Across the known universes, parallel against the backdrop of eternity, a realm existed in near-total darkness. Reality twisted over itself in this sanctum, drawing fine lines in time itself. Fractures in natural physics were commonplace here, especially deep within the abyss where the slumbering eidolon sat dormant.

It was an old creature, far older than Goddess Tippy or God Neb, yet far, far less subtle. It was bodiless, born more of instinct and happenstance than blood and flesh. Magic spun through its core, feeding its consciousness like the original paragon primordials. But where the primordials eventually left their mortal bodies and became the foundations of magic itself, this creature, this eidolon, was something else—something long thought dead and gone.

And now, because of the actions of a few certain individuals, it had awoken. Deep within its sanctum, it watched a certain world and a certain World Walker.

***

Luka yawned as he walked through the park. With little Leo tucked safely in his hood, magic flared to life around him. Strands connected against trash, sticks, and stones, molding each into masses of writhing material. Luka casually pulled everything behind him, ridding the grassy path of all debris. Emberwood Village was beautiful, but also still inside a forest. There was just stuff to pick up.

The village smithy was a place Luka had only been once, and Forgemaster Adam was a man he had only met once. But, just like everyone else in the village, Adam and his apprentice, Cam, both seemed like good folk.

Luka pushed in the front door and poked his head into the furnace room. “Hello?”

Two orcish heads popped up, each lost in his own task. Forgemaster Adam was the definition of a perfectly shaped man—his profession demanded it. Orcs were muscular beings, but where some were top-heavy and skipped a few leg days, Adam’s size encompassed his whole body. If the man was made out of stone, Luka had no doubt he’d be a master sculptor’s magnum opus and locked away in a museum somewhere.

Apprentice Cam, likewise, was a muscular orc with muscles growing from his muscles. But he was also young and not yet fully adapted to his most recent growth spurt. Maybe in a few years, he’d warrant a museum spot as well.

“Ah, Mr. World Walker,” Adam said, wiping his soot-covered hands with a dirty rag. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“Please, call me Luka.” He took a step into the forge room but stopped when the heat became too uncomfortable. “And yes, I’m sorry about my tardiness.”

Two rounded fire pits took up most of the space, each with a ring of stacked and mortared stone. Between the two, metal housing branched up and over the centers of the pits, splitting from the center like a double-sided fishhook. The tips of the fishhooks were crucibles, the ‘bowl’ that could withstand the heat needed to melt metal. Each held glistening silver liquid—metal coming up to temperature.

Sitting between the two furnaces were the molds, each covered in a layer of releasing power. They were long, flat ingot shaped—a shape that could easily be hammered into several other things later on.

“We understand,” Adam said, setting down his hammer. “With the park’s success, I figured you’d have forgotten about us.”

“Of course not,” Luka replied, sweat already beading across his forehead. Little Leo whined in his hood, and Luka sat him down. The wolf scampered outside, back into the cool air. “I just wanted to get to a stopping point in my own projects.”

The Forgemaster crossed his arms but nodded his head. “I get it—I do the same.” Then, a pensive expression crossed his face. “Your project doesn’t have anything to do with that mountain of metal that showed up near the lake, does it?”

“Not yet—that’s next. God Neb was kind enough to supply the park with the materials needed for a big ride.”

Adam and Cam shared a look. “A god gave you metal?” the former asked.

“Yeah.”

“And he just… sat it down in a massive pile?”

“More like summoned it, but yeah.”

The Forgemaster and Apprentice shared another look. “Whatever you say, bossman,” the latter said.

“Let’s just…” Adam trailed off, shook his head, and nodded to a closet. Cam moved from his workbench, leaving behind his projects, and strolled over. With a mighty heave, the young man pulled a mass of metal and stone from storage. “What did you call it again? Aluminiutniy?”

“Aluminum,” Luka said. He gritted his teeth and stepped past the superheated forges, and inspected the mass. “Is this it?”

“Aye, ‘dainty iron,’ we call it.”

The mass was a slightly red sedimentary rock with streaks of familiar aluminum silver. It was porous, with big open pockets and a crumbly texture. Where the metal and rock connected, black singe marks charred the stone as if held above a dirty fire.

“This is bauxite, I think.”

“What now?”

Luka thought back to his previous life. “But I thought bauxite didn’t actually have aluminum in it, and it had to be refined into alumina.” Memories came to him, specifically his time searching for a cheap aluminum supplier. “No, I’m sure of it—aluminum doesn't form naturally like this.”

“This isn’t natural,” Adam said, patting the hot metal of his forge without worrying about the heat. “That’s after smelting.”

Again, Luka thought back to Earth. Aluminum was created after refining bauxite into alumina using the electrolytic processes. Only then could aluminum be smelted.

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“How did you smelt it?” he asked.

“It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. It is one of the reasons it’s called dainty iron. Maybe someone would find a use for it, but with the cost of arcwood, the whole thing becomes an ordeal.”

“Arcwood?” Luka asked.

Apprentice Cam reached into the supply closet and pulled out a piece of tender. The wood was blue and sparked with coils of electricity. They ran up and down the bark before diving into Cam’s hand. The young man grunted as every muscle in his fist clenched and he had to pry his fingers open with his other hand. He dropped the wood back into the closet.

“Expensive and annoying to work with,” Adam said, picking up a strange flint striker off a rack. “Commissioned Sol for this years ago—arcwood won’t catch fire without it.” He flexed the striker, producing a short bolt of red lightning.

Luka hummed a bit before asking, “When arcwood is burned, does it infuse the fire with electricity?”

“How’d you know?”

“On Earth, bauxite—the red rock—is refined into alumina using a complicated electricity process. And that is then made into aluminum.”

Adam made a face. “Are you sure? Cause arcwood smelting is considered a magical smithing technique and you said your home world didn’t have magic.”

“That’s true. But as an initial guess, I’d say it seems like burning arcwood creates a similar effect as electrolysis.” Luka pulled a slip of paper and an infinite-ink pen from his pocket and took some notes. The pen was a gift from Eve, and one of his most used tools. He always carried it with him now. “How expensive is bauxite?”

“The red rock? We call it red lime here—”

“Like limestone?”

Adam nodded. “We know it’s not limestone, but it’s just about as common as limestone around these parts—so the name stuck.”

Luka’s eyes went wide. “Red lime is common here?”

“Very much so. Emberwood’s mine was made to mine emberore, and emberore is only found in red lime. We always figured the redness of the rock is from the ‘ember’ part of emberore.”

“That’s good. But also, that means we’ve got some work to do—” Luka drew a crude diagram and sighed. “I wish I paid more attention in chemistry now.”

The diagram explained the relationship between an oxidizing anode and the bath it sat in. Forgemaster Adam and Apprentice Cam shared another look.

“This is going to take some guesswork,” Luka muttered. “But I think I remember the process enough for a starting point.”

“Looks complicated,” Adam flatly said. “Is it worth the effort? Dainty iron isn’t useful.”

“Trust me on this. Emberwood Village might be sitting on a wealth of raw materials far exceeding the profits the park could ever bring in.”

“Maybe on your world, World Walker. But here, dainty iron isn’t used.”

The wind in Luka’s sails died. This world wasn’t Earth. It didn’t have Earth’s insane need for aluminum, it didn’t have Earth’s insane population. In fact, it didn’t realistically need aluminum—not when magic was involved. What was the point in using aluminum when iron with a weightless glyph etched into it worked just fine?

Anodes and electrolysis? Was all of this needed?

“I think… I think you’re right, Adam.” Luka stopped drawing and thought about his responsibilities. As much as he’d like to spend a few weeks trying to figure aluminum out, it just wasn’t realistic. Not with the park operating, not with the perfectly acceptable resources he already had.

Luka took a breath. “I’ll work on the theory of electrolysis on my own during my free time. You’re right, aluminum’s not much needed here. And spending your and my time to figure it out just isn’t worth it.” Declaring that didn’t sit well with him, so he added, “For now. Who knows what the future might require.”

The Forgemaster sighed a breath of relief. “Thank the gods, then. We were already busy with everything Tram’s making us do.”

“What’s she making you do?”

Adam nodded at the forge. “She spent all of the park’s profits on raw ores at a massive discount and expects us to smelt it all into metal you can use.”

“Really? How much ore did she buy?” Luka asked.

“Six wagons’ full delivered here every morning for the next four months. The first shipment got here yesterday, and we worked until midnight smelting it all.” Adam jutted a thumb backward. “All the product is outside.”

Luka leaned out a window, finding a pile of dull metal. After seeing God Neb’s mountain of metal, Adam’s seemed like… not that much. But Adam and Cam were mortals and a two-man team, not gods.

“Don’t worry about working until midnight,” Luka said. “There’s no rush for metal right now.”

Adam gravely nodded. “That was why I asked about the metal by the lake.” He pressed his hands together and said, “Thank you, God Neb, for your gift. It makes my and my apprentice’s lives easier. Your benevolence knows no bounds.”

Luka raised an eyebrow before quickly snapping it back down. Religion wasn’t his place to judge, not with the ring on his finger and all the personalized life lessons taught.

***

God Neb, God Rion, and Goddess Tippy inched through the darkness between realms. Behind them, a dozen of their divine brothers and sisters followed, each toting devastating magics that could easily sunder the world.

“On three,” Neb whispered, placing his hands on either side of a crinkle in reality. Just behind this spatial oddity was the tomb of a monster long thought dead. Well—soon to be officially dead and witnessed, monster.

“One.” A flare of magic erupted from the war party as each god and goddess readied their most potent spells.

“Two.” The gods took aim.

“Three—” Neb ripped the crinkle, and pure darkness spilled forth.

The gods attacked.

The darkness slaughtered them one by one.

***

Neb frowned, his future-reading magic coming to an end. Every single time he looked to the future, his future-self dies—regardless of the choices he makes. The monster was simply too powerful, too malevolent. It didn’t abide by the rules of magic, it forged them.

The future was grim, but not lost, not yet. There was a single future Neb had yet to divine—one single idea he hoped not to rely on.

Magic bubbled across his eyes, and this last idea came to pass. The vision ended with a forking path in World Walker Park. One direction led to the destruction of everything, the other to prosperity.

And the deciding factor of which future path time went down, sadly, was left in the hands of a single man. But Neb had to admit, it was a man he’d be okay with deciding the fate of existence—if such a man existed.

To get to that point, however, Neb had to fill his role. It was simple, all he had to do was nothing at all.

Neb’s gaze fell to Tippy, the youngin that set off this avalanche of insanity. She was currently divining the future as well, but the girl was never very good at the discipline. He’d have to help her, mainly to make sure she knew her role in this as well. The other gods would all know their places, and if they didn’t, he’d have to help them as well.

Sighing, Neb realized his role in this wasn’t as simple as he thought. There was no harder challenge than convincing gods to not help when their world was facing down a calamity.