Honestly, she didn't think Donner would be that upset because she kind of did what he told her to. Was the World Tree bigger than a flower? Yes. But, it was a plant. A plant no one knew what to do with and it was out of her hands now; they'd gated it off and were trying to decide how to handle the thing. If they'd ask her she'd put it back where she found it. Or, she'd try at least. She wasn't sure where it came from.

Suffice it to say she had a spot at Arcane Arts and wasn't that the whole point of her life? She didn't understand why he was still mad. The goal was reached and she already had a single room, full of stuff Ji-hun bought because of appearances or whatever, and she was assigned a tutor one-on-one before school officially started. That person, whoever they were, would be around within the next week. They needed to find someone with unique qualifications for the job.

"Because they don't trust you to share with anyone!"

"Geez."

Everything was wrong in his estimation.

Ji-hun pulled a sob story out of his ass about how she'd displayed incredible power from a young age and that it'd gotten to the point that he didn't know what to do with her anymore. So, now she was out of the dead vampire's mansion and enrolled in boarding school.

And dammit Donner was right about the food. She was trying to come up with a plan to fix that, but she wasn't sure how to go about it and he wasn't any help. It was like these people had never heard of any seasonings besides salt and pepper.

"You'd think with magic they could chop up garlic and toss it in with some potatoes, but no. What the heck is wrong with these people?"

"I'd like to know what's wrong with you, but it seems neither of us will find the answers we seek."

"Oh come on! Get over it already! You're such a baby. The past is past and we're here now so we can get into the library or something, right?"

"They won't let you in until the school year begins."

"Okay, but we can at least make a plan. Tell me the names of the books you want to look at or the subjects I should check or something. You're wasting time being a bitch boy."

In her dreams, she stood with her hands on her hips as he sat on the sidewalk, his back to a red brick building.

"I can't believe you called a fucking World Tree into existence," he muttered. All her insults rolled right off. "You saw one Wiki article about it and then-"

"You've said this a million billion times!" she shouted. "It's already over!"

On a day when she was extremely bored, she went to the library that was local to the mansion and did a little web browsing. She was planning to look in on Ant, but one thing led to another and somehow she ended up in Valhalla.

"It is not over. That thing is still in the examination hall and you have no idea what effect it might be having. I'm not talking about the lives of the people and things around it either, I mean how they view you. We don't know what they're thinking."

"I bet I can read their minds if I want to, but it doesn't matter. We're not here to make friends, Donner. We're here to kick ass and forget their names!"

"That may be your ultimate mission but it isn't mine," he growled, glaring at her. He looked like a mentally ill homeless man right now. Hair all a mess and his face unshaven, ragged dirty clothes. If he could have he would've been drinking, she was pretty sure. "I don't know what you think you're going to say to them when they finally ask you about it, but no explanation is going to suffice."

She folded her arms and sat down cross-legged with a huff. "I could tell them the truth, that I'm Life incarnate. That I took a vacation and this is what happened."

His silent seething was answer enough.

"Things aren't going too bad," she said, "even with Life mostly out of commission. It's not like the world is ending or anything, and I haven't messed stuff up that much, no matter what you say."

Most of her dreamscapes were devoid of other life and this one was no different. It was the two of them as usual. A city backdrop. A world in which no other people remained or maybe they'd never been there at all. Perhaps this place was somewhere real, somewhere else.

She wondered about that. Were there other worlds? Separate from this one. Like her thoughts on the paranormal when she was a small child, she tended to think it must be real. Too many people told stories about it for it to be fake. The whole World Tree incident pointed in that direction as well.

What were all the branches for? How much was it sustaining?

Exactly what was this world and what was her role in it?

Donner thought she grabbed the Tree for no real reason, but that wasn't true. She wanted to see it.

"Listen," she told him. "I get that you're mad, but there was no better time for me to get the World Tree than right then. I wanted it to be a good surprise for you! And then you said the thing about the flower and I thought it would be great. I didn't know you'd be so freaked out about it."

"You're telling me you planned that?" Flatly.

He still wasn't thankful.

"Not exactly, but I was thinking about the Tree and then you said the flower thing and that was a good opportunity because it killed two birds with one stone!" She woke up on purpose and pulled on her shoes. "Let's go look at it. If it's that important in so many cultures, it must mean something."

"Fucking hell, Luna. Something that important shouldn't be pulled into your reality because you're interested in it! A sane person would realize that!"

"I guess I'm not sane then, but whatever. It's already done and it wasn't just that I wanted to see it. I think it might be tied to me as Life somehow. If it is, maybe we can use it to get you out."

He was never going to appreciate her hard work.

Out into the darkened hall, lit by the clouded moon outside the many windows, she went. Down a set of stairs and around a corner. And another corner.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"This place is big for no reason."

"Needless difficulty. Even Arcane is not immune."

So he was a little less mad.

Hm.

He wanted to know about the World Tree, too.

"Of course I do," he snapped, "and it's not as if I can stop you from sneaking down there so what else should I say?"

The paths of this place were far less magical than she expected them to be. Somewhat castle-like with the stone and arches, but nowhere close to a top-tier fantasy world. Where were the patrolling empty suits of armor?

There was literally no consequence to her roaming the building in the dead of night. No one else was awake and no one knew what she was doing. She'd been in more danger of getting caught back at the farmhouse because of the creaky stairs.

"When other students arrive, policing will pick up, but you're not wrong. Much of Society runs on an established social narrative. Magic as they practice it is the epitome of socialization. You will be hard-pressed to find someone who even has an idea that anything else is possible. They don't know what the outside world holds and they don't know what their own world could hold."

Normal people would be super disappointed to see that this was the actual state of magic in the world. All those novels with romance and fantasy and this was the reality.

Nothing much.

"Is anything ever as cool as you hope it will be?" she lamented. "I wonder if the World Tree will be another letdown." She'd set it on fire if it was.

"You have no idea what significance it holds so don't go doing anything stupid."

Many steps later she was finally in its presence. The most magical thing here, she was sure, shone with a silvery light. The leaves were golden-hued and the trunk rainbow crystal. It certainly looked special. The question was how to find out why it was important, if it was at all.

Most myths surrounding the World Tree revolved around its purpose in connecting the heavens above and whatever was down below. She hoped it did more than that because that didn't sound useful.

"Considering nothing happened when I brought it here, I'm thinking they were wrong about what it does," she told Donner. "The sky didn't fall, the dead didn't rise, there weren't any natural disasters."

So what was it for?

Examining it up close didn't provide any clues. It was what it looked like:

A super beautiful and totally impractical tree.

"But where was it before this?" she asked. Maybe its true purpose had to be observed in its natural habitat.

A portal. She'd opened a portal and pulled it into the school.

She just had to do it again and go through herself.

Finding the thread as she did for the school was no trouble with the Tree right here and though it took a bit of maneuvering to unzip the dimensional pocket, which Donner did not like at all, she got it open and peered inside. Like the other portals she'd seen before, it was darkness all around.

"That's not how we open portals," he groused. "Artifacts and spells are necessary."

"Yeah, yeah. Accept that I can do shit the way I want to."

He would be better off if he could do that, but the stretching of his mind was like pulling teeth. He'd even tried to tell himself to take it at face value. He understood that his own life, such as it was, would be easier if he did; yet, every time she pulled a stunt like this he couldn't help but react in disbelief.

"It's more frustrating for me than it is for you, I'm sure," he told her as she stepped into the black and exited in a place that looked like the World Tree.

"Ooookay," she said slowly. "So, it's not somewhere on Earth then." The air itself was different. Lighter. She was lighter, too. As she walked forward she bounced and had to adjust the force she used to keep herself from soaring too high. "I didn't die going through it either, like I did in the mansion. You still here?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Did you ever read about a place like this?"

"No. I have no idea where we are now. Tread cautiously. Beauty is often the guise of danger."

A whole world of crystal. There didn't appear to be any living things.

"That must be where the World Tree was," she pointed to a massive hole in the ground and slowly made her way toward it. On her knees, she crawled forward and gazed within. "It looked bigger from far away. It's not even that deep."

"Keep in mind that our perspective may be wrong. What seems right in the context of Earth, may not apply here."

She nodded along; his words sounded wise enough to her.

"The question is still the same though," she said as she peered into the crystalline crater. "What's the point of the tree? Does it do anything or did someone see it by accident once and make up a story to go with it?" She sat back on her heels and scanned the landscape. "It looks manufactured, not natural."

"Yes, it does appear to have been constructed," Donner observed. "If you have no other ideas, follow the pathway. It may lead somewhere."

Logical enough to go with and so she did. Someone built this place, but whether or not they were still around remained to be seen.

There were no other trees here or grass or bugs. This wasn't a place for the living.

"Maybe it's Heaven?" she asked aloud.

"Doubtful. You'd think there'd be some form of activity if that was the case."

"Maybe I can't interact with it because I'm not dead."

"At this point, your guess is as good as mine. All you can do is keep walking."

Soon, though, she noticed something a bit off. A seam in the shiny crystal, or so it seemed at first. Upon closer inspection, she found it to be a string or something like it. A clear fiber that ran off into the distance, away from the path.

"I'm going to follow it," she told Donner. Looking back the way she came she could see it kept going, too. "I think it started where I did. I think it's mine."

"And how do you know that?"

"I don't, but I think it is. See?" She walked back several paces. "It follows the road where I walked. I bet if I kept going I'd find its start where the portal is."

Turned once more, she continued off the road onto more crowded terrain. Crystals grew tall here and shined with an inner glow. Iridescent shimmer flung without pattern.

"Maybe it's hell," she said. "If I was here for too long, I think I'd go crazy." Something about it all wasn't right. It was too quiet, too gleaming. "You could get lost forever."

"Possibly." There was an off-putting feeling here, he noticed it too. As if this world wasn't meant for life. Dry. "I suppose it's good news for me."

"Because you aren't comfortable here either?" She'd never thought she found their universe particularly satisfying, but it wasn't like this. "There's no place like home, I guess. You must not belong here either."

Fortunately, the string did lead somewhere. If it looked like she had to walk much further she was ready to give up and leave, but the thread went off into a solid wall. "There's got to be a way to open it. I hope there aren't any ghosts this time."

She pushed against the cool barrier and felt a pulsing energy. It wasn't merely an edifice, but neither did it feel alive. She wasn't sure what it meant and Donner didn't know either.

"I've never encountered something like this," he told her. "I suppose you should try to use that energy. Take hold of it, if you can."

It wasn't easy to do. It kept sliding out of her grasp. Like learning to walk more carefully here, it took her a few tries to grab hold of it. A snake that wouldn't stop slithering and like the rest of this world, it was imbued with a feeling of discomfort.

"It makes my hand ache. My whole arm." She rolled her shoulders and shuddered. "It ain't right!"

"We aren't supposed to be here," Donner said. "That much is clear. This whole place is unnatural in comparison to our world. It's not enough to kill you, but it's still wrong."

She tugged the coil left and right, shook it up and down, and grit her teeth against the urge to release it. "I hate this thing. Whatever it is I hate it and when we go back I'm launching the World Tree into space. We don't need it and I don't care if this place does."

She had the distinct notion that it was the threat that made the door open and from within the room of white a croaking voice said, "If you do that, there will be no more worlds."

"What the fuck," she said to Donner. "Do we care about that?"

"The end of everything? I would think so."

"You don't need to be sarcastic."