“Now that I think about it, how the hell I’m able to do common magic if the connection to the arcane plane is cut off?” The enchanter asked to himself, thought the core was kind enough to bring one of its non-verbal negations.

“Yes, yes. You don’t know.” He sighed while caressing his intertwined ring. “My guess is that the cut off cumulus of ether here is enough to recreate the laws, at least partially.”

The Law star wasn’t called that way for nothing. Time and Space were the basic laws, those who dictated the workings of the universe. But they weren’t the strongest. That place was conceded to the primal energies of Arcane and Chaos.

Arcane was order and magic itself. Everything else that didn’t use arcane energies couldn’t be called magic, as the definition of magic was heavily tied to the arcane. One could be using the ether and other elements exclusively, but it wouldn’t be magic.

Chaos, on the other hand, was the other side of the coin. For there to be order, there shall be chaos. Demonology was the most commonly known aspect of the element. A type of ‘magic’ that didn’t require arcane sustenance. Though the element wasn’t as shallow as it sounded. It never was.

Following the enchanter’s train of thought, the core suggested him to use the other functions of his Tenet of Immortality.

“It wouldn’t work, core.” He stopped moving the energies of the void and got away from his rift opener machine. “The tenet’s Light and Chaos properties are a contract with plane’s superior beings, they are totally independent from the Life and Death ones.” The enchanter explained as his finger traced the red metal part of the ring.

“If the connection with the dimension is severed, there’s no way I can contact the divinities in the first place.” Now his finger wandered along the white section. “That’s why I called it a tenet. An accord with others. Though the regenerative and pseudo-immortal properties are totally upheld by me.”

The core obviously knew this. Even if it wasn’t constructed while the ring was crafted, the endless conversations happening around the tower during the centuries were enough information to learn the mysteries of the man called the ‘Divine Enchanter’.

“I think I’m starting to lose it. I’m even monologuing to you. This is weird. Everything has been weird since I arrived here. No, even more before that.” His sight was lost in melancholy, remembering previous eras. “It’s strange having lost the connection to the other planes, I have been relying on them to heavily. Yet it feels refreshing. In some way, I’m free. Sure, trapped in a cage. But no longer connected to other beings’ interests. Weird…”

Freedom was a twisted concept for the enchanter. He had traded his life over a millennium ago, the word made sense, yet the concept escaped his grasp.

“You know? I think it’s the ether that is the problem.” He commented while floating in the air, examining the machinery from another angle. “Ether is supposed to be malleable, fluid, and renewable. But here, the strings of creation are broken, corrupted, and finite. I don’t know if the Void is the antithesis of ether, but it can certainly twist it in horrible ways.”

So much time had happened that the ether that had been teleported with the tower had become obscured. Alike soaking cotton is oil, the ever-present energies became heavier and began dissolving. It also didn’t help that the tower was the only source of ether in all the plane. It had become a pseudo-ether net of its own.

“Or the air. It also may be the air.” By now so much time had happened that the enchanter had cycled around every deposit of breathable air in the tower. The place was more akin to a coal mine than anything as bad air littered the place. “I probably have the record for holding breath for the most time. Can this be considered holding my breath, core?”

Interrogation, the arcane computer responded. There was more carbon in the air than a wagon of diamonds, yet it still served the enchanter for his countless monologues. The enchanter hadn’t bothered to transmute the carbon dioxide to oxygen as it would be a waste of his somewhat finite resources. Speeding the corruption on the ether wasn’t a good idea.

“Alright, let’s get started.” The enchanter clapped and began working with the void creature’s remains. “I do think this is the key to break out of the void. Something is completely blocking of the access to the physical plane, and I feel like commanding the void itself is the way out. This shouldn’t be possible to this degree, not even the divinities were capable of doing so when they imposed the sealing of the plane.”

The ether around the enchanter slowly purified, returning to a previous state. The void had permeated onto the tethers of magic, so the solution was as simple as to move the Void from one place to another.

“Yeah, it sounds weird. But it does make sense, core.” He told to his companion even though it hadn’t asked nothing in the first place.

But he was wiser than letting all the null energy accumulate on his body. He had suffered once from arcane overload, and while the extreme exposure to the Arcane was one of the worst pains in the Existence, he suspected it was going to be way worse with the antimaterial element.

Small rifts of pure black began forming in his wrinkly arms, as more and more energy from the Void gathered. Using one of his failed orichalcum rings, he diverted the energy towards the exterior. Even the golden alloy of the gods was unable to suppress the null energies and cracks appeared.

Only a few more seconds were needed for the trinket to collapse and break. That small circlet was probably more valuable than small kingdom’s treasuries, yet the enchanter did not even care. For him, it was only but a failed creation. A worthless lump of metal that had a last chance to be useful.

He promptly put on another one.

Three orichalcum rings, an adamantium bracelet, and two mithril pendants later, he was finally able to purify the ether around the Nexus.

“Man… Those pendants were actually well-enchanted.” He said with a hint of pain. “Oh well, it matters not. Mithril is cheap anyway. And I greatly prefer getting out of here than losing some centuries-old, enchanted items. I have hundreds of those.” Even if he didn’t show it, the act had taken a lot out of him. Not something he wanted to repeat.

A sphere completely devoid of color spawned in front of him. The energies were so powerful and compressed that space-time itself would have collapsed if it was present in the first place.

“Hmm, curious.” The enchanter casually flew around the ball of death. “It isn’t corrupting the ether surrounding it. Did I just create a cumulus of energy so dense that it cannot longer interact with the world? Scratch that. How does energy even have density? Scratch that. Is this even energy?”

Even the ancient enchanter was dumbfounded by the current phenomenon. The Void was a new field of study for him. Completely uncharted, totally unpredictable.

“Core, are the calculations finally ready?” The arcane computer gave the green light. “Perfect. Three out of four things checked.”

The old man looked around the tower’s innermost room. He saw the glowing core at the celling of the room, emitting golden light as it didn’t stop computing for a second. Then he looked at the machinery made from deep ebony cage. It had been repurposed into circlets that levitated around each other. Akin to a magical astrolabe. The inner circles were fast, a pair of spins every second, the outer layers were slower, mayhap one revolution per minute.

Last but not least, the concentrated null entity. A ball of energy that it somehow looked more darker than deep ebony if that was even possible. Those three elements would be his way out.

And the final element? Himself of course. Whilst the core was able to handle hundreds of millions of operations per second, it wasn’t truly capable of magic. Only of resourcing mana from one place to another. The computer was not even capacitated to interact with the ether net. So that weight felt onto the enchanter.

“I’m not looking forward into reaping the veil between dimensions, but it’s the only way.” The enchanter talked to the core in order to get some approval. He had little trust in the following endeavor. “Well, here goes nothing.”

The astrolabe deconstructed and floated around the void orb, only to reconstruct itself once it had surrounded it. The lighting and every other function in the whole tower shut down as the core’s process power fully centered on the task.

In an harmonical manner, the enchanter commanded the forces of the ether and the void. The energies that seemed opposite worked together under his yoke. While the ether worked in the familiar tethers, the void was more alike a gas. Not easy to control and pretty fluid. Yet as if he was an aeromancer in this analogy, the clouds of nullness obeyed him.

The circumscribed circlets of deep ebony gained more speed, until only after images could be seen. The room began flashing as the core rapidly changed colors, a sign of the high computation speeds. Around this myriad of colors and maelstrom of energies, the enchanter kept his cool.

Concentration is key for a mage, even if he doesn’t consider himself as one.

His lungs stopped gathering air, his heart stopped pumping blood, yet he was unphased. He reached the apex of concentration, his subconscious mind abandoned menial task as maintaining his body alive and focused on the spell. These trivialities wouldn’t kill him, either way.

Even when the access to the ether net was blocked, even when he challenged the unknown, even when the laws of the Existence were against him, he persevered.

Blood began escaping from his capillaries, only to be instantly regenerated by the Tenet of Immortality. If this procedure was inducing pain, he no longer felt it. The coiled ring glowed as more ether poured into his body. Soon, the enchanter was holding the entire micro-ether net created in the tower.

A metallic screech echoed across the room as the deep ebony astrolabe found itself incapable of containing the impossible concentration of void. The energies present weren’t comparable to the previous rift the cage had been containing when the enchanter first came into the plane.

A smile was drawn in the enchanter’s face. He had never seen someone break neither enchanted orichalcum nor enchanted deep ebony, yet the void managed so easily in a small span of time. Sure, when those metals were unenchanted they were a lot less durable, but the void was breaking divine materials with relative ease.

Small cracks in the reality began to manifest. Some in the shape of null lightning. The weird electrics arches didn’t produce nor light nor sound. Other rifts were more sensical if that was the word. Unidimensional points appeared and fizzled out of existence as the orb of the void became more and more agitated.

The veil between worlds was collapsing.

Finally, the energies of the null cumulus collapsed on itself, now being able to interact with the surrounding ether, as if the force that impeded them doing so vanished.

“Core… activate the… portal.” The old man said with difficulty as the unleashed forces of the uncharted dimension threatened to devour him.

In a logic-defying manner, the extremely fast circlets of deep ebony stopped themselves in a perfect aligned orbit. Totally discarding the notion of momentum, or physical all the same.

The path was open.

“Here goes nothing.” The enchanter commented as he gazed inside the strange portal. This wasn’t the work of common telemancy, obviously.

He approached slowly towards the sphere of certain death, a force impeding him to continue forward. Something that wasn’t expected of an object that was more akin to a black hole made out of energy than anything else.

The enchanter nonchalantly sacrificed the powerful trinkets, driving them to overload, as to gain a measly boost against the power of the universe. He would cross that portal, whatever it takes him.

The ether corrupted and purified trillions of times per second, time began to dilate to obscene degrees. That was a good sign. There was time!

In an instant of complete confidence, the enchanter touched the blackest surface.

...

…

…

His mind weighted down on him. Everything and nothing spun around. His back felt coarse and his body numb. Yet he lived.

With a blinding light, he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was an arm, a young arm. Completely devoid of the thousand wrinkles typical of a century-old man. Yet he ignored that part.

He heard the birdsong; he heard the air. He saw the trees!

“I made it, core!” The man stood up with a jump. Repeatedly hopping on the spot in ecstasy. “I finally made it!” Yet something felt off. “Core? Core!” He had broken away of the void, but not without leaving some things behind.