Interlude: After the beginning
“I don’t understand why the orcs aren’t more, well, orcish.”
The Archon shook his head. “History,” he replied.
Emily scoffed. “The only history here is what you created.”
“And?” the Archon answered with a raised brow.
“And so, that’s no explanation at all. You might as well have said ‘because’.”
The Archon fixed her with his gaze. “One of the marvelous things about your mind is its inability to maintain perspective for any length of time. It’s like watching a flower blossom and close, the way you soar and diminish. One moment you are one with reality, the next you are worried about socks.”
“In my defense,” she said, “socks are pretty important when hiking hundreds of miles in freezing temperatures. But that’s not the point is it?”
“What I was pointing out is that if you took even a moment to think about how my mind works, you might understand the nature of my answer, and thus save me from wasting more processing cycles explaining it.”
Emily’s eyes widened for a moment as she made dozens of connections. “It’s about efficiency isn’t it? There’s a.. congruence between plausibility and how much energy you expend.”
The Archon was nodding, so she continued. “The past doesn’t exist, like the Boltzmann Brain thing we were talking about earlier. We can’t prove we didn’t just fluctuate into existence with our current memories. So history becomes, I don’t know, a present measure of coherence, a gage of...” she tailed off as she lost the thread of her thought. “What was that about socks again?” she joked.
“I think you have it. The more one can trace the elements of existence within a logical framework, a present that explains itself, the more momentum the system possesses. Which makes it vastly easier to maintain, I might add. So the answer to your question is that the orcs aren’t more orcish because orcish orcs orc-ed themselves out of contention for existence.”
Emily winced, though she followed his point.
“Might I add, this is also why I agreed to remove the undead,” he continued. “You wouldn’t believe the effort required to keep a world historically coherent when it includes such creatures. I had to suppress an apocalypse every time I blinked, it felt like.”
“Aww, I thought you just did it to make me happy,”
----------------------------------------
Chapter 30: Plausibility
A rainbow shimmered in the cold mist rising above the thundering edge of the cataract. Lilijoy was surprised to find the edge of the broad plateau of swamp and scrub marked with such drama, and a little worried about what might come next. The faint sheen of colors hovering in the air did little to enhance the view of the pocked and steaming lands stretched below, dark brown streaked with yellow, stubbled with smoking chimney formations and broad green pools.
“The Boiling Plains, eh?” she said to her companions.
Jess grunted, and Lilijoy could only agree. What was there to say? The past few days had been… not boring, exactly. Maybe predictable? Lots of trudging, punctuated by aggressive encounters with the native wildlife. The new creatures to maim and kill consisted largely of just what Lilijoy might have expected to find in a swamp in a fantasy setting. Giant salamanders, giant snakes, giant frogs… pretty much anything that lived in a swamp, only giant and unreasonably feisty.
Lilijoy had amused herself by getting well acquainted with the local vegetation. At any given moment during their trudge, she could be found sitting up on Jessila’s broad shoulder in a quasi-meditative state, following the turgid flows of blended mana between mud, water and life. Every once in a while she had forced her friends to stop and wait while she communed with some sundew or horsetail that had caught her attention. Now that they had reached the end of their time in the rainy bog of stunted growth and angry amphibians, she was almost a little sad.
Almost.
She had transferred many of the interesting plants she had befriended to a swampy section of her Trial Space, so she felt the journey hadn’t been a complete waste. Now that she had a better handle on the role rare ingredients played in Alchemy and thus… everything, she couldn’t help but wonder if any of them might be part of, say, a hovercar, or medbugs, or even some completely mundane item that she took completely for granted but was actually a concoction whipped together Inside and somehow extruded Outside in the form of a seat cushion or something.
She almost needed to take a mental breath after thinking that.
The descent to the Boiling Plains was not difficult, not after the sheer walls and horrible drops in the Labyrinth. The rough cliffs provided many resting points, and even Jessila seemed comfortable as they moved down the weathered stone, though the mists and ever dripping sky conspired to make some areas treacherous. Sulfurous fumes rose to greet them as they passed the halfway point, the smell thickening as they went until it became a tangible presence gripping the backs of their throats. Lilijoy began to get notices of diminished Vitality, though it never reached a point where she felt endangered. Still, the fresh air Skria conjured as they reached the rock-fall slope at the bottom of the escarpment was a welcome relief.
“I’m guessing it gets more difficult from here,” Lilijoy said, as they surveyed the lands on either side of the river. “Should I try to bring a boat over now?”
From their vantage point, she could see large areas of bubbling mud, and several of the smoking rock chimneys, interspersed with fields of scraggly grass and scrubby brush. It didn’t look that bad, but she had already heard from Anda, who was on the opposite side of the large, geologically active area, that the Boiling Plains were extremely treacherous, with thin crusts of earth that would give way without warning and drop travelers into boiling acidic pools. Her Earthen Sense would be indispensable, should they eventually need to go by foot, but drifting down the foaming waters of the Southfall River, waters that already swirled with greens and yellows as they passed from the great cloud of spray at the base of the falls, just seemed like an altogether better idea.
The others quickly agreed, so after they made their way down the loose, wet rock to the river’s edge, she dropped into her Trial Space to find the boat she had previously selected. The Trial Space had no large lakes, rivers or ocean bays, though it abounded in springs, streams and ponds. As far as Lilijoy could tell, it wrapped around itself, curving through one or more otherwise imperceptible dimensions of space so that while there was no edge or defined boundary, it was possible to circumnavigate without ever changing direction.
What made her suspect that several extra-dimensional curves were involved was that it was difficult to predict where any particular straight line path would end up. She had spent the better part of a day once, zooming her perspective across the landscape, and even with her system’s assistance, her best map of the place was something along the lines of a hypersphere crossed with a Klein bottle, though she couldn’t yet rule out a random element. She planned at some point to bring a powerful telescope in and solve the issue once and for all.
Bringing her thoughts back to the issue at hand, she swooped her viewpoint down to a rowboat resting on the bank of one of the larger ponds near the human town. She had never seen it used or otherwise occupied, and she guessed it might be part of some trial-like challenge or puzzle she could have come across, had her decisions been vastly different. Her diamond energy cooperated nicely, and she pulled it onto the river’s shore.
It wasn’t long before they were drifting with the river’s gentle current, praying it would stay that way. The rowboat wallowed, creaked and slewed, all things no reasonable person would wish for in a river-going craft. That there were no leaks was a relief, especially since the river water was foul, hot and caustic, as the occasional splash was happy to demonstrate. All around, the waters heaped and swelled in fat ripples from bubbling vents below.
In the end, it wasn’t the rowboat that caused the problem as much as the river’s inhabitants. Soaring outlines in the sky above, of what, none of them could tell, kept Skria close to the boat at all times, though she would periodically glide up just high enough to check the water ahead for hazards. It was on the return from one of these jaunts that she called down.
“Hey, can you see the water around the boat? It’s acting strange.”
Strange could only be a relative term. Turbid swirls of brown and yellow made any hope of seeing a bottom faint. For all Lilijoy knew, the river could be two feet deep, or two hundred.
“What do you mean?” she called up.
“It’s… gathering? And it looks darker all around you.”
Lilijoy had noticed clear patches here and there ahead of them. She assumed it had something to do with the upwelling springs, but now that she thought about it, they had never floated over such a patch. Now she wondered if they had been bringing their own darkness along with them.
This can’t be good. What could it be?
She ran through possibilities, even as she studied the waters around the prow for any signs of overt misbehavior. To her eyes, it was just muddy water, though now that she thought about it, the streaks of green and yellow did have a certain robust consistency. To her mana sight, the situation was significantly more worrisome though, and she kicked herself for not using it sooner. The green and yellow streaks had a different presence than their surroundings, a substantially higher concentration of fire mana, along with another type she wasn’t entirely sure about.
Muttering to herself about developing sensory filters to maintain her mana sight at all times without constant distraction, she wedged her feet under her seat. Feeling exposed, and wishing she had something like a mirror on a stick, she gingerly leaned over the side of the rowboat, until she could look down the flared hull to the waterline.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Oh dear. I bet I know what type of mana the yellow stuff is concentrating.
“I think we’d better start heading to shore,” she relayed to Jess. “I think the river is digesting our boat.”
The hull of the boat was steaming, or smoking, maybe both, and was pitted and blackened. Since the entire environment was one of caustic vapors and smells, none of them had noticed.
Jess hadn’t put oar to water since the first seconds of their trip down river, as the boat had been to content to wallow placidly with the current once it had been moved to the center. The moment she engaged the oars, Lilijoy could tell something wasn’t right. Jessila was clearly struggling to move them through the water, and when it came time to lift them out for the next stroke, one of the oars snapped off in her hand.
“Oops,” she said.
Lilijoy could see that the water, or rather something in the water, had a hold of the remaining oar and was engaged in an active tug of war over its possession. When Jess managed to pull it toward herself and pull the oar from the water, an elastic mucous could be seen connecting it to the water. She used Scan for all she was worth.
Juvenile Slime: Level 8
H.P. 36
Primary Attack: Acid 1-3/sec (ignores INV)
Damage Abatement: 30-50
Disposition: Social
Could be worse, I suppose, she thought. But how can a slime be social? Is it friendly? Maybe it just wants to eat the oar.
This was one creature she might have some difficulty using Two Minds One Self with. While touch wasn’t strictly necessary, it would be extremely hard to avoid once she was close enough to initiate the ability. Plus, she could easily imagine falling in the water in the process.
“Skria!” she yelled. “Try to blow us to the shore!”
“Okay!” her friend called back. Jessila was still fighting over the oar, which was rapidly disintegrating anyway. As the wind picked up and began to push on the side of the craft, she finally pulled the smoking remains, little more than a stick, from the river’s grasp.
Lilijoy used the time to run through every scenario she could imagine. The river was broad, so even if Jess threw her, carrying a rope, she didn’t think she would make the shore. They had no way to attack the slime, and even if they could, it seemed likely there were many more than the one she had seen.
That’s probably what ‘social’ meant. There’s probably a regular slime party going on in the water. I wonder what the collective noun for slimes is? A squish of slimes? A slurry?
As usual, the great speed of her thoughts made time stand nearly still around her. Jessila sat staring at the ruined oar with an alarmed expression, while Skria crept through the sky, her mouth and hands in mid spell. The wind was still picking up, and Lilijoy took a moment to marvel at the sensation of subjectively slow air pressing on her, even as she began to feel the rowboat begin to rise on the windward side.
Oh no, she thought. Maybe it’s just rocking?
It was not just rocking. Ever so slowly, she felt the rowboat tip beneath her, then faster and faster until it was an inevitability. Jessila barely had time to begin to shift her weight against the motion, barely even had time to change her expression, before the sky was eclipsed by the flipping boat and the steaming water claimed them.
***
“This… this is paradise,” said Mr. Sennit.
Anda looked at him skeptically.
“For a weaver,” the older man hastened to explain. He gestured to the tall tufts of flowering grass on all sides, some towering many feet over their heads. He shook his head. “Or maybe just for me. Look, over there,” he gestured. “Blood iron grass. Over there a stand of broad-blade fireweed.”
Anda shrugged and pointed. “Level thirty-two saw-back lion.” He pointed back at Mr. Sennit. “Lunch.”
Mr. Sennit squinted, trying to make out the predator in question. “I never did figure out that Stealth stuff,” he finally admitted. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Your point is well taken though,” Anda said. “A crafter is only as good as their materials, and this corner of the Great Grass Sea abounds. We should grab as much as we can, because it won’t be long before things get considerably more hostile.”
“Boiling Plains that bad, huh?”
“Yeah. Worst part of the Garden in my opinion. But it’s the inhabitants I’m most worried about. They were pushed off this land by my former clan, a nation of many thousands of the toughest creatures in the Garden, forced to live in brutal conditions for generations. I doubt they’re going to be happy to see Outsiders.”
“Eh,” said Mr. Sennit. “What’s one more death, anyway? Besides, you’ve got an in, Mr. Half-Orc.”
Anda barked out a laugh. “That just means they’ll kill me slowly, out of respect for my better half.”
“Hmm. Never heard that phrase used that way before," Mr. Sennit said. " Tell you what, how about you take care of the lions, and see if this old weaver can’t put us in a better position to meet the in-laws over the next day or so.”
***
None more white?
Lilijoy could have sworn her thoughts echoed.
So this is death. First time I die in in the Garden. Not dragons, or dhrowgos or, heck, even wolves. No, it had to be slimes.
Granted it was hundreds, possibly even thousands of them. Swimming had been impossible when they were dumped into the river, due to the fact that the slimes occupied far more of the river’s volume than actual water, at least in their general area. She wondered if she had broken a record for quickest death by slime.
To add… something to injury, hanging in her internal awareness, framed by white, white and more white, was a notification. Two actually.
----------------------------------------
Level Up! 2601 EXP Reached: Level 26 (10 more free points available)
----------------------------------------
You have died!
Death Counter: 2
----------------------------------------
She would have already dismissed them, but they broke the monotony somewhat. Even the sensory signals from her virtual body were repressed, not entirely, but enough to make her feel abstract, ghost-like. They called it ‘riding the white’, and now she knew why.
For her, of course, it wasn’t any kind of issue at all. She was still on the Outside, perhaps an hour away from Guayaquil. In some ways, the endless parade of fields wasn’t much better than endless white nothing, especially as it was night there, though even an hour out from the city there were early signs of something that might reasonably be called traffic. They were passing carts and conveyances of all shapes and sizes with some regularity, many of them human powered, though Lilijoy saw a few oxen, and even a dog team. In some, she could see produce, crops destined for the luxury markets she assumed, rather than the raw biomass grown for conversion to food bars. That would be the only reason she could imagine for the farmers to undertake what for them would be a grueling trip of a day or more.
I guess I should poke around, since I don’t plan on being here all that often, she decided. Let's see if I can break something in here.
With a thought, she took hold of the sensory data being fed to her from the Inside and began to poke at it. It was a very minimal stream, which seemed obvious enough given the vast monotony. There were two components; the underlying data that gave her a vague sense of embodiment and the visual feed. The embodiment data was reasonably complex, while the visual was as simple as she had imagined it would be.
She was intrigued to notice a feed of what she could only call Charm data. Her system automatically blocked such things at this point, but it was clearly meant to soothe and stimulate a feeling of wellness, as well as gently interfere with recent memory formation. It wasn’t much, just enough to take the edge off of any trauma suffered during the death experience, she estimated. Still, it was more than she had expected, given the stories she had heard of the horrors of dying on the Inside.
Guess Guardian doesn’t want its fruit bruised, she thought.
After examining the inputs, she turned her attention to the signals her system was sending back out. This was, to her, the most interesting aspect, and the simplicity of riding the white gave her an excellent opportunity to study which kinds of information her system was returning to Guardian’s servers. The kinesthetic and proprioceptive data was most prominent. It was how the Inside knew what she was doing with her body, and she was fascinated by the way in which she could send out a signal for her arm to move and then receive the sensations of moving her arm.
Most of the heavy lifting was still occurring in her brain, and it occurred to her that this was why Outsiders were, by and large, restricted to a close representation of their Outside body as their Inside avatar. The more differences there were, the more data would need to be exchanged in both directions, and the more processing would need to be handled externally. As it was, the Inside could send relatively small amounts of data that stimulated the deeply ingrained paths of her brain responsible for the perception of her body presence and movement.
I wonder what would happen if I sent out signals for body movements that shouldn’t be possible? She chuckled to herself. What could possibly go wrong?
The abstract quality of her body while in the death space made the experiment easier than it would have been if she were fully embodied. There was no visual feedback for her movements to throw her off, and her sense of touch was numbed and distant, reduced to degrees of pressure like an ancient haptic feedback rig.
She started simply, pointing an index finger, and then slowly feeding out data to make it bend back, away from her palm. There was a barely noticeable lag, as the Inside tried to understand how to interpret the anomalous data she was sending it. Then a flood of pain signal came rushing downstream. This wasn’t an issue for her, though she did wonder if there would also be damage points assigned, were she not already ‘dead’.
A split second after the pain came another signal, on the notifications channel.
----------------------------------------
Skill Discovered: Upgraded(2) Apprentice(3) of Body Manipulation (VP = 6)
----------------------------------------
Now that’s interesting. It must have found the closest fit for the signals it received.
She wasn’t about to stop there though. She extended her arm outward as far as it could go, then sent it further still, imagining her bones and muscles elongating, feeding the Inside data to indicate her hand was a foot farther away than she would be able to reach in reality. Again, there was a slight hesitation, and then pain she didn’t feel, followed by a notification.
----------------------------------------
Skill Raised: Enhanced(5) Apprentice(3) of Body Manipulation (VP = 15)
----------------------------------------
I guess my magic contortionism just got more magical. This is getting good!
Already, she could feel her diamond mana spinning faster and faster, sucking in her excitement and spinning it through her Soul Vortex. That gave her another idea. Unfortunately, her access to her Trial Space seemed to be blocked at the moment, but she could still try the concept.
She reached out with her hand again, sending it even farther from her body, two feet past her normal reach, then three, then five, like one of the stretchy superheroes from the ancient comic books. There was a mild resistance, she noted, to altering her own body image, as if she had her own internal accounting of plausibility to work through. She put that to the side as best she could and reached farther still, finally reaching the limits of her own suspension of disbelief when her arm would have been about ten feet long. A few new skill notifications popped up along the way, as the Inside was forced to sort what she was doing into its own terms.
But that wasn’t what she was after. She took a moment to gather her thoughts, wiggling her invisible fingers, feeling the presence of her hand so far from her body. Then she pulled, tapping into the same sensation she felt when moving objects from her Trial Space, imagined her hand staying in place and the rest of her snapping to join it.
There was a sense of something almost happening, as if the Inside was rendering a verdict on whether it had to play by her rules, but in the end, perhaps because there was no external frame of reference, all that occurred was a return to her normal proportions.
She was not deterred. She stretched out her arm once more, and then began to remove all the signals from the rest of her body from the outgoing data, leaving only her hand. Then she pulled once more, snapping her point of view to her hand and restoring her body data to the stream.
There was a sharp crackling sensation from the Inside data stream, as it tried to make sense of her actions, followed by a pause of almost a tenth of a second, a veritable eternity. Then the notification came.
----------------------------------------
Unique Ability Created: Body Warp
Wherever any part of you goes, the rest of you can follow.
Limits Instituted:
Body structure must be contiguous and within the parameters of Body Manipulation Skill
----------------------------------------
This was immediately followed by another notification.
----------------------------------------
New Achievement: Reality Bender II
The Inside will never be the same.
You have invented a unique ability: Body Warp
+20 Additional Direct Free Points
----------------------------------------
Yes! I should die more often!