Vera could feel the cavern pulse, filling with a deep red light. It was steady, a steady pulse. She could feel something being drawn in each time the light was at the brightest. The cavern surrounding her was quite dark. She could hear dripping water off in the distance. There hadn't been much that was revealed to her sight. While each pulse had caused the surrounding cavern to be filled with red, she was unable to see anything outside of a sphere that surrounded her. The sphere had been steadily growing with each pulse of the light, but it had only been with fractions of an inch with each pulse.

“Tall friend,” Max spoke, “Let's try to do a summon.”

Vera could feel Max pushing a mental image of his three foot tall cat gremlin thing at her.

“I’m not sure what you’re telling me to do.” Vera replied.

She could feel that Max was pushing the mental image at her insistently.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

Max grumbled in frustration then vanished. The link to Max had been severed instantly. The comfort that he had provided to her was gone. Vera had been good with being alone. The fact Max had disappeared was a bit shocking, but she found there hadn’t been much of an established connection. This was confusing to Vera. She could clearly remember that Max had been quite important to her. She remembered crying for weeks when he died. He had been run over by a car, she remembered.

Max returned just as suddenly as he had left. The link that had connected them previously was again restored. A warm feeling surrounded her again. The image he had been pushing to her once again filled

“Max,” she asked, “where did you go?”

“Tall friend, can you pull the picture onto the ground?” Max asked.

“What?”

“The thing,” he said “with the lights.”

He was clearly trying to convey something to her, however, it wasn’t immediately clear to Vera. She didn’t respond. She was trying to understand what her cat had been trying to tell her.

“You sat in front of it,” he continued.

She still didn’t respond. What was the thing with lights? She thought for a moment. The only things she sat in front of for long periods of time were her television and her computer.

“I still don’t understand.” She replied.

“It’s the one with the click things.”

The computer she thought.

With some effort she tried to imagine pulling a picture from a folder onto a desktop. She applied the same mental action she formed to the act of her pulling his image onto the floor of the cavern. Once she had pulled the image Max had been pushing at her onto the glistening floor, she could feel something pulling at her core. It had been an odd sensation. It had almost been like a vacuum pulling from her own heart. She could feel the sphere surrounding her core reduce. A couple of notifications popped into Vera’s vision.

>

>

>

>

>

>

Vera selected yes without thinking. She hadn’t had any reason to distrust Max. He clearly was trying to lead her somewhere. She could feel the link between her and Max split. The small figure flexed it’s tiny hands. The ears on its head twitched and rotated as it seemed to adjust to its own body. It sat still for a moment and licked the back of its hands.

“Thank you, Tall friend,” The small creature said in a comically high pitched voice.

The small creature dashed from the sphere that surrounded Vera. Once it left it felt as though the link that Max shared with the creation seemed to vanish. It only took a moment before the link returned. The creature she created returned with a centipede in its hands. The creature crushed the centipede in its hands. A notification flashed into her vision.

>

The sphere that surrounded her grew slightly with the death of the centipede. The weird gremlin dashed back out of her vision. It hadn’t taken it long to return with a strange lizard in its hands. Again, it crushed the small animal in it’s clawed hands.

>

So, it was a newt, not a lizard. Vera concentrated on the newt. The creature must have been Max possessing it. It had the same distinctive red band of fur surrounding its neck. Max dashed out of her vision again. There had been the sound of splashing water for a moment before Max dashed back in holding a white glistening catfish. Max crushed it into his hands. The claws allowed the innards to flow between his fingers.

>

Again the sphere surrounding her had expanded. Max dropped the corpse of the catfish onto the ground. The centipede that he had started with dissolved. As it dissolved she found the sphere had increased in size.

“Max, what are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m Teach—”

The gremlin avatar she made for Max dashed back out of the sphere. It hadn’t taken him long to return with another creature held between his hands. With a crunch Max squished it between his tiny fingers.

>

The sphere grew.

“Max, every time you kill something it seems to grow the sphere surrounding me.”

“Yes, yes.” Max replied, “That’s called your influence.”

He didn’t wait for a reply and dashed back out of her sight. Similar messages flooded Vera’s view as Max continued his genocide of the denizens of the caverns. His small form moved awkwardly when he tried to walk on his legs alone. He walked slowly to her core. He looked tired. His menacing grin seemed to have grown. He was panting, his small tongue flapping in the air. He sat near her core, but then flopped onto his side as just sitting seemed to be too much effort. The viscera and broken bodies from Max’s ramage seemed to be melting into the floor.

She took the time to examine her core. The dark crystalline structure hung in the air between a stalactite and a stalagmite. The structures were both growing to reach her core. Instinctively she knew that they would eventually surround the crystal. She felt oddly comforted with this realization. She tried to put it into words for herself, but it was quite difficult. It was almost like coming home. Maybe it was more like making her own home and then coming to it? She resolved to think about it later. It was hard for her to put the jumble of feelings in a category at the moment. She was both horrified and amazed at Max’s hunt. Each thing he had killed near her felt good. It was mostly like eating, she figured. There had been some sort of gain from the deaths of the monsters. Their vanishing bodies seemed to also be giving her something, though at this point she wasn’t sure yet. She still yearned for the forest she had painstakingly built, but the cavern was a nice change of pace. This place felt more real to her regardless.

Max continued to lounge near her core. He wasn’t panting anymore. He had begun to carefully groom himself. Each lick of his tongue reminded her of someone stepping in mud.

“Do you have to do that here?” she asked.

Max didn’t reply. He was focused on cleaning the fur on his legs. Whatever changes occured to his body, Max still seemed to have the jelly bones of all cats.

“Max!”

Max continued to ignore her. Something seemed to have been stuck between the pads of his foot. He chewed, the fur quietly squishing in his mouth.

Vera went back to her thoughts. She had seemed to summon Max into the room. She wondered if she could summon another creature in the same way. Something different appeared. There was a menu that popped into her vision. It was filled with many of the creatures that were murdered by Max. Next to each name was a corresponding number. She wasn’t too enthused with the actual selections. She wasn’t a big fan of bugs, but they had the smallest numbers. She selected the smallest one from the list. A tiny outline of a cricket floated in the air. She played around by moving the outline through the air. She quickly found that if the outline seemed to clip into another object it became red. It didn’t take her long to understand that she needed to confirm something.

When she found what seemed to be a suitable spot, she confirmed that she wanted to summon it.

>

A hole appeared in her influence where the cricket was formed. The mana surrounding the hole rushed to fill the new void. The cricket appeared in the air. It fell to the ground without a sound. Vera had only summoned it about an inch off the ground and she hadn’t expected anything spectacular to happen. She was still surprised the cricket had actually started to exist the moment she summoned it. Besides it falling the inch, the cricket didn’t do a thing. It was still alive. She could sense a definite link between her and the cricket. It was certainly healthy, and the fall to the ground hadn’t hurt it in any way. She was a bit surprised with the intimate details she had of the cricket. There hadn’t been the same bond with Max when she created his body.

Max continued to groom near her core. He hadn’t seemed to notice that Vera had summoned a cricket. She had summoned it out of his view, on the opposite side of the stalagmite under her core. The cricket’s antenna twitched on the floor of the cave, but beyond that the small creature hadn’t moved. She wondered if she could somehow compel the cricket to move using the strange bond she seemed to have with it. After a few attempts the bug started to crawl. It really hadn’t been too difficult. All she had to do was give the bug the desire to move forward and the bug moved. She toyed around with it, making it walking around in other directions. An idea sprung into Vera’s head. She’d try sending the bug on a mission.

The bug crawled to the base of the stalagmite and slowly crept up behind Max. He had appeared to have cleaned many of the juices off his dark fur, but he still continued to pay close attention to his fur. The cricket leaped into the air. It was a perfect arc! Vera felt proud as the insect soared through the air. It landed on Max’s back, causing him to leap vertically in the air. He fluidly moved through the air, landing with both his feet and hands on the ground. The cricket had managed to keep a hold onto Max with its feet. It didn’t matter though, after coming over the shock of being startled Max crunched down on the cricket with his mouth. Vera broke into laughter at the sight of Max jumping into the air. Max was not as appreciative. He walked to a rock further away from the core and sat down. He looked directly at Vera’s core. The ever present grin on his face seemed to curl down slightly as he stared. Vera still laughed, the fact Max was pouting seemed to reinforce the idea that this was her Max. He still acted the same.

“I love you, Max.” She said.

Max’s sour expression seemed to lighten up. He curled into a ball and seemed to have fallen instantly asleep.

The parts of the bug Max didn’t eat slowly coalesced into a red crystal. The crystal was quite small. It seemed to have the same red color of her pulsing core, except the small crystal just glowed faintly on the ground where it lay. The crystal was clearly mana, but somehow it was just out of Vera’s grasp. There was an effect of decay. She could feel a faint sensation from the crystal. It felt like a melting ice cube. Vera watched the crystal and with a pop it was gone. It had taken roughly twenty minutes for the small crystal to vanish. The small crystal must have been a physical representation of one point of mana. If the small creatures made a small crystal, would the larger entities generate larger crystals? Furthermore, would the larger crystals vanish back into the ambient mana in the same amount of time, or would they slowly dissolve? She vowed to experiment.