The shack door was cracked open—I was pretty sure I hadn't left it like that. One of the dolls containing the other me was already heading over to check it out.

A notification appeared in front of me just as she was going to open the door.

Moderator Nyxie is teleporting you to her studio Would you like to cancel the Moderator action? Y/N

I let out a squeak. I forgot I was going to meet Nyxie!

"Okay, you handle that, I have to go," I said.

"Oh wow, lucky you!" My other self said, "You're sure you don't want me to come?"

"I mean, you can already watch through my eyes, can't you?... Oh, you wanted me to. Yeah, you have to stay here." I ordered them. The sick little freak was getting off to their Oath.

I glanced up from the notification and blinked in confusion. She had a satisfied expression on her face from listening to the command I gave her. That wasn't the surprising part, though—the part that surprised me was the fact that the doll had ripped the door right off its hinges.

"Is this going to be a problem?" I asked. If she couldn't keep herself together when following directions, then we'd have to have a talk, and maybe alter the wording of the Oath.

I had no idea if we could even do that, though. Damn it, we should have added the possibility for alterations to the Oath if we both agreed.

"Huh?" She seemed to notice the door, "Oh wow, I think those muscles we made are kind of really good."

She flicked the door out into the forest. There was a thunderous boom, followed by a sound like shattering glass, as the sonic boom caused the flash-frozen door to blow itself apart. A rush of displaced air rattled the nearby trees and knocked the roof off the shack.

I stood there silently for a moment, then simply nodded. Whatever, she should be fine.

"Oh, right. Before I go, we should link your bodies to the ritual domain," I said. I had completely forgotten to add the node circles when making the dolls.

Both dolls hopped up onto the table and preened.

"Where do you want the circle?"

"Umm, how about on the back of each body?" She replied with one of the dolls.

"Turn around then, I need to finish this quickly so I can meet Nyxie," I said. My body twitched in excitement as I thought of her.

The dolls turned around, and I carefully drew the circles on their backs.

"Your Authority leaked into your voice for a moment there," one of the dolls said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just excited, you know how we get," I replied, just as I finished up with the circles.

"Yeah, okay. Have fun. I'll always be there for you," my other self said.

"I know. Go find whoever took the staff." I replied, sending the thought directly to her.

[Just send me a thought if you need me.]

I accepted the teleport request.

The void swallowed me for an instant, then spat me out within a distinctly non-two-dimensional space. I stumbled at the perspective shift for the moment that it took for me to get used to not being in an animation.

The way teleportation worked was fascinating from the perspective of the roots of the world. It looked like I was pulled completely out of the world and then shoved back in immediately. I had no idea how I could possibly replicate it.

Maybe Autumn could figure it out. They had some weird powers that came with the Mother Tree Seed.

Looking around, I appeared to be in some sort of lounge or possibly a green room. I didn't have much time to take in my surroundings as one of the doors opened, and an imp wearing a pressed polo shirt and khakis entered the room, looking rather frazzled.

"Are you Player Ellie Winters?" he asked, his voice tinged with anxiety. Is he sweating?

He was wearing a name tag labelled 'Gregrethoriul'.

"Yeah, you didn't teleport the wrong person," I replied.

He let out a held breath, "Thank the gods, I live another day. Okay, let's get you into makeup."

"What? Nyxie's show is audio-only. Why would I—wait, no, this doesn't make sense either way. Look at me. Why would I need makeup when I'm already perfect?" I replied, I knew with absolute certainty that my shell looked adorable.

Not as cute as my actual body, but you can't improve upon being a small sphere.

"Just come with me, please. We can talk while we walk," he said, dabbing his forehead with a cloth.

I reluctantly agreed, and we left the room to travel through what appeared to be an endless labyrinth of corridors, doors, and staircases. It was like I had fallen into the backrooms or something.

While I followed Greg through the cavalcade of liminal spaces, of which he seemed to know the exact path to follow, I tried to get information out of him.

"So Greg, what's it like working with Nyxie? Hearing her voice every night is amazing," I said. "You probably get to hear it all day. I bet you love your job."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Yeah, it sure is… Something," Greg replied, looking down at the floor.

He must be an anxious type.

"So, where are we headed then? I said no makeup, but if you'd like me to alter my face, I can change it however you'd like. I have several interesting materials that I could use. What do you think Nyxie would prefer? Fire, Ice, or Blood themed?" I asked, wanting to present my best to her. She was… Wait, why am I so excited to see—

"Uhm, no, it's okay, just stay as you are," Greg replied, snapping me out of the train of thought.

Wait, what was I just thinking about? Oh, right, I'm so excited to meet Nyxie!

I wondered if I should have brought her a gift. However, I had no idea what kind of things an imp would even want.

"Hey, you and Nyxie are both imps, right? What kind of gift do you think Nyxie would like? Wait, is it speciesist of me to assume imps would all like similar things? I think all Runaspriggans would like unique plant material to consume, so there are definitely things that certain species as a whole would enjoy. Though I'm also the only Runaspriggan, I'm pretty sure, so maybe that's a bad example. Is there anything most humans would enjoy? I guess putting meat in their mouths." I shivered in disgust.

"That doesn't matter, if you're her coworker, so you should at least know something about her. Is she a fan of fruits? I can grow some fruits from back on Earth. I'm personally not the biggest fruit person, but I wouldn't say no to a banana. Something about the texture of other fruits turns me off them. I could also make her something out of wood. Do you have a picture of her? Would it be too much for me to mould a statue in her image? Yeah, that would probably be too much. We wouldn't want to make her think I'm weird or something."

Greg didn't answer. He just walked ahead, silent. Eventually, he stopped, opened a door to a room labelled 'Makeup', and gestured for me to enter.

I entered the room, grumbling under my breath, but paused when I realized it was completely empty. Confused, I turned to Greg only to see he was fiddling with something that didn't exist.

Why are the things in this room invisible? That's odd.

Now that I knew what I was looking for, there were a bunch of empty voids in the room.

He found what he was looking for and turned towards me.

"Alright, hold out your wrist."

I held my arm out for him, curious what he was going to do. Nyxie's assistant wouldn't harm me. That would be ridiculous. She'd never do anything that could hurt me.

He wrapped something around my wrist, and with a click, a needle found its way into one of my conduits. I didn't interface with it because I didn't want to disrupt whatever it was doing.

A moment later, some kind of Mana was injected into me that quickly made its way into my Core. I felt it latch onto something that it burned away.

I blinked a couple of times. The room was now filled with artifacts of all sorts. I wondered if Nyxi—

Wait a fucking moment, Hazel was right, I was under a mental compulsion.

I pouted, "That was rude, manipulating my emotions from a distance. She wasn't even polite enough to show up in person to alter my thoughts… Why even bother doing this?"

"Please keep those opinions to yourself for the duration of the interview," Greg said. Now that I was thinking clearly, I saw he was also wearing a wristband.

"Yeah, yeah, I won't do anything that might break her manipulation over the audience. If anything, it was rather nice. I haven't felt genuinely happy in a while, so if anything, I should thank her for the little while that I got to experience joy," I replied and let out a sigh. Honestly, it was a little sad that I'd have to ensure I'm never affected by the Joy she made me feel. I couldn't allow myself to be manipulated by anyone related to the Divines. Otherwise, would I even be able to accomplish my goal?

Nyxie could have politely asked me not to kill the developer who worked on my Core's design, and I would probably have followed her instructions like a good little girl.

"You have to return the band before you leave," he said, then turned to exit the room and waved for me to follow him.

The moment he said that, I connected to the band using Arcane Interface and pulled it into a simulation. If they were going to take it from me, I would just duplicate its functions myself.

The circuit design of the band was clearly built out of some kind of Mana-based language I didn't understand. It almost seemed as though the circuits themselves were… Ohhh, the circuit is shaped into the language itself! It's as if they're being written as instructions in a series.

Why did I never think of doing that? It was genius. I needed to acquire more artifacts designed by other people. I was sure different design specifications would inspire my own artificery.

I turned up the power of the Mana detectors in my eyes and held the wristband very close to my face. It wasn't perfectly insulated, like living bodies. This meant I could see a Mana emission pattern. The circuit ran around the band, which also seemed to be the circle that contained the ritual itself.

The band was using an internal battery, which I was fairly certain was filled with tamed Raw Mana, and running it through the converter setup. This meant I just needed to add a feedback loop attached to my Core. It should receive Raw Mana, convert it, and then save it until it detects an outside influence. The Mana itself seemed to be drawn to my Core, so all I'd need to do was add a pressure gate.

And there we go, I should be immune to compulsions.

I added a thirty-second timer to when a compulsion was detected and when the Mana was sent into my Core, because honestly, I wanted to experience the Joy for a little bit. Wait…

"Divine gambling, oh, this removed all compulsions. Cool." I muttered to myself.

Greg shot me a look that said I should shut the fuck up about that, so I did.

Eventually, after travelling through windowless corridors that made no sense and taking what I was fairly certain was six left turns at one point, we finally reached an incredibly fancy-looking door that Greg stopped at.

He opened the door and signalled something in a language I didn't comprehend, "This is where I leave you. Please ensure you are polite to Miss Nyxie."

"I think the translator is broken because I don't know what pointing your arm in the air and twisting it clockwise three times means. That's not on you, but I figured I'd let someone in charge know," I said before entering the room.

Greg made an expression like I'd just spilled a drink on his shirt for some reason. I didn't pay it much mind.

The room was a small chamber with seats surrounding an artifact of near-unimaginable power. Simply standing in its presence made the leaves on my cloak stand on end. I stared at the near-incomprehensible object, my eyes sucking in as many details as possible. There was some sort of power source inside it that was doing… So many different things.

It looked like the entire Plane was connected to this single object, or at least every single entity's personal root passed through it at some point. That's the only way that I could explain the billions of strands that travelled through it.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" a voice came from behind me.

"Is it interfacing directly with the Mother?" I asked and walked up to the marvel of artificery. Once I was close enough, I could see that the entire surface of the object was covered with almost microscopic wiring.

"You can see that, huh?" I turned to see an incredibly sapient-coded imp with a massive smile on her face. She was walking perfectly upright, unlike any imp I'd ever seen before, including Ledger, and was slightly taller than I. Her eyes glowed purple. I'd never seen an imp with purple eyes, and her facial features were rather soft.

After a moment of staring, she giggled, "Ellie, I presume?"

"Y-Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to," I replied, then cleared my throat as I realized I was spilling spaghetti out of my pockets.

"You probably already know I'm Nyxie," she waved her hands as if presenting herself. "Why don't you take a seat, and we can chat just a bit before the broadcast begins? Get to know each other?" Her eyes twinkled.

Not twinkling in the sense that they were glowing, I mean, they were glowing, what I meant was—

"Sure," I replied, my voice cracking like a twelve-year-old boy's.

Oh boy, but this is gonna be a problem.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.