“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” ~ John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“Art takes nature as its model.” ~ Aristotle

==Zidaun==

“No. Just no. I am not doing this again.” Gurek said.

“Not exactly,” I said. I grinned and pointed at the four doors with a flame motif. “This time you are going in by yourself. And just think, this time you get to actually go until you cannot go any more. Then you can brag about how far you got with toughness alone. And just be glad this challenge isn’t combined with some other problem.”

“Bah, don’t say that! You will make the heavens curse us. Then they will laugh and we will weep. I swear, I hate this dungeon already. If I wanted to deal with this kind of heat I would travel the central plains in Burn.” Gurek said.

“Yep, that’s the attitude. The anger will help push you through.” said Inda.

She only received a glare and more mumbling in response. With a little more good natured ribbing the party split up into their own separate tests. We did make Gurek go first though, just in case he had thoughts of skipping out entirely.

It turned out to be a hot, sweaty, and miserable experience. I made it the farthest because I could manipulate the temperature around me, but Gurek did the get the farthest without any external skills. He was so tired by the end he barely even complained.

We cooled ourselves down slowly and drank heavily from the fountains. Even with Firi’s spells helping, we were enervated and resigned ourselves to not doing any more tests today. If it was remotely challenging, physically, we wouldn’t be able to do our best.

And just because we didn’t know why the tests were being done didn’t mean they weren’t important. For all we knew there was a minimum level of competence required to enter the rest of the dungeon.

We slowly walked back to the building we were staying in, each of us conserving our strength. We slept, each of us taking our turn on watch. When my turn came I slowly walked outside. My eyes stretched up to the look at the stars, where they glittering in an imitation of the outside world. It was strange to see nothing but the stars. Yamash was not looking down in this skyscape.

This might be the closest I was to the real sky, ever again.

I allowed my perception to keep watch for me even as I gazed at the heaven’s created by a god I now served. My thoughts were uncertain, even to myself.

Eventually it was time to sleep again.

In the morning I felt a tremble through the aura of the dungeon. The other entrance had connected.

==Caden==

I wanted to match the simple elegance of the Celtic knot-work that filled my other entrance tunnel, but I didn’t want to repeat myself and do the same thing all over again. After some consideration, I decided to do an overlapping triangular pattern inspired by Art Deco. I used subtly different shades of blue and green, broken up with copper lines to make the pattern. The entire pattern shifted as one walked along to follow it. First it was dominated with greens and it then slowly shaded back into blues. With the tiny firefly lights I embedded in the clear stone cladding, the shifting light, as I walked through the tunnel, reminded me of a forest or being underwater.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Hmm. I made a note to include a tunnel going underwater at some point. I doubted it was something that people in this world had ever experienced.

I couldn’t know exactly what the conditions were like at the tunnel’s exit until it actually connected, but I started to design statues for it anyway. Art Deco and Art Nouveau were actually two of my favorite art styles, so I knew quite a bit about them. I even had a chance to see a museum exhibit about the Japanese interpretation of both. The mixture of their cultural styles and the clear flowing geometric lines had created some truly beautiful art.

I was debating what material to use, though. Some pieces of Art Deco looked best in stone, like the giant Christ statue with its straight geometries. However, I tended to prefer the sweeping curves of Art Nouveau in statues, which usually looked best cast in metal. I had a number of metals, but the only ones I had truly good samples of were copper, bronze, silver, gold, iron, and steel.

I was practicing, and making the geometries had actually gotten much easier with my new calculation skill, but the flowing motions were still difficult to capture properly. Especially since slight exaggerations and hyperbolic curves were a part of the art style. I had a decent ability to create lifelike art, since that came straight as intended from my imagination, and I had also recreated a number of pieces from memory. However, I was now finding that my skills with actual artwork were being pushed further as I struggled to use a non-realistic style to make something new.

I was interrupted as a notification flashed.

You have gained a new skill!

Artist’s Perception II

Learning and using art styles you have been exposed to is easier. You remember art you have seen, heard, felt, etc… more clearly.

I had given up on getting any kind of artistic skill, but here one was. I could recognize why that was the case though. For all the art I had created, I hadn’t really been trying to stretch my capabilities. I came up with something, or borrowed it, and implemented it straight from imagination.

Now I was trying to actively create something that followed a style. It was an attempt to make something new while following a particular artistic sensibility.

And I could feel the difference that the skill made. With the internet and my natural curiosity I had been exposed to prodigious amounts of art. That, in combination with my love of museums and college art history classes, lead images to start piling up in my mind as I thought about the two art styles.

My brain was doing more than just pulling up examples, however. The straight rigid and the flowing styles were being deconstructed in combination with my calculation ability. I could understand the geometries that made the art function. Angles that I had never noticed suddenly became the core parts that made a composition work.

Learning about art and the finicky details that made it possible did what it always did to me. It made me appreciate it more. How could I not be moved when knowledge that was so technical and practical was combined with the artist’s vision to create something that seemed effortless?

Using what I knew now, I experimented. Exsan told me he was ready some time in this process, but I told him I would take care of it later and kept working. I quickly activated the connection, but left a blank wall. I was inspired, the ideas slowly shifted into place as I considered what to create and as I understood my new canvas. And, iteration by iteration, I brought forth something that made me happy. With a thought, my will remade the entrance.

The other entrance had been a tribute to the ancient gods and cultures of my world. Art Deco, and Art Nouveau were a celebration of the modern world. They were a celebration of industry, and took joy in the success and prosperity it brought. So my statues should be a reflection of that same spirit.

Facing the entrance one would see two statues. On the left side was a stylistic man. His clothes captured the elegant style of the early 1900s, wrought in shining lines of highly polished steel. His face was copper with silver eyes. He had a gentle smile on his face. His hair was the same copper, though it had faint lines of gold to offer contrasting highlights. One hand leaned on a cane, while the other held a single lantern made of dark iron raised above his head. The interior of the lantern blazed with harsh white light. It mirrored and represented the harshness of electric light.

The statue on the right was a woman. I had based her off of Rosie the Riveter. While the man had exemplified the grace and elegance of prosperity, the woman was wrought in metal that was burnished to be less shiny. Her skin was steel and her expression was set with resolve. Her eyes stared straight forward. They were made of gold and flashed with intensity. Her clothes were a dark subdued iron and functional. Hints of Art Deco were woven into the slightly straighter and harsher lines. One leg was pushed forward, as she stepped almost aggressively towards the viewer. Her left arm was at her side, but her right was closed into a fist slightly in front of her chest. Between her fingers spilled a golden warm light. She was a beacon of strength and perseverance. What she had gained and found so precious, she would keep.

My task completed, I came back to myself. I had been engaging in numerous other tasks with my shards, but the core of my focus had been here.

I looked at the statues and I was happy with them. I wasn’t quite sure why I had let myself get so fixated on them. I had a guess, however. They were a monument to the world I had left behind. All the previous art had been fun and an exercise of my imagination, but it usually didn’t mean much to me personally. This, was an homage to all the things I had loved most about my last world. That world had sucked in a lot of ways, but we had conquered the world with the power of our minds. I had always hoped that the in next step would prove wiser and heal the damage we had caused as we rose up to power.

I hadn’t really needed to grieve for my old life. Something about how I had been brought and then placed into a dungeon core had removed that necessity. However, now I was saying goodbye. I hadn’t even known that I needed to do so, but I had. I would try to keep that dream alive, however. The dream that my mind and might would be sufficient to make of this world what I thought it ought to be, rather than simply accepting it for what it was. I knew that some of my illusions and beliefs would be broken here, but I hoped for a better world.

With a last thought I remade the blank space between the two statues into an open archway. Golden filigree curled and suggested vines around it, matched by actual vines made of green stone.

Once more, I was ready for guests to enter.