combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

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The strangers have six casters, in their group, that Qiri can count. Qiri's group has four counting him, and they got split up awhile ago when the strangers started that earthquake. Qiri is stuck with Master Huo. Master Huo is dying, but since Qiri is chained up he can't use that to escape, or attack Master Huo. The master's magic is uninjured, and he can reach Qiri's from where he lies, and Qiri is sitting there, goosepimpled, enduring it. He wonders if Master Huo might be in enough pain to distract him, if Qiri tried to wrench his magic away, but he doesn't think so. He can squirm around a fair bit under Master Yu and Master Zao if only one of them is using him for a spell - and if he wants to earn himself a beating - but not Huo.

He doesn't get nauseous anymore, like he did when he was a kid. So there's that.

Huo's casting a healing spell, moving Qiri's magic around this way and that to set it up. Qiri assumes it's going to target Master Huo, but spells don't know who anyone is. Qiri can't distract himself, not with his spine tingling and all his magic cringing under the slide of Huo's. Instead he tries to concentrate on something less directly sensory: how's the spell targeting? How is Huo going to make sure it heals him, and not Qiri's irritated skin under where the chains sit, the injuries to his fingers from the last time he irritated Master Yu, the probably broken toe sustained in the earthquake?

He figures it out when the spell is probably almost over: it's going to target the most injured person, and Qiri is a little banged up but Master Huo's got an arrow to the gut and a slice through his thigh that's probably going to bleed him out before the abdominal wound can kill him. It's objectively pretty impressive that he can concentrate enough to make his magic force Qiri's through the motions he wants.

Then, dimly around the cloying sensation of Huo's magic over his, Qiri notices a group of the stranger mages approaching, standing close together, back to back to back, doing something -

And he and Huo are banished somewhere else.

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"Okay but - let's say that you're a soldier. Is killing people bad for your soul? What if they're bad people who are hurting others? What if they're not bad but they're still hurting others? What if you have to kill them or break a promise you made, which is also bad for your soul?"

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"I don't know, I didn't get to be a monk."

"Huh."

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"I could guess but it'd just be guessing. Maybe it's fine to be a soldier as long as you're an honorable soldier but worse to be a dishonorable soldier than a dishonorable farmer, or maybe it's actually bad to be a soldier and they're all going to be snails..."

"That wouldn't be very fair, we need soldiers."

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"I don't think that affects whether it's good for your soul or not?"

"It seems like it should! Losing the war and being tortured forever by the enemy can't be good for your soul."

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"...I don't think we're having the same conversation but I don't know how to fix that."

"If I were inventing this system then, even if something wasn't normally good for your soul, if it was the best thing you could be doing, and you were doing it for that reason, then that'd be different. So even orcs could do things that were good for their souls."

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"Well, nobody invented it, it's just how it works. But maybe it's like you said anyway, I don't really know. I think you have to meditate a lot to figure it out? I think that's how it was figured out but I don't know."

"Do you think it happens to humans here, too?"

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"I definitely don't know about that."

"It's better than them not existing. Dwarves think they just stop existing."

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"That's no good. Reincarnating isn't that great but not existing is worse."

"Is it? I don't know if I'd care whether I stopped existing or was a snail."

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"Well, if you're a good snail you can be something better next time and maybe eventually a person again."

She makes a face. "I guess."

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"Mind, I have no idea what being a good snail involves. Maybe it is more obvious if you are a snail."

"Probably snails meditating on goodness learn goodness for snails, like people meditating on goodness learn goodness for people."

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"That's probably it. I wonder how snails meditate."

"How do people do it?"

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"We sit like this -" He can do a full lotus. "Or as close you can get, or kneeling on a cushion is fine, and then you breathe very regularly, counting the same amount in and out and pausing in between, and then you try to think only about that and not about anything else, and if thoughts happen you kind of go 'not now, I'm meditating' about them."

"...that doesn't seem like enough to think about."

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"What do you mean, enough?"