TDYK - Soul Fall .1 (Patreon)

Bbl felt a pain deep in his soul, such that he had hoped never to experience again. He felt as if his shell had been cracked open and the vicious, pink human had spent ten years scooping his insides out with a rusty implement. In reality, Theo had spent a little over nine hours in his interview with the small crab, and he still wasn't satisfied.

He shook his head slightly and pinched his brow to try and settle his thoughts. It didn't help that his emotions and memories continued to swirl in broken shards through his mind. He had flashes, instincts, impulses that would come back to him with perfect clarity in one moment, only to fade to nothing the next and he was left grasping at nothing, filled with a sense of loss. He'd hoped that when enough time had passed it would resolve itself, but that didn't seem to be the case. He was no better off now than he had been in the administration office.

"When are my memories going to come back?" He muttered. 

Bbl slumped to the ground, his legs splayed out and his claws limp on the stone before him. Even his eyes drooped until they were ground into the floor. 

"I told you, soon! You just need a little sustenance!"

Theo snapped his head up.

"And what, exactly, do you mean by sustenance? What do I eat? Where do I get it?"

"I can't say!" The crab wailed. "There are things I'm not allowed to talk about. You know that. I've told you a hundred times! Literally! A hundred! You know what they'll do to me if I break their rules! Some of this stuff you are just supposed to figure out as you go!"

Theo's shoulders slumped forward once more. He had to think. He'd been able to get a great deal of information from Bbl, but the most critical pieces, the stuff he really needed to know, had been locked away by the administration behind a wall of threats that nobody could hope to breach. How could you make it worthwhile to betray an organisation that would know the second someone had betrayed them, and rip their soul out right then and there?

The administration of the Endless Chaos appeared to adhere to an outdated and painfully inefficient induction method, in Theo's opinion. They had an advisor, yes. But that advisor existed, as far as Theo could determine, to tell a new Demiurge how stuff was done, not whether doing something was a good or bad idea. It felt as if the administration sought a system where the proficient would rise to the top and the incapable would sink to the bottom, but there was such a massive element of randomness to the process that Theo instinctively hated.

He sat, his legs crossed and his arms folded with his back firmly planted against the stone pillar. His eyes flicked from around as he sank deep into his own thoughts. If he couldn't get the information he needed from his advisor, then he would need to infer what he could and make the choices he determined would have the highest probability of success.

There would be a chance he would be wrong, but that was unavoidable. So long as none of his 'bets' were all-in, then he would allow himself wiggle room to absorb losses. His brain sparked with energy as he tried to map out how things would happen, how they might work. There were still so many gaps that he couldn't be certain of much, but could guess at many things. It was as if he was trying to imagine the final shape of the jigsaw puzzle after he placed down the first three pieces. A fruitless waste of time, some might say, but Theo drew great comfort from being able to picture the possible ways forward. 

Ninety nine of a hundred of his guesses would likely prove to be worthless, but that didn't matter. So long as he had a chance to envision and consider the correct path meant he would be more prepared, meant that he wouldn't be surprised. Theo hated to be surprised. In his bones, he knew that.

He sat for over an hour as he thought. The only part of him to move was his eyes, which were in constant motion. What should he do next? What was the right thing do to? When he at last came to a decision, he didn't hesitate to stand, turn around and activate the realm stone. Once more the text appeared, writ in flame and he moved through the menu without pause. He selected 'Expand Territory' and used his hands to grow his square territory to the largest he could afford.

"What are you doing there?" Bbl asked as Theo began to move. "Are you making us a residence, finally? Remember that it needs to house a magnificent and legendary figure such as myself! Don’t' forget to make it sufficiently opulent! Include a pool."

Theo ignored the crab babble. The largest he could make his square shaped realm whilst the total area remained a generally rounded number was 650 metres squared, which would leave him with a total of 1 AU in reserve. He hesitated, but only for a moment before he confirmed the change.

Once again, the ground trembled beneath his feet for a moment before it was done. The edges of his realm had expanded from twenty metre edges to roughly twenty five metre edges. Theo checked at the menu main screen to confirm his current balance. 

Demesne: Unnamed

Area: 650.01 metres squared

Souls: 0

Demons:0

AU Balance: 1

Expand territory.

Material change/creation

Access Restricted Marketplace.

As he'd done before, Theo moved to the corners of his demesne and inspected them. He was displeased to note that his new territory was made from the same unformed, broken rock as before so he moved back to the realm stone and spent his final remaining AU to smooth out the surface and continue the grid lines he had laid out before. Once that was done he felt a great weight come off his shoulders. Satisfied that he had done all he could for the time being, he sat down and pressed his back into the plinth that held the realm stone and closed his eyes.

"What. The. Flollop have you gone and done?!" Bbl shrieked.

Theo cracked an eye open and gazed down at the irate crab.

"Expanded the realm," Theo replied.

"I can see that!" Bbl waved his claws with vigour in Theo's face, "but what about us?!"

Theo closed his eye again.

"What about us?" he sighed as he leaned back.

Now that there was, in a literal sense, nothing for him to do, Theo felt calm for the first time since he had awoken in the Chaos. There no moves to make, so it wasn't possible for him to make a wrong move. All he could do was sit back and wait to see if things played out as he had guessed they would.

"What are we going to do?!" Bbl cried as he gestured wildly at the flat, empty square of land around them. "You didn't think that we could do with a bed? A chair? A wading pool filled with sensual lady crabs?!"

Theo frowned as he tried not to allow that image to form in his mind. 

"Bbl, listen to me," he said calmly, "I have spent every AU that we had, there's nothing left. All we can do now is sit and wait until we can get some more."

Bbl deflated like a crab shaped balloon with a hole. 

"Are you telling me we have to sit here doing nothing until the next soul fall?" he mumbled, miserable.

Theo cracked an eye open at that.

"Well, why don't we go over that again?" he asked, "what's a soul fall and how long do you think it'll be until it happens?"

The colourful, sparkling crab kicked at the now smooth rock beneath his legs, filled with impotent rage.

"Fine" he muttered, "not like there's anything else to do."

He scratched at his shell for a moment as he considered how to begin.

"OK. You may have been wondering why the sky in the Chaos is visible to us, right?"

Theo nodded.

"I had, actually, yes."

"So, the reason is that the flaming sky of ash and smoke is actually a dimensional boundary. No matter where you are in the Chaos, you'll always be able to see it."

"A boundary to what?" Theo asked, curious.

"To the Between," Bbl announced solemnly.

"… and that is?" Theo prompted.

"I don't know!" Bbl waved his claws, exasperated. "Do I look like some sort of expert to you? It's where souls get measured. How and why, nobody knows, but the good go up and the bad come down. What I can tell you is that one soul isn't enough to push through the barrier on its own."

Theo thought for a moment, an unpleasant image formed in his mind.

"So you're saying they … pile up? A pile of … souls?" he swallowed.

"Exactly!" Bbl snapped a claw for emphasis. "They pile up! When there's enough of the krill pressed into the boundary they fall through in a massive heap. Here in the Chaos it's called a Soul Fall."

Theo asked the same question he had the first few times he'd heard this.

"Wouldn't they just fall forever? Most of the Chaos is just chaos, right? Empty space?"

"No, no. The souls are drawn to the demesne. They might fall for a while but they'll land somewhere eventually. The closer the demesne is to the site of the fall, the more likely that they'll be drawn there."

"Wouldn't the bigger territories have an advantage then? Since they have a much larger area, they're more likely to be closer to a fall?"

"That's not how it works! Things like distance and time and space are all fuzzy in the Chaos, they don't operate like they might have in your universe. Not to mention the larger demesne' have their own problems. Yes, they get more souls, but they have expenses."

Theo nodded. From what he'd inferred, the size of the territory acted as a sort of gravity for the souls as they fell. The larger domains had a much stronger pull than the smaller ones. Which was why Theo theorised he had to prioritise increasing the size of his demesne for the time being. His territory had more than doubled in size from the paltry 314 meters squared he'd started with. If Bbl had kept his demesne at that small size and spent his first 100 AU on mansions and pools, then only a soul fall very close to his realm would have been drawn to him.

He couldn't be sure, but this was what he felt had the highest chance of being correct. The only way to find out was to wait for some souls to rain down. An idea that made Theo squirm. As uncomfortable as he was with the idea of torturing souls, he knew he needed to get them to survive, so he was focused on that. What would actually happen when he got one, he resolutely pushed from his thoughts. He would try and deal with it when it happened. He knew he would gain AU from them, the how was the part he didn't want to dwell on.

"So how long do you think it'll be until we see a Soul Fall?" Theo asked his advisor.

"Could be a day, could be a week, could be a thousand years!' Bbl scoffed. "This is the fucking Endless Chaos! It's not like predicting the fucking weather! You've left us here with nothing to do but sit around and scratch ourselves, not knowing how long we'd have to wait!"

Theo tilted his head to one side. 

"Is that why you're so mad?" he asked.

The little crab trembled with rage.

"YES. That is why I'm so mad! Is your mind as soft as your flesh?! I can only hope I go insane from boredom in the next two days, then I won't have to be cognizant of sitting around picking at my shell!"

"Surely it can't take that long for a soul to land here" Theo protested, "don't I have a time limit on getting my Demense off the ground?"

"So?" the crab questioned, staring at Theo as if he were an idiot. "You think Administration gives two shits if you never see a soul before your time is up? Of course they don't! It's entirely down to luck!"

Theo frowned.

"That doesn't seem efficient, or effective. The best Demiurge they've ever had could get snuffed out due to never having gotten started based on bad luck? What would be the point of that?"

Bbl crawled toward Theo and grabbed hold of either side of one his legs before he leant back to peer earnestly into Theo's eyes with his own stalks.

"You have to stop thinking of the Chaos, of the Administration, with the same kind of logic that worked in whatever soft, flabby world you came from. It's going to get both of us killed. Worse than killed! You need to drill into your mind the simple fact that they don't give the slightest fraction of a sliver of a fuck about efficiency or effectiveness. The exploratory committee to the advisory panel to the sub-vice head of the think tank in charge of recommendations of fuck giving, has not been asked to look into this, even in their time off. In a billion, trillion years, they've never once thought this was bad. Do you understand!?"

The very idea of such a revolting system roiled in Theo's gut. It seemed so stupid to run anything that way, let alone an entire dimension.

"So what do they want? What do they care about?" he demanded, "there has to be some goal or purpose. The Chaos is run the way it is for a reason, surely?!"

His crab advisor just shook his head and sighed before he released Theo's leg and looked down. Claws drooped so low they rattled along the smooth stone ground of Theo's realm, the crab crawled away two metres before he threw himself to the ground in despair.

An unpleasant anxiety rippled through Theo as he watched the dejected crab for a moment before he sat down, his back against the plinth, and stared at the sky. There would be nothing to do here until a poor unfortunate who'd suffered the judgement of the multiverse for whatever sins the universe decided were bad enough to warrant a sentence to this place fell into Theo's metaphorical lap. What he'd do after that, Theo didn't want to think about.