Ahsch's Demi-Plane

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“I think I’ve figured out why you’re such an idiot,” Avery commented, looking around the empty forest. “Not a damn thing in sight - your mind’s empty!”

Ahsch exhaled loudly through his nose, leveling an unamused glare at his wife, who just cackled. “The demi-plane is bound to my soul, Aves, not my brain.”

“I don’t think that helps your case,” Ariin smirked at her brother.

Fitting eight people into the currently-small demi-plane that he had wasn’t necessarily difficult - there was a few hundred square feet, though it was forested. It was, however, rather boring, seeing as they couldn’t really go anywhere or do anything or see anything.

“I suppose the lizard didn’t deign to teach you how to expand your demi-plane, or alter it,” Rwnil commented.

“Not explicitly,” Ahsch confirmed, “but I do have enough basics figured out that I’m fairly certain I can do it myself.”

Well, don’t let us stop you, Mahat said from where she lounged in a sunbeam.

Ahsch took a deep breath and reviewed what he’d learned. These demi-planes were infinite and also infinitely small - a spaceless point of infinite space. Within that paradox, he could extend the forest the group now stood in to encompass an entire world; or he could make it so that leaning slightly to the side brought someone to an entirely different locale. The key to maintaining the stability of the demi-plane was the way it was bound to Euphoria - his soul. The forest was clearly reminiscent of the Forest around Sarvas, which made some sense, given he’d spent so much of this life exploring and working there. That did raise the question - what other locations were marked upon his very being in such a way?

With another deep breath, he cleared his mind and then began to walk forward, heedless of whatever lied before him. A few surprised murmurs came from the group, but he ignored them until he stepped onto something… uneven. Somewhat soft, or at least with give. Yet there was a slightly wooden smell in the air now, different from the trees of a forest.

Opening his eyes, he let out a small exhalation of amusement and nostalgia. Woodchips underfoot, and a wooden playground ahead, only sized for an adult rather than accurate to the dimensions he could recall from his childhood back on Earth.

“Where are we?” Elui asked, peering around.

“I recognize this place,” Ariin murmured as she cleared the treeline behind them, transferring from the forest to the park. “Though I can’t… wait, Dreamweave!”

“It’s a place from Earth,” Ahsch said. “From my childhood as Mitchel. A playground at a park near my home. He let out another huff, though this one lacked mirth. “How sad is it that in over two dozen years, this is the place etched onto my soul from Earth? A childhood park. Not my family home, none of my schools…” He shook his head.

“Not just your childhood,” Mahat said, coming up beside her Master and gently embracing his arm. She pointed over towards a small copse of trees nearby. “Your first kiss in middle school,” she reminded him, then pointed towards a clearing, and the scene dimmed into nighttime, stars shining overhead. “A lovely date your freshman year of college.”

“What is she saying?” Kirasiel’s whisper was clear to Ahsch’s Enhanced Senses.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Ahsch’s - or rather, Mitchel’s - Earthian language,” Ariin replied. “But I only know a couple words she’s bothered to teach me, so I’m not sure.”

Ahsch flushed as he realized that Mahat _had _been speaking English to him, and he hadn’t even noticed. Clearing his throat, he turned away from the playground, away from the others, and cleared his mind again before walking forward. Quickly, the crisp slap of his shoes upon hard flooring reached his ears, and he opened his eyes.

“I get the feeling this isn’t a _place _so much as it’s symbolic of something,” Dorin mused.

“A holy building,” Ahsch agreed, looking around. It was grand, quite open, with tall pillars holding up the ceiling, though the building itself wasn’t closed to the outside, with a great deal of the far walls cut out to let in sunlight, and a large circular hole in the center of the ceiling. The floor was tiered, with several short flights of steps leading down towards the lowest point in the center of the building, where a small, clear pond was situated, bathed in the light from the central opening. Grand as it was, there was little to distinguish any of it, the designs and patterns on the pillars and floor and ceiling simple geometrics and repeated shapes.

Then Ahsch concentrated, drawing upon his being and divinity as Enochiel and allowing it to infuse the place. Suddenly, pillows and low couches and curtains filling the space, and the designs changed to depictions of nude bodies, of sex, of domination, and chords of rope seemed to link, to _bind _everything together.

“A temple to Enochiel,” Elui said, a hint of approval in her voice.

Ahsch cast his gaze around, and tried to ignore a few darker corners, where the domination was more akin to conquest - rulers and slave masters lurking behind curtains. Then, with a thought, he forced the dark aspects out, banishing them to be replaced with more of the same from the rest of the temple.

“I don’t think there’s really an end to any of it,” Avery called from a short distance away, where she was walking off, yet never seemed to go much further than she already was.

“It’s a space that is both infinitely vast and infinitely limited,” Ahsch called back. “Space, distance, it doesn’t follow the normal rules. Not unless explicitly made to.”

Avery turned around and quickly rejoined the group. “Shit like that hurts my head,” she complained.

They all explored the temple for a minute before Dorin called out, “How fast did you say timed passed in here?”

“About ten times as fast,” Ahsch said. “We’ve only been here, what, fifteen, twenty minutes? So, maybe a minute and a half or two minutes back on Euphoria.”

The servant shook his head. “Sounds like your problems of never having enough time are going to be a thing of the past.”

Ahsch gave a lopsided smile. “Not enough time, sure, but I’d say I still have too much to do, too many different projects. Working on any one of them means I can’t work on the others, and so many of them are equally important, so I have to either delay all of them, or somehow pick one to prioritize over the others.”

Avery was frowning at a sculpture cut into one of the pillars, though her frown was thoughtful, not directed at the art in front of her. “You should join me one my tour of the Odestag facilities in the Capital,” she eventually said.

Ahsch raised an eyebrow. “Why?” he asked slowly. “House Odestag mostly produces automata, right?”

She looked over at him. “Unless you’re planning to make yourself a second body somehow, an automata you can pilot might be the next best plan.” She smirked.