---Maddy---
Maddy looked around warily as she crept into the broken home. Smashed belongings littered the ground and if her body had a sense of smell, she would have noticed the sharp smell of fresh blood.
This had been…a kitchen? Flat metal pans littered the floor – different colored and patterned strips of cookware. Some of the pans looked harsh and sickening to Maddy – cast iron. Some were bent in sharp mangled angles or shattered as if stomped on by a heavy force.
And there it was. A half eaten red leg was crushed and hidden under what had used to be an oven/fridge hybrid.
Definitely a monster attack.
Maddy pushed further – ducking under a minuscule gap in the rubble to enter the less damaged part of the house.
Her senses were dim – Maddy’s dark mana sight enhancing spellwork no longer letting her see in the near pitch black of this hallway. Because of that with her unbalanced and broken light affinity, the dark felt sinister.
There were things in the darkness. Standing there. She couldn’t see them but Maddy was certain they were right there. Just…just out of sight.
…
Maddy crept through the empty house, navigating by dim glows leaking under doorways. Soon she heard a soft muffled crying sound and – after spending too much time trying to open a simple unlocked door – Maddy entered the source of the longing.
Badly hidden under a bed – surrounded by wool and leaf blankets – an incredibly young purple ‘demon’ hid. Her eyes were closed, and a single small hand covered her mouth. Dried tears streaked down her cheeks and mixed with dust covering her one cheek in a layer of brown grey grime.
The child hiccuped and pressed her hand over her own mouth tighter.
Maddy felt like the girl was speaking. She…was chanting. She was pleading...so why couldn’t Maddy hear anything?
The fae stared at the soul's desire and found her perception slowly shifting as she tried to understand the wish.
The pure desire – the competing desires in her heart.
Maddy knew if the child spoke – vocalized her wish and thus communicated it to Maddy then suddenly Maddy’s perception could shift to a wishspace that might make it easier to complete…
Maddy also knew by now that she could focus on her own ‘wishes’ – force herself into her own goals and desires to see a solution.
In this case, it wasn’t an immediate thing. Without that vocalization it was hard. Even if they were just simple ‘unmagical’ words. The very act of ‘asking’ had meaning she could latch onto.
Even if she revealed herself to the child she didn’t have her translation scripts.
Her vision refused to simply change just because she wanted to know…maybe if she had as burning a desire to know as the child in front of her?
Maddy cared…but not deeply. Not for someone she’d just met – not for someone with a similar form to those who had captured her…Maddy wanted to believe she wasn’t speciesist. She wanted to believe she wasn’t heartless…and yet it didn’t fully matter did it? This was all a dungeon – all a dream. She no longer needed to prove herself to herself.
I’m doing this because I want to.
Maddy drank a drop of nothing, consuming her non-resource to see the miracle. She burned a spark of her lingering miracle to see the wish hidden in the nothing. In that moment her fumbling turned into a fall in the right direction.
Imperceptibly small pulses of lingering power flickered past empty channels. Maddy’s translation scripts flickered and let her pick up the literal hundreds of nonverbal communications the child was making.
The translation revealed the silent chant failing upwards with partial potential translations…but that was enough.
Maddy winced. She couldn’t bring back the dead – maybe if she had captured their soul with death mana and created a body with life mana…but without tons of meaningful resources that was likely just to create some brand of undead cursed existence.
Too hard of a wish.
That was easier?
Maddy saw the shape of the child’s wish and willed herself into the shape of the wish.
The child sat alone and rocking on a vast hill. Beside her a mangled bloody effigy stood – a grotesque statue of pain that leaked blood from countless spots.
Blood seeped away from the statue – slowly falling down the hill and alerting the things that lurked below.
Maddy walked around the edge of the plateau – peering out at the situation on all sides.
Creatures of pain and suffering circled like sharks in the water. There was a hoard of them – climbing the mountain in spirals as they followed the trail of blood. The scent of prey, a universal draw for predators.
Far away for now but the first of the creatures would arrive within a few hours if their current speed and distance remained the same. Maddy continued to stare at the situation – long enough she could see a distant force coming towards the hill. Too far away to see properly but different enough Maddy could tell it wasn’t monsters. That…was a rescue party? It was days away.
Maddy stared at the rocking and sobbing girl and knew…the child did not have much to give. She could try revealing herself and asking for a future payment…but the child would not be able to afford much.
To add to that, Maddy would have to reveal herself – somehow she’d managed to stay hidden even now. Maybe she could ask for payment from the rescue party? But that would involve revealing herself and potentially getting captured…
No…Maddy felt like performing some charity. This wasn’t a trade…it was just a gift.
…
First we have to get rid of this ugly thing.
Maddy struggled to drag the statue to the edge of the plateau. In the ‘real world’ Maddy turned and moved through the house towards the mangled leg. She had to leverage up the rubble a bit to drag it out and then at the moment she finished the effigy was at the edge of the plateau.
Downhill now Maddy moved the leg into the forest pulling the statue further down the hill and away from her client.
She kept moving for quite a ways before deciding it was far enough – With a final heave Maddy tossed the leg over a sharp drop and ran upwards watching as a many-legged feline came and ate the mangled effigy.
This wasn’t enough.
The source was gone and yet a trail of undried blood still remained on the hill – a new trail from where she had dragged the statue as well!
Maddy saw the centipede-like panther begin to track her larger trail directly towards the summit.
Frantically looking around Maddy spotted a second monster and made up her mind.
“Over here!” She called in both the metaphor and reality causing the many-legged feline to turn away from its upwards climb.
Running along the edge of the great hill Maddy drew the first monster towards a second – this a four-legged beast of armored scales and powerful looking tusks.
Maddy ran as fast as her tiny legs could take her – dodging under roots and bushes as she brought the two monsters together. She caught a glimpse of the armored hippo-like creature in front of her just before running past and diving into an animal burrow to escape.
Climbing back up the cliff she watched for a moment as the two massive creatures fought then Maddy turned and made her way closer to the top of the hill.
Another monster appeared and Maddy rushed towards it pushing the beast back with a thrown rock and a run in the opposite direction.
And another creature.
And another.
…
On the second day Maddy saw a second danger creeping towards the girl. It took her a bit to understand what she was seeing – what her perception was highlighting.
The girl…was dehydrated. Starving too but that was less important.
Maddy raided the fridge and left a bowl of fruit juice for the child while they slept. She could see the wish coming closer on the horizon – the safety would soon be real.
…
Maddy soon realized the beasts of this forest weren’t quite the same as monsters. They were more dangerous than regular wildlife should be…but they didn’t have any ‘abilities’.
That wasn’t quite the right description either – monsters being animals that could use magic was far from the truth…monsters were the cost of a world of free magic? The cost of infinite potential? They were more than the red eyes or varied biology. Monsters were…something with endless anger?
Either way. The animals Maddy continued to lead away from her client were more like natural predators than single-minded sources of violence. They ate for sustenance instead of spite. They fought or avoided each other.
And yet from Maddy’s perspective, there wasn’t much difference in the end. They were all threats. Nearly everything in this forest could eat her with a single bite. Many creatures were faster than her – or more agile. Maddy wanted to believe she was smarter than simple beasts but with the node in her soul that represented mental speed gone her thoughts were more sluggish than she would like to admit.
Finally her self imposed goal was complete. The safety arrived at the hill and scaled it in a few minutes slaughtering the beasts and cutting their way through Maddy’s dance of distraction.
Maddy hid as they passed.
A band of soldiers arrived at the house and found the starving child. Maddy couldn’t understand what they were saying but she felt it. She felt the girl's relief as she hugged one of the men. She felt the flow of gratitude seem to spill over – felt the trickle of meaning that came towards Maddy as she completed her one sided wish. A gift instead of a bargain – and yet one that had fed her all the same.
Maddy felt a strange sort of twinge of her instincts. She…wanted to know why she had done this. Why she felt the way she did. Maddy wished for answers and slowly her perception changed. She saw a mirror and properly looked at herself for the first time in both body and soul. She saw a book in a different language – burning a portion of the miracle she had just created summon her status screen twisting it as she read and pulled out information.
…
Maddy had just created a miracle. She had just ‘performed’ a ‘spell’ of true magic – she had just answered a mumbled prayer to anyone who might listen. Other than her altered perception…Maddy hadn’t spent a single drop of mana. From her own perspective it felt like she hadn’t even done magic…and yet paradoxically, this was the truest form of ‘true magic’.
For the child something mystical had happened. She had wished to survive this ordeal and done so despite all odds. She had wished for a drink and it had miraculously appeared as if summoned from nothing.
She didn’t know how it happened. She didn’t understand how or why…and yet she was grateful.
Magic was real and it had saved her. Had taken care of her. That’s what the demon believed and Maddy could feel that belief as if it were a physical energy in the air. Could taste that reaffirming energy as it entered her. Magic was real. Maddy was real. She had done something. She existed.
Less mystical of an answer was she had come out ahead. Despite not having gained anything physical Maddy’s store of liquid miracle was greater than it had been when she started. She had a higher leverage to break the rules now…it felt strange to think of using her own power as breaking the rules – they were spells she had created! Her sister’s mana! Her mana! The mana she had in her other pools!
But yes, each use of her own power felt like cheating. Like breaking the rules – more than just breaking the rules of the dungeon. Like breaking the rules of reality itself.
When had using her own power come to feel like cheating?
Maddy followed the soldiers as they travelled through the forest tracking something – the creature who had smashed the house. They investigate a trail a week old, finding strange tracks and increased signs of aggression in the wildlife.
Maddy followed the soldiers as they tracked the trail to a great cave on a rocky cliff. There they found bones and remnants of hundreds of different creatures.
Something was in this cave – an apex predator breaking the ecosystem of the forest!
Maddy didn’t know why she was following the soldiers… Maybe she wanted to see this ‘story’ through to its end? Make sure her saved child reached civilization? Maybe she was just curious?
The soldiers had a goal. A goal to increase the safety of the forest and thus their kingdom.
Individually their goals were less than a wish. Individually each had smaller desires – they wanted a good meal tonight. They wanted this forest excursion to be over…to come back safely, to have sex with their fellow soldier, to have a successful mission and gain a reward, to gain a promotion for leading a successful extermination mission.
Together however…they looked like something more. It looked like the entire country wished for safety – the entire country wished for this beast to be put down even if they didn’t know it. These soldiers were a knife – the shield that would protect the common folk. The spear that would strike the monster threatening their safety.
It was hard to follow the soldiers into the cave – nearly impossible to sneak into an enclosed space without being spotted. Maddy ended up waiting for them outside the cave. It might have been cowardly but too much of her remembered being trapped in that box. If she had her magic she would have followed without a second thought! But weak as she was she could only watch.
Over half the soldiers fought in the cave deep and out of sight the rest forming a perimeter outside. The girl Maddy had saved was with them – behind the group helping the chef make everyone a meal. Maddy watched the spear plunge into the darkness – disappearing out of sight.
She watched it come out and plunge again – blood on the tip. A scratch on the shaft.
Finally the soldiers returned in triumph tinged in sorrow. One of them had died in the fight just out of sight. Over half were wounded – bloodied with broken bones and missing arms.
And yet they had done it. They had succeeded. That victory helped blunt the loss.
Maddy could feel the very minor miracle contained in the soldiers actions. They had scraped together a victory despite the danger.
She could feel the faint meaning from this incredibly minor miracle and knew she had no claim over it.
Maddy hadn’t helped. She hadn’t done anything – and so despite there being a small amount of “meaning” in her witnessing the victory…she couldn’t eat. She could only gather from this system when she was a part of it.
…
The travel back to civilization was uneventful. Maddy followed her saved child all the way back to an orphanage before exploring the town – no city she had been led to.
All about the city people wanted things. Many many had enough…’something’ to achieve their wants. Their minor wishes. Some wishes were much greater than others – many times harder to actually achieve.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Still other ‘wishes’ were incredibly incredibly simple. Of those simple wishes some shone ringed in tasty ‘potential meaning’ because their wisher were not able to achieve their wish themselves.
The second wish Maddy granted for free was for an old man. An old man too weak to do much anymore. Alone with no one to help him this man was growing less happy with each day that passed. He dropped things and found he could not bring himself to bend over and pick them up. His trembling hands could no longer make a proper meal. His weak bones could no longer sweep the accumulating dust.
And he was poor. Not in a deliberating way – enough he could continue to afford food…but to the point he couldn’t hire someone to help him out even if he was able to push past his stubborn pride.
Maddy became a brownie in that moment. She swept the man's dusty house cleaning nearly a year of trash off the floor and living space. She mopped – the very act of climbing the strange otherworldly appliances and furniture requiring herculean amounts of effort. Finally after nearly an entire night of cleaning Maddy turned to food. She found all sorts of weird vegetables and grains – what remained after she had tossed the rotting groceries at least.
Without taste buds it was hard to guess what most of the food tasted like, but Maddy found massive eggs and was able to make something she thought looked nice at least.
Why were all the frying pans so flat? They were like crepe pans – nothing to catch anything from slipping off. It was annoying.
Still Maddy finished her meal and cleaned up after herself leaving the plate on a table in the middle of the house.
Soon the old man awoke and Maddy hid. She waited an hour for the man to slowly get out of bed and stumble into his living area only to freeze.
He looked shocked. Almost angry? And yet…like he wanted to cry.
Spotting the meal the old man shuffled over to it and stared down at it a single tear falling down his face as he did.
Maddy couldn’t understand his mumbled words – she knew he was probably saying something like “darned kids” and yet…she felt the real message hidden beneath. She felt the grateful tired relief. Felt the way this ‘miracle’ helped the man decide to sell his tiny house and move to a gated sort of commune for the rest of his years.
Maddy moved on.
Days turned to weeks and slowly her power built. Her pool of agency – of potential rule breaking power grew and with It, her situation improved. Her severed connection to her other bodies grew closer once again – she wasn’t “in” the network…and yet she was beside it once again. That above all gave her a sort of comfort nothing else did. Not just because of that invisible sense she wasn’t alone – or the certainty that if she were to die she would definitely be brought back in the network.
No, it was the way that link seemed to peel back a layer of the dungeon. She knew that while it felt like years were passing…it had only been a few days outside of the dungeon. That invisible internal clock helped the years pass. Her agency let her push on the mental toil of a lifetime and blunt it.
She kept solving problems. Bigger and bigger ones – more daring risks taken with the pool of agency as collateral. Soon the pool of agency revealed something else to Maddy. She had lost her pool. Lost her mana finger. Had lost her mental speed node…but something remained. She…still had a creation affinity. Still had a light affinity – still was a being of illusion made real.
Every time she fixed a problem. Every time she created a miracle…Maddy was making an illusion real.
When Maddy had protected the child for a week way back when…the safety the child experienced was nothing more than an illusion. When it had lasted the whole week she had made that illusion real.
When she had helped the old man she had created an illusion that someone cared about him and then made it real by actually caring.
When she had stolen a letter bringing news of dissent to the king she had created an illusion of peace. When she had solved the dissidents problems she had made that illusion of peace real.
Maddy still had a creation affinity even if she didn’t have the ‘cheat’ to conjure physical things from nothing. She had to work harder…and yet because of the effort she was putting in there was more meaning held in each illusion she created. Maddy took a break from solving problems for free and built something for the first time. She wove a cloak – spending an entire ‘year’ of dungeon life on this outfit. It was made with nothing more than her hands. She couldn’t ‘cheat’ it into existence with mana…and yet it was from her affinity. Her affinity helped her weave it together. Helped guide her hands. Helped her search for hair and silk to weave it with.
Finally after all the effort she had put in Maddy had a beautiful cloak that helped her hide.
She cheated near the end. Just before finishing her handmade cloak she consumed her agency and pulled mana from her other eyes weaving light into her cloak and causing it to become a thing of magic in truth.
With her new invisibility cloak Maddy’s wish hunting exploded in strength. Wishes she would never have tried to grant became viable when she could move about hidden from the world.
Not all her wish granting was a charity. Maddy used her invisibility cloak to approach some of those less sympathetic wishers offering them a solution while demanding they bare some of the ‘cost’.
These trades…these more traditional ‘wishes’ granted Maddy quite a bit more agency. If granting a wish as a gift gave drops, granting a big wish as a trade gave thimblefuls.
It was almost intoxicating the difference – sure it wasn’t like it had become buckets of difference but each trade felt like it was worth a dozen gifts.
They were easier too – with a gift Maddy had to do all of the ‘work’. She had to pay the cost – mostly time and effort on her own part. With a trade on the other hand. Maddy could use the wishers own resources to complete the task. Unlike when she was trapped in that box – forced to pay out the nose for the boy's wishes…these times she had leverage. She could conjure an illusion of herself as an old woman or pretend to be a great force hidden in a well or tree. If they didn’t like the costs they could leave.
A greedy merchant who lost his daughter, paid out massive amounts of money to get his kidnapped daughter back. Maddy used the money to buy information and hire mercenaries to bring the child back from the rival holding her hostage. She stole the money she had been promised using the wish as leverage – the merchant had planned on undercharging her but Maddy felt empowered by the promise of her change and used that to pull vast amounts of magic from the network – teleporting in and destroying a great hole in the wall of the vault to get what she wanted.
She destroyed a blind man’s sense of taste and touch using the conceptual sense to gift him his sight back. She healed a pained soldier's war wounds, healing his deadened emotions as she did and left him to handle the new perspective on some of the atrocities he had committed in the name of the crown.
…
Bargaining these wishes was so much easier – there was a sort of synergy in offering the requestors agency to choose if they really wanted their wish granted – or choose among costs they were willing to bare…only to harvest the agency when she created the result.
And yet…as Maddy was nearing the end of her time in the dungeon she found she missed her early charity work. She felt the way her accumulated agency had grown – felt the way years upon years of effort had built into a ladder she could use to escape her hole at any time.
She was waiting for something. These final years of waiting gave Maddy some time to work on charity cases once again. With the size of her accumulated agency she couldn’t even tell if she was gaining anything from the gifts. It almost felt like she was spending more than she was gaining when she burned her miracle to use mana in a gift…and yet the world felt better.
When Maddy had granted wishes as a gift it had felt…it had felt like she was making the world a better place. The “costs” she had born herself had never been that bad – mainly because she had been feeding on small easy to grant wishes but still.
Bargaining power however felt like a bittersweet note. The world felt…the same. The costs were almost always equivalent in pain to the power gained – which let the power soar but dragged a weakness up with it. Many seemed to have regret as soon as Maddy granted their wish even though most wanted to keep their boon proving it had been worth it. You could argue bargaining wasn’t malevolent. Its very act was of fairness – of equivalent exchange. She wasn’t making the world a worse place at the very least…but in the end her trades felt less like removing suffering and more like moving it about. The world remained the same.
This feeling was enhanced by two separate events.
The first was the death of the mage with her eyes. Maddy felt him dying long before he did so and found herself watching his final days.
Unlike many she had come to bargain wishes from…this old mage was happy.
Maddy had born a terrible set of costs when she had been forced to grant the wish without anything in return…and yet the boy had been happy. He had become a hero – using his growing magic to solve problems just as Maddy had. He had used his money on luxuries…and yet hadn’t ever gained a greed for more.
In the moment he died, the old wizard seemed to spot Maddy – staring through her invisibility cloak in peace.
“Thank you”. His final words were accompanied by a smile and, as Maddy reached out and ripped her eyes back out of the corpse, he still had a glowing smile.
The man’s attendants shouted in alarm as the smiling corpse's eyes began to bleed…but Maddy moved like the illusion she was, strolling right out of the mansion and skipping into the distance.
Maddy regained the two eyes she had gifted away – loaned you could say – and felt the way they settled into her soul. She felt them shift and fill two sockets instead of returning to the finger sockets they had been ripped out of.
They took a while to come back to her. A slow growth as she felt treads of power grow into her mental web like living vines. An empty pool that started to splutter and slowly fill with stagnant mana as if waking up from a long slumber.
They were stronger than they had been when Maddy had gifted them. Almost twice as powerful feeling, if she had to guess – the stats she had were her own. She hadn’t gained whatever stats the wizard might have gained in life. She didn’t gain the affinity he had nurtured – the spells he had made.
No. Her affinity was her own and the mana created from that affinity as well…but the nodes were stronger. Her pool was bigger. She hadn’t gained any more mental stats…had even lost a bunch of them as her stats decayed without a node protecting them…and yet somehow she felt like she was ahead. The fraction of her mental stats that remained and were reintegrated were now many times stronger.
Her ‘gift’ had come back with interest.
Her gift had come back with interest because it had been a ‘gift’. Maddy could tell she couldn’t have received this sort of result by stealing someone’s power. She couldn’t have gained this result if she had forced her eyes into someone and hoped they would grow them for her…no the reason she had gained this result was resting entirely on her sacrifice. On the fact she hadn’t needed to perform the sacrifice – she could have granted a lesser fake magic…but had done so anyways.
Looking at the ladder in front of her Maddy began to climb.
She reached out for the network – grasped onto the link between her and her sisters – and began to force power into it. She had a spell that let her teleport to her other bodies by following the connection. With a new pool of mana Maddy pushed down upon this skill a rush of liquid miracle boosting it into viability and felt a familiar shift of her self.
When Maddy reached the top of her ladder she turned around and began pulling it up after her.
The bottom legs had begun to melt – the pit filling with acid and destruction the moment she left it but Maddy regained most of the potential in the final moments.
And turning to find a gate before her Maddy realized she hadn’t teleported to her sisters. She had followed the connection out of the dungeon and then been stopped right at its entrance.
An incredibly simple blue box appeared.
Final floor complete.
Potential based reward taken – skipping stat and skill process. Potential tithe not great enough to maintain dungeon for future questors. Dungeon’s safe disposal activated to reduce strain.
Temporary additional reward granted for those willing to look.
…so grabbing the ladder means I don’t get stats and a concept for beating the dungeon?! Should I toss it back or is it too late?
…what does reward granted for those willing to look?
Maddy turned and stared at the invisible door to the dungeon behind her. It was shrinking – eating itself and folding inwards endlessly.
Maddy wanted to know what the reward was and as she stared at that disappearing dungeon, she saw the way it seemed to fold inwards to infinity. Maddy stared deeper and deeper – the single point at its center beginning to grow and soon Maddy’s perception changed.
Before her was something Maddy had long since wanted to understand.
It was…hard to make out. Hard to understand – two creations stuck together with so much super glue.
The karmic [system].
The magic [system].
Tied so tightly together they couldn't exist apart.
No…it wasn’t two things you could reduce to simple words. It was an endless amount of ‘things’.
Maddy stared at the magic system in what could only be described as an overload of sensation. It was a cacophony of…stuff.
She felt shock, aww and wonder. She felt fear, glee, greed and sadness in equal measure. She knew on a fundamental level what she was looking at was a work of art on a scale far beyond what any one creature – beyond what any fae or otherwise could hope to achieve on their own no matter how much they tried over however many years – millennia even.
It felt like the sky. Like a pair of stars spinning around each other close enough they should have combined and fast enough they should have pulled apart. There…was just so much raw potential packed into such a dense area the only way to see anything was to change your perception – swapping density with size and distance.
If the magic system were a physical object, it would be larger than a solar system and full of actual variance and detail – no solid empty mass or solid star. No, the wish that was magic was more than that.
It was…a single wish, fulled by trillions upon trillions of separate people over a trillion years – each donating grains of growth to the whole. It was a trillion separate wishes each forced into a single conflicting whole.
It felt like more than anything could possibly be. Covered in marks civilizations had left – ruins for some, towering structures for others.
…and yet in its current state it “Looked” broken. Looked bloated and atrophied. Looked weak in the ways it felt strong and formed sickly growths of meaning.
Maybe that wasn’t quite right?
Maddy stared harder trying to figure out what it looked like.
It had fundamental power aplenty and that power had enough weight to do some truly incredible things…but too much of it seemed to contradict itself? Too much of it was based on instinct – not enough on intelligence. Too much of it focused on maintaining its own size and momentum – not enough on stabilizing that which it had.
That felt like nonsense. That looked like truth.
How many civilizations had gained a link to magic, only to wipe themselves out by their own costs? How many had sought power for the sake of happiness and found an even worse plateau than they had when they started – an uneasy unhappy stalemate. A tyrant saving and condemning everyone without immunity? How many had wished for a world where their struggles and effort would mean something only to get their wish in a world they would forever struggle in?
At least as many as worlds that had found delight. At least as many worlds that had stabilized happily – if not more.
Fundamentally life without magic was dull. Magic made every joy better…but it also made every sadness worse. Every trauma was enhanced for the sake of harvest. Every focus on growth started and ended with violence.
Why?
Why was the result of this wish twisted so far from its root? Maybe reality existed in conflict – maybe the natural state of life was full of pain and suffering…but why did the wish for reality to be broken follow those same grains? Why did the wish for “more” not…become more?
Was…it because it had been traded? The trade an equivalent shift of what reality was…no gift to help it show what reality might be?
That felt right…and yet it didn’t help Maddy.
The natural thought when seeing a world wrecked by monsters and horrors of magic was…well logically to remove the magic. “Logically” the “problem” was the “magic” creating those “problems” – and yet no one Maddy knew accepted that as the answer. No one wanted to give up their power but more than that. No one wanted to go back to the dull powerless life they had lived before. No one wanted to suck the colour and light out of the world even when that light was blinding.
That was because…
Why was that? Why even looking at the monstrosity before her did Maddy feel an urgent need to protect it. Was it like depression? Was life without magic the apathetic state some might reach? Where even pain was better than feeling nothing?
…
That made magic seem like it was pain and ignored all the joy it gave her. Magic was closer to emotion. To truly feeling something. To existing with excitement and interest.
No. Removing magic is never the answer. Trying to throw away that galaxy of “more” was a tragedy worse than death.
What then was the answer?
Maddy stared and stared at the wish that was magic. There…wasn’t truly a right answer. No matter how long she looked, there would never be a simple easy comprehensive or satisfying conclusion to the problem before her. That was the truth. There was no simple obvious solution everyone was missing but too dumb to find. Only options and the same issues they already had.
Magic was ‘more’ and wished for ‘more’. Aether was almost the wish for ‘more’ to be ‘better’ but not quite. Not in the way that matters. Not the way Maddy would want it to be better.
Maddy wished she could just…’fix it’ in the way she wished it could be fixed. Some ritual like she had performed to become a fae – her cutting out all she disliked from the mess before her – killing it and becoming born anew.
She could see a sort of dance reflected on the shape of this creation.
Magic created things. it created something that couldn't exist. It pulled a possibility out of chaos. Made something that was impossible something that happened.
Aether...solidified the thing. Made it work well with other things. It filled in the cracks mana had made and then used the result in combination with everything else. filling in the cracks weakened some things...but combining it did so much more.
it was strange...looking at it this way Maddy liked the shape of aether a bit more. it was...less selfish. A more cooperative wish.
it no longer looked like magic.
They could force every single creature of magic into one of aether while keeping their current ‘capabilities’. Could solidify all rules and make them ‘better’…but by doing so completely sever all chance of ‘better’ becoming ‘more’.
By ‘solidifying’ the break in reality that was magic they landed on ‘better’… but could never achieve ‘best’ or higher. That was the sort of problem that could not be solved in R’s system of unstable growth and solidified stability. solidifying it would solidify both the good and bad...it would let the solidified good combine together in a way to become stronger than the bad but it was still the death of magic.
Was that by design? Was it a weird form of planned obsolescence? A way for 'him' to exert control? For R to swoop in and create more growth and offer more contracts siphoning more agency for himself?
Maddy would be very cross with him if it were.
Could she solve any of the problems within the system? Working within the same bounds as those who had come before?
There were an infinite number of rules they as a species could adopt. Rules and decisions they could make – each a trade offer. Part of the conflict was in allowing them this freedom. The only fairness was in conflict. In letting them convince each other with the effort they had put in. Any way of removing their freedom decreased that inherent conflict.
The weaker answer was in the way the rules defaulted if nothing was done.
The main cost of equal ‘fair’ effort based growth was conflict and by removing growth the conflict could be diminished both magically and physically. A ‘cap’ on the strength of a world removed a lot of new danger while removing the old – even if it felt like a shackle. The wish of magic was the wish for ‘more’. As soon as there could be no ‘more’, that wish died.
The other cost was in control. A good portion of the ‘trauma’ gained was due to the need for control…the wish to be able to use magic was tied so deeply into the wish for power and the more negative connotations of that.
If they removed their own ability to perform ‘magic’ the danger dropped…but no one wanted to live in a world of magic without having that same magic for themselves. A world of superheroes where you are nothing more than a regular person?
That was a different sort of hell. A hell of endless unsatisfied yearning.
No, the half shackles were infinitely better. Rules like those of limited affinities – anything is possible and the world you live in has all sorts of magic…but you can only have some of it. Don’t worry, everyone else can only have some of it as well.
Wanting everything was greed.
Ironic coming from the Maddy who had pushed for three affinities. Ironic from the Maddy who had broken through the shackles of previous rules to reach this point but…it felt right. They had to share that infinite potential. Share. Sharing is caring.
Was there any way they could shift the fundamental state of balance? Imbalance it towards happiness?
…
Maddy stared at the magic system shifting her perspective about as much as she could until it vanished. The system’s last touch vanishing as the dungeon disappeared for good.
It was still there – still all around her. In her mana. In every inch of the planet…and yet Maddy could no longer see it. Even with all of her gathered potential she couldn’t do more than sacrifice it all for a second more time.
It felt like she had learned nothing useful…and yet because of her time in the dungeon she understood some things on a more fundamental level.
The asymmetrical karmic system was a gift.
It was a gift created by the self-sacrifice of a pure soul. A gift that gives strength for hardship without cost. The cost is the hardship and the strength it gives is simple…and yet its something that could never have been created with a bargain.
‘Mana’ was a more traditional wish. A bargain – with both strength and weakness being dragged up together.
It felt stronger. It ‘felt’ more powerful than stats…and yet it did not contain the same miracle. It didn’t look as beautiful to Maddy’s sight.
Maddy didn’t know what she could do with this knowledge. She wanted to use it to help shape her world – and yet for now it didn’t give her anything.
Maddy sighed – missing the perspective she had just lost. If she had a few minutes longer maybe she could have seen something – some solution.
What happened to the surroundings?
Maddy stared about noticing the surroundings for the first time.
The home her dungeon had been in – the town it had been in…was gone.
Flattened.
The grass was burnt away.
The secret tunnels Maddy had initially hidden her reincarnation setup in…was gone.
What sort of hellscape had come to pass while Maddy was in the dungeon?