Chapter 321: Dreams (Patreon)

Chapter 321: Dreams

Secluded cultivation was a common enough thing in the martial realm. It was when people locked themselves away for months, years, decades or centuries, to sit in a peaceful place and quietly practice or grow their cultivation realm.

In a way, Mercury did something almost like that. He didn’t need fasting pills or anything like that, since his own thoughts could sustain him easily enough. Entropy didn’t touch him anymore. He didn’t need to sit in a cave to meditate either - he could simply retreat to his internal realm.

That was, after all, a peaceful and quiet space. Sure it had Kim, Whisperstar, and sometimes old Uunrahzil, but at the end of the day, there wasn’t much happening there. Right?

“Okay, Illuhm, I’m gonna be so for real with you, what the fuck are you doing?”

The god of sunlight sat in the middle of Mercury’s realm. And he looked… distraught. His fiery hair was in disarray, muddle bits of black and brown mixing with the usual pure flames. Each of his eyes that formed a ring on his spherical head had deep bags underneath it. His arms were still muscles and defined, but also atrophied, as though he was skin and bones.

With all of that, he still stared at the silver sun in the sky, and at the meagre collection of threads in front of him. “I can’t do it,” he whined. His voice cracked. “I can’t… I can’t make it like you do!”

Mercury blinked. “Make what.”

“This!” The god spread his arms wide, gesturing at the entire realm. “I want something like this!”

“Dude you have the mental endurance of a toddler,” Mercury told him. “You’ve been practicing for… what, a handful pages?”

“Yes…”

Sighing softly, Mercury sat down next to the god. “Okay. See, this place is mine. First, you shouldn’t just copy it, because you probably have different needs from me. Second, you’re learning. You’re better at other things. Do you think I can smite people with sunlight like you?”

“No…” The god said it with a pout.

“Think I can keep the planet protected like you do?”

“No…”

Mercury clapped the sulking god on the back with a firm pat. His whole paw promptly incinerated to ash, but the man’s hulking form did move a bit from the pat. “Alright. You’re having a midlife crisis, and I get that, Illuhm. You’ve realized that maybe your envy is a little much, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s good. I’m glad you get to live that out. But please, I mean this in the most kind way possible, can you stop burning my world?” 

Around the god, there was a large circle of scorched and torched grass from where he’d thrown lashes of fire in his tantrums. Old Uunrahzil stood off to the distant, even their webbing of mana-veins bearing some tiny marks of black, as the god must’ve accidentally struck them. 

Luckily for Illuhm, both the ancient teacher and mercury were quite patient. It was a childish thing to react with anger like that. Maybe he needed an adventure in the mortal realm, get kicked around by people weaker than him a little bit, make an avatar with less physical power?

Well, getting a little hurt by Mercury was what had kickstarted this whole thing, so maybe that was decent advice, really. The mopaaw considered it, then decided to use it just a smidge later. “So, what’s troubling you, hm?”

Illuhm hummed about it for a long while before admitting it, but he ran into the troublesome thing that Mercury was very, very patient. So, while the god was all conflicted and squirming about what to say, wringing his multitude of arms with miniature solar flares dancing between them, Mercury just sat there.

And thought.

Eventually, of course, the god spoke. “The breathing exercise is hard. I struggle to focus properly.”

A soft smile spread on Mercury’s snout at that. “Yeah, it’s hard.”

“Yeah…”

“But hard things are worth doing, I think. Give yourself some time. Has it already gotten a bit easier?” he asked, laying his head onto his front paws, getting comfortable.

Illuhm wringed his hands. “It has,” he admitted.

“Then it’ll just be a bit. I know you want the results right now, but being patient with yourself is important. Believe in your own ability to do better. You don’t need to tear anyone down, it’s not like there’s a hurry, right?”

That last bit seemed to surprise Illuhm. “There’s no hurry?”

Mercury smiled, tilting his head. “Is there? Are you running out of time? Will you die in a year and need to master this perfectly before then?”

The god thought it over for a moment, before finally folding his hands in his lap. “I have time,” he said quietly. “You’re right, I have time.”

“Yeah. Time is the nicest thing in the world to have. So long as you have the basics met and an abundance of time, there’s nothing you can’t do, yeah? You have a nice place to stay. You have… do you eat food?”

“I subsist off sunlight.”

“You can photosynthesize,” Mercury said. The god raised a finger as if to protest that, then reevaluated and slowly dropped it. Yes, apparently the god of the sun was a plant. Or something. “And you even have some social needs met.”

Illuhm seemed conflicted at that. “Your caterpillar isn’t nice to me.”

Mercury snickered. “Their name is Kim,” he gently corrected, “and I imagine they got angry you burnt down the lawn, didn’t they?”

A guilty glance to the side revealed Illuhm’s answer before the god opened his mouth. Mercury just snickered again. 

“Yep. They’re a gardener, Illuhm. You probably wouldn’t like if people tried to, say, cast the sun into darkness, yeah?”

“Preposterous!” Fire boiled out of the deity, singing Mercury’s fur, but with a flick of the mopaaw’s tail, clouds gathered above and a <Rainfall> started. The flames petered out in the grass, and Mercury’s fur was left smoking lightly.

“So imagine, then, what a gardener might feel if you burn their garden.”

For a moment, Illuhm almost protested. Then, he met Mercury’s unyielding, lavender eyes. He paused, reflected, and then answered. “It wouldn’t be nice,” he admitted.

“It sure wouldn’t.”

“I have much to learn.”

At that, Mercury smiled brightly. “You do! And isn’t that wonderful?”

“Huh?”

“The knowledge that you have things to learn means you have the ability to improve. And learning, in and of itself, is fun, isn’t it? Getting better at something, picking up new things, making connections between your hobbies. I did a lot of weaving dreams, and I could use a lot of that knowledge recently when I was weaving rope from plants. It’s lovely.

“Perfection would be so boring, I think. It’s the capstone of all growth, after all. What am I meant to do if I’m perfect? Simply remain like that for the rest of time? Never change? That seems rather boring. I think perfection isn’t even something to aspire to. It’s a dead end.”

He looked at the patchwork sky of his realm and smiled. “People want to gaslight themselves that there’s a peak, that after doing one thing or achieving another they’ll have claimed happiness, like it’s something that you take once and keep forever. But it’s not. Happiness is something you find in little things, in moments in time. It comes in contrast to sad times. An experience. And yes, there are things that bring a lot of happiness after a lot of work. But in the end, fulfillment is a process, not a stage. So, do things that make you happy.”

For a moment, he paused, then smirked at Illuhm. “Though, if you think that burning this place to the ground would make you happy, I might need to kick you out.”

The god remained quiet. Instead of answering, Illuhm took a deep breath, clasped his myriad hands, and then dipped his head once, his ring of eyes closed. Then, gently, he ran his fingers across a single blade of grass. 

It didn’t regrow, of course, but the heat he passively emitted got more gentle. Mercury started to feel like he was sitting in a warm patch of sunshine, rather than in a sauna or next to a forest fire. The choking heat died down to something manageable.

“A process,” Illuhm repeated. “I was made to be perfect, Mercury.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” the god nodded. Then he went quiet again. “I’ll be more quiet in the future.”

“I’d appreciate it!” Mercury said with a smile. “Also, I’d recommend maybe making yourself some mundane avatars to walk in the mortal realm.”

If Illuhm had eyebrows, he would’ve furrowed them. Instead, he kind of drew his solar-flare wings closer in a somewhat guarded pose. “What do you mean? Why?”

With a soft sigh, Mercury shrugged his shoulders. “It’s good to feel normal. In fact, it’s good to be weak in the world, sometimes. It teaches you valuable lessons. What it’s like to be harmless. How that changed how people treat you. It teaches you a bit of humility - but it also brings a profound normalcy with it. It’s grounding.”

“Grounding?”

“When you have your head in the clouds, be it from power or status, it’s easy to lose track of your humanity. Or, well, personhood, I suppose. You’re not… exactly human.” Neither was Mercury himself. Personhood fit both of them better indeed.

Illuhm seemed confused. “Why would I want to hold onto mortality?”

Snickering, Mercury shrugged again. “Try it or don’t. I think it’s a valuable experience. Something profoundly wonderful about the sort of community and abrasion you find when you’re weak. People are kinder and more cruel than you’d expect.”

Innkeepers might serve some poor sod soup, and bandits might try to take their last handful of worldly possessions. It was something Mercury had experienced in this world already, and while it certainly made for a difficult lifestyle, there was a reason he usually kept his power hidden.

People were kind, so there was no need to constantly hold the implied threat of violence over them. Mercury was perfectly comfortable being treated as an equal by most. It usually revealed their true colour more easily. 

Despite that, Mercury shook his head softly. He rose from his position in the grass, shaking himself for a moment as his tail curled in the soft warmth of the silver sun. “Anyway. Good luck, Illuhm. Please, don’t cause Kim any more trouble.”

“... I won’t.”

“Good man.” With that, Mercury was off towards old Uunrahzil. 

The ancient dreamweaver, Mercury’s first and longest teacher in this world, turned to him and coughed up a plume of ash. ‘Ah, Mercury,’ their thoughts rumbled and rasped across the realm, sounding faintly hoarse. ‘My new student has proven, ah… demanding. But this one is jelec. Tenacious.’

With a snicker, Mercury nodded along. ‘Indeed thou are. I have come here to bother you more, on top of your already difficult duties.’

Humor radiated from the ancient one, alongside a bit of good natured relief at a somewhat less difficult student. ‘Oh? Doth this old one be sought? For purposes other than to, say, sort out your messes?’

Mercury did feel a small sting of guilt at that. One which he quickly brushed off. ‘I simply believed you’d like the company, I assure you,’ he lied. They both knew it, too, but there was no real malice in the words of either. ‘No, but I must ask thee for assistance. There is something I wish to do, something I wish to change in the world.’

Curiosity and interest spilled across Mercury’s mind like ink over a page. Old Uunrahzil was intrigued. ‘So you say. To change the lo-pac is difficult enough. To change the things beyond them is even more so. What doth thou wish to alter?’

‘Cruelty,’ Mercury replied wordlessly. ‘The world is too heartless. I wish to force the unkind to be empathetic.’

‘A valiant task,’ old Dreamweaver praised, ‘and an impossible one.’

‘Indeed. I cannot force them to grow a conscience. But perhaps I can at least make kinder actions more beneficial.’

At that, old Dreamweaver expressed some interest again. ‘You wish to use their selfishness to promote selflessness?’

The old dreamer was sly, as usual. Mercury smiled faintly. ‘Yes. I wish to tie their power scheme to karma. So that, at the very least, the strong do not slaughter the weak needlessly.’

‘How curious. Safeguards, then? Soft encouragements to be better, and limitations placed on cruelty… You surprise me again, Mercury. Speaking the language of the world.’ 

‘Excuse me?’ Mercury tilted his head. The language of the world? What was that?

Old Uunrahzil wrote surprise for a moment, then composed themselves. ‘Thou doth not yet know. This one should not have assumed. Surely thee knoweth the world has a spirit, yes?’

That much Mercury was aware of, and he wrote as much.

Nodding in affirmation, his oldest teacher continued. ‘Every lo-pac, every dream, has a dreamer. Sometimes many. The world, too, is supported in turn by the people living in it. Every single organism on it is a dreamer, in a way. And tiny fragments of their thoughts come together to form the Worldspirit.’

And Mercury had encountered something like that before. He’d strongly suspected that it was an entity a little like that who’d asked him for help with the sins. The notifications had been of an entity involved with the system who had the health of the planet at heart.

The gods, too, were born from something. Did mortals or divines come first, Mercury wondered? The dream or the dreamer? It was an amusing thing to think about, but it was also entirely meaningless.

Knowing what old Uunrahzil meant when they spoke of the language of the world, Mercury understood the context of their words a lot more. ‘Is it easier to alter reality in a way that the world wants?’

‘Uhn. Thou’rt clever as always,’ his teacher praised, pride written clearly in their thoughts.

‘And the world wants peace, because the vast majority of people yearn for safety…’

‘Indeed.’

What an interesting idea. It would be easier to shift reality towards one that enabled community, because people, generally, sought community. The world wanted to be an environment in which the weak can thrive and the strong don't kill them wantonly.

Even looking at beasts. Wolves didn’t kill rabbits for fun or by the hundreds, they killed what they needed to eat, and little more. It was a normal thing for creatures, all creatures to want safety, and it was a normal thing for the powerful to protect the weak.

Mercury breathed in, then out, and smiled. ‘The language of the world,’ he repeated. ‘That is an interesting idea. Thank you, old Uunrahzil.’

Knowingly, the ancient Dreamweaver smiled. ‘Will thee meditate on this for a while?’

‘It seems prudent.’

‘So it does.’

And with that, a thousand mana veins, a creature made from rock and magic and stardust, rose from their prone position, plodding away to a different place. Mercury’s dream looked much different from how it once had. Barren fields of grass now sported lamps and benches and rivers. Trees grew in rows and on their own, providing shade in the tall grass, and bits where the undergrowth was a little shorter.

There were more things in the distance. A graveyard, a citadel, a cathedral, great mountains and a fountain. They were encroaching slowly, now connected in a way. Darkness dwelled beneath the stems of grass and underneath trees, the cool shadow shielding from the sometimes too-bright sun.

Mercury loved it. 

It was a peaceful, quiet place. And yes, it had other people in it, but they were all people he allowed in. Whisperstar and Kim had done nothing but make this place nicer, trying their best to be accommodating when he needed his quiet. The gardener especially had made an effort to grow fruit and organise this place, while Whisperstar was an important defense against outside probing.

The little spirit guarded Mercury’s dream against the Void when he wasn’t there, and for that, he was grateful. Of course, the world was extremely resistant to that sort of degradation anyway, mainly because it was thin in terms of reality, and directly linked to him, who lived on a protected world. But it was still a good precaution. 

He breathed in, then out. A tree shifted to him, and a wrought iron bench unwove, and reappeared under him. Silver sunlight filtered through the leaves, painting bright and dim dots on his fur. Mercury laid on the iron with his eyes closed, letting the calm of this world wash over him.

Quiet wrapped around him like a comfortable blanket, only the sound of rustling leaves and the running river breaking it. Illuhm kept his promise and caused no further explosions or trouble, and no one else bothered him.

For a long, long moment, Mercury allowed himself to soak in that. His mind sank into ihn’ar like a well-tailored glove. There was a dreamer for this dream, too, but it was himself, so learning to speak the language of the world wasn’t really an option.

But that was fine. He’d practice outside eventually. For now, he just wanted to get more comfortable with re’zil as a person. He hummed softly to himself, trying to find that note that made the world shake.

It wasn’t really a sound by itself. Instead, it was a mindset, a mental framework to pull at the weave, a way to manipulate it. Magic that was so embodied it consumed all senses. It was a sound, the soft touch of a paw on the weave, the way he looked at the world and the world shifted to fit his image.

He didn’t properly notice when his mind took the step, when the dream resonated with him. It was like dipping his paw into a pond and watching the ripples spread. The grass bobbed up and down for a moment, the sky contracted in-sync with his heartbeat. 

From one moment to another, Mercury felt his dreamscape. Resonance was synchronization. It was overlaying his idea onto the world, and the world onto himself. A profound shift in his interaction. The sensation of interconnectedness from <Tapestry>, the way the world bent around him from <Itinerant>, but much deeper.

If he beckoned, it would change. A single movement of his mind, and trees would become glass. He could create mountains or flatten them, shift things as he needed or make wholly new ones. But he didn’t.

For now, he didn’t move to exploit the feeling. He let it rest. He breathed in, then out, the motion of his lungs creating a small breeze in his world. When he shifted to get more comfortable, the earth rumbled faintly. When he closed his eyes, the sun dimmed.

Mercury allowed himself to be one with the world, to let his heart beat in tune with the rhythm of this world. It slowed down, a little at first, then more and more. This was a slow, languid place, after all. 

After a while, his heart only beat once a minute or so. That was more than enough, of course. His blood flowed through the veins, and as it did, the rivers flowed through this realm, bringing water to the grass. Living synchronized as a resonant embodiment of his dream, Mercury practiced.

In a little while, he’d do so with the whole world… and turn it upside down.