Everyone I’d meant to help had died or left, but I still carried an annoying sense of obligation. I couldn’t fall back into a trance, not when there was still someone I could help. Then I could relax.

I still had no method of communication, which was a huge annoyance. The amount of power I had made that annoyance worse, not better. Thankfully, although I couldn’t communicate, I had templates of creatures who could.

My ants.

How they’d learned to project mana packets like that I had no idea. I might never have figured it out on my own. There was a twist to it, a sort of warping of space and mana that left a split second of time with which to cram in as much information as possible. The results were jumbled and confusing when my ants tried to have conversations, but quick orders and responses went through just fine.

Learning how to twist mana like that would have made any Aelon’s head implode, but I cheated. The entire technique took no time at all to memorize. The ants used my mana for it, and so I just stole it from them. And now I could talk too.

So that was communication down. Now I needed … trials. Something to push a person to their limits. Something dangerous, because even a completely nonmagical person could sense enough to get vague intentions from the mana around them.

Ember needed to feel complete apathy from me. Her life or death would be in her own hands. I couldn’t slant the odds in either direction. That presented a unique challenge. I could painstakingly craft obstacles that could be adjusted on the fly to match her and slowly evolve them to match whatever powers she gained when Awakened.

Or I could just make a bunch of animals and give each a slightly higher amount of mana than the last to gauge her power. And then I could polish up the contents of my Domain, send her into deeper and deeper areas as she advanced, making more and more powerful trinkets as rewards for each obstacle…

If I were still human, I would’ve been rubbing my hands together. This could actually be fun. I’d been considering slapping together something that’d cause her to Awaken and then just throwing whatever I felt like at her as she gained power, but now that attitude made me make the soulstone version of a wince, which translated to the flow of mana in my Domain halting for a moment before resuming.

Making a bunch of trash for someone to clear away didn’t appeal to me at all. I’d been a thief in life, not an artist, but I definitely appreciated the aesthetics of what I took. I hadn’t wanted to spend my life making something when I could just take it. But now I could rival a thousand artists, sculptors, glassblowers, miners, even Aelon. Everyone always talked about how powerful the Domains were, and now I got it in some intuitive way I hadn’t before.

Manually resetting everything that broke through the trials would bore me, so I had to figure out how to repair and regenerate everything automatically. I’d allow nonobvious solutions, but blatant cheating had to be prevented. Keeping someone from burrowing through my Domain like a worm was something I’d need to look in to. For now, I just assumed Ember wouldn’t be bringing a pickaxe with her.

Right, so I had a ton of goals and no solutions. Just what I wanted. What I most needed was some sort of instruction manual on how to be a soulstone. If it existed, Senz had probably read it. Right now, my abilities consisted of being able to create, destroy, replicate, move, and reshape anything my mana touched, and feeding living creatures mana until they mutated magical abilities. Any human would gladly take any of those powers.

But I gave up my body and soul for a rock. I wanted to do magic myself without relying on copying magic mutations. I tried shaping my mana into different constructs, but all I got was a bunch of unraveled mana and a few really inefficient explosions. There was a reason even the most powerful Aelons only created a few spells during their lifetimes.

Alright then. For now, I’d make do with what I had. Creatures spontaneously mutated in my mana? Why not make my top floor inhabitable for all sorts of creatures? I expanded my first floor drastically, changing it from a cavern to a yawning chasm. I added fertile soil, created a bunch of trees, grew them to the ceiling, and then scattered tiny mana crystals around the new forest floor to hopefully tempt some wildlife inside despite the feel of my Domain. After that, I added a ton of miscellaneous vegetation, the better to obscure vision and host critters.

That was my first floor. The low level of mana there would keep powerful mutations from occurring, but I’d have a lot of creatures to copy and experiment with on lower floors and sealed-off chambers. There was enough mana to keep all the life flourishing without sunlight, which would add an interesting challenge to anyone entering.

As long as the mana crystals paid off and the floor populated, the floor was complete. It would weed out anyone who wasn’t prepared to deal with the challenges further ahead, and it let me sit on my crystalline throne without lifting an invisible finger. I added a small gap in the stone at a random edge of the forest which would lead to the next trial. Then I focused on the entrance.

I’d had ideas for a transport system before. I made a small room somewhat reminiscent of the one I’d had there before, with the same raised pedestal. Though this time it held a mana crystal that was more … alive, I guess, than the others. It was still connected to the cycling mana of my Domain and the moment anyone touched it I’d scan them and plop them down in the trial they’d left off at. If the person was new, I’d randomly place them somewhere in my first floor forest. After a bit of thought, I flared the mana in that entrance chamber, making a sourceless blue glow.

For the exit to my first floor, I decided to try bundling a pulse of information with a mana crystal, then embedded that in the floor of the exit chamber. I flooded that chamber with the same sourceless blue light as the entrance. It worked, sort of, but I could only slip in a single short concept before the crystal slipped from my control.

It was good enough. I set one within a decorative archway within the exit chamber and pushed my will into it. I sent a tendril of questing mana next to it, making it mimic the feel of a human’s.

Continue?

It worked. My mana vibrated in satisfaction. The stone would draw mana from what I had circling around my Domain, offsetting anything used up at a touch. I created another archway above the crack in stone that anyone would have to come from and set my second mana crystal above that. This one had a different concept.

Leave?

Simple and effective. All a human would have to do was focus on a mana crystal, and their mana would instinctively brush over it, activating the impression. Actually touching one of them would activate another trigger, one that I modeled after the teleportation method I used to move my own soulstone. It would surround the person in my mana and move them around to a predetermined point. The destination for the mana crystal that would lead further within my Domain I left empty for now. I wasn’t about to show anyone a half-finished floor.

After that, I was tentatively ready for Ember’s return.

So I contacted the ants. The big purple and black one seemed to be the leader, so I sent it a thought packet.

Identity.

My own sense of myself flashed by. The ant seemed stunned for a good while. When it moved, it seemed tentative and unsure of its own location.

Oh. I should probably have toned down my senses. I’d overwhelmed the poor thing.

Soon after it regained its sense of self, the ant gathered itself and launched a probing thought packet at the air in front of it.

Allegiance.

So they’d do what I said. Nice. I was contemplating what next to ‘say’ to it when I sensed Ember. Based on my sense of time, she shouldn’t be here this early. She sprinted into my chamber, pack stuffed full of trinkets and sweating a river.

“Please,” she gasped. “They’re behind me.”