It was a big day.
Well, “day” was a loose term, in my Sanctuary. Time didn’t work quite the same way here. It was intrinsically linked to the universe that constituted my real ‘body’ now, in a very real sense. Right now that universe was experiencing time at a leisurely rate of about five times as fast as I could feel it here, which was basically a snail’s pace considering I usually let it run at thousands of times that speed.
The large room I had made was a little new… probably only created in the last thousand years or so of my world’s history. I was still tweaking it, shaping it with the menu of options that I had for customizing my Sanctuary, but it had already given me a better sense of how my world was doing.
The room was huge and circular… or it might be better to call it disc-shaped. Like a frisbee, perhaps, since the edges were curled inwards. This was just to fit the projection of my world’s surface, which was the inner surface of a torus. I’d split it to have a walkway between sections, which slightly shrank the ‘inner’ half’s projection, but it meant I didn’t have to walk through the projection of the ground.
It wasn’t physical, thankfully. More like a hologram. A huge hologram, with the room being about ten meters in radius – I’d finally figured out how to switch my Sanctuary measurements to metric like my universe measurements – to make the walkway circumference about the length of half a football field.
American or European, the estimate was close enough to work for each.
My interface could let me see the land and its condition instantly at any point by pulling up something like a video game HUD, but I found a certain amount of satisfaction walking along and looking at things semi-manually. The room also allowed any guests to walk with me and investigate how my world was doing.
“Your tea is ready.”
The spiral staircase down to the rest of my Sanctuary was on the other side of the ‘inner’ part of my world, so I couldn’t normally see it. That light, feminine voice came from that side, and a moment later the owner stepped through, carrying two hot cups of tea. English Breakfast tea prepared with a splash of cream and honey. Of course, calling it ‘prepared’ was a little unfair, since everything here was simulated. This hadn’t been brewed so much as just picked up from downstairs.
I took a second glance when I accepted the cup, then sighed. “Okay, Duck. Why the maid getup this time?”
Duck lifted her ears in an elven smile, playfully innocent in context. My own ‘body’ here in Sanctuary was malleable, but I normally walked around as I was this moment, as an average-sized human male of unremarkable features. I did have slightly pointed ears, a long fur-tipped tail, and a shaggy head of blue hair… but mostly human.
Duck, on the other hand, was also malleable, but almost always took the shape of either an androgynous or female elf. Usually, she looked like my old Avatar from seven thousand years ago – Tastka – a petite female elf complete with blue skin, swishing tail, and fang-filled snout that kept smiles from being a thing. The long, tapered ears and tail were their more expressive portions. Like most elves, she was tiny, and only came up to my chest.
She was, at this moment, dressed in stereotypical maid attire. Black dress with short, poofy sleeves, a white apron in front, frilled white headdress-tiara-thingee – I didn’t know the name of it – and stockings. Which, by the way, looked ridiculous on the elf’s quasi-digitigrade lower legs and brutal-looking four-toed claws.
It was the outfit she wore when she thought I wasn’t listening to her enough. Duck claimed to be mostly based on how I’d been as Tastka, back when I’d been living on the world I managed. I wasn’t so sure about that, because I also had Tastka’s memories and I remembered that she had grown up to be quiet and contemplative… not sassy and needling.
Duck was also, technically, an accidentally-created Terminal. In other words, she was basically a portion of my soul and personality split off to act semi-independently. She could easily share what she was thinking – and I could read her mind if I really focused – but usually we bantered vocally.
I wondered what it said about my psyche that the first fragment it created was a snarky, irreverent, argumentative girl.
To answer my question, the small ‘elf’ sipped her tea and hopped up onto one of the bench-like seats I had placed at intervals around the walkway. It was a maneuver that would have almost certainly spilled the tea, if this were a physical world, especially with how she didn’t sit down… she perched on the arm of the bench.
“I know today is an important day,” she replied, clasping both hands on the teacup. Her snout twitched as she inhaled the aroma – flavors were slightly muted here, but did exist now that I’d added air simulation – and she gave a dismissive tail flick toward me. “But you’ve been putting off the Downside preparations for almost seven thousand years now. We don’t know when our armor will be chewed through… you can’t keep procrastinating.”
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That got a grimace from me, but I turned toward the display and brought my cup to my lips instead of answering immediately. I knew she was right. She often was, being a more critical version of me. I knew I tended to get ahead of myself with big projects, and this one was big. Also a lot more delicate than many of the things I’d done to get this world running.
Free will, I decided, was a pain.
The dulled, mild flavor of the tea soothed me. It was slightly more bitter than I’d have made it, but that too was a bit of prodding from Duck. I spent a few moments just savoring it anyway, while staring at the foothills leading up to the massive barrier mountains I’d made between the two halves of the torus. One wall was impassable, but this one was possible to get through… with enough dedication.
I knew that a few small and isolated elven communities were nestled in these foothills, far from most of their kin. Religious cults or devotees that drifted from the bulk of the elven population, usually as part of a pilgrimage to honor the first Great Journey. I’d never made another Avatar to see them, but I knew they were there.
“Hey, Donut, I was talking to you!”
Sigh. “Ugh, fine…” I grumbled loudly at her intentionally using that awful nickname, and shrugged my shoulders. “I just wanted to make some of the younger races after the big moment. It’s important.”
Duck swished her tail at me as if wagging a finger. “It is important, but you and I both know you’ll spend centuries fiddling with them once you’ve started. They can wait a few decades for you to check out the mess at Downside. Energy production there is dropping, and if you’d handled it back in the elven Bronze Age you and I both know you’d be sitting on a much bigger nest egg.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I grumbled as I ‘spun’ the display rather than walking, rapidly turning the torus from looking at the fringes of elf land to the mess of Downside. It was a more chaotic, violent place by its very nature, and for the early parts of my work with the elves, it had consistently provided far more energy than them. Struggle, conflict, and significant decisions from free-willed beings gave me energy, and there was plenty of it on Downside.
In fact, despite what Duck had said, energy generation was climbing here… but I could see now why she was concerned. The steady rate was not because of the hostile environment, but because there was still a lot of infighting. Tribe-on-tribe violence was almost constant, but generation was much lower than the elves now.
I’d expected that, because Downside did not yet have working deities to give out Quests. But it did have Elder Dragons – albeit a different kind than Upside – and they could hand out quests. Younger dragons could, too, though of weaker strength and only one at a time. I’d seen a bump in energy production not that long ago and assumed they’d started doing that.
“Huh… they formed a little Bronze Age nation while I wasn’t looking,” I muttered. “That must have been the energy bump. Still no Quests though… and not enough concentrated belief to make a god. That’s going to be troublesome. They don’t have enough to even alias to the existing gods.”
I heard Duck thump back to the floor, claws clicking as she walked up beside me. A quick glance confirmed to me that she was, thankfully, back in the silk-like fabric of a modest, sleeveless tunic instead of that weird choice of uniform.
“Yeah I was looking into this while you were faffing about,” she agreed. “I can’t make heads or tails of it with my limited access, but it does look like the dragons here are staying well away from any core-eater communities. Maybe they’re too violent? It’s weird though, it didn’t take the elves long at all to have at least some of them meet dragons.”
“Mn.” I grunted and scanned through more communities, but while a few had basic bronze-work, none were organized like the nation I’d just seen. “The lack of religion is worrying. Our defense relies on a cohesive belief system.”
“Which is why you need to handle this now.” Duck flicked one ear down, indicating a light chiding. “You’re too focused on one, but you made a lot of races. Make sure they’re all working out or you’re still a failure.”
Harsh. But true. “Yeah… yeah, I guess you’re right. It could take centuries to get things set up, we can’t rush it.” I sighed. “We need more coverage, and I was putting this off because the core-eaters are spreading just fine. They breed a lot faster than the elves. But now I have a lot more to convert.”
Duck opened her mouth – probably to make another insulting comment about my procrastination – but was thankfully interrupted.
“FINALLY!” I shouted, letting out a little whoop of joy and pumping my fist in the air.
“Niiice.” Even Duck sounded pleased. She had limited access to my interface, but I knew she received notices like that. She stared at me intently with the bright green eyes, saying nothing else.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” I sighed. “I guess I have to see what’s up with their belief system. I guess if they worship the System it’s fine…”
Duck scratched at her chin and hummed to herself. “Where are you going to incarnate to check that out? A lot of options here.”
I shook my head. “Too many. Incarnating will leave me stuck there, and if they don’t choose the Soulkeeper class I won’t be able to guide them at all. Too risky. It might help for that little area but I need to cover more ground.”
She tilted her head at me, then her eyes lit up, tail curling upward in comprehension. “Oh… yeah without that thirty percent penalty you have a lot more to work with. Proxy Avatar first, huh?”
“Looks like,” I confirmed. “Maybe spend two decades as an Incarnate just to get the general culture. I can time limit it, now.”
“Tragic.” Duck’s deadpan delivery told me she actually approved of the plan, despite what she said. “A strapping young man, struck down in the prime of his life.”
“Bite me,” I replied. “You wanted me to handle this, I’m going in informed.”
Duck, naturally, took me literally and bit me on the arm.
Where the Wild Things Are
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