mages. They can create a horizontal pit that make you fall into the painting if you so much as glance in its direction, along with all sorts of weird stuff like that. And they're full of tricks to make you look the direction they want you to. I know what you're doing, by the way."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Damien denied immediately. Cale rolled his eyes.

"Sure you don't," he said, smirking.

"But thank you anyway. For the hypothetical thing you're not doing."

"You're hypothetically welcome. Um. For the thing I'm definitely not doing." Yeah, he was definitely going to stay on Utelia as long as he could. Even if it did keep throwing these curveballs at him. Cale suppressed his shudder as they finally began to pass into the shadow of the tree.

"Is that a door?" Flia muttered, squinting at the base of its trunk.

"Huh. Don't think I've ever seen one of those before. You think that's where the mage's soul is?"

"Eh. It's a narratively significant tree," Cale said with a shrug.

"Pocket realms are even more beholden to karmic backlash than any of the Great Realms. The soul wouldn't be able to hide anywhere else. The realm itself is kind of weird, but that's probably just because of where the Aspect Cascade is."

"On top of the desert?" Flia asked, frowning. Cale waved a hand dismissively.

"Sort of," he said.

"The place feels familiar. I wouldn't worry about it, it's actually helping us a little. Imagine if we ended up in a place with more butterflies. We would've had our hands full even getting here." He hesitated.

"But it's probably best we get this over with sooner rather than later. You know, just in case." The presentation of the tree was majestic, even if Cale was doing his best to avoid thinking about it. The inside of it, on the other hand, was less tree and more violent soulstorm. All six of them stared awestruck at the soul fragments—now visible and glowing white but torn at the edges, like a wounded and macabre jigsaw puzzle—whirling around each other like a miniature hurricane.

Every so often, they would snap together as if attempting to meld, only for a flash of light and crackle of soul-lightning to blast them apart again. Or something. Soul-lightning wasn't actually a real term; Cale had made it up. But the soul fragments were basically creating a miniature storm and the sound it made certainly matched that of lightning, so it felt accurate enough. The reality of it probably had more to do with the failed merge releasing a burst of energy.

"They can't remember who they are," Flia said softly, her voice pained. Cale glanced at her, his gaze suddenly sharp.

"You can feel why this is happening?"

"I can." Flia's voice trembled slightly, but she took a step forward regardless, stopping before she reached the edge of the barrier. There, she took a deep breath.

"I think I know what to do. Can you let it inside the barrier?"

"Just be careful," Cale said, his voice softening. He expanded the barrier, pushing it out until the soulstorm as a whole was included within the overlap. As he expected, the glowing pieces of the mage's soul flew through his barrier like it wasn't even there. They were anchored to Utelia, not to the pocket realm. Even more importantly, as the source, it didn't seem to bring over the violent storms of the Aspect Cascade through the overlap. This close, he could feel the nature of the sacrificed mage's soul.

Cale almost held his breath as the whole of it entered his senses, but he needn't have worried; nothing about it seemed familiar. He let out a sigh of relief. Conflicted relief, but relief. He had been starting to wonder, with the strangeness of the pocket realm and all the other oddities... but it was better not to hope for such things, and besides, he would have no idea what to do if this was actually someone he knew. Cale watched as Flia knelt before the storm and conjured her [Water Sphere].

Now that she had a Spark of her own, there was a distinctly different feel to her magic—she hadn't lost her ability to connect with the Abyss, but she had gained something. The beginnings of her very own Law, a Spark she could use to connect with those she considered lost or left behind. Whoever this mage was, they surely qualified. Whoever this mage had been before this, they had been reduced to nothing more than someone whose mistakes created a ruinous disaster, and their pain used to fuel a weapon.

Cale could feel Flia reaching out, trying to connect with what remained of the mage's mind. His apprentices, he noticed, had all come up to her to offer their support. He smiled to himself. He really had found the best apprentices. The Red Knight flew through the Golden Sands. It did not have any thoughts about its mission, for it was commanded not to think. Nor did it need to.

The only thing that was required of it was that it follow any instruction given to it, and today, its instructions were to investigate the fortress in the Golden Sands and proceed as necessary. It had taken some time for it to actually find the fortress, strangely enough. Teleporting to the desert was a simple thing, but the Aspect Cascade scrambled its senses and made it difficult for it to find what was ostensibly a second storm roaming about the place.

For a while, it simply rocketed in a simple grid-based search pattern, tapping into the Observers' scrying spells to locate where this second storm might be. It found itself... lagging behind, somehow, which was strange. Apparently, this fortress was capable of moving far more quickly than it had anticipated. That fact was filed quickly under its "investigate the fortress" task. When it finally caught up with the fortress, the storm around it had already faded.

The Red Knight did not know what to do with this, but it had been commanded to investigate or destroy. It walked into the fortress and looked around, finding nothing except a trace of magic that appeared to lead into the nearby Aspect Cascade. Which, now that it thought about it, appeared to have grown in power. For the first time, the Red Knight felt a glimmer of curiosity. It sensed that several mages had been here. Had they willingly walked into the Cascade?

That was a death sentence for virtually any being of magic. Would following them into the storm be considered a part of its investigations? It had technically already fulfilled its duties, but it also had been told that nothing should interfere with the Red Hunters' plans. If by some impossible feat these mages survived the Cascade, they might be able to disturb it. It was faced with a conundrum. If it simply destroyed the fortress and left, it would have completed its orders. But it was curious.

Why and how had mages entered the Aspect Cascade, and why was it growing in strength? Also, was it allowed to be curious? It had been commanded not to think. The Red Knight struggled with this for a moment, then decided that curiosity was a feeling, not a thought. It was allowed to have feelings, and it already had to be able to make decisions in order to carry out its orders. That meant it could decide to follow because it was curious. The Red Knight was very good at following orders.

It was also very good at surviving. The Aspect Cascade might be able to destroy and unmake any being of magic, but the Red Knight was more than that. It was immutable. Inviolable. A constant in this and all other Realms, though the Red Knight thought there might be a term it was forgetting. What were such constants called? The Commander had referred to it that way once. Those were among the first words it could remember directed toward it, though it was having trouble recalling... Ah, yes. It remembered now.

Broken, broken, broken, the Commander had said, a mad gleam in his eyes. A broken shell of a Law! You will do. You will do perfectly.