Matthias ran his fingers over the mirror and waited patiently before it. Ripples ran across the surface as he waited for Nefertut to accept or decline the connection. It took nearly twenty minutes before the ripples faded and the image of the goat-man solidified.

  “Before you say anything,” Matthias began the moment he saw Nefertut open his mouth, “know that your mother is listening to this conversation.”

  Nefertut paused at that, his eyes narrowing. A long, measured silence stretched between them. Nefertut studied Matthias while Matthias held a stony, bored gaze.

  “I am calling your bluff,” Nefertut hazarded.

  Matthias smirked and stepped out of the way, revealing the spirit of the world sitting upon the bench behind him. She removed her hood and stared directly into Nefertut’s eyes.

  The spirit of the world looked like an aged elven woman. The wrinkles on her face appeared earned through years of hard living. Her eyes held the weight of eons. Her hair was limp and silver. But even as Matthias watched, vitality was slowly returning to her. One by one, her wrinkles were being undone.

  “Hello, Nefertut,” the world spirit greeted. “Long time no see.”

  Nefertut was at a loss for words. His eyes were wide, his mouth unable to close.

  “But…” was the only word he could muster after a full minute of gawking.

  The world spirit raised an eyebrow. “Nothing to say?” she asked.

  “I could not get to you,” he began. “It costs so much power to reach that deep. Once I was cut off from my concept, I simply did not have the power on my own.”

  “Excuses,” the world spirit sighed. “Where there is a will, there is a way.”

  “There are binding vows upon my soul,” he growled, suddenly very angry. “I could not risk the price!”

  “So your fairy is still marked?” the spirit of the world asked.

  “How do you know about that?” he demanded.

  “I was forced to be the weapon they used to carve away your power,” she admitted. “Your fellow siblings used me like a crude tool to swallow up your concepts.”

  “I… I did not know,” Nefertut sighed. “I thought they just used the core as a binding vessel. I did not know they used you as such.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Matthias interrupted. “Run that by me again.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “The original dungeon cores ascended to divinity by cultivating various concepts,” the world spirit began. “They then split into two factions. One faction believed that the world should be full of change. The other believed their rule should be eternal, no matter the cost.”

  “That sounds less than ideal,” Matthias pointed out.

  “Due to their connection to their various concepts, they were unkillable,” the world spirit continued. “So the second faction abused the concept of Order, along with several others, to weaponize my power. My power existed as equal but separate to their divinity. Their power is top-down—they place mandates upon reality. My power is bottom-up, editing the foundations.”

  “Oh no,” Matthias muttered, already anticipating the worst.

  “So they used me to sever and steal away the connections of the gods who believed in change,” the world spirit explained.

  Nefertut winced.

  “All those concepts were bundled up and chained within the core of the world,” the world spirit confirmed. “I was bound to contend with the unmanaged amalgamation of concepts. That amalgamation is the source of all chaotic mana in the world.”

  “So you’re saying there is a baby idiot god down there?” Matthias asked, slightly panicked.

  “Idiot god?” Nefertut repeated.

  “A thing with the power equivalent to a god but no mind behind it,” Matthias clarified. “A being that is unmanaged power given form. It doesn’t need a physical body. I’m guessing this thing is a bundle of passive chaos—almost sleeping—that simply exudes chaotic energy that must be filtered and processed in order to be usable by the rest of reality.”

  “You speak as if you know exactly what this thing is,” the world spirit observed. “As if it has a name you do not wish to speak.”

  “Some names are stronger than others,” Matthias said quietly. “Some names draw attention that cannot be diverted. Some names carry a kind of power you don’t want aimed at you.”

  There was a manic edge to him now. A creeping dread filled his eyes—something so deeply ingrained in his psyche that he could barely accept the possibility that such a thing existed.

  “So this is all bad?” the world spirit ventured.

  “No,” Matthias replied, beginning to pace. “Technically, this means we have an endless battery. Something with limitless potential and energy that can fuel ever-escalating growth.”

  “So it is good?” Nefertut asked.

  “Also no,” Matthias sighed, collapsing onto a bench. “One wrong move—one being just a little too greedy, in the wrong place at the wrong time—could endanger all of reality. This thing will grow. Every act of creation or destruction will feed it. It will never stop growing. It is a blessing and a curse so vast that to truly grasp its magnitude is to realize how uncaring reality truly is. To realize how small even divine beings are in the grand scheme.”

  His eyes hollowed as his mind spiraled through the implications.

  "It is not aware or conscious in a way that we would comprehend," Matthias continued. "It is not life as we know it. Not authority as we can understand. If it wakes, we simply cease to be. So long as it sleeps, and it is not what we would recognize as sleep, then reality is but the fabric of its dreams. It is an impossibility that should not be able to exist and yet here it is." At this point his inner panic was reaching a peak as if his mind was trying to reject the conclusions it was coming to.

  “Give us a name,” the world spirit demanded, putting a bit of her recovering power into the command.

  Unbidden, the name spilled from Matthias’s lips.

  “Azathoth.”

  At that terrible name, a heartbeat rang out. It was a feeling they could hear. Dread and wrongness climbed their spines and settled in the dark corners of their minds in that briefest of moments. Then it lingered—not fading, simply hanging in the background like an idle threat.

  Matthias closed his eyes and began to hum a lullaby with what remained of his sanity. He hummed softly, praying that its sleep would deepen enough for that most cursory attention to fade.