Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex’s heart continued to pound in his chest for nearly a minute after the last remnants of the vision shown to him by the Memory Crystal faded away. He could feel see Quinn’s gaze boring into his skull like the man was standing right beside him.

He almost expected the man to pop into existence right beside him within his Mind Palace just like Meiderly had. But, as the seconds dragged by and his heartbeat slowed, no such thing occurred.

Alex was alone.

Well, as alone as I’m ever going to be. Berith is still in here. He might not be saying anything but forgetting that he’s around would be a grave mistake. Berith is far too dangerous to ignore.

But pulling his thoughts from what he’d just seen was difficult. He didn’t even know what Quinn had done. Pygil had clearly had an incredibly powerful domain. Alex wasn’t sure if it was quite as strong as the one he’d seen in his previous Memory Crystal, but it had felt powerful.

Not that it had mattered. Quinn had killed Pygil instantly. Nobody could even call what he had seen a fight. It was more of an execution. Even though Pygil had had every single advantage, he’d been cut down instantly.

And it didn’t look like Quinn used a Soul Manifestation or anything like that either. He just… what, instantly killed him? How is that possible? How is that even fair? It didn’t seem like there was even a way to fight back.

There’s no way the System would give somebody an instant-death ability, right?

Alex refused to believe that it would. Something that powerful would break everything. There could be people who were strong and people who were far stronger still, but there was no way such a thing as an ability that guaranteed instant death could exist.

Which means he just outclassed Pygil by such an enormous degree that, from Pygil’s perspective, he got killed instantly.

Quinn had also left Pygil’s dying form a single throwaway line. It might not have mattered much to Pygil, but to Alex, it was liquid gold.

He said there was more to fighting than a mere domain. I wish he would have explained more, but there’s more than enough to learn from that one line alone.

Quinn had unintentionally made absolutely sure that Alex would never forget one thing. Domains might have been immensely powerful. For someone like him, who had only taken his first step along the path to power, they seemed like the very heavens themselves.

But they were far from the top. A domain did not make someone a god. Even someone with the most powerful domain Alex had ever seen could still be taken down in the blink of an instant.

That’s the lesson that Pygil didn’t get a chance to learn. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are. The moment you start thinking you can’t be defeated and you’re at the pinnacle of power… someone else will roll up and remind you where you really stand in the universe.

Determination etched itself into Alex’s mind.

In other words, if you’re going to go all in and be cocky about something, you better have a damn good contingency plan.

Alex let his senses brush across the ring on his finger that stored his other Memory Crystals. Each memory he’d seen so far had been immensely useful. He’d definitely gotten his money’s worth — and there were still more to go through.

With any luck, at least one of them will be someone actually opening the gate to the domain for the first time so I can get a hint of what’s coming.

With that in mind, he summoned forth the next crystal and, without a moment of hesitation, crushed it.

***

Alex did not get what he was hoping for.

Looking back at it, perhaps he’d just been hoping for a bit too much. People lived pretty long lives. That was clearly doubly true for after the System arrived. Only the gods knew how old Berith was, and even Pygil had clearly been much, much older than he’d appeared.

And a long life meant there were a hell of a lot of moments someone had to pick from when making a Memory Crystal that had something to do with a domain.

Of all the other Memory Crystals Alex looked through, not one of them had anything to do with the creation of a domain. Almost every single one of them was the middle of one fight or another. And while Alex wouldn’t have said the crystals were useless — they definitely gave him a good understanding of the feeling that came with using a partial domain — they weren’t exactly what he’d been hoping for.

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There was no fixing that. It wasn’t like Alex could complain. He was far more prepared to unlock his domain than the vast majority of the other Native Worlders ever would be. Few of them would have been able to draw a small fortune on Memory Crystals to give them an understanding as to just what domains were capable of.

And, at this point, Alex had a pretty good idea.

The first Memory Crystal had been the most enlightening for that part. Domains were impressing the power of your Soul Manifestation onto an area around you and turning it into a natural law just like any other.

Other domains could affect just how strong that law was. The stronger domain would overwrite the weaker one, though to exactly what degree Alex wasn’t yet sure. On top of that, he hadn’t forgotten Quinn’s lesson.

Right then. I think I’m out of prep I can try to do. There’s no point pushing this off any longer. I don’t plan to be meditating forever. I think it’s just about time to open the gate and unlock my partial domain — and after that I’ve got some good Title Fragments sitting around that I should combine.

But Alex was in no rush to get distracted by titles. At the moment, his interest was solely on the doorway that would unlock his partial domain. He was finally ready to open it. Alex took a moment to gather himself before rising to his feet from the spot where he’d been sitting to use the Memory Crystals.

He made his way over to the closed gate between two of the massive marble pillars in his soul. Faint light glowed within the lines running up the door’s center to gather around the gem embedded within it.

Alex let his palms rest upon the marble surface. All he felt was stone. Cold, dead stone. But there was power beyond it. He knew there was. He’d been in the memories of enough people who had called on similar power to know what it would feel like to feel flowing through his very being.

But he’d only watched the others. The power had been theirs, and Alex nothing more than a silent passenger. Now things were different. The power beyond this door did not belong to another. It was his.

And it was waiting for him.

Alex drew in a deep breath. He might have known what would come after his domain was created, but he didn’t know what would happen when he opened the door. It could have been a Trial. It could have been a clone of himself that he’d have to fight in order to earn the powers. have been anything.

He didn’t know. And if Alex was totally honest, he didn’t mind that all too much. If he knew every single challenge that life had waiting for him, it would have taken all the fun out of it.

There was only one way to find out what laid ahead.

Alex pushed the door open.

He’d fully expected the door to fight him. To grind open with the ponderous gait of a lackadaisical giant going for a stroll. But the door did no such thing. It swung smoothly inward without so much as a creak of protest.

And beyond it laid an ocean of power — of Qi.

Coils of molten red and royal purple mist twisted together in a horizon so great that he couldn’t even begin to make out where it started or ended. Arcs of furious magenta lightning rumbled through the impossibly huge space. Alex recognized the feeling of the energy instantly. It was his Rifwarped Qi, but more of it than he’d ever seen.

Throughout the magical ocean floated huge, fragmented mirror shards. They hung suspended in the air as if frozen in time. It was just like the many destroyed buildings that littered the world of the Mirrorlands.

A flash of green caught Alex’s eye. He squinted, peering deeper into the world beyond his gate.

What was that?

And then he saw it.

Buried deep within the storm and surrounded by the mirror fragments floated an obsidian throne. Veins of green emerald twisted throughout the black stone, glistening with molten energy. Arcs of lightning tore away from the jutting spines covering its back, scoring through the air like a roaring orchestra.

It wasn’t hard for him to tell what the game here was. There might as well have been a glaring neon sign flashing above the floating chair.

I’ve got to sit on the throne, huh?

Alex inched into the doorway.

Energy prickled against Alex’s skin like static. The closer he got to entering the gate, the stronger it became.

There was no clear path to the throne, but there were enough floating fragments of glass to pave the way. They were large enough to jump from one to the other. He was pretty sure he could make it over so long as he was careful.

Alex didn’t know what would happen if he missed a jump, but knowing the System, he had a pretty good guess that he wouldn’t like it.

But one more thing held his attention. He didn’t miss a particular parallel that stuck out to him like a sore thumb.

The ocean is made from my Riftwarped Qi.

Mirror Aspect Gem, mirror fragments.

Ruler Aspect Gem, throne.

Then there’s the Nightmare Aspect Gem… so where’s the nightmare?

And from the corner of Alex’s eye, he saw something shift. His gaze snapped down into the twisting strands of smoke, but only fast enough to see a shadow vanishing into the furious storm.

A grin tugged at the corners of his lips.

Ah. There we go.

There was something within the smoke and mirrors — and Alex didn’t miss the joke there. He cracked his neck and shook his limbs off. It looked like he was going to have to race to reach the throne and prove his worth before the storm and whatever lurked within it stopped him.

He tested his weight on a piece of glass floating before him. The glass bobbed slightly, but it held. It would support his weight.

Well then. That settles it.

”Sounds fun,” Alex said. ”Let’s do this, shall we?”

And with that, he stepped into the sea of energy. The door slammed shut behind him with a resounding bang, but Alex didn’t care. He was already moving.

His domain was waiting for him.