Neophyte World Builder

CROWN

“Now that we’re alone, I have to agree with Muerve that this gives me a bad feeling.”

I looked up at Sena, dismissing my interface screen. She had that familiar expression I’d grown to recognize by now. A half-frown that was not quite disappointment, not quite questioning. I couldn’t call it curiosity… Sena had that in spades, but usually her desire for information was born of a need for context to solve a mental puzzle. Her curiosity face was different.

“To be honest, it gives me a bad feeling as well,” I muttered. “The only reason I’m risking it at all is because I need to test some things, and it’s better to start small. Going straight to what I want to do is pretty foolish even for me, and like I said, my partner intended to keep me from doing stupid things is gone.”

“I’m here,” Sena pointed out, tapping her chest.

I opened my mouth… then I shut it again. “You would fill that role, but what I need to do requires me to leave the afterlife and go back to my sanctuary. You can’t exist there.”

The frown I received in reply to that was much more intense than the previous one, but she followed it with a pointed question.

“Then tell me what it is you do there that you cannot do here. Are you not the creator of this world?”

She had me there. Or at least, by the logic she knew, she had me. The actual situation was much more complicated, but she lacked the context.

Just like I had lacked context, when I was younger and knew nothing about how this worked. I still knew very little about all the mechanics, but as I thought back on what I did know, I understood how far my grasp of the subject had come.

I pushed the thought away and focused on the problem in front of me.

“I am, but there are other worlds,” I explained. “Like the one where Sara came from. One of the things I need to do is make a new world, and I can’t very well make a new world inside this world. The afterlife is still part of the world, even if it interacts differently and has looser rules about who can show up and interact.”

With one finger I gestured upward. Since we were on the moon, this vaguely took in the world itself, the tubelike structure clearly visible from this vantage.

“So I need to step outside the world, and since you are a creature of this world, you need some kind of space that is attached to this world to exist within.”

For a moment, I was worried I’d lost her. After all, the concept of a world beyond the one she knew was a little abstract for someone who had lived in the Bronze Age. They’d surprised me before, however, so it was worth a try.

“I get that now,” Sena said immediately, once again proving that she was fully capable of grasping those concepts. “So you have a sort of… place you go to outside of the world to operate on it. Just like I couldn’t get my heart to do something to my leg because it’s inside me.”

About then I remembered that the Norse had the whole concept of the World Tree and a complex cosmology. I really needed to stop thinking of Bronze Age people as dumb just because they lacked the context and experience of myself. They consistently proved me wrong even after I’d lived as them for decades.

Maybe I was the idiot.

“That’s a better analogy than you think,” I agreed. “You could say I created the world, and that would be true. A better way to say it is that I am the world. You’re just interacting with the part of me that thinks.”

Sena narrowed her eyes in thought, her tail doing that swish and tilt of the end that I’d come to associate with her really concentrating on the details. “What does that make me and Akasha? Or the gods? A part of you?”

That… was a really good question.

“Not exactly,” I sighed, walking back my earlier statement. “The world is me, but thinking creatures like yourself and Akasha, with souls, are… not me. Akasha is a little bit of an exception in that she’s bound to me, much like the gods here are bound to their tasks, but their souls are their own. The analogy isn’t perfect, so there are a few gaps.”

Sena scratched at her chin, still showing the signs of thought. “And this Sara was a soul from another world you control? Extracted from her own world and put into ours?”

Finally I saw what she was getting at.

“Yes, but it’s… not as simple as just pulling her out,” I sighed. “Also it is technically… actually it’s more complex than that. It isn’t the same as pulling you out and into my… sanctuary…”

I held up a hand to let Sena know I was thinking as I pondered what I’d just said. My sanctuary wasn’t technically a place… it was more like a mental state. There were beings that couldn’t go into my world, but as I’d just demonstrated with Sara, I could bring souls between worlds. Orpheus had even visited my world as an avatar of her own, and she was a completely alien existence.

Was it really just as simple as… inviting one in?

No, I immediately knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t have done it when I was still a lower rank, I was sure of that. But now, ranks were more a suggestion than an actual limitation. Several of the tasks I had done lately I had performed by feel, without even using the World System interface. It was like training wheels… they were helpful, but not necessary.

If I had managed to extract a soul from Earth—or an Earth-adjacent world—and have it survive the trip even if damaged, that was something. Sara even had her memories, which was… surprising. Had Orpheus lied to me, or genuinely been unable to preserve them?

“I will… see what I can do,” I finally said to Sena.

Reappearing in my sanctuary, I frowned. Could it really be this simple? Orpheus probably would have screamed at me for bringing a mortal soul into my sanctuary… but it wouldn’t be the first rule of hers I’d broken. She probably had good reasons for it, if there was a rule… but we weren’t in the position to be listening to the old rules. It was also a bad idea to presume it was a rule at all.

Besides, I was making the rules.

I reached out, gently touched Sena’s immaterial soul, and tugged her into the sanctuary with me.

Just like that, she was there.

I’d been worried over nothing.

“This is… not what I expected,” Sena murmured, looking around the room.

We were in my “living room” at the moment, which was a mixture of furniture and white walls. Most of the furniture was Earth-type, with comfortable chairs and sofas, since I’d moved any rest-related or work-related items to their own respective spaces. It probably looked distressingly mundane to someone expecting a god’s living space.

I shrugged. “Sometimes I just like to relax. Come on, I’ll show you the command center and then I can start on my project design. I don’t have the resources to get it going yet, I had to spend all my spare energy on kicking out my assistant.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you… go through assistants often?”

When Sena asked that I winced and glanced back at her, my foot on the first step of the spiral staircase leading upward.

“No. I’ve had the same assistant for… probably 8500 years or so. I haven’t counted.” I let out a sigh. “Things happened. She’s off doing her own thing now. Come on, you’ll really want to see this.”

Of course, the center of the command room had nothing of interest. I had to wait until Sena followed me through the projection of the outer shell to hear her gasp. Even the dour former spymaster could still be impressed by the sight of her entire world spread out before her.

“Welcome to my world,” I laughed, turning around and spreading my arms. “Or your world, if you want to think of it that way. I can see this much at any time, but it’s easier when it’s large like this.”

Sena slowly walked along the inside of the tube containing the world projection. “It’s even larger than I imagined. How do you keep track of it all? Is this what you stare at all day?”

“I don’t really have a concept of night and day in here,” I admitted. “Actually it can be pretty boring, most of the time. I’m sure hundreds of interesting stories play out while I’m sitting here watching, but most of them don’t concern me. I shouldn’t have gotten as wrapped up in Chall as I did… not that I regret it.”

I “spun” the display and pointed to a region. “This is where Chall was. You can’t see from the display, but it currently has three major nations all claiming to inherit the original spirit of Chall. None of them are anything like it, according to Akasha. I will have to go visit sometime.”

As she watched, I gestured to another region not far from the first. “Here is where we put down Sara.” The display spun again to show the dividing mountains. “And here is where Wanderer is right now.”

“I see…” Sena murmured. “You spend thousands of years just watching things shift and go by slowly? I’m sorry I made you wait a year between each meeting.”

I had to chuckle at that. “No, you were the one who waited. I can speed up time considerably while in here. I can slow it down as well. It was usually just hours for me, subjectively, before I met you again. Sometimes longer, if I had something to do… that was a particularly busy time for me, I admit. Setting up the dungeon rules, monitoring new species… not to mention designing and deploying the Spirits.”

She frowned, and I shook my head at her.

“No, I’m not going to do it now. I have no idea what time manipulation in here would do to a mortal soul. You’re stuck with watching at the normal rate.”

Sena just clucked her tongue. “Fine. But you can create a new world from inside here?”

Now we were back to what I had been talking about. I looked around and shrugged. “I… think so? I haven’t actually done it before. I should pull in a more experienced administrator and have them show me how to do it, just in case. But I’m pretty sure this place connects all the worlds I create. Yours is just the first attempt… and this next one has a different purpose, anyway.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Purpose?”

“It’s a long story,” I replied. “You don’t think we make worlds for fun, do you? I tried to make this one a nice world to live in, within the constraints I was given. It… wasn’t entirely successful, but I did try.”

Shaking her head, Sena just looked over a lava-covered plain on the world display. “And what purpose does this new world have? Why do you need it? Do you need someone to slap your hand and tell you no?”

I laughed. “Yes, that would be nice! As for what purpose, well…”

Sighing, I opened my interface again.

“I need a place that can generate heroes.”