Cypher’s Dream World - Dokyeom

The earth around me rumbled to the very core.Cypher must be coming back from outside, I thought.

This was a common occurrence in this world. Everytime Cypher, the ancient mage of reality, returns it happens given she is the only one able to travel between Aereth and here.

Where exactly is ‘here’? You may ask. Well, from who knows how long ago (lost track of time after one century, maybe I could ask Sen if this was in any of her textbooks) there were us Ancients. Ancient Mages to be more specific, titled and empowered as the most powerful beings in the world. We had a sort of counsel that we had in the country of Aereth that we would go to whenever we need to all meet.

There were six of us in total, and only some of us had two separate sets of powers: the ancient mage of life and death, ancient mage of reality, ancient mage of creation and destruction, ancient mage of time, and the ancient mage of light and darkness (we don’t talk about the darkness though). There began a sort of war... Well, Sen calls it a war because that was what it was called in her history textbooks.

It was more of a massacre.

One being killed off us ancient mages one by one; all for the simple reason that he didn’t like the way we were doing things. Cypher managed to save me, someone else that ran away, and my student Sen, by creating an alternate dimension on top of Aereth. It looks very similar in some aspects to Aereth, but given the striking lack of... well I don’t know, people, you can definitely tell this is just a copy of Aereth. Cypher leaves this dimension every so often to try to find other ancient mages.

“Master?” Sen asked, floating in front of me while looking at the sky open (as it did whenever Cypher returned). Every now and then, she would push her shoulder-length, blonde hair out of her face covering her gold eyes.

“Cypher seems to be falling,” I laughed as I squinted my eyes to see a girl with long black hair - curled to some extent - in a cloak trying to extend the fabric as much as she could to slow down the fall.

“Should we help her?” Sen gave the usual face at me whenever she wants to do something but wasn’t sure I would allow her to.

“Nah, she’s good.”

“Oh."

“Dokyeom!” Cypher shouted at me while still falling.

“Yes, madam?”

“Why aren’t you sending Sen to help?” She screamed, attempting to activate wind magic to no success.

“Ladies and gentlemen I present to you Cypher in all her glory!” I shouted, smiling widely as I used my own wind magic to make me fly up into the sky to greet her.

“You're really not going to help?” Sen asked me once more.

“Yes my dearly beloved audience, she is in fact falling! Now you see, she wishes for me to send my poor fairy student who can barely carry the weight of a newborn calf, and in no way could carry the ancient mage of reality, much less one with maybe 10 extra pounds worth of equipment, to go help her because she was too lazy to learn wind magic when Isle taught it to us!” I raised my arms in such a way as if I was addressing a stadium full of people when in reality it was just Sen.

“Oh shut it, Dokyeom!”

I watched Cypher hit a tree close to the main town of this dimension. A few moments later I looked up to see a huge explosion erupt from the same direction.

“Master she is going to be really mad at you…” Sen said nervously

“Sen,” I called.

“Yes, master?”

“Let's go.”

“But-”

“Come on.”

“Yes, master.”

I began walking closer to where Cypher had fallen with Sen close by, floating her glittery fairy wings. I drew a triangle with a circle through one of the sides in the air, and glowing red letters glowed in front of me to spell out Guidance slave. A person holding a crystal came out looking at me.

“How may I be of service?” the Guidance slave asked.

“Slave, take me to Cypher.”

“Yes, Ancient one.”

The slave activated the crystal and a clear blue line appeared on the ground showing the direction of where Cypher had fallen. The Slave took the lead and we followed close behind.

“Slave how far did she fall?” I asked while going through my things.

“I’m sorry, but I am not sure how to answer that Ancient One.”

“Slave,” I warned, itching my fingers in preparation for a spell, “why not?”

“Master the only thing guidance slaves know how to do is… guide. They literally can’t do anything else or do any other type of communication,” Sen explained as she landed on my shoulder.

“My old guidance slave was able to communicate,” I pouted while looking at Sen.

“Well, why didn’t you call that one then?” Sen asked.

“Oh, he dead. Long dead. Like super dead. Like getting caught up in one of my experiments that went very very wrong kind of dead.”

“How long ago was this again?” Sen said with a sigh.

“I forget.”

“Figures.”

We arrived at the location where Cypher was, so the guidance slave disappeared. The area where Cypher was in this beautiful courtyard with lots of fountains and greenery everywhere. Up close, I noticed Cypher had injuries but they weren’t from the fall. She was knelt down grabbing herbs from her many pouches trying to heal her wounds.

“Oh, you actually got hurt?” I said, kneeling down next to her “This doesn’t seem like it’s from the fall, so did you get caught up in one of my experiments again?”

“The survivors. They fought,” she said, clearly more focused on treating herself. “Wait, were you the one who made the explosion when I hit the ground?!?”

“Whoops,” I laughed, “I got caught!”

“Master, should I aid her in healing?” Sen asked.

“Oh, dearly beloved Sen, you mustn't! Don’t you think it is an important experience for Cypher to treat herself?” I asked, raising my hands once more.

“Master… is that really important now?”

“Why of course it is!” I said jumping up and down.

“Sen your help would be appreciated,” Cypher said.

“Yes lady Cypher,” immediately Sen jumped down from my shoulder and went to go heal her.

“Something was happening out there. Probably in Aereth I can imagine. I’m not sure since I was in Ifrit, but I felt as if the entire world was going to shatter under me. Something terrible happened there and I didn’t want to find out so I came back earlier than I had planned” Cypher said while staring at me

“Ok.”

“‘Ok’? Seriously Dokyeom, there could be a great evil going on destroying us all and all you gotta say is ‘Ok’?” Cypher shouted.

“I don’t do good in serious situations, you know that,” I said with crossed arms.

“Ignore him lady Cypher. You said the earth shattered? How is that possible” Sen said almost in a whisper.

“It shouldn’t be… but” Cypher was clearly shaken up “ I saw something too”

“‘Saw something’? Was it one of us Ancients” I asked

“No. There was a portal… not to here, thankfully, but to some other world. The most interesting thing is that I wasn’t the one who opened it”

“Oh, things are getting interesting here!”