Ch: 8 Cabin in the new universe (Patreon)

Edited by Aldous

Sage of Humanity.

Chapter eight

Cabin in the new universe

She woke up feeling her hellhole floating just above her somewhere, like an annoying pest buzzing just out of reach. She looked upwards with her soul, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Annoyed, she stood up and went to get something to eat. Opening her refrigerator, she groaned as she saw just how low on food she was. There was a bunch of food still inside the fridge, but most of what she saw was old and looked spoiled. She did spot a newish-looking carton of apple juice in the door to her fridge. It even had a bit of juice left in it. Not bothering with a cup, she took the carton out and drank the last little bit that was left, before throwing the carton on the counter along with all the other trash.

Feeling disappointed at just how bad she let her fridge get, she started pulling out all the spoiled food and putting it on her counter. Once she was done, her fridge was almost completely empty. Her counter, on the other hand, was full of food that was suspect. She opened the freezer side of her fridge. She looked through it and frowned. Most of the stuff in there was either stuff she didn’t want to take the time to cook or had been there for way too long.

Going through all the old stuff, she put anything she thought had been there too long on the counter along with the other stuff she had pulled from her fridge. Reaching into a cabinet, she got out a large, brown, paper bag, and stuffed it full of the food she had taken out. She started casting her crush spell and, once she had it at the ready, she pulled the trash bag up with her empty hand, and then let it go while at the same time setting her spell off. The crush spell hit the brown paper bag and turned the three foot bag into a ball the size of a soccer ball. A very heavy soccer ball. She rolled the brown paper soccer ball full of old food just outside her door.

Feeling a bit better, but still in the zone, she set about cleaning her kitchen. Feeling lazy, she hit most of the dirty things with her Repair spell instead of just wiping things down. It cleaned the thing while at the same time repairing any damage the filth had caused. She even cast the spell on her dishes because it was faster than washing them in the sink. Once she was done she felt better, but still hungry.

“Nothing here, might as well go out and get something to eat. But first I need to take a bath. Need to feel human again.” She thought to herself, as she looked around at her clean kitchen.

She really didn’t want to just use her Cleanse spell, even though she was really hungry. She wanted to soak in her tub. With that in mind, she walked into her bathroom, tossed her clothes on the floor and turned on the water. A few minutes later, she was basking in warm water, occasionally adding more hot water as it started to cool off. She thought about casting a spell to warm the water up, but she didn’t feel like getting her grimoire out to look up an appropriate spell. Still, it was amazing how such a simple thing like sitting in a hot bath could make her feel so much better, but it did. The only thing that ruined her soak was that she still felt her hellhole floating behind her. It was like someone was watching her from behind her back constantly, but every time she went to look for them they weren’t there.

“I need to take care of that thing.” She muttered to herself, as she picked up what passed for soap in the world that came after the invasion, and started to clean herself. She started thinking on how to create her spell as the soap slowly turned her bath into a bubble bath. Happily scooping up large piles of soapy foam into large islands, she thought about how to create a tunnel to her old home. She came up with a few ideas while singing about an old sitcom about a three-hour cruise. She had long forgotten some of the words, so she made up her own to replace the ones she had forgotten.

When she was done butchering the song, she finally left her bath. It was mostly because the water got too high, as she kept adding hot water to prevent the bath from getting cold. That, and her hands were white and very wrinkled. She used her Cleanse spell to remove the foam from her body as well as dry herself. Once she was done, she cast Repair on her clothes and got dressed. Feeling more relaxed, she made her way towards her living room. She had work to do.

Time slipped away again as she got lost in trying to create a new spell to connect her old home with her new one. She forgot about the contract she was supposed to sign for the building association. She forgot about going out to eat. She forgot about everything except trying to figure out a way to connect her old home to her new one. She only remembered to eat when the boy from the food store came by that evening and dropped off her order. She absently made noodles for dinner that night because it was easy and she didn’t have to think too hard about it. She tasted the first few bites then, what felt like a second later, the bowl was empty. She put the dirty bowl in her sink before sitting back down to write down her thoughts in her grimoire, lost in her own world.

The rains of spring came and went, as she struggled to come up with her spell. She came up with a bunch of ideas, but they had all failed by the time the heat of summer pressed down on her. All her attempts at creating a spell failed. With a frustrated sigh she closed her book, but didn’t dismiss it.

“What am I doing wrong?” She asked herself, as she got up to pace back and forth in her living room before her huge window. She stopped to take in the sunset as her mind whorled over her problem. She really wasn’t looking at the sunrise, but going over the problem in her head. She knew there had to be a way to either get rid of the stupid, annoying thing that seemed ever-present just behind her shoulders or find a way in. She didn’t really want to get rid of the thing because, while she never had to live there again, it was useful for, at minimum, an extra-secure storage space. She had so many ideas when she started, but, time and time again, they all failed. What made it worse was the fact she could feel its never-ending presence behind her.

Turning away from her window, she turned towards one of the rooms that she had left empty. She had four rooms, but only used one of them. She looked at the door frame and wondered if she could somehow use what it symbolized as an anchor for her spell. Feeling like she had nothing to lose, she went to the door frame and started to measure it with a bit of mana here and there.

It was a very crude way to mark something that she had discovered a very long time ago. It was an easy and simple method she came up with way before she created her Grimoire spell. It wasn’t really a spell - she just let out puffs of mana on the door and let it slowly fade away. The mana left a mark that she could see while looking through her soul and lasted for hours. She used it as a way to mark a point without a pen or pencil. As she marked the door she thought about where she wanted her spell to anchor on the door frame. She still had some extra beast cores left over from her Anchor signal spell, which was the first part in creating Woburn’s magic city force field, the precursor to the Woburn’s advanced Magic city force field ritual.

She marked two spots on top of the door frame, four on the sides and two on the bottom of the door, hoping it would give her inspiration on creating her spell. When she was done she stood back, looking at her handiwork and thinking about how she wanted to create the intent of the spell, when she noticed that her mana wasn’t fading away like it normally would. The marks would last hours, but normally she could see the mana start to fade as soon as she stopped adding it to the marks. For some reason, this time the mana stuck to the door and didn’t fade like it had in the past. As far as she knew, the only way to keep mana in place was inside a crystal beast core.

It was just mana, but something about it called to her. It was beyond just mana being trapped in the real world without a crystal to keep it in place. It felt like the beginning of a spell, the intent of it, not the creation of the spell balls, yet it wasn’t a spell. There were no spell balls. It was just pockets of mana that hadn’t faded away. Looking at it, she felt she was being drawn into it, like she was looking at a mana well - not unlike the one inside her body.

But it felt off. It felt like it was missing something. Like when she corrected her spell balls' positions. Looking at it for a few seconds she realized the obvious - it was missing a mana pocket in the middle of the door. She didn’t stop to analyze why she felt it was obvious, she just acted. She pushed the mana out, and let it pool in the middle of the door. She kept on adding mana to the spot until something snapped. It was like someone had snapped their fingers, but it wasn’t something physical, or really magical. It was something very different. It was like reality snapped. Right after the snap, she felt her old home rush past her and connect to the mana. It was the oddest feeling she had ever felt. Then the voice of her double spoke, giving her a system message.

You have created a doorway to your pocket universe. This doorway is owned by you and cannot be used by anyone else unless you give them your permission. The creation of a doorway is restricted to Sages and above who have earned their own pocket universe. You cannot create a doorway within 500 miles of another doorway. You must have a pocket universe owned by you to create a doorway. You must own the property from the System that the doorway is created in. This doorway may only connect to your pocket universe. You may have only five doorways at a time, but you can release a doorway at any time. You must be outside of your pocket universe to create or release a doorway. If you release a doorway, it will remain marked and will be easier to recreate when you have an open doorway spot. If you are rebuilding a doorway, you must be at the creation site to recreate the doorway.

You have earned the right to create a pocket universe and a doorway to it. You may enter your pocket universe at any time through your doorway. Congratulations, Sage Wilson. You are among the first four to earn this reward.

“I didn’t earn it, you silly System. I made it.” Lily muttered.

She reached out, feeling slightly dazed, and touched the door handle. It felt like a normal door handle to her. She gently turned the doorknob, and opened the door. Instead of seeing her extra bedroom, she found herself looking through the doorway towards the hellhole she had been trapped in for 97 years. For a second, all she saw was her memory of the place in a flashback-like vision. Due to her fear of that old place, she almost shut the door and destroyed the doorway until she saw…

...That it had been completely changed. For one thing, the white, wall-dome-thing was gone. In its place was an awesome sunlit-sky, with the most amazing baby-blue color. It even had a few puffy, super white-clouds were floating across it. Underneath the amazing-looking sky, was her tiny complex which had also changed -where it had been there was now a log cabin complete with a large, rock chimney.

Directly in front of the door from her apartment was a dirt path that led to the front door of the cabin. Surrounding the cabin was a field of grass that ended about twenty or so feet from the front door. From there. there was a forest that circled the front and sides of the cabin. Behind the cabin, Lily could see a raging river that had a lot of bubbly, frothy water from hitting the many large rocks that lined the river floor.

It hit her, standing in her doorway between her apartment and her pocket universe, that it was the real-life, picturesque scene from a painting that her parents had in their room. Her dad said that he got it from his grandfather who had hung it in his bedroom before she was born. She had asked, in her innocence, if it was worth a lot of money, her dad had said, “only to me”. She had loved looking at it whenever she had been allowed into her parents’ bedroom back before the world had ended. In a weird way, it was a part of her parents’ bedroom - like the huge messy bed her parents had, and huge window that overlooked their street.

What she was seeing before her was a fully realized world that was identical to the painting. Seeing it in front of her made her feel so lost and yet happy at the same time. It was the most amazing thing she had ever seen in her life. In that moment, it made her love magic more than anything else in her life yet at the same time it made her mourn the loss of what had been.

She stepped through the door, only to stop when she heard the crunching sound of her feet on the slightly rocky path. She bent down and grabbed some of the stones and dirt. It felt just as real as the real world. She turned her hand over, letting it fall back to the ground. She wiped her hands off against each other as she stood up, still feeling the grit on them. Taking a deep breath while she was standing there, she was amazed at how life-like the world was around her. She took in her new world. She smelled the soft dirt below her. She heard the trees rustle from the slight wind that blew against the left side of her face, and she felt the warmth of the sun as it beamed down on her. It was the most amazing thing she had ever felt, and it was all hers.

She took a few steps down the path, only to turn back as she felt a flash of fear that her doorway would be gone, leaving her trapped once more. But, to her relief, the doorway was still there, showing her living room. In fact, the doorway was a part of another building that looked like a shed with four doorways on it. It looked odd since most of the sheds she remembered had two doors instead of four like this one had. The shed looked like the one from her backyard where her family kept the lawnmower, except this one had four doors. Only the first door looked real. The others looked oddly like they were painted onto the front of the shed.

Still feeling a bit of anxiety, she went through the door to her apartment. She took a deep breath, and closed the door to her new world. It closed like a normal door, leaving her alone in her apartment. Then she immediately opened it again and her new world appeared across the threshold again. There was no feeling of magic or, really, anything. It just felt like she was closing a normal door. She laughed and opened and closed the doorway several times, just to make sure, but her living room came back again and again without fail.

“Now for the real test.” She thought to herself, as she stepped back into her world. She turned around and looked at the door for a few moments then, before the fear could overtake her, she slammed the door closed. As soon as the door was shut, she ripped it open again. To her relief, she found herself looking into her apartment again.

“Yes!” She yelled as she jumped up and down, throwing her fists up in celebration. Just to be sure, she opened and closed the door a few times, but the door kept working. Once she was sure it wasn’t just a one-time thing, she let the door go. In celebration, she bent over and did a booty dance like she had done when she was a little girl. She only stopped when she started to get out of breath. Laughing at herself, she turned around to run towards her cabin.

The cabin had three stone steps leading up to a porch that seemed to wrap around the front of the house. She looked around at the wooden porch and smiled. The cabin door was a tall, wood structure that looked like someone had cut a log into thick, flat planks and put them together to create the door. She reached out and opened the door. Inside, the cabin was bigger than it was on the outside.

On the outside, the cabin looked small but cosy. On the inside was a single, huge, open room. There was a large fireplace on the left-hand side of the room with two nice and comfortable-looking reclining chairs that bookended a huge couch. The couch was covered in old-looking knitted blankets. The blankets reminded her of the blankets her grandmother used to knit. To her right was a large, dark, wooden, rectangular table with a bunch of high-backed chairs surrounding it. Beyond the front part of the room was the kitchen, which took up the entire right and middle of the cabin. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a long, polished bar with bar stools.

She walked into her new home and ran her fingers over the knit blankets as she passed the couch. Taking a closer look at the table, she smiled at the shiny finish of the wood. It reminded her of a table she had seen in a store so very long ago. She walked towards the kitchen and stopped to take it all in.

There was no stove that she could see, only a really large, but very flat, waist-high, stone structure. At the bottom of the stone was a metal grate which she could see fire flickering behind. Just above that was a handle made out of stone. When she pulled on it, part of the stone in the front separated downwards and she found herself looking into an oven space. There were metal racks inside with some pots and pans being stored on them, like her mother used to store their larger pots and pans back before the world ended.

There were a bunch of lightly-colored wooden cabinets on the walls of the kitchen, with deep countertops below them. In the middle of the room, there was an island with pots and pans hanging down from the ceiling. The pots and pans didn’t look modern. They looked like they were made out of cast iron. The sink, which took up a pretty big space on the left-hand side, looked like it was made out of stone as well. It had a modern, silver-colored spout for water attached to the middle of it, along with the spray thing that her own apartment had and she never used.

There were glass windows on the left side of the kitchen, showing parts of the forest and the river behind the cabin, on the wall near a door to the back yard. The door was big and wooden, with another window taking up the top half of it. To the right side of the door was another large window that showed the backyard and the river, which had to be only twenty or so feet from the cabin. When she walked up to the window, she could see a small clearing filled with grass before a small hill that led down to the river bank. The riverbank in the backyard was carved in a semicircle where the water was oddly calm. She could see through the clear water all the way down to the stones that made up the river floor. She didn’t see any fish, but, then again, it was a pocket universe, so she wasn’t sure if there were any.

She walked back to the living room of her cabin and looked to her left. This side of the cabin was taken up by a wooden staircase. It wasn’t a wide staircase, but it wasn’t too thin either. There was a banister that ran up the outer edge of the steps that led upwards. Lily stepped around to the front of the stairs and looked upwards.

The stairs led to the second floor, which, when Lily walked up, she saw was kind of dim. Not dark per se, but the lighting was very low. She looked around for the light source, but couldn’t find any. She could see everything fine, but the lighting was just there and dim. The second floor was taken up with a hallway that had a door to the right side, in the middle of the short hallway. At the far end of the hallway, there was a very steep-looking staircase that was almost a ladder. It led up to what she guessed was the attic. Ignoring that staircase for now, she went to the door in the middle of the hallway. When she opened it, she found herself looking at her old bedroom from her home before the world ended, minus her electronics.

It was also much smaller than her old bedroom used to be. Her old twin bed was still there, taking up much of the room, but, other than her drawers and the door to her closet, that was it. Her desk was missing, as well as all of her posters and other stuff. Her bed was made up with the same sheets and blankets she had in her apartment, not what she remembered having before the world ended. After thinking about it, she liked the new sheets and blankets more, compared to her old ones. It felt like it fit better in this new world she was exploring.

Her closet was empty, but it had another door at the far end of the large closet. That door led to a huge bathroom that looked identical to the bathroom from her apartment, complete with the huge tub she loved. It even had the huge mirror above the two sinks that her apartment had. After checking, everything worked perfectly.

Smiling, she left her bedroom and walked towards the second staircase. It had a weird, unfinished vibe to it. The wood that made up the stairs that were almost a ladder looked much rougher than the ones that led to the first floor. There was also no banister to the stairs, so she had to climb the staircase like a ladder, holding onto the next step to keep her balance. There was a trapdoor in the ceiling above her that she had to push a bit to open. Bright, white light shone down on her when she did so. She had a sudden bad feeling about that light. As she pushed the trapdoor fully open, she saw that her fears were fully realized.

The small room on the third floor looked like what she thought an attic should look like, except for the ceiling. The ceiling was covered in the same white light that had made up the wall of light in her hellhole. The walls of the attic were made of wood, as well as the floor, but the ceiling was made up of what looked like that hideous wall of light. Feeling terrified, she slipped into her soul and looked at the wall of light. To her horror, she saw thousands, if not millions, of spell balls bouncing off each other as they moved around her attic ceiling. She quickly pulled herself back from the sight and closed her eyes.

One part of her wanted to shut the attic door and bar it for all time, but the more rational part told her that there were thousands of spell balls she hadn’t deciphered. That meant there were thousands of spells that she could create, if she just conquered her fear and spent time in here looking up. She sighed as she opened her eyes again and, without looking back, closed the attic door and stepped down the steep staircase. She knew she would go back. She needed to go back, but not now. Not yet, anyways. For now, she wanted to explore and see her new home.

After spending a half hour wandering around looking at all the neat little things in her house, she decided to take a stroll around the outside of the house. She went out the back door to the small, calm area of the river directly behind the cabin. She bent down and put her hand in the river, which was a little cool, but not bad. She took off her socks, stepped into the water and smiled. It felt like she had gone back in time to before when all the bad stuff had happened. The water and the feeling of the large, head-sized river rocks at the bottom of the river felt the same as when she went on vacation, back when everything was normal and safe.

She left the river and started walking barefoot back into the house. She mentally made a note to bring her shoes, which she left by the front door to her apartment, into her world. Still barefoot, she went out the front door and took a left - walking towards the forest. She stopped to enjoy the sights of the forest for a few seconds before continuing on, wanting to know how far her world went. About fifty feet from her cabin, she came upon another clearing, but this clearing was not filled with grass. Instead it was filled with her mushrooms and some strange moss. She bent down, grabbed a mushroom and ate it. It tasted just like her mushrooms tasted, back when they were still fresh. She also felt her hunger and thirst fade away. It was nice to feel that again. She stuffed her pockets full of them and made a note to stock up for her apartment before she left. She started walking again, away from the cabin.

She kept on walking for a while before she stepped out from the forest to find herself on the other side of the cabin. She looked around in confusion for a few seconds until she got what happened. Her world looped her from one side of the forest and cabin to the other side. There was no sign of magic or anything else. Just to be sure, she turned around and walked back the way she came. She found her mushroom glade just where she left it, and kept going until she was back at her cabin - proving her hunch. She wondered if that would happen if she floated down her river. Would it circle back around or would she fall off the end of her world? It didn’t make sense if it didn’t happen in the river too, but she made a mental note to test that idea later. That last thing she wanted was to find out her world was flat and it was possible to fall off the edge.

She went back into her cabin and sat down at the table. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable. She cast her Grimoire spell, and started writing notes on the things she wanted to check out about her new world. Things like: Was her new world flat or round? Just how big was it? And was that the sun setting?

That last part was more an observation because she looked up as she was writing and noted the sun was indeed setting in her world. She quickly jumped up, leaving her grimoire to fade behind her as she ran to the window. She watched as the sun set on her river with vivid colors, as it disappeared behind the forest on the other side of the river. The sun went down pretty fast, but the sunset was awesome. It lasted much longer than she thought it should have. Then it was over, and the night sky was left behind. The nighttime sky was full of stars, just like how she remembered it from when she was really little and went camping with the Girl Scouts. There was even a moon. It looked normal, if a bit bigger than she remembered. She smiled at the sight. She cast her Grimoire again, and started writing more notes like; was it possible to go to the moon in her new world?

She lost herself in writing questions and trying to think up ways to test them to see if she could find a way to answer them. It was a really fun exercise that she kept up for a while before getting tired. She put her mushrooms away in a very large cabinet that felt like a refrigerator, except that it looked just like every other cabinet in the kitchen. Then she went out and gathered more mushrooms, noting that the ones she picked had already grown back. Once she was done, she went to her new bedroom in her cabin and slept in her new bed.

In the morning, she learned that her new world didn’t have everything. For one thing, she didn’t have any towels for her bath. She only noticed after she was done. It was fine though, since she could use her Cleanse spell to dry off, but she still missed drying off with a towel. There was just something great about doing it that way. She also learned that, besides mushrooms, she had no food in her new home. She had come to like her eggs in the morning. On top of that, she also didn’t have any silverware to eat with. Or cups and plates, for that matter, when she went through her cabinets. Not feeling like having a mushroom for breakfast, she went back to her apartment.

As soon as she stepped into her apartment, Woburn appeared, looking worried. “Where did you go? I can see the new spell on your door, and it's very powerful. I couldn’t see you when you went in. Is it some kind of travel spell?” He asked, when she looked at him.

“Kind of. It’s a spell I created. It makes a new world, and it’s awesome.” She told him, moving out of the way so he could peek in. “The System restricted it to just sages and above.”

“It’s just a black void to me.” Woburn told her, sounding worried, as he looked through the door. “I can’t see anything on the other side.”

“Was there anything you wanted or were you just checking up on me?” Lily asked, as she closed the door and headed towards her kitchen. She was really looking forward to scrambled eggs with cheese.

“A little bit of both.” Woburn said, as he followed her to the kitchen. “We got orders from Lowell yesterday, asking if you would like to visit the city. They are willing to issue a quest just so you could go and visit.”

“Can I turn the quest down?” Lily asked as she pulled out her eggs from the refrigerator. She just got her new home, and she wanted to hang out in it for a while.

“Yes, but it’s free money and experience. Why would anyone turn that down?” Woburn replied.

“Pass.” Lily replied, as she started cracking eggs into the frying pan. She cast Grimoire and started making a list of what she needed to bring back to her cabin.

“Look, Lowell is a bit of a dick.” Woburn said, jumping up to sit on the counter beside the stove. “He’ll make my life a pain if you don’t go. You don’t have to do anything they ask you to. Just go listen to what they say then come back.”

Lily looked up from the list in her book to really look at him. He looked a little depressed and sad. She looked over at the stove and her eggs and thought about it.

“Please. For me?” Woburn asked, with a big, fake smile. It made Lily laugh which got him to laugh too.

“How long will it take?” She asked him.

“Five days.” He replied, looking slightly happy.

“That’s a really long time to be away from my work.” Lily complained, shaking her head.

“For me?” Woburn begged, giving her puppy dog eyes.

“Ok, fine. Just stop.” Lily said, as Woburn made even more stupid faces.

“Great!” Woburn said loudly, before jumping off the counter top. “I’ll go tell the Colonel. I owe you big time for this.”

“Yes, you do.” Lily said as she added spices to her eggs. It was a new thing that the store keeper had added to her groceries. It made the eggs taste really spicy. She liked it. She thought about traveling to a new city. She wanted to spend some time in her new cabin, and check out how her pocket universe worked. But she hated to disappoint Woburn. He was nice for a ghostly boy. With a sigh, she went back to her grimoire and started a new list. This one was about what she needed to take on a trip to a new city. If it all went well, she thought she could create a new doorway there as well, so she could bounce between the two cities if she needed to.