---Maddy---
A large golden chalice the size of a mountain and yet small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, slowly filled with bubbling poison drop by metaphorical drop.
A cartoonish skull and crossbones was engraved on its surface with the subtlety of a child’s drawing. Holding the cup was a colossal hand, while simultaneously countless small hands the exact same size as the massive hand refined the raw water into its bubbling surface. The hands were all less than R had been – none of them had features, or a sign of intelligence and yet they were obviously R’s work.
Was this really a good idea? At a certain point, it was stupidity to ignore the bright neon warning sign wasn’t it? Poisonous stuff in nature usually marked itself as poisonous so that it wasn’t eaten. Eating the bright red and yellow frog then dying…that was stupidity, wasn’t it? Its not like the wonder was hiding how poisonous it was. She couldn’t claim they didn’t know.
Was she complicit in dooming the world somehow? Should Maddy join the hands refining? From this perspective, it didn’t seem too hard. The cup was doing most of the work. All she would have to do was squeeze that water over there and toss it in…should Maddy stop the hands? Run about and yell they had changed their mind?
Maddy popped over to a closer perspective. She was aiming for the lip of the cup and yet somehow missed. The world was parabolic – distances were wrong and hard to gauge. The cup itself also seemed to break her magic. Like the cup had a suction force drawing everything towards it. Maddy aimed for the lip of the cup and slipped.
She fell into the cup below attempting to teleport out twice and failing. She felt like a fly trapped in a glass bottle struggling to fly out of this slippery prison.
The last thought she had was an overwhelming fear that this process needed to be stopped.
…
A large tower grew up into the earth below. The tower of Babylon. The foolish hubris of mortals daring to look at the realm of gods. The higher the tower climbed into the depths, the more foolish it felt. They didn’t deserve this. They didn’t deserve to look.
And yet nothing about the tower itself ‘looked’ wrong. It looked safe and surprisingly well built. Good foundations. Good solid materials – refined reality travelled down the two roads towards it on an assembly line of workers. The workers were hands and they slaved away at their building. They tossed blocks of water to each other compressing and refining them before stacking them about.
They worked in silence but Maddy mentally gave them all a voice – they sang in her mind like Oompa Loompas or Disney Dwarves. Hi hoe. Hi hoe. Heave…heave…heave. Huff Huff Huff. Focus Maddy.
One of the paths brought nice solid blocks of water quarried from a deep mine. The other had weaker blocks. The weaker blocks refined worse, That’s all Maddy could do to explain it. Those were probably from Maddy’s attempt at using stone instead of water. And yet from this perspective Maddy could see they way the blocks were failing. She just had to focus on filling in the cracks better with the concept of water. She just had to push a little bit harder and her blocks would work just as well.
All that remained from this scene was an uneasy feeling of danger with no source or direction. Like something was hidden just out of sight. Some god was watching from the earth above – about to strike the tower in fury. Some invisible crack in the sky foundation below that no one had notice would let this tower fall.
They should tear the tower down and prostate themselves as soon as they could. Maybe then they could be saved.
It was kind of funny. In some ways this perspective made Maddy more worried than any filled with blatant poison. They knew they were creating a dangerous solution. They knew but thought they knew better. They thought they could control it. These workers were the same. They thought they could survive the wrath of the divine.
Foolish. Foolish foolish foolish.
Suddenly that ominous feeling grew. It ramped up from 10 to 12. Maddy was suddenly violently aware something was about to go wrong.
Maddy jumped towards the tower attempting to warn the workers. She flew down the road just as a block was being placed. The worker fumbled. The newest block fell. In that moment Maddy tried to raise her hands to catch the block and…
She didn’t have hands.
Of course she didn’t have hands. She was an eye. She could only see and watch in horror as the block fell towards her tired form. Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she step to the side?
She didn’t have legs. Of course. She needed to escape. Maddy stared up at the falling block in heretic defiance. She glared and tried to push it away with her will. One long drawn out moment later, Maddy was squished in that falling block, the reality of its form too heavy for her weak reality to bear.
…
Maddy stared at an incomprehensible pile of shapes. She didn’t know what to make of it other than ‘neat’. It sort of looked like an animated fractal? Weird for weird’s sake – as far as she was concerned it was complex for the sake of being complex and complicated without purpose. She couldn’t understand what she was looking at and she didn’t think anyone could.
She stared at the wonder for a while in frustration. Give me your secrets.
…
A great gnarled tree grew. A simple tree with small budding bulbs. A small trickle of water fertilized the growing monument.
It was kind of peaceful. Maddy understood this tree. It resonated with her affinity. The concepts within it spoke to her. Growth. Growth that would create more growth. Stepping forward Maddy sat in the shade and leaned her back against the trunk.
The trunk was strong. Much stronger than her human form could damage. Maybe if she had an axe she could chop at its bark…
But also, from this perspective Maddy wasn’t sure why she would even want to break the tree. High above she saw budding fruits. They weren’t ripe yet. When they were ripe, the tree would be ready and their gift would be done.
Through Maddy’s connection to the tree – her affinity to life that pushed her into the same category of being as this marvel, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the tree was good.
Those seeds. Those fruit…Maddy reached up and looked at them properly. She felt the way they grew, crystalizing point by miniscule point of reality into a stronger form and she knew suddenly what they were called.
Ambrosia. The fruit of the gods. With it they could make drinks, they could age wines or create cocktails.
She knew in that moment the ambrosia was the same as that within stories she knew. It was the food of gods. Poisonous to mortals but only because of how weak they were. A demi god could drink ambrosia and heal.
Was she a demi god? Maddy wasn’t sure. From a certain perspective she might be. From another more grounded perspective she wasn’t. The main problem with all this world settling, was how nothing was set in stone. If they grew the world to have gods and pantheons and mantles of divinity…well than she would probably count as something along that scale. She felt she had grown powerful enough to no longer be considered fully mortal?
And yet if they rejected the idea of even allowing something like gods to form…then she was obviously not divine. That system would have some sort of tangible magic separating the divine or demi divine and the mortal. Without a system in place for that she couldn't claim divinity from nothing.
In such a world divinity would not exist and their current state was closer to that than anything else the potential for something to not exist was greater than the potential for it to exist. It was all a manner of perspective.
It was a massive problem – this uncertainty – but one that was nice to have. A measure of agency she was only just beginning to appreciate.
Maddy lay back further and let her eye wander. She felt relaxed and an unknown amount of time passed alone with her thoughts.
This tree was a gift. A gift R had brought from somewhere Other. A gift they were now watering to grow properly. The seed was Other, but after growing it would be theirs.
A gift creating fruit that was ‘poisonous’…but the way it was poisonous was a manner of perspective. A lot of poisons were safe in small doses. If anything, small amounts of toxicity could be beneficial. Small dozes of poison could improve your bodies ability to handle large doses. A drop of certain poisons a day could make you immune to larger doses.
And this wasn’t even poison from a classical sense. It was ambrosia.
The only reason this gorgeous misunderstood tree and its miraculous fruit could be considered poisonous was…because they were too weak to appreciate how great it was. Too much of a good thing concentrated into one spot.
The box had even told them that fact. It was poisonous to greed. Poisonous in large doses to those too weak to handle it.
That was the problem. That was the great big ‘thing’ Maddy hadn’t taken into account up till now. Maddy tried to remember more of what James had transcribed from this seed.
Rank…6. 6 and several minuses indicating it was weakened somehow?
Something so far beyond what Maddy had experienced she couldn’t fully appreciate the scale of it. That fate dungeon she had experienced. The living cliff…had been something like rank 5 hadn’t it been? It had felt ridiculous in scale and strength…but limited in movement and purposefully set to allow them to escape. It had been in a rank 4 dungeon hadn’t it?
Maddy wasn’t sure how much time passed as she sat there beneath the tree. Minutes? Hours? Days?
She felt safe – like the tree was protecting her. She felt optimistic. This was a massive gift they were being given. It was not safe – not in any sense of the word – and yet that was part of the greatness of this gift.
They were being trusted with a knife. Trusted as an adult allowed to use sharp things in their own kitchen. If they cut themselves it would only be their own fault. That was the fundamental truth of this gift.
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Finally Maddy’s understanding began to settle. She’d come to appreciate this gift in a way that bordered on fanaticism. This was their chance of something greater. It was a gift with no strings attached other than ones they imposed on it themselves. If…if they failed to use it properly. If they settled as a weaker world and had R come in and raise them up a bit higher…well than there would be plenty of strings. He wasn’t an altruistic being.
Still this was their chance to prove themselves. The biggest chance of all. The ‘push’ they could ride.
Maddy’s understanding of what the gift actually was extended to her main goal of using her domain in the first place. She had wanted – needed – to know what the costs of this gift actually were. Long term but also while growing. What did this tree need to grow big and strong?
Maddy checked the ground and found it lacking. It had no fertilizer. No real weight for the tree to stand on.
Their world was too weak to properly host this tree. That was hard to fix. It was something that would solve itself when the world advanced but…that was all circular reasoning because they hoped this tree would strengthen their world.
The water currently trickling in to water the thirsty routes was what they had control over. It was exactly what the tree needed but not enough. It was drops when the tree needed a river.
They would need more. Much much more…Maddy tried to change her perspective to see just how much water they might need in comparison to what they had already given the tree…but she couldn’t. The world wobbled as she did – her current self was a multitude of perspectives resonating together. She was a life eye but she was also several temporary eyes formed from the environment. Maybe just maybe – if everything had worked correctly – an eye or two formed from the magic creating this wonder itself.
She was an existence that only existed as a meld of those many and acknowledging that made her suddenly aware of those other perspectives. Trying to change her current delicate balance by adding or removing eyes…was not something she could consciously do. Even acknowledging this state began to break the illusion - she was suddenly aware of time once again and this perspective outside time couldn't exist with a mental clock syncing her to reality.
Dimly she could sense those other eyes even as the vision wavered. Some seemed to be falling into this growing tree. Ground up and fed to the growing wonder like so much fertilizer. Some of the dying eyes were panicking, some didn’t even notice something was wrong. The tree drank deeply from those bits. Her eyes made better nourishment than the meaningless sea. Her eyes were water with meaning and strength.
Just the act of realizing how her perspective had formed and what the ‘truth’ actually was was breaking her perspective but Maddy still achieved her goal right at the end. She understood the tree drank reality. Water was the reality of choice, but the strength of that water was in its weight. It’s tier. The only reason the tree needed so much was because it was refining rank 0 water into rank 6 water. A single bucket of rank 6 water would be enough to nourish the tree fully.
The world was growing more and more fake.
The tree wavered – becoming a tower reaching closer and closer towards the dangerous dangerous state of independence. A chalice filling with ambrosia churning through endless weakness and pulling out strength bit by bit. A book with forbidden knowledge. A pendant given to a disciple. A word said in passing. A hand shake. A hope. A hole to a void in understanding. A blade. A refurbished toy damaged through misuse. Countless scenes with more or less understanding stacked on top of each other to infinity. None of it was real. None of it ‘felt’ real and part of that was how little her eyes could feel. She could see clearer than perhaps anyone else and yet was only just realizing her other senses were faked. Imagined. Like illusions without enough weight. All the scenes about her were partial metaphors and Maddy couldn’t even see the full picture because she only ‘saw’ and did not truly ‘feel’. Maybe R ‘felt’ but could not see? Had the power to reach out and grasp what he wanted but did not ‘know’ truly what the thing’s he grasped truly were?
And yet the world was fake as well wasn’t it?
Everything is fake…from a perspective.
That thought was enough to kick Maddy’s thought patterns into a whirl of activity.
The world had felt more and more fake recently – roughly from the same time as when she had learned to give reality to her illusions. That was the moment it felt like she had broken the world. If anything, she imagined could be come real…than what even was reality? Just a collection of imagined shapes stuffed with weight? Did anything even matter? If matter was fake what mattered anymore? Maddy giggled the sound bouncing between eyes and causing the world to waver.
The world isn’t wavering, my vision was wavering. The world righted itself once more.
Meaning mattered obviously. She could make weak shapes of any size she could imagine and yet hadn’t been able to form powerful swords able to cut through anything or anything similar. She needed meaning to actually craft something meaningful. That was the ingredient she kept pretending was less important than it was.
Maddy could feel herself loosing control in many microscopic ways.
More accurately she could see herself as if from a outside perspective and understood something new. Maddy couldn’t feel anything – everything she ‘felt’ was fake. The truth was she could only see what was happening, her mind imagining feelings to fill in gaps it believed she should have filled. Her imagination could be wrong but what she saw was all true from a certain perspective.
Could she trust any of her feelings? Her feelings were contradictory and shared…but currently the ones that felt the truest were the ones she’d gained from the tree. maybe because of her shared affinity. Maybe that had given her real feedback. Maybe the tree was a lie as well.
No, Maddy was certain it was the truest of perspectives she’d seen. It had taken the most eyes and had lasted the longest of any of the separate memories could tell her. Instead of an imagined feeling it was a real resonance with her life concept.
Maddy’s own weight was dropping rapidly moment to moment. She could see this now. Her own ‘reality’, her sense of self was diminishing. She was fueling her domain with her own existence – lighting a fire with her very being as fuel. A fire that allowed her to see into the dark but one that burned oh so much.
This time – perhaps because of the perspective she had gained with eyes of natural wonder, perhaps due to experience. Perhaps a combination of ether or neither. Perhaps a simple fact of her actually reflecting on herself in this moment...
This time she could actually feel it happening. She could feel her combined mental state slowly disassociating bit by bit from ‘reality’. She could see the end – her ‘self’ burned up and cast into embers. Could see an invisible point before that end state where she would automatically put the fire out in a sense of self-preservation. She’d be a bit of a mess but just barely alive and should she interact with others and build stuff and slowly heal once again.
But Maddy had already achieved her goal. She knew what they needed to do to ensure the tree survived. She shouldn’t need to wait till that survival state, should she? She had got what she came for?
She just needed to deactivate her current state.
Putting out the fire was easy. Trying to reform the remnants a bit harder – she ended up gathering as much of her surviving eyes as she could in one spot and resonating on the concept of orbs held withing the orbs forming an orb.
Slowly she distinguishes between temporary eyes that had collected bits of her soul and self and permanent ones she’d given enough power to maintain. From a certain perspective, they weren’t too different – if Maddy wanted to, she might even be able to try and force one of these ‘fake’ eyes into staying ‘alive’ for as long as possible…and yet they were also a drain on her. She could feel her self leaking into them. Leaking out of the holes in their existence. With a faint sense of loss Maddy broke those eyes allowing the self inside of them to rejoin the whole, the constant drain disappearing as she did.
She then slowly focused on reforming her body. An illusion was easy to project – she’d built a spell into her soul to project an illusion of herself after all – and stuffing her ‘self’ into that illusion was fine as well. The only difficulty was one of efficiency. Her self illusion…wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t a perfect illusion even if it was growing better and better the more she burned herself into it. The main parts she needed to work on were all eternal – even if the skin was perfect, her organs were half imagined and shoved together randomly. She still needed to heal her body and yet life mana only fixed superficial damage. It didn’t reach her soul beneath.
Her ‘stuffing’ was also inefficient. She had wasted some self in the stuffing – perhaps due to her lack of soul power or soul speed. Her creation eyes could see the lingering wisps of reality – the misty smears of air and ground that were just a bit more real than everything else and yet resisted her attempt at claiming it.
She needed to specifically build and grow a spell to do this action for her. A button she could press instead of her feeble imaginary hands.
Next time she used her domain she would prepare better.
Slowly feeling returned to the puppet that housed her combined focus. She realized she was currently in Jess’s arms. It felt nice. Hugs were nice. That very act of feeling the arms around her and knowing that someone cared healed Maddy slightly. Grounded her ever so slightly.
Leaning back wordlessly, Maddy accepted the embrace from behind and settled.
…
Maddy felt off. She felt off and diminished and weak and damaged but she felt mostly like herself so that was a plus. She could handle the ‘feelings’ of fakeness her body was sending her. The body was fake after all, of course it felt like everything was fake.
Instead, Maddy meditated on the meaning of herself and on the effect she had on others. She was real. The her that controlled this body was real. She mattered at least to her friends because of the way she affected them. Even if there was no deeper meaning to anything, if people thought she mattered that was meaning enough. If Maddy thought she mattered she didn’t need to deal with anything dull like the ‘truth’.
“I’m good now,” Maddy said while making no move to pull away from her friend. “Before anything else, we need to talk about the dungeon that’s growing and what we can do to ensure it succeeds.”
“What do I need to do?” James asked, dropping to the grass near them purposefully ignoring the entire situation to feel more normal.
“Well, we could do nothing. We can continue watering it like we are currently. Defend it from anything that arrives to stop it and hope for the best. From what I can tell…this passive solution will work but the amount of water we will need might very well be as much as the entire ocean. The good news is that the ocean disappearing isn’t actually a cost like I was worrying about. It’s just a side effect.” Maddy began shifting backwards to sit more upright, finding herself pulled onto Jess’s lap.
“Plan zero, do nothing. Already doing that. Easy enough” Troy spoke dropping down with them as well.
This was comfy.
“No matter what we do, we need to continue watering from the ocean – if that trickle stops, the tree will get too dehydrated and die.” Maddy continued. “The tree’s not actually a tree obviously.” She laughed at her friend’s expressions.
“The good news is I believe we can actually take a more active role in things. The main reason we need so much water is due to the quality of our current water. If we can boost it into a stronger form before feeding it to the tree or find a better drink, then the massive amount of default water we would need drops.”
Troy sighed. “I think I get it. I shouldn’t have used my dungeon on myself. If I knew this would help us all I’d have tried to make a dungeon that rewarded super water.”
“Hey now. I’m glad you got to use it to strengthen yourself first.” James winced. “The only gift that needs to be used up is mine after all. Other than a custom dungeon do you have other options?”
Maddy nodded slowly. “I think with enough meaning I can make a true converter. My stone attempt is a failure because of how meaningless the stone is and how little relative effort I put into it.”
Maddy thought for a moment about what she would actually need to get this theoretical ritual to work. To start. She’d need to borrow some concepts. This spell would need components – materials with innate concepts she could meld to the goal…
“If we want to speed up the creation and lower the costs we will need a lot of monster corpses,” Maddy spoke after a while.
“Refining them into fertilizer will work better than relying completely on the ocean. I’ll also need some monsters with concepts related to transformation and transmutation, refinement, purifying or distilling, growth or nurturing growth…I don’t need all of them but each material you get will increase the efficiency of my spell and the more I can get out of using my own concepts the closer to perfect it will get. Obviously if you find high-quality water that would work as well, but I have a water concept so it’s the least important.” Maddy listed off her shopping list.
“We’ll have to wait for night to start hunting most monsters” Troy spoke his thoughts aloud. “We could try and find nests or dungeons others have made to raid…but if we head too far away we won’t be able to defend this until then.”
“Night should work…is there any way we can use the growing dungeon to help fuel the dungeon?” James asked hopefully.
“From what I can tell, the current growing form is completely different from what it will look like at the end,” Maddy shut down that hope.
“No magical Ponzi scheme for us,” Troy muttered.
“I can stay protecting the area?” Jess offered. That made sense. Her domain seemed focused more on protecting people than inanimate objects, but she did have that barrier and defensive spells.
“Of course, obviously stay safe if we are splitting up. The general monsters are weaker than the hardest stuff we’ve faced but you could still get surrounded and overwhelmed.” Maddy added.
James seemed to think that was especially funny.
They still had quite a bit of light left in the day so pending anything else to do, Maddy formed a second makeshift illusion house and they had a rough dinner of rocks. Soon the light began dimming and the group was ready.
Time to put in some work.