Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

volume can be displaced into the ether. They will remain buoyant there too, like a floating beach ball. The tricky parts are maintaining the opening so you can open and close at will and detaching your pouch from the surrounding ether so that it is portable.”

“That does sound complicated.”

“You’ll get it. Maybe. Ok, let’s get started with Trans-dimensional Manipulation 101!”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Day 9 12:11 PM

1:10:59 remaining

“Remember that time when you were ten and you tried to blow a bubble out of a full pack of Big League Chew?” Nick asked.

“Vaguely…”

“Well, making a pocket dimension is a lot like that. It’s easy to make very tiny ones that have no functionality but as they get bigger, it’s a whole lot harder to keep the bubble from popping. If you can get it to the size you want and seal the edges, voila! You have a fully functioning bag of holding. Trust me, it takes a lot of practice, and it’s a whole lot harder than it sounds.

“Let’s go somewhere open where you have a lot of room to move,” Nick suggested. They ended up in the atrium, and Gus’ eyes kept drifting to the large bulkhead and the now-muted blows that constantly pealed against it. Blinking and shaking his head, he focused on Nick’s explanations.

Nick started to instruct him how pocket dimensions worked, but Gus was still frazzled and amped up on adrenaline from seeing the Dark Nth almost getting inside, and couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept returning to the ‘what ifs.’ What if the Dark Nth had made it into the manor while he was busy goofing around in the Foundry? What if his preparations took just enough time to allow them to break the door down? I need to focus and push worry out of my mind, he told himself.

It was unproductive and he didn’t have the time. Gus closed his eyes, taking deep breaths and booting any thoughts from his mind that tried to rile him up or make him worry. After a concerted effort, he could feel the effects of his jittery, agitated state calm and fade. He stopped sweating and the slight tremor in his hands stilled. After five minutes, a chime sounded. Curious, Gus opened his eyes and saw a new skill had unlocked:

Mindfulness (Level 1/42)

You have greater ability to deal with stress and think rationally during a crisis by focusing on the now. Level this skill to better plan and see how to create the future you want.

300 XP awarded

100 FP awarded

1400 XP to level 11

That was a little odd, Gus hadn’t seen a skill with a level cap, he just assumed that it would get more and more difficult to increase in levels after a certain time. “Nick, why is the level capped for this skill?”

“Well, from what I can tell, no one has reached the highest level of that particular skill in the history of the Nth. A lot of people guess that it means a type of transcendence or such a deep understanding of fundamental forces that you understand life, the universe, and everything.”

That seems familiar for some reason, hmm. But nothing came to Gus. With his mind more centered, he asked Nick to restart his spiel.

“Ok, let’s start off small. You know how to shape ether into strands that you weave, right? See if you can use a similar force, but instead of pulling, push using a slight pressure into a sheet of ether, causing it to bulge out. Just like a soap bubble; if you do it too quickly it will pop, too slowly it will collapse. Until you know how to tie off the edge it will collapse anyway, but get a feel for it.”

Gus reached out with his hand and could feel something tingle at the very tips of his fingers. It felt like when trying to put two magnets with similar polarities together, and they repelled one another. Moving slowly, Gus could begin to visualize a virtual indentation he was making on his display. Gus had to not only hold his hand still and stable but mentally push MP out of his fingertips to maintain the slowly forming sphere around his hand.

“What’s keeping— ” Gus started to ask.

“No more questions until you answer that riddle. You’ve lost your thousand questions privileges. Don’t overthink it, most of this is nuance and feel.” Gus turned his attention back to the sphere, noticing that his MP gauge was draining at a moderate rate. When the sphere was the size of a beach ball, Gus had difficulty stretching the ether bubble any larger. Holding it in place, he heard a chime.

Ether Warping (Level 1)

Extend a portion of ether into another parallel dimension, creating varying effects depending on design and management of ether constructs.

1000 XP awarded

500 FP awarded

400 XP to level 11

“Whoa! That dropped a lot of XP! Noice!”

“It’s a foundational skill for a lot of others, including teleportation, storage, shielding, and stealth. Frankly, I’m surprised you have made a pocket so large. Most supers take years to learn how to make one the size of an orange.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t be able to do that as well as you do just yet.”

“Maybe it’s because I really am that awesome…” Gus said, as he took his eyes off the virtual display for just a second. There was a loud pop as the ether bubble collapsed and air ran back into the pocket it had displaced.

“Serves you right. Making the bubble is the easiest part. Then you have to stabilize the edge of the bubble which makes it resistant to collapse. You have to do this quickly, because it requires you to take your attention away from maintaining the bubble’s shape and size.

“Kind of like trying to tie a knot in a balloon so the air doesn’t gush out. Since you are maintaining the opening, you have to go back and forth, stabilize what I’ll call the rim, or lip, of the pocket dimension and then refill