Mage World
“Let me introduce you to Chris…” Greg grinned, turning towards the figures forming around him, only to freeze as the world pulsed, rippling out of Greg and passing over the Archmage and Techno.
Rune World
A ripple surged out of Tori, covering her and Beatrice, their entire room, and a significant chunk of the building around them.
Beast World
The ripple surged out of Andrew, pulling in Cathryn and Li Jing.
System World
The ripple just managed to catch Quinn as she and Andrew ate breakfast.
Maze World
A horde of foxkin yelped as the ripple pulsed out of Chris's ‘corpse’, covering a good chunk of the tunnel as it spread much further than any of the other ripples.
As the ripples finished, the four once again found themselves seated on thrones, in the center of a patchwork space. It was mostly tunnels, due to Chris's ripple, with a small section that included a piece of spaceship, a random section of a building, a small dining room, and an apartment kitchen. “Greg?” Tori began.
“Yeah?” Greg replied.
“I fucking hate you.” Tori growled.
“Ah, yeah, I get that.” Greg chuckled, getting to his feet and looking around. “Wow… that's a lot of pissed off fox people.”
Chris sighed as he got up as well. “Yeah, that's my fault.”
“Fuck, Beatrice!” Tori cursed, jumping to her feet.
Andrew jumped up as well, only to stop and grin as he heard a roar from that direction. “Don't worry, Mei's got them.”
“What- is that a fucking dragon?!?” Tori asked incredulously as she watched a ferocious serpentine form tear through a group of terrified foxkin, before curling up protectively in front of two girls.
“Yeah.” Andrew confirmed, flicking an airblast at an incoming fireball, sending it flying at a different foxkin. “Did these guys really beat you?” He asked, glancing at Chris. “They're kinda weak.”
“Well… I was holding back to try and throw off suspicion.” Chris muttered as he threw up a few barriers. “But they are considered fairly strong in my world, compared to humanity at least. Particularly that one.” He pointed towards the foxkin captain, who was trying to organize the foxkin. “His attacks affect you on a… spiritual level, I guess? It isn't physical at least. So you know, don't let him hit you.”
Andrew paused. “Spiritual? Like my aura?”
“Maybe?” Chris shrugged. “You do realize I have no clue what you're capable of either, right?”
“Fair.” Andrew agreed. “But can we capture him for me? It's literally the first time I've run into an ability that even might have something to do with aura.”
“I can capture him for you.” Tori offered, her Spirit threads unfurling and her Essence forming into daggers as she stalked towards the foxkin captain. “Particularly since your pet dragon is protecting my girlfriend.”
“She's not a pet!” Andrew hissed, glancing Mei's way, hoping she hadn't heard that. Even implying that the Beast was subservient to the human side was enough of an excuse to kill for certain Bonded, and while Mei wouldn't do anything like that, she'd definitely hold a grudge, which was the last thing they needed right now. Particularly since Tori seemed like the type to hold a grudge herself.
The foxkin weren't much more of a threat to Tori than they were to Andrew, particularly once she got her Essence armor up. She used her Spirit threads to bash them against the sides of the tunnel and cut down any that got too close as she moved towards the foxkin captain, catching him before he could run away and wrapping him in Spirit threads. Greg dove in as well, transforming into his scorpocroc form as he tore through the foxkin, any attacks he took healing almost instantly since he didn't have a real body at the moment. Meanwhile Andrew made his way over to Cathryn and Li Jing, taking care of some of the foxkin as he did but mostly focused on making sure his girlfriends were safe. As for Chris, he used his barriers to harass the foxkin, but there wasn't much else he could do as he'd once again lost all his ability energy. Still, even without Chris and Andrew doing much, Greg and Tori were more than enough to break the foxkin, the few survivors fleeing back down the tunnel and out of the strange warped space.
“Man it feels good to fight something I can actually kill.” Greg sighed in satisfaction as he returned to his human form.
Tori frowned at him. “Seriously?”
“Hey, I just spent like four hours dealing with enemies I couldn't even touch.” Greg shrugged. “Being able to actually do something about a problem is just nice, alright?” He paused, glancing at the foxkin captain floating behind her. “Speaking of, do you want me to put some cuffs or something on him?”
“Sure.” Tori agreed, moving the captain over to Greg as they walked over to Andrew, who used some smoke to pull his limbs together before turning it to steel. “There.” She announced as she dropped the captain in front of Andrew. “One fox person with a maybe aura ability, as requested.”
“Thanks.” Andrew grinned. “I would have done it myself, but… I'd probably have ended up killing him.” He finished with a slight sigh.
“Okay, what the hell is going on here?!?” Cathryn demanded.
“I would also like an explanation.” The Archmage commented, crossing her arms and staring at Greg, while Li Jing did the same to Andrew, pulling Li Mei back since things seemed to have calmed down.
[Vic- Victoria?] Beatrice called out hesitantly, peeking out of their room, wide-eyed.
Tori grimaced slightly as she moved over to her. [Sorry, Beatrice, this might get a bit confusing. There's a lot to go through here, and I don't think anyone else speaks Callowan. I'll explain everything after, okay?]
[I can translate for her.] The mantis Avatar offered as it appeared on Tori's shoulder. [Our connection lets me understand and speak any language you know.]
Tori blinked. [That would be great, thank you.]
Meanwhile Quinn was still frozen, staring blankly across her kitchen table with a spoonful of cereal still halfway to her mouth, completely forgotten by everyone.
Chris looked around, shrugged and opened a portal to where Beth and Nadia were waiting to hear the results of his escape attempt. “This is probably a conversation you should be a part of.” He explained, waving for them to join him.
They both frowned as they stepped out, eyes immediately widening as they took in the scene around them before simultaneously whirling on Chris and exclaiming in unison. “What did you do?!?”
“I was this close to escaping when a random group returning to the tribe hit me with some sort of concussive attack, stunning me just long enough for that one to get a good hit in, which sent me to this timeless space with him, him, and her, though they were asleep at the time. I woke them up, things happened, we went back to sleep and now we're here.” Chris replied as succinctly as possible. “All of which is to say I have no idea what's going on, but it has something to do with why I have a space.”
“What he said.” Greg agreed, pointing a thumb at Chris. “Though I'd add that it probably has something to do with us being the Sovereigns of the Multiverse.”
Tori rolled her eyes. “Would you stop trying to make that a thing? None of us are sovereigns of anything!”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Hey, I have it on good authority I'm the sovereign of physicality!” Greg retorted. “And you can't deny you at least have something weird going on with you, right?”
Tori scowled. “No, but that doesn't make me a sovereign. What would I even be the sovereign of?!?”
“How should I know?” Greg shrugged. “Maybe you should ask Narita. I'm sure she can figure it out.”
“I might just do that.” Andrew muttered, not noticing as Quinn locked onto him. “Getting some guidance on what's going on with my aura doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world.”
“I wouldn't call it guidance.” Greg commented. “It isn't like she knows how anything works, she just gets a vague idea of what it is.”
Andrew shrugged. “Even that sounds helpful. I mean, I know I can control aura, but since I don't know what aura actually is then it doesn't do me much good, now does it? All I know how to do with it right now is kill things, switch cores, and make mutant monstrosities.”
“I guess it wouldn't be the worst idea.” Chris agreed. “Though I feel I have a pretty good handle on what my space is capable of.”
“Does any of this have anything to do with what's going on here?” Nadia asked, rubbing her temple.
Chris cocked his head. “Considering our natures are an integral facet of why this happened, I would say it's fairly foundational to what's going on. Then again, the fact that we probably aren't going to get anything better than the theory that we're all sovereigns at the moment, it isn't a very productive avenue of conversation. But then, we don't exactly know why any of this happened, so it isn't like we have a lot to say either way.”
“I mean, I have some theories.” Greg commented.
Tori sighed. “Of course you do.”
Greg chuckled, clapping his hands. “Alright, let's look at the facts! First, clearly something we did ended up pulling the areas around us into this weird meshed together space. Probably something to do with those connections, but the weird part is we showed up, then the area was pulled in… Why didn't it just pull the area in to start? My guess is that it has something to do with all of us being in the same reality, not to do with the connection, which suggests that there are other ways for us to get to other realities.”
Andrew frowned. “Didn't we already know that? Both me and Tori have ended up in different realities.”
Greg snapped his fingers. “Good point, right, so yeah, that makes sense. Now then, the question is why it ended up pulling in the areas it did. Obviously it started from where we were, but why is Chris's area gigantic, while our areas are comparatively small?”
Chris looked around, eyeballing the area, noticing the shape of the other sections, then looking up. “Huh… if this area extends just as far up and down as it does side to side, it could be a similar size to my space? That might have something to do with it.”
Tori frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I've had to invest fairly heavily in growing my space.” Chris explained with a shrug. “I don't know how your abilities grow, or even if they do, but that's the only thing I can think of that I might have done differently.”
Greg glanced at the spaceship area. “That could work… I didn't really do much to make my smoke stronger.”
“I didn't do much for my points either.” Tori agreed.
Andrew grimaced. “I don't even know how to make my aura stronger.”
“So… the stronger our sovereign abilities are in a reality, the more area we pull in?” Greg offered tentatively. “Though how does that work if we move from one reality to another?”
“Maybe we can't.” Chris suggested.
“Dude, we literally just did it!” Greg retorted. “It pretty much immediately pulled us in here, but still!”
“Did we?” Chris raised an eyebrow. “Because what I remember is being in five different places at once for a moment. I didn't travel anywhere, a new me was created in each other reality, along with a separate space for each one.”
Greg paused. “Really?” Chris nodded. “Huh… So our power in each reality is independent of our power in any other reality?”
“Hold on. I did move between realities, and my points didn't get weaker in the process.” Tori interjected. “Though I did have to spend pretty much all of them to do it…”
“Well, my aura isn't as strong in system world as it is in Beast world.” Andrew pointed out. “So maybe it's both?”
“Does it matter right now?” Li Jing commented. “I think we should focus on what the existence of this space means.”
“Oof, good question.” Greg muttered. “Well, clearly it's connecting all the realities we're in, because otherwise y'all wouldn't be here. It isn't isolated either, because I saw fox people entering and leaving. Not sure if that means you can travel to a different reality though…”
“That seems like something we should test.” The Archmage suggested. “On the one hand, it could be a significant boon for us, and on the other, I believe the individuals who live in these structures would like to know if they need to worry about these… fox people.”
Cathryn shuddered. “I do not want those things getting into our house!”
“Yeah, no.” Andrew agreed, his expression twisting slightly. “Who wants to give it a shot then?”
“Allow me.” The Archmage offered, moving towards the dining room. “It was my idea, after all.” She reached the edge of the space and stopped, frowning and cocking her head slightly. “Curious… it seems there are options. I can either… suppress myself? Or… convert?” She announced as she attempted to explain the vague impulses she was getting, before taking a step back. “The suppression feels temporary, while the conversion seems to be more permanent, like I would be giving something up if I did it.” She considered it for a moment before deciding to suppress herself and step through, stumbling the moment she did, her eyes widening as she immediately scrambled back, letting out a sigh of relief as she returned.
“You okay?” Greg asked.
“Yes, that was just- one moment.” The Archmage held up a finger as she formed a series of clones which rushed back into the ship. “It suppressed my magic. Completely. It was… disconcerting. I'm not used to being alone in my own head.”
“Huh.” Greg cocked his head. “So would the conversion let you keep it? Or get rid of it completely?”
The Archmage frowned. “I'm not sure, but it isn't something I'm willing to risk.”
“Fair.” Greg sighed, looking around. “Anyone want to volunteer for that one?” No one did. “Yeah, didn't think so.”
“I have one.” Chris announced, opening another portal and pulling a confused looking Vera out.
[Wha-] Vera began.
“Walk through there and choose to convert.” Chris ordered, Vera stiffening before nodding and doing as he said.
“Wait, who's that?” Tori asked, glaring at him.
“A foxkin who attempted to dominate me.” Chris replied. “Pity for her, I'm better at it.”
Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Dominate?”
“Sounds kinky.” Greg snickered.
Beth scowled at him. “It's what we call mentally controlling someone in our reality.”
Greg paused, then nodded. “Yeah, still sounds kinky.”
“I don't care if it sounds kinky, I care that it's slavery!” Tori growled.
“It-” Beth began angrily.
“Hold on.” Andrew interrupted, narrowing his eyes at Vera as she began the conversion process. “Something is happening to her core.”
Tori blinked, frowning towards her. “And her-” She cut off as the energy was suddenly torn out of Vera's body, the space shifting deeper into Maze world as it was. “What-” She froze, her eyes widening as she felt her point limit grow.
“Did anyone else just feel that?” Greg asked hesitantly, feeling his smoke get stronger too.
“Yup.” Chris nodded.
“Weird.” Andrew frowned, feeling a strange tingle run through his aura. “Why did that happen?”
“It ate her energy!” Tori exclaimed.
“I think we ate her energy.” Chris corrected.
“It also altered her core.” Andrew added. “I think- it made it so it fits with my reality?”
“Oh, that makes sense.” Greg nodded. “It's like the difference between getting a visa and becoming a citizen. With one you still have all your rights in your original nation, you just can't use them, while in the other, you give up all your previous rights to gain new ones!”
“What about dual citizenship?” Andrew commented.
Greg waved dismissively. “Not all metaphors are perfect, Andrew. The point is travel between realities is possible, but not terribly concerning since anyone who comes through will be weak as shit, due to either suppression or conversion. Also, conversion makes us stronger and expands the space deeper into the reality the individual comes from.”
“Is there any way to shrink the space?” Cathryn asked. “Or maybe move it? So we don't have an expanding portal to the Multiverse in our dining room?!?”
Andrew hesitated. “I think we're going to need to move…”
“I have a feeling this is going to be a problem for all of us.” Tori grumbled. Then, as if to emphasize her point, Tiffany walked into the space.