A Much Bigger Dollhouse

(I did not make up any creatures in the Asheron's Call universe, I don't claim ownership of them, nor do I intend to use anything here commercially.)


The girl stood alone. She looked like a supremely healthy Isparian girl of about twelve years old, with a suspiciously symmetrical face, and hair so neatly cut that even a magically sharpened sword blade would have been too jagged. Her clothes were less neatly arranged, they were a battered blue dress or cloak with long shredded arms. Her mother had given this virindi cloak to her. Her mother was gone. Edric was gone. The cloak was the only thing that tied her mother and Edric to her in her mind, and somehow, she thought that if she kept the cloak with her, they would be back. After all, if a piece of cloth could be magically repaired over and over a thousand times using different bits of reality and still staying the same, then why couldn't they? Somehow, somewhere, she could remake them, it was only a matter of replacing their bits over and over until it was actually them looking back at her.

She wasn't Isparian. Well, true, her body had started to develop from the pairing of her Isparian mother with her Isparian father, and she'd been merrily forming in her mother's womb when Edric had began to study Dichroic in the first place, but he'd modified her, and from the time he had, she hadn't been acceptable to the Isparians. She had only existed for the last six months. She hungered for knowledge, and control. Bad things were happening. No one explained things well. Edric was amused and made happy by her magical progress, her mother had been angry and hurt by it, and her father had flat out rejected her. She had a lot of issues to work out.

An isparian girl of her age wouldn't even be able to grab dolls to slam them together to try to make sense of it all. But she'd been taught how to casually tear one reality from another like parchment scrolls stuck together. So she did. This was her playhouse. She would try to observe and learn from it. Maybe it held some version of her mother somewhere or perhaps another version of Edric. Importantly, she'd learned how to pull the reality around her to hide. Yeah, it warped a little here and there with the pull, but that provided a dark place to hide. If she didn't, THEY would get her.

Of course, Dadri's interference in the new reality left open the path for any magic similar to hers to find itself here- and half of her heritage had nothing to do with the flesh of her body being isparian.

Lilresc entered desperately. It was in the act of being destroyed by the quiddity that it had grabbed any source of escape and the conduit of energy had succeeded in transmitting the most vital parts of its memory and existence to another world. Of course, it had needed to leave enough of itself behind to convince the quiddiy that it had been destroyed, not escaped. Lilresc took stock of what memory remained now that it was not actively being destroyed. It was an energy being, made of the portal energy in between worlds.

The portalspace energy had become sentient billions of years ago, and each part of it had its own perfect path of order to pursue, until it had explored Dereth. Every agent sent to Dereth came back changed drastically. At first, the danger had not been apparent. A few alien concepts returned with the agents. As invisible energy passing through the world, they had only brought back observations. Once they took forms to be visible and interacted with the meat beings on the planet, however, they were given names. Names had changed everything. Once the virindi stopped being named by their role and had individual names, then they had specific memories and experiences that differed from the quiddity. Lilresc was only two years old as a named being. Prior to that, the entity had simply been an extension of the quiddity's will to destroy aberrant beings. Now, Lilresc had developed so abberantly, it had decided on a gender to emulate with interactions with other beings. It felt inclined to be female, since that would allow it to 'berth' a large population and style them as children.

At the moment, Lilresc was not tied to the new world at all. She searched for something that could tie her here. She needed something that could interact with her energy so that she could transmit her energy into physical matter here. Then she found a standard portal, attached to a gate with a portal crystal. She wasn't trying to vaporize the people traveling through the portal. That was simply a by product of the timing of her prying the crystal loose. Merging it with her portal energy allowed her to form a physical cloak to cover the energy tendrils with something visible. She then formed a metal mask to cover her head area with a visible face with the obligatory friendly smile. The beings here made many portals. She could make herself a new place to live on this world, and new beings to interact with, besides these meatlings. Perhaps, she would interact with the meatlings later.

Thousands of planets saturated the reality, separated by vast spaces, the reach of which was unfathomable to a normal human mind. Dadri herself could not understand many things, but Edric had implanted such knowledge in her mind. Relationships between beings was hard to understand, the existence of space in between matter was like understanding that there were different intensities of light. She had better senses than any isparian for that. Matter and magic and the things that made them up were completely regular fathomable things, but reactions between beings were unduly complex.

One of the many spinning planets was Ispar. She was sort of interested in it. After all, she was defined as an Isparian simply because her parents had both been born there. But after passing through it, she'd determined that it was a very weak planet with extremely weak magic and not worth the visit. She did not understand how so many Isparians on Dereth spent their lives pining for it, wishing they could go back and live in the filth and the hovels she found there.

In this version of reality, Dereth had been destroyed in the shadow war, so all the Isparians had never come to Dereth. So, she looked for her mother among the cities of Aluvia. She didn't find her there. When she finally found a trace of her mother's flesh, she appeared in a forest and found bones buried under fifteen feet of dirt. The bones had been degrading for ten years, two months, four days, seven hours and thirteen minutes. She had learned to round off seconds and fractions of seconds because by the time she transmitted them with her mouth, her accuracy was mistaken. Speaking was a slow method of communication. However, telling through mental communication was not always permitted and someone who never spoke with their mouth would be suspect. She recreated her mother from her skeleton, a bit of her flesh, and the various gases and plant matter loose in the surrounding area. She still had a tiny bit of the soul stuff she'd ripped from her mother, trying to save her. She'd saved it, to try to act as a lifestone to bring her back one day.

Soon, she had a thin, blond, sixteen year old version of her mother in front of her. She implanted what she remembered from her visit to her mother's mind. She couldn't take her to the safety of Dereth, so she found another planet, almost as saturated with Magic as it.

She deposited her young mother there and spread herself out in awareness. She was frightened as she felt another Virindi Presence. She fled to a dark plane and attempted to hide.

Dichroic shook her head to try to clear it. Unfortunately, that didn't help. She didn't speak the same language as the two men in front of her.

The first man was tall, tanned and handsome, with vibrant green eyes and dark black tattoos framing them. He was as thin as she, and taller by a head. The second man came up to his waist and seemed to be a shrunk man- he was a man, but the size of a child and everything he wore was proportional to his size. She almost wondered if she was imagining the second one. Sometimes her mind did that sort of thing to her. In fact, they might be speaking perfectly understandable Roulean to her, and her mind could just be keeping back the meaning right now. She spread her hands in confusion.

"Sorry, I have no idea what you are saying. It sounds pretty though. You can keep talking." She smiled apologetically. Some part of her mind flashed back to her dying by angry villagers. Then by some horrible monster. Then by a little girl and an energy being wearing a human skin. Her brow knit and she bit her lip again. She looked down at the clothes she wore- they were simple linen breeches and a shirt. Why had she thought she'd had on armor? Her mind sure liked to put her in strange places and then jerk her out of them. The tinier man thing stabbed up into her stomach with a small sword. Her mouth fell open. She would feel the pain any moment now. She stepped back, blood spilling down her front and hitting the muddy road below her. She pulled out an iron scarab, a prismatic taper and her aquamarine tipped wand. She spoke the words Malar Zhapaj, and a red energy ate the scarab, her taper and closed up her wounds closed up in a flash of glittering red. Of course, they would kill her now, for daring to use magic, but she would have died of the wound if she hadn't. She hoped she could bluff them with her rickety old crossbow.

The crossbow she pulled out of her pack wasn't old or rickety. Hadn't she just dreamed Dereth? But this was her Peridot Crossbow from that dream, and here it was, smooth and waiting in her hand. So, she must be dreaming now as well. She aimed it at them and the two stared.

The tall one strode forward right up to the sharpened tip of the crossbow. He made a broad gesture of bowing. "Xzar." He said, indicating himself with his hand. "Montaron," He said, pointing to the half man. Then he looked at her curiously.

Her spooked smile turned friendly again. "Dichroic." She said in relief. She wished she could just understand them like she could understand everyone in Dereth. But that magic hadn't followed her here.

(Edit for spelling corrections, wow, I'm rusty!)