Pain. Bright light.

Oz squinched his eyes, reluctant to open them. Why does everything hurt? With effort, he peeled his eyes open.

He laid in a field, surrounded by low grass. Confused, Oz sat up and looked around. This… isn’t the library. It isn’t the plains outside the World Door, either.

Three large boulders stood before him, blocking his way forward.

Oz laughed. Pushing himself to his feet, he strode over and slapped a hand on the nearest boulder. “I know where I am. I’m inside my own… cultivation, or something. And these rocks are my closed meridians.”

The rock slammed into the earth. Cracks shot through it.

Oz jolted. He looked at his hand, then at the rock, then back at his hand. Blue sparks flickered around his hand, his whole body thrumming with power. His core ached, over-full.

“Huh. I guess I did just drop into an ocean of qi.”

The rock started to heal up behind him, crackling as it fixed itself. Oz clenched his hand into a fist and whirled, punching the boulder. It shattered. Shrapnel shot through the air, spinning off in all directions.

Before the shrapnel landed, Oz darted forward. He punched again, smashing the next boulder. Like the first, it shattered. Racing forward, carried by his momentum, he lifted both fists and dropped them down on the final boulder.

A shockwave travelled through the enormous rock. It trembled, then burst into a thousand tiny pieces. Oz clapped his hands, pushing all his qi into the snap. A second shockwave flew forth, and the tiny pieces became dust.

His feet tapped down. Dust rained all around Oz, settling over the grass all around him. He took a deep breath. That’s the last meridian, but… He put a hand on his stomach, where his core sat. Stuffy. There’s still something blocking my progress. Something I need to do before I can truly step onto the first stage.

He took a deep breath and let it out, then turned, slowly, taking in the field. A flat, grassy space. Empty. No trees, no more boulders. Just a vast, empty, flat space.

Knowledge bubbled to the surface, gleaned from thousands of absorbed books. Oz put his hand on his chin. “Entering the first realm is referred to as building your foundation. But did they mean literally? I’ve got a nice plot of land here, waiting to be built upon.”

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

The books flickered before his eyes, hundreds of thousands of words blurring by. He gestured, freezing an image of a flat field. Again, this time picking out the worlds “lay your cornerstones.” Three more times. A diagram of a rocky mountain, the phrases “a firm foundation,” and “solidify the earth.”

Oz grinned. “They’re being coy about it, but if you read it all together, you can pick the pieces out. Building your foundation is literal. I knew it!”

“I wonder, is this what Madame Saoirse was referring to?”

Abruptly, he shook his head. “Before any of that! How am I supposed to build an actual foundation? I don’t have anything to build with except my bare hands and the earth.”

He reached down into himself, checking his stocks of qi. It simmered in his core, at least seventy percent full, but no longer overflowing. Qi, to form the foundation…?

Squinting, he shook his head. No. That’s definitely part of it, but that isn’t all of it. I lack something. There’s still something I need to overcome before I can lay my foundation.

A wave of exhaustion rolled over Oz. Sighing, he plopped down, lying on his back, arms spread, in the middle of the broad field. Grasses swayed. Flowers bobbed in the wind, dancing over his head. The sun beamed down, warming his body.

Where is this? This realm. Is this really inside me? Inside… my soul, or my core, or whatever. But there’s a sun, and a breeze, and this nice field with grass already grown. Was this Ossian’s, before it was mine? But Ossian said magic is linked to the soul, so it shouldn’t be something we share.

He closed his eyes, searching the knowledge he’d gained. It jumbled together in his head, totally disorganized. More than ever, now, I need to figure out how to sort this data. With nothing better to do, though, he kept going, brute-force searching the data. Bits and pieces floated to the surface, simple concepts that hinted at something deeper. A realm… within the soul. One’s core becomes a world. There’s bits and pieces hidden within the books. Building a world within the core is a common theme.

I’ll have to ask Aisling and Linnea. I wonder what kind of worlds they’ve built?

What kind of world should I build?

Oz laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? I should build a library.”

He froze. “A library…” Doesn’t that solve my organization problem and my foundation problem at the same time? I can organize the books in my mind the same as in the library, and call forth a book I need as easily as I do in the real world? Of course, I’ll still need to read the text to know what’s in the books, but with the help of the sea of knowledge, I can quickly learn the books’ contents, then quickly use the library in my core to access the information I need at any given moment.

He opened his eyes, watching the flowers sway on the gentle wind. I’m still a long ways from that, though.

Oz yawned. The sun warmed his skin and lulled him to sleep. Rather than resisting, he let himself drift away. His eyelids glowed a warm red. Comfortable, he settled among the clover.

A whisper sounded on the wind, a faint warning. Sleep muddled the words, mussing them to mere sounds. Oz struggled to wake back up, to make the voice out clearer, but sleep gripped him and dragged him down.