Once upon a time the Moon was very close to the earth. The world was still new, having only just recently been fashioned from Ophireon’s body. The heavens themselves glowed with the pink blush of a newborn, and the earth was sodden and soft with the morning of the fresh universe.

In those days, the Moon had not quite risen to its proper place in the night sky and sat hovering above the great Celestial Lake on the eastern edge of the world. The gravity of the Moon pulled the waves on the lake towards it, and the moon’s proximity made these waves very large indeed. The Celestial Lake was constantly disturbed with great turbulent whirlpools. Some of the waves would be so enormous that they would brush the very bottom of the Moon that sat above the Lake, and in doing so would deposit some algae on its lowest face. This is why sometimes in the night sky, when the Moon rotates, it appears green.

In those days, certain brave (or foolish, some would say) fishermen would bring their boats onto the Celestial Lake. On the new moon, when the Moon was the smallest, the waves on the Lake would not be quite as violent as usual, and the journey was relatively safe. These fishermen would paddle their boats to the middle of the Lake. Hardly a mile above them lay the Moon. It shone with soft flickering light, round and lambent.

Even though during the new moon, the waves were not quite so viciously tugged by the lunar pull, the water could not completely escape the attraction of the Moon. Droplets of the Lake fell upwards towards the heavens like reverse-rain. The droplets carried with them phosphorescent plants and tiny organisms and, suspended like they were in those upwards-dripping raindrops, they filled the wind with light and life.

Then, for reasons unknown to those fishermen, the Moon tumbled into the water one day. When the Moon fell, it shattered the bed of the Celestial Lake, and that great freshwater ocean and all the miraculous life it held beneath its surface and all the wonders of the water, all of it, it all came tumbling into the void along with the Moon.

When the Moon fell from its place above the Lake, a great piece of it broke off and embedded itself into the side of the world where the shore of the Celestial Lake used to be. This huge fragment of the Moon mossed over and magma, the liquid life force of the earth and the ancient blood of Ophireon, filled its veins slowly. This Moon fragment became the mountain at the very tip of the eastern edge of the world.

The Moon rose again, riding along the ridge of the mountain.

A thousand years later, Annie came to the mountain at the eastern edge of the world. Here, so close to where the earth met the void, everything was twilight. Bluish grey tones took over the landscape so that even the trees looked to be made out of stone.

The mountain jutted out from the World’s edge, cutting an imposing figure over the space behind it. It leered down at Annie, great celestial storm clouds clinging to its snow-capped summit. Annie put a hand to the mountain’s edge closest to her. The whole thing was very nearly a solid wall, a sheer drop. She needed to climb the mountain, but there weren’t any hand or footholds for her to use.

“Mountain,” Annie’s voice could barely be heard over the steady rumble of the earth slowly grinding against the void, “Could you please help me climb you? I need to talk to the Moon.”

The mountain remained stubbornly unclimbable.

Annie stamped her foot on the ground. She hefted her shovel in her hand and shook it at the mountain, “You need to help me out! I had a chat with Ophireon and he told me that all the earth and sky and heavens would help me, so give me a hand, you miserable pile of rocks! Your dad—err, grandad? Ophireon said so!”

(“Wait a minute,” Annie had said to Ophireon, “You fathered everything made out of dirt and stone and stuff, right?”

“Yes. I fashioned all that exists in the earth and sky and the heavens.”

“But isn’t the mountain at the eastern edge made from the Moon?”

“Yes.”

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“And the Moon is your kid, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So doesn’t make that mountain your grandkid?”

“… it is complicated. Do not worry about the exact familial relationships of all the rocks in the world. Just know that they will help you.”)

Sluggishly, a few pebbles at the foot of the mountain next to Annie rearranged and stacked themselves to form a crude sculpture of a human hand.

“Ha ha. Hilarious. Not what I meant by giving me a hand,” Annie exhaled humorlessly and shook her shovel once more, “I’ll talk to Ophireon again, and I’ll tattle on you.”

That got a reaction out of the mountain. Smoke rose out from the peak, black and acrid.

“I’ll do it,” Annie threatened again, “I’ll head back to the void and tell your dad or granddad or whatever that you were being a big baby and you didn’t help me.”

The mountain was silent. Then it made a noise like the wind makes when it whistles through a canyon. The smoke stopped rising from the mountain’s summit. The solid rock surface of the mountain dripped like liquid. Moss fell off the side of the cliff, exposing bones of shining white stone. A crude and bumpy set of stairs bubbled from the side of the cliff.

Annie patted the mountainside, “Thanks.”

She walked. And walked. And walked. Halfway up the mountain, her calves and thighs were on fire. Panting, she sat down on one of the steep and bumpy steps that the mountain had hastily constructed for her. From the height that she was at, she could see for miles and miles. The clouds didn’t seem particularly far away from where she was. She imagined she could almost hear the stars above her grinding against the celestial bedrock.

Annie kept walking.

She and Ophireon had come up with a plan. Step 1 was starting negotiations with the leaders of the Three Kingdoms and trying to gather as much support as possible. Their plan would require much in the way of infrastructure and resources. They needed the backing of every major power in the world to even make their plan feasible.

But that was Step 1. There was a Step 0, before they could even start their negotiation process, which Annie was working on right now. It was part of a last resort among last resorts, and it had physically hurt Ophireon when he suggested it. The very nature of the plan ate at the heart of the supreme god in a very literal way.

Annie broke into the cloud layer. She sat down to take another break and idly watched the lightning birds chase each other around in the sky. When the beat their wings, lightning fell from their feathers. When they chirped mating calls to one another, thunder boomed out across the land.

She kept walking.

The steps on the mountain at that height became steeper and steeper, to the point where Annie could no longer walk to the next step and instead had to climb onto it with her hands. The snow on the mountain was now ice. Annie had brought an extra cloak along with her to bundle up, but still felt the chill pierce to her bones.

Annie kept ascending.

The Golden Comet rushed by, one of Ophireon’s many descendants. It waved hello as it blitzed past her, briefly igniting the air into a blazing yellow fury. The Golden Comet was visible most nights as it burned a trail in between the stars. And here Annie was, at the same height it normally flew at.

Still, she kept climbing.

The mountain was no more than a spire at this point, a faint sliver that poked upwards at the heavens. She shimmied up the frigid stone tower and kept going up and up and up. Up into the space between the sky and heaven, and then even beyond. Up until she had reached the very tip of the mountain, the highest point in the entire world. Up until the lightning birds were no more than distant sparks and the clouds looked like a wispy coat of snow on grass.

Then she waited.

The Moon came after about an hour of Annie’s wait. And it stopped in its orbit and peered at Annie curiously. A great rocky scar ran its way across its left side, the part of the Moon that had been carved out and become that mountain at the eastern tip of the world. Its bottom side was green and teeming with algae and assorted plant life.

“You used to be Ophireon’s eye, right?” Annie spoke confidently, “You saw our conversation down in the void. You know the plan. You know what we need to do. You know what you need to do.”

The Moon stilled.

Then the Moon, like Annie had done for the past few hours, ascended. It grew fiery wings and flapped them, rising in a frenzied burst of speed. The Moon went up and up and up until it hit the celestial bedrock at the very top of the world. And then it went even further.

Step 0 was to alter the very nature of the universe, to make changes to the fundamental structure of reality. The Moon went up and poked at the strings of cosmos-stuff.

And the Moon changed things and there was silence in the heavens for about half an hour.

And when Annie closed her eyes, she saw:

Annie Smith - Level 12

Stats

Intelligence: 11

Arcane: 17

Esoterica: 12

Speed: 7

Constitution: 50

Physique: 12