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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"Like, you're trying to find this magical artifact and return it to the city in time to save everybody, stories like that."

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"Let's just explore first."

"Cool!" And she shows him how to flap his arms to get aloft, and then how to control his direction and altitude from there, and they go flying out through the skies of Valinor.

Valinor is really excessively beautiful.

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"Wow!!!"

"Isn't it fun?" She does a twirl in the air. "It goes on for ever and ever, too!"

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"It does? Like really or just in the game?"

"I mean, in real life it's a ball so it goes on forever and ever but after a while it's repeating. This is procedurally generated, though, so it's really forever."

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"What's procedurally generated mean?"

"Uh, they described rules about the kinds of ways trees could look, and from that the computer can make trees forever and not have any two exactly alike."

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"Rules about the kinds of ways trees could look?"

"Yes. If you are really good at it, you can describe enough rules about trees that a computer can come up with a tree that has never really existed but looks perfectly real."

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"Wow."

"You can land and take a look at them if you want."

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"Oooh!" And down he swoops.

The trees are very convincingly detailed; he can't touch them, but other than that it just looks like he's closely examining a tree.

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"This place is amazing."

"We should leave the designers a compliment! I bet they'll appreciate it. There's sand dunes and marshes and coastline and ocean and so on if you want to see any of that - you can bring up a map in the corner of your vision -"

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"How do I do that?"

She shows him a hand motion. If he imitates it he indeed gets a corner map.

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All right, corner map, where's the ocean?

Off a long way forward and to the right! Up in the sky there are air currents to get you to other areas faster.

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Off he flies to see the sea.

It stretches out as far as his eye can see, with a sun setting over it and making the water and the sky and the clouds colorful. There are waves crashing against the rocks.

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Ooooooooooh. "You're not bored, are you? You've probably done this before -"