“I see that you’ve improved on this gliding vessel,” Kliss commented as her slitted eyes moved over the hovercraft. The vessel in question was now slowly moving over the large lake in the middle of the Skyisle Valley. The Church of Equality was visible in the distance, blue stained glass reflecting the glittering caustic reflections coming from the brilliantly-blue azure lake. The buzz of the wooden blade was muted by a silencing rune so we could enjoy the sounds of nature and talk to each other without any issues.

“M-h-mmm,” Delta sent Kliss a sly grin. “Are you super-duper impressed? You should be! It now fits three people!”

“Right,” Kliss said, turning to me. “So, there’s gold buried in lake Karamshira?”

“Gold and artifacts,” I nodded.

“Karamshira? Pff,” Delta rolled her silver-blue eyes. “This lake is called Skybliss!”

“Is it?” Kliss arched a dark red eyebrow.

“It was, back when I was alive,” Delta said.

“Back when you were alive?” Kliss blinked at my twin.

“Over a thousand years ago,” I explained. “Sometimes Delta gets fully into her Kopusha Megara persona. A third of her is an Alanian Agromancer acolyte whom I pulled from the Astral thirteen years ago.”

“I had the best freaking glider,” Delta huffed. “Darn it, I miss my lovely glider.”

“A thousand years…” Kliss mulled. She stared at Delta, emerald-orange eyes wide. “Was your glider powered by... souls?”

“Why, yes it was,” Delta said. “What’s wrong with powering gliders with souls of the dead? There’s a whole lot of 'em floating, blooming, existing aimlessly and uselessly in the infinite aetherial abyss beneath the physical plane. Nothing wrong with harvesting some. Our mighty Astral Engines capture and process the excess overgrowth for the greater good of the Alanian Empire!”

“You’re a necromage,” Kliss accused, her expression growing darker.

“The correct terminology is Animancer, darling,” Delta waved a hand at the dragon-girl as if Kliss was just a pesky fly. “Specifically an Animancer specializing in Dryad Arcanology. Do you see those violet-orange trees covering the hills? That’s my work and legacy! A tree that can survive anything!”

“Necromage trees,” Kliss shuddered.

“No, idiot descendant,” Delta rubbed her forehead. “You talk like a Basq ignoramus, what has the world come to?”

“The world has fallen into darkness,” I answered Kopusha in Ancient Alanian, the soul-shards belonging to Archmage Keps Klondike Tricameron momentarily pulling at me. “Tricameron is no more, but at least your legacy remains, Acolyte Kopusha.”

“You don’t sound like an idiot descendant, who are you?” Delta-Kopusha tilted her head at me, switching to Alanian.

“An ancient memory that refused to fade to naught when our great Empire fell,” I shrugged, “Just like you. Name’s Archmage Keps.”

“A pleasure, elder,” Delta-Kopusha bowed.

Kliss stared at us, her arms crossed. She had no idea what we were saying and looked at us with equal parts suspicion and confusion. I tried to pull the shadow of Keps into the back of my mind. For some reason, this action was difficult to accomplish. I peered at my soul with my Infoscopes and found that it was fuzzy, rippling just like the lake beneath us.

“Sorry about that,” I addressed the dragon-girl in Ishikarian. “I think that the local Astral barrier is a bit thin. The ghosts we’ve absorbed are stronger here.”

“Is that… bad?” Kliss squinted at me.

“Easy to lose control of ourselves to the memories of the long dead,” I said. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” She asked.

“Unless we have a dragon on hand to keep our souls from succumbing to the aetheric density fluctuations,” I said and grabbed her hand, embracing the positively-charged warmth that her dragonheart was projecting.

Kliss squeezed my hand back. “Better?”

“Better,” I said, observing how the positively-charged magic radiating from her skin began to stabilize my soul.

“I miss everyone,” Delta-Kopusha whispered as she stared over the azure lake with a forlorn look. “Almost makes me feel like throwing myself into the waves of Skybliss. Damnation. I was only nineteen when I died, an Academy Acolyte. I didn’t say goodbye to my parents, didn’t get to finish my dissertation about Dryads. It all went to shit so fast. Bloody Seditionists!”

Tears filled her eyes as Kopusha wept for everything and everyone she lost, wept for a past that was gone but not entirely forgotten.

Kliss grabbed Delta and wrapped her in a tight embrace. My sister’s face relaxed.

“Thanks,” she switched to modern Ishikarian. “How odd… I don’t think I’ve gotten so badly immersed in the past before.”

“Too many people died here,” I said, eyeing the lake. “The Alanian house wards tried to put up a defence, tried to protect their inhabitants, but whatever bomb the Basq dropped on Tricameron must have shredded the hexagrams pretty badly. As the estates of the Archmagi plummeted from the cliffs into the lake, their failing wards tore holes right through reality.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“If the physical world is thinner here… does that mean that… the Hollow Mother or the others can find us here?” Delta whispered, her face suddenly askew in worry.

“Sasha hasn’t bothered us in a while,” I shrugged. “Presumably she has better things to do. I can definitely see why the locals don’t fish in this part of the lake. Oh wow… look.”

Delta and Kliss turned their heads to where I was pointing. Both of them peered into the Astral, sensing a presence there.

A massive dead whale comprised of thousands of silver arm-like threads moved across the surface of the lake like an enormous, glowing zeppelin. The Phantom was weaving in and out of reality, flickering between the blue waves.

“That’s… concerning,” Kliss whispered.

“That’s... pretty,” Delta commented.

“It won’t try to eat us, right?” Kliss asked.

“The hovercraft is covered in lantern-hex-runes, the design of which I improved personally,” I said. “It shouldn’t see us at all.”

The ghostly, transparent, flying whale dove deeper into the Astral and vanished. A flock of smaller Phantoms shaped like flying manta rays with long, bird-like tails flashed all around us and vanished.

I directed the hovercraft forward.

It took almost no effort to peer into the Astral here. Mountains made from dead trees and bones of ancient magical creatures entwined with the lake in phantasmagoric patterns, forming enormous diatom-like megastructures.

“By Equality,” Kliss exhaled. “What is that?”

“The Astral,” I said. “Lower levels of it. Stuff that human eyes are definitely not supposed to see. Pretty isn’t it?”

“It’s creepy,” Kliss shuddered. “But then again… there is some strange, beautiful order to it. I’ve seen the lower levels of the Astral with Astralscopes at the Cessna Academy, but that was looking at it through a dim, scratched up, tiny lens. Seeing it all around me like that is… both terrifying and awe-inspiring. It just looks so wrong and uhmm… endless?”

“Infinite,” I nodded. “The word you’re looking for is infinite. Whatever the Astral Ocean is, it doesn't have an end.”

“Kind of like a silver-blue kaleidoscope,” Delta commented leaning on Kliss. “It just goes forever and ever.”

“An abyss of everything that ever was or will ever be,” I nodded. “A fractal of magic connected to everywhere.”

“What?” Kliss stared at me with emerald-orange eyes. “That can’t be right. Is Astral not the end of life, emptiness, decay? Are the Phantoms not the enemies of all living things, seeking to devour us?”

“A lot of the local unlife is aligned with [Decay] and [Death],” I shrugged. “But that’s not their fault.”

“Who's fault is it?” Kliss asked.

“The war. A thousand years ago back when Tricameron still stood, the local Astral Ocean was quite different.”

“Different how?” Kliss asked.

“Cleaner, nicer,” I shrugged. "More alive. Filled with magical trees, plants and animals. Populated with Phantoms that didn't want to eat people."

“And you know this, how?” She demanded. "Did another long dead memory whisper this to you?"

“No. I'm aware of this, because I understand the underlying principles of cause and effect when it comes to magic Assembly Theory,” I said. “When the Basq atomized Tricameron the local Astral caught fire too. It became warped, twisted, filled with almost entirely negatively-charged, hostile unlife.”

“Are you saying that the great war polluted the Astral with evil like it’s a freaking lake with muddy silt at the base?” Kliss demanded.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said. “There are wounds all around this valley filled with ghosts that desire vengeance. The Hollow Mother, the monster that haunts my dreams masquerading as Commissar Sasha Gradenski is an imprint of the last war. She is a conceptual manifestation of pain, misery that desires nothing but revenge, remembers and wants to spread nothing but suffering.”

“We’ll stop her… right?” Delta asked.

“We will,” I nodded.

“How?” My twin inquired tentatively.

“The three of us are real,” I said. “We can do things in the physical world. The Hollow Mother exists outside of time, like a bleeding gash in the Astral, an imprint of an arcane catastrophe, a shadow on the wall. She’s not real.”

“The hell she’s not,” Delta huffed. “I saw her and her children. They seemed plenty real to me.”

“She is just a magical echo,” I shook my head. “The final curse of the local dead, desire for revenge, knowledge and power to carry it out. Unlike us, she isn’t actually physically attached to any of this,” I waved my hands at the azure lake and glacier capped mountains all around us. “If we change Skyisle enough and heal the land, she will begin to fade away like a bad dream.”

“Really?” Kliss asked. “Aradria… knew about The Mother. The dragon didn’t like the local Phantom, dragonfire couldn’t get rid of her.”

“Aradria’s damage to the valley only made Mother stronger,” I sighed. "Death begets death."

“So if I summon dragonfire then I’ll make everything worse?” Kliss gulped.

“You’re a human, Kliss,” I said. “You’re not a dumb dragon. Mundane dragons are wild, uncivilized creatures without much rationality. They undoubtedly see things as enemies or prey. Do you see me as an enemy or prey, Kliss?”

“Mmmm… no,” the chimera girl shook her glittering, violet-red mane. “I see you as… my friend, someone who saved me again and again even though I don’t feel like I deserved it. I feel mostly worthless and stupid around you and yet I trust you with my entire heart, even though some of the things you say seem utterly mad.”

I smirked at her words.

“What’s the opposite of Death, Kliss?” I asked my dragon-girl apprentice.

“Life?” She blinked at me.

“Exactly,” I nodded sagely. “Life. Creation. [Vitality].”

“I don’t understand,” Kliss said.

“Mikhail Bulgakov was a great Soviet novelist and playwright,” I said. “He wrote a fictional story that I had fallen in love with as a child, called The Fatal Eggs. In it, a Soviet scientist invented… the ray of life.”

Kliss opened and closed her mouth. She understood.

“I’m going to use you to create a genuine ray of life, Kliss,” I said. “Inverted dragonfire. Flames that will bring, create life instead of taking it. We’re going to fish all the Archmage gold from beneath this lake, convert most of it into crystalline dust and spread it across Skyisle beneath Leemy’s roots and have you set it alight.”

The chimera’s eyes bulged at my mad-sounding plot. Delta looked at me with a giddy expression.

“We’ll set the world on fire, Kliss. A fire that can’t be put out, a fire that will burn for a thousand years,” I declared with a manic grin. “A fire that will burn so bright and with such fervor that it will blot, wash away the shadows of the cursed dead, dissolve the vengeful Astral Phantoms, undo Mother once and for all.”

Kliss gulped, staring up at me as I rose, spreading my arms wide.

“An explosion wrought by war ruined this valley, decaying peoples', plants’ and animals' levels down to Twenty. I’m going to make something that saves everyone, everything here. I’ll create an explosion of life that will chase away the silver-blue, hollow darkness and make the Astral Ocean itself bloom with life once again,” I said. “Don’t ever think of yourself as worthless! You, Kliss are my beautiful, perfect ignition key, the flint, a spark that will help me create a firestorm of change and illumination, make a garden of life unlike any other!”