It took me a while to figure out how to tint all of Mirage green. After all, if all I did was create a giant green light source, then it would all be for nothing. Whatever part of Mirage the Elemental took over would still probably reflect whatever green light ended up being cast by the light source, so rather than construct an external reason for the change in hue, I had to construct an internal one.
In simpler terms, I was trying to turn my living room green, but instead of just screwing in a green light bulb, I had to replace the furniture, dye the floors, paint the walls and ceiling, and just overall remodel my entire house. I had to infuse into the very Laws of Mirage that everything here must emit a lightly green hue, and somehow spread that Law to encompass everything that I had built, everywhere that I had yet to personally travel to, and every plant and animal that I had designed. The way that I had accomplished this feat was through the very thing that caused Mirage to exist in the first place.
The construction of a Soul is comparable to one of those Russian nesting dolls. There is a base Core, and then a shell surrounding that core, and another shell surrounding the first shell, and so on. When you Ascend from a Mortal and become one of the Titled, that’s basically something like shedding the Outer Shell of your soul, which then splits into two. The ‘top half’ if you will, of the Outer Shell or First Shell, combines with the body, turning you into a being that is only half-corporeal. This is why Sophia can change her size at will, and how she literally has flames dancing throughout her body. The second half, however, is a little trickier.
The reason I specifically use the analogy of Russian Nesting Dolls is that the Shells surrounding your Core, your Center of Existence, are not perfectly secure. Their primary function is to separate after all, so they all have a kind of crack running through them. The seam of the future split, the perforated line for ease of access. This crack runs through all of your Soul Shells all the way to the Center of Your Existence, the Core of your Being. Now, while this seems kind of like a design flaw, it does have a very specific purpose.
When you become a Titled, and the First Shell of your Soul splits into two, one half goes to the body, and the bottom half squeezes through the Crack in the Shells, and serves to nurture your own Soul Core. Then, as you continue shedding more Shells, your body continually grows in power, and your own Soul Core is nurtured into Divinity. Basically, your Soul is the Egg of the God that you may grow to become. Growth is essentially a journey of making your physical body a Construct that can House a God, and making your Soul into the God Housed by your body. Then comes the final stage, the penultimate layer. The First Shell from the perspective of your Soul Core, the deepest part of your soul that is not the Center of your Existence.
This particular Shell is also called the Gateway to Divinity, the Border between God and Mortal, or the Heavenly Tribulation. This shell serves one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to join the Body that Houses God, with the God housed by the Body. A Complete unification of the physical with the ethereal, the spiritual with the mundane. You become a Living Soul. If you walk the path of Nonexistence, you become the Embodiment of your Aspect of Reality, whereas if you walk the path of Existence, you become the arbitrator of your Aspect of Reality.
It’s a little difficult to explain, so let me use a hypothetical example. Let’s say that Sophia is at this stage, and let’s give her a hypothetical Angelic Opposite of Desire’s Flame. Basically, if both of them reach this stage, then the Angel would become the Source of Desire’s Flame, and Sophia would be something like the Representative of Desire’s Flame. Of course, this is a bit of an oversimplification. It’s not like there are pairs of Gods after all, with one being the Source, and another being the Representative. In fact, from what Sophia’s been able to piece together, there are many times more Representative Gods than there are Source Gods.
The reason for that is: Representative Gods do not generally represent the Entirety of their concept. For example, there is no straight up Representative God of Fire, rather, there are a hundred different Representative Gods of different contexts of flame. There is a God of Fire Burning Out of Control, a God of Campfires Guarding You from the Night, a God of Fire that Warms the Home, etc.. Hence why Sean’s Aspect of Mysteries Hidden Within the Depths of the Ocean is so ultra-specific.
You may be asking why we know so much about Divinity when none of us are actually Gods. Well, that references back to the original topic about the Structure of Souls, specifically the Core of your Being, and the Crack that leads to it. By shedding the outer layer of your Soul, you gain an intuitive understanding of where exactly that Crack is located, and on a certain level, you are able to Touch Upon the Center of your own Existence. This Soul Core has certain inherent information within it, common sense stuff, basic understandings of its role in Creation. By touching upon the Soul Core, some of that intuitive knowledge is implanted in you, and the more Shells you open, the higher the percentage of that inherent knowledge you have access to.
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With both Sophia and Sean being Titled, they both have various amounts of this knowledge within them, and have been comparing notes for the past 4 years. Veronica may not be a Titled, but she’s interacted with more of them than Sean and Sophia combined, and also has learned an extraordinary amount from them about the nature of Souls. Especially as the magic that she uses most directly comes into contact with the Souls of her targets.
The reason that I mention all of this, is due to the fact that the Center of my Existence is the source for my Dream Aspect. This means that this whole time, my Dream Aspect has been slipping through the cracks in my soul, in order to become Manifested. As for why I can access this Dream Aspect as a mortal who has never opened one of my Shells? Who knows. But the point is, all of the Dream Aspect within me, all of Mirage, it all technically exists somewhere inside the Core of my Soul right? Which means, that if I were to use magic to temporarily give my soul a greenish hue, wouldn’t that henceforth affect all of Mirage?
And so, I tried it, and lo and behold, it worked! I successfully took literally everything constructed from my own soul, from my own Dream Aspect, and colored it green at the same time, using the most cartoonish logic that I’ve ever used in my life. But hey, this is a dream right? Cartoon logic is an absolute staple with dreams, and I will stand by that self justification until the day that I die. No it’s not lazy writing, it’s an extremely well-thought and pre-planned dive into the true nature of dreams.
Ahem, anyways, So I looney-tooned green into Mirage by painting my soul, and immediately started searching for the Dream Elemental. Not a sentence I ever thought I’d say aloud, but here we are. Cole said that he was going to check out the towns that I’d made, while Mira was going to look at all of the different Landscape Zones, minus the Beach that I was currently on. I decided to work my way back towards the Twin-peaked Mountain where the three of us spent most of our time.
If I had to scale the size of everything that I’d made in Mirage, the undisputed Champion of Largest Thing that I’ve made is without a doubt the home that I’ve built for us. Yes, while the Landscapes such as the Beach, the Valley, and the Grasslands all technically take up more space, they aren’t really composed of anything other than the Beach, the Valley, or the Grasslands. Meaning, other than the scenery, and whatever random animals happen to be passing through, there isn’t really anything there.
Our home, on the other hand, is an extremely elaborate, and borderline impossible existence that I’d perfectly detailed, from the sprawling, multiple layers of caves that it technically exists inside of, the wood paneling of the walls and floors, the completely absurd number of rooms that I’d made, everything. I had put a truly tremendous amount of effort into the Home where we all lived, and normally, I was quite pleased at how it all turned out.
At this particular moment, however, I found myself cursing my own constant tinkering. Our home was so ridiculously huge that even though I only really needed to pop my head into a room to check if the Elemental was there or not, after the first hour or so, I’d still only gotten to about half of all the rooms that I’d made. Jesus Christ, I don’t even use the vast majority of these rooms, why the hell had I gone so overboard with making all of them!! It’s not like I’m expecting guests anytime soon, or even ever for that matter. This Dream Elemental is a bit of a fluke, but normally, I’m the only person who can ever actually come to Mirage. Maybe once I absorb the Elemental Core and start figuring out how to use Dream Magic safely I’ll be able to bring other people here, but as of right now, the only purpose all of these extra rooms are serving is making my hunt extraordinarily difficult.
After another hour of searching, I’d finally finished verifying that the Elemental wasn’t inside of the home that I’d built. As far as I could tell, this limited the possibilities of where it was to three possible places.
One: It could potentially be in the vast field of clouds outside of what I’d developed, which, as far as I’m aware, extends out forever, and would make it extraordinarily difficult to search for the Elemental.
Two: It’s taken over part of or even a whole Landscape that I’d made, and Mira would soon come to let me know where exactly it was.
Three: It’s in one of my towns, and Cole would let me know which town it’s in. I could only hope that it hadn’t done too much damage to it if this is in fact the case, as I’d actually put in a decent amount of work, both in the architecture and the NPC’s of all of my towns.
Wait…NPC’s? Those are all technically part of Mirage, right? Couldn’t the Elemental currently be possessing one of the NPC’s I’d made?
Wait…
If NPC’s count as a part of Mirage that the Elemental could potentially take over…
Could it take over the kids too?