Swirling rock and water made for a disorienting environment. Theo felt rocks pelt him, his struggle to keep both water and rock away from him an impossible task. He felt Tresk nearby somewhere, but it was impossible to feel her intentions through the maelstrom. It was only the swirl, darkness, and the occasional sound that broke through long enough to pierce the black.

Then there was nothing. Until Theo felt the distinct sensation of someone rousing him from sleep. He woke to the feeling of something soft beneath his back and the sound of Tresk jabbering.

“It’s dimensions all the way down!” she shouted, shaking him hard enough to roll the alchemist down a small hill. “Wake up.”

Everything was blurry by the time Theo opened his eyes. Where he expected to see the inside of some beast or the bottom of a sea, he saw an open field. Green fields of grass stretched far into the distance, mountains looming on the horizon. A scatter of trees were close enough that he could hear the leaves rustling with the wind. The breeze that blew from somewhere distant felt cool.

“Okay. What just happened?” Theo asked, groaning to a seated position. Although his body felt sore, he wasn’t missing any health. He watched as Tresk ran over, an empty potion vial in her hand. The alchemist pointed at it. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem,” Tresk said. “I had two. Anyway, I think we’re in another dimension.”

Theo grumbled, looking around. “The old dimensional space inside a monster trick. Absolutely played out.”

“Agreed. And yet, I got something,” Tresk said, withdrawing something from her storage pouch. It was the size of her head, holding a pearlescent sheen that caught the light. “Stole it from the sea monster.”

Theo took the item, feeling both the alchemical potential and the conceptual significance of it. Without experimentation it was hard to tell how useful it would be, but he was certain it would do something with his newest experiment. “I suppose that makes this trip a success,” he said, finally feeling well enough to move around. “Now we need only untangle the weird dimensional space… Looks like a normal place.”

“Yeah, anything but normal,” Tresk said. “Pretty sure the entire world is from here to there.”

Theo gestured to the small cluster of trees a few hundred feet away. “There? What about the mountains?”

Tresk shrugged. “Illusions or something? Like the stars.”

Theo rubbed his face. Calling them ‘illusions’ wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the truth. Since he didn’t want his brain to overheat, he settled on that concept with one exception. “This is what our brains are seeing so we don’t go nuts,” he said, kicking at the dirt on the ground. “I guess the materials here are real, though.”

“Sure they’re not just a figment of my imagination?” Tresk asked, taking a handful of dirt. She ate it. Without hesitation. Then she spat it out, withdrawing a waterskin from her pouch and pouring it into her mouth. “Yep,” she sputtered. “That’s real.”

“Quick recap,” Theo said, helping Tresk dust some dirt from her face and chest. There was still a faint smear on her face, but it was good enough. “Big void outside with many world. Many small voids inside big void, more worlds. So on, so forth.”

“Sounds about right,” Tresk said, nodding. “Question is: why?”

There was something about the structure of their universe that didn’t make sense. Theo could accept that small voids like the ocean world existed because people like Kuzan had made them. But why was there a nested void? It reminded him too much of the nested dungeon they had experienced in the negative dungeon, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. There was something important they were missing, and making sure the void was prepared for the switch was their job.

“Recon time,” Theo announced, breaking himself out of his thoughts. “Let’s get an idea of what’s going on here. I think I can eject us at any moment.”

Discovering the secrets of nested void dimensions was outside the abilities of either member of the party, yet finding useful extra-dimensional ingredients was not. It didn’t take long for Tresk to come across several objects that piqued the alchemist’s interest. After confirming that the area was about 1 square mile, they settled on a log to discuss their findings.

At first glance, the tree branch Theo held in his hands seemed unassuming. Only someone who had attuned their senses to strange magical forces could determine that it was anything but normal. Even if he focused hard enough, he could burrow his senses beneath the bark, feeling an unfamiliar twinge of magic he was certain would work for one of his potions. It would allow him to bind two important concepts together, producing an attribute potion that would be fit for a king.

The second object they had discovered looked like a small stone statue of a frog about the size of Theo’s palm. However, after some investigation, he determined it was a naturally forming frog-shaped piece of bone. What bone that might have been, he couldn’t say, but he doubted the logic in this place was sound. Unlike the first object, he was unsure what use this would have, but he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to pilfer it from the dimension.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

After confirming it was only the two objects and nothing else in the dimension, the pair shifted their efforts to searching for a way down. If they were nested too deep, could they be nested three deep? But it wasn’t to be, and they eventually gave up.

“Now the moment of truth,” Theo said, looking skyward at a bank of clouds he knew wasn’t really there. “We’ll head back into the void and look for another dimension, like the water world. Are you ready?”

“Yup. Let’s go.”

Unlike the last time, Theo didn’t find it incredibly difficult to remove them from the nested dimension. He passed directly through the water world and back into the void without encountering resistance like he had in the paper world. His cousin must have established some sort of defenses for the paper world to keep things in or people out. The alchemist then turned his senses to find more of the pocket worlds. He scanned the void, finding it hard to force those places to reveal themselves. They might have been obfuscated, but he eventually detected another.

Taking a deep breath, Theo nodded to Tresk. “Got another one. Let’s go.”

“Adventure!” Tresk shouted as they were drawn toward an imperceptible dot in the distance.

The moment Theo felt himself materialize within the bounds of this new dimension, his skin burned. When the scent of burning everything filled his nostrils, he knew they might’ve been in trouble. But thanks to their adventures in the volcano, the alchemist was all too familiar with hostile, fiery environments. His aura sprang up, infused with the cooling power of a Manashroom to batter away the impossible heat. He felt hard ground beneath his feet, and when his bubble had cooled enough, he dared to open his eyes, only to find what could only be described as hell.

The landscape was an endless roll of rocky hills dotted with disparate fires burning. The sky above was a smear of ash-gray clouds, and there was little else to orient themselves, but the horizon.

“Well, this sucks a lot,” Tresk said, dumping a waterskin over her head. “We almost got cooked.”

Theo tapped his chin. There was something oddly familiar about the fiery landscape, and it had nothing to do with the similarities between the volcanoes. Instead, it was the sense that lingered in the air; something that was more than just the energies latent to a nascent dimension like this. It was a connecting force he felt stretching from here, perhaps all the way to the heavens.

“I’m thinking these are more than just random realms,” Theo said. He looked for a place for them to walk but there were simply no features. It was a flat plane of fire and rock. “Hold on, how about we back out.”

“Yeah, no. Screw this place,” Tresk said.

Theo brought them out in a flash, hovering them in the void a moment later. He closed his eyes, this time remembering the newest gods in the pantheon. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Arcane. Each represented an element, and while there could’ve been more, he had a straightforward theory about those heavenly realms.

“I’ve got two theories,” Theo said, scanning the void for another realm. “The first is that these realms we’re finding are connected to the elemental gods. Maybe it’s some disconnected part of the system that needs cleaning before we reset.”

“What’s the other theory?” Tresk asked. “This one seems thin. Just because we went into a water world and there is a water god doesn’t mean they’re connected.”

Theo let out a steady breath as the second theory was proved. He locked onto the concept held in his mind, tunneling them through the void. When they stepped out, the scene before them was horrific. Spires stretched high into the sky, a haze of green shadowing everything. The ground itself looked sick, and figures loomed in the distance. The alchemist winced as he reached out, feeling those entities searching. They engaged in the endless search of undeath. The March of Hoi’ch.

“Welcome to the worst ascendant realm I’ve ever seen,” Theo said, gesturing widely. The halls of the Demon God of Undeath, Hoi’ch.”

Tresk snapped her fingers.

“Oh! They’re the ruined realms of the ascendants,” Tresk said. “Makes sense. Guess the system didn’t recycle them.”

“Which means the system messed up.” Theo sighed, looking around as his mind tried to make sense of this. The system should have done its job. It should have recycled these worlds and turned them into energy. But as the alchemist walked forward along the cracked ground beneath his feet, he assumed none of the Ascendant Rones had been properly recycled. Well, perhaps a few had, but those Ascendants who had taken heavenly thrones were the exception.

“How the hell do we clean up this mess?” Tresk asked.

Theo had an idea. He wasn’t sure if they could completely destroy these places, but leaving them here wasn’t a great idea. He sensed undead in the distance, but didn’t feel the spark of sapience. The souls that drove them were proto-souls, closer to monsters than living people. They lived their existence in this place, forever marching in search of the living.

And yet, despite all his flaws, Balkor had left behind a realm of power. Within it was the undeniable flash of energy that represented strength. Somewhere deeper still might be something even more interesting. Theo pressed forward, and Tresk followed closely behind.

The undead moved closer as the duo proceeded, but Theo allowed a barrier to flow from his body, glowing a brilliant silver. He infused it with the Hallow property and watched in satisfaction as one skeleton attempted to breach its boundary. The creature’s hand was engulfed in silver flames, the fire spreading to its chest and extinguishing the green glow in its eyes in an instant. The other skeletons nearby did not get the hint and suffered a similar fate.

It took a while, but Theo and Tresk finally approached a spire that felt conceptually significant. Ascending stairs, they found their way into a cathedral-like interior, complete with fetid green stained windows and an altar. More interesting than that was the throne that was set just behind it. Frescos lined the walls, and where sections of the gray stone were left bare were other decorations. Tapestries, paintings, and statues of Balkor’s life marked the building.

“You know what would be interesting?” Theo asked, working his way around the altar.

“What’s that?”

“These Thrones of Power,” he said, producing a hammer from his inventory. “They’re pretty conceptually heavy, huh?”

Tresk rubbed her hands together, reaching for the hammer. “Say no more.”