The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice LXXV – Visitations

Isn’t this kind of overkill for a closet?

Meanwhile, the power-influx from the Green Galaxy was flowing out along the local dragon lines, no longer filtered and mitigated by ten to the hundreth power light years of distance. The churning power was shifting both current and future demesnes towards wood aspects already – although the process would take many years to complete.

The effect was expanding at about ten miles a day – and was showing no signs of stopping. It was, after all, the Elemental Pole of Wood, the most powerful source of that element’s essence in Creation. The entire Southeastern United States and probably parts of the Caribbean islands would soon be affected…

That would definitely attract more attention over time, even if the effect would be hard to trace to a specific source what with the wards and pocket-dimension effect.

It wasn’t long at all before Charles heard about it… Huh! He’d underestimated how big an impact a link with one of the old elemental poles would have… Perhaps the sheer distance to their current manifestations had diluted their power to the point where half of earths geomancy had gone quiescent? It would certainly explain why there seemed to be so few modern demesnes – and how people had managed to get by with so little awareness of magic for so long!

He’d probably have to make some similar manses for the other three elemental poles to balance things out.

Hm… Would they be better in a circle around Atlanta so as to mitigate each other out locally, or would a tetrahedron around the planet be better for balance?

Considering the power involved – and that the Earth was the old elemental pole of Earth – it might unbalance things even more to put them all on one side of it. A tetrahedron it would be!

Meanwhile, however, the Morgans had seen him casually open a freestanding gate into another universe – using geomancy and a confusing mixture of other energies – pass through it with their alchemical guest, and then re-emerge a little later. He hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that he hadn’t left the conference room yet.

The Morgans knew of a number of creatures capable of that stunt – but Charles didn’t really seem to match… Unshaped would normally use wyld energies to do it (and were near-legendary anyway), raksha usually had to leave the portal behind, and divine sanctums were usually fixed locations. Moreover, they used personal energies – not a mixture of various types of essence. Definitely curious!

Well, when in doubt, send in your most experienced Aspected… which was Raymond.

Fortunately, he was entirely willing. He considered it pretty obvious that Charles was utterly harmless – and his curiosity was about to blow the top of his own head off!

He asked for if he could visit as well as soon as the pair came back out.

Charles figured that – as long as he was coming out as something more than human anyway – he might as well do it in a big fashion. Besides… he was reasonably sure that – as long as he kept it to less than a dozen or so suspect visitors at a time – they could probably be handled. And it wasn’t like the secondary doors were impossible to get past or no one could get in otherwise.

(Charles) “Oh! Did you want to visit too? Well, if you want; I do have some things to do though, so you may have to wait a few minutes at spots!”

(Raymond) “If you wouldn’t mind!”

(Charles) “OK!”

Charles took him on the usual tour, visited a few random places – and stopped at the Well of Worlds because it was focused in on planet #38 now – and it was time to terraform it…

Raymond seemed quite at ease – although it was hard not to be in Aden – and spent a lot of his time taking photos and trying to analyze the essence flows.

Charles suspected that that wouldn’t help him much more than it had the Sidereals. Just for drama – and because he had been wanting to anyway – he channeled the terraforming spells personally. It wasn’t like Raymond couldn’t figure out that he’d been terraforming planets; how else would he have coordinates for empty ones handy?

Besides, all it meant was that the Guardians channeled their spells through their hearthstones rather than through their usual avatars. It was really neat seeing how well everybody worked together!

Raymond, however, had seen the child channeling power on nearly that level before. While seeing it wash over a barren rocky world, transmuting rock into water to carve out rivers and seas, purifying, oxygenating, and thickening the atmosphere, adding transmuted resources and soil, sprouting trees and plants, and spreading animals to balance the ecosystem with utterly unnatural speed, was impressive, it wasn’t really anything NEW – and there definitely seemed to be traces of secondary power-signatures. They boys personal power WAS tremendous – but at least for this, he had help! He’d probably had help in creating the Yggdrasil too…

(Raymond) “So… whatever you are, you’re definitely interested in spreading life everywhere. And what is this place, anyway? I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you made it.”

(Charles) “Well… It’s me as a world really! It’s like Dr Who and his Tardis, I can be bigger inside than out and – like now – I can have an aspect of me inside myself… Does that make sense? Anyway, once I get the gates open, there will be lots more room for people!”

(Raymond) “Gates?”

(Charles) “Well, each planet gets a dozen or so Manses with Gates back to the earth! Planets are no good unless people can come live on them! And the manses make the cores of the cities!”

(Raymond) “I see.” (He looked around.) “And with this place, you probably have the resources to pull that off… I guess you’d be sending any mortals here who’d be willing to as settlers.”

(Charles) “Well, it’s mostly refugees here right now – but there are always more of those!”

(Raymond) “A sad fact… what about the fantasy creatures? Some of them seem to be helping out too.”

(Charles) “Minor Sub-aspects or me and THEIR secondary creations really! The major sub-aspects tend to be pretty busy!”

(Raymond) “Helping with the terraforming, I’d say… there’s no way you could do it all on your own.”

(Charles) “Some of them! But that’s one of the things I made them to help with!”

(Raymond) “So… I’ve got to ask. Does this place connect to Yu-Shan?”

(Charles) “There are some gates there – and it connects to anywhere I go of course, since it’s me.”

(Raymond) “Good to know. Now… how did you make your own world? That’s supposed to be impossible unless you’re one of those Primordial things, or some beast from a Wyld pocket.”

That was really a good question! He’d never really stopped to consider the exact mechanics behind the charm…

 

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