Nothingness grew for ages, expanding out in every direction known to mortals, and then in some directions far beyond their understanding. This void, a place between places, was home. Had been home for so long. Ages. Millenia. Mere moments. There was no way of knowing its age. Of telling how long it had existed, or where it existed.

And then it was taken away.

In a blink of a non-existent eye, he had become aware of something in his sea of nothingness. Just the tiniest pinpoint of light. It swelled, growing vast and wide, filling his every sense with a presence that was anything more than nothing.

He thought he screamed. Wordlessly. Violently. The void usually ate away his words, so he wasn’t exactly sure it was a scream. But this one didn’t vanish without so much of a whisper. It echoed, bouncing off a prism that surrounded him like a cage.

“Calm yourself,” a voice said. “Thrashing like that is dangerous.”

It was the first voice he’d heard since he’d entered the void. Such a thing excited him. The voice was like honeyed wine, gentle and warm but with a spark of something sharp, dangerous beneath the surface.

His vision snapped to it.

A person floated above him on wings made of gossamer crystal so thin they barely existed. They were so close that he should have been able to feel the wind from those fluttering wings, but no such sensation existed.

His first instinct was to reach out and touch them. To see if they were firm like the crystal they mimicked, or soft and pliable like wings needed to be.

But he had no arms. No hands.

The sensation of wanting arms when he hadn’t had them in the void was disorienting. He tried to toss his head to clear his thoughts, but there wasn’t a head to toss either. Instead, he just existed. A floating speck of consciousness trapped in what looked like a multi-faceted gem.

“I’d like to help you,” the winged-man said. “We need to establish a bond to do so.”

The winged-man got closer. A single hand reached towards the gem’s surface, and inside its cage, the consciousness from the void panicked. Some part of him wanted to push the invader away, to get more information before whatever bond that was necessary was formed.

But he forced himself to calm down.

It was much harder to do without lungs to push air through.

The winged-man touched the gem, but the consciousness couldn’t feel it. No warmth from those hands permeated the crystalline surface of his prison.

And then, finally, he wasn’t alone.

It was as if a channel had been dug in the surface of the stone, just wide enough for the mouth of the universe’s smallest ear trumpet. He could feel the presence of the winged-man, distantly.

If he had a mouth he would have smiled.

“There we go,” the winged-man said. He straightened up, giving the consciousness in the gem his personal space back. “Welcome to the world of Sleyn. I wish you were visiting under better circumstances.” Something dark crossed the winged-man’s face. “I’m Chesu, your wisp. Go ahead and think about something. At me. To me. Whichever you like.”

Chesu jolted, his wings spasming. He looked instantly uncomfortable, but the consciousness wasn’t sure if it was from his question or perhaps the despair in his mental voice. “I’m sorry?” Chesu coughed once, trying to gain control of himself. “Is our connection bad? I must have misheard you. What did you say?”

The consciousness in the gem made a frustrated noise that rattled against the crystal of his cage.

“That’s… normal.” The wisp’s tone said it was anything but. “We’re dealing with a bit of an emergency, so I don’t think he really had a chance to think about how this went.”

“Not important,” Chesu said, his teeth snapping closed sharply on the ends of the words. “Things may clear up to you over time; its an unfortunate side effect of being made into a Dungeon Core. For now, all we can do is give you a temporary name.”

Chesu stared at the consciousness for a long moment. The wisp’s gray-white brows were fluffy and stood out in many seemingly random directions. They were also furrowed. Driven in sharply towards a nose so crooked it had to have been broken too many times to count.

As he stared, the consciousness realized there were many things about the wisp he failed to notice at first. He’d been so entranced by the fluttering wings. There were lines—vast and deep so that they were nearly chasms—on the wisps face that spoke of age. Black smudges like coal surrounded blue-green eyes that were narrowed with focus but were also sunken. Tired.

Chesu finally clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I’ve got it. We’ll call you Gem. Just until you remember your real name.’

If the consciousness had a face, he would have screwed it up in frustration and disgust. Talk about the lowest hanging fruit.

The wisp at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “You got something better?”

Gem tried to shrug, but he had no shoulders to do so.

Chesu clapped his hands together, hard, then rubbed them like he was trying to start a fire. “Good. Let’s get started then. Sooner we fail, the sooner I can return.” The wisp winced. “Sorry, kid. Gem. That was uncalled for.”

Gem would have wrinkled his nose in anger if he had one. he lied.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“There isn’t enough time to get into all of it, so let’s go for the short version: we’re giga-screwed, as an Issy would say. This is the planet of Sleyn. I think I mentioned that already? Anyway. Sleyn was once a really nice place. Red sky is a little weird, but you get a good glimpse of the rings in the early morning around here, and it can be a real beauty.”

Gem looked to the sky. Chesu was almost right: the sky was a soft almost-pink, shot through with long feathery gray clouds that twisted and twirled at the edges. A sun sat at about halfway up the horizon, which could have meant anything.

He didn’t, however, see any rings.

“You are currently not on Sleyn, however. Not on the planet's surface, at least.” Chesu rubbed his face. “Sleyn’s surface is… overrun. I could get into a giant history lesson about it, but let’s go easy for now: down there are the Ostrum, and up here we are safe. Relatively.”

Gem tried to look down. Under his gem was a small pedestal made of some sort of looping metal, and beyond that was a square of stone. He could see the hard edges, cut into perfect sharp angles.

In a small, irregular shape around him were blocks of grass. Even though they sat next to one another, Gem could see the faintest outline of an edge to each block. They were perfectly uniform—all the same size and shape, with patterns of grass that looked similar.

On one of the blocks of grass sat an equally blocky wooden box.

But beyond the grass was nothing. Just a reddish-pink sky for as far as he could see.

“For a lack of a better way of putting it, yes. World Cores really don’t care about obeying the laws of physics when things get bad enough.”

Chesu clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth again. “I’m… getting ahead of myself. We can talk about that massive pain in the hip when we get around to it.”

Gem wanted to press, but instead he just sent a mental grumbling noise.

“You can also send me images. Things like… pictorial representations of body language. Some cores find it helps convey emotions. Ones that move are possible as well, but they’re harder.”

It wasn’t quite as easy as talking, however. Gem had to form the picture fully in his consciousness and then send it to the wisp as an entire thing. He tried to make one of a tapping foot to indicate impatience, but the movement was impossible for him to hold together. Instead, he sent a picture of a multifaceted gem with raised eyebrows on its surface.

Chesu laughed. It was a short, barked thing, almost as if he was caught off guard. “Well, that’s a new one.”

Gem felt a bit of queer pride at having made the wisp laugh. While it dried up quickly, vanishing behind that veneer of no-nonsense firmness, it was good to see there was something else to Chesu.

“Now then. There are two big rules here: the first is to never build down to the surface. The Ostrum are down there, except when there aren’t, and we don’t want them up here, even when they are. So let’s just… leave them alone. For now. Alright?”

Gem agreed wordlessly.

“The second is to always do your quests. If someone is doing their job right, you should have gotten your first quest by now?”

Gem went to confirm that he had, in fact, not received any sort of quest when words shot across his vision:

It’s a **insert-description-here** day on Sleyn. Welcome, **core-name**.

Quest Available: Would You Like Some Wood? Gather materials, including wood, stone, dirt, and other substances. Some items have been provided to you in a chest to get you started.

Quest Available: A Roof Over Your Head. As a sky-based Dungeon Core, you do not have the protection of being underground. Build a structure to act as your Core Room before it’s too late.

Gem said in a dry tone. He relayed the quest information to Chesu, leaving out the bits that were obviously unfinished. It would only make the wisp more upset.

“Right. So that second one is the most important. You, ah…” Chesu looked away, but not before Gem caught a glimpse of the tightness in the wisp’s face. After a bare moment he turned back, his expression sour. “It’s easy to become distracted. Sleyn’s systems are candy to new cores. Underground, you’d have the protection of the dirt itself to keep out whatever wanted to do you harm… but here…”

The wisp motioned around them.

It was unnecessary.

Gem was exposed to the sky. There was nothing covering his core even from the elements. Just the odd curved pedestal that held him up, which looked so out of place among all the right angles from the surrounding blocks.

“Already a step ahead of the curve.” Chesu grinned, a dark and bitter thing. “In that chest you’ll find a few items. Starters, if you will. You need to get a few things going so that you’ll be able to build. The first is a tree farm, since that requires time. Trees need dirt under them to grow. Otherwise… Sleyn takes care of the rest.”

Gem waited for more instructions, but Chesu just motioned at the chest. “Go on. Gather your saplings.”

The chest was four block-widths away from Gem. He thought to ask Chesu how to open it, but realized the wisp might not be too happy to answer.

Instead, he examined the chest.

It was the same width and length that it was tall. The chest took up the entire block of dirt that it sat on, which led Gem to believe the block of dirt was the same height as well. It was constructed out of some light wood, with darker bands and accents that also seemed to be made of wood. A small metal latch seemed to be the only thing holding it closed.

Without arms and hands, there was no obvious way to open it.

But Gem wasn’t deterred.

He focused on the chest’s latch and willed it open.

The lid of the chest swung backwards on hinges Gem hadn’t seen. It stopped at around a 45-degree angle. Four rows of ten gray boxes leapt in front of Gem’s vision. Some of the little boxes were full. He could see obvious items, like the aforementioned saplings, as well as two buckets that seemed to be filled with different types of liquid.

When Gem focused on one of the two saplings, a small bit of information appeared overlaid over the chest’s contents.

Spruce Sapling

What you plant when you want a spruce tree. Requires dirt block.

Focusing on the sapling again made it vanish.

Gem sent a panicked, wordless sound to Chesu.

“Its alright, kid. Don’t get so upset over nothing.” Chesu held up both hands as if warding Gem back. “I’m assuming the items vanished from the chest?”

“Good. Now its in your inventory. Means you can put it down and get it growing.”

As soon as Gem thought the words, another handful of gray boxes assaulted his vision. This one was also four rows of ten boxes, with a sapling in the upper-leftmost box. When he examined the sapling now, a small list of options appeared.

View Description

Plant

Destroy

Gem selected ‘Plant’ with his thoughts.

The sapling removed itself from his inventory and instead hung in the air. It was surrounded by a red outline. When Gem moved it over the dirt blocks, that outline turned green. Gem was amused to see that the outline was the width of the block, even though the sapling didn’t take up that much space. Perhaps the tree would grow to fill the space and be the same size as the block below it.

Each sapling also required an entire block of its own. He wasn’t able to place them on top of one another, or even in the sky.

Everything seemed so uniform and orderly on Sleyn.

But looks could be deceiving.