“The audacity!” The creator shouted as my eyes refocused to a world which actually existed, though an artificial one still. “Just what have you done?!”

Despite his clearly diminutive tone, his voice wavered in clear panic.

“I may or may not have entered the past as an observant specter of sorts. If you want to blame anyone, blame yourself for forcing me into that situation.”

“Cira!” I had to say something. The creator’s crushing mana was all around us.

“What? If he uses power as an excuse to reduce others’ opinions to nothing, then he is hardly someone we should pay mind to as self-respecting sorcerers.” She flipped her palms up like there were no more facts left to prove her point, “Am I wrong?”

“You—you dare call yourself a sorcerer?” The omnipresent mage shouted his question into our minds, and there was a sudden disturbance in the aether. It felt as potent as the wrathful storm.

“If there is any title within these vast skies which I am confident claiming,” Cira’s tone turned cold as gold turned red, rising through the thatch roof like molten rain, “it is Sorcerer.”

Spatial quakes fluctuated and the small hut confining us eroded in motes of light.

I heard his voice ripple through the wind and fade away as if a sudden gust had rejected it, allowing Cira to continue her tirade.

“You lost the right to judge me one thousand three hundred and seventy-eight years ago, Fragment.” A burning golden landscape surrounded us, and I watched raindrops of melted gold larger than myself rise to the sky. Instead of an orb like I would expect her to make out of materials, they kept rising and took form like a field of stars, or perhaps countless suns. In seconds, it all burned away in smoke and wafted away. “You have waited so long for a sorcerer, yet here I am. What do you want? Enough games.”

I could not believe how obstinate Cira was, but she also spoke with a familiarity I couldn’t fathom. The mage shouting through the winds didn’t hold a fraction of the impact to her as it did me.

“You have now witnessed the moment of my fall, though you left early. I always wondered how she evaded my sight in the end…” His voice dripped with remorse and exhaustion. “You have quickly proven yourself to be the most foolish sorcerer I have ever met. If you’re lucky, moving through the past will have gone unnoticed because you are within my realm, but if you value your existence, I would recommend never doing that again.”

“Well…” Cira spoke pensively, “It was an accident. More importantly, do you expect me to find and kill your former mistress? You know I have quite a few things on my plate as is. If by some miracle she hasn’t died in the last millennium, don’t you think she’d be much stronger than me?”

“Don’t be so simple-minded,” he retorted to Cira’s visible displeasure, “It matters not how much is on your plate. You went out of your way to show your face. It wouldn’t surprise me if your picture has hung on that wench’s wall for the last thousand years. I don’t even have to bribe you with power, because you already dragged yourself into it!” He laughed a hearty laugh. “I can’t believe such a fool exists.”

“Tch. You think I did anything on accident, you old idiot? I did not like what that man was doing with the sanguine smoke, so I decided to act.” The Saltier Songstress rose from the ground below us and we were already moving, “Come on, Tawny. We have crops to check on.” The she turned over her shoulder to the sky, “I care not for your powers nor ancient grudges, old man. I will destroy what I feel like, because I feel like it, and only when I get around to it. Feel free to piss off to the next life now.”

Glasses manifested in our hands and Cira filled them with legendary ale from her pocket. I let out a satisfied sigh on my first sip as I had grown parched lying there on the floor of the hut for who knows how long, “What was that pink smoke, by the way? It made me feel… bad. Hard to describe…”

“I know what you mean,” Cira replied, meanwhile we both heard ambient grumbling, “But I’m not entirely sure what it was… I believe that man had the power to create those abominations. Hard to say if they were derived from people or something like flesh golems, though. Mac may have some insight. We should hurry back, actually. It’s easier to think when Skipper makes me a five-course meal.”

We clinked our glasses together and shared a drink while a frustrated dead man erupted in our minds—I nearly spit ale out my nose.

“ENOUGH.” He yelled, “I will not be ignored after all this time.”

“Oh, but you waited all this time just to ridicule someone who decided to help of their own volition after being so moved by experiencing your memories.” Cira continued drinking indifferently, “Surely another sorcerer with more agreeable sensibilities and clearer limits will arrive in the next thousand-some-odd years to become your servant, now if you don’t mind, I will harvest my apples and be on my way.”

As she spoke, the miniature golden ship sailed across the land in a beeline back to our field.

Wait, is she actually offended? Her sensibilities are probably the greatest mystery I’ve ever known. I thought she disliked this guy from the get-go, so why would she still go out of her way to finish his worldly business?

Loud grumbles continued and I felt the connection from the mage cut off. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he gave up. Surely it couldn’t be that easy, right?

“Are we really going to just leave?” I asked, “This is kind of a disappointing conclusion after everything we just went through.”

“I agree, but the self-proclaimed sorcerer who created this place couldn’t have been more of a disappointment,” Her voice dripped with irritation, “It’s one thing to play with lives, but to create them temporarily just to throw them at strangers for a test…” She was surprisingly serious, and I watched her fist clench around her glass. “After his downfall was wrought by the bastardization of life, he has the gall to commit the same sin here.”

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“Are we… talking about that memory—”

“Yes and no.” She cut me off, opening her palm and letting a stream of lighting flow out, only to dissolve into the aether, “That storm fiend should never have achieved consciousness. To kill me was to survive. It was granted intelligence enough to come to this conclusion, but not enough to realize that defeat or victory both led to the same outcome—destruction. Dispersal as any other conjuration. It never had a chance at innocence in its brief life. The Paradise Mage should be glad he’s dead, for the fragment he left behind has become just as bad as those who inspired such wrath. Good riddance if you ask me.”

She seemed in a mood, so I let her ramble away from as we approached the fields. Cresting a golden hill, we were met by a field of dark-gold soil with so many trees I couldn’t count them.

Bright red fruit hung from their branches and Cira shook her head from side to side, plucking an apple for each of us into the air. “It sure is a shame having to rip up these trees I worked so hard for…”

“You win some, you lose some.” Taking a bite, I shrugged. That was the best advice I could offer. The apple was unbelievable and sweeter than anything that ever made it to the docks of Hangman’s Cove.

Cira sighed, and I watched apples begin to pluck from their branches when a weirdly familiar feeling brushed against my mind.

“Wait…” It was the creator again—the so-called Paradise Mage. “Perhaps you are right.”

“Huh…?” Cira was the first to ask.

“I wonder… Have I truly become so deluded?” He let it hang in the air for a moment.

“Go on…” Cira started enjoying her apple as well, staring into the sky.

“I’ll have you know, what was born of that storm was never my intention. I may have been talented in my heyday, but creating life from scratch…? Don’t flatter me.” This seemed to improve Cira’s mood for some reason, but the look on her face gave the impression it had more to do with narrowing the gap between this guy and her dad. “And I abhorred the corruption of life. Surely one of the main contributing factors to Ventra setting their eyes on me.”

The disgust in his voice was authentic enough to my ears.

“That man with the rose-colored smoke,” Cira replied with a keen tone, “He was from Ventra, wasn’t he? What can you tell me about that power?”

“I have never seen it in person, and the memory I received from you is hazy…” It sounded like he was trying to scrape the distant past for clues, “Lord Zephyr, Sovereign of Ventra. He became a conqueror at a young age after a god supposedly granted him power to ‘perfect the flesh’. The citizens of his skies enjoyed such health and prosperity it sounded made up. Normal people without a speck of mana lived well into their second century and all forms of labor were handled by artifacts or beasts of burden. Commerce was internalized and the people received everything they needed straight to their door.”

“Hah,” Cira chuckled, but her eyes looked grave. “They sound more like livestock to me—Materials, if you will. You sure got some perfected flesh delivered straight to your door though, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did…” He was audibly frustrated. What makes a perfected human body? The ability to be cut up and incinerated, yet still not die? Perfect just isn’t the word I would use for those things.

“You ever heard of Ventra?” Cira asked me.

“No.. never.” It didn’t even ring a bell.

“Interesting… and the curse I laid on that woman still exists. She is too far away for me to locate though, or perhaps hidden in a realm of her own.” She again looked to the sky. “Tough break on her. She was supposed to be your mistress or something, right? What was her deal?”

“She was my wife, and my queen for centuries…” It sounded like a wound that still hadn’t stopped bleeding. “I have spent all these years wondering why she betrayed me… and I still don’t have an answer. Whether she was under Zephyr’s influence or did so of her own volition, I will probably never know.”

“You may know one day, now that a true sorcerer is on the case,” Cira smirked, plucking another apple from the air. “But I haven’t been paid for my last few jobs. Even if I’m personally invested, I have standards.”

“Look beneath your feet, foolish girl.” We both did and were reminded of the massive rock of gold we stood on. “What more could you ask of a dead man?”

“Fair point… I can’t exactly take the whole island with me though.” It looked like she actually played with the idea briefly.

That got the old man laughing, “Naïve, greedy, obstinate, reckless… rude, while we’re at it. If any one of my students exhibited a fraction of your personality traits I would have expelled them in the blink of an eye.”

“Okay…” Cira took it well. More with confusion than anything else. “What are you trying to say?”

“The me of the past would never take you on as a student. Not in a thousand years.” And now her confused face was drifting towards offended. “But this old me doesn’t have another thousand years to wait. As promising a sorcerer as you may never again reach my shores. It looks like you’ll have to do.”

“Gee, thanks.” She looked baffled and insulted in equal measure now. “I already told you I was going to look into it. Why do you feel the need to go out of your way to be mean?”

Throughout this argument, a swarm of apples had begun to blot out the sun.

“But you seem to possess a good heart. I have no doubt you will rise to be the sorcerer I’ve always waited for, but I am still uneasy. It appears you hold quite the sinister power yourself, not to even mention your conjuring of a moment in the past, and entering it.”

“Let’s be clear. I was never seeking your approval, and the most sinister thing about any power is the hand that wields it. The only sorcerer I shall rise to become is the one to surpass my father. Naturally, you are somewhere along the way.”

“Hah! So that’s how it is.” He was in a strangely good mood, but somehow distant. “I suppose you will do just fine, after all. Now, it may be inconvenient to carry the whole island away, but I prepared a gift for my eventual successor. Believe it or not, I had the time.”

A curious sparkle entered Cira’s eye as a shimmering necklace appeared before her. Made of various metals of strange colors I’d expect to see Cira pull out of her pocket, it held a massive gem that looked like it went on forever. The centerpiece was surrounded by smaller gems all precisely cut into asymmetrical shapes and flowed into each other like petals of a flower.

It was the gaudiest thing I had ever seen, but a grin crept onto my master’s face as she took it in her hands. I could see its weight pull her down for a second.

“Two anchor points bind this realm to existence,” The mage spoke with unexpected gravitas, “The Island you know as Green Pit, and this pendant.”

There seemed to be a light behind Cira’s eyes—she was literally glowing.

“I can feel it… the spatial pathways. I could teleport us straight back to Green Lake right now if I wanted. Or the other side of the island—the bottom of the sea even.” She held up the pendant and gazed into the massive gem in the center. “No… does this mean…?”

“Indeed.” The mage spoke proudly, “You may return to this realm through either anchor. Keep in mind, it will take increasing amounts of mana, the further you are from Green Pit. The only remedy to this would be to destroy the island entirely, but then you better be sure to keep that pendant safe. Destruction of the final anchor will cause rapid spatial decompression and likely destroy an area at least as large as this realm, and much of whatever’s beneath you.”

“Incredible…” She put the necklace on and conjured a mirror-like surface. She wore a bright smile but I could tell she also thought it was the gaudiest thing she had ever seen. “My own realm. Imagine that.”

“Just be sure you don’t break your soul again trying to enter it.” I laughed.

“Tch. Perhaps a lesser sorcerer might.” It really is incredible though. She’ll never run out of fish. That’s for sure. “But this means we can leave the orchard intact. So, I say it’s high time we head back and share the spoils.”

She was already loading back up on the golden ship when the mage spoke again, “Cira, you are now my successor, like it or not. Return here before you continue your journey. I am not yet out of gifts to bestow.”

Cira shot a casual finger-gun to the sky, “You got it.”