The endless waste

[aestrix]

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)

Comments

[greatestgift]

Sable gives her an extremely dubious look, which seems like the appropriate reaction here.

[light_another_life]

Slightly ominous plant woman frowns. She motions to the doll, and then to herself, then to Sable, and mimes talking with a hand.

[greatestgift]

"Okay, fine," she sighs, and she pulls a strand of her hair and holds it out to the slightly ominous plant woman.

[light_another_life]

Slightly ominous plant woman inclines her head, and wraps the strand around the doll.

"And now we can talk," she says in Sable's language, once that is done. "Hello."

[greatestgift]

"Hello," says Sable. "What new exciting wasteland have I arrived in?"

[light_another_life]

"... The... material world? Were. There other old exciting wastelands?"

[greatestgift]

"There are at least two other material worlds," she says, "and the other two each contain some fairly exciting wastelands."

[light_another_life]

"Charming. Well. I suppose now ours needs to be named. Do you have dream worlds, too?"

[greatestgift]

"I'm reasonably sure we don't."

[light_another_life]

"Ah. So. Your deaths are permanent?"

[greatestgift]

"...As opposed to what?"

[light_another_life]

"I mean, I'm a special case, but if you connect yourself to the dream world and then die, you go there instead of ceasing to exist. And someone can help you come back. Or if you're me, or become like me, you can come back without anyone's help at all."

[greatestgift]

"That sounds... useful. Is there some sort of horrifying catch?"

[light_another_life]

"It's not easy to become like me. And while bringing someone back is easier, it's not in itself easy. But... No, no horrifying catch."

[greatestgift]

"We don't have anything like that in either of my previous universes. But we should," says Sable.

[light_another_life]

"Yeah, agreed. Do you want me to connect you to the dream world? Though, admittedly, I don't know how it would work with the... other material worlds you've been to."

[greatestgift]

"...I'm slightly wary in case there's some sort of unforeseen horrible effect," she says.

[light_another_life]

"That's fair. You can also just go visit, instead of connecting to it, but that's still sort of. 'There could be an unforeseen horrible effect' worthy." Pause. "... If you are worried that the dream world and associated magics caused the current exciting wasteland, it didn't, that was another thing, and I am fixing it."

[greatestgift]

"What did cause your current exciting wasteland?"

[light_another_life]

"Unforeseen horrible effect of another type of magic. The magic isn't in itself bad, but if you don't know what you're doing it turns out that you can accidentally drain all life from the world and kill everything."

[greatestgift]

"Sounds like the world I grew up in," says Sable. "Somebody screwed something up and now world-eating life-sucking monsters periodically pop out of the ground and try to kill and enslave everything in sight."

[light_another_life]

"I am somewhat dismayed to hear that other worlds have monsters that show up to try and kill you. The ones here don't pop out of the ground, they appear out of darkness when there's nothing around to suppress them. The most effective way to keep them from appearing is to light up the area, but they're a symptom of the emptiness in the world, and if I fill it again they'll stop for good even in darkness."

[greatestgift]

"Define 'fill it up again'."

[light_another_life]

"Well, put lots of living things everywhere. To explain exactly what happened to cause the apocalypse - there are centers, hearts of - damn, you don't have the word for it, uh, essence? Of the world. You can drain the hearts of essence to power all sorts of magical things. Just taking a little bit is fine, they regenerate on their own. Taking more than that is ill-advised, but not in itself world ending. The problem is when you figure out a way to move the essence hearts, and then put them all in one location so you can easily recharge all of your magic things. Because then, you have places that don't have any essence hearts at all, and that will kill everything, because new hearts will try to form to replace them. But they won't have any essence, and will steal it from living things to reform. So that happened.

"In order to fix that, I need to feed them essence so that the new - nodes, nodes are a better term than essence hearts, so that the new nodes have essence again. There are a few ways to do that, but the method I'm favoring is growing lots of plants with a lot of essence to steal from, because even fixing the nodes wouldn't restore the climate, and I might as well do both at once."

[greatestgift]

"...So," says Sable, "if there were an artifact called a 'Staff of Regrowth' that could make plants grow in bare dirt, and I had about thirty of them, would that be helpful?"