This text was copied from a unique, one of one book written by Adelaide Cherry of Abolon, Master of Illusion and Mentalics. The back 3/4 of the book contains a thoroughly diagramed, notated, and reviewed Proof of her final published Working. This text has been outlawed by seven nations, including Abolon's host state, Evnalien. Destroy this upon completion of the Working.

  …

  Economics become strange in a city full of wizards. Doubly so when a plurality of the wizards are under the age of twenty.

  If you're selling anything made or shaped from stone, wood, metal, glass, cotton, or leather, you should probably not be selling those things.

  If you're selling stone, wood, metal, glass, cotton, or leather, you're probably doing alright. The things other things are made of hold value surprisingly well when every teenager in town needs to prove they can magically construct a chair.

  The exception that proves the rule? Books.

  Given any of the aforementioned ingredients, a novice mage with a thimble of determination can likely recreate your wares. A toy, a cloak, a wallet, even--especially--a sword. It's all fair game for a mage learning the ropes. Even rope! They can make rope! What's a shopkeeper to do?

  But if the academy all of these students are forced to live at is sufficiently remote? If it needed to be placed there due to esoteric and frankly indecipherable reasons, and no amount of bargaining could get the founding wizards to build the academy closer to a river, an ocean, or heavens forbid an established road?

  Well then you have yourself a fine market for raw materials.

  But books were different. If a mage wanted to reproduce a book, they'd have to read the book first. Kind of defeats the purpose, no? And that's not taking into account the countless hours memorizing the book wholly, constructing a Working to match the text, collecting the materials en masse, and actually sitting down and expending mana and time to create a single copy where the words don't all show up overlapping on the first page.

  Quite frankly, the entire process of magically mass-producing books is wholly unpleasant and not worth the effort unless you have a pool of mana, a paper mill, a tannery, and just an obscene amount of time.

  And what was I trying to buy? What could have dragged poor Cherry away from her lab to grace the market square with her presence?

  Obviously a book.

  It was a vain hope, really. The book I wanted to find was unique. Not unique like different, or not like other books. It wasn't a quirky book. No, quite the opposite.

  It was a banned book that had only one copy. At least originally. I wasn't sure how many copies had been made, less so how many remained, as any mention of the book was also banned. Yet I found myself hoping some poor bastard had went through all that effort to replicate the damn text, boredom be damned.

  How hard could it be to find a copy of a forbidden text from three hundred years ago titled Death in its Many Forms. The author, Emil Bunson, had been a preacher, mage, imbecile, and mayor in that order.

  Honestly, what a bunch of prudes. Can't a girl read an idiot's book in peace without breaking three local laws, one national law, and violating a treaty between four nations?

  And why were there more local laws about it than national? Comparatively, the queen seemed mild about the whole thing. Was it because this ninety-two and a half percent of all mages passed through this locality in any given year? Was that it?

  When I put it like that, I guess it does make sense. Only a little though. Just let me read the madman's words already! I promise not to try resurrecting The Unfathomable and Everlasting Lord of Torment. Pinky promise, even.

  I'm not trying to resurrect evil deities, okay?

  He seems like he'd be hard to carry on a conversation with anyway.

  ...

  My first published Working was a strange one. It was accepted for publication two years into my time at the academy (The Abolon Academy of Esoteric Arts, not the Abolon Junior Academy of Esoteric Arts or the Abolon Graduate Aca-- you get it).

  The premise was simple: what are fish thinking about, and how do I make that not suck to study and present?

  The first answer? Strap a rock onto a fish and use three different schools of magic to collect, interpret, and visualize the fish's (fishes? fish'?) thoughts.

  Any guesses as to what that fish was thinking?

  It was thinking about how it wanted to eat me because I strapped a heavy rock to it. It was UPSET that I strapped a ROCK to it to stop it from moving around so much.

  Workings that complex are hard, okay? Okay, fish? You get that? How's the magic supposed to scoop out your thoughts when you're always moving all over the place? If you keep putting your brain in different places, my magic won't know where to scoop!

  I eventually stopped strapping a rock to the fish and spent two months rebuilding that part of the Working from scratch. Four schools of magic now, thanks. But that fish still only thought about how much it hated me.

  So I had some soup, found a different--less selfish--fish, and paid a guy to come move the rock out of my lab.

  It was heavy, okay?

  And the new fish thought much more interesting thoughts. Interesting enough to get me into the Abolon Graduate Academy of Esoteric Arts at least.

  What a fish, that guy. A real class act. I owe that guy a lot. Can't really repay him though, what on account of the celebratory soup...

  ...

  Five years later and I'm a Graduate graduate. A double graduate?

  A Master Mage of Abolon.

  Adelaide Cherry, Master of Illusion and Mentalics.

  The other two disciplines required nonsense like teleportation and prayer theory. I got into Dimensionalism and Divination for the useful stuff, not teleportation and prayer theory. Who needs to teleport when everything you need is right here in Abolon?

  Everything except one book full of nonsense. The only god worth praying to is one who GIVES ME THAT DAMN BOOK.

  I knew I was better off staying right where I was, unteleported and unrepentant.

  It wasn't because I forgot how triangles work, okay? And it wasn't because I wrote the prayer portion of the test to the Lord of Secrets asking for a specific book.

  OKAY?

  I should probably thank Master Drus for just burning my divination exam, huh?

  Thank you Master Drus!

  He'll probably read this some day. Either when I'm in prison or when he's in Heaven and I'm wherever I'm going.

  A real Master's Master, that guy. I get to say that. I'm a Master too. You don't get to say it though.

  I, Adelaide Cherry, am a Master of Abolon. I have earned this title through effort, ingenuity, Proven mastery of my fields, unproven mastery of two other fields, two fish soups, three published Workings, and effort. I know I said effort twice; it bears repeating.

  And blood. Only my own (and two fishes'), but blood nonetheless.

  Anyway, three published Workings? I bet you're wondering what the other two are.

  ...

  For any Graduate exam, you must complete a written exam, a practical demonstration, and a thesis defense. For the thesis defense, you must prove a novel and inventive new Working in your chosen field or fields. I know that seems like a lot--it sure did to me--but I don't make the rules, I just break them.

  Oh, and you have to compete in a tournament. Or five tournaments? One tournament five times?

  You have to participate in regularly scheduled bloodsport to become a Master Mage.

  Before we get into that though, let's talk about how good at magic I am! Two whole published Workings? In five years? While maintaining my youthful exuberance?

  Wow, Cherry! You're the best! Everyone thinks you're perfect and looks up to you! Go Cherry!

  So anyway, the Illusion Working, a MASTERWORK OF ILLUSION, was like this: I convinced a guy that every clock in Evnalien was off by three to seven seconds in either direction.

  You might laugh, but that man believed it! Every single clock in the country! He was positively distraught. I still find him adjusting clocks in the academy to this day.

  Poor Master Hibbert. I probably shouldn't have done a numbers thing to the math guy, but he does seem to enjoy maintaining the clocks, so maybe it's fine?

  It's probably fine.

  It's definitely fine.

  Right?

  Right... And for Mentalics, I convinced a guy that every clock in Evnalien was off by three to seven seconds in either direction.

  To prove your mastery you have to construct a Working that highlights the school of magic you are studying. I wanted to prove Mastery of two schools, and rather than waste the time making two spells it felt far more efficient to just make one really good one, okay?

  I might be lazy, but this has already been litigated by the academy and my Mastery stands!

  So I might have done some permanent damage to that examiner, but Hibbert was the one who scoffed at my Thesis and that was not okay! Rude, even.

  If he had just read the appendix he would have been able to answer his own question anyway. That's on him.

  I mean who asks "But does it even work?" to a clearly gifted young Master-to-be who's submitting a UNIQUE and INVENTIVE new combined application of the Illusion and Mentalics schools of magic?

  I proved it worked just fine. Master Hibbert is a living testament to my graduate thesis and its practical applications.

  He can move to Bethel if the clocks bother him so much. I hear the canals are beautiful this time of year.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  And what was the third published Working, Master Cherry? Did I hear you ask that? I did, didn't I? Because I've only told you about two so far, if you were paying attention. And you'll have to read to the end to learn of the third.

  Because it's being published right now, at the end of this text.

  NO DONT SKIM AHEAD!

  Have some class, come on.

  You want to hear about bloodsport now? About how the indomitable and beautiful and sublimely intellectual Master Cherry made a bunch of muscly guys cry five years in a row?

  I'll tell you! I swear I will!

  I'll tell you all about how that poem started. You know the one, at least if you've been around Abolon recently.

  Cherry Cherry

  Sweet as a berry

  That tart is scary

  Best be wary

  I'll even tell you how the Working works.

  I'm not publishing it properly, though. I'll take that to the grave. But I will tell you the principles of it. One of you can probably figure it out from there.

  Not Master Hibbert though. He'll be too busy with the clocks to sit down and work it out.

  Sorry, Hibbert. You really are a fine guy, I was just having a day.

  ...

  The Annual Abolon Arcane Ascendancy and Auxiliary Exhibitions is a proud and noble tradition of The Abolon Academy of Esoteric Arts, hosted in Abolon, Evnalien.

  Basically, every year they force graduate students to fight in duels in a tournament bracket, and then also on the side we can showcase our actually interesting research and projects.

  Who wants to see pent up twenty-somethings who can't date because they're too busy studying beat each other senseless when they could learn about MENTALICS!

  Stay in school kids, learn how to manipulate the very minds of your enemies. Your teacher won't remember homework is due if they don't remember which way is up.

  I participated in the tournament five times. I won the tournament three times. The first one, I will admit, Gendrick got the better of me. She understood Dimensionalism much better than I, and I was foolish enough to cast my Working on her in an unfinished state.

  I mean I cast it on all of them in an unfinished state that year, but she was the only one I shouldn't have done that to. Marlene Gendrick was one of a kind, a true prodigy. She still is, but she also was back then.

  Marlene, if you're reading this, I hope the attached Working brings you some semblance of comfort, or at the very least closure. I did what I did bec-

  You know why. I'm sorry.

  The only other time I didn't win, it was because I was arrested. DURING THE SEMIFINAL NO LESS. What a travesty, I would have danced circles around that Delor boy. He'd better sleep with one eye open.

  Actually, he probably does.

  August Delor, if you're reading this, I hold no ill will. I shouldn't have said what I said to you, but calling a constable over such childish things was uncalled for.

  But so was my thing, so sorry.

  Anyway, I only ever cast one Working in the tournament (no I will not write the full name of the tournament every time). You all know it, and technically I cast two Workings because Marlene broke the first one but the second one was just an improvement on the first one, but for anyone who doesn't (somehow) know it here's the general idea:

  I cast my opponents into the fiery pits of hell, or whatever their equivalents of that were, while I casually strode towards them and pressed a FAKE knife to their throats. This was litigated the first time everyone, the knife was ALWAYS FAKE.

  What do you take me for?

  Of course, as soon as the horn sounded to begin each round all the audience saw was my opponent convulsing, or collapsing, or swinging their staff wildly at imagined specters, or sobbing and vomiting at the same time, or participating in a rather touching conversation with their absentee niece. That last one actually happened, mind you. Teddy Ipsil really did that. His personal hell is interpersonal communication with his sister's daughter. Please keep that in mind if you ever feel the need to judge me.

  Of course, while they were indisposed I would then pull out a WOODEN knife and walk forward until it was pressed against their throats. And that worked.

  The way the Working functioned was simple. I would use Mentalics to locate the mind, sending out a pulse of Dimensionalism from there to locate the eyes and ears based on statistical thresholds of what a face is like, then more Dimensionalism to map the eyes and ears, then Illusion to cover the surfaces above the pupils with the appropriate image and fill the ears with the appropriate sounds to properly scare them into senselessness.

  So congratulations to everyone who ever lost to this Working, you have a regular face! At least statistically (looking at you, August). And to anybody with an irregular face, congratulations! You are immune to the most feared Working in living memory.

  I could likely use Biologics to shore up that step of the Working; send out a ping to locate the first two eyes and ears maybe? That could work, although if the opponent only has one eye someone nearby could have a rather unsettling experience, and if you're the only other person nearby during the fight...

  I'll leave that to you all. If you care to improve the Hell, be my guest! Biologics lost my interest after the fishes, when I realized it would be a useless discipline in completing the Heaven.

  But how do I know what image to show?

  That first burst of Mentalics to locate the mind, on top of triggering the Dimensionalism to locate the eyes, ALSO deploys Divination using the mind as a focus to quickly distill an image of horror as a concept. Trust me, I tried using Mentalics for this part but it just took too long for practical application.

  From there, the Divination is interpreted into an Illusion format and transmitted to the Illusion base that is now in place before the pupils and within the ears of the subject.

  Now you may be asking, why did they believe the images? They were moments before preparing to fight me, right? Like with violence? And now their niece wants to chat?

  That's because that first burst of Mentalics triggers not two, but THREE effects. The third, of course, being a much more sophisticated compaction of a Mentalics Working by the great Master Claude. For those who know of it, yes I am the anonymous author of the Seventh Variant on Claudian Determinism.

  Put simply, the third effect convinced them that whatever they were seeing and hearing was the gods' honest truth.

  And that is how I won three of the five tournaments I participated in, before I was officially a Master of Abolon.

  Marlene foiled my first iteration by interfering with the first step, the location of the target. I was using Dimensionalism to locate the physical person back then, and Master Gendrick is nothing if not the pinnacle of Dimensionalism. I swiftly pivoted to Mentalics for that stage of the Working, as by the time she could interfere with the Dimensionalism aspects of the Working it would already be too late.

  And it worked. As you know. Which is why all of you are reading this. You know how effective my Workings are because you've seen Them with your own eyes, heard Them with your own ears, felt Them with your whole heart.

  So there, hints as to the construction of the infamous Saccharine Hell. Oh how I hate that name, but you all decided on a 'sweet' motif and who am I to stand in the way of branding.

  As a note, you may be wondering why so many students subjected themselves to the Hell instead of simply forfeiting and sparing themselves the humiliation. The answer is simple: if you forfeit you lose more points than if you lose, even if the fight isn't close. And since those points impact your grade, and all of the students are dedicatedly seeking Mastery…

  The academy wanted a show, and I was content to deliver one if it meant they would leave me to my research the rest of the year.

  Now that that's out of the way, I'm guessing all of you want to know about the biggest Working. Let the blood-hungry students pick apart and replicate the Hell, you all want to know about Cherry's Heaven. The third and final published Working of Master Cherry o-- You know the name by now.

  The exact diagrams and proofs for Cherry's Heaven are attached after the conclusion of this admittedly extended author's note, but I encourage you to read this in order.

  Now, who wants to hear about Divination?

  ...

  Divination is the art of querying the truly mysterious. The future, the past, the dead, the divine. It is a record of all we do not yet understand. The realm of the gods, and it appropriately uses Them as a crutch.

  I may not strike you as a pious Cherry, but mastering Divination (unofficially) took some serious determination on my part. You wouldn’t believe how dry and quite frankly deathly boring most preachers are. You holy folk of today should take notes from Emil Bunson.

  At least he was interesting.

  Yes, I know he was a dangerous and unhinged madman. I don't need to agree with him to learn from his words! He could at least string a sentence together without putting me to sleep, unlike Novice Elara of the Golden Dawn Cloister.

  But you did help me quite a bit after all, Elara, so thank you kindly.

  So how does this fit into the Heaven? Cherry's Heaven?

  The Heaven consists of four schools of magic. You can probably guess them: Illusion, Mentalics, Dimensionalism, and Divination. I settled on these four schools after a decade of refinement.

  As for material, you will need roughly 250 pounds of Clay, four liters of water, a quarter of a cubic meter of rigid material (stone, metals, etc), a rather large Ruby (fist size or similar), and an offering worthy of the Lord of Secrets.

  I wish it weren't so, but a divinity is needed. I tried everything I could, and I believe that given another two decades I could bypass the need for a divinity, but for now please pay the Lord of Secrets their due. They were quite helpful in the crafting of this Working and They have agreed to open the door as long as an appropriate offering is made.

  Maybe one of you will succeed where I left off. That would make me quite pleased, so whoever you are I thank you in advance for your contribution. Leave me to my Heaven, you can claim the glory.

  Back to the Working, do not fret over the exact specifications I gave for materials. If you gather what I've laid out here, you should have a surplus in most cases.

  Oh! You will also need something intimately related to the subject of the Working. Hair, bone, blood, things like that. I almost forgot! I never had need of this material, but most of you will.

  You will find exact diagrams and instructions attached to this text, but here is the summary:

  The first step of Cherry's Heaven is to beseech the Lord of Secrets to open the gate to Everafter. They will oblige, provided your offering is sincere and reasonably secret. Remember to give thanks.

  Next, the opened gate can be used as an anchor for more structured applications of Divination, namely a wide-area positional search based on the Golden Dawn Cloister's variant of Rorsted's Rangefinder, a rather obscure Working but uniquely applicable in this case, as we use four focii and a catalyst of blood, bone, hair, or similar to pinpoint the location of the soul we wish to mark in the Everafter.

  Once we've located the soul and marked it, we send that mark back to the Working and use it to target the soul with Mentalics, altered in composition to account for the differing consciousness of a soul.

  We then use the focus, blood or similar, to query the mind of the soul for the intended shape of the vessel. This could be replaced with Biologics on the selfsame focus, but I find it kinder and less irritating to allow the soul to define the vessel it wishes to inhabit.

  Dimensionalism then is fed the intended shape and consecutively pieces the rigid material (I opted to use silver, but any similarly rigid material will do) into the intended skeleton, then shapes the clay into the defined body form. Transmutation might be a more elegant solution here, but I opted for methods I was more versed in. Another area for improvement.

  This stage leaves a spherical void in the chest cavity as well, and tunnels through the clay to create passages for the water, which is then poured into the chest cavity. This water will need to be refilled every so often to keep the clay moist, but the subject will know in advance when that is needed and can perform the maintenance themselves by drinking water regularly.

  Then we come to the ruby, by far the most expensive material involved. The Mentalics link with the soul in the Everafter is repurposed once the body is shaped and tied to the ruby. We use this link to anchor the gateway to the Everafter, as well as to interface the thoughts of the soul, and then slide it into the head of the clay simulacrum that has just formed. If you have done this right, the clay head and metal skull should part with minimal effort for insertion, then harden into final form.

  The penultimate step of the Working is Illusion. We arrange an interface for the soul to configure their appearance, within reason. Clothes, hair, skin tone, eyes, voice, etc. Once the soul has a grip on this, the simulacrum should appear much more lifelike. This also involves translating the Illusion commands given by the soul into Dimensionalism to properly pilot the clay body as well, but I have heavily annotated that section of the proof so you should be set there. I've also detailed instructions on the sensory aspects of this Dimensionalism stage, which allows the simulacrum to see, hear, and feel.

  The simulacrum, and the soul it is intermediating, should be able to speak, walk, sing, dance, write, read, and more now. It will perceive the world around it, interact, and communicate. It will still not feel real though. For that, we return to Mentalics.

  The Seventh Variant of Claudian Determinism could serve purpose here, but that only works one way. It's something you inflict upon a single target, which is less than ideal.

  Instead, within the Proof of Heaven attached, you will find an Eighth variant. We anchor this to the ruby, the mind of the simulacrum, and allow it to radiate from the body. The soul, as well as all observers within a kilometer or so, will now believe that the simulacrum is indeed the real person rather than an inhuman vessel for the dead.

  And there you have it. Cherry’s Heaven.

  The Final and Definitive Working by Adelaide Cherry of Abolon, Master of Illusion and Mentalics. Archmage Cherry of the Secret Tower, Chosen of the Lord of Secrets.

  An exceptional talent, an era-defining magus, and a devoted sister.

  This Working is dedicated to Madeline Cherry, former Aspirant of the Abolon Junior Academy of Esoteric Arts.

  It is so very nice to see you again, dear sister.

  …

  Slid between the final page of the Author’s Note and the first page of the Proof of Heaven is a poem written in a shaky hand. Although not altogether different penmanship from the Author’s Note, the handwriting appears almost juvenile.

  Cherry Cherry

  Sweet as a lie

  Take her by the hand

  And you'll never die