Cole’s POV
After I made the plan with Dad and Mira, I went out searching the various towns for traces of the Elemental. I waited until Green covered everything, just like we’d planned, then started inspecting everything. The insides of every building, the streets themselves, the NPCs…everything seemed to check out okay.
To be honest, I was a little worried about Mira. Obviously, if Dad finds the Elemental, he’ll be able to handle it just fine, and I understand the situation well enough to know that this is a completely unknown enemy we’re dealing with, so if I find it, my first move will be to go find Dad for help, but…Mira? Honestly, I don’t really understand the actions that that girl takes sometimes. What exactly is her obsession with burying bunnies alive at the beach? Why can I find distinctive memories of her trying to teach various birds how to commit crimes and insult people? Why did she spend a full day pretending to be a frog that one time?
The way our memories work, I know everything that Mira and Dad do, but I have to guess as to the reasons behind the actions taken. For Dad’s memories, every action he takes on some level just makes sense. Even when he does stupid stuff, like the time he set himself on fire and almost died of asphyxiation, or when he broke his hand trying to split a boulder by punching it, or when he dangled himself upside down with magic until he passed out, then asked us if anything odd had happened to Mirage, each one of those had a very clear reason behind them.
When he set himself on fire, he was trying to develop a fighting style that took advantage of how he was fireproof, and only made a mistake in forgetting that fire generates smoke, and would make it difficult for him to breathe. If he fixed that one small aspect, he would probably be able to fully use his ‘Burning Man Style’ in actual combat. When he broke his hand punching a boulder, it was due to a test on how much his Baptism had strengthened his body. One, he wanted to find out just how physically powerful he was, and two, he wanted to see just how tough his skeleton and internal organs had become, to pinpoint exactly what weaknesses he still had. When he hung himself upside down until he passed out, he was looking for the connection between the Mind, the Brain, and the Soul. Obviously the three things are all connected in some way, but the only means by which Dad can assess the state of his soul is through Mirage.
Mira, on the other hand…I can’t figure out why she does what she does at all. Dad believes that after he created her personality, she lost something, in being left alone, or during the process through which she possessed her own body, but I’m not really sure. All that I do know is that she constantly seems to act without thinking, and if she does that in this situation, there’s a risk that if she’s the one who finds the Elemental, she may just go charging at it without letting us know.
That’s why I’m desperately hoping that the Elemental is either in our Home where Dad’s looking, or in one of the towns where I’m looking. Not that I don’t trust Mira, but…I need to protect her from herself. She’s very used to life here in Mirage where she can act without thinking and suffer no consequences as a result, but we’re currently dealing with an outside force, something that actually could pose significant risk to her. For the first time, there’s actually something I can do to look after our little family, so I’m gonna do everything in my power to handle it.
To be perfectly honest, our relationship is…strange. It can’t not be, after all, we’re not ‘actually’ family. We may act like a Dad and his two kids, but we’re all just one person. A lonely man’s dream of being surrounded by people who need him. Maybe that’s the real reason why Mira seems so young. Maybe Dad’s subconscious mind wanted to make a personality that would make him feel needed by someone, so ended up developing an immature personality so that he would have something to take care of. Someone who would always be happy to see him.
Sure, Aunt Sophia and Mama Ash are always happy to have him around, but they don’t really need him around. If one day, Mama Ash left, she might miss Dad and Aunt Sophia, but she’d get over it eventually. And Aunt Sophia…she has lived for Millennia without him, and is far more capable at basically everything than he is, so she doesn’t really need Dad around, she just wants him around. With kids though…it’s different. With kids, they NEED their parents around, to pay attention to them, to play with them. And in Mira’s case, there’s a decent chance that she’ll be a kid for Eternity, so no matter how powerful Dad becomes, or how many Millennia he lives, he’ll always have someone who needs him around.
Me on the other hand? I was created for one reason, and one reason only. Dad only comes to Mirage for the 8 hours when he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, he returns to the real world for the other 16. He didn’t want to leave Mira alone for the majority of every day, so he made me to keep her company, so that she wouldn’t have to spend 2/3s of Eternity completely isolated. In fact, that might be why he chose Xavier to base my personality off of, the most dutiful and loyal person that Dad knew. That way I wouldn’t just know that I was supposed to keep Mira safe, but I would WANT to keep Mira safe.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
As I considered all of this, I made my way through the towns that Dad had built, inwardly cursing him for his constant tinkering. Did we really need 10 towns full of NPC’s in a world where only the three of us had any real semblance of conscious thought? Who the hell is he making this stuff for? He hasn’t even learned anything new after the third town, and he’s just making them for the sake of making them!! Normally, that’s fine, as he needs something to do for the 8 hours he spends here every day, but damn, couldn’t he have predicted this extremely isolated and impossible to foresee situation beforehand and limited himself a little to make my life easier?!
I grumbled to myself as I dutifully searched through all of the towns. Thankfully, Dad hadn’t yet done any sort of work on making a sewer system, as none of the NPCs actually produce waste of any kind, so I didn’t have to crawl through muck during my inspections. I’ll take time consuming work over disgusting work any day.
The town that I was currently investigating was based on the town where Dad met Mama Ash, though he’d taken their concept from a 3 and dialed it all the way to 300. According to him, Dad was inspired by the idea of having a town that existed on multiple elevations underground, though he wanted it to feel freer and more open than the original town did, so rather than having a complex series of caves, he just completely hollowed out a damn mountain instead. The Twin Peak Mountain where the three of us lived eventually became the highest point of a mountain range that Dad had made, and further down this mountain range, was this one specific and peculiar mountain. Dad had wanted to make sure he didn’t forget which mountain was the one with a town, so he invented a new kind of plant he called a ‘Fire Lily’, and made them all grow on the outside of that one particular mountain.
Fire Lilies were a truly beautiful flower, that seemed to perfectly combine the opposing natures of water and flame. They were all a mottled sort of gray color, and their petals were all significantly larger than you’d find on a normal lily. This made it so that whenever there was a breeze, the petals would all flicker around, giving off the appearance of a colorless flame, like a campfire in a black and white movie. However, rather than giving off any of the heat that you’d expect, fire lilies are actually remarkably cool to the touch, and tracing one with your finger feels almost exactly like letting cold water run over your hands. And according to Mira, if you happen to eat one, it feels almost indistinguishable from drinking a refreshing glass of water.
Due to the appearance of these flowers, we all took to calling this place ‘Ghostfire Mountain’. Ghostfire Mountain had only one entrance, and it was at the very peak, where there was a ring of the only colored fire lilies that Dad had made creating a violently purple beacon showing the location of the hole that had a spiral staircase leading down into the town.
When you make your way to the end of the spiral staircase, everything opens up, and you see that practically the entire mountain is completely hollow. Stairs and platforms are all carved into the sides of the mountain, and from the various platforms, bridges have been built to various places all throughout town. Because Dad doesn’t have to worry about pesky things like the Laws of Physics, magnificent Towers of various sizes are placed all throughout the mountain, one starting from the actual ground and reaching up all the way to the base of the spiral staircase, with the second tallest tower placed on the ground reaching only to the middle of that tower. Aside from the ones placed on the ground, there are also towers that had their base set up basically in midair, connected to the stairs and platforms in the mountainside through small bridges that led to their entrance.
The occupants of this town were an odd race of NPC’s that Dad had created. While they could be seen, they didn’t really have a physical body, and instead seemed like roving motes of light. Dad calls them the ‘ShadowEaters’. Their diet, as described by the name, is literally the concept of Shadow itself. The paradox here is that the more shadows they eat, the brighter they become, and end up casting more shadows purely by existing. And even if, hypothetically, all of them worked together to devour every single shadow, and ended up all becoming so bright that every single square inch of Ghostfire Mountain was illuminated, because they would have nothing more to eat, they would gradually starve, and grow dimmer and dimmer until shadows once again were cast inside the hollow mountain.
This is the latest town that Dad has designed, and he considers it more of a contemporary art piece than an actual town. Something about the ‘self sabotaging nature of man’, and the ‘eternal cycle and struggle of consumption’. To be honest, I don’t really get it, but luckily I don’t need to. I just need to make sure everything’s green here, and don’t really need to waste time debating whatever philosophical mood Dad was in when he built the town.
Checking every single room in each individual tower was a pain in the ass. Dad had intentionally made this place overly complicated for aesthetic purposes, but goddamn it, I kept ending up missing a tower and accidentally walking over a bridge that would take me to a tower that I’d already inspected. Yes, I get it, the place looks insanely beautiful, and it’s not like anyone actually lives here, so normally the complete impossibility of convenient travel doesn’t actually piss anyone off, so he’s never had any reason to consider simplifying the town’s design, but Jesus Christ, couldn’t you have predicted that we may eventually have to search for a monster that can invade dreams, despite the fact that no one we’ve ever talked to has ever even heard of such a thing!! It would have made my life so much easier!!!
Finally, I had inspected all but one of the towers. I had saved the biggest one for last, the one whose base was connected to the ground, yet reached all the way up to the spiral staircase leading out of the mountain. Room by room, I peeked my head in, checking that everything was green, before moving on to the next one. The constant struggle of trying to find where I was trying to go, along with the constant state of everything being perfectly fine, made it so that I ended up letting my guard down a little too much.
To the point where, when I opened one particular door and glanced inside, I had already closed it by the time that I thought that I had noticed something weird. Opening it again, I realized what I’d seen. The pale green light that’s been emanating from everything that I’ve looked at so far, was nowhere to be found. In particular, the ShadowEater that was staying in this particular room, rather than a light green, was emanating a soft, grayish light. The same color of light that they usually give off, and the same color of light that the fire lilies give off. Before I could fully realize what I was looking at, before I could fully comprehend that I’d found the Elemental, it suddenly surrounded me in ghostly light, and before everything went black, I heard,
Such a Delicious Dream You Are.