Making a mountain out of a molehill.

What an apt description of what I’m doing now.

Well, apt if it is reversed.

I’m making a molehill out of a mountain.

In order to create a ship that can travel safely through the Void, I need a valid concept.

A Rune can only be crafted once the concept is completely understood. Crafting a half-baked one will likely lead to the disintegration of the ship, and death of all involved.

Well, all those who can’t travel the Void already, at least.

To this end I have been diving deep under the lava for the past few days slowly going through one Rune simulation after another using the ambient energy.

I’m close I can feel it now. I just need that little final bit of inspiration and I can make the Voidship a reality.

Stretching my branches, I descend deeper into the lava following the vent down towards a lower layer of the planet’s crust.

To my surprise, a variety of creatures are living at this depth.

The variety of life is rather abundant. Fish, coral, snakes, and other stranger creatures litter the surroundings. All of them display a marked ability to live in the incredible temperatures surrounding us.

This is awesome!

I really have never created something that can handle temperature variations of this amount. My previous Gardens were all something that I did on a whim, and each featured genetically modified plants, true. However, none of the plants was resistant to a specific criteria.

Have I perhaps been too limited in my views? Too human?

I think so.

I have limited myself, unconsciously perhaps, to certain human ways of thinking.

Yet, there is nothing human about magic. There is nothing human about me.

The thoughts, concepts, ideas, and methods of thinking of a human have aided me greatly though, so it isn’t all bad. I just need to adjust my thoughts.

What I want is a ship that can travel unhindered. Freed from the boundaries of the physical world, the limits, and the order.

I don’t want a Voidship, I want a microcosm of what I aspire to be.

Yes!

There’s the spark.

I’ve been thinking of this ship as a dead creature, a physical machine constructed and limited!

Hah, hah!

The error in thinking is obvious now, watching these creatures.

A mere ship could never do what I desire, unless of course it has Life.

I’ll need to get back to Dryad, this is much more her forte than mine.

Now that this issue is solved, the important point arises.

Shape.

What shape should my ship be in?

Testing time!

Squares, cones, orbs, ovals, I create and place into stress situations.

The winner by a landslide, is the egg!

Hm…apparently nature isn’t as stupid as some claim.

Granted, a normal egg cannot withstand being smashed on a rock, but my ship isn’t going to be normal.

Carbon is a wonderful molecule.

It is easy to work with, simple, and almost idiot proof!

Carbyne, a minor variation of the carbon molecule is one of the best products I know for structural building.

It’s also the cheapest.

Sure, sure, I might get better results if I electro-plated the entire ship in Orihalcum…

As if!

Mineral deposits like that that have attained a great deal of magic by soaking in energy require millenniums to produce!

Even if I used Time’s Shadow to speed up the process we would be talking about at least five centuries!

As for mining it from the deep core of the planet, that’s unrealistic. Once you go past the crust, there is far less magical metal. More energy, less metal, well solid structured ore at least.

The long and short of it is, magical metal doesn’t appear in liquid form for a reason. The crystalline structure required to allow energy to be trapped, and the metal to grow ‘magical’ is absolutely destroyed by high heat. Given a high enough temperature, without a heat-resistant magic structure formed, and you get slag. High quality slag sure, but, slag all the same.

Sure, there do exist high-temperature magic metals, don’t get me wrong. The way such metals resist heat though is counter-productive. Their crystalline structures in essence, use energy patterned by the crystalline structure of the metal itself, to resist heat. In other words, they are power hog type metals. Using something that increases the power draw may work for a cold weapon like a sword.

Build a ship from such metal and you could be looking at a power bill that’s enough to send you straight to heaven!

It just wouldn’t work, unless of course you had an almost limitless supply of power.

No, far easier in my opinion to simply use Carbyne and Runes. One of the benefits of magic, and the Dao, is the incredible efficiency of power use. Simple physical forces such as friction can’t hold a candle to the Dao, or even the simplest use of magic itself.

This ship should push me further in a direction I’ve been thinking of lately.

Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from the technology in my human memories.

Flying cars? Flying swords!

Floating cities? Floating continents!

F.T.L.(Faster Than Light) travel? Portals! Teleportation Arrays!

Concentrated energy sources? Magic rocks! Mysterious crystals!

Genetic engineering? Bio-magic creatures!

A lot of similarities in my honest opinion.

A user of the Dao or magic uses incredible willpower and intent, a user of technology uses gadgets and gimmicks!

Is it possible that out there in this incredible multi-verse is a lifeform that perhaps can’t even be understood by my current level of knowledge?

I wonder what it would taste like…

Ah! Tsk.

Distracted again.

Well, whatever. That stuff is for the future.

For now, I have a ship to build with Dryad’s help!