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]

"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?"

[light_another_life]

Blink blink.

"Yes. Not - 'I finish fixing the world and start bringing people back by lunch time' helpful, but yes."

[greatestgift]

"Well," she says, "there is, and I do. Along with plenty of other things, but it seems like you have less use for a bow that shoots dragons."

[light_another_life]

Snort. "Yeah, I neither have dragons to shoot nor a reason to shoot dragons from a bow. The monsters aren't particularly difficult to kill, just numerous, and my perfectly ordinary magic dream world bow works just fine."

[greatestgift]

"The bow that shoots dragons is very useful for when an enormous tentacle-faced creature appears out of nowhere and tries to eat you," Sable explains. "And it doesn't require dragons as ammunition; it'll turn any ordinary arrow into a sparkly flaming dragon."

[light_another_life]

"... Your previous wastelands were very exciting. An enormous tentacle-faced creature shows up out of nowhere and tries to eat you. Why. Actually, no, better question - how."

[greatestgift]

"Terraria. Is the name of that world, and also the answer to both of those questions," she says.

[light_another_life]

"It sounds murderous and insane. I don't think I would like to visit."

[greatestgift]

"It's murderous and insane," she agrees, "but full of useful things."

[light_another_life]

"Such as the wings?"

[greatestgift]

"Such as the wings, and the Staff of Regrowth, and the Celestial Wrath - that's the bow that shoots dragons - and the Coat of Many Pockets," she pats one of the many pockets of her coat, "and weird dyes that turn things pretty colours, and candy that makes you permanently healthier."

[light_another_life]

"... Nevermind, I might want to visit. Provided I can reach the dream world from it just fine, and therefore come back if I get killed."

[greatestgift]

"I have no idea whether you can reach the dream world from it, and setting up transport back there will be... nontrivial, but if I can get back there at all, I can bring you to a safe place where nothing will try to kill you while you test your dream world status."

[light_another_life]

Nod. "What does transport back entail?"

[greatestgift]

"I try to build a magical sending/receiving station that matches up to the one I left behind. If it works, then going back and forth becomes very easy. If it doesn't, I probably disappear into yet another new universe never to be seen again."