This was an idea I had a long time back. The strongest operants in the Empire of Humanity have the capability of creating splinters, energy fields anchored by a small piece of their soul having the ability to be in other places than their main body at the same time. The question was “What happens if a splinter survives its creator?”
It had to happen in the early days after splinters were invented, otherwise there would be an awareness of the problem and the danger splinters create for originals ignorant of the peril. This is about 4500 years before the events of the three series I have published about the Empire, although there are background stories that will probably never be published.
What to do with such a splinter? Well, it shouldn’t be a revelation that the abilities of operants map well to various magic systems. Clarke’s Third Law and all of its corollaries apply. One of the unpublished background stories is how a particular person goes from being a mostly unremarkable martsi (vaguely equivalent to Second Order Guardian) to the strongest known pentsi (roughly, Sixth Order Guardian). (<cough>not the whole story<cough>). So that is the place the surviving splinter is sent to – the center of the metaverse, an idea inspired by Zelazny’s Amber, Moorcock’s Tanelorn, and others (Cinnabar, Ainulindale, etcetera).
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A splinter comes to self-awareness with a sword in its hand and a dead fractal demon in front of it. It has no memory of how any of this happened, as the soul-link that tied it to its original is now gone with the dead original. After building itself a real body with some help (which he initially mis-identifies), he discovers that he needs to leave the Empire. Fortunately, the person helping him has a suggestion: Aescalon
He encounters a traveling group of diligar, lobster-like aliens who are the closest thing the Connected Worlds have to cavalry. Looking for a fight, the young leader of the diligar and his followers are no match for an ultsi’s splinter.
(There are many vacant ecological niches in the Connected Worlds because they are all comparatively young as far as evolutionary time – the inhabitants mostly arrived by wandering in from somewhere else, much as this splinter did, and what they didn’t bring with them or died out doesn’t exist)
He also meets Edvard, a traveling human mercenary leader, impressed by how easily he handled the diligar, having all the operant abilities as his ultsi original. To Edvard, he names himself as Alexan. Alexan returns with Edvard to his home, Treemount, at the base of a giant world-tree that has grown under the access point to Aescalon. He’s attacked by Kiltig, wizard-king of Treemount, and while Edvard assumes Alexan will want the throne, he instead encourages Edvard (one of the Jarls of Treemount) to take it, with his aid.
The problem is Edvard is in his fifties with no children – his heir is a nephew. So Edvard needs an heir as soon as one can be arranged, for which he needs a queen, and he decides to look first among the wizards of neighboring realms and their offspring, as Kiltig had jealously kept other wizards away, and Alexan persuades Edvard he wants many wizards in his kingdom.
Edvard indeed does find a wife among the wizards of the region. Unfortunately, Alexan offends her parents, then kills them by turning a spell they used to attack him back at them.
Meanwhile, Alexan is investigating the nature of Aescalon and where all the energy is coming from. The answers to those questions are neither obvious nor easy, but he encounters Petra, an Immortal – sort of a demi-goddess created to punish men who are unfaithful to their wives. She is thousands of years old, but has led a miserable life she would like to escape, having never known any other existence – she came into being as an Immortal, with a divine curse to do what she was created for – and she hates it. Even though the people whose myths created her are long gone, she is still stuck with her curse (one of the rules of the universe is all divinities must have a divine curse). Petra wants to escape her existence, and she thinks Alexan may be able to do it – once he understands Aescalon and the Connected Worlds.
However, the noble Alexan killed was a Select Son of Klikitit, the diligar patron deity, who leads a diligar invasion of Treemount, and Alexan has to deal with several problems simultaneously.
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Alexan and Petra have bound themselves together as Eternals, equivalent to the divinities of Olympus or Asgard in Earth myth. Alexan is trying to figure out how to boost themselves to the next level of divinity, a Monad. The problem is that divine curses get stronger with each level of divinity, and the divine curses crowd out ego and free will.
As the book opens, Petra is ready to give birth to their first child, a daughter they name Catharin. Catharin, being the daughter of an ultsi, has been conscious most of the pregnancy but Petra chose the divine curse of motherhood, so unlike Alexan’s homeland, she has kept Catharin isolated from everyone else in the womb, even Alexan.
He realizes that the monads he has encountered all share a certain problem: They’ve become essentially robots, not free-willed entities. There is only one who has any free will at all: Nulitaras the Searcher. Every other monad he encounters is either free-roaming Godshome as an ambush predator (and severely dangerous), or bound to a certain task and reacting the same aggressive way to anything challenges their world-view.
Meanwhile, Klikitit has reincarnated from his defeat by Alexan and is ready to cause more trouble, and a new threat Donarr has entered Treemount. Donarr may be the son of the legendary failed rebel Zaius from the beginning of Alexan’s homeland, which would mean he’s likely comparably trained to Alexan – and has been gaining power and knowledge for nearly a hundred thousand years.
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For this one, I think the cover blurb says it best:
It’s fascinating at the junction of universes – until one of them starts throwing shockwaves!
Alexan and Petra have settled into an idyllic life as Jarl and Frue of Ygg, each satisfying their respective divine curses. But Siluria next door starts generating massive shockwaves, unable to absorb the energy being generated by the scourgings every seven days. Worse, Siluria is home to the warlike diligar, who are likely to launch an invasion as their home is ravaged.
It’s hard to unravel a puzzle the size of several universes. Alexan has only just begun to solve it when one of his experiments poisons an enigmatic divinity far greater than himself or Petra.
But mistakes can also provide opportunities.
This series is complete. I have no intention of writing more about the primary characters. Alexan, being who he is, is far and away the most difficult character I’ve ever tried writing this length of story for – and I did it three times. However, when tying up the loose ends in the denouement, I inadvertently set the stage for a ‘next generation’ series I’m laying the groundwork for called Princes of Treemount. If Catharin, Ansharos, and Edvard and Veronia’s children aren’t too difficult to write, I have framework plots for at least two stories in this series.
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