Page 21 of Spelunking Through Hell

“And you justbelievedhim? Without seeing the charts or asking for any evidence?”

I bristled at her tone. “Of course I did. He’s helping me. I wouldn’t be here if he weren’t. I’d have died decades ago if he hadn’t taken me in and provided me with ways to survive. So when he said that noneof the worlds past Cornale were capable of supporting human life, I believed him.”

“Maybe he didn’t understand,” said Helen, catching the discomfort in my voice. “Phoebe, did you want to see those books?”

“They belong to my family,” said Phoebe, watching me warily. “They should all be returned.”

“And I’m happy to return them, although I’d like it if you can tell me anything I need to know about the path I’m planning to take, or ‘bottle worlds’ in general. I’ve never encountered that term before.”

“Most of us would like to know how Aikanis was able to detect them,” said Phoebe. “We have records that imply he entered some, and even left again, which is meant to be impossible.”

“Bottle worlds are what remains of dimensions like any other after they have died and lost their souls,” said Helen. “Nothing beats at the heart of them, nothing keeps them cleaved unto the great weave. When something stumbles into one of those, it remains there, until it is digested.”

I frowned deeply. “I understood every word of that, but not the way you put them all together,” I said. “Can you please try and make it make sense for a silly little librarian from a backwater world that doesn’t even know other dimensions exist yet? Please?”

“Every living world possesses a pneuma of its own,” said Phoebe. “A living spirit, as it were, that allows the world to sustain smaller life than itself.”

“People are ecosystems, so I guess it makes sense that ecosystems would be people,” I said slowly. “All of us are more bacteria by volume than we are the people we think we are. We’re basically swamps that decided to go for a walk one day and haven’t figured out yet that it’s a ridiculous thing for a swamp to do.”

“The pneuma—the soul of a world—is formed by the presence of so much life that it becomes another life through proximity to itself,” said Phoebe. “If enough pneuma is gathered together, it will give rise to another life, even greater and more glorious than the pieces that comprise it.”

“I’m with you so far,” I said. “This swamp is following.”

“This dimensional oversoul makes sure everything below it remains healthy and whole. When people move between worlds, that’s what clings to them.”

“The dimensional oversoul is the membrane?” I asked slowly, trying to make sure I was still understanding her.

“Not entirely, but the two are connected. The membrane is a physical thing, like air or water are physical things. The dimensional oversoul is the living energy of that membrane.”

“Huh.”

Dimensions are surrounded by an intangible membrane that, well, sticks to people whenever they pass through, for lack of a better metaphor. It’s part of why snake cults gain so much traction; it’s easier to summon your god when your god is essentially a tube. Very low friction. It’s also why dimensional crossing is such an effort for someone built like me. Lots of friction. So much friction. I am an irregular shape being magically dragged through the fascia that’s intended to keep one dimension from bleeding into the next.

The membranes around individual worlds are so thin by comparison that they barely register, so if these bottle dimensions didn’t have any membrane left, there would be nothing to block my entry.

Helen put a hand on my arm.

“No, although I can guess what you’re thinking, and it’s not as clever as it seems,” she said. “The dimensional oversoul is the source and sustenance of the membrane. It animates it and provides its strength. It’s like an eggshell. It protects the entire egg. If you take away an eggshell, there’s an internal membrane—the pneuma and membranes of the individual worlds—that will hold for a while, but that dimension’s membrane will be dead. It won’t renew itself or grow any longer. Gradually, it’s going to get damaged. It’s going to tear. And when that happens, you’re going to lose the whole egg.”

I blinked at her. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“When you remove the membrane from a dimension, all the pneuma inside it will die,” said Phoebe.

“Okay, so the pneuma is the same as the soul, and the membrane—or that internal membrane you were talking about, like the yolk sac of the egg—would be sort of like the body?”

She nodded.

Oh. An extinction event for the souls of literal worlds seemed like a bad thing to me. I frowned down at the map. “So a bottle world is really a... a dead dimension?”

“A dimension where something happened to kill the oversoul, and left the lesser pneuma defenseless, yes,” said Phoebe. “Most of them collapse, like stars sometimes do. They warp inward and devour themselves, and there’s nothing left to show that they ever existed. But a few will curdle instead. They twist into something new, and they’relonely, and they’re hungry. Worlds in the places where dimensions used to be, eating until their own ends.”

“Meaning...”

“Meaning that anything they catch never gets out.” She turned to the map, all but glaring at the point that had been flagged as a bottle world. “They devour whatever they encounter. But you found these materials elsewhere. Aikanis found an exit.”

“Maybe he wrote it out in one of these.” I pulled the books out of my pack and offered them to her. She virtually snatched them out of my hands. “If you find it, please let me know.”

“Alice, you’re not planning to do something stupid, are you?” asked Helen.

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