Two uneventful weeks followed that day at the sausage train, and every night we worked on proving our bosses statement, while handling an ever-increasing amount of differing enchantments during the day. We focused on our souls like we always did when meditating, and concentrated on the color as we delved deeper.

  It was hard work to look within ourselves, when suddenly an Idea was proclaimed from ember.

  “Maybe we need to cast a spell while meditating?”

  He asked, and I immediately went to implement that solution, only to struggle on a conceptual level, for I had never cast a spell in meditation before.

  Choosing the purify spell for it proved to be the wrong attempt, as it sputtered out the moment I started meditating, while Ember once again surpassed my speed by suddenly bursting into flames.

  Blue and red danced across his skin without touching the ground, the heat coming from him something I quickly chose to counter by putting him in the waterball, something my survival instinct told me to do while still in meditation. Suddenly, I saw it, the aqua flooding through me from somewhere deeper.

  It didn’t originate from me, and the split second I managed to gaze into this opening, I witnessed a world of water and storms, where everything was submerged and a plethora of fish creatures flooded through the plane.

  Reproducing the feeling, I tried to open the path of necros, and it opened in the same place aqua did, closing the beautiful gate to a world so twisted I had to hold my breath not to puke.

  The plants were dead in every way, shambling corpses with eternal hunger in their eyes brushing against them on occasion. I switched to lumen when a skeletal titan with blackened skin made eye contact with me.

  This time, what I saw was not merely light, it was structures made of laser beams, and creatures that interacted with them as if it was normal, bending what could be seen into a million different things.

  Like a twisted mix between cyberpunk dystopia and an image of heaven, everything flashed, appearing or disappearing at a whim, the beings of this plane filled with mirror like edges. It was beautiful to watch, and yet it twisted what I knew to be possible in a hundred different ways.

  Before going mad with the possibilities, I switched to the next, Spatium so very different from the others.

  Spatium was connected to all I had seen, and so much more. It was a barrier flowing between the planes, sometimes allowing for something to pass through depending on the month. Hundreds of strings connecting every decision and ensuring the worlds integrity. It was beautiful and maddening, for it made me realize something I had not realized before.

  I had known of our insignificance, but I had not understood it. In an attempt to escape this cognition hazard, I switched to the last thing I had open, a simple idea forming because of a glimpse I had seen during the seconds I spend gazing at spatium.

  Despite everything I had learned, I could not resist a glance at the plane of null, and it was what I had expected for the first time since starting this session.

  I saw dragons fly across the sky, people running beneath them in hordes like ants. I saw the connection of spatium from it, a world that mixed the other planes to uphold its own matter, and at the same time a prison.

  Old thoughts and words made much more sense as I saw what the gods had done, a gaze between the five planes I was connected to.

  Slowly, I looked at the connection between lumen and null, creating a model that connected the two worlds, which made them fit like a hand to a glove. I did the same to the oceans of null and aqua as well as the swamps and graveyards to necros.

  My brain was burning when I wrapped spatium around it, the model missing geos, pyro, vita and temparum, but I had a feeling where they had to go.

  This entire reality had been made into a puzzle, and given my talents, I was uniquely suited to solving it. I just needed the power to meld reality together and expel any divine influence.

  Then, my model broke apart, and I found myself in the normal meditation view, my arcane gates connecting and brimming as I forced them open all at once, falling unconscious as a result, my last sight was Ember in the very same situation.

  He probably hadn’t witnessed the split of reality, but given that he had not even gazed upon an eldritch one yet, it was perfectly reasonable to pass out when observing a world of eternal flame, or whatever pyro was.

  It was overwhelming to be presented this choice, and while all tier three runes I could see looked absolutely overwhelming in power, I decided to complete the tier two ones for the sake of it.

  When I awoke, it was to a feeling of overwhelming power, the world just a bit more vibrant than I remembered it. And the doctor above me pretty pissed at me, from the looks of it.

  “Seems they just entered a refinement on accident, probably the fourth, if the amount of pure power I have to bring up to even affect them is anything to go by. These two don’t belong in this area, they belong into the academy. Who knows what they might do. And this one is what, eight? Nine? The sheer set of traits he has available to him, if we don’t send them up as soon as possible, they might very well be abducted or something. Any one of the two would be an asset to any family that found some sort of control over them.”

  Slowly, I rose from the bed I had been laying in, looking around for ember, only to find him in a containment chamber burning like a human torch. The way I was laid in dust and mud spoke to the things that probably transpired during this little experiment of ours.

  “Doctor, I’m awake.” I said, rising from the mud bath and casting cleanse on myself to make sure no dirt remained.

  “Isn’t it incredibly hard to get into the second circle?” At that, she laughed lightly.

  “If you two aren’t runaway nobles, I don’t know how you got access to that kind of power. Just be nice to your family, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you re-enter.” I wanted to object, before my brain caught up with the situation.

  “We are El and Ember slayer, I am sure someone will come to pick us up if you mention these names, best add our power level though, I’m unsure whether our family would let us re-enter if we didn’t show at least some talent, you know?” I ask, trying to maintain my physical integrity as I smiled at her.

  “Do you happen to have some food for me? I am starving, and you do not want to know what my trait does when I don’t eat.”

  My explanation was enough to get her to nod and leave the room, my smile becoming a manic grin, especially as I look at a closed wooden box on a night stand, the container for the silver slices we managed to spare, enough to get some good enchantments on a few rings, and probably enough for any impromptu rituals I might need.

  It was a wonderful day, and while we were going to enter a battle for the right adoptive parents while pretending we were actually noble kids, it would be quite interesting to experience life as a noble for once. Compared to my short stunts as witch apprentice, priest or enchanter, it could only be on the good side of things, maybe even without the amount of deaths the other events carried with them.