“Augh…” The enchanter woke up with a killer headache. Ending with the life of an outer god had taken a toll not only on his body, but also his mind.
The tower’s core immediately acknowledged the awakening of his master and saluted him. “Yeah, yeah. Good morning to you too. Tell me core, how much time have I’ve been sleep?” The old man asked as he cracked every bone in his body with every miniscule movement.
No time has happened. The magical computer communicated in a non-verbal way, as the enchanter’s head automatically translated it to words.
“Oh, right.” He groaned while taking a comfortable position in the couch. “I’ve forgot about the whole ‘no time and space continuum’ shenanigans of the null plane.”
He obviously knew that was impossible. He was thinking and talking, and he had had a good night’s rest, so time indeed did flow. The most likely of every hypothesis he had thought of was that the modified dungeon core was incapable of working correctly in this different dimension. That would explain the failed teleportation attempts from before.
Whatever was the case, he needed to do some chores first. The first one and most important was eating. He didn’t really need to thanks to the Tenet of Immortality, but it was better to think with a full stomach.
“Core, bring me some food. Anything will work.” The core nodded, or at least, transmitted the feeling in its own way.
Whilst the enchanter waited for the core to bring food, he took the minor signet of stamina out of his finger and examined it carefully. It was made of silver, and it wasn’t perfectly circular, more akin to an oval.
“The runes aren’t well defined, and the calligraphy of them is acceptable at best.” The enchanter commented with a teacher-like demeanor. “Easily improvable.”
With a touch of mana and a swift redirection of the surrounding ether, he modified the runes and infused the argent ring with the renewed energy.
“Hmmm, not that good, but it will make the cut.” The signet had changed from one of minor stamina to one of medium stamina. The improvement was sizeable but a far cry from the tens of magical items he wore.
The old man didn’t cry over the spilled milk, he still had hundreds of replacements all over the tower. He was just to tired to search for them. Maybe the core would help him.
After what felt like a quarter of an hour, then again there wasn’t any time, flying disc brought the enchanter some food. Stale bread, dry meat, and freshly made potato soup.
“Feeling fancy, aren’t we?” The old man told the core with a chuckle.
Whilst the tower master was used to lavish feasts, he would kill for any kind of sustenance right now. Even though one millennium ago he lost the necessity to eat, he still indulged on the activity. It returned him a bit of his lost humanity. The enchanter found comfort on the act of eating, but it was a chore to him, nonetheless.
The bread was tasteless, the jerky salty, and the soup was acceptable. Yet the motion of having a full stomach activated his tired mind.
“Alright, let’s get down to business, core.” The man limped towards a chair surrounded by stone slates. The instant he sat down, the engravings on the stones illuminated with a faint blue glow and began levitating. He was promptly covered by a glowing wall.
“I need you to make the necessary calculus to reopen the rift between dimensions, core. Meanwhile, I’ll work on repairing the void sigil.” The experienced enchanter didn’t need to open the deep ebony cage to know that his magical writings had been destroyed after the tower had changed planes.
He didn’t know how much time it took to repair the sigil. Between the fact time outright didn’t exist in this plane and that he didn’t need any sleep thanks to his intertwined white and red ring, the measurement of time became diffuse at best.
His advanced age also affected the notion of time. He could have spent hours or months fixing the void’s conduct, and both options would feel right to him.
The enchanter tried to ask the core how much time he had spent sat around his stone cage, but to no one’s surprise, the arcane computer was unable to measure the elapsed time.
“Ehem.” His throat was no different than a desert after spending so much without lubrication. A bit of water here, please. The enchanter communicated mentally to the core as he was unable to talk.
After an excruciatingly long sip, he was moisturized enough. The old man didn’t worry about any scarring or damage caused in his vocal cords as the Tenet of Immortality would be more than enough to heal them.
“I’m human once more.” He commented while stretching his arms. “Are the calculus for the reopening of the gates done?” Negation, the core communicated. “I see. Well, I didn’t expect this to be easy, to begin with.”
Almost every other plane lord held the null dimension closed, so tearing a rift, however small it was, was a mind-boggling, titanic, near-impossible task.
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“Try to track ether on the plane, core.” The man commanded as he laid once more on the nearby couch. Ether doesn’t spawn in the void. There must be some rifts to be able to uphold the current ether net around the tower. “I don’t care if it’s of microscopic or atomic size, report to me when you find a connection to the physical plane.”
It was rather obvious that a scan of the plane would take a while, so the enchanter took advantage of the downtime and collected some scattered enchanted pieces around the Nexus.
None of them were as strong as the mithril and adamantium garments he wore against the void lord, but the materials weren’t important, but the enchantment themselves. Some stamina and mana boosters were easy to find, but the mental and physical wards were a tad bit more complicated to get his hand on. He had all the time in the world to find them, either way. Or more accurately, none of the time.
The enchanter pondered how the void lord had managed to break the adamantium trinkets as the metal was known to be virtually indestructible, but the answer was rather obvious. The physical and void plane didn’t share the same laws. Whilst the mythical metal was the strongest material on place, in the other it was no different from any matter. The void is also known for piercing any magical or physical entities, so that’s that.
“I put the task on low priority, but I think now it’s time to repurpose the cage.” The mage groaned as he thought on the tedious task of modifying the deep ebony sphere. “Augh, this is going to be more boring than that time I was paralyzed for a full year.”
Deep ebony was a metal hard to work with. Not as much as adamantium, but the golden metal was so rare he only managed to make rings and necklaces with it. On the other hand, the impossible dark metal was somewhat common, incredibly dense, and its magic-nullifying properties impeded metalworking through sorcery.
He no longer needed the black cage as it was meant originally to prevent the void from leaking to the physical world because he didn’t want to close the rift. But now he didn’t have to worry about that. The moment he returned home, he would close the gate, making the whole cage concept useless.
Once again, he didn’t know how much time had happened while he transformed the rift jail into an amplifier. It was a tricky and creative exploit of the dark metal’s properties.
Deep ebony wasn’t able to nullify magic, it just absorbed and broke the tethers of the surrounding ether net. The enchanter took the sphere apart into pieces and created spikes of dark metal that gathered all the ether around the tower. Akin to a bottomless battery, or a capacitor.
“I wonder if the creature’s carcass is still out there?” He asked himself as his mind began to wonder. The old man became unable to concentrate in one thing after waiting for so long for the core’s scan. It felt like an eternity since he ordered it to look for dimensional rift.
It probably hadn’t been that long, maybe a dozen of days, but his patience was running low. And even then, he was the first mortal, perhaps even the first being, to visit the Void. So, it was a waste to not pioneer a bit the place.
The mage made his way out of the tower, now re-equipped with a myriad of trinkets. Ranging from pendants to bracelets, he was fully equipped to handle the harsh environments of the devoid space.
“Yeah, I don’t know what I expected.” He told as he wandered across the endless expanse. This time he had a bit more foresight and prepared a choker that summoned a bubble of air around his head. This way he could talk and breathe, even if it wasn’t really needed.
“The corpse still remains, but everything else is so… dull.” There was nothing around him besides the dead divinity and his colossal tower. “But there must be something out there.”
He knew about the tales and myths about the eldritch gods. How much true they were was up to dispute, but the fact every story mentioned multiple gods, that meant there were more than one outer void overlord.
“I have travelled to the Light and Chaos plane and they were ruled by a plethora of gods and demons, so why I can’t find another being in this place!” He shouted in indignation. The sound didn’t travel beyond of his air bubble as there was no medium for the vibrations to be transmitted.
Although he didn’t want to redo his fight against another void lord, he doubted success was even possible with his mediocre replacement equipment. But he wanted to meet other inhabitants of the null dimension.
As his search across the endless nothingness proved fruitless, the enchanter decided to try other things. Mainly working with the metaphysical properties of the creature of the beyond.
Inside the Nexus’, the enchanter toyed with the strange not-material material. It was affected with magical and physical means, thought not in a great deal. It was illogical, beyond any comprehension of the natural world. It also moved before and after of his time and space. When his fingers traced over it, they were touching it and not doing so at the same time.
One time there, the other not. Sometimes he could feel the silk-like skin of the creature even if he wasn’t touching it, other times he wasn’t nowhere near and it reacted to his touch.
“Huh, when did I came to the tower?” His head pained as he tried to remember. “I was in the void, yet I’m now working with this carcass. Ugh. Core, when did I arrive here?”
Negation, no passage of time.
“I should have expected it.” It was rather obvious that the absences of physical dimensions were affecting him. “But the thing” he said unable to classify the void lord’s substance, “is interacting weirdly. Is it working in its own space-time dimensions, or is it connected to myself in some way?”
He didn’t feel any trace of ether on the creature’s body, which shouldn’t be possible as everything contained it. Whether it be gods or demons, dimensions or objects, even the god-forsaken creatures that were mosquitoes. Everything acted in some effects towards the ether.
“It doesn’t even undo ether knots, it just… doesn’t interact with the ether.” He was like a farmer finding for the first time of the existence of ghosts and poltergeist. “As if it wasn’t from this dimension…”
Though it didn’t make sense as he was currently in the Void itself.
He found himself working in the machinery needed to reopen a rift as the tower’s core was unable to find a single one. Which was another impossible thing. He had found uncountable tears in the space-time continuum during his millennia-long travel across Caelestaya. They were more common than dragons! Which is not to say a lot, but they at least existed.
“It doesn’t make sense… Tears should be everywhere, not only towards the physical plane. I should have found towards other planes, even if they were to kill me instantly like the temporal one.” The enchanter stopped weaving the ether as he looked around. “When did I dismounted the cage and began building this? Wasn’t I inspecting the godling’s corpse?” He scratched his coiled ring while pondering. “It must be the age, I guess.”