Clair was asleep. It was late, well past her bedtime, and the threat of a sunrise bloomed just past the horizon. It was a cold early morning, like most this time of year, but Clair didn’t mind. She had the mostous comfiest blanket ever! It was made using a special threaded linen native to the Locan Desert’s crystal worms and spun by the natives that farmed such luxurious silk. A gift from her late grandfather when she was born. Her mother would have said that such a blanket was too expensive for a newborn, but after a single night’s sleep, Clair was unable to rest with anything less.

The thread had a property that reacted with the surrounding temperature cooling or warming to find the perfect warmth. It was a survival evolution by the worms, the desert’s boiling days and frozen nights were tough on its natural inhabitants. But nature finds a way, especially when magic is involved. This particular night really put the fabric to the test. It was the coldest of the year so far but well above the silk’s limitations, so when Clair was suddenly woken, she knew it wasn’t because she was cold.

“Wake up!”

At first, the words were added to her dreams as if a director was writing the story as the actors spoke. But the words became surreal, harsh, and borderline odd. The words didn’t make since to the prior conversation within the dream, she woke moments later. A bright off-blue figure of pure magic essence hovered just beyond her bed. It took the form of eight spectral eyes, two rows of four. The outer edge eyes staired intently at Clair, the middle two whipped around as if imminent danger was afoot.

“Unlotous?” Clair asked, rubbing her eyes, and sitting up. The cold air rushed into her clothes and skin, causing her to jitter.

The spirit from a different world spoke in odd long draws of breath. A limitation of his current form, merely a shadow through the veil between realms. “Call me quick! The city is in danger!”

Clair spoke no words, having understood his meaning. Her throat cackled, bringing forth ancient magics well lost to current practices. The calling didn’t have to be through song or music, but Clair’s grandfather had found it to be the best way to practice as a child. He, along with Clair’s mother, spent countless hours working with Clair to best transfer Unlotous. Rhythmic beats of magic seemed to be the best solution to many problems they faced in the early years. Clair was at the point where she could call Unlotous through quicker means, but the link that bonded the pair radiated his worries. He needed a stronger body, in this realm, and calling him to such a vessel took power. Power Clair did not currently possess, thus causing her to resort to song.

Unlotous had only been called in such haste once before while partnered with Clair. It was a summer day, hot, dreary so. A rogue Stalker had found its way to Lesterwood after a monster den had been ridded of its inhabitants by an adventuring team. The Stalker was desperately hungry, lunging at the scraps rather than following the golden goose of war or famine. Unlotous saw and reacted, much like tonight, destroying the Stalker before the sun even rose. Only this time it was not a simple wandering Stalker. It was a horde, a size he had only seen once before.

Power swelled in the basement style room. Stuffed animals were pushed away, clearing an area of floor covered by a shaggy off-white carpet. The carpet split, a hatch opened, and an arm reached for something to grip. The arm was solid silver but made of a non-reflective material that seemed to vibrate when looked at. Runes, warding script, and two types of written langue not native of Nava wrapped the arm and connecting body. For a moment the room felt as if it was going to tear. Mana mixed with other worldly power clawed at the veil of reality before slipping away as if it was only teasing.

Clair’s mom, Kaia, rushed into her child’s room. She stopped at the site of Unlotous’s rising, terror in her eyes. This form, this body, could only mean one thing. She darted to her daughter’s side, lightly tapping her cheeks keeping her conscience. If Clair passed out now, the calling would fail, Unlotous would be sent back as if the tether snapped. Clair’s eyes rolled around in her sockets, fluttering as blood vessels broke. She would need healing, that much was sure, but Kaia found it hard to focus. She had only seen this body once. Her grandfather made it a habit of solving Stalker problem using lesser vessels, but when the Empire attacks, nothing is off the table.

Clair’s eyes snapped forward; the gargling music ended. Unlotous fully stepped out of the cellar. He inspected himself, as if he had just been reborn. In a way he had, but while his real body was nothing like the one he currently inhabited, he felt perfect within the artificial construct. He took the form of a spider with great feathered wings. Eight arms each with one hand and six fingers carried his weight. A gentle stretch later, he suddenly remembered his task at hand.

“Stalkers. A lot of them. Coming from all over in preparation.” He said to Clair, but mainly for Kaia. After arriving to this dimension, the bond between Clair and Unlotous had solidified almost as if they were the same person. They knew each other’s thoughts, how they felt, their ambitions in life, their fears, everything.

“The Empire?” Kaia asked already knowing the answer.

“I am unsure. But we will know soon.”

Kaia nodded and moved to a drawer. She returned with three potions. Two were giving to Clair, one for healing the other for mana. The third, a large glass bottle double or triple the volume of the others. It had a warded script etched into the cap, which Unlotous broke with a single thought. He down the bottle with breakneck haste, mana fueling his odd body moments later.

“Warn everyone.” He said to Kaia before turning to his summoner. “We cannot separate, you understand?” Clair meekly nodded, knowing the tether would snap if they moved too far from each other. “I will protect you. If worst come to worst. We leave. We find your mother and fly away. Understood?”

Again, Clair nodded, but this time she stood. She wobbled at first, as if she had just gotten off a particularly rough boating trip. It took her only a moment to find her legs, the duo of potions doing work. Unlotous held out a single arm, acting as a stepping latter. Clair climbed onto his back, nestled between his massive wings. Kaia’s breath hitched as the ceiling detached with a pulse of mana.

“Wait!” Kaia said. She rushed to the bed, grabbing the silk blanket. As she wrapped it around her daughter, tears found her eyes. “It’s going to be cold outside. Keep this on.”

“Thanks mom.” Clair said, seconds later the two where in the air. Their first task was ahead of them. Find Miev and Beolen, the others apart of the Stalker extermination team. Unlotous knew where both were, his senses were pretty impressive in this body, even for his standards. He knew Miev was her in bed by the cemetery, Beolen was a bit out of the way, but awake and moving towards the city. His wolf must have already alerted him. Max… Unlotous had to stretch his senses out to find him. The young man and his bond were standing above an outlying village.

Good. Unlotous thought, which carried over to Clair. It looks like they are ahead of us.

Max and Emi looked down upon the forest. Just behind them a village desperately moved. Some built fires, some packed, some prayed, but most took up arms. They used whatever they could find. Firewood axes, pitchforks, garden hoes, simple hand hammers… The civilians knew their weapons would do little against a raging monster, but the familiarity of their tools kept them comfortable. It was a symbol of hope as much as it was a lifeline. Maybe the younger, more able few could land a clean slash, but one could also find a Blue Cored Flame Azalea and be rich for the rest of their lives.

Any ideas? Max asked with a quick and panicked thought. He had prepared for a whole platter of situations dealing with the villages. From monsters he couldn’t fight to flash floods of lava, he had some semblance of an idea. But now, when every village needed help at the same time, he was stumped.

Emi shook her head, facing the same conundrum he did. Fight? She asked unconvinced herself. Maybe fighting would have been plausible had it been a normal monster wave. But this was no such thing.

Max and Emi had already been to the other villages, each faced the same problem. A single wave. The same wave. A wave of dozens of species of monsters all feral and unhinged. At first the duo thought they were attacking each other, but that had not been the case. In fact, the monsters seemed to be assisting each other. They had watched a tall, mouse like monster with green flowing leaves as fur, reach down and pick up a smaller fox type monster. Instead of devouring it or killing it, the mouse dropped it a bit away in a path more suited to the fox’s stumpy legs. Emi was first to notice the issue. Every single monster was covered in blue spores and fungus. A hivemind mind-controlling fungus.

Maybe teleporting? Max asked, knowing this avenue of thought was weak. He had tried to teleport others before. But, as he had expected, only Emi could travel with him. Xylem had theories that it was the bonded relationship between their mana systems that allowed such things. And unless Max wanted to bond with every villager, he had no idea how to achieve mass teleportation.

Pocket Dimension? Emi offered. That… Had merit. It would take everything Max had to create a dimension large enough to hold a person… He had experimented with living things within a pocket before and it worked as he expected. Pocket Dimensions were, after all, designed to be miniature worlds. He had even been inside of one before when he inspected the dead bodies stored with in the Space Safe in Esmel.

I don’t think I have enough mana to teleport that many times. I would have to pour everything into the creation of the pocket before being forced to take one-maybe- two people at a time. I don’t think we have the time for that.

Emi agreed. But she knew of a way around size constraints. Divine racial. She told him her idea.

A pang of emotion filled the Lost Lord. That… Should work. But what about the city? If a monster shows up that we could have killed with the racial-

We just teleport everybody. Emi cut off.

Ambitious. Max took a moment. We always have the Gates. If we fail that is.

Won’t be needed.

Max scoffed in agreement. There were times to be arrogant, this was one of them. It’s got to be big. The volume to surface area is going to be the primary limiting factor. So, a sphere it is… But that causes the issue of gravity…

Emi spoke with certainty. Trust the spell.

Below the monsters got closer. They could smell the village now. Smoked meats, smoldering fires, livestock. All of it, the monsters were going to destroy all of it.

Max didn’t say anything else, but when his eyes changed golden and his presence lit up the bleak sky, Emi smiled. Took you long enough, she whispered.

He had an idea of what he wanted the spell to form into. There were a few worries, but he hoped the system would calculate for his errors. It had worked for other spells, why not this one? He imagined a large, very large, sphere of folded space. Empty other than a door of light in its center. The light would be the entrance and exit. No that wasn’t quite right. The door of light was less of a door and more of a filter. Max pictured it as a door, but it functioned with his will in mind. Allowing things like air and sunlight entry but keeping out thinks like bugs or pests.

He chuckled despite himself. How would a pest find its way inside? It was a nervous thought, but one he equated for anyways. The filter would be floating, meaning that he needed a staircase leading to the floor. It would have to be extra space folds for now, later he could change it. There definitely needed to be gravity. A movie from Earth came back to him. A spaceship rotated in the vast depths of space, creating gravity. He remembered it clearly, farms had been set up on this ship, they wrapped all the way around into themselves. An infinite farm, a haven in the cold dead of space.

He wanted that.

Around him his magic worked. High in the sky a Pocket Dimension so large, so safe, was being created. Layers of geometric slices of reality folded and creased, forming together before expanding. They puffed into a sphere, a shape that maximized volume to its surface area, allowing more mana to be poured into the creation. The filter took the most time to form. Multiple sets of congealed space solidified on top of each other, acting as a screen. It was tricky, but the system guiding the artist’s hand corrected for mistakes.

Emi watched with fascination. She had missed the first time Max used his racial, not having been born yet, and was too distraught to appreciate the second. The world seemed as if the Heavens were descending. A gentle blissful warmth perfumed from her bond, casting the cold daybreak with a resonating power. She felt indestructible in this moment, like she and Max were one. Her mana found simple refuge with his, only adding to the resources available.

Resonance, she realized. They had only done it once before and the two instances could not be any different. The first was when she was mad at him for something dumb and the two were forced to be cast away from too many negative emotions. Sorry, resent, acceptance, scorn. She remembered it all, but this, this experience right now was something magical.

It was Unity.

The spell completed with a final shock to space. The spell constructs snapped back, fading out of reality. Before Max’s eyes, only for him and his bond to see, the lines of folded space disappeared along with the bindings created during the action. With a final stream of mana, the spell connected to him, anchoring itself relative to his body. An emergency mana potion found the Lost Lord and little monster’s mouths moments later, both having released everything they had into the creation of a lifetime.

Congratulations, Pocket Dimension has evolved into Pocket World (Mythic Unique: Source Max Fowler):

A World fit for a Creator. You have created a land so promising and full of hope, those you look down upon wish they could catch a glimpse of the inside.

Mana cost expunged on creation.

Anchoring can be changed at any time for 400 mana.

28 mana used when living material passes through the boundary. Set to a flat cost to limit cost for large entities.

Sahhgen, Goddess of Space and the Infinity, has noticed you.

Present an offering at one of her shrines for guidance.

Peneil, Precursor of Death, has noticed you.

The first two notifications seemed… Good…? The last worried Max. But people’s lives were at stake. He disappeared from the sky, Emi along with him, appearing below in the village. His presence had been noticed by all, even people in Lesterwood were woken up to his display. The villagers had gathered outside, some were crying, other laughing, some thanks their Gods, but all went silent at their patron’s appearance.

“Hi.” Max said trying to sound casual. “I have a way out of this for you all. Uhh…”

A door made of purple light formed beside him. The crack in space seemed to shift and bend in different angles, a disconcerting effect. Everyone was hesitant.

“Come on, we have three more villages to save.” Max moved his hands in a circular motion trying to add speed to the onlookers.

The first, a young boy, stepped up. “What is that?” He asked, his arm swinging behind his back nervously.

“Salvation.” Emi said, her emerald, green eyes glinting in the light from the peaking sunlight and a smile on her lips.

Max shrugged and nodded. “Or… Think of it as a carriage to Lesterwood. But it’s departing soon, and you definitely don’t want to miss it.”

“Oh.” The boy nodded. “Thanks mister.” He walked forward, disappearing into the purple light.

Max watched his mana drop as the boy entered and spoke to Emi through their bond. Looks like your plan worked.

Emi snorted as the next villager entered. Our plan. She corrected.