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The endless waste
Once, this planet teemed with life. It doesn't do that, anymore. The ground is dry and cracked and occasionally broken up by charred remains of trees. There are no birds, no bugs, no living plants - nothing but an empty, endless waste.
With one exception.
But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.
with Sable (Kappa)
with Aisilian (Link)
with Grendyne (Rockeye)
with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)
With one exception.
But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.
with Sable (Kappa)
with Aisilian (Link)
with Grendyne (Rockeye)
with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)
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The site contains a node! It's hard to see with ordinary vision, just a faint twist in the light, but it's definitely having an effect on the area around it.
...
It seems to be eating things. That might be alarming.
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... It's nibbling at him. Just a little.
Of course, his existence refuses to change as a result, so it's mostly amusing.
Well, anyway, this is a tad dangerous, isn't it. Better seal it off.
This one's a little tricky, since he's trying to operate three dimensions and his template only covers one, but...
Carefully, he removes a cloth from his backpack. Despite being made fabric, it's rigid as a board, and refuses to be tilted away from vertical; he has to pull it straight out, without rotating it.
Then he walks fearlessly up to the node, and swipes the fabric across it.
As the fabric strikes the node, there is a sudden ... "sound," a sensation that a gong has been rung, without the attendant noise; the trembling in one's bones and in one's ears, but without the actual sound. And when the fabric strikes the node, instead of passing through, it deforms, bending around it.
As the fabric bends, the node seems to recede infinitely into the distance, without actually moving. And then the man wraps the fabric entirely around the node, twisting it off and tying it shut - and the node vanishes entirely.
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What.
No, that is not the appropriate thing to do with the node. Miss walks-into-hurricanes is questioning his life choices. She displays this by making a strangled sound, and face palming.
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Obviously he has no idea what he's messing with. She's going to educate him. This would be a lot easier if she had a translation poppet, but she seriously suspects she cannot leave this man alone for... any period of time. Luckily she has her node note taking supplies. Maybe with those she can overcome the communication barrier, at least a little.
First things first, though. Safety. She retrieves two essence potions, one for her, one for him. She hands him his, and sips at hers while retrieving paper and her quill. She crooks a finger at him to please pay attention.
(Her quill is magic. The potions are magic. Lots of things this woman carries: magic.)
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(He is not particularly surprised by this woman's magic artifacts. Given his home Truth, it would not unduly surprise him to see the magic equivalent of a bear gun strapped to her back.)
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She begins drawing. It becomes apparent that her magic quill can do multiple colors: she draws a green forest with little slightly shitty lollipop trees. She then gets to drawing the important parts: nodes. She draws little black outlined circles, filled with blue scribbles.
A stick figure is added to the world. The stick figure is shown siphoning blue scribbles from the circle, and then shooting what looks to be a lightning bolt. She draws an arrow from the blue scribbles to the lightning bolt, just to make that very clear. Blue scribbles = magic.
She draws a house far away from the circle with blue scribbles, and a stick figure. The circle with blue scribbes is far away from the house. The stick figure makes a frowny face; how tragic. She draws the stick figure next to the circle with blue scribbles, little sticky arms raised above its head. Then, she crosses out the circle, and draws an arrow to a place near the house. There, she draws another circle with blue scribbles. Apparently stick figure man moved the node to a place that is more convenient.
New page. House, again. This time, though, she puts several blue scribble filled circles by the house. She draws the forest, again, and leaves it empty of blue scribble filled circles. She motions to this in an expressive sort of way. There are, in fact, no blue scribble filled circles in a place that is not near the drawn house.
And then she draws a circle in the forest. ... It does not get filled with blue scribbles. She draws an unhappy face in the circle, instead. She motions from the unhappy face circle to the node that he's covered with a cloth, and the black circles on the map. These are the same.
Blue arrows are drawn from the forest into the unhappy circle. She draws an arrow to another part of the paper, and redraws the unhappy circle, and the blue arrows. The trees she redraws, but without their leaves. Instead she leaves empty branches. She does not color the ground green, she colors it brown. She points to this, and then motions expressively around them. That did this.
She goes to the part of the paper that has multiple circles. She draws the blue arrows, siphoning out of several of the circles and into the one in the center. She draws black arrows from the outer circle to the inner circle, and then an arrow to the last blank space on the paper. She draws the circle - much bigger this time. She scribbles it with blue... And then she draws a black smiley face with angry eyebrows overtop it. She motions from angry eyebrow circle to the red circles on her map. These are the same.
She draws blue arrows towards the angry eyebrow circle. She redraws the house, but tipped to its side and its roof unattached, and draws a black arrow from it to the angry eyebrow circle. Apparently the angry eyebrow circle eats houses. The artist declines to draw illustrative stick figures, but if her guest is paying attention, he can probably guess what happened. Lots of people died, probably.
New paper. She draws an unhappy circle. Next to it, she draws a stick figure that has orange hair (and silently is glad that she has such a distinguishing feature), and gives the stick figure a scribbly blue shield. She taps the potion she's still occasionally sipping, and the points at the blue shield. She draws blue arrows from the blue shield to the unhappy circle. But, instead she gives her little stick figure self a smiley face. Obviously, stick figure her is fine.
Stick figure her gets a thing that looks like a potion! She draws blue scribbles from it, and then little blue arrows from it towards the unhappy circle. She draws a black arrow from the circle to another part of the page, and draws the circle again, this time with blue scribbles in it. Then, her stick figure self is drawn again, stick arms above her head and with a smiley face. Obviously this thing is the ideal. She motions from this to the black dots with X's on the map.
Then, she gestures to the node nearby. We need to do this to that.
Does he understand?
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What he doesn't understand is the nature of their source of magic. It's certainly not mana, or there wouldn't be anything left at all; if there was empty space left over where a planet used to be, he'd consider them lucky, if those dots were manavores.
Reaching into his endless pocket, he pulls out ... a spatula.
It's. Mildly gaudy-looking, matte black and edged with a glimmering blue crystal, and its handle is wrapped in what looks like platinum, if platinum was as supple as leather.
And with it, as if he was flipping an egg, he digs into the drawing the woman has made, and brings out one of the blue squiggles. Simply pulling the drawing out of the page, like digging up a worm.
He peers at it for a moment, then flips it - and the strange drawing flies up and comes down as a tiny, tiny blob of pure essence.
... It's not real, though. It's already simply - vanishing, ceasing to exist.
It seems to be enough for him, though, as he frowns mildly at it.
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What the everliving fuck is that.
The woman tilts her head.
Is he trying to study essence? That - is about the only thing she can figure out from his bizarre magic spatula trick.
Well, okay, she can help him out, there.
She retrieves an essence potion, and uncorks it. She carefully pours out a few drops onto her palm, and the recorks it with a thumb. She shows the strange man with his bizarre magical gadgets. It's not, actually, blue. It's crystal clear, and where the light hits it, it brightens and shimmers and seems to almost glow. Already it's beginning to dissipate, into her skin and into the air, but it'll linger long enough for him to look at it.
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He takes his own potion, pouring out a few drops onto his thumbnail - though they never quite hit, hovering in place an inch above. Pulling yet another gadget out of his pockets - this one a pair of gold-silver inlaid glasses, with frames so clear they look empty until the light strikes them right - he puts it on, and frowns at what he sees.
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It feels - unprototyped, easily malleable. Somewhat like a stem cell - easily able to be adapted into other things and then staying that way. With a bit of a push you could probably even get it into a non-living form, but that feels highly advanced and difficult to accomplish. It looks like it might be possible to tell what's been adapted from it, though he'd have to have an example of it to tell for sure.
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A curious form of thaumaturgy, then. Using some sort of reified liquid life as fuel... that and the sucking presence that he can feel pulling on his existence would certainly explain this wasteland.
Tch. He'd better get to fixing that, then. His duplication machine... well, it works on everything, but it may not be efficient enough to create large amounts of reified abstracts. He'll have to consider new designs...
Mind whirring, he looks around, now that he knows what to look for. Is there anything in the vicinity that is particularly ... essence-tial?
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In this case, the something is... Well, there are two somethings, actually. Two distinct types. Some type of categorization thing, something that neatens up the things around it and organizes them in efficient manners. Too much and you would get something stuck, maybe, too anti-wasteful to actually do anything, but 'too much' doesn't feel like the standard for this node. If left to its own devices, it would quietly bring order and efficiency to things around it.
The second is far more interesting, however. What is that, understanding? Knowledge? Not quite, it's not random knowledge, it needs a something with it. Perhaps that was why the orderly essence was so easy to understand, this one was helping. Some sort of connection to other things, sympathy, maybe? Empathy might be closer. 'This is how this thing near you works,' almost, but it doesn't feel very well aimed on its own, does it, it would need something to aim it.
Or, it would, if there were any in the node. There's a little hint of more essence being made in it, but whatever it's managing to make is not keeping up with the demand just from the node itself. It doesn't have enough essence to circulate; it's starving. Long starved, actually, by how the node looks. Giving it all the essence it requires all at once would hurt it, overwhelm it, like a stomach that has starved for so long and shrunk being given a huge meal all at once. It would - not throw up, exactly, but whatever would happen seems unhealthy for the node, and it's already in poor condition as is.
... Oh. And what he's done hasn't helped. Actually, it's made it quite a bit worse, though it hasn't had any instant immediate effect. It can't pull in the meager essence it was pulling in at all, now, it might just chew up all of the essence it has in it, completely run out. Be a tiny miserable little vacuum, hurting and starving, all alone in the pocket universe he's put it.
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She waves a hand in front of his face, and then motions towards the node, then the essence potions. She would like to feed it. While she's quite happy to help him understand what's going on here, she has her priorities. Node first.
(... She is made out of essence. Screams it, actually. And if the node was interesting, she is fascinating - but perhaps he would like to help the node before studying her, first.)
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Even if it doesn't have a mind, it's still alive.
(And anyway, it's clear this world really needs them.)
Stepping back to where he bound it - exactly where he bound it, to inhuman precision - he simply opens the bagged cloth, and with a warping of space the node reappears.
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The woman smiles at the node rather fondly, and then gets out a book of something and writes... something... in it. She marks the black dot signifying the node on her map with at set of symbols, and copies the symbols to the book. She notes another black dot on the map, and writes another entry with added symbols for that one, too.
It might be possible that the world doesn't need him. It seems to already have someone. But the someone probably won't mind sharing; there is an awful lot of world to save.