[Who: A Sucrose Spirit]

[Where: A Knot in The Universe]

[When: Now]

Oh, we do hope this works! All alone, for all this time, with naught to keep me occupied! It's a wonder this old gal has kept it together amidst all this boredom, honestly.

Here, amid time's unyielding passage, I find myself grappling with the Herculean task of maintaining my sanity amidst relentless monotony. But ah, salvation looms on the horizon! A flicker of hope in this desolate domain! The mere thought of sharing this barren landscape with another soul fills me with relief, a promise of reprieve from the crushing weight of solitude. Honestly, it's a wonder this lass has kept it together as long as she has like this.

A [Companion], finally! For so long, I was bereft of the assistance I so direly required. Forced to spend eons gathering and refining each [Ingredient], just to have enough for a single [Delivery], a single monster summoning.

Once they’re done [Baking], that insufferable barrier will finally, finally go down, and what I’ve been calling [The Tutorial] will be over! I yearn to delve into my gigantic backlog of [Recipes], I have so many ideas I’ve been dying to make use of. 

 I’ve got NEEDS, overwhelming urges to protect myself, to expand. I need to create, to grow, and to feed. Feed from emotions, consume power, siphon the life force from those who dare delve into me and steal my resources. All of it, converted into raw essence, from which my [Ingredients] derive. My instincts tell me what I should be capable of, but without a [Companion] to facilitate, I am limited to my basic spirit abilities.

I have got exactly two of them. As a spirit, telepathy and minor possession are all I am capable of in my power-starved state. I need more, so much more. I do not know why, but I am unable to do anything substantial without a [Companion] to assist me.

Worse, my telepathy and possession scale proportionally inversely to distance. The closer they are to my core, the stronger my abilities get. In any case, they’re really both extensions of the same basic ability. It’s more like really strong suggestions through telepathy, honestly.

I digress. As I was telling Nebula before the adorable soon-to-be [Companion] tapped our cores together, I’m Cherry Maraschino, or at least that’s what it says on my gravestone. I think. I’m sure I have one of those around here, somewhere. It’s the name that won out, in any case.

What can I say? I died, twice. I’m not entirely sure which one was my first death, and which was my second. I was two different people, and then, we weren’t. Two individuals, two different pasts, tangled together in a spaghetti knot and merged in an instant at the moment of death.

One a man, a wandering fortune-hunter. The other, a woman, a chocolatier mage. The man died of his own stupidity and greed, an accident claiming his life just before his biggest score. The woman, for her part, was murdered, and disposed of, thrown into the inner workings of the candy production line at which she worked.

I won’t lie, I have no clue how it all actually happened. Things were quite the jumble there, as we- I, sorted ourselves, myself out, with little success. The result is a confusing amalgam of personalities, a thoroughly blended mixture that can never again be unjoined. Much was lost or changed in the shuffle.

Eh, it was probably all unimportant memories or personality traits anyways. I've been doing just fine without it for all this time, so it's probably fine.

As for what happened to cause this mixture of minds, my best guess is that we got stuck in a rift in Unreality. When I next became aware, I found my mixed-up mind in this new form: a spirit, bound to a gem, which in turn, is seemingly bound to this little spaghetti-knot of space-time.

In simple terms, I basically died and became a spirit. A ghost who got possessed by another ghost, who then got stuck haunting a crystal attached to a pocket Reality out in the middle of nowhere.

Enough about a past that cannot be changed, I tell myself. Instead, I examine our stock of [Ingredients] in my [Pantry]. My [Pantry] is my inventory, where I store not just [Ingredients], among other things.

Regarding my [Ingredients], they consist of, in no particular order: [CHAOS], [ORDER], [PARTY], [HEART], and [GROSS]. Might as well go over their properties again and what I know about them while I wait for my new [Companion] to finish [Baking].

Each [Ingredient] is… well, it’s difficult to explain. [PARTY], for example, is the embodiment of light, energy, motion, sound; physics, chemistry, and the inorganic. [GROSS] deals with the organic, rot, life and death, flora and fauna. [HEART] is everything related to the mind and magic, psychic powers, information, and all that is spiritual and abstract.

[CHAOS] and [ORDER] are fairly self-explanatory, the domains of luck, fortune and fate, time, past and present, darkness, void, certainty and uncertainty, probability, stability, balance, and randomness. A twinned pair of affinities, each two sides of the same coin. Yin, and yang.

I call these my [Ingredients], personally. The labels I use are not entirely my choice; they just come out that way. I do not know why but I suspect it has something to do with it being mostly metaphorical. It helps to think of my [Ingredients] as tangible aspects or affinities, of a sort.

Using the UnReality, or urpower, constantly leaking from the hole in spacetime that I consist of, we can mix it with our [Ingredients] to create or power practically anything. From simple objects to spells, we can [Bake] practically anything within our domain.

More on that later; Nebula has begun to stir, in a quite literal sense. Swirling around like that, I’m impressed that they aren’t making themself dizzy! From the feel of it, and the ding of the imaginary timer in my head, the [Companion] bond is pretty much done [Baking].

I cannot help but feel an odd sort of attachment to the slime now. Almost like… they’re a part of me, and I, them. Should they leave this room, I should still be able to reach them with my telepathy. 

Speaking of which, I focus my attention on the entryways of the pentagonal room, opening the metal doors on each wall. I feel my urpower, now at full capacity, flow out and into my passageways. It seeps into the extension of self that is the land I am bound to, filling my brickwork with energy, and settling it into place. With a woosh, urpower pours out of my entrance.

Tracking the urpower, it rushes out into the forest, until finally impacting against the dome-shaped barrier around me. It collected there, the pressure building until finally, FINALLY, that mother fudgin’ son of a biscuit barrier shattered like it was nothing more than mere peanut brittle. The wave of our urpower spreads out into the world, fading away as it leaves my perception.

Mentally projecting an imaginary handheld intercom mike, I prepare to use telepathy again. Holding the on button, I tap the microphone a few times with a pale phantom finger to check that it’s working, and I speak into the box-shaped receiver. It may be purely imaginary, but it is as real to me as gravity is to others. A psychic construct, created by my mind to help me visualize what I’m trying to do, as all my abilities tend to be.

I don’t broadcast very quietly, of course. We are trying to wake them, after all. [[Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!]]

Nebula’s reaction is priceless to watch, and I can’t help but giggle madly at the rippling they make in surprise. Cute! [[Up! Up! I’m up!]] I hear them thinking through the communicator box in my semi-transparent hand. Lavender slime collects around their core, rising into a bulbous form as they wake up. Yes!!! Arise, my minion, arise!!! Their thoughts come in clearer than before, with almost no static distortion.

[[How are you feeling?]]

[[Not bad. More… connected.]] I ask them to clarify. Their core spins as they think, rotating towards my spirit self. Curious. [[To everything! To my slime, to you, to this place! Full of energy! Feel whole!]] I drift slowly around them, and their core continues to face toward me.

 [[So this is you?]] they ask, picking up the stone I inhabit. My core, the crystal that consists of my mind and my heart, but not my spiritual body, is being held in one of Nebula’s mitt-like ‘hands’.

[[Hey! Be careful with me! I’m probably fragile or something! You know, that’s actually one of the reasons why I [Baked] you. I can’t really do anything on my own, but you, you are my hands! My catalyst!]]

[[Woah… Is it hard? Being your calliope?]]

[[Catalyst. Or battery, or medium, or other similar words and concepts. A refinery, or a purifier, basically. You don’t actually need to do anything, just be there for me. Carry me around, things like that. I’ll do all the rest of the work.]]

[[Really?]]

[[Yeah, just wander around the place, explore if you like. You’re my [Companion] now, so you’re under MY protection/ You are perfectly safe with me. Now, I have a lot of [Recipes] to [Bake], so just… Do whatever, I-I guess. Call me if you have any questions.]]

[[No. Want to stay here! With you, Miss Voice Lady! To protect you! You’re so tiny and fragile, and you don’t even have any slime around your core!]]

[[Miss Voice Lady?? O-oh, right, you started [Baking] before I could tell you that. Well, Nebula, I-I-I’m Cherry, Cherry Maraschino, your new boss and very best friend!]]

My spirit body floats above the slime, the flatter side of their core still tracking me. [[How are you doing that? Can you see me?]]

[[See what now? No, sorry, not really. Maybe? That’s just where it feels like your voice is coming from, Miss Cherry.]]

Miss Cherry? Better than Miss Voice Lady. I suppose I can live with that. [[Well, why don’t you take a seat, and you can watch me work, keep an eye on me if you’d like. I suppose you’re right,]] I said, chuckling. [[I do need protection. Which is why that’s one of the things that I’ll be cooking up first.]]

Nebula gives me an affirmative ‘nod’ at the top of their slime. [[You might want to put me down, first.]] Embarrassed, they put me back down in the center of my room. Looking around for a suitable location, they settled on a spot right next to me. Seems they really didn’t want to leave me alone, which I honestly don’t mind.

I may ask them to relocate me to someplace more defensible later, but for now, this will do.

The first [Recipe] I choose to [Bake] is a simple one. Accessing the stock of [Ingredients] in my [Pantry], I withdraw a small amount of [PARTY], [ORDER], and a little [GROSS], for flavor. My stocks are low from the prior [Delivery] of a [Companion], but with the refining power of a bonded [Companion], I no longer need to use mind-numbingly large amounts to do the job. A minuscule amount is all that I require, now.

Unimpeded by any physical barriers, the [Ingredients] stream into my [Kitchen], my laboratory slash factory floor. Directing the flow of [Ingredients] into the [Mixing Bowl], a structure I keep buried deep within the depths of my [Kitchen] for safety purposes, I stir them together, beating out all the lumps as I do.

Once I feel the [Batter] is the proper consistency, I pull in urpower. The mere presence of my [Companion] automatically purifies it into a much more usable form. The difference in quality between the unrefined form, and this new stuff, is immense. I’m honestly shocked I managed to use the old urpower to do anything at all. No wonder it took me so many years to [Bake] what should have been so much simpler!

Much of that time was spent renovating incomplete and missing parts from my inheritance, either that or asleep recovering urpower. I took over a real mess. Whoever was in charge last let the place fall apart, and didn’t even bother finishing any of the [Recipes] in our [Cookbook]!

Just ignore the fact that the last owner was one of my past selves.

That sugar-fudging barrier probably didn’t help either. When I got here, all my urpower was old, crusty, and stale. Let’s see you try to [Bake] anything even halfway as decent as I did with the time it took and the poor quality [Ingredients] I had access to!

Finally, I stir in the purified raw urpower, adding my intent and a little bit of imagination. I picture what I want to happen, and my creation coalesces. Decanting it from the [Mixing Bowl], my [Recipe] leaves spiritual space, and my desires form around my core.

Hard white crystals coagulate below me, growing from the concrete and tile floor. The pillar of crystals raises me up as they increase in height, to about the chest height of a grown adult human. From the top, a ring of bent copper and steel pipework grows out and around my core. I arrange the sharp points of crystal and broken ends of pipes to form a rough crown encircling my core, for protection.

I now have one very fancy-looking core pedestal, and I am no longer sitting on the dirty ground or surrounded by my old bones. It’s nice and clean, and I can finally get to work properly. I don’t want anyone but my lovely [Companion] doing anything with my core. That’s part of why I had them [Delivered] in the first place!

I giggle madly again, startling Nebula, who had been watching me work.

[[It’s time to start making some real defenses,]] I tell them, and bask in the wave of pleased emotions they sent me in response. [[People are bound to find us eventually,]] I clarify, [[so it’s best if we prepared for that.]]

[[So what are we waiting for?]]