Orphan At The Edge Of The World
/ Orphan at the Edge of the World 30 OEW 29
Orison floated in a dark place but he wasn't stationary. Something pulled him. In a second, an eternity, he found himself before a blue-green sun that shown with the bright liveliness of a Caribbean sea. Passing it's outer expression, he found himself in a place that was a mashup of giant mall, temple and a touch of furnishings that made it feel like a home.
Passing a mirrored wall, he expected to either see a sandy haired boy or a tired and gloomy man. He saw neither. Instead, the reflection showed a person somewhere between man and boy, something between human and otherworldly. With a guilty subtle checking of his surroundings, he inspected other features before breaking into a perverse smile.
"We really are a vain person, aren't we?" a mirthful boy's voice said behind him.
Ears burning, Orison whipped around to see a ghostly visage of the original. "I thought we were merged. Is something wrong?"
Exasperated, boy Orison replied, "Nothing's wrong. We ARE merged. To put it in a way you'll understand without getting all metaphysical, I'm a subordinated processor to the main one. You know, if you want to see the entire soul as a computer."
Teen Orison said, "I wanted to be equal with you, not subordinate you or whatever!"
Boy Orison laughed and said, "You're still holding on to this fantasy that you're Al pretending to be Orison until the two of you are one proper soul? No wonder I look like the boy instead of Al... Most of what makes me yours, CAME from Al, statistically speaking. You were technically already one soul as soon as you woke up... What made you so confused and caused you to jump to conclusions wasn't your soul, it was your mind.
"Once again, to keep things simple, I'll use tech you understand. If you liken a soul to a cassette tape, then the spiritual planes are magnetic fields. Over the time it takes souls to pass through them, maybe reincarnating or facing some semi-permanent afterlife scenario, their old lives are forgotten. The duality discomfort you feel is because neither soul was purged of its nurture aspect. Aaaand the child's body has a significantly different 'nature' than Al's body did. You handled it well, considering your misunderstanding. At least you didn't have a psychotic break."
Orison looked at the boy shaped entity and asked, "Okay, let's take all of that as true, for the moment... I get what you say you are but how did you come to be and what are you willing to tell me about 'you'."
The ghostly boy said, "I'm willing to share everything about me but you won't understand it, shouldn't even try to. It would be bad for your spiritual and mental health... I see the suspicion, so let me give you a piece of evidence. I am the spiritual equivalent of what your space is, intermediaries between the parts of yourself you have yet grown and evolved the ability of your meta and mundane consciousness to safely interact with directly. Because you created the 'inventory space' and I, you can continue absorbing 'alien energy' and foreign spiritual essence without the nearly endless concerns a mortal would usually have from doing so, until one day, you won't be one anymore."
Massaging his head, Orison said, "Anything else you do for me or anything else it would be good for me to know? Also, I think it would be good to name you something so I don't think of you as me, us, whatever."
The child specter said, "Though I may be distinctive, I AM still a part of you. Attempting to separate me completely would be unsafe... How about Interface, no, Beta. If Orison is Alpha and Omega of this internal space, then I would be Beta. I am, after all, a part of yourself that will see many 'editions' and 'updates' as you grow.
"As for what I do for you and useful knowledge, if I know it then you already do but I suppose I can give you an uncluttered perspective of that. Honestly though, we won't have many chances to allow you to talk to yourself like this. You shouldn't even want them.
"Since you're about to wake up, I can tell you a quick thing or two that your dissonance keeps you from seeing clearly... Soul crystals are spirit poop. It's what your soul, body and 'space' either don't want or can't use safely. By inference, eternium crystals are miracle grow, processed and super concentrated spirit poop. It's creation breaks down many of the impurities within soul crystals, allowing it to be used in small quantities to invigorate mortal bodies and magic conduits but it is still filled with things that aren't good for physical vessels.
"Creating enchantments are a great intermediary for understanding it's usage but the next logical step is the creation of artifacts. It's a large and dangerous step though. Take your time and learn more. Continue being as thirsty for know-"
Orison sat up, coughing and spluttering. While his vision was clearing, he felt the need to remove and readjust his loincloth as it was biting fiercely into his waist and other more sensitive areas.
In an unfamiliar, mellow voice, Orison asked, "What happened?"
"The stick that hit Rithus, turned you into a monster. Since you sort of looked reptilian, I asked Rithus if he could talk to you since you didn't seem to understand us. For whatever reason, when he knelt down and made some sounds at you, you just nodded and started busting a hole through the floor.
"We didn't know what to do about that since Rithus told us not to get close to you or you might attack but as soon as you fell down I started giving you some of the food because you said it would turn people into Highlanders. Morrel made fun of me but looks like I'll get to laugh now because it worked... mostly."
Panicked and wishing his eyes would clear faster, Orison said, "What do you mean by 'mostly', Gan?"
Gan took a sharp breath and paused, making Orison's anxiety wrench up several notches before the scout said solemnly, "I-It's just... You lost some time. It's not a lot, not really."
Nearly in a hyperventilating state, Orison wanted to hit Gan for scaring him needlessly.
Laughing in relief, Orison asked, "How old do I look exactly?"
Gan's silhouette looked Orison over critically and said, "The only light in here's coming from the ghost crystal behind you and, uh, a bit from your eyes but that's got a lot more normal in the last little. I'd say somewhere between fifteen and twenty, er, seventeen...Yeah, don't worry about it. I'm sure you didn't lose that much."
Orison shook his head at the irony of his situation. He had been so worried about not growing fast enough and overshot his mark. His mind already started turning on how to flip it around to work for him.
Casting a brighter light spell, Orison stuck it to the ceiling and consigned what remained of the room to illusion status, noticing that further alchemy would be pointless since all the 'edible' looking ingredients had at some point ended in his or Gan's mouth.
"Where's everyone else?" Orison asked.
Gan chuckled and said, "The trussed hen started to wake up so Rithus and Morrel took her back. The Marshlander's more than a sight better off. We all are. It's just that most people here never really payed much attention to Rithus and Morrel can hide...really well. You and I aren't that, um, recognizable. I mean, we are but not in a way that doesn't raise questions."
With softer and better balanced lighting, now that he wasn't standing with his back to the breaking down crystal, Orison discovered that his sight wasn't actually that bad at all. Evaluating Gan, Orison understood what the scout meant. If the Northlander wouldn't have stood out in a group of vikings before, after miasma created food gorging, Gan would blend in better with a group of quarterbacks or college gymnasts.
Orison thought, "Trimmed, streamlined and balanced sums it up. No big changes, just a crap ton of tiny ones that adds up to an overall big difference." out loud he said, "I don't see it. I mean, sure, it's a drastic change but not for people who don't know you well."
Gan looked at Orison in disbelief and said, "If someone is half blind. My face is as smooth and hairless as a baby's butt. Do you think there's a single Northlander man who doesn't at least have stubble? If my backside hadn't swollen like I sat on a fire ant nest, my pants would have slid clean off. Look, I'm not complaining about anything. I'm just saying I look like a completely different person. If I insisted I was me and they knew what I should look like, they'd notice too much. If I didn't insist I was me, they would escort me directly to their prison."
Orison was going to ask about the changes of the other two but as he was getting ready to, his senses picked up a wisp of soul shooting into his space. Tracking it to it's source, Orison noticed the hole under the illusionary floor that exposed the corner of a translucent, oily tinted window to another place that was framed in a corner of gold plated bone. Even as he looked, an impish looking creature on the other side saw him and dove through, turning into a wisp that got sucked straight into him, spooking him yet again.
Turning his senses inward, Orison noted that he had a great deal many small and medium sized crystals that had, overall, taken more of the filtered latticework than they had given. In that moment, he had reached two conclusions. This was an Abyss gate that could not be left open and if he wasn't snatching the things up as they appeared, him and his friends would have been overwhelmed and killed.
After Orison assured Gan that he had no intentions on continuing to unearth the gate any more than he needed to destroy it, he bent to the task of studying it to figure out how, safely. Cracking the frame might blow them up. He didn't have the time or understanding of it to deactivate it from his side either. After two hollow eyed people shuffled by only to be shunted through the exposed portal corner, adding to Orison's wisp collection adding another diminutive net loss to his lattice filter, Orison saw it was clear.
Cautiously peaking to the other side, Orison saw what was powering the portal. Two mummified people were chained around it to make a macabre mirror frame. It was their energy that was keeping it open. Noticing that the chains were incredibly rusty and loose, he opened the hole on his side just wide enough to fit them through, one after the other. As soon as the two were on his side, the gate powered down, cutting the chains cleanly enough that the only thing binding the corpses to the chains any longer were the forked spikes driven through shoulder, hip and ankle bone.
Horrified, Gan said, "Why did you drag those things over here? Quick, let's cut them up and burn them."
Orison glared and Gan and said, "If you light a fire in here and burn up our air, making me waste multiple potions to get the rest of-"
He paused to hear a raspy whisper repeat itself. "Please...help...me."
The mummy thing on his right wasn't dead or undead, it was alive. Cold pragmatism and compassion warred in Orison's head while he staved off Gan from dismembering the impossibly alive creature in front of him. Wary of hostile action, Orison decided to treat this case as he had the werewolf woman's. He had Gan stand at moderate distance with arrow trained as he removed the spikes as gentle as he could while sending light touches of healing to stabilize a body that should have long since expired.
The body, for all intents and purposes, responded to his magic as if it were not alive. Holes did not close and flesh did not mend. Exhausting all the lesser options at his disposal with no signs of improvement, the urge to deliver mercy rather than healing grew a bit stronger.
In a last ditch effort to compromise between his overly altruistic conscience and the pragmatic side telling him that saving a stranger from the Abyss carried too many unknown dangers, Orison grabbed a bottle of purely beneficial 'game wine' and sent the will message to make it 'real'. In his earlier experiments here, Orison discovered that the food only acted as alchemy ingredients in his hand and only acted as a conduit to his wish alterations for others. Drinks were different. They acted the same as 'game food' did if another got to them first but if he touched them, he could 'bring it to reality' proper. Then it proved it's benefits and detriments closer to something between potion and recreational beverage.
As he slowly trickled the wine into the mummy's desiccated mouth, Orison thought, "If this does nothing, I didn't waste a precious life saving resource and I guess I can consider it a toast to better fortune in the afterlife for the poor thing."
Orison observed carefully as he slowly poured the wine. The only observable effect was, the body was so dry that it soaked the wine in like a sponge. As the body took in the last drops of the bottle, Orison prepared himself to deliver, as kindly as he could, his merciful death sentence.
In the middle of trying to figure out how to address the thing, He heard the whisper again, "Very weak but useful...magic of...low dimension... is too thin... but this...hel-"
As the mental whisper became to weak to hear again, Orison weighed the metaphorical feather against his heart, yet again. When he had pulled the mummy in, he had only wanted to close the portal but now he was faced with a much harder choice. He never considered himself a person of faith but he had the clear compass of a person raised on it's values and turning a back on someone in need that he could help felt wrong. On the other hand, this stranger needed the best of what he had to even have a shot and should he even be successful, there was a good chance it would covet what he himself wanted or had... It didn't sit well for either side of his ethical quandary that what tipped him towards aiding the stranger was his curiosity towards what it knew.
Calling another illusionary drink into reality, he poured it down just a bit faster and said, "I want your binding oath that you will do me and mine no harm and that you will freely share what knowledge you possess, um, that the laws of this reality will allow you to."
With some time to form it all and a couple more bottles of wish booze that made the mental whisper a bit fuzzy around the edges, it said, "I will these words within the structure of my key and upon the structure of the tower I climb: I will no harm upon the one who aids me or those this one claims under their protection. I will to share what I may of knowledge to this one until I am bid to rise within the structure of my tower once more."
Orison thought, "Wow, I could feel that. When I said binding oath I was just putting some dramatics into it. A sincere promise, please and thank you would have been good for me!"
"What was that, Little Boss? Never mind that. We should kill it, kill it with fire or , uh, something," Gan said anxiously.
Stifling a chuckle, Orison said, "That was an oath. The special kind. We're good. As a matter of fact, I think giving any more of those drinks might do more harm than good... Take a couple of these clay jugs here, get light weight hammered and chill for a bit."
Gan took the jugs but instead of enjoying them on the spot, he tucked them away carefully in his bag of goodies and sat a bit away, shooting a stink eye at the 'juicy' mummy. What followed was a trial and error of remaining materials. Raw food was apparently 'structure poison' as it carried Orison's will within it. Of the remaining alchemical ingredients and what he could do with the meager remaining pile of mundane food, stamina enhancements were the only ones that gave minute but consistent trickle benefit. The skill enhancers all flickered dangerously between real and unreal in the tiny bit of illusory space left and did next to nothing. The one cure poison potion seemed to help tremendously which made black lines form on Orison's face.
Once again in debate, Orison thought, "So the thing 'she' needs the most right now is detoxification... Finding out I'm dealing with a woman makes it even harder to just throw my hands up... What the hell is she made out of!? I could have saved a small army with what she needed just to go from crypt keeper lich to stereotypical zombie. Well, a zombie with pretty, lavender eyes... Okay, newly awakened hormone monster. That is a full stop, hell no. Even if she turned into a celestial fairy, I'm going to see 'this' in my mind every time I look at her. I'd have to find a whole new term for that kind of 'heavy' because cougar and snow leopard aren't even enough... Graveyard panther, maybe?"
Chapter end
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