Maddy paused for an extended moment.
A single uninterrupted stretch of time where mana built and refilled, but everything else was still.
Everything stopped as she meditated on both her ideas of what the status quo was, as well as her goals to change it. Everything needed to be framed in conceptual interactions instead of physical ones. Everything had at least one layer of metaphor to it.
Creation and destruction. To create something by building it up from scratch. To destroy it at its base, razing the very foundations on which it stood.
They were more than simply opposing sides. They were an important cycle for optimal growth.
That was what she had been missing wasn’t it? Or at least part of it?
By building something all the way to the end you could take note of exactly what worked and what didn’t. If completion was your initial goal – instead of perfection – well then you had a much higher chance of reaching the end without endlessly restarting. You had to allow any problems that came up to exist and try and address them as you build. When you finished your creation you could always look back. Keep those mistakes in mind as something to protect against from the very start and avoid in the next attempt.
That is one generalized example for how you learned. How anything could learn.
A generalized example of how systems themselves could grow. On a macro – on a universal scale this growth was positive. Progress. And yet on the micro level this cycle could grind individuals into dust.
Everything about the status quo was purposeful. The ‘rules’ in place had good reasoning behind them and yet when combined together they created something with backlash. They were building towards a “perfect” end state blind and that end state was unobtainable. An ideal forever out of reach. A theoretically better system would be ‘practically’ worse at least for individuals but that didn't mean there wasn't a conceptual problem with this one.
The class system needed to work differently. It should be a perfectly neutral force where changes to spells could both strengthen or weaken them.
That applied to more than just the class system didn’t it? This ‘problem’?
Growth was at its very nature nothing more than ‘change’. Positive change in an upward direction. Meanwhile the system limited and prevented any change that was considered ‘downwards’ even if it was theoretically a positive change in that downwards direction. The system was an asymmetric finger on the scale to prevent losses of power without any more nuance than that. Weakening strength was a sin even if that weakening could be beneficial long term.
A way to fix this ‘problem’ would be to provide an option for downwards growth in this system. The ideal would be a method of refining and improving all of your stats and power while condensing them down and thus weakening them. One one side, if you wanted to travel to the ‘lower realm’ you would need to weaken yourself to a lower level of power to maintain balance. On the other side this step could improve the quality of a person’s strength in the long term even if it was an initial weakness.
Alternatively they could allow higher realm people to send weak clones or temporarily limit themselves to a lower level of strength to visit…but Maddy liked the idea of making this option a sacrifice. Coming down should be a commitment and coming up should take effort and growth. Those concepts needed to be tied into all passages up and down, otherwise magic might allow individuals to undermine the whole setup. The lower realm should stand on its own without meddling from above.
…
Maddy continued to map out everything then arranged everything she could do in series of steps.
She was ready. Everything up till now could be redone but as soon as she started this part she had one shot.
With how much time she had spent thinking about what she wanted for this theoretical system her wish began to strengthen to the point her fae perception could follow it as a metaphor. She was done when her perception saw a path she could follow all the way to the end.
Without any more thought, Maddy began.
The start was a reverse cycle. Proof that initial downwards growth could help lay the foundation for upwards growth.
The cycle of rebirth. Destroy all there is and create something new from the ashes.
Maddy took an action and it felt like the collective breath her surroundings had been holding was suddenly, violently released.
Her first step was unimportant – she could start with anything – and yet monumentally meaningful. It framed everything she did after that point.
To start Maddy split the world in two.
A single slice and half of reality was here, half there.
…admittedly this was a bit easier to do than it sounded. Especially considering how small the ‘world’ currently was.
Maddy’s eyes were currently in an empty sphere the size of a small room.
All it took to cut this room in half, was a single spin of one of her eyes and a single line of void light.
A tiny groove was dug all the way around the empty sphere, stone weakened and melted deep enough to be visible. Maddy released her mana and soon that ring was absolutely soaked in delination. The concept of delination drew her mana into its rune.
Her perception funneled down into a single eye all of her bodies following a single lead.
Maddy turned and popped towards one side of the split. Out of the corner of her sight she spotted a mirror version pop to the other side turning to watch silently.
Ignoring her reflection for now, Maddy spoke, translating the meaning in her mind into sound before watching that sound get translated down to letters as her dictation spell carved her words into the stone.
The stone was incredibly soft. It felt like clay for her to mould.
This dication was more than a fancy method of writing. Her magic translated her intent and each step acted to build the meaning she needed to leverage. Each and every word she spoke had such confidence it felt like it was already law. Who would dare tell her no? Who existed in this world to push back against her declarations? No one but a shadow and the shadow was silent for now.
Maddy’s voice resonated in the enclosed area doing more than just dig letters into the slate before her. The sound itself bounced and rippled through the surroundings cutting letters and warping words all about. She focused on a single square like a piece of paper glued to the 'wall' and yet the entire wall was covered when she finished speaking. Intent lingered and built. Soon the process began to snowball.
“And so, we start with the shape of a split. A delineation of truth. The first of many – none more or less important than the others. On this side, size is strength. Bigger is better – an unarguable truth.
“Monsters exemplify this trait higher than any other. The system or highest equivalent power will help tag monsters in this area using this list or a similar one.
- Rank 1. Dire
- Rank 2. Giant
- Rank 3. Titan
- Rank 4. Behemoth
- Rank 5. Colossal
- Rank 6. Leviathan
“In this place all ranks are split into tiers with the bottom third of each rank being represented as ‘lesser’ and upper third being represented as ‘greater’. A greater dire rat is nearly a lesser giant rat and yet there is still a qualitative difference between the two. Discovering what rank a creature falls under is trivial or even free. You can see how large a creature is after all, its hard to hide size.” Maddy paused for a moment as if thinking of what else to add.
“The system or equivalent power will – to the best of its ability – enhance all large creatures and constructs. It will distill this ability. This goal of enhancement. Distile and refine and propogate it as its main goal across the area. For our example area, this product shall be named ‘vast mana’. As a main benefit, vast mana will also make it easier for large things to exist – the environment itself will help larger creatures with their caloric intake, increase whatever innate ability they have to exist at such a large size etcetera. It doesn’t have to give power directly. All that matters is that every part of this force pushes towards reinforcing and stabilizing this truth and damages and decreases anything that might threaten it. The goal is infinity. An unreachable goal but one that can be strove towards forever meaningfully in this context. A creature larger than is currently possible is a success. One larger than that is the new goal.”
Maddy paused and as she thought about what to add next, she heard her shadow begin to speak in an imperceptible whisper. Her copy nearly silently sketched words into the stone on the opposite side of her sphere… but didn’t seem able to achieve the same ‘meaningful’ effect Maddy had made.
Maddy turned and watched the shadow silently reading her words as they were written.
“…and on this side the truth is that large sizes don’t matter. A bug can take down an elephant if they are dense enough or have stronger magic or know the creatures weakness. Theres no need for nomenclature when something doesn’t matter... So obviously size won’t appear on status screens or system descriptions. Humans won’t need to become massive to gain tremendous power…but smaller monsters might slip about to a stronger degree. On this side, something may or may not be created to erode the tyranny of size – or prove once and for all that it doesn’t matter. The relocation of any magics that threaten the other side to this location will help. One example of that help would be a magic to change size without increasing or decreasing ‘power’. A potential name is Dilation mana.”
Maddy nodded to her copy as they finished. She hadn’t done anything to prompt them – she hadn’t known they would appear and the ideas they had brought forth weren’t her own…but they matched what she wanted. This was nearly exactly what she had planned to write on that side already.
Maddy flickered back to the middle, her shadow popping at the same time she did and disappearing from all sight. It was as if her copy had teleported to this position in the middle at the same time she did rejoining her in the moment.
Nothing more than a reflection.
Maddy spun slowly in place staring at the two empty and scarred sides with a critical gaze.
They were mostly empty right now. Two empty stone halls with goals carved deeply into them. Nothing had actually ‘happened’ yet.
She imagined the two zones and what sort of ecosystems they might create – massive, towering behemoths large enough for cities to rest on their backs on the side with vast mana. Strange realms hidden in microscopic positions – entire cities resting on the face of a coin requiring shrinking dialation magic to gain access. With each idea of what these two sides could become, she threw tiny illusions into place letting the image float through and fade.
A strange form of fae brainstorming. Suddenly a whim struck her and with a conscious thought, Maddy flickered to the opposite side. She spoke confidently and retraced her false sisters plan with real power – watching as her mirror traced Maddy’s own original meaning in empty agreement.
As Maddy wrote over top of her false sister’s words, they almost seemed to hum – as if some invisible and silent resonance was building. Something greater than one plus one equals two.
Finally, Maddy returned to her origin once again and hummed a song of reset. Slowly but surely a steady wash of different types of ‘void’ scoured the entire inside of her cave. Layers of rock melted away and her words were erased. As far as Maddys 'true magic perception' was concerned, she reached the end of a strech of path. A tiny ravine lay before her – a gap half a foot in length. Maddy barely had to shift her feet to step over but she still bent and jumped to clear it. Maddy jumped and her perception of ‘reality’ blanked.
…
An eldritch egg twitched as it allowed itself a moment to relax. Tendrils exploded out in all directions as the creature stopped pretending for long enough to nibble at the surroundings.
A crack opened as ‘nothing’ blinked and briefly twisted causality under the weight of its un-gaze.
Everything broke in this endless moment.
If a single sapient creature were to witness the fracture of this blink it would fall in to unrecoverable insanity just by acknowledging it.
And then the eye closed. The egg returned to its dream. The character woke up once again and continued its story.
…
Maddy landed on the other side of the line. A new path stretching out before her. In reality the sphere smoothed over and Maddy could start once again.
As far as her ritual was concerned. The delineation she had made still existed…but now it was untethered and weakened to the point of being nothing more than an idea. The memory of an idea floating about everywhere she looked in her reality sight. Where exactly did size matter again? Where was it easy to change your size? Who cared about this delineation? Who would fight to keep it? Should it even exist?
All about, perfect opposites clashed and vanished as they rejoined one another – only visible in Maddy’s reality sight and weak enough they were barely shadows of truth. Tiny bits of intent smashed into one another like atoms in a hydron collider. For several flashy seconds after the forceful restart finished, inverted ideals of ‘permanent size’ and ‘tiny things mattering more than large things’ burst apart and joined like minded thoughts. The bits of intent formed swirls and chains and blobs and fractals – all on invisible currents.
Maddy continued the second pass of her ritual – everything she did now gaining a small sense of urgency. If she did nothing, step one would be gone. She had to build and gather enough for it to maintain momentum.
Her mana was gone – Maddy’s entire pool spent and lost in the ‘nothing’ spell of step one. She was over drafted to the point her regeneration itself would be harmed for longer than this ritual would last.
…But Maddy had multiple pools. A new her took up the torch and the current her faded into a supportive audience.
Maddy nodded to herself in thanks then spun a delineation into place dancing over to her new canvas.
“On this side one of the most important rules is that space is broken for both good and bad. Distance is just an idea, and all may take advantage of that to the best of their abilities. Teleportation is fun and so are places with smaller or bigger insides than they should have.” Maddy laughed – a faint well of joy rising within her.
With a jump Maddy was here.
With another she was there.
Her teleportation did not rely on space – it wasn’t truly teleportation, more a transformation into sound and transformation back into self…and yet it was so much fun! She wanted to share this joy – she wanted to see what sort of place you could build without the tyranny of distance and linear movement holding you back. Her voice maintained a happy note despite her words darkening slightly.
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“Cities are but a step away…but so are monsters. Let’s see…the default might be the idea that monsters originate deep within the broken space. A different dimension – a hell or infernal realm that is the source of all demons. Demonic creatures attempt to break into ‘reality’ through cultists or deception.
"All demonic creatures will have a note in their status indicating their demonic rank. As an example Knight, Count, Marquises, Dukes, Princes, Kings from ranks 1-6. Demons themselves might attempt to corrupt permeant gates and portals into linking to their infernal realm…but maybe a different cost is revealed by broken space? Maybe instead space has a police force that comes to fix and subjugate areas that have been broken – preventing all but the most powerful or cleaver from keeping permanent gateways alive, but leaving quick instant jumps an easy luxury?”
Her shadow suddenly spoke – done waiting its turn – and Maddy felt a strange lurch as her copy seemed to care just as much about the opposite ideals as she currently did about breaking space. This time her copy created a small resonance with her words without Maddy even retracing them. This time her delineation truly began to feel like she was splitting reality in half. The line between them became a nearly invisible pane of ‘difference’ – like a tiny void in the air. Like a pair of invisible panes of glass had left a tiny vacuum in between them. Swirling stone dust from the partially destroyed wall bounced off this pane of nothing as it passed by.
Her copy continued to speak her voice stronger, with every word now fully audible. Was her copy a monster? A creature created out of her essence? R sneaking into her ritual? Whatever the answer was it didn’t matter in this moment. Together her and her copy were one.
“Stability is the name of the game here. Here in this place. Here in this hollowed space. Here far away from that broken disgrace! No removing the journey – the journey itself matters just as much as the destination and the only way to cross great distances is through speed. Distance itself can become a barrier you protect yourself with – You never have to worry about anything teleporting past or around your defenses. Dangers like demons are blocked forever. Space matters and there’s strength in keeping it as strong as possible.” Maddy nodded slightly at her copy then swapped places and ‘agreed’ with the rules her opposite had offered.
Maddy reset a second time.
A second jump over a slightly wider ravine. A second brief blackout.
The law of space was already weak in this dimension – roughly half as strong as on earth or the trial planet they had been given and different in a strange way as if its power was related to the square of distance instead of the direct distance. With infinite mass on all sides gravity should be compressing them with an insane amount of force…but gravity was broken as well. It only seemed to extend a bit away.
Still that weakness helped her break it further.
One side wanted the law of space as strong as possible, the other wanted it broken and easy to subvert. It wasn’t to the point that one side instantly grew to 100% and the other dropped to 0% but there was a noticeable flex in space as the two tugged. The weak space on one side strengthened. The strong space on the other side weakened.
Just those two base wants – the nascent wish hidden in each hemisphere of her spell was enough to suck some of the law of space into themselves and shatter the barrier between them even without a concept of space or a dedicated mana type.
It was as if these two physical spaces were physically pulling themselves away from each other – ripping the fabric of reality in between them as they did so.
Where did space not matter? Not here! Where did space matter? Well…not here either. The line was gone after all.
...
An egg rolled over in its sleep, kicking away some shackles with an incomprehensible flex. Its surroundings grew closer to chaos. Closer to home. The egg shifted in a sleepy manner with all the energy of a cat making biscuits on the lumpy blanket that was space…
And then the eye returned to its dream.
...
Maddy paused for longer than she meant to, before continuing with her next split. Her final initial split.
The final example.
“On this side time enhances all. The older something is, the stronger it might become – every building, every plant, every item and being. All grow stronger in time. A city built over decades will never fall quickly. It is hard to damage that which has been established and finding historical relics can give more power than just history alone. You can build a home with regular materials and then, if you defend it for long enough it might become nearly unbreakable as every material tiers up year by year!
"Maybe the history of an object even helps it become restored if it ever is broken – with the history of an object sunk deep into its existence, all you need is for that object to remember what it once was. Repair! Reinforce! Improve! Doesn’t that sound wonderful? If you build something it will last. If you make something great it will be remembered! Because of how powerful age is on this side, it shows up in status screens and analysis results. All hail the 500-year-old ginseng root. The elder tree and the mature river!” Maddy laughed as if sharing an inside joke with a friend.
Her copy spoke, a tiny bit of colour entering their voice and form for the first time.
Her copy felt real. It sounded real as it laughed and shared in her joke. “Age is just a number, and the elderly are no more important than the youth. It’s so much easier to rebuild. It’s so much easier to cause a revolution. Maintaining the same ‘thing’ for centuries or more is nothing but stagnation. Creation is wonderful and anything permanent prevents more creation from appearing! I want to build! I want to make! Without stuff breaking down, how can ‘new’ ever hope to compete! Maybe higher tier items and objects last longer – I’ll give them that – but all must bow to the passage of time. The only key to permanent immortality lies in rebirth.”
Maddy spun and washed the world in void – her twin bodies swirling about in a dance as they flickered between each other back and forth.
Both.
Both is good – if you grew tired of one you could head to the other.
This was the type of delination that she wanted. The law she was creating was one designed for separation of rules. Not of people. People would have to accept the rules of these areas – bending or changing to acclimate to areas. They would have to accept them but as long as they didn’t violate the rules of a place in specific ways, they should always be able to travel freely between areas. That was the freedom Maddy was imagining.
Her spin once more scoured her physical words. Once more the physical was transformed into nothing more than information in her spell – bits of intent filling the world about meaning thick enough to hinder a faes movement.
She could continue. She could continue near endlessly – but three felt like a good number to build this baseline. Magic loved threes, its hidden pattern appearing everywhere in proof.
“Vast mana and Dilation mana. Size as a focus. Distance and stability! Easy travel and hard travel for lovers of destinations and journeys. History and Decay. Time is power. These splits are not joined in endless conflict but separated in delination!”
Maddy knew the only way to achieve her goal was through pure sacrifice and so without more than a second of hesitation she removed her personal concept of delination. She pulled it into the space above and then gathered all the ‘information’ floating in the air towards it with a pull of condensing Orb.
Slowly she watched as all the decaying concepts in her recipe began to gather. Ideas fused to the concept in the air elevating it even as they crystalized and limited it in turn.
Maddy’s fae instincts knew that right now her creation was shifting towards something like delineation mana. This was how affinities could be created. A whole bunch of ‘meaning’ shoved into a concept to elevate it.
Her goal wasn’t to create a mana affinity. Her goal was to create a law. Something beyond a goal that needed ‘power’ to complete. Something that simply was.
Already the three example splits she had made were muddied beyond recognition. A faint fear filled her – why hadn’t she stabilized this more. Was it enough? She only had one shot now that she had added her concept…
Maddy’s voice surprised her brain as she continued to speak her goal – continued to pray for a miracle.
The shape of the higher world she wished to create and the positive effect it should have on the world ‘below’. She saw a path.
The problem with shared wishes was conflicting goals. You couldn’t grant two people with opposite wishes the same thing…at least in the same location. With the system Maddy wished for, both people could have their wishes granted as long as they were physically separate and prevented from damaging each other.
Every word she added was pulled into the idea above and around her.
Each word broke apart as she spoke – its meaning filling in fuzzy bits and allowing more shapes to build off the forming ‘thing’ in the center of her room.
“These splits can be made solid as soon as it would be more beneficial for them to be so. These splits are numerous and unlimited. These splits happen when anyone cares about anything. These splits happen when any idea becomes truth – creating a safe haven for anti-truth and allowing it to become truth as well. Spaces are created by overlapping splits and solidify into proper sides when groups share their goals and actively work to create a place they can call home. Countless rules currently exist – some stronger and weaker than others. This split is designed to be neutral and impartial. We have infinity. Even if the previous ‘strength’ of a side was much greater, all are equal in the face of separation. This is truth. It’s obvious truth. A tiny tiny sliver of infinity can exist safely beside a large slice of infinity. Even with a tiny slice you have infinite space. It does not matter which has more potential. Which is easier to create while side by side. All that matters is the seperation.” Maddy spoke.
Her copy chanted as well, speaking words that Maddy would have said before she said them.
"As splits happen, something will act to help purify each side. Creatures that fit one side more than the other will be drawn towards their haven while those who resonate with their space will seek to drive out those who don’t. Life will build towards a stable perfection and environmental magic will gather and rest where it belongs on invisible winds. Everything is possible but not at once. This law of separation will be kept above all and creating a solid separation has meaning.” Her copy spoke.
Maddy changed her tone almost completely ignoring the forming creation above. She needed to create a link to the next step. As soon as her first creation finished she would no longer be able to influence it. She could tell that. Laws were unbreakable. Truth unchangeable.
“I wish to gift the power of these splits to all. I wish to create a framework for definition. A smaller scale. A pair of tools. These splits are natural but sapience should be able to use the natural themselves.
"To start, the positive. A delineation of an area you want to exist in. A delineation of a home. A delineation of a city. Of a country. Of an arena, of a public space. Of a private space. A delineation I have to make myself. A delineation I have to work to build.”
Maddy drew a tiny circle around herself then sat in it. She barely noticed her eye had grown limbs once again – chicken legs and paws sprouting out of her smooth sphere. A mouth split down the bottom of her sphere to smile as she watched the weak magic she had just made break and swirl as it interacted with the broken swirl above.
Conceptual patterns that only made sense in metaphor.
Maddy looked up at the swirling spell above her head spinning in place like a confused cloud and spoke once again.
The magic she had used to vibrate the air had bound to her body so now her voice came out of the small mouth on her eye.
“This area is mine!” Maddy declared pointing about her firmly. “If others were here, it might be larger. It might be ours instead of mine. It might be different somewhere else, but in every way it matters this is the same. I wish to subscribe to the laws of history but only in this space. To the law of stability but just within these bounds. To a dilated reality for I am very small but still the most powerful creature in this space.
“Imagine this is a city – because I might just try and make one here. I want it to be easier to do the sorts of things I like. I want it to be harder to do the sorts of things I dislike. If others were here, I might be willing to share – I might be willing to make some concessions, but right now I’ll make some goals just for me.
“I cannot be greedy for laws, but as many smaller goals are met as possible the better. Weaker than an absolute law for sure, but easier to list because of that. Murder is frowned upon. If a murder happens in my space, it shall be very easy to find the culprit. Theft is also bad but I care less about that than others.
“All Magic for tracking crimes is strengthened. Methods of hiding crimes are weakened and absolute methods of hiding such a vial act are blocked. I know it’s a lot to ask considering how small I am but that’s why I cut such a small circle of the whole. I give up control of every position outside my city. That out there is the wilds. Its rules may vary. Its laws may contradict my own but that is fine.
“I give up control of the wilds. I give up control of the unknown in exchange for this place I may call my own. An Orb of space. A Delineated dome as big as my circle. A haven for me and mine. A shared space with shared goals freely spoken. A space no one may be forced into – a space you must freely enter, its rules a binding contract upon those who exist within its bounds.” Maddy’s voice tumbled out of her as she spoke.
She continued to talk about her potential city and watched as bits of the three damaged ideas, she had mentioned slowly drifted towards her. Inside her circle, bits of free-flowing intent that clashed with those three ‘law examples’ began to slowly be expelled away. As soon as she decided the process had lasted long enough to be ‘proven’ Maddy moved on.
With a pop Maddy left her previous circle in place.
She found a new spot on her much larger inverted sphere and drew a new circle.
“This space is a negative. There is something in the world I hate. An idea I wish to weaken. A problem I wish to trap and a prison I wish to create. Something I’m too weak to destroy. Something that acts against the space it exists in – attempting to weaken what I have built.
“I do not care for sickness. I wish to banish disease! I know my circle is small and I know I cannot hope to banish all diseases everywhere…but I hope any diseases trapped in this prison will not be able to enter my space. I hope diseases in the space outside of this space might be drawn towards it like a drain. The more diseases are forced into this prison the less we have to deal with out here! The better our side of infinity becomes!”
Maddy watched as bits of those invisible ‘anti-vast’ chunks of swirling intent began to drift towards her prison. The strength of the small. The strength of microscopic things and their ability to topple titans.
A second concept was removed from Maddy’s soul – split in two and infused into both circles decisively.
The two domes she had made burned in her mind’s eye – Two brilliant rings of power stronger even than the delineation above. She’d used her Orb concept much more over her spellcasting journey. This step would stay stable for quite a bit longer than the first one.
Two concepts sacrificed already and she wasn’t done.
Maddy pulled premade devices towards her. A dozen items she understood and a dozen more she didn’t.
They were still damaged from being teleported into this universe and so following instincts, Maddy pulled meaning out of the swirl about her to fill the cracks.
A world that could split and accommodate everything and everyone as long as they were in different places. A spell that could let individuals claim and transform the rules in a location.
The spell at the base of the city building class was done even if it was barely formed.
The spell at the base of the explorer class was already done by Richard but similarly damaged. Maddy gave the city building class a spell for conjuring buildings, then gave the explorer class the spell for conjuring water. She drew overlap between these two auxiliary spells – city building could conjure a single stationary source of water, explorers could create a temporary shelter and then stopped.
Three concepts sacrificed. She still had more to give.
Maddy sacrificed a 4th. Her custom concept of filtration gained nearly solely for this moment. It appeared in places above conceptual valves slotting into the structure. It linked to the city spell pulling unsaid filtration meaning into place. It linked to the duel classes sorting spells for the individual on one side and the collective to the other.
Maddy could tell in this moment she would need to sacrifice one of her higher creation affinities to complete the system and once she did this would be done. The only way for the class system to use these spells as she had, was for her to give it the affinity she used to build those spells.
She was nearly done part one. She could continue but this was enough. Everything was as stable as it could be and she had some time.
The idea she had was quite vast in scope – she had so many minor ideas she wanted to add towards it. Filters, Ways of changing things that passed through the barriers, automatic environmental osmosis with the surroundings. So many moving parts and minor allowances.
For example, something in a prison might see their surroundings as a haven and even if they couldn’t ‘break out’ into the surroundings, they might be able to grow or link up with other places. If a prison was placed in a haven and something managed to say, teleport away to a new space, they should never ever be able to break into the haven from the outside. The goal of the prison was less a punishment and more a forced separation – the people outside a prison did not want to deal with whatever was inside of it and the only way whatever was inside of it should be able to reach them is by the barrier of the prison itself.
This ‘reaching’ could be either done by someone on the outside breaking the cage or by some method of fairness built into everything allowing something strong to fight back or try and prevent it from being formed…
But once this barrier formed she wanted this separation to be near absolute in power. As long as the ‘prisoner’ or contained concepts left whoever was on the outside alone, they should have as much freedom as possible. Someone in a disease prison might eventually end up at a disease haven.
Your freedom is only granted as long as it doesn’t diminish another’s freedom. That was the idea behind this prison.
The shape of these spells was also open to interpretation. She used a orb because thats what she had, but as long as there was a line between in and out, any three dimensional shape was valid. If space was weak the 'prison' spell could be tossed into a hole in reality instead of created and then ignored. A prison spell in that sort of area could let you 'teleport' the problem 'away' 'forever'.
So many ideas she wanted to add to this idea and the meaning of these ideas infused everything already.
And yet there was power in simplicity. Yes she could spend more time describing every little part of her plan. Yes she could define everything right away...
But there was a reason most concepts were single words. The truth was that the simpler her idea was, the better chance she had of grasping hold of it. All these ideas remained something that could happen but didn't have to. All this meaning was given flexibility in the way it could be completed.
Explicitly Maddy described the spell while leaving rooms for growth. A circle, the power of which was linked to meaning and reinforced by the highest power in whatever way it saw fit. An inside – the owner of the circle had control over. An outside the owner did not. A delineation of this orb and a goal for maximum satisfaction with it.
Destroying the surroundings with waves of delineation destroyed the rings but did nothing to destroy the magic contained in them. Her concepts couldn’t be washed away with a word or two and these spells were fully boosted by her concepts.
As the physical rings were destroyed, rings of meaning floated up from where she drew them, steadily drawn towards the whirlpool of delineation at the worlds center.
It began to look like a planet in Maddy’s reality sight. A Saturn of sorts, with two rings spinning about it.
Maddy took a deep blink then finally embraced her fae self – no longer holding herself back.
Maddy opened her eyes to the dream, her second perception clearly opening in her platau. She closed her eyes to reality, the cave, spinning meaning planet and lightshow vanishing from her perspective.
And following the steps R had shown her, Maddy began to cast a miracle.