Ozzy woke in his recliner and groggily opened his eyes. He’d slept for ages and for a while had forgotten entirely where he was, but as he sipped from the strangely gritty textured glass sitting next to him he remembered making it. Which reminded him where he’d made it and all the things he’d done since arriving here. He still wondered for a moment if he wasn’t dreaming up the things he’d seen until he got up and stumbled his way to the light shining through the edge of the door. Outside he found himself stepping down onto his central square and the pathway that led off between two lines of trees.
The pathway was missing a few squares he’d moved over near his new home to transport the contents. Otherwise everything was as he left it. The square he was standing on still showed no sign of a new recliner appearing. Which he’d already figured would be the case. So returned his attention to the rest of the haven. It was quite satisfying to have just stepped outside rather than woken up there. Something about that accomplishment had him feeling giddy this morning. He wasn’t even bothered by the fact that he had no way to discern if it was actually morning or not.
He had so many things he could do today. Yesterday, though it had been more like two days straight, he’d focused on building and securing the basic necessities for his physical and emotional needs. While he did still have a few that weren’t met long term, such as new clothing, he had them covered for the short term. The main thing he was missing right now was strength. He’d felt like early on when he’d been improving his body that things were ‘too easy’ and that his progression would outstrip anyone he’d meet. Yet the first person to show up was easily and obviously stronger than him. Later on he’d seen just how much stronger and was glad Cederick had been cordial and inviting. Despite the change in his demeanor he’d at least let him be.
The only other person he’d actually seen was Vonder, and gauging his strength was difficult. While he was clearly stronger than Ozzy he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d measure up to Cederick. Though he suspected he was even stronger. That wasn’t the only comparison he had. The imps were already significantly stronger than Ozzy by the thirteenth one and that was despite the fact that he had a domain able to fill multiple of the smaller havens to bursting. There was also the intelligent rat he’d met. Which had nearly killed him despite what he’d felt was a meteoric rise in strength. All of this told him he really needed to focus on improving his strength before branching out or meeting other people.
The hints he had regarding growing in strength were at least lining up with one another. He was still optimistic that he’d already accomplished the first two things that Vonder listed as part of the process. He could control his energy and had followed the same pattern that the Imps did in coalescing it. Now he just needed to understand how they were compressing their domain. Then he could be as strong if not significantly stronger than them. Before that though, he needed breakfast. Pulling a few fruit over to himself he pulled the energy into his domain and began to snack on the fruit itself. While he didn’t want to waste the energies of the cores on his domain he wanted to eat the fruit. Yet he didn’t like the hollow feeling subsisting off of energy gave him. So to avoid letting the energy go to waste into his domain it went.
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After his breakfast, which he washed down with his best, and only, beverage, water, he connected to the twelfth imp haven again. While he had a few ideas on what he could do right now he wanted to check one more time what he’d previously seen with their domains. Using his overwhelming amount of domain he again trapped it in the center and formed a small membrane around it. Using an entirely new method he separated a particle of its domain. Previously he’d used a membranous appendage to do this, now he used the combined strength of all the nearby particles of his own to pull it through. The applied force being one that had no physical connection to the particle seemed to do the trick. It remained as it was through the process of being pulled through the membrane.
All the while the imp watched the membrane surrounding it with apprehension. Understanding now that it could only detect the membrane and not the energy made him wonder if that had also affected the results of his previous experiences. It was possible it had seen his membranous appendages grasping at its domain and sacrificed it somehow. Either way he now had its particle residing within his own domain and could examine it more clearly. Peering into its domain was apparently as hard as affecting it. Once getting it into his own domain Moving it around took exactly the same amount of energy as any one of his own. Though just Focusing down on it didn’t immediately reveal any differences.
It was only after observing the particle for some time that he was able to glean anything new. While it didn’t feel any denser and was no harder to move about it didn’t have the same behavior as the other particles. His own, and he’d confirmed those of the weaker imps also, were essentially unmoving, and unresponsive relative to the domain at large as long as they weren’t willed to do anything. These were different. The particles vibrated in a barely perceptible manner. It wasn’t like they were moving around and bumping into the other particles nearby. It was more like there was an engine inside of them and touching the edge would let you feel, or hear a hum. There was also the smallest hint of rotation as if it was spinning in place yet he couldn’t see or feel any evidence that it actually was.
He spent some time watching, nudging, and taking its pulse for lack of a better word, but couldn’t seem to gain any further understanding of how this was created. If just looking and gently touching it didn’t get any further info moving on to a less gentle approach was in order. Batting it around only resulted in it reacting and knocking back his own particles like bits of string. With his new understanding he was able to get several more particles involved to hold his manipulators in place while interacting with the captive. All of his testing culminated in grabbing the particle and trying to pull it in two different directions. There was again a puff of energy though this time the result was three particles once the energy cleared enough to see.
Repeating the process gave three particles every time he pulled it apart with his domain. The oddity being that the initial time he’d attempted this with his membrane it had resulted in only two. Recreating that experiment a few times he found it did give three on some attempts, while on others it would result in two and a much larger cloud of energy. This suggested he was destroying one of the cores unintentionally while manipulating it with his membranous appendages. While the domain approach allowed him to separate it effectively. Seeing no real progress left to be made with examination he decided to have lunch before moving on to attempting to compress his own domain.
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He was craving some meat, and had found something a little more appetizing than the rats. The Havens with the murky water had something resembling a catfish. Or at least that’s what he thought before actually tasting them. Somehow he’d heard so much back on earth about catching catfish, but never about how they tasted. Killing, fileting it, and roasting it had been almost an afterthought now that he’d become more proficient at using his domain as a tool as well as a weapon. However tasting it resulted in a look of confusion and consternation. The meat somehow tasted like mud. There was a bit of flavor behind that which he was able to focus on to continue eating the meal, but overall it was a letdown. Maybe the shark would taste better for his next meal. Washing it down with another fruit and a few glasses of water he got back to his mission for the day.
Focusing his domain back down to just three of its fundamental particles he began what he hoped was the right process. Corralling them together he slowly began to push them toward one another. Their surfaces touched and creaked across one another as they vibrated a bit under the pressure. Slowly applying more and more pressure until suddenly the resistance gave way. A puff of energy again blocked his view and as it cleared he frowned. There was nothing at all left where the three had been. Even as he watched the excess energy coalesced back into new particles and began soaking up the rest. Which reminded him of the excess energy. Even when three particles came out of the ‘compressed’ cores there’d still been a decent amount of excess energy. Still enough to create another particle, if not a fully densified one.
Pulling a fruit from the trees he set it beside himself and pulled a miniscule amount of energy from it. Carefully he again pushed the three particles together while also sprinkling energy over them slowly to ensure another particle didn’t just form. There was a difference with the energy. As the particles touched they didn’t creak against one another. It was as if they were no longer fighting one another which was promising. Again he continued adding pressure until another cloud of energy was produced. Which again cleared to show no new particle. Instead the cloud was condensing back into the normal three with a fourth slightly less dense particle. While he hadn’t gotten the result he wanted, it was at least a little progress. Extra energy was clearly improving the process, but there was still at least one other thing missing.
Ozzy spent the next couple hours varying different aspects of his attempts. Trying to pressurize the particles at a slower pace. Pressuring them to just before they would burst and leaving them at that pressure for a time. Adding more energy, less energy, and adding it in different ways. Over that time he’d also created test chambers out of membranes to hold different experiments. Initially it was to apply the pressure over extended periods but he realized it could help to cordon each one off and even create a little label of sorts using the membrane. Many of these were not complete yet, but he’d run out of different ways to try to compress the particles into one another. He was beginning to question if Vonder hadn’t really known what he was talking about. Tossing the possibility around in his head he came up with a few possibilities but settled on one or two being most likely. One being that Vonder chose the word compress because it matched with control and coalesce but the actual process was something else. Two Vonder couldn’t see the energy, only feel what he was doing so compress was as close as he understood to what was happening.
Either one suggested that the actual process was very close to compressing, but was not the same. Which left him wracking his brain for longer than he’d like to admit. Enough that he eventually went to have dinner. He decided to forgo his planned roasted shark as he remembered he’d never heard of people discussing its taste either. He absolutely wasn’t going to try imp. Instead he went for the tried and true… rat. It really wasn’t that bad, especially compared to the catfish, which was saying something. He hoped to god he eventually found something more appealing to bring in.
While munching on his meal he was getting to the point of asking himself “what is compression… “. trying to think of what else could apply to this situation. He’d thought of squeezing, of condensing and of all the variations thereof. Eventually he hit on gravity, but realized there was a difference there. Gravity was pulling, and compression was pushing. He tossed that variation around for a while before deciding it was worth testing out. He’d tried every method he could think of to push the particles together. Might as well try to pull. Again he finished his meal off with fruit and water.
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He found himself staring at another set of three particles. Reaching out to two of them with the third he began to pull them together still slowly adding energy as he had before. As the particles neared one another he internally shook his head, the force involved wasn’t enough. Though even as the thought crossed his mind he could see a difference already. The edges of the particles where they touched dimpled as if they were a couple balloons being squished together. Suddenly his skepticism was abated and he willed them to connect as strongly as he could. However after another minute of pulling the only success was merely hiding the third between the other two swished particles. No further progress appeared even though he gave it yet another minute just to see. Despite no success this was progress. There was just something else missing still.
If the strength of one particle wasn’t cutting it so he aligned the particles again and this time he had the left pull the middle and the middle pull the right. Almost immediately he could see a difference. The spheres were deforming significantly more and after less than ten seconds there was a warping and he could see a single particle sitting in front of him. Mentally high fiving himself he also internally screamed, but his self congratulations were cut short as the particle popped a second later back into three.
Well no time to stop now he thought. He’d tried one, and two, here goes three. Again he formed up the particles but this time in a triangle and had each point pull on the next forming three connections. Pulling particles together there was the impression of a snap like two magnets being pulled together and before he could even start counting there was one particle sitting before him. That’s when he realized he hadn’t actually even added energy to these ones. Releasing his willed intent to pull the particles together he sat and watched for a bit but nothing new occurred. He’d ‘compressed’ his domain! Well he’d tensioned it? Ugh, naming things wasn’t his job, that was for others to do. What you called it didn’t matter, he could grow stronger again, and maybe face that thirteenth Imp without fear.