Chapter 284: The Social Contract |
The Devourer of worlds needed to see better.
After the worlds had scattered from its successful ambush, they had not returned. They were likely avoiding the area.
The Devourer would go hunt them down, but it couldn’t see from World to World. Their tracks were little mini-worlds so large that The Devourer couldn’t even grasp their scale.
What is vision, anyway? The Devourer thought, pondering the concept. The Devourer idly spun its webs as it considered.
Its mind slowly grew quicker and more precise as the webs expanded outwards.
Test it.
The Devourer waved its forelimb around until it blocked a part of it’s own vision. There was a specific part of its face that seemed responsible for vision.
I can’t see what that looks like. I need to find another me.
The Devourer’s instinct rebelled against finding another Predator like itself. They were threats that would eat The Devourer the moment they had the opportunity.
It only took a few minutes to find another Predator, sitting there in its net, waiting for The Devourer to approach so it could strike.
The Devourer clipped its anchors and wrapped the other predator in its own net. A most humiliating defeat.
It then studied the other Predator up close, poring over the expressionless face.
It’s these little spheres, The Devourer thought, poking its own eyes.
Little spheres that light travels through.
The Devourer experimented with weaving eyes for several days. It found that a sphere can capture an image and project it onto a surface, upside down and backwards. Eyes were spheres, so it followed that eyes were doing something of that nature.
After a few days, the Devourer had woven an external eye out of its webbing.
The Devourer nearly lost consciousness from the sudden burst of information that took entire mind just to sort through. A bright, overwhelming blur.
The Devourer just barely had enough left to weave. So it weaved a net, trying to make more mind to contain the eye and sort through the waterfall of sensations coming from it, so that The Devourer’s mind didn’t need to carry that burden.
Eventually, the vision cleared up, interpreted and relayed to The Devourer’s body.
The world expanded with breathtaking clarity.
The world that The Devourer was standing on was a bark-world, but when it looked up, it could see green leaf-worlds, swaying in the wind, connecting together with other bark-worlds to form a green and blue barrier that seemed to stretch on into infinity.
It was nearly too much for The Devourer’s mind to handle.
The Devourer looked down and saw the ash of its prey scattered across the…ground-world that…connected all the bark-worlds.
Is this all one world then? Worlds weren’t floating through some vague abyss. Everything stood on the same surface of one world and shared its plane of existence. The Devourer was simply…very very small.
I’m not sure how to feel about that, The devourer’s mind thought. Feeling things was new to The Devourer. Mostly it had just moved on instinct, hunger, and sudden bursts of fear.
Awe, curiosity, frustration, the horror of discovering how truly small one was…
All new things.
Perhaps, like vision, it is a form of perception that simply needs more mind to process?
Having more mind has never served me poorly, The Devourer thought, weaving a net of mind.
What am I even doing? The thought occurred to The Devourer. It glanced down at it own butt with its external eye.
Curse and blessing roiled together with the miasma of its prey in The Devourer’s butt and came out as complex ephemeral threads of miasma that trailed back, back…
The Devourer’s external eye found itself looking back at its own mind, a complex interwoven net of curse and blessing miasma. Opposing forces that played against each other, glittering with outrageously delicate miasmatic structures that branched and cleaved together, blinking on and off by the billions in fascinating patterns.
The pattern that’s displaying there, is that the thought I’m thinking right now?
The thought I’m thinking right now?
I’m thinking right now?
Thinking right now?
Right now?
Now?
…Ow.
The Devourer looked away from the patterns. Using its mind to study its mind was causing some kind of loop that disrupted that very mind.
Alright, I can see well enough to spot the worlds I’m hunting from a distance…but none of them are near enough to see. What now?
It only took a moment to think of it.
I need an unobstructed view, The Devourer thought, looking up at the canopy of leaves.
Untold dangers awaited in that world. Other predators, predator-eating monsters by the dozen. But from there, The Devourer could find a tall branch and see more than just bark worlds.
The external eye could move to some extent, but it was connected to the rest of its mind, and couldn’t stretch endlessly, so The Devourer’s real body had to make the trip.
Let’s get started.
The Devourer conquered the upper worlds a day later, preying on multiple predator-eating monsters and finding a branch that stuck out above the rest, allowing it to finally have an unobstructed view of this ‘true world’ it had found itself in.
Magnificent. It didn’t have the word, but the feeling swept through it.
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The green canopy stretched forever in ever direction. A blue sky spanned from horizon to horizon. There was a blazing circle in the sky that lit up the day, beating down on The Devourer with heat that made The Devourer want to crawl into a nice, cool spot.
Do I have a way of protecting my body from the heat? Better yet, can I protect my body from getting hurt?
The Devourer’s mind and butt worked on the solution to those questions while its body and eye-mind studied the horizon.
In the distance, there was a strange grey structure, seemingly made of stone. Flat angles, with smoke coming out of it.
Weird. Unexpected. Out of place. Un…natural.
That was a foreign concept, based on simplistic thinking from a maturing brain. What should belong and what shouldn’t belong.
How am I to know what is natural and what isn’t?
Still, it was the only difference from the endless greenery in every direction.
Perhaps some of the worlds are hiding there.
The feathered predator-eating monsters had a decent amount of miasma in their bodies, but it was barely enough to slake The Devourer’s thirst.
The Devourer of Worlds hungered for Worlds.
The singular change in the terrain seemed to be a conspicuous enough place to find something to eat.
Let me try something.
The Devourer slung one of its special nets towards its destination.
The breeze picked up and knocked The Devourer off the branch, landing it right where it had sent it’s net, which dissolved upon accomplishing its task.
It worked. I can Ride the wind.
Wait. Why tumble from branch to branch when I can actually ride the wind? What form would that net take?
That and…
The sky was the territory of the feathered monsters. They swooped back and forth, their eyes constantly searching for an exposed Predator or Prey.
Being in the air with them…didn’t seem like a good idea.
At least…not yet, The Predator’s mind thought. But I can imagine a future where that is not the case.
I can imagine things. Excellent. One day the sky will be my hunting grounds as well.
The Devourer continued towards the strange, unnatural grey structure with smoke coming out of it, the wind coincidentally blowing it exactly the direction it wanted to go.
**William Oh**
Will, Maribelle and Loth went to Carrie Envar’s Stronghold by air. Whatever this thing was, it seemed to hunt the ground, so flying seemed like the safer option.
Better sight lines, too.
“Less birds than I remember.” Loth said.
“You think this thing hunts birds too?” Will asked.
“It is generally strange for something to hunt prey of wildly different scale. Wolves don’t hunt fleas, nor do they hunt dragons. Generally a creature’s prey must be on a similar scale for the predator to benefit from eating it. If this creature hunts birds and dragons, then perhaps the normal rules of scale do not apply to it. Or maybe it’s some kind of filter-feeder. In any casse, having prey of wildly different scale implies an unconventional hunting method. We should keep our eyes open for giant mouths, or…traps.”
Loth shivered in anticipation at the word ‘traps’.
“Filter feeder?” Will asked aloud, picturing a monster composed entirely of an extradimensional mouth the size of a castle that passed through the forest, swallowing up anything living while leaving the rest untouched, spitting out the ash afterwards.
As good a theory as any, but I’ll withhold judgement until I get stronger evidence, Will thought, scratching Steve’s crystal head.
Despite being a snake, Steve had no aversion to flying, peering down at the forest below in fascination.
Steve’s head swung towards Maribelle, who was passing below them, his crystalline tongue flicking out of his mouth, tasting the air.
The ever-present sensation of warm crystal wrapped around his torso was replaced with cold air as Steven let go and dove down towards Maribelle.
Between Will and gravity, Will was much faster. He could’ve snatch Steve out of the air before he even made it a few inches, but…
Let’s see how this plays out, Will thought, arms crossed as Steve wiggled, dropping through the air to land on Maribelle’s wing.
“ACK!” Maribelle shouted with her ‘dragon’ voice as something landed on her wing, causing her to flinch and snap her wing like a drum.
Steve went flying into the sky, wiggling enthusiastically, seemingly trying to catch the air.
I suppose I should catch him before he…
Steve’s fall slowed as the air gathered up underneath his coils. A moment later, Steve was happily wiggling along through the air beside them.
Will flew in close beside Steve’s squirming flight and peered at the snake’s underbelly.
Lightly imprinted in Steve’s underside were Maribelle’s miasmatic structures that originated from her wing, providing her bulky body with lift.
Huh.
Will had made re-writable crystal for training Miasmatic control, but it was crude, took a lot of effort, and the size was rather small, and it couldn’t give feedback.
Maybe I could experiment with giving Steve a Class.
“You’re the perfect test subject aren’t you?” Will said, admiring Steve’s flight.
Steve wiggled happily at the compliment, soaring through the air as the imprint slowly organized itself along Steve’s underside.
Still, he couldn’t fly quite as fast as Will and company, so when he got tired Steve wrapped himself around Will’s neck and went back to simply observing the scenery flowing by underneath them.
Once Steve was safely perched around Will, the ‘air catching’ Miasma imprint on his belly slowly faded, seemingly flushed out of his system when not in use.
Interesting. I wonder if he can keep it if he wants or if he can choose to keep something or if he perhaps simply stopped thinking about it which caused it to fade.
As enthusiastic as Will was about taking Steve back home and experimenting, Steve was one-of-a-kind, so there was no sense subjecting him to harsh treatment.
I’m gonna have to get you a crystal girlfriend or boyfriend so I can run unethical experiments on your kids, Will thought, scratching Steve’s chin.
Steve’s tongue flicked out and touched Will’s finger, and Will spotted a flash of the chainmail-like pattern of Resistance travel up Steve’s tongue before vanishing.
Fascinating.
They arrived at Carrie’s Stronghold after a short flight. The stronghold was even smaller than Will’s modest town. A single stone fortress with all of its Climbers living cramped inside, with a distillery and a sawmill outside that spoke to their primary products: Wood and magical sap.
landing outside the gate and announcing their presence, as was expected of a Lord visiting another Lord’s territory.
“William Oh, here to visit Lord Carrie Envar!”
…
There was no sound or motion from the gatehouse above them. Will was pretty sure he heard them breathing, though.
“William Oh, here to visit Carrie Envar.”
“What if he’s the real thing? Maybe this could be good? If he’s really William Oh…”
“You wanna die, be my guest.” Another voice whispered inside the gatehouse, assuming Will couldn’t hear their every word.
“Coward, I’ll do it.” another voice whispered.
A moment later, a man’s face popped through the arrow-slit in the wall.
“Prove you’re really William Oh! And why are you with the dragon that attacked!?”
Will glanced at Loth and shrugged.
Will fished around and pulled out his signet ring and tossed it up to the gatehouse. It was an engraving of a snake eating its own tail.
“The fuck am I supposed to do with this?” The Climber demanded.
“That’s my signet ring!” Will shouted up.
“How am I supposed to know that!? Do something only the real William Oh can do!”
Will walked up the side of the wall and squatted down so he and the Climber were face to face.
“You literally watched me fly in. Letting me inside the Stronghold is a formality.” Will said. “So get to it while I’m still being formal.”
“O-okay.”
Will walked back down the wall and waited as the gate slowly opened.
“Why bother to wait until these weaklings open the gate for us? You’re literally subjecting yourself to someone weaker than you. You could just smash the gate. Or go over.” Maribelle said.
“We wait for the guards to open the gate to demonstrate to those inside that we are going to adhere to the social contract.” Loth said.
“Wazzat?” Maribelle asked as they walked through the gate.
“An implicit agreement among the members of a society to follow certain rules of behavior in return for social benefits.” Loth said.
“We don’t attack them on the way in, they aren’t allowed to attack us once we’re inside.” Will summarized.
“Says who?” Maribelle asked.
“The social contract.” Loth said.
“That’s dumb. What’s stopping them from attacking you once you get inside, some magical force?” Maribelle asked.
“If they break the social contract, they are no longer afforded its protection. If we are attacked after entering peacefully, then the perpetrators can be attacked by other Strongholds without warning at their discretion.” Loth said.
“That’s complicated.” Maribelle complained.
“Not really.” Will said, scanning the fort town.
“It’s a human thing.” Loth said, tapping her skull. “They’ve got something wrong with their brain that makes them cooperate with strangers. I think it’s a form of selective inbreeding. Like dogs. The only reason it works is because the humans all have the same mental deficiency. Took me a while to get it.”
“…Where is everyone?” Will asked.
Loth paused and scanned the streets. It was a little frontier town, but everyone here should be an advanced Classer, old and tough as nails.
Will expected there might be a saloon with open doors and the smell of soup, while some old salts sit on their porches between shifts of backbreaking labor, carving magical wood in the shape of the girl they left back home, hoping it would come to life. Maybe some foot traffic.
There was none of that.
Will could hear heartbeats and hushed breathing inside those buildings. But it wasn’t an ambush.
Will could see fear oozing from the rough-hewn windows.
They were hiding from something. And they didn’t know what it was.