Mother tapped a long, luminous finger on the edge of her fine jaw. That wasn’t a good sign, Mother only did that when they were angry with someone. There wasn’t anyone around here except for…

“Child. You performed a Ritual on this very morn?” Feigning ignorance as to whom Mother was speaking, the Child looked around in mock confusion. Perhaps if they feigned it well enough, Mother would believe them to be truly confused…

“Do not attempt to fool me, my Child.” They looked at Mother and stood straight, swallowing hard. They had performed a Ritual… only Mother shouldn’t be angry about it. They had performed it flawlessly and in a truly novel fashion as well! The Essence expenditure was so minor that even a juvenile divinity such as themselves could support the Ritual.

That’s right! They should be praised, not punished! They just needed to tell Mother so!

“Yes Mother! I performed the Ritual of Summoning, using a new method to reduce the tier of the Ritual and thus the Essence draw. It worked flawlessly, I have Summoned a baker and three apprentices to your Realm. They arrived safely and Empowered, though only lightly so. They are bakers afterall and not Heros…” The long, thin, glowing hands of Mother slapped together with a thunderous sound, light flaring and the very earth of the divine Realm cracking and crumbling from the force of a simple clap. Such was the power of Mother.

“Child.” She softly spoke the name for her nameless offspring, a title really, assigned to all such descendants until she deigned to give them identities and purpose beyond simply growing. When Mother spoke softly like that, it either meant she was surprised in a pleasant way or that she was about to mete out some punishment for something that they should know was a terrible thing to do and yet did not seem to understand. They supposed that was in itself an expression of surprise, though surprise in the failure of their offspring to see the issue on their own. “Child, your Summoning was terribly flawed. It did not, in fact, reduce the Essence draw.”

Mother waved her hands and the world collapsed around them, pulling them both into the Void within which worlds floated. Here, dimension and energy did not exist in any structured way. Only beings of divine Essence could survive and not indefinitely. The bubbles of Realms were seemingly infinite, preserving the separation of Essence and Mana and Life and Rules from the Rule-less chaos of the Void. They were pulled along with Mother to another Realm. This one was familiar, it was where they had plucked their target from with the Ritual. A Realm with Rules compatible with so many other Realms and yet largely without Mana.

Only localized occurrences of Mana occurred and the Rules of this Realm were that only Mana imbued Life could itself generate more Mana. As such entire species of intelligent life existed, one of which was so similar to the Man of Mother’s Realm. The god of this Realm was long gone or perhaps simply did not wish to be known. In either case, this Realm served as a place with which to get templates for other Realms, easy ways to populate the Rules and the Life within such that these things would reliably function without issue. Then Mana could be added and tweaked and the Rules adjusted just so, to the liking of whichever divinity was making the new Realm.

It was also a popular place from which to Summon people for Heros and such. The people were so used to thinking and living without Mana that they took to it like a fish on dry land takes to water. They also usually rejoiced at the opportunity to perform ‘magic’ or gain ‘immortality’ and other such things. One Man’s trash is another Man’s treasure, or so the saying went.

It was evident there was something wrong with the Realm. There was a rupture along the surface of it and Life was bleeding into the Void. It would be… billions of years, by the count of the Man-like species of the Realm, before this resulted in a collapse of the Realm itself. They didn’t really see what the issue was…

“Child, this rupture was caused by your inept modification of the Ritual. You are responsible for the destruction of nearly an entire species, a species which I must remind you is quite precious to myself and many other divinities.” Mother gestured and the rupture repaired itself, but it did so with their own Essence, ripped from their young divine self and draining them of most of their strength. Mother snapped her fingers as soon as the patch was complete and they were once again in the divine Realm where Mother and her children lived and grew. Now, this place which they had been born into and grown in was oppressive, crushing down upon their weakened form, threatening to snuff out the final flame of Essence that flickered within them.

“Mother! Tou’ve taken nearly all of my Essence! I don’t know if I can even survive in this Realm anymore!” Just moments ago, by their perception, the Child had been like unto a small star, blazing with Essence and on the verge of forming a more complicated body. In this divine Realm, shared by Mother and many other divinities, the Rules were far more relaxed when it came to physical form. Here, their offspring were almost universally complex, self aware constructs of pure Essence. Despite the name and title, Mother did not literally birth her offspring. Some were the product of mixing her Essence with one or more other divinities, but most were creations made of only Mother’s own Essence.

Other Realms typically required a physical, living anchor for Essence constructs to survive. ‘Soul’ was a common word assigned to describe that Essence construct. All sapient Life had an Essence construct or a ‘Soul’ that it anchored. Here in this divine Realm however, no such anchor was required if the construct was sufficiently strong and stable and thus able to sustain its own form. Mother’s violent act of using the Child as an Essence source to repair the breached Realm boundary had destabilized their construct. Their Soul was unraveling and unable to maintain stability here.

“Mother…” The luminous figure looked down upon her wayward Child with disapproval. “…please!” Mother simply turned and began walking away. The Child began to cry. It had been a very long time since it had last done so. Not since it was a very young Child and had nearly destroyed itself in an impatient attempt to visit Mother’s mortal Realm, the very same the baker had been Summoned into. They had noticed then how very much the small children in that Realm loved delicious baked breads and cakes and treats. Several massive wars had ripped through the Realm’s people since.

There were breads and cakes, yes. With access to grain flours and sources of sweetness, these would almost inevitably come to be. The buttery creations with seemingly infinite flaky layers… the delicate, fluffy cakes and whipped frostings… the cookies! Fudges! Whipped cream! Oh! No these kinds of creations required a long and continuous history of exploration and excess resources. Even the nobility and wealthy did not enjoy such delights within the Kingdom of Man and few of the other species had such a taste for both grains and sweets.

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“Very well Mother. At least I have brought happiness to the Kingdom of Man.” The Child’s sobbing continued albeit in a muted fashion. They held on to the torn threads of their protective shell, watching forlornly as their Essence leaked out. Had they a physical body it would be very much akin to having your gut torn open and watching yourself bleed out while looking upon one’s own exposed innards. If viewed with mortal eyes, it would have looked like a ball of pale golden light, with a hazy and ephemeral stream of liquid light was lazily pouring from the side. It would probably have been considered beautiful.

Attracted to the sudden increase in Essence in the area, other Children flitted closer and closer, watching in both horror and hunger as their sibling slowly died. They sipped at the Essence that leaked into the area and wondered at how they might avoid such a fate for themselves. Very, very few Children survived to be allowed to take a more stable and permanent form, to join the ranks of the divine and form their own Realm. Only the infinity of time for the divinities and little cost to create a large number of Children resulted in an ever expanded numbers of successes and thus Realms, floating in the Void.

The Child in question was struggling to even see their own Essence weaves now. Within minutes they would be no stronger than any mortal. At that point it would be mere seconds before the last of their Essence was gone forever. They noted with amusement that their true core, what mortals would likely consider the ‘immutable soul’ portion, looked no different from that of a mortal’s. Were divinities no different from a mortal, but with a far more powerful and stable body formed mostly of Essence? Could a mortal become a divinity? A blasphemous thought if the Child had ever had one.

The clarity of their interior was courtesy of the ever growing tear in their shell, which was unraveling at an ever increasing rate. Idly they noticed that their siblings were growing closer. They may not even have minutes, if one of the other Children grew bold enough, they would simply come forth and devour this one before it expired naturally. Had they not done this to dozens of others which had been similarly injured? By Mother, by themselves, by other Children or other divinities? They would not hold it against them.

They wondered how the baker was doing. They had seen the Summoning was a success, the baker and their apprentices arrived, returned to youth and given a modicum of Essence as structured abilities. They would live far, far longer than a normal lifespan. Their divinely granted abilities were relatively inexpensive to grant compared to those of Heros. They would not be leveling mountains in epic battles against Elder Dragons or any other such nonsense. No! Their abilities were all oriented around baking superbly delicious things!

They had little time left. Why not indulge their curiosity? There was no reason to hold back. With Essence powering it, the scrying spell was only a tier 2 construct. They wove it directly onto the remaining undamaged portion of their shell. Even so, the act of casting it nearly shattered what stability they had left, the strain of even so light a spell nearly too much given the damage. A sense of place, light, sound, taste and smell came into their thoughts. The baker and his apprentices appeared to be confused, which was to be expected, but they had already found themselves demonstrating their divinely enhanced baking skills to a local bread-maker! Ha! Typical Summon behavior, find something familiar and engage with it to help them adjust.

Oddly, the scrying spell was being tugged to another target… had one of the apprentices wandered off? No, no they were all accounted for. Lacking the strength or willpower to resist the shift in focus, the Child simply watched as their scrying was wrenched from the Kingdom of Man and far across the large central continent, nearly to the opposite side. There they were greeted with a curious group of four Man, three male and one female if the Child could recall the signs of gender correctly. The four were sitting around a small fire, seemingly chatting and attempting to cook something impaled on sticks and placed near the coals.

They were wearing very strange clothes. Really, it was just knotted and braided strands of mostly brown blades of grass. One of the males seemed to be somewhat close to the female. Three of them were visibly in good health and showed little to no evidence of the harsh kind of life they seemed to be engaging in now. The fourth was… also soft skinned, but they were blatantly lacking the musculature and even had a somewhat flabby belly. There was no way that these four lived this way normally.

Why had the scrying spell come to them? It was keyed specifically to those the Summon had transported. A quick sampling for traces of Essence revealed… the Child’s own Essence? There were no divine gifts. These bodies were not youthful! These were unaltered Summons! It truly dawned on the Child then how right Mother had been. They had badly botched this Ritual. There was little doubt in their mind that the tear in the other Realm’s boundary could have even remotely been caused by their Ritual, but this was clear evidence it had not worked as intended.

There was a fair bit of Essence still clinging to these people…

Quickly they wove another spell construct. This was very much like the Ritual of Summoning and while hastily devised, this Child was actually no fool when it came to spell constructs. They had a very good basis for believing they had improved the Ritual for their own purposes. What had gone wrong? Clearly something in the targeting and abduction aspect. Given that they were moving pure Essence and not physical bodies, that could be simplified tremendously. It was a challenge to totally attune the targeting section to their complete Essence construct as it was undergoing rapid degradation, but much simpler than isolating out the living body, symbiotic and parasitic lifeforms in the millions or billions, inert material contents, etc of a targeted Summons, as well as ensuring the Summons came complete with their own anchored Essence construct and did not simply arrive as a non-sapient meat form severed from said construct.

They similarly altered the forms which modified the Summon’s bodies. Yes, they would need to make a good impression upon their arrival. The Child’s survival would be, at least initially, reliant upon their assistance. Ensure the bodies assumed their intended forms. Ah, good! The Summoning spell had captured Hero forms for them! There was absolutely no Essence to apply the divine abilities to the forms, however they could be granted lacking divine powers but with the highest possible mortal potential.

Ugh, the fat one was going to be the biggest issue. Something about them was resonating too much with the Child’s own Essence signature. A kindred Soul, the mortals in their Realm might say? It was going to cause a tremendous amount of interference with the formation of the Child’s own mortal form… unless… perhaps all that excess ‘material’ could be put to good use? Yes, rather than form a physical body from inert materials in the area, simply shift the organic materials around, alter the biological instruction data in those curiously simple and yet functionally complex little helixes, modify the chemical components for compatibility…

Yes. Yes! It was going to strip the last of their structured shell to nothing and they had no time left to check for errors. The tier 4 Ritual construct ripped through their construct shell. They felt the sudden scrutiny of Mother as her ever present Essence turned its focus to this Child that was casting yet another Ritual. It was too late though, Mother would either choose to destroy them outright, assist them to smooth out any issues, or leave it to fate. The Child knew only that there was no choice in the matter. If Mother destroyed them, it was no difference in their fate than simply bleeding out.

No, the choice was made and besides, their Essence had been fully committed. Only their small, mortal Soul remained, held momentarily safe in this Realm within which it could not exist. Then even that was gone.