#13 Fancy Dresses and Alternate Dimensions: The Most Powerful Being in the Universe

Honestly, I didn't expect a Fabric Healer to also be a mass murderer, but it's always the course of these kinds of things to throw all of these complicated factors at me and make me even more unsure of what I was doing. Truth has a funny way of muddling things up before becoming the clearest thing you've ever known, and in my many years as the Fabric Healer I've learned tons of truths that changed the nature of the universe. Amethy's truth just happened to be one of the most jarring. After openly admitting that she used her power to destroy entire worlds, she seemed like such a pleasant person and I fully expected her story to read like a fairy tail.

A Fabric Healer's responsibility is to tend to the universe, is it not? We're supposed to keep it clean, ordered, and functional, are we not? Topaz left me with piles of information I'd already figured out myself and a mess of a universe that would simply die if I let its lesser parts keep sucking energy from the more prosperous and preferable worlds. Why keep a horse alive if all its legs are dead?

So I travelled to thousands of different worlds in an attempt to figure out which ones were worth keeping and which would only drag the rest of us down. No one could stop me and no one even tried. I am the Fabric Healer and I am the highest authority in the universe. If I can create, then I can and must destroy. Some of these worlds were essentially devoid when I arrived. Others were so horrid that there was no way I could, in good conscious, allow them to exist any longer. Still others were inefficient; their inhabitants were dull and/or unable to reproduce in ways that made rational, biological sense.

It is a sad truth that some things just cannot be saved.

Truth, huh? Was this what Mysterious Creepy Lady meant? Seemed pretty cryptic to me.

One of the first worlds I ended consisted of nothing but puppies and rainbows. Had the puppies grown into dogs and reproduced, and had there been more creatures in the world besides puppies, I would have considered sparing it. However, the puppies never grew into adults and the rainbows never led to any pots of gold. Therefore, I deemed the world useless and ensured its destruction. I deducted that it was simply one of the many remnants of the universe's creation that was thrown to the wayside and never given any other features to make it a functional world. I deemed this and other such places "scrap worlds." They are not filled to completion and maintaining them is more trouble than it's worth. Therefore, it is my job to cleanse the universe of them for the greater good. Of course, I was met with some resistance from the more stubborn worlds, but it was nothing the universe's most powerful being.

I understand that what I am writing here will be read by future Fabric Healers. We haven't figured out much about Fabric Healers yet, but if there was one before me, then there will probably be one (or a thousand) after me. So, let me give you another truth: you are the most powerful being in the universe. Nothing can stop you and no one can overpower you. You may not know everything yet, but even in your inexperience, you will find that you will always win because you can do anything.

I thought back to my fight with Octavia and how I managed to figure out how to beat her even though I had no idea what I was doing. How would it have gone down if I knew the extent of my powers? Did I really have the potential to have no enemies?

But more than that, what about those worlds Amethy wiped out? On the one hand, it made sense to get rid of dead weight for the sake of prosperity and efficiency, but her standards of efficiency were sketchy at best. I knew that as far as I was concerned, I had to decide whether or not something has worth simply because it exists or if it earns worth by contributing to the world--or universe in this case. That wasn't something I wanted to think about at the moment.

I needed to get the hell out of this cell. Amethy's story continued to depress and horrify me, so I decided to set it aside for a while. I leaned my head against the cold rails and sighed. This sucked. A lot. More than that, it was unfair. Wasn't it typical for the bad guy to underestimate the good guy so the good guy could train up and know what he's doing? I knew maybe two things about my abilities as a Fabric Healer and already this Grand Master person wasn't giving me any chances.

Unless. . .the Grand Master knows my abilities better than I do. The thought made me tense. It was certainly a possibility. That's who sent me here in the first place, right?

"Even more unfair," I said with another sigh. I closed my eyes and images of Amethy's story flashed through my mind. One phrase repeated throughout.

You are the most powerful being in the universe.

If that was true, then literally anything was possible for me, including escape. My eyes snapped open again and I saw all of the fabric surrounding me, vivid despite the dark colors. I could travel through it, I could build it up, I could take it away or twist it or change it into something else.

Change it. Would that work? If I could change the cell bars into something else, then I could get Molly and I out of here.

Well, I didn't have many other options. No choice but to go for it.

I wrapped my hands around the bars separating my cell from Molly's, the fabric coarse against my skin. I figured I needed to fix my mind on a particular image in order for this to work, so I closed my eyes and focused on the first thing that came to me: bread loaves.

Don't judge me. I was hungry.

The bars grew warmer and I could see them glowing through my eyelids. With a flash, the bars thickened and I felt the familiar roughness of bread crust. I opened my eyes and sure enough, a gap stood where the bars once were and two very long loaves of bread were in my hands. I set them down for the time being and squeezed through the new hole.

"Molly," I said, shaking her gently. "Hey, get up. We're leaving."

Molly stirred and slowly picked herself up. In the dim light, I could see that her hair was a tangled mess and her eyes retained a heavy grogginess. It took a few seconds for her to focus on me, but when she did she managed a small smile. I reached behind me, grabbed one of the bread loaves, and broke it, handing her a generous piece while I took the rest of it.

"You should be proud of me. I figured something out without you for once," I said.

"Is that so?" Molly replied, not detecting my sarcasm at all as usual.

"Yeah. Basically, a creepy lady told me to read a story that told me that Amethy was Hitler and that I'm the most powerful person in the universe. Something about truth and the true nature of the relics-I didn't really get it all, but she said I would eventually."

"I see," Molly said slowly.

"So then I turned some of the bars separating us into bread because I can totally do that apparently."

"A very excellent use of your skills. It is true that the Fabric Healer can change the nature and amount of fabric in a given area. You are very powerful in that sense."

"That weird lady also gave me Amethy's necklace," I said and pulled it out of my pocket. Molly finished the last of her bread and took the necklace from my hand. Her brow furrowed as she studied it and I felt uneasy.

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"It is useless."

"What? How is it useless? Isn't this was we're supposed to get?"

"Amethy's remnant isn't in this like it should be."

"Remnant?"

"All of the relics have a remnant of the Fabric Healer they belonged to. They each imparted a special skill of theirs in the relic to pass on to the next Fabric Healer. It usually comes in the form of a hologram message and when you hold the relic, you feel a sense of life inside of it, but this is empty."

"So that means. . .someone figured out how to extract them and they're trying to keep me from gaining those powers."

My chest suddenly tightened. All the time I just spent sitting in here was time that they had to get more relics and suck the power from them before I even reached them. I stood and grabbed Molly's arm to make her stand as well.

"We have to go," I said firmly and grabbed the bars in front of me. Using the same technique as before, I created more bread (I tried to make swords, actually, but they ended up being bread. Oh well. I'd figure it out later). Molly and I bolted out of the cell and up the stone stairs until we reached the wooden door. I stretched open a square of brown fabric and dragged Molly inside. I didn't care what laid ahead and Molly didn't struggle, so I figured that she was safe to travel through not-blue fabric as long as I was around. Mirrors surrounded us and I looked around, searching for one with Walden as its background. I spotted it to my left and ran full force into the picture like Mario jumping into paintings that were gateways to new worlds.

It was good to see the damp and pipe filled underground city again. I released a huge breath and leaned against a nearby building. That almost felt too easy, but then again it had taken me a while to figure it all out.

You have a sharp mind, that woman had said to me.

Yeah, but maybe it's too little too late, I thought.

"I will contact the other DGs," said Molly. She produced the giant zipper and spoke Locrio's name. The elf's face appeared in the gap and he immediately asked if we were okay.

"We are fine now. We made it back to Walden," said Molly.

"I'm glad. Michael, Ophelia, and I are with Lloyd's ship now. We managed to crash land it on the surface and give us some more fighting room with Dorian. Vincent took off tracking your scent after you two disappeared. I'll call him back in a couple minutes."

"Did you catch Dorian?" I asked.

"No," Locrio said with a sigh. "According to Lloyd, he disappeared before we showed up."

I took the zipper from Molly and told Locrio everything that had happened to us.

"So, we have to get the other relics as soon as possible. Otherwise, I really will be next to useless. Isn't there some kind of map or list of the relics by now?"

"We only have a definite lead on the relics in Portchester, Triassica, and Walden. They're always well hidden, but they always appear in the same worlds; however, they don't all appear at once. So right now, Amethy's necklace and the other two relics might be the only ones to find out of all nine of them."

"Knowing how quickly they got the necklace, they probably have the relic from here already. Should we even bother trying to find it?"

A small smile creased Locrio's lips. "Don't be so quick to dismiss Walden. After all, the people here manage to keep their world a secret from the rest of the universe. You can bet they didn't make it so easy to find the relic."

"Then is there any clue of what it is or where it might be?"

"Michael and Ophelia would know better than I would."

"And are they with you right now?"

"Yes. We're heading back to the gate now. We'll see you soon."

With that, Locrio's image disappeared and we could do nothing else but wait. I took out the necklace and looked at it properly. The gem was a diamond-shaped piece of amethyst incased in a thick golden frame and attached to a thin golden chain. I didn't know what Molly meant by the supposed life it needed to have-it just felt like a regular necklace to me, not something dead.

"I wonder how you extract a hologram," I said.

"Whoever managed it must be very powerful. The Grand Master is likely behind it. Only the Fabric Healer should be able to access the powers of the relics."

"Then how is it that someone besides me took all the power out of this thing?"

Molly said nothing for a few moments and then spoke slowly. "I believe we have explained this before, but the Grand Master was once thought to be the Fabric Healer and went through the same training and searching that you are going through. That's a major advantage."

"Well, weren't Locrio and Vincent around for that? Shouldn't they already know where the relics are?"

"The relics did not appear until after the Grand Master became the Grand Master. That, at least, is lucky. Still, the Grand Master was trained far better than you and likely has a better idea of how to not only find the relics, but remove their power. It is likely a complicated trick to bypass the security placed on the items."

"Complicated trick," I repeated and tossed the necklace between my hands, the chain jingling as it briefly floated through the air. "So, there's some type of magic that allows the extraction of classified information."

"That is likely the case," said Molly. "But the question is which dimension such a magic comes from."

"And there are only five thousand plus dimensions in the universe."

"But not all of them possess magic. Yours, for example, and Triassica."

"That still leaves thousands of dimensions. Doesn't Secoria's library have a record of magical spells in other dimensions?"

"Yes, but I am certain that this is a spell the Grand Master invented. You would not be able to find it in a book."

I weighed my options in silence for a couple minutes, still tossing the necklace around. We needed the relics and we needed to find them before the Grand Master did. We also had to search for worlds that allowed the possibility of security breeching/information extraction in their magic systems, but we couldn't really do all of that at once.

"It comes down to this: research or finding the relics we already kind of know about," I said at last.

Molly didn't respond. Understandable. She knew more about these things than I did and if I was having trouble finding a solution, then of course she would. She probably had to consider at least ten other factors that I had no clue about. Oh, decisions. Whether they involve choosing between breakfast and lunch or minor things that affect the fate of the entire universe, they still suck.

Finally, Locrio arrived with Michael and Ophelia in tow. The twins carried their steam gun things over their shoulders in an attempt to emit every ounce of possible swag they might have possessed.

"Lloyd's back as his headquarters. He said we should meet him there when we're ready to search for the relic," said Michael, pointing his thumb behind him.

"Wait," I said. "We haven't decided if that's what we're going to do."

Michael raised his eyebrows at me. "Are you stupid or something? Of course that's what we're going to do if we want to get it before the Grand Master does."

"Well look, the Grand Master is probably using some crazy technique that sucks all the substance out of the relics. We should probably figure out how that works, don't you think?"

On the inside, I agreed with Michael that we should just look for the relics, but he was being such a little brat about it that I felt like fighting him.

Ophelia motioned for Michael to shut up. She had a little more respect for me and as a result, I tolerated her much more.

"Well, we already know that the next relic is a flask that Onyx always carried around. He was the third Fabric Healer and he came from Walden. Michael and I have already compiled a list of places we can check for it."

"Wow, okay. Awesome," I said, genuinely pleased.

"We're working just as hard to figure stuff out as you are," said Michael. "You're weird, but we're not gonna leave you hanging."

That was probably the deepest compliment I would get from him.

"Then let's go," I said.

"We'll head back to Lloyd first and take another airship. It's faster to travel above the surface than below," said Michael.

So, Molly, Locrio, and I followed the two kids, who walked down the crowded sidewalks with forced "cool" motions. It was ridiculous, but they knew what they were doing.

A small part of me, however, felt as though I had somehow cheated my way out of the cell. I couldn't shake the notion that I had only learned a fraction of whatever it was that lady expected me to learn. Oh well. I was certain she would show up again. The only question was when.