"Hey, look at this. A man called pyu- wait no, Pyotr Obruchev. These Russians and their names. Anyways, he discovered a way to accelerate chemical reactions using a certain attunement of mana."
I sat up from the couch I was laid on. I was trying and failing to take a nap but it was fine, this seemed interesting.
I looked over at her.
"Like a catalyst? That seems useful even if it only works on certain things."
She looked over at me with a bright beaming smile on her face.
"No, not like a catalyst at all. Not like heat either. It simply made every single chemical reaction surrounding this attuned mana happen faster, including reverse reactions."
"That's fascinating, what applications does it say this might have?"
She looked down at her tablet, trying to find what I asked for.
"Seems like it would be used in industry, well obviously but along with that things like accelerating the reproduction of bacteria and even cells. This might be the first step towards legitimate healing magic."
"Yeah, I'm sorry but there is no way I'm trusting anyone with what is essentially cancer mana to do anything with my body."
I said that a bit harsher than I intended.
"Yeah, I understand that. Then again, don't doctors use lethal poisons all the time in medicine? This is basically just the same thing but with mana instead. Its dangerous sure but that's why professionals train for it."
I was glad she took it in good stride. Nevertheless I would make an effort to be nicer in my next response.
"Yeah, you're completely correct and that is amazing news. What else can this mana do?"
---
As I opened my eyes I immediately regretted doing so, the light was so blinding It felt like my retinas were being burned off. Despite that I hardly seemed to even register the pain in my eyes.
That dream has stirred up some painful emotions.
I slammed my fist onto the ice tree I was laid on but not even a single crack appeared on its flawless surface, the pain in my hand wasn't enough to dampen these emotions.
I sat up and looked at my hand, it was bleeding but that hardly mattered. The wound was already healing right in front of my eyes and before I knew it, the wound would be gone without even a scar to mark its passing.
I hadn't remembered falling asleep, as a matter of fact I had found it nearly impossible to do so back when I tried. It would seem that at some point during the process of constructing my weave I had just... fallen asleep.
I looked down towards the ice tree I was currently sitting on. It had noticeably changed, I hadn't realised before but the surface was no longer flawless, it looked as if countless cracks had appeared across its surface. These cracks were spreading too. For a moment I was concerned that this was due to me but as I looked around to the other surrounding ice trees I noticed a similar cracked pattern across all of them.
I noticed that the sky was no longer quite as bright as before. It wasn't immediately noticeable due to the fact the sky was still blindingly bright however if I considered the fact I was able to see clearly without even having to squint my eyes it became obvious.
I stood up and attempted to hop to the ice tree beside the one I was previously on. I did it with unexpected finesse.
'Is the gravity here lower than up at the surface?'
I continued hopping from tree to tree until I found a clearing in the canopy. I reached my hand over this gap, preparing for my hand to be scorched off but nothing of the sort happened. It felt hot sure but nothing life threatening.
I looked over the edge into the clearing but my vision near instantly blacked out. I reached around in a panic, my soul sense still allowed me to position myself but losing my sight was definitely not something I expected beforehand.
Despite the fact my vision had quickly vanished, it hadn't instantly vanished and in the time I had looked over I was still able to see a dark patch of ground in the centre of the clearing.
'If these ice trees essentially photosynthesize the light coming from below then it makes sense if there was a dark spot then naturally there would be no trees there.'
It was fairly obvious that these trees were not using photosynthesis though, the chloroplasts are where the sunlight gets turned into food and they are green. This is why leaves are always green in colour.
These ice trees' leaves were pure black even in the blazing light, along with the fact they seem to be made of rock more than any kind of biological material. This probably meant that their biology was nothing like what I was familiar with. They probably had some far more efficient way to process the light.
I held my hand out in the light once again, it didn't feel nearly as hot anymore. It cemented in my mind that yes the light was dimming.
I tried looking over the edge once again with my newly regained vision. It was painfully bright but it didn't blind me instantly like before. It was more like having the sun in my eye, if I just didn't look directly at the light I was fairly certain my vision would remain unimpaired.
After a few moments of building the confidence I did the daring act of jumping onto the black ground below. I landed with a sharp 'thunk' sound, meaning the material was extremely rigid.
I reached down and touched the ground, it felt like glass. It felt the exact same as the shard of glass I had picked up from the crater where I landed. The trees felt cold as ice but this material felt almost indistinguishable from glass other than the fact it was significantly harder to break.
As the surrounding light became less and less incinerating, my reflection on the black glass-like substance became visible.
I had gotten a brief, fleeting look at what I looked like before in one of the windows in the floating city above but now I was able to see myself much more clearly and for much longer.
I looked young, like a late teen but with none of the fat to make it a baby face. My hair was white as snow, my pale skin made me look almost sickly and with how thin I had become after obtaining immortality making me look all the more sickly made the impression I was some fallen higher being turned beggar.
My iris' were the most interesting, they were pure white. Brighter than even the white of the sclera, though it was clearly still an iris. The lines and patterns were still there but it wasn't an eye colour usually possible in humans.
Together all these features made my entire self look very weird, like a black and white photo devoid of any colour.
My attention was taken away from me when a branch of a tree fell to the ground right on the edge of the clearing, making a deafening 'clack' sound. Then in the distance I heard it again, and again. It quickly became a cacophony of the sound of falling rocks, it sounded like a rock slide but it was coming from every direction and extremely loud.
The ground was shaking, not too violently but you could most definitely feel every single impact onto the hard ground. Then not even a minute later, it all stopped.
It made sense that the trees would fall, I saw them rise as I got here after all. I guessed that the ice trees rise out of the ground when there is light and collapse when it turns dark.
I looked around to see all of the remnants of the ice trees quickly turn to pure liquid, as it all started flowing towards me like a flood. I was at the lowest part of the surrounding landscape it seemed.
'That's probably why this spot is black too, the black substance on the trees all flow to the lowest point.'
It raised the question of why it would remain the lowest point, logically the depression in the surface would disappear fairly quickly but unfortunately I had no way of knowing.
I decided to concentrate on something different however. The light was still dimming, I estimated that it would likely be dark once again in roughly an hour. This meant I had probably at least half that time until the dangerous black liquid rose once again.
I would be able to travel, and this was likely my only chance. When it was turning bright the dark liquid lasted a long time until it popped and then the surroundings instantly became too bright to travel. It seemed like as it was becoming dark there was a small time window in which it was possible to move.
So that's what I did. I didn't have much time to waste so I sprinted, I had no need to worry about stamina so why not go at full throttle and luckily the flow of liquid wasn't strong so there were no immediate issues.
It wasn't long before I had reached the end of the crystal island I was on, as I looked out I saw an endless expanse of crystal with brilliant light shining from below. Briefly I looked out at the horizon to see where I would like to go, I decided to head towards an obsidian black mountain. It looked somewhat like a volcano but at the peak were colossal spikes which rimmed the caldera like a crown.
The hope was there would be something interesting within said caldera. The fact it was this dark in colour was a requirement as well, otherwise I would be incinerated once the light came.
My footsteps rang clear, with no echo despite the vast expanse of space surrounding me. Minutes passed as I continued to run as fast as I possibly could, each step I focused on pulling every bit of strength I could out of my muscles. By the time I had reached the foot of the obsidian mountain, my estimate of how much time I had left was up.
The darkness had not started rising quite yet thankfully but I for sure wasn't going to slow down now.
Step after step I climbed the mountain, after that long sprint and now running up an incline it became very obvious that my stamina was, in fact, not infinite. I recovered stamina incredibly quickly but I was definitely able to outpace it given enough time.
Honestly stamina was half the issue, the issue was with how badly I needed oxygen. I was no slouch when it came to exercise but no lungs on earth could keep up with a full sprint for all too long. I had already far surpassed what I ever should have been able to but I was reaching the limit.
I stopped to take a breath, I had been running out of pure fear but now I was certain I was in the clear.
As that thought crossed my mind the now dim light instantly darkened to near black. The last thing I was able to see before darkness once again consumed the abyss were pillars of pure darkness reaching up to hug the sky.