by Demi Harper
‘Exactly!’ She glowed, clearly mistaking my crushing realization for delight.
'But I don’t want to be their god! They're pitiful! Miniscule, weak, dumb—'
'Corey…'
'—gormless, pointless—'
'Corey!'
The sudden urgency in Ket’s tone brought me back down to earth with a jolt. Literally; she’d yanked me back inside my gem again.
I looked up to see what she was so concerned about and would have jumped in alarm had I not been an inanimate object incapable of spontaneous movement.
Faces loomed above me. Good grief, they really were ugly. Dirt-smeared and horrid just like the one who'd found me, they stared down upon my shiny purple form, their stone-gray eyes wide and puzzled.
‘Are you creatures always confused?’ I muttered.
They didn’t appear to be able to hear me. One of them had a finger stuffed up its nose – a popular gnomish pastime, it seemed. Another scratched its head; flakes of stone dust, scalp and gods knew what else rained down around me.
Revolted, I tried to shrink away, but all that happened was a brief dimming of my already faint purple light. Thankfully, this was enough to make my watchers leap back with cries and shouts of what I presumed was alarm.
The gnome who’d found me – the one with the biggest, palest, ugliest gray eyes – actually slipped over the side of the small hillock. The unfortunate creature squeaked and wailed as he rolled down the slope, drawing further sounds of consternation from those gnomes who'd kept their balance and now watched with interest as their comrade reached the bottom and lay sprawled in the dirt at the hillock's base.
I couldn't help it; I snickered, and my surroundings glowed once more, this time with a bit of cheeky pink tinging the purple. The watchers nearby reacted in a similar way again – so skittish – but to my disappointment none of the fools followed their fellow in his undignified tumble over the edge.
They inched closer to me again. Meanwhile, my finder dusted himself off and clambered back up the hill, elbowing his way to the front of the small crowd. Once there, he gestured clumsily toward me and began jabbering nonsense at the other gnomes, who clustered tighter and murmured to each other.
‘What language are they speaking?’ I asked Ket. ‘It sounds like gibberish to me.’
‘They’re speaking Gnomish, of course. But even if they were speaking Common, I’m afraid you still wouldn’t be able to understand them. As a God Core, you’re simply incapable of processing your own denizens’ native language.’
As relieved as I was to learn that this particular shortcoming was an in-built design flaw and not a personal failing, I couldn’t help but object.
‘Aren’t gods meant to be omniscient?” I asked. “As in, all-knowing? What’s the use of a god who can’t understand his subjects?’
‘That’s the whole point, Corey, don’t you see? You’re meant to intuitively see to their needs; they can’t just ask and have their wishes granted. That’s not how this whole religion thing works.’
I stewed over this, listening to the gnomes talk some more. At times I felt I almost knew what they were saying, but after a while I was forced to conclude that I could not comprehend them in the slightest.
‘What about you, then?’ I asked Ket. ‘Can you tell what they’re babbling about?’
‘A little. I get the gist of it, just like you can pick up on emotions from me – or you will do, the longer we spend together. Right now, the little gnome is trying to convince the others you’re special; that you’ll bring them luck.’
‘What do the others say?’
‘They think you’re a demon.’
‘Oh.’
I felt like this should have concerned me more than it did. For some reason, though, all I could think about was that there must have been some kind of mistake.
‘Ket… this is all wrong. Gnomes? Gnomes? I should be the god of my own people!'
'Right… and who are your people?'
Almost certainly not humans. I suspected this revelation would not go down well with the sprite, however.
'I… well, I can't remember. But—'
‘Exactly. Put all that behind you, Corey. These are your people now.’
Even as I watched, the small party of gnomes began to disperse. Most simply wandered away shaking their heads, though one or two spat parting words at my finder which I did not need to understand to get the meaning of. They clearly thought their compatriot was mad. And maybe he was.
The second-to-last remaining gnome patted him on the shoulder sadly and then walked off, disappearing over the brow of the hillock and heading back toward that stick-and-hide settlement on the other side of the stream.
My gnome’s shoulders slumped as he watched them leave. Then his brow furrowed, his ugly features set into an expression of determination. The gnome squared his shoulders and set himself between my gem and the other gnomes, as though preparing to defend me against any further insult.
Uncomfortably touched by this gesture, I said quietly to Ket, ‘Why such loyalty? I’ve done nothing.’
‘He’s desperate, Corey. They all are.’ She sounded sad.
Together, we watched the steadfast gnome for a moment, until Ket brightened again. ‘And I think you mean you’ve done nothing… yet. But things are changing for the better already. I have faith in you, Corey.’
Such optimism. Such encouragement, from such unexpected quarters. Was it annoying? Yes. Was it the worst thing in the world? Hell, no.
Could I ever get used to the prospect of a life – presumably eternal – as a shiny purple rock? No. But could I put up with it temporarily while I figured out how to increase my influence over this area and possibly escape my predicament? Damn right I could.
‘All right, Ket. I’ll do it. I’ll be their god, for better or for worse.’
‘Of course you will.’ She paused and eyed me sideways. ‘You do realize you don’t have a choice, right?’
There’s always a choice.
I took in the sight of the cavern, the guardian gnome, the tiny sprite no bigger than a firefly.
It’s not much to work with, but it’s a start.
Four
Insight
‘Not much to work with’ turned out to be an understatement. Not content with merely denying my divinity, my impious new denizens returned a short while later carrying sacks.
These sacks turned out to contain small, moldy black mushrooms, which they used to pelt my lone gnomish guardian – whom I’d decided to name Gneil – until he lost his balance and once again went rolling unceremoniously down the side of the hillock.
Satisfied, the other gnomes left, thankfully without throwing anything at me. My triumph at this was short-lived as Ket reminded me that this was likely because they still believed I was a demon.
Poor Gneil stumbled back up the hill and resumed his defensive stance. Meanwhile, I contemplated appropriately godlike responses to the actions of his miserable kin.
‘Can I set them on fire?’ I asked Ket.
‘No.’
‘Not even a little bit?’
‘No!’
‘But they don’t believe in me. That’s blasphemy! And they were mean to Gneil.’
Ket sighed. ‘A good god doesn’t just go around setting unbelievers on fire.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ she said primly.
I mentally rolled my eyes.
Good argument.
‘I thought gods were supposed to be all-powerful,” I grumbled. ‘What sort of god can’t even immolate a few heretics whenever he chooses, hmm?’
Ket sighed again. It sounded like a breeze whispering through leaves. ‘Remember when I told you that your power would grow in correlation with the number of your worshipers? Well, how will you increase your following if you kill all your potential converts?’
She had a point. Still, I couldn’t help but feel frustratingly impotent.
‘I thought this was meant to
be my Sphere of Influence,’ I grumbled. ‘If that’s the case, I don’t seem to have very much influence.’
‘Not right now, no,’ Ket agreed bluntly. ‘But once you get a handle on your new abilities, things will change. You’ll see.’
‘And what abilities might they be? Growing moss? Talking to worms?’
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
I grumbled some more, but ultimately decided to go along with whatever Ket had planned. Even if my so-called abilities were less than impressive, it was surely better than having none at all.
Besides, we all have to start somewhere.
Ket was glowing brightly.
Damn, she really does love bossing me about.
‘Right! Let’s start by looking around again. Do you need me to help you do it?’
‘No, no. I can do it on my own.’
I concentrated hard, straining to leave my body – no, not my body; my gem, I reminded myself again, glumly. Pushing aside such thoughts, I stared at the cave ceiling and focused every fiber of my being on willing myself up there.
Nothing happened.
I wanted to scream with frustration. Why could I not do this simple thing? I’d done it earlier, after all. Why not now?
‘Relax, Corey,’ said Ket. ‘Don’t be so tense!’
Relax? How am I meant to relax?
I was a rock, which was by definition structurally rigid. ‘Tense’ was my new natural state.
I huffed and puffed – well, as best I could manage without a pair of working lungs – and tried once again to forget about my physical predicament.
The first time I’d done this – left my gem of my own volition and gained that god’s-eye view of the cavern – it had been entirely accidental, my mind’s instinctive reaction to the shock of direct sunlight. That wasn’t going to work a second time, not now I was accustomed to the light. So, I tried a new tactic.
Recalling my recent stint in the abyss, I envisioned myself floating in the dark. Mindless, weightless, sightless…
A dizzying jolt, and then I was suddenly hovering several feet above my gem.
I did it!
In my triumph, I lost my balance and did a little roly-poly in mid-air. In my incorporeal state, I had no idea how to regain my balance, and continued to tumble over and over.
As the cavern spun before me, anxiety replaced excitement.
‘Ket! Help me!’
My pride went out the window – or rather, through the hole in the ceiling above – as I found myself trapped in my own ridiculous gyre of incompetence. The scene before me spun: bright daylight, interspersed with flashes of greenery and the blurred, grim dimness of the rest of the cavern.
Just as I was preparing to panic, everything stabilized. The world went back to normal – or at least the right way up – and my center of non-gravity was restored.
‘Nicely done.’ Ket’s laughter tinkled in my mind like spiders tap-dancing on glass.
‘Your panoptic vision, Corey – which you’ve been thinking of as your ‘god’s eye’ - is an intrinsic ability all Cores possess,’ the sprite explained, zipping around in front of me like an obnoxious firefly. ‘As you’ve already discovered, it allows you to ‘leave’ the gem serving as your physical Core – though of course your soul will remain irrevocably tethered to it – in order to better survey your Sphere of Influence.’
‘And remind me: what’s the point of having a Sphere of Influence if I can’t control anything inside it?’ I grumbled.
She tutted. ‘The sooner you learn that ‘control’ is not the ultimate goal here, the better. Now, come on: use your god’s-eye vision to travel over there, toward the mushrooms.’ She guided my viewpoint in that direction.
I could just about see their gray-brown caps, grouped together in a dirty-looking mass.
‘All right, now imagine yourself moving closer,’ Ket instructed. ‘Focus on the mushrooms, and will yourself in their direction. Imagine moving closer to them. Focus, now…’
She made it sound so easy, but when I did ‘move,’ it was sudden and unexpected. I zoomed across the cavern, landing once more among the mushrooms. Everything went dark.
‘Ket!’
I shuffled and squirmed, trying to work out what had happened. I heard Ket giggling for a good long minute before she finally took pity on me and hauled god’s-eye-me out of the mushroom stalk I’d ended up inside.
Ket guided me upward until we hovered just above the mushroom’s patchy, rounded cap.
‘Nicely done,’ she said again. ‘Now, while we’re here, why don’t you take a proper look at this lovely little specimen?’
The only thing that was ‘lovely’ about it was the fact that I wasn’t physically present to smell or feel it. Besides, she’d just pulled me out from inside it. What else could she possibly want to show me?
‘I think you’ll find I’ve already seen all there is to see about this particular specimen,’ I replied loftily.
‘Just look,’ she said.
Grumbling, I directed my gaze toward the offending mushroom. The rounded surface of its gray cap glistened damply; strips of skin had peeled away, either from scavengers or some kind of fungal disease, and—
‘Argh!’ I yelped.
As I stared at the mushroom, something strange began to happen. A vision of a second mushroom appeared – a perfect replica of the first in size and dimensions, except this apparition was blue and faintly glowing.
‘What’s that?!’
When I examined it more closely, I saw that it was comprised of thousands of tiny blue lines – like filaments in a butterfly’s wing, or strands in a spider’s web. They spread across the body of the mushroom, each strand branching out and interconnecting with others in a thousand different ways until they formed the perfect whole, superimposed atop the real-world specimen I’d been looking at.
I found that if I concentrated hard enough on the blue duplicate, I could move it wherever I wanted. I pulled it away from the mushroom and into the air, where I stared at it, bemused. Now that it hung suspended in the air, I saw the extensive network of fine roots that extended out from its base.
‘What’s that?’ I asked again.
‘Remember those special abilities I mentioned?’ Ket replied. ‘Well, this is one of them.’
‘But what is it?’
‘This skill is known as Insight. As a God Core, you have the power to comprehend all living things within your Sphere of Influence. What you’re seeing now is what we call a ‘blueprint’ – the very essence of what living things are made of, distilled into a form only a Core can decipher.’
Huh. I’d never really thought of something so tiny and insignificant as a mushroom as an actual living being, but I supposed she was right. Faint, flowing lines streamed from countless points around the mushroom’s edges, eddying across the cavern directly toward where my gem sat atop its hillock. The blue lines appeared to be flowing into my gem.
‘What are those?’
I had no way of gesturing toward the flowing lines, but Ket knew what I was referring to.
‘Those moving lines represent ambient mana, which is a sort of excess life force naturally produced by all non-intelligent living things. In areas with no Core present, it’s simply reabsorbed into the atmosphere, but in areas that are ruled by a Core – such as this cave – the ambient mana is siphoned directly into the Core itself.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being force-fed these particular mushrooms’ life juice, but decided not to think about that for the time being.
‘So this ‘mana’ they give me… it’s sort of like a life tax?’ I asked.
‘Paid by things that dwell within your Sphere of Influence, yes, I suppose it is. Though it’s paid willingly, and passively. There is no way for you to directly extract it, or take more than your natural share – although you can manipulate it, if you work hard.’
‘Isn’t mana used by mages to cast spells?’
‘Correct!’ If I’d had teeth,
I would have gritted them at the patronising note in Ket’s voice as she praised me. ‘When you eventually become more powerful, you’ll be able to employ mana in a similar way in order to use magical abilities of your own.’
Magical abilities? I’m going to be a wizard!
Ket’s voice brought me back from my fantasies with a bump. ‘Don’t get too excited. These abilities won’t let you simply do anything you want, like causing earthquakes – or setting disobedient gnomes on fire,’ she warned. ‘But they will enable you to better help your denizens and create a safe, stable base in which they can thrive. And it’s all thanks to the humble flow of mana from one being to another.’
Now that I concentrated, I could actually taste the mana from this particular mushroom. It was nourishing, yet hard and bitter, which I somehow knew was due to the absence of sunlight and the lack of proper cultivation.
I followed those swirling mana lines back to the mushroom, and examined the ethereal blue mushroom form beside it. I pondered its complexity – so much more than just the simple, ugly fungus I’d summoned it from. How had I done that, again?
‘The particular skill you’re using right now doesn’t require mana,’ Ket went on. ‘If it did, you’d notice your mana levels begin to deplete. See that blue globe in the bottom right of your vision?’
Now she’d pointed it out, I could.
How did I not notice that before?
It was a small blue sphere, translucent, softly glowing and pulsing like a heartbeat. The sphere was superimposed against my surroundings, remaining in the bottom right of my vision no matter which direction I looked, and I somehow knew it was only visible to me – and Ket too, apparently.
‘That’s a mana globe, Corey,’ Ket said. ‘It’s full at the moment, but it will diminish with each mana-based ability you choose to use.’
‘But it will refill with…’ What had she called the blue lines? ‘Ambient mana?’
‘Over time, yes. There are other ways to regain mana, which we’ll discuss later, but for now, remember this: you must never expend all of your mana. That globe you see must never be allowed to empty completely, otherwise your crystal will shatter and everything we do here will be in vain. Do you understand?’