The Newt and Demon

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It took Ziz a while to clear away all the workers near the city. Theo waited near the shore, watching as those people dispersed into the surrounding area. He had wanted to wait to try this until things got dire. Since nothing was working, that moment felt as though it was approaching swiftly. While he had an arsenal of potions, there was only one he could think of that would pair well with his plan.

Until this point, Theo had been moving a handful of stones at a time. It was more efficient than having people carry them by hand, but it was still slow. Collapsing the mountain range to the west had been an option. Their tests had revealed that it was too hard to control the way the mountain fell. The alchemist held a Greater Intelligence Potion in his hand, waiting for the area to clear. He had swapped his Toru’aun Mage’s Core out so that he could equip both Zaul Shadowspirit Core and his Earth Sorcerer’s Core. The Spirit Weaving skill attached to the Shadowspirit core allowed him to empower one skill.

Earth Attunement was the skill that allowed him to move things aligned with the Earth element. Spirit Weaving didn’t have a time limit, but Theo was certain this would work. The skill was already empowered with his willpower, but would experience at least a doubling effect. Consuming the intelligence potion would send him up a few realms of power for that attribute, unlocking even more power. If he drew some willpower from Tero’gal, all the effects combined might make this work.

“Everyone is cleared out,” Ziz said, thumping Theo on the shoulder. “Try not to kill anyone in the city.”

Theo nodded. He drank the potion first, swaying on the spot as his Intelligence rocketed past 40. Once he could stand on his own, he activated the Shadow Weaving ability and focused on his Earth Attunement skill. In an instant, the mountainside lit up. His head swam again. If Ziz wasn’t there to keep him from falling, he would have pitched over onto the gravel pathway. With almost 50 Intelligence fueling the skill, the alchemist reached out with his mind.

The side of the mountain was almost a vertical wall of stone. It towered higher than the city itself. In Theo’s vision, it was a sheet of green energy, pulsing with the will of the planet itself. He reached out with his mind, pressing his willpower against those nodes. His aura flickered out as a turbulent bubble of shadows, pressing against that mountain and gaining a few screams from those lingering too close.

“Here we go,” Theo grunted, tugging with all his might.

Seams appeared in the mountain. The green energy buckled under the potent combination of Zaul’s skill and Theo’s own potion. Those seams grew larger as Theo yanked, pulling house-sized boulders down from their perch. More stone fell the more he yanked and the alchemist shifted his focus, watching as the shadow bubble battered the wall. An avalanche—if a vertical drop of rocks could be called that—came next. Piles of stone formed at the bottom.

Theo split his concentration, yanking boulders down as he distributed them around the work site. Those who had remained to watch the event had long-since fled, but Ziz stayed where he was. Shouting words of encouragement, the half-ogre pumped his fist every time a large rock fell from the cliff. The alchemist had piled about fifty feet of boulders and rocks around the base of Qavell when the skill wore off. His shoulders slacked and he lost hold of the massive rock he was holding with his willpower. It slammed into the sea, sending more waves rushing his way.

“This is going to take a week,” Theo said, swaying some more and nearly falling over. He had trouble contending with the cold logic spreading through his mind. High Intelligence was far worse than Wisdom. It was as though all emotion had drained from him, leaving him feeling like an automaton, slave only to logic.

“Sounds about right. One-day cooldown on that bad boy?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Your normal rock-moving ability can still help, though. Unless you’re too busy.”

Theo wasn’t that busy. He didn’t want to be that busy, anyway. He agreed to help Ziz, no matter how long it took to set the city straight. It would be a grueling week of work, but he could do it. If only for the sake of the people in the city above, he would do it. Drinking a steady line of Greater Intelligence Potions was easy enough, but the heavy lifting was done by the Shadow Weaving skill. The alchemist might not admit it, but the effort to collapse part of the cliff had taken something significant from him. He was drained beyond what he would express and only took light work during that first day.

It took fewer than a week to get the job done. Including the first day of work, Theo spent four days moving material from the mountains to support the city. Laying a base of stones, no matter how large they were, wasn’t good enough. The stonemasons of the town worked to bind massive sections together with their magical mortar ability, creating something more like bedrock than a pile of gravel. Ziz had other ways to bind everything together, but the alchemist was often too exhausted to watch closely.

The only thing that made the days doable was Theo’s ability to retreat into his private realm. He looked over the pile of stones, shaking his head at the sight. It looked as though an army of giant ants had moved the boulders, creating a pile that surrounded the entire city. Ziz and his teams were climbing over those boulders—not unlike ants—and welding the last few things together. This wasn’t the final form of Qavell as it rested outside of Broken Tusk, but it was enough to keep it from tilting over. Estimating the amount of material that had moved would be impossible. It was about a mountain’s worth, and that’s all Theo cared to think of it as.

“I’m taking off. For about five minutes,” Theo said, dabbing a layer of sweat from his forehead. He was perfectly cool in his coat, but the stress of abusing his Earth Sorcerer’s Core had piled up over the day. Midday had drawn over the town and gone, leaving them with the bright sun of the mid-afternoon.

“Okay,” Sarisa said, looking around awkwardly. “Whatever.”

Theo wrapped himself in his aura and fell through the veil. He didn’t use his Tero’gal Dreampassage ability, instead planning to probe the void for something interesting. Once he was done with this bit of work, he would finally see what his newest potion had become. The one in his inventory hadn’t budged, but the others planted throughout the lab had progressed well enough. They produced different shades and unique quantities of bubbles. Even the shades were different, rendering each with interesting differences of stability.

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Theo coasted along the first ribbon of the heavenly reality, hovering near the Bridge and soaking in the feeling. He would consider the sight, but there wasn’t much to see. The void was a long stretch of nothing, punctuated randomly by stuff. ‘Stuff’ was the best way to describe it, as the alchemist could never get a feel for it all. But it was easy enough to understand the blockade the Bridge provided, keeping the heavens where they were and the mortal plane where it was. If he strained, he could feel things off in the distance. The high heavens nearby, which included both the Prime Pantheon and Demonic Pantheon. There was something else near those two groups, but it was hard to say.

Interesting, Theo thought, pushing beyond the bridge. It was like observing the fabric of everything up here from a top-down view. Near the edges of the two pantheons there was something that felt more solid than even the bridge. Theo pressed himself against it, but couldn’t find a spot where it was weak. After fumbling up against something he couldn’t understand for a while, he gave up and approached the bridge. This time, he allowed Uz’Xulven to detect him.

Moments later he was landing in Tero’gal, eager to enjoy some tea. Several gates to other godly worlds were already up. Some had stopped waiting for him to show up and just took the realm as an open invitation to chill. The spirits had taken up new sports, but that wasn’t surprising. Those gods that were already enjoying Benton’s fine tea hardly noticed as the alchemist entered the room, taking his seat to partake.

The conversation that was already in motion didn’t stop for him, rolling through the group with opinions on heavenly politics. It was a topic that Theo had no interest in, so he remained on the sidelines. The trip to Tero’gal was refreshing enough that he decided a hike was in order. Several hours after arriving with the gods and drinking his share of the tea, he headed out on the path.

It would take more than a few hours to cover the distance from the main spirit hub to the outer reaches. Theo took his time on that road, waving to the denizens of his realm as he passed. A group of power walking spirits came up behind him at a point with cries of “on your left.” He was eager to see the newest trend of the locals die and never return.

What few souls had joined Tero’gal in recent memory were settling well enough. Theo had been shocked to see that people weren’t flocking to his realm. He expected a torrent of souls pouring into this place, crowding it with their ethereal presence. Since the void didn’t seem overly full of lost souls, the alchemist could reach only one conclusion. They had picked other realms to call their home. It made him wonder what attracted his current population of lost spirits. Asking them was useless, as they rarely remembered why they came.

Even Belgar wasn’t immune to the dizzying effects of the void. Only Theo had the honor of traversing the void. Perhaps it wasn’t a responsibility he wanted, but there it was. The alchemist settled in by the lake he had created. He adjusted the time-scale of the realm, setting the current time to the mid-morning. The local souls would get used to a day-night cycle. He left the internal clock of the realm running, allowing the fake sun in the sky to move in an Earth-like cycle.

“What about a moon?” Theo asked himself, tapping his chin.

Between the Simulated Reality and Landscape Manipulation upgrade, he could form the world to look like just about anything. As he reached out to the realm, he felt as though a moon wasn’t out of the question. Like the sun, it was cosmetic. Instead of a singular moon, he settled on eight. The number was significant, representing the phases of Telbarantis back in the mortal plane. That moon shifted through a range of colors, changing each day. Green, blue, red, yellow, orange, gold, white, and black. Why not have them all at once?

“Even if the spirits don’t like it we can change it later,” Theo said, resting on the sandy beach. He could see a village created by the splinter group of spirits on the far shore. It would be easy enough to teleport over there, demanding that they reunite with the others. But what was the point of that? Tero’gal was meant to be a living thing, not some diorama created by a god. Minor changes, such as the sun and moons, were as far as he would go. That and the occasional trail or feature of the land.

This strategy had proved fruitful from the start. Theo remembered the way spirits acted in other realms. They all danced to someone else’s song. Within Tero’gal, the spirits themselves made the music. Those lost souls wrote the tempo for their lives, dancing however they saw fit. Industries had sprung up throughout the realm. Logging, mining, clothcraft, and so on. While there was no central currency, people bartered for their stuff. Since almost a year passed for each day Theo was away, those things had moved quickly. But not as quickly as things moved on the mortal realm.

If Tero’gal was an analog for the mortal world, Theo could have spread a city over everything in sight. Seed core buildings had a way of creating a civilization overnight. Not the souls of Tero’gal, though. They build their structures by hand. They mined the ore without classes, chopped trees without them… A mortal would puke if they considered doing any of these things without classes.

“My perfect little world,” Theo said, scoffing. “An example for the gods… or what?”

Theo stopped by the Dreamer’s Throne before he left. Tresk came here every day to reassert her power. This was the perfect hiding place. If another person were to come and take it, they would need too many skills that most mortals didn’t have. If a god wanted to claim it, they would deal with the ire of the Arbiter. Even if Khahar didn’t come to help, the Guardians of Faith expansion on the realm would be interesting to contend with. That and the Bubble upgrade, which made it harder for hostile gods to perform interdiction actions both into and out of the realm.

Once he was satisfied with his trip to the realm, Theo allowed himself to slip through reality. He fell back to where he was, finding the weight of the mortal realm comforting. When he entered the lab, Salire had a strange look on her face. It was a mixture of excitement and dread.

“Interesting results,” she said, gesturing to the vial that had been stored on the first floor.

“What is that?”

Theo looked upon a pile of something. Where the vial once was, there was now a mass of material. It appeared as though someone had poured molten metal onto the vial, only to let it cool there. While none of the wood around it was damaged, heat still emanated from the pile.

“Some unknown reaction,” Salire said.

“Are they all like this?”

“Not the one upstairs. Top floor. The second floor is a mess.”

This was an unexpected turn. Aside from explosions, this was the single most reactive thing Theo had witnessed with alchemy. There were plenty of times where he had intentionally forced two reagents to react, resulting in an explosion, but never anything like this. He inspected the stuff on the ground, finding it to be rock-hard foam. It had bound with the floor itself, creating an awkward situation where it was nearly impossible to remove. A job for Ziz and his boys, perhaps.

“What are we waiting for?” Salire said, almost breathless. “The one in the air conditioned room worked!”

“Let’s go.”