A vast fantasy world

The first sensation I felt was grass beneath my feet and wind brushing against my skin. I looked around to see rolling green hills and mountains in the distance. Crawling up the side of the rocky mountainside was greenery, clearly a vast forest. The skies were blue with a few fluffy clouds drifting by lazily.

“What. The. Fuck?” I stumbled around, my gaze crossing my surroundings but finding no trace of the naked woman or the mirror.

Don’t panic, Master. I heard the woman’s voice, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Where did you go!?” I shouted, panicking a little.

I’m still in the studio, Master. But I can communicate with you as long as you are here. Welcome to Seradyne, this is the world that the mirror’s previous owner created.

“What? This is a different world?” I looked around my surroundings more closely. Nothing about it seemed fake. “It seems so real.”

For all intents and purposes, it is real, Master. This world has its own ecosystem, its own geology, it even has its own inhabitants.

“There are people here?”

Of course. It was designed to be a perfect world of fantasy and magic, I believe.

This revelation struck a deep chord in me. I remembered that this mirror belonged to my grandfather. Though I knew little of him, I knew he had a passion for the classic fantasy genre like me, the last gift I remember getting from him when I was a teenager was the Lord of the Rings books, which I considered to be what thrust me into my passion. The idea that my grandfather would create a fantasy world full of magic and mystical creatures did not surprise me in the least. It’s pretty much what I would have created myself given the opportunity.

Suddenly the vertigo returned, and I was once again inside “the Studio” as the woman called it.

Yet again, she was there, standing nude in front of me.

“Since you are here, and you are certainly not my previous Master, I can only assume he has passed away and left you this mirror in his will. This is the only way the mirror could have taken you here.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, that means you now own this place, and the world your predecessor left behind is yours as well. You may use the Studio to alter his world or erase it to make way for a new world.” That seemed simple enough. Or at least, I was able to grasp the concept without my brain turning into ooze.

“Where do you fit into all of this, though?” I asked.

“I’m the Studio. Or, at least I’m a part of the Studio that you can interact with. I can answer any questions you have, or even make changes at your request if you’d rather not take a hands-on approach. However, if you prefer the latter…” she made her way to the door in the room with the artist’s brush painted on it and opened it, gesturing for me to enter.

I walked inside to find a much larger room full of various creative tools. I immediately spotted an easel, a writing desk, a block of marble and a stool, even a variety of musical instruments. There was much more, enough that it was a bit overwhelming.

“If you are the creative sort, you can use anything in this room to give inspiration or directly change the world you create, designing every last detail.”

“How would anyone have enough time to design every aspect of an entire world though?”

“This studio is timeless, you won’t age here, and time won’t pass here. For that matter, each world is temporally exclusive. This means that time will only pass if you are in that world. You could spend hundreds of years in Seradyne and not age a second in your world, and visa versa. If you’re in the Studio, time won’t pass in either world.”

Well that was certainly helpful.

“But,” the woman continued, “if you prefer, you can just tell me what you want to change and I will do it for you more quickly, though it may not be exactly how you imagine it.”

I walked back into the lounge, for lack of better name, and looked at the door on the other side, with the hanger on it. “And what’s in that room.”

“It’s a dressing room. You can alter any aspect of your appearance or attire in that room, to make sure you fit in with whatever locals inhabit your world. I can help you with that when you’re ready.”