5.7

Candy

Refreshed by her first untroubled sleep in two weeks, Candy dove into the problem of the dungeon masters losing their physical bodies.

Over the last few weeks, they had found limited successes with golem cores and constructed bodies, but nothing that could leave the Studio without Lena losing her direct control over the golems. Also, the golem constructs lacked the familiarity of human senses. Regardless of how much Feltz and Dibbs tinkered with the sensory translation spells, Lena's presence always unlocked everything to such a degree that as soon as Lena stopped piloting the golem, the core burnt out from the sensory overload.

Brad's existence differed not just on the scale of the sensory information his core had to handle, but also because his core wasn't actually a golem core. Those were essentially programmable mana stones.

No, Brad's mind and soul lived on within a memory stone, and the spare room for his soul to grow within the stone turned it into a soul gem.

Feltz had yet to give up his adamant resistance to using a soul gem as a golem core. "Sands take it, that's a way to grow monsters!" he warned whenever the subject came up. He displayed less aversion to the idea of flesh golems, but Dibbs had gotten a queasy look and spoken to Lena. She, in turn, required that they get a working golem prototyped before experimenting.

"Why?" Candy had asked.

Lena's reservation came through clear in her reply. «Flesh golems are either preserved corpses, or brain dead bodies made to heed a golem core's will. As a dungeon, we don't have to kill anyone to get the flesh golem construct, but if the core keep frying the way they do, we'll be going through a lot of fleshy bodies. I'd really rather not.»

The idea of trying to use a soul gem instead of a golem core kept nagging at Candy, but they were being methodical. That was before discovering that what the dungeon masters were trying to do amounted to possession. Now that she had that piece, she felt the need to act.

«Lena?» Candy called out.

Her cousin's toon slipped into her bedroom on the physics lab level. "Yeah?"

"We need to see if you can possess a soul gem."

Dibbs sat across the kitchen table, a cup of some herbal tisane steaming in front of him, and kept his mouth shut while Candy explained what she wanted Lena to attempt.

Feltz paced as he listened, his frown growing deeper and fiercer by the moment, but Dibbs? Candy couldn't read anything from his tired expression. Both of the mages seemed quite content with her "long versions", wherein she over-explained every nuance of detail to her idea, though Brad's fidgeting betrayed his impatience.

His opinion, however, was not the one Lena wanted.

When Candy fell silent, Dibbs raised his tisane and sipped. Feltz continued to pace for a few turns before pouring himself a cup and sitting down between Dibbs and Candy. "The greatest problem with this idea of yours is that the soul gem will need to have a soul within it to be possessed."

Dibbs, speaking slowly, said, "Maybe not, Archmage. A proto soul might actually be better for what they want, and if the Design Lead is able to graft a small segment of her own soul to the gem --"

"-- that would make it a phylactery," Feltz said, his entire body stiffening.

Candy leaned back and left one part of her mind following their back and forth while she plumbed the Tapestry for more context.

Both seemed in agreement that phylacteries were a kind of necrotic magic, but Feltz seemed to find necromancy a far more taboo subject than Dibbs did. The Tapestry, however, placed necromancy as a sub-set of soul magic that relied on physical repositories for the soul-mana flavored aether. The fact that most soul mana used by mages came from living and once living beings meant that once living repositories had the most compatibility for the way they used their mana.

The mages' discussion dragged on for most of the morning. Brad jumped in every now and again, asking for clarification, and Candy listened to those clarifications as intently as her lab partner. However, language was so damn _imprecise_ and her understanding of the Tapestry, thanks to her [Tapestry Fusion] skill so much _better_, well, she wasn't listening to learn from them so much as to mine their conversation for search terms.

Candy stopped paying significant attention when the mages began to circle back to the same ethical differences. Feltz held any and all soul magic taboo; Dibbs drew the line at that which had to do with undeath and forcefully stopping a soul's natural progression through the reincarnation cycles.

«Lena, let's make you a phylactery,» Candy used the G.C. She was the last of their group sticking with her cousin, so it didn't matter if she tried to use a discreet channel or broadcast, but Candy liked neatened details. She used a discreet channel and then began sharing details.

Lena

A phylactery. A repository for a small piece of her soul. Rob would lay ostrich eggs of raging N O P E at the thought.

Lena, on the other hand, suddenly found herself wondering just what constituted a soul. She hardly shared Rob's Catholic faith, but she also wasn't as atheistic as her cousin. As she saw it, the defining difference between the Judaic big three boiled down to which mouthpiece for God they followed, not which big-G God. There were Buddhists and Hindis, and all sorts of related off shoots, as well as the neo-pagans. To the best of her knowledge, they all claimed something about the human soul, as if its existence were a given.

A surge of mana among her guests jerked Lena's attention back to the floor containing the guild delegations.

The mana pushed toward the floor's structure core, not so much a single blast as a mass of minute seeking snakes. She didn't bother defending the core; either it absorbed and refined the mana headed its way or it would go offline, subject to the same restoration clauses as any other contracted entity in the Studio. No, she followed the mana back to its source.

"Mages, I did warn you that another attempt to usurp my dungeon would get you kicked out. Good-bye," she said. She wasn't even particularly angry at this point, just … tired.

Most of the various mage guilds looked around with surprise and bewilderment.

Lena created dunce caps and dropped then on the heads of the group of mages responsible for the ban (who were from the Arcane Asylum no less), and then everyone with the [Design of the Mana Shaper] found themselves yanked out of the Studio of Capricious Dreams, along with their personal belongings.

Addressing the remaining participants, Lena's voice issued from the very stone of her dungeon. "I have said it before, I will say it again, and probably many more times yet to come: In so far as the Grand Tapestry of Rhofhir is concerned, dungeons filter in mana to replace that which leaks out. That filtered-in mana mainly consists of the physical beings and objects a dungeon creates. That purpose will be served above all others.

"If you want training grounds, if you want specific resources, if you want an outlet for aggressive idiots that doesn't end up with your polities at war with each other, you are placing the burden of balancing the risks and rewards on the dungeon masters. If you don't like how they do it, the dungeons can always move their entrances. That is not a small thing, not something trivially done, but it can be done.

"I believe I have heard all of your concerns at this point, and the debates between the various guilds and localities have provided me with a clearer understanding of the balance that managed dungeons might disrupt. The entrances to your local dungeons will seal when the new dungeon masters arrive to take control of them, and will unseal once the process completes, which may be as long as a month.

"Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Your guest passes run out in three days. The non-hostility clauses remain in effect. As a further token of appreciation for your level headed candor, I have prepared gifts for you to take back to your various peoples."

So saying, she delivered the spatial bags she had prepared for each group to their leaders. For the mages that had been ejected, she sent out golems carrying the bags. She debated with herself for all of a moment, but she even sent a golem out to the Arcane Asylum's mages.

The golem held no bag, just a single book. "My mistress is too kind," the golem announced. "Despite your rude poking, you did manage to stay until the end of the meeting, even if your actions were the reason for the abrupt ending. Thus, she presents you with a glimpse into the nature of dungeons and their management, as this seems that in which you hold the most interest."

The golem extended the book, and the senior Archmage present took it, after a careful examination for traps and magical snares.

Soft, sensuous, lavender colored suede wrapped the spine and covers. The book's title was engraved on the front, then filled in with crystals that changed colors in the light from pink to green: "The Dungeon Master's Guide (abridged)".

The Archmage opened the cover, revealing the inscription from Lena. "I have redacted information in this edition for each breach of manners I experienced during this convocation as I hold the Arcane Asylum accountable for several subtle and not-so-subtle provocations. However, on the whole, your presence -- despite your instigations -- proved more beneficial than not.

"This book contains information provided to me by the Grand Tapestry regarding the purpose and responsibilities of dungeons, with more detail than conversations may convey. It appears that the information available to Zone Arbiters is different from that granted to ordinary Aware inhabitants of Rhofhir, but perhaps you shall have individuals with advanced enough [Tapestry Fusion] to fill in the gaps."

One of the Archmages crowding around the fellow holding the book asked, "Should we be offended?"

Not bothering to answer, the senior Archmage turned the page, revealing the title page, and then beyond that, the table of contents. Skimming through the entries, frowning at the numbers offset from topics, the senior Archmage opened the book to a random page and began reading. His eyebrows rose with surprise and a grin broke out on his face.

"Only if you want to come off like an idiot. I'm sure there will be griping enough at us for the parts of this book that are no longer legible."

The mages got even more animated, and the golem stepped back into the dungeon. Lena closed that temporary portal immediately.

She swept her presence through her dungeon once more, noting which delegates stayed to talk with each other and which left immediately, or at least prepared to leave soonest and sooner.

That distraction mostly done for, Lena got back to her most important topic. «Candy, when y'all are talking souls, what are you talking about?»

The soul, as it concerned soul gems (and as much as Lena understood Candy's explanation), was in fact the mana pattern needed to reproduce an individual being, their magical DNA. In a universe where Aetherial force had a noticeable presence, souls had more to do with the way individuals formed, grew, and lingered after death than the DNA in their cells.

A soul gem was a particular type of memory stone, which was itself a particular type of mana stone. Mana stones, in general, needed to be between the density of pure quartz and silver. Quartzes of all kinds made great mana repositories.

Refining a mana stone into a memory stone involved threading a complex pattern of conductive metals in and around the crystalline structures. For a memory stone to become a soul gem required that parts of the crystalline structure became amorphous, at which point they could be reshaped and with new metallic structures grown through the new areas. Those areas provided room for the pattern of the soul within the gem to grow.

Phylacteries took that idea and replaced the "room to grow" with linking nodes. Essentially, so long as the phylactery remained connected to a living soul, the portion of the soul within the phylactery had to be overwritten to reflect any growth of the living soul.

Feltz's essential abhorrence of phylacteries and necromancy came down to the what happened when an individual died. The soul piece stuck in the phylactery was on its own. At that point, either the phylactery broke, releasing the soul fragment, or it didn't. If it didn't, well, the soul stuck in that gem had no room to grow. While the rate of spiritual deterioration could be throttled down, without room for growth, there wasn't room for the change needed to restore the deterioration.

"How does that affect Brad?" Lena asked as soon as she understood that point.

Feltz shrugged. "He's got room to grow. If he can demonstrate that he is Aware, then we'll work on a way to move his soul back into a body that can grow with his soul, but for now he's got more than enough room."

"Well, what if a phylactery had both the room to grow and the link? Wouldn't that change things?" Lena asked.

Candy bit her lip and let Feltz answer. "No, just delay the crisis point."

"Oh. Well, can we make a phylactery that's supposed to break as soon as the connection's lost?" she asked.

Dibbs nodded, but Feltz growled, "Souls are tricksy!" He took in a deep breath before continuing. "A soul cannot survive without a proper supporting foundation, and not all souls are equal. Most of the phylacteries break because the soul pieces are simply unable to properly bind with the phylactery, but there has to be some foundation for the soul or it won't bind to the phylactery at all, in which case, the person making that phylactery knows it because it just fails to link."

"Explain me, please," Lena asked.

Feltz paused to scowl before he asked, "What do you mean?"

"I have been trying to acquire a physical embodiment since pretty much the first moment I realized that this wasn't a weird science thing. The Tapestry continues to tell me that I do not have access to any physical patterns that are both mobile and capable of handling all the states of mana, and thus no body."

"Obviously you're anchored to some physical foundation," Feltz began.

"Does the dungeon count as a physical foundation?" Lena asked.

Feltz made several funny faces while he chewed on that thought. Dibbs, however, nodded. Then he, too, made a strange thinking-face.

"Design Lead, have you ever heard of the [Design of Cultivation]?"

Feltz rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but Lena beat him to it.

"I have. The meditations for it are pretty therapeutic, and the exercise itself helps me keep from going on manic building sprees."

"Which cultivation designs have you completed?" Dibbs asked. Feltz just looked startled.

"Only the initiate one. I'm working my way into novice, but it's slow going."

"Slow going?" Feltz asked, looking utterly flabbergasted. "How long have you been on Rhofhir now? Maybe four months? And you've already completed the [Design of the Cultivation Initiate]? That's not slow!"

"Chill, dude!" Lena said, making her toon hold up her hands. "Initiate level just took understanding the concepts, which aren't that different from the mental state you're supposed to seek while doing yoga. Novice level is getting some mental dexterity with the application of those concepts, and, well, I sucked at yoga back home."

Candy interrupted, holding up a finger as she asked, "What makes cultivating like yoga?"

"Cycling your personal energy through your chakra points. As a dungeon, it's more my feng shui than chakra, though, seeing as I don't have a tailbone, pelvis, stomach, heart, throat, mouth or forehead anymore." Lena tried, she really tried to keep the sourness out of her voice, but she felt it there.

Candy, bless her heart, just went along with it, asking, "Those are the chakra points?"

Lena made her toon shrug. "I don't remember for sure, but it sounds about right. Rob had a few things to say about dantian, which is like the Buddhist version I think? That's just belly, heart, and mind, but, hey, the vedic culture is much more open about sexuality than Western or East Asian cultures are."

Brad was currently covering his eyes and shaking his head. "Really?" he asked, perturbed.

Lena made her toon shrug again. "Just calling it like I see it. Besides, modern India's been infected with the false prudery of Western civilization."

"Just-- Lena, just shut it. Sometime, probably far in the future when I have naturally regenerating Will points, we can have this conversation, but not now." Brad said that with an edge that told Lena she really had put her foot in her mouth.

"Okay," she said. "I'll admit my ignorance, and I'm sorry to have offended you."

An awkward silence drew out for a moment before Candy asked, "Okay, so how do we go about testing Lena's ability to control a soul gem?"

Making a body for herself stood out to Lena as the most surreal experience in her life to date.

Months had passed since she last looked into a mirror, and over that time the light projection she had used had changed. An adjust here, a nip in for convenience sake there, and the not-so-occasional flights of fancy into more illustrative renditions of her former self along the way meant that Lena wasn't sure what she had looked like. Before Rhofhir, that was.

She had had brown hair, yes, and blue eyes, and the foundation she had used was beige ivory. Depending on the day, she stood between 165 cm and 168 cm in her bare feet, most of the difference having to do with how much tension knotted up her shoulders and compressed her neck.

Did she want to remake her body as exactly as she could recall it? Including the faint scar lines on her hands from that one time she forgot to put her gloves on before stretching the fine wire mesh they were using as armature, only to have it break and curl into her hands? Did she want to keep the accidental tattoo she gave herself with a pencil on a hayride? The blue spot where the pencil tip just broke her skin without hitting any blood vessels was interesting, but also kind of … weird.

No, this was an experiment. Lena didn't need to craft the most awesome body ever, nor did she need to recreate who she had been. The past had passed, and time, at least, appeared to be as consistently forward moving on Rhofhir as on Earth.

With that thought in mind, Lena's nerves unwound. She gave her main creature core instructions to form a human woman with the appearance of her toon, and with an empty soul gem in place of whatever animating force it usually provided her newly spawned creatures.

Following the instructions Candy and Dibbs had agreed upon, Lena drew out a bare sliver of her core energy, adding to the separated bits slowly, testing constantly for the point where there existed enough of her energy, her soul, in that sliver for her to flex it.

Inserting that sliver into the soul gem was relatively easy. She just directed the sliver to lay over the gem and sink into it, and the gem did the rest.

«Step one, two, and three, done,» she whispered over the G.C. bond. Now came the crucial test.

Rhofhir

Returning his focus to his Grand Tapestry project, Rhofhir began his search for the translation-gifted cultivator.

It came as no surprise for Rhofhir when he traced the disturbances in his pattern collectors to the converted mana collector given over to budding new cultivators. Sifting through those tangled threads found the traces of that particular cultivator, but only the traces.

The logs for his Grand Tapestry, on the other hand, proved far more useful. Searching through the recent anomalies, Rhofhir discovered a group of six that came in all at once.

*** *** ***

Anomaly Group 11.15477.154.12.

α - Pattern: Human; Designation: Candice Ruth Sterling ; Location: [Studio of Capricious Dreams]; Status: embodied.

β - Pattern: Human -> Golem; Designation: Bradford Ajput Singh; Location: [Studio of Capricious Dreams]; Status: embodying; Overseer: Casper Dibbons;

γ - Pattern: Human; Designation: Lena Marie Weston; Location: [Studio of Capricious Dreams]; Status: integrated.

δ - Pattern: Human; Designation: Jason Jefferson Kline; Location: [Malta], South Sage River; Status: embodied.

ε - Pattern: Human -> Elf (Plains); Designation: Roberto Morgan Garcias; Location: [Malta], South Sage River; Status: embodied.

ζ - Pattern: Human; Designation: Aaron Morgan Felding; Location: [Whispering Trees]; Status: integrated.

*** *** ***

Morningstar held quite a fondness for the human pattern, so it showed up … a few times every several thousand cycles. That six humans came in all at once was less astonishing than that they came in at all.

More surprising to Rhofhir were the statuses. Two were integrated, which meant their mental patterns had been woven into the Grand Tapestry itself. Going by the naming pattern of their locations, they were now arbiters for the zones that dealt with the final filtration stage of new, raw mana.

The overseer for the β pattern looked like a good suspect for his translational cultivator.

Rhofhir began examining the communications systems he had placed inside his Grand Tapestry, hoping without much expectation that they would not need much in the way of fixing before he could use them to more directly investigate these interesting developments.

Difficulties in communication between the different tiers of cultivators increased proportionally to the power they could direct. Rhofhir liked other beings, even if their insights and ideas were incomplete, infantile compared to his comprehension of the multi-verses. For that reason, he constantly worked at improving the means by which he could communicate with his cultivators.

The Grand Tapestry was based on one of his earliest communication models. While it worked, it required a lot of finessing on Rhofhir's side to do so in a non-destructive manner.