Challenge #187
Option #1: Three dimensions plus one.
Note: This is something that belongs at the beginning of the Alice story, I think. It's not part of the continuity as it stands currently, but it'll be important to the overall story eventually. It's about the creation of the world, and hopefully it makes sense to more than just me.
Book One: The First | Peeping Alice pt.0
There is no way to understand the First, the Creation, the Beginning of all things. It is merely sufficient for most to realize that there was an act of creation. It was not merely happenstance, or chance that the worlds, and planes were created, they were formed. Formed with purpose, with meaning, levels of existence were created over a space of what no being since has ever been able to conceive as time. To know the true name of them which created it all would be to know all secrets of all the universes. There is no creature that could know all those things, at least not singularly. It is the nature of those who create great things, to keep many secrets and one could not believe that the Creators could be any different. Not ever can one being get things right every time however, but the Creators continued to work to find the best solution to every creation. In the Beginning, they created the First.
No one can truly say what happened in the Beginning, not really. Those that have lived long enough to remember refuse to share their stories for whatever reason, and over time any of the truth there was in the legends that remain, has died off. It was at the First, the place in the universe closest to the Creators, that all time was lost. Like a great many places close to such immense power, certain things were lost in the folds of its existence. Time is among the things lost, not that many remember the difference. Those that were there after the Creation remember growing older for only a short time, and for them, time has not passed since. They continue on existing in the First. However, many created on the First could not remain content there, happy as they may have been. Instead those on the First worked with the Creators to find another solution.
That was the only time the Creators thought to take input from their creations. In the time since, they have been quite happy to remain peacefully apart from their creations. At least, it is peaceful for the Creators; since in the interim of their collaboration between themselves and those from the First, everything has not been peaceful. The result of this joint effort, in an effort to continue certain continuity by the Creators, has been since referred to, by them, as the Second. By those from the First however, it has become known as the Trial. Unfortunately for them that came to inhabit the Second, or the Trial, it is known only as Earth. It is there, on the Second where time was reclaimed by the Creators. Still, it is favorable to those of the First, and they are able to maintain without being overcome by their age.
It was during the creation of the Second that the Creators began to bicker. Not with those from the First, but with each other. It was after the creation of the Second was complete, and it inhabitants were also formed, that one of the Creators broke away from the rest. He, who was called the Keeper, went to the First and gathered his scions together. Of these scions, one was chosen to go to the Trial and bring back one inhabitant that the Keeper might imbue with some of his power. He meant to bind the other Creators, to create a second Time that the Creators might one day perish.