The Skyisle winter was long, far longer and harsher than the winters of Earth. It wrapped the town and surrounding forests in snow and blanketed the sky in thick clouds.

However, all things end and change. Eventually, the winter released its grip on the valley. Spring came to the mountains and bathed the valley in sunshine. Waterfalls carved a path through the ice and snow, rushing down from the great azure glaciers overhead.

Brilliant, silver-blue lily-like flowers embraced the warmth, opening their shimmering petals in the earliest hours of dawn, covering the valley in sparkling arrays of stars, signalling the start of the new year of 8062 by the Ishikarian calendar.

The snow crunched under the weight of my body, but I didn’t sink into it thanks to the snowshoes I had designed. Inaria, a supermassive planet covered in silver-blue and violet rings, was slowly vanishing from the sky as sunrise came and the world of Novazem turned away towards the violet nebula on the other side, facing the endless expanse of the cosmos.

Lunaria, the satellite of Novazem slowly moved in front of Inaria adding to the alien otherness of the view in front of me, swirling clouds hiding the hexagrams on its surface.

I could barely believe it. Thirteen years ago I was but an old Soviet Administrator without hope, without a future. Thirteen years ago I stood at the virology lab of Aralsk-7, lamenting the end of my nation as I pressed the trigger of a flare gun that turned the bioweapons facility I helped design into an inferno.

I didn’t expect to meet a god that called itself the Omniscience, didn’t expect to end up in the local hell called the Astral Ocean, didn’t expect to be reborn in the body of Dante Alan Skyisle, didn’t expect to see another sunrise.

And yet, here I was, staring at the rays of the coming sun that were painting the mountains pink and orange.

“Skyisle spring’s the best,” my twin sister trudged through the snow on her own snowshoes. She waved a hand at the glowing silver-blue flowers. “I freaking love Starfall Snowdrops. I’m really glad that they survived the Age of Darkness!”

“You know what they’re called?” I turned my head towards Delta, watching as the wind coming from the mountains danced through her white hair.

“They aren’t natural,” she said. “Kopusha’s Agromancy Instructor, Archmage Legathe Terestirii Tricameron designed them over a thousand years ago.”

“You remember that?” I asked.

Thirteen years ago, I had dragged a wisp of memory of an Alanian Agromancer Novitiate Kopusha Megara Tricameron from the depths of the Astral Ocean and accidentally attached it to my twin sister when she was but a blastocyst in our mother’s womb.

“I remember,” she nodded. “With each year I’ve been recalling more and more of what Skyisle was like eleven centuries ago. Sometimes I can recall things about local plants at random, sometimes the memories of past Skyisle and Tricameron come to me in dreams. Sometimes I wake up and wonder who I really am.”

“Who you are?” I murmured.

She nodded.

“Sometimes I feel like I am Kopusha, an Alanian Agromancer who got another chance at life. Sometimes, I am Destiny Alana - a misfortunate girl doomed to become an Astral Phantom and a ghoul thanks to the prophecy of goddess Ishira that binds my future. Most of the time I’m Delta though, a girl woven from the strange, discordant memories of a Soviet Academic Vladislav Kerenski who just wanted to be loved, but ended up destroying his life’s legacy in virology research when his own government betrayed him.”

She looked at me with a smirk, her triangular pupil focusing on my face.

I opened my mouth to protest.

“Deny it all you want, Slava,” Delta winked at me. “But I know the truth. You wanted a family more than anything.”

“I was perfectly happy designing super-viruses,” I crossed my arms.

“Uh-huh, sure,” my sister waved me off. “Tell that to someone who doesn’t have a big chunk of your soul in them.”

“What else do you remember as Kopusha?” I asked her, trying to derail her nitpicking of my character.

Delta’s expression shifted incrementally as she switched to ancient Alanian.

“There were paths here made from multicolored glow stones that connected rental villas and vacation houses belonging to the great Alanian Archmagi,” she nodded at the wild arboreal forest at the edge of a great cliff. “When the white Citadel city of Tricameron was vaporized by a massive explosion, everything here that didn’t catch on fire was presumably carried away by an avalanche straight into the lake below.”

“I can scan the lake depths more thoroughly if we can get closer,” I nodded, staring at the azure, glittering lake far below. “There might be intact tools or runestones buried in the sill.”

“That’s a very deep lake,” Delta pointed out. “How well is your Infoscope gonna do in there? Is your spell going to fizz out before reaching the bottom?”

“It might. I have more mana now,” I mulled contemplating whether the water and mud would disrupt the scan. “I think I can do it.”

“Even if you do spot something of value, how are we going to get anything out of there?” Delta asked.

“I can make diving suits?” I suggested.

“You know how to make diving suits?” She asked.

“At the very least I could make a diving bell, all we need to do is create a pocket of air around the diver, allowing us to breathe underwater,” I shrugged. “If I can detect things down there with the Infoscope, then we only need to go directly down to grab them.”

“Right,” Delta nodded. “We can take the hovercraft we built last year over the lake. Being in a diving bell sounds like it would be very constraining. Wait… there might be Leshereed somewhere here!”

“Leshereed?” I asked.

“They used to sell diving potions to tourists when this place was a resort,” my twin said. “It allowed a mage to breathe underwater for about fifteen minutes. Leshereed looks like a mix between a reed and strawberry plant, except it has three distinctive leaves which have a black rim. The berries are inside a black nut-like shell. They need to be collected, peeled and crushed to make the juice. Mixed with Tessiweed in proportions of ¾ it should make breathing potions. If Starfall Snowdrops survived then so might Leshereed! The local magi grew both in their gardens!”

“That does sound handy,” I nodded. “We’ll still need wetsuits. That lake’s gotta be cold. Also, when does Leshereed start fruiting?

“When the snow melts fully,” Delta said.

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

“We’ll look for it,” I said. “Thanks for the info.”

“Anytime,” she grinned, looking smug about the fact that she knew more than me about Alanian Agromancy.

We resumed our walk across the snow-covered forest, the crunching of our snowshoes adding to the sounds of the forest. The towering trees creaked all around us, their branches adorned with delicate icicles dripping onto the snow below.

Delta managed to get ahead, leading the way, her silver-white hair contrasting against the brown and green backdrop of the pines. Every now and then, she would pause and point out interesting plant specimens, Kopusha’s knowledge of Agromancy shining through. I mentally noted everything she said, wondering if Delta was maybe scraping this information from the shallows of the Astral Ocean whenever she dove there as an Astral Phantom. Technically, I had a bit of Kopusha in my head too and yet my sister was somehow way ahead of me in the knowledge of local plant life. She even knew how specific plants could be combined to produce potions.

Soon enough, we reached the Alanian tower.

When we found this place a year ago, it was a complete ruin, but now it was starting to look presentable, mostly thanks to Skyisle’s ex-Overseer Kliss who had rebuilt a big section of the interior wall. Before Kliss left Skyisle to get her soul repaired, she managed to set up a few wooden beams to give the restored section a semblance of a roof. Over the past year my sister and I slowly touched up the rest, turning a part of the old Alanian tower into a small, albeit cozy workshop.

A fluffy shape suddenly emerged from the kennel next to the workshop. It rebounded towards me and swiftly rushed up my leg and settled around my shoulder, a small nose nuzzling into my neck.

“Hey Mesmy,” I laughed. “Ah, stop it, staphhh, cold nose!”

The Mesmerbane fox licked my neck, wrapping herself around me tighter. As I’ve been injecting more of my soul shards into her crystalline core, the mental connection between us deepened. As she fiercely nuzzled me, I felt Mesmy’s vague surface thoughts dancing across my mind like foam atop an ocean wave.

[Warm. Master. Back. Food?] The foxcub spoke not in words, but in smudgy, grayscale images entwined with a sense of smell.

I smiled at Mesmy, scratching her behind the ears. "Yes, I'm back. I'll feed you soon."

The fox wagged her extra-fluffy gray tail, big ember and blue eyes filled with anticipation.

We went into the workshop. I tapped a crystal lantern and the interior became bathed with colorful light. After feeding Mesmy and checking on the Silent Moths I walked into a corner occupied by a large anthill.

I sat down next to it and reached out across the Astral Ocean with my Tether, connecting my soul to my soul shard within the ant queen. The queen rapidly broadcasted her power across the hive, mentally directing the rest of the Titanthorax-Ants to emerge.

In about ten minutes, the entire corner of the room became filled with red ants. I tested my connection to the queen by making them form intricate patterns and shapes. The tiny, minute bodies of the crystalline-organic insects glittered in the lantern’s soft glow, coming together like ocean waves to create mesmerizing displays that grew more complex with each cycle.

I arranged the ants into the shape of a cross, then a pyramid, then a giant sphere and then a diatom.

“That’s a lot of ants,” Delta commented from her corner.

She had several hundred fire-bees sitting on her head, forming shimmering, brilliant, orange-red patterns that resembled flowers that opened and closed. I wasn’t the only one practicing control over insects - Delta had acquired control over a beehive from our parents' attic long before I magically took over a few ant queens.

I nodded.

My Neurovista skill guided the ants through their queen like an orchestra conductor, linking and intertwining them. The sphere broke up, but thousands of ants remained behind in the form of a tree, with branches slowly stretching out across the room and growing as more ants connected with ants like a phantasmagoric puzzle.

“Wowza, they really can make some crazy stuff,” Delta whistled. “It's like having a miniature civilization right here in our workshop! Count me impressed, if a tad creeped out. So, are they… telepathic like my bees?”

I released my control slightly and the wave of red ants forming the tree fell apart, the workers returning to their daily routines within the large hive beneath.

“Yes,” I nodded. “The queen only needs to exert a bit of a Charisma pulse and the rest of the ants handle the rest. On Novazem, almost all social insects that live in organised colonies rely on Charisma to reinforce their coordination. The ant queen produces a very specific vibration pattern across the Astral which is received by the ants that she gave birth to. I think we should get a spider colony next.”

“Ew spiders,” Delta huffed. “What kind of spiders form colonies?”

“They’re called social spiders,” I said. “They aren’t as coordinated as ants or bees, but they do build a communal web, maximising total biomass capture per spider.”

Delta giggled at the concept of a ‘social spider’.

“So if they don’t have a queen, how would you manage them?” She asked.

“That’s why I haven’t done it yet,” I rubbed the back of my head, hand brushing through white curls. “I need to… design them a queen.”

“Is that gonna be hard?” She asked.

“Extremely hard, since spiders are more independent compared to ants and bees,” I nodded. “But worth it. The silk of local arachnids has ridiculous tensile strength.”

“Reinforced with [Strength] magic, yeah?” She asked.

“Not just that,” I said. “Spiders are generally insanely coordinated when making webs and magic makes them more so. The colony I’ve scouted optimised itself with [Dexterity].”

“The spiders are extra dexterous?” Delta asked. “How does that help?”

“On Earth, transatlantic telegraph cables connected continents,” I said. “After the mid-century, coaxial cable came into use. When cables are woven into an interlocking pattern it distributes the load more evenly, reducing stress concentration points and increasing overall strength.”

“Sooo… the spiders are entwining smaller strands to make thicker ones?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I affirmed. “Because of how precisely they can weave together nearly microscopic threads, it magnifies the tensile strength of the entire web a hundredfold!”

Delta whistled instead of a reply.

“Why do you need to make a spider queen? Would a Charisma-maxing mage not be able to tell arachnids what to do?” My twin asked curiously.

“No,” I shook my head, “a Charisma-maxing human wouldn't be able to directly communicate with insects. At best, they might be able to influence very general behaviour - for example scare them away by broadcasting fear of fire. But, making bugs form specific shapes or coordinating them to create clothes for example is absolutely out of the question. The intricate communication system of the colony is specific to each species, and humans simply don't possess the necessary receptors to understand or transmit the vibrations emitted by the queen.”

“So… how does the signal propagate? How far can an ant queen command her minions?” Delta mulled, glancing at the ants who were departing back to their hive. “Bees have a honeycomb crystalline Charisma broadcaster, did your ants build something similar underground?”

“No,” I shook my head. “The ants themselves act as broadcasters. Their shells are crystalline-organic.”

“Oh?”

"The ant queen emits the initial command to a select group of worker ants closest to her," I explained, "and they, in turn, pass on the message to the ants around them. This process continues in a chain-like fashion until the entire colony receives the instructions.”

“What if the chain is disrupted?”

“Then direct communication is compromised. However, the chain will re-establish itself quickly because ants also use chemical signals, pheromones as a backup way of constantly writing information onto each other and the local environment.”

“So, it's like a multi-layered system,” she mulled. “Charisma waves for direct commands, and chemical signals as street signs and notes?”

I nodded.

“So, how ready are we to create… people?” Delta asked, eyes glittering with impatience.

“Very ready,” I asserted. “Were you able to make even letters?”

“You betcha, I did!” Delta glared. She dug into her buzzing backpack and pulled out a piece of paper.

There was a large star burned onto the paper.

[Behold the incredible power of the fire-bee printer!] The slightly lopsided letters beneath the star read.

“Amazing!” I grinned at her. “You’re getting really good at this!”

While I spent the winter waiting for my ant colony to grow, Delta had become exceptionally skilled coordinating her fire-bee colony with incredible precision. She had learned to utilise their fire-stingers to write notes.

"So," Delta bounced merrily at my praise. "What's this gonna be for? I reckon, I could maybe make a bee-telegraph and send you notes seventy metres away… more if the queen bee’s signal is amplified by the Silent Moths.”

“There’s already voicecast runestone magic for direct person-person communication,” I shook my head.

“Sooo… then what’s the plan?”

"A printer is power that can change hearts and spread knowledge,” I waved the piece of paper. “The printing press revolutionised the world back on Earth. It allowed for the mass production of books, making knowledge accessible to all. Before the printing press, books were painstakingly copied by hand, a slow and laborious process and only the privileged few had access to knowledge. The same issue plagues the village of Skyisle. The local church only has a few Imperial books, nowhere enough to educate everyone.”

“Hrrrmmm… so we’ll be making books to teach kids how to read?” Delta arched an eyebrow.

“Kids and adults. Not just that, a printer is required for proper administrative work,” I said. “Writing tables by hand isn't anywhere as effective or quick as eighty thousand bees doing it.”

“Booring,” she huffed. “Books and office paperwork then?”

“Aim higher,” I grinned. “We’re going to make our own newspaper!”