A few hundred slimes were killed and two days later, Amanda's very soul was aching. Her star was full and it practically begged to ignite and ascend.

The three students and one teacher were still in the vast lake cavern, having a picnic under the canopy of a catalpa tree Amanda had grown and shaped to provide maximum coverage from the incessant rain coming from the lake waves. The heart-shaped leaves were aligned perfectly like the shingles of a roof.

"Is this what you've dealt with all this time?" She asked Robert. "I want to ignite my star right now."

"Yes. It only gets worse as you gather more aura," He replied with a smirk. "But let's be patient. At least you didn't have to deal with soul damage like I did from growing it too fast."

"That octopus was a high two-star," Noah said. "The cultist who definitely ran away was a known four-star. If he had been killed, which he hadn't, it would grant much more essence and Ether."

Robert coughed.

They finished eating and put away the picnic stuff. The class was in session.

*

*

"Today, the two of you are manifesting your Ether constructs," Noah said. "Sorry, Freddy. You'll have to wait for a while longer. Amanda, what is an Ether construct?"

"It's a tool or a weapon Archs can create to help them gather wisps and deal with vestiges in the Netherecho. Ether constructs also grant either an active ability or a passive power. Most Archs prefer active abilities but rarely some passives are just too good."

Noah nodded. "Yes, that's true. Before manifesting the construct, Archs are basically unarmed in the Netherecho. Most vestiges or remnants are a threat if they are hostile. They will remain so even with the construct but at least you'll have something to fight back with. Your construct is very personal but not as much as your talent. You shouldn't disclose what power they grant you freely. Now, I want you to count to ten and then join me in the Netherecho."

The professor closed his eyes and entered a meditative state. They soon followed him.

In the Netherecho, everybody was a cartoon representation of themselves. It was an entirely conceptual dimension, a hundred percent energy and thought, with faint ties to reality.

Noah's projection wore an elegant navy blue coat with gold trim and matching pants. He had a wreath of fire around his neck and the usual mask. He also had an old tome on a leather strap on his side.

Amanda dressed to the nines in an elegant princely ball gown full of CDs glittering gems. Her hair had a big violet flower made of gold, silver, and purple gemstones. White lacy gloves and high heels completed the attire.

And Robert was clad in blue jeans and a white t-shirt with sneakers.

"You are so plain!" Amanda complained. "You can be anything you want here and this is what you chose?"

"Pick wisely," Noah warned. "Changing one's appearance is not free. It used some of the aura stored in your star."

"If it's all the same, I'll do it later," Robert decided.

"It's okay. Let us begin."

The teacher conjured his construct. It was a mahogany pipe with gold trim. He blew on it and flames roared out of the pipe.

"As you can see, the Ether construct is usually not the exact object you would like. It's linked to your Prime Vestige and to your own soul, a complement of its theme. The meaning is often unknown and it remains so. I, for example, never understood why mine is a pipe. You don't need to worry. Nobody has ever reached close to figuring out one's talent from their construct.

"The power granted is also related to the Prime's talent. To summon your construct, focus inward, think of your talent, and call it to yourselves. Don't worry if you can't get it at first. Just focus and meditate."

The constructs were a secondary aspect because they only worked in the Netherecho. Robert pushed these thoughts away and concentrated. He didn't close his eyes because they were already closed. Back in his physical body right next to them, sitting on the picnic cloth.

He felt wisps drift toward him. Meta, glass, time and… space? What the hell?

Wood and Light wisps drifted toward Amanda.

The metal wisps became brass, gold, and silver. The metals flowed like liquid and took the shape of three concentric rings, forming an armillary sphere. All the rings had evenly-spaced notches inlaid with silver like a measurement tool. Numbers and letters in gold cursive formed along the notches. The time and Space wisps entered the rings and caused the notches and glyphs to glow.

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In the middle of the rings, his timepiece appeared, with all the gears, beads, and the five hourglasses. Finally, a ring that fits perfectly in his cartoon hand formed at the top. As he grabbed the construct, the rings started to spin, each around one of the axes. The timepiece in the center remained still no matter how he moved it, stabilized by the armillary sphere.

He looked at Amanda, who was holding a shepherd's crook made of wood. The shaft and hook were a dark brown polished wood with glowing purple runes. At the tip of the hook, a glowing yellow sphere reminded Robert of the Sun.

Amanda looked at her shepherd's crook, then at Robert's orrery, back and forth.

"Aww, c'mon!" She pouted. In that chibi cartoon form, it was adorable. "You get this cool fancy spinning thingamajig and I get the… anglerfish shepherd's crook? That's so unfair!"

Before Robert could think of a comeback, Noah intervened.

"And I got the devil's flaming smoking pipe. The shape of the construct matters little. The power it grants is where the money's at. I want you both to concentrate and see if you can figure it out."

They went silent as they examined their constructs. Robert learned that each inner ring and the timepiece had a pointer that ran over the notches, making a radial measurement. Each ring had two moving parts, one to spin around and another to spin over themselves. This way, he could move the rings to put the pointer on any number from zero to FF. He counted the notches and each ring had 256 of them. The letters and numbers appeared every sixteen notches, in order. He recognized them as hexadecimal notation. The total number of possible positions was two to the power of fifteen, or _______.

He also learned he could move the rings with his mind. He could wish for any combination and the rings would spin to place the right notch under the pointers. He could also rotate the rings to place them in any orientation he wanted.

On closer examination, the spot where the axis of one ring met the one outside them also had a series of notches, measuring the exact angle of rotation.

In summary, when the rings rotated, they moved in relation to one another. When they spun, the two parts of the ring moved relative to one another, slowly rotating the inside part of the contraption. It allowed for even more positions, _______ of them.

The timepiece inside only resembled the artifice clock he commissioned. He found he could command it to display any time, forward or backward. It had a display for year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. The mechanism that made the clock tick was missing. The digital watch was also missing.

So, basically, the whole thing could be set to a specific set of numbers on the outside, and a specific timestamp on the inside.

He hummed as his brain tried to make sense of it. The timestamp was obvious but what did the numbers on the outside mean? An armillary sphere with three rings, three axes, X, Y, and Z. But what about the angles? Time and space? A dimensional compass? A time machine? An astrolabe? Were all choices correct?

Robert shook his head. He had no idea what his construct did.

"Any luck?" Noah asked him.

"No," Robert replied.

"I got it!" Amanda squealed.

She raised her crook and waved it in the air. The glowing orb went through all colors of the rainbow and back to yellow.

"A magical disco ball?" Robert wondered.

Amanda smirked. "Keep watching." The colors shifted and Roberf thought they were so pretty…

*

*

"Hey, wake up!" Amanda shook him.

Robert opened his eyes and found himself back in his physical body. Noah, Freddy, and Amanda were looking at him. At least he thought Noah was. Hard to tell what was going on behind that expressionless mask.

"What happened?" He asked.

"Amanda used her construct to put you to sleep."

"Is that even possible? Affecting the physical body from the Netherecho?"

Noah shrugged. "It's possible to die in there, and you would die in the physical world as well. Prime powers are weird."

"Do you think you can put vestiges to sleep too?"

"Yes. If they aren't already attacking me," Amanda said. She didn't sound so sure but Noah nodded.

"It would make capturing them so easy! What was that I heard a while ago? That you got the short stick?" Robert teased.

"My stick is quite long, I'll let you know," she bragged.

Robert smiled. But he was dying of curiosity to know what his construct did, aside from looking pretty.

*

*

Throughout the entirety of the next week, they killed hundreds of slimes each day. Noah had Freddy use his illusions to distract and kite large groups of slimes, while Amanda abused the slimes' proclivity to ignore plants to make them squeeze through gaps big and small, the big ones just large enough for a core to pass. Once a slime picked a big hole, she would shoot a slate disk and crack the core. Robert spammed drain essence on them and sliced the ones that didn’t get entangled.

Robert didn’t let the other two spend as much time in the liminal void as he did but even a little still stretched this week by six more months for Amanda and Noah. They trained melee combat and footwork during that time, and then replenished their Essence, killing slimes and gathering wisps in the Netherecho.

With Amanda’s shepherd’s crook pacifying the vestiges, they could gather with more efficiency. Robert still hadn’t figured out what his construct did. Only that he could set the rings to a specific set of coordinates with a thought.

“It is probably a passive,” Noah said one day when Robert asked him for guidance. “We should go to the Netherecho and find a few vestiges for you to fight. Fight some with your construct, others without. If we can figure out the difference, that’s your passive. I doubt it is something small. The construct is a part of the Prime Vestige’s powers, just like the talent. If the talent is strong, the construct also is.”

So they took their spot under the catalpa tree, where the monsters above couldn’t see them, and entered the Netherecho. Freddy remained behind to warn them if something bad happened.

They found the first vestige, a cute bouncing blue teardrop with black circles for eyes, a white triangle for mouth, and two pink dashes where the cheeks should be.

“Bounce, bounce, bounce!” It happily lilted as it bounced. Its voice was as sharp and innocent as a child.

“There you go. Fight that,” Noah said. “If you have an ability that can benefit from the concept of bounciness, then you can capture it. Otherwise, kill the vestige.

“Aww, it’s so cute!” Amanda cooed. “Do we really need to kill it?”

“Ether constructs can be deceiving,” Noah said. “And it’s not like they’re people. Most of them are just an idea given shape.”

“Bounce!” The teardrop vestige chirped merrily.

“Use your construct!” Noah shouted as Robert sprinted toward the vestige.

“Bounce!” The teardrop blinked, the pink dashes becoming rosier.

Robert reached it and punched the teardrop between the eyes. His fist bounced back and struck his nose.

“Bounce!” The teardrop said, staring at Robert.

He swung his construct at the bouncy vestige. It bounced back.

The two eyes turned into half-circles, the straight parts slanted forming a V as they moved closer to the center to touch at the edges. The mouth became a thin line.

“BOUNCE!” It shouted with a deep voice. Then it leapt at Robert.