Chapter 12: The Meaning of Fire
“Oh shit,” Lena cried, “are you okay?”
I blinked up at the pale morning sky. I stretched my hands toward it. Yep. There they were, ten fingers and a phone, unharmed. For an instant, I’d felt like a grenade had gone off a few feet away, pelting me with shrapnel from my own Stone barrier. Only for an instant, though. That seemed to be how HP worked in Third Eye. We got the briefest taste of the pain it had spared us as a reminder not to let it happen again.
I gave Lena a thumbs up. “I’m good.”
“Your clothes aren’t,” she said.
I looked down at myself. Nothing seemed torn, apart from the worn patches I’d already had in my gloves. As I shifted, though, I felt the mud squelch beneath my back. My parka was waterproof and would wash off. Cold mud soaked through my corduroys, though, and I really wished I’d worn jeans. Or better yet, snow pants. “Laundry day might have to move up in the schedule.”
Lena appeared over me, her hand outstretched. I reached up and clasped it. Between her pulling and me scrabbling in the mud, I regained my feet.
She glanced at my mud-caked back and chuckled. “Awesome defense, btw.”
“Simply the best there is,” I said.
“Please. We both know that isn’t true.” She poked at my arm. “An attack like that wouldn’t have gotten close to scratching Albie.”
“Wouldn’t it?” I raised an eyebrow. “We never actually saw her use a defense that would stop an explosion.”
“Because the creature didn’t shoot rockets.” Lena cupped her chin. “You don’t really think it would get through to her, do you?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s a safe bet we’re a long way from coming up with anything she wouldn’t have a counter for. Hell. I hope she’s got a counter for everything, especially if she’s putting herself in danger.”
“Yeah...” Lena’s shoulders slumped.
I reached out to pat her back.
She squirmed away. “Don’t get mud all over me, too!”
My hands ended up on my hips instead. Hell with it. My corduroys would either wash out or not. “Well excuuuse me, Princess.”
Lena snorted. “If you’re going to break out quotes from the old Zelda cartoon, maybe I’ll let you get me dirty after all.”
“I think that’s the definition of TMI.” But it had distracted her from worrying about Albie, so I considered it a win anyway.
Lena sauntered back to her position by the sidewalk. Her hand stroked the air, telling me that, through her smart glasses, she saw Bernie stretching his neck up over the back of his bench.
I raised my phone to watch her pet him and took the opportunity to check my status.
The explosion had knocked 49 HP off my inflated total. Not the most devastating attack we’d seen, but she hadn’t launched it while her Material hovered close to me, either. This had been more like being caught at the edge of a grenade’s blast radius. Some of the damage might even have come from my shattered Stone. Pieces of the slab dotted the grass and mud.
“You used those explosions against the creature, too, didn’t you?” I asked.
Lena glanced back at me. “For all the good it did.”
“No shame in that,” I said. “Albie told us we weren’t ready, and holy shit, was she right.”
Lena scrunched down and hugged Bernie. “No kidding.”
“That’s not my point, though,” I said. “How are you actually making it happen?”
Lena frowned. “I just pump triple Fire into Wood.”
“Does it not work with the other Materials?” I asked.
“Nope. Maybe if I had more than three units of Fire? Of course, with the way the costs scale, that’s going to chew through my MP real quick.”
Manifesting a Material with a Reactant cost one MP. If you then manifested a different Material with the same Reactant, or vice versa, it would cost another one. On the other hand, infusing the original Material with another instance of the same Reactant enhanced its effects, but cost two MP. The third usage, three.
Assuming that scaled linearly, I could pump four instances of a Reactant into a Material exactly once before exhausting my original MP pool. Lena could do it ten times. If we eventually got enough Reactants to scale much beyond that, she was right, it would get totally out of control.
Unless we could make Potions that overhealed us, HP and MP alike, the way Albie’s had me.
If anyone had figured out how to make Potions, they hadn’t shared it on the wiki. I had to imagine Water played into it, and it was, at the moment, my nearest and dearest goal within the game.
Not that I’d made any progress on it.
Something else to work on. Later.
“Didn’t you use three instances of Fire on the Wood you used to melt s’mores for us?” I asked. “That Wood didn’t explode, it just burned hotter.”
Lena and Erin had brought a box of s’mores to the construction site. As a test, supposedly; in practice, as a snack. Lena had used her Fire to heat them until the crackers began to darken and the marshmallow started to melt.
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Eating food cooked by Third Eye had ended up as one of the few happy memories from our expedition.
“Oh, yeah,” Lena said. “It was the same when I was testing out temperatures.”
“Are you doing something different? A different gesture?”
“I don’t... think so?” She looked down at her hand. “Stand back and watch me this time, okay?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” I grinned as I said it, and a smile flashed across her face, too. I required no persuasion to do one better than watch her. I hit record on my phone and started taking video.
She aimed away from me and jabbed at her screen three times. Through Third Eye, I saw the explosion erupt in the air over the sidewalk. It looked like some of the remaining snow began to melt beneath it, but I’d need to look closer, with and without my phone camera, to know for sure.
“It didn’t feel like I did anything with my hand,” Lena said.
“Agreed.” I played back the clip I’d taken. The only thing different seemed to be the speed at which she pumped Fire into her Wood. “Try doing it slowly this time.”
We set up again. Lena tapped her phone rhythmically, like she was matching the button prompts in a game’s quick-time event. Or playing music, I guess; neither of us had any talent for that.
Instead of an explosion, she conjured a panel of Wood, which burst from a smolder to a blaze in seconds. By the time I stopped recording, it was ash in the wind. This time, the snow retreated so much I could track it visually. It looked like somebody had taken an oversized blow dryer to the surface of it.
I waved Lena over and showed her both videos I’d taken.
She watched them through narrowed eyes. “Weird. I knew I could do both these things, but I guess I just figured I gestured differently and didn’t pay attention to it.”
Every Third Eye effect we’d seen mapped to hand movements. Or at least, that’s what we’d assumed. Did Albie’s gestures really explain some of the elaborate tricks I’d seen her pull off, or had I just told myself that because it was how us regular players knew to interface with the game?
“I guess it could just be too much heat building up too quickly,” I said. “Less like a spell, more like an overload?”
Lena shook her head. “I’m no physicist, but there’s no way Wood blows up like a grenade just because it gets hot too fast. Hell. It doesn’t even get that hot. Even with triple Fire, it’s just enough to melt marshmallows and toast graham crackers a little.”
“That’s the real world effect,” I said. “It’s obviously a lot hotter than that in Third Eye, otherwise it wouldn’t do any damage at all.”
“Maybe that’s part of it,” Lena said. “It’s not just a physical, chemical reaction. When I put three Fire in, it’s not just making it hotter, it’s making it more... real?”
“More closely aligned,” I said.
“Like Albie said.”
If I closed my eyes, I could picture her, her round face framed by aquamarine hair, her dark eyes shining with tears. I repeated what she’d told us at the construction site. “Our knowledge of the world, knowledge of self, and knowledge of joy aren’t ‘aligned’ enough.”
“Not gonna lie,” Lena said, “I’ve got no idea what she meant.”
I chuckled. “Same. She did say she didn’t have ‘the right words.’”
“So.” Lena grinned. “It’s gotta be ‘knowledge of joy’ that makes things blow up.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “I think I should worry about you getting the power to start fires with your mind.”
She turned her nose up. “Spoken like somebody who grew up in a state where fireworks aren’t legal.”
“They were legal in Lawrence?”
“Not exactly?” She got a far-off look in her eyes. “There was a field we went to outside of town. Every year, the owner let folks come and set off their fireworks. It was awesome.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Also, glad we weren’t going to visit her parents in July. I kept that second part to myself. “About your Fire, though.”
Her smile faded. “You don’t actually think I’d be irresponsible with it?”
“Of course not.” I patted her hand. “I just want to figure out how we’re really using our Reactants. We’ve sort of treated them as physical forces, but it’s not like the classical elements are a real thing. Deep down, we all know this is violating all kinds of scientific laws as we understand them.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know we joke about things being sufficiently advanced, but it does feel more like magic.”
“We know Third Eye knows enough about us to tailor content,” I said. Bernie was proof of that. “Maybe our control over it is more mental than we realize. The gestures could just be a shortcut to get us to conceptualize what we want from our Reactants.”
Lena stretched her arms. “You know, right from the start, I didn’t like the way the wiki team said Fire just ‘destroys.’ It was like they saw it was aggressive and wrote it off without really trying.”
My eyes traced the arc of her, from her toes stretching in her boots to the tips of her wings brushing the trees. The Magnificent Ashbird, indeed. The warmth I felt didn’t all come from her fiery avatar.
Some of it did, though. “How would you describe Fire, Lena?”
She set her jaw. “Well, it can be dangerous, obviously. Wildfires are awful. But so are hurricanes, and floods, and rock slides. And Fire is super important for people! Are me and Bernie being destructive when we warm up our apartment? Was I being destructive when I cooked those s’mores?”
“No,” I said.
“Fire doesn’t have to be a pyre.” Lena straightened her back. Her wings folded in. Her free hand balled into a fist. “It can be a hearth.”
I wrapped my arms around her.
She squeaked. “Wha –?”
“Sorry,” I whispered. Fabric softener from her toque and a hint of the strawberry shampoo we both used filled my nostrils. “I just really love the way you think about it.”
“I could be totally wrong,” she mumbled. Her arms slipped around my back. “But thanks.”
I kissed the top of her hat. Then, since we were in the middle of a public park, I forced myself to pull back and look her in the eyes. “If you had to pick a verb for Fire, Lena, what would it be? Not based on what we’ve seen Third Eye do, just on how you think of it as a concept?”
I felt more than heard her draw in a deep breath of the cold morning air. “Fire heats, it cooks, it chases off the darkness. Scale it up enough and you get the sun, so it’s as much a source of life as death. Which is the whole point of the phoenix legend. Which I’m kinda into, don’t know if you noticed. And there’s a bunch of other legends where stealing fire from the gods is like the whole basis of human knowledge. It’s dangerous. It’s potent. It’s useful. It’s powerful...”
I nodded along with her words.
“Fire,” she said at last, “‘energizes.’”
“I like it.” I loved it. When Lena said it, it felt right. Was that the three kinds of knowledge coming closer to alignment?
Or my imagination?
Lena averted her eyes. “Yeah. Well. I’m basically the best at nomenclature.”
“Damn skippy.” I smiled down at her.
After a moment, she returned my expression. “You realize I’m pulling this out of my ass, right? It’s what I’d like Fire to mean, but that doesn’t mean Third Eye agrees.”
“We don’t know you’re right,” I said. “Before we say you’re wrong, though, we’ve got some tests to run.”