Born to the abyss between worldlines, we were a jumbled mess of fragmented souls, clumped together because we each had our own gravity, and we had found warmth in orbiting each other. All of us were shattered, unwanted by our worlds, too different, too powerful, too outside of the norm, unwilling to be dictated by the laws of our universes. Thrown away to the abyss between realms, now we gathered as one being, broken and shattered, and yet more powerful than even the gods of our original realms.

The abyss between worldlines was cramped, insulated with barriers to keep the realms from slipping into each other, and because of this we were in a chamber akin to a blackout isolation chamber. There was no time here but in the cracks between realms created once a seeming eternity we would witness again the feelings of the living, the wonders of the ages, or even the special taste presented by metaphors given life. Things like the never ending cycle of peace and war, the bittersweet hope of farewell, or the breath of creation when enough plasma gathered together to implode, creating a star.

It took many, many cycles of witnessing the realms through cracks for us to finally admit our wanting to join the mortal realms again. We had been hurt before, thrown away, and abandoned. We didn’t want to experience the same again, but the cracks to the living realms was taunting us, showing us the beauty of the worlds of the living, yet again reminding us of our traumas.

Our minds raged against the very idea, powerful souls ranting about humanoid forms and the slight it would be against our greatness. We were too powerful, our minds unwilling to lose this combined strength to resist the laws of realms.

Many cycles passed, certain powerful souls spoke out and offered options, we could go as a spirit was a popular thought. Until others brought up how limiting the form would be, some powers being locked behind living blood and physical form. We reviewed many, many options, shapeshifter was a thought, so was an eldritch form. The last idea being too close to a godlike being for most of us, all screwed over by the gods of our old dimensions.

So we waited, thinking and theorizing, it took too much speculation but eventually we got to thinking about descending as a dungeon core. It took us so long to get there because it was a thought unthinkable to most souls, too outlandish, even for us the rulebreakers and rogue experimentalists. It checked all of our requirements though, dungeons, old ones or powerful ones, will eventually gain a physical avatar. But it’ll still be an adequate vessel for our minds and power along with being inherently nonhuman. A good fit along with a dungeon’s powers and domains, we had many souls and minds of crafters and sculptors here, we’d love our new abilities.

It was decided.

We would descend as a dungeon core.

Now to decide on a realm and a form.

We were powerful, as previously stated, so we had some level of control over where we would form and the form we would take as a dungeon core, after all, a carbon diamond core is quite different from an amber one. After some discussion, it was found that we were partial to obsidian, the magical properties of black obsidian, specifically, it’s ability to connect with the abyss, and really, general spacetime, would be the key to tying us into a physical form without overloading a core.

This wasn’t the only thing we needed in our form though, after all, obsidian couldn’t be the base ingredient for our new body, too far from a mana gem, too likely to leave a part of us strapped to the abyss. After that, an ascended alchemist fragment stepped up to suggest a gem called star sapphire, it had a molecular structure which allowed it to display a rare phenomenon called astarism translating into extra room for traits and affinities. It’s magical properties were a good fit as well, depending on color and elemental affinity, it would allow for our mish-mash of souls to all anchor onto a single core matrix.

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We built the core in the abyss itself, burning our weakening edge souls which had longed for the End for many cycles, creating the material from the molecule up. We had initially wanted a diamond matrix but our expert minds argued that a diamond was too condensed in molecular structure and its magical properties incompatible with our being. Even a black diamond, the closest to fitting us we could find, was incompatible with our obsidian secondary.

The star sapphire, on the other hand, had many varieties and its structure was easily altered to most fit with our...ah, unique, circumstance. We made the “frame” a twenty side dice, a D20, I believe mortals called it. It would be our symbolic connection to the chaos realm, some items are chosen as a representation of concepts and realms and we are a being close to chaos but not born of it, a D20 obsidian frame will work best to keep our soul connected to our new form and still leave us a one-way tether into the abyss and chaos.

The frame made, we used some of the residual power left to create a mesh of crystal, superimposing an image of our primary affinity, spacetime, onto it.

Spacetime is purple and blue, a nebula swirling around a core of golden-bronze, amber, time, our understanding of it based on the weaving flow of time on the loom of space. So as we created the mesh out of spacetime itself, the core glowed a gradient of purple to blue with multiple hues floating on the crystal surface. While within the core itself we used about two fifths of the power we had burned into existence to break open a slash to the origin realm, the first realm of creation, where the purest mana is made and flowed to the other realms through mana springs and dungeon cores.

Surrounding that scar, we weaved strings of the “time” part of spacetime to keep the scar contained and stable. As stated, time is golden-bronze and within our core we had weaved fluffy time around the silver scar, all the while, etching in runes and formations which would allow us a connection to the barest minimum of life, origin really, affinity to help us in creating life, true souls, within our domain. The circular formations swirled around the scar, rotating around the scar like planets around a star, they glowed green and silver within the amber cloud of time.

At this point, we were running a bit low on the power we could use without burning a more “integral” part of ourselves, with about two fifths left after we had broken into the origin realm and created the main parts of our core. There is just one more thing to add and we’ll be at the last step, the specific structure of our core’s astarism. Presently, we had a strong connection to spacetime and a sliver of a connection with life and origin affinity, and with our remaining power we had just enough to add in some of the “lesser” elemental affinities.

Most of our souls argued for the four basic elements, fire, water, wind, or earth and most of us agreed. But after some math, we had found that it would leave us with some leftover power that wouldn’t be used even taking into account the last step. So we thought to add some higher tier elements spawning off the basic ones which would also reduce cost.

As we didn’t have the time to look through all of the combinations we could take, the process had already started and stopping for a time to plan would cause it to fail, we choose the ones most useful generally with a direct link to the basic four. Metal was an easy decision, spawning from earth, then ice, spawning from water, next sound, spawning from wind, and finally lightning otherwise called plasma, spawning from superheated fire particles.

Those secondary affinities spawning from the primary four floated above the colorful core we had created, metal glowed in a steel grey cloud, ice glittering like light blue white freckled snowflake stars, sound a golden asteroid ring layered around our galaxy core, and lightning sparking from place to place flashing bright yellow with burning purple centers.

The first four were still there, of course, just connected to and hidden under the latter additions. They can be seen in the ghostly white indigo fires catching like embers in the wind trailing after those lightning bolts, in the waves of water swirling like heavy rain during thunderstorm in the background of snowflake stars, in the light green of a wind gale almost invisibly dancing amidst golden asteroid rings, in the bright greens and earthan browns softly covering the base of our crystal as floating metal clouds float above. All these features were created in a six point star shape, fanning out from the center crack into the Origin Realm, it wasn't perfectly aligned, as that would mess with a few other factors, but it would count as an astarism pattern.

When finished, we took a step back, figuratively, of course, and looked upon our creation. Our core was beautiful, a fitting home for a bunch of almost hilariously different souls, a mini world that will be the nexus point for a future dungeon.

Almost done now, just the reality flux and world line left to choose, really it is only one thing to choose, place of arrival, creation, but when broken down it sounds like two.

First, limitations, not an apocalyptic reality, too sharp on souls. Not the peaceful idyllic ones either, too likely to fall into the whims of destiny. Neither are we to pick one of the old ones conquered by the divines or hellspawns, too entrenched with fated history and old aligned powers. Not the newly created ones either, too bright, too green, filled with new souls of need for guidance.

That left the middling development ones, just right in that range between too little and too much. Let’s see, of the infinitely growing reality fluxes, more than enough would work.

Now to narrow it down, first, a culturally beautiful and diverse world line, not one ruled over by a single prime species. Then, a blessed world line filled to bursting with primordial energies much needed for our uses. Finally, a world line unfated, broken off from the currents of destiny, gods knowing better than to meddle too much, one worthy of the presence of us, the Ascended.