So Mister Sage, is there a special shape or design this dagger needs to have, or can I just wing it?

I'll show you.

An image appeared in my head of a dagger with a long, wavy blade embedded with colored crystals and inscribed with cryptic runes along its entire length. It set off fireworks in my brain, but not the good kind. I could feel tantalizing insights and information dancing just out of reach.

System: Your mastery in Magical Theory has evolved

System: Your mastery of Thaumaturgy has evolved

System: Error - Maximum possible mastery has already been achieved

System: Resolving compensation

System: Error - Compensation cannot be resolved at this time

I’d never seen the runes on the dagger before but they had to be powerful because just seeing them was enough to level up my skills, if only I hadn't already maxed them out. With my meager Adept mastery I couldn’t fully understand them, but I didn't need to. As long as I could properly reproduce them on the dagger that was all that mattered now. Now that I knew them, I could always try to unravel their secrets later.

Got it.

The Great Sage’s voice inside my head remained mute while I worked at the forge. He was right, it did take a lot of mana, and even with my backup mana battery I had to reach into my inventory to keep pulling out potions and crystals to fuel me and the forge. A while later...

System: Fabrication successful

I brought the completed dagger close to the dome.

How’s that?

Don’t show the brain, show the Shoggoth. It’s the one with the eyes.

Oh, right. Sorry.

I held the dagger out in front of the creature, and it examined it through countless bursting eyes.

Impressive.

Thank you. So what’s next, something about a power?

To move between realms, yes.

What does that mean?

It means exactly that. The dagger must be imbued with the power to shift from one plane of existence to another.

You mean, like, open a portal between dimensions or something?

Yes.

Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

I thought I had.

I took the dagger and placed it into the forge.

Don’t tell me you have the power to shift dimensions, too?

No. Not yet, anyway.

I had an idea. I pulled out the grimoire.

What is that?

Just a book I took from some cultists.

Let me see.

I held it up for the Shoggoth to examine.

I know that tome. It was once a prized treasure in my library.

Oh. Does that mean you want it back?

It is enough for me to know it still exists and is not being used for nefarious purposes.

Well, not anymore anyway.

I have no use for it now. You may keep it.

Thanks.

I should tell you that it does not contain the ritual necessary to travel to the specific dimension of pure thought and enlightenment I seek to reach.

But it does have other dimensional-hopping rituals, though. Like that one the cultists used to summon the Calamity Demon. Maybe we can riff off of that.

They did what?

Well, they didn’t get a chance to finish so it was only a partial demon that came through.

What happened to it?

We killed it.

You are unusual. I'm glad you managed to deal with it, it was not easy to banish it to that dimension in the first place.

You did that?

Using that book. But if it was only partially here, then I should also tell you that you did not destroy it, merely part of it. The part that remained there will regenerate and become whole again. Eventually.

Good to know. First things first, though. Let's figure out dimensional travel.

Things like teleportation and my inventory involved using other dimensions to either act as a shortcut between two places in this dimension or stashing stuff in another, and all that fell under the purview of Void. Between Thaumaturgy and the grimoire, Magic Theory and the runes, and all the powers I had access to including Synthesis – another Void power — surely I could find a way to figure this out. Plus, I had the Great Sage to collaborate with. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I’ve bored you enough already with obsessive details into my various crafting escapades, and it would take a long time to describe everything we tried to make it work, so I’ll skip to the end. It took us a while, but all my mucking about trying to improve upon the portal earlier paid off and we finally found the right combination of things to do what the Great Sage wanted. It wasn’t easy. It required a few steps, starting with a new power.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

System: Synthesizing Plane Walking

You can synthesize as well?!

System: Synthesis successful

Who are you? No, what are you?

Me? I’m just a humble utility belt.

Plane Walking - Novice: Extra-dimensional travel

The Plane Walking power was amazing, but it required so much mana it was too impractical for me to ever use it myself. But I could put it on the dagger and it would do the trick. I hoped.

Right, does the dagger need to do anything else?

No, Plane Walking will suffice.

You sure? I could throw on some other powers while I’m at it.

I am sure. The dagger will be consumed when it is used, anyway.

Oh yeah, so I guess there’s no point in adding anything else.

Step one was complete, on to the next. Creating Plane Walking had been hard, but getting it onto the dagger was another thing entirely. I couldn’t just use the forge.

Here’s the thing about powers on items compared to powers that people can innately use. All powers require mana, regardless if they're personal or item-based. When I used one of my own powers, I had to have enough mana in my personal pool to fuel it. Artifice and Alchemy were a bit different, the forge acted as a bridge so you could use external sources like mana crystals to fuel those powers. There were also powers that could supplement a person’s personal supply. I had those too.

Items were different. Triggering a power on an item sometimes required you to feed it some personal mana, other powers didn’t need much and could draw enough mana from the surroundings, and some could use mana stored inside the item itself. Embedding mana crystals was one way to provide that.

I had just learned that adding multiple crystals of different colors had an amplification effect on this, so using one of each color greatly increased the available mana, while vastly increasing the difficulty of forging the item in the first place. One of the things that made adamantium so awesome is that it had scads of innate mana stored up in it, which is why the dagger needed to be made of it. And it had to be a lot of adamantium, because like I said, this particular power needed a crap ton of mana. But it still wasn’t enough.

That’s where the Thaumaturgy came in.

That Great Sage thing was no joke, Cagliostra knew his stuff. I’d never have been able to do it by myself, but with his help I managed to tweak a few rituals in the grimoire to add two new pages to the book: a new ritual that would temporarily supercharge the Artifice forge to provide a huge influx of mana, and another that would activate the runes on the dagger, which turned out to be a sort of address for the specific dimension he wanted to ascend into. Heaven’s phone number.

I performed the rune activation ritual first, then the mana boost. The forge started to vibrate in a disconcerting way and emit a dubious hum, and I became genuinely worried the thing was going to blow up and take the tower and everything inside (i.e. me) with it. It didn’t, of course, but it was touch and go there for a bit. But at long last all the preparations were complete.

Okay, let’s do this.

System: Artifice successful

System: Do you wish to give the item a name?

“Heck yes! You know better than to ask me that, System. How about...The Great Sage’s Ascension Blade?”

What does it matter what it is named? It’s going to be consumed.

Before you were just a brain and were known by many names, were you also known as a fun person?

That was a rude thing to say to someone whose only interaction with the physical world comes through the medium of a blob with eyes, you know.

Ouch. Sorry.

System: The Great Sage’s Ascension Blade complete

But hey, it worked, right?

Unbelievable.

Right-o. We’ve got the dagger. What’s next? A potion, right?

An alchemical agent.

What’s that?

A compound created through the alchemical arts.

In other words, a potion. What does it do again?

It must contain the essences of all the universal elements.

Oh, right. And what are those again?

The primal aspects of existence.

And those are...?

You know. Fire, Water, Ice, Air, Earth—

Light, Darkness, Life, Death, right. You’re talking about the twelve affinities.

I am talking about the twelve fundamental elements of the universe. It is possible to have an affinity with an element. Your affinity is clearly with Void.

Something like that.

This is where your efforts will come short, I am afraid. You will need eleven practitioners, each with alchemical prowess, and all of the twelve elements must be represented between them.

How does that math work? Eleven people, twelve affinities.

Affinity with elements.

Whatever.

The brain didn’t need to breathe, but I swear I heard it sigh in my head.

Oh wait, I get it. Because you can only use Alchemy if you have affinity with Void, that means all the practitioners by definition will have that. Meaning there are only eleven elements left, so each of the eleven people must have a dual affinity with another one of the other elements.

Correct. If you are fortunate enough to have people with affinities with three elements, then fewer people may be required, but the odds of that are so low they may as well be zero. Regardless, without having enough individuals with the right talents, the alchemical agent cannot be completed.

So it’s all about using Alchemy with all affinities, er, elements.

It’s not that simple. Consider: some lucky people have an affinity with one element, some species likewise have certain elemental affinities, and in a generation there may be a handful of beings blessed with dual affinities. Perhaps in a century there may be born a prodigy who can boast three affinities. Statistically speaking, a confluence of individuals who all have Alchemy and can boast affinities with all the elements between them may happen perhaps once every few hundred years. And even then, they must all be brought together to collaborate on the project. One person alone cannot possibly make it happen unless they had affinity with all elements, which is inconceivable.

Oh ye of little faith. I assume you must also have an Alchemy forge lurking around somewhere, yes?

The Shoggoth silently vanished into a wall, returning moments later lugging another forge. It gently deposited the new Alchemical forge beside the other one. This one didn’t have the steampunk aesthetic, but looked more like something Leonardo da Vinci would’ve designed.

Nice. Now, the next thing we need is something to put the potion in. You wouldn’t happen to have a vial or a jar or something, would you? You know what, never mind. I’ll make one myself.

A short minute’s work at the Artifice forge produced a small glass vial, which I took to the Alchemy forge. My first effort at producing the potion did, in fact, come up short. I had tried to simply focus the twelve affinities into the alcohol I was using as the basis of the potion all at the same time, but I could tell very quickly that it wouldn’t work and almost made me pass out from mana depletion.

Time for a big snack. And a new vial.

What I needed was a power that represented the affinity elements. Then it hit me. Wayne had that I Can Make Fire power that gave him the second affinity with Fire. That should do the trick. I just needed to synthesize a version for each of the other eleven.

But that didn’t work either. The alchemy kept failing. I tried more things. I started making vials five at a time. Then by the dozen.

To his credit, Cagliostra remained quiet as I kept trying and kept failing. I think maybe he was dumbfounded by the fact that I really did have affinity with every element as well as Alchemy. And maybe I was just projecting, but as I kept trying and kept failing I also thought I could just feel the I told you so lurking at the tip of his brain.

The Shoggoth kept bringing me food and I kept eating it. I know I said there was no way in hell I’d lick anything from the void, let alone eat it, but beggars can’t be choosers. I was going through mana like vodka at a college mixer for new freshmen, and I could only suck so much from the environment of the Void.

It was disconcerting that all I had to do was think about wanting to eat and the exact thing I wanted appeared in front of me a few minutes later, the Shoggoth oozing away then coming back shortly after with whatever it was I’d been craving. I knew better than to ask where the food came from, but I took zero comfort in the fact that the information was also never offered.

If you’re wondering, it all tasted pretty good.

System: Alchemy failed

Again.

“This isn’t working,” I said out loud, scratching my head in frustration.

I told you it was impossible.

Shhh.

Did you just shush the Great Sage?

Shhhhhh.

Time for some more vials.