Date: Þórri 12th, 598 AD. (Alt: 24th January, 599 AD.) Location: Götaland (Ancient Sweden.)
The name was being decided for the floating reverse pyramid through a vote between Gorm, Heath, Leif, Sigrid and Valyria. Dozens of names, none sticking for a few setups.
"How about the Electro-arcanic Nexus?" Heath daudles the creation of the cabling while giving his opinion. "Too long, how about den hjarta (the heart)?" Leif believed that this electricity would work much like the living blood pumping through a body.
"That is good, son, but let us create more options. How about fals-ský (forged cloud)? It does build up quite a bit of mist below itself." Gorm kept his face hidden behind his mug, his frown having stuck since Heath's disappearance over the past few days only to be brought into this conversation suddenly. The sweetened mixed berry cider helped to calm his nerves somewhat, but he will make sure to have a stern talk with him later. "Den skýhjarta (the cloud heart)?" Sigrid combined the two names, thinking they worked well together.
"I heard your idea to add weaponry, Papa. Should we make a name about that?" Valyria suggests a smaller range, yet still way too large for any normal amount of time. The others reacted as expected, with eyes full of questions.
"In case we ever get invaded, I gave all of you my knowledge of weaponry, and I wish to put it to use." He cranes his neck downwards. "Even if I hate it." He mumbles, causing Gorm to give him a look of satisfaction for his personal biases not stopping what is necessary. Sigrid in the background had a strong enough imagination to picture the sort of monstrosity that would loom over their heads. "Who would control the systems?" Leif wonders aloud, as what he has shown in the past could lead to catastrophic damage if unchecked.
Heath looked towards Valyria, but then shook his head. "I was thinking of giving it to her once she has more knowledge of reality, but we need someone level-headed, calm." He looks towards Egill. "Who can think of the positives even when in darkness?" Heath stares.
"Oh no, you do not." Egill crossed his arms in a modern reactive show of distrust with himself. "I already have enough on my hands, giving my knowledge on carving magic. Now owning a weapon that could blow us all to kingdom come?" He dramatises it by shaking his head like a toddler. "No°o°o, thank you." He walks off now to finalise his point. "I can give you more tea recipes~!" Heath entices him with one of the newer obsessions he has had from his newly introduced hot drink. He stares around an Auto he had walked behind with consternation.
"Not enough, how about a recipe for nutty caramel fudge?" He had talked to them about the pure flavour of the dessert in the past with him showing great interest in it, which finally led to him doing it. "Too easily bought, Egill." Leif smirks behind him while leaning.
"I have to bring around toothpaste or a concentrated cleansing agent at some point, your teeth will thank us for it." Heath has ruined too many of their pallets now with the increased sugar intake in their diet. "Leif, do you have any plants that taste almost cold to you?" Heath saw that his question looked askance at. "Never mind, I will think up something." Heath had an idea, anyway, of using certain birch bark strains to act as an antibacterial at some point. '*Egh* Bark toothpaste?' Heath internally scrunches, knowing it would not be good.
They continue ahead with a few added accoutrements to their day, the new recipes being a great delight to them while also figuring another major issue: How the divinity of Freyja had altered Heath's state of mind enough to tell her his deepest thoughts.
The others were not told of this memory that he had shown off so carelessly, but he explained how he had been forced to tell when he had experienced a terrible tragedy. They kept silent, understanding it was still too soon for him to share it, but they consoled him afterwards by sharing their own worst parts of their past without expecting him to return it. 'What is with this realm and people sharing their darkest moments with those just met?' Heath internally wandered his mind, yet kept their thoughts under lock and key.
"-it is hard to believe that after your first accidental 'divine hypnosis' we would come this far." Egill laughs, and as the others knew of his blunder and his trying to pay it back, they laughed as well. Knowing all he has done has paid it a thousandfold in their opinion.
They have dealt with so much worse in the past that it is comparatively tame, which is a mindset Heath has a hard time adjusting to. "Goes to show this world is harsh sometimes. Huh?" Heath rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, silently sniffling. That scent of blood from those old memories clinging like a phantom limb. "How could we help you, all of you?" Adal comments in the background, while not added to this group history pile, he could feel their pain all the way back. But all gave non-committal answers, knowing his allegiances.
"I have heard from King Tiwaz what has occurred and have been given a message by them." Adal bows, showing courteousness. He keeps the bow, frozen, a furry gargoyle. He is expecting Heath to take his head, an obvious tactic by their alliance for appeasement.
A bit hypocritical, but the others acted with great distrust of the same stunt pulled upon their beneficiary. ". . . I cannot, not with you." But Heath treats it just as everything else, another wound that will close on itself as everything else would. "Then all they will do is give you your space." Adal notes with an unknown vision, as if he were directly communicating with King Tiwaz in present, which causes Heath's eyes to glance upwards. 'I REALLY need to strengthen the communication blockage.' He hides his thoughts by staring at the sky.
Adal could tell the obvious through that hidden movement, but chose not to comment further, knowing that Heath, being a young God, would be quite volatile and unable to control his emotions the stronger he became without disciplinary teaching and experience.
'With his growth rate slowing down, he should slowly stabilise.' Adal theorised with a credible clause, knowing of many Gods who are hundreds of years older than him, yet experiencing sudden personality changes from growth or wanes of their worldly influence. From that moment, they did their own tasks in groups or in isolation. Electricity has been introduced throughout the Cavern's complex and the lights now use hybrid magic-electricity in case of outages. Heath felt he was alone, checking thrice in turn to starting a piece of music.
He does not know its name, only hearing it with perfect clarity from videos online. But he starts up the string instrument and 'keyboard' set upon the quiet stage in the top floor of the left tower. He begins playing, a morose violin soon echoing throughout the floor.
Literally called (Dramatic Sad Violin by Platon Davydov, feat. Oleg Kirilkov.)[1]
Cradling the violin and playing its strings as if rocking a baby, he plays the tune in an unsung ballad of emotional depth, the piano setting tilting high-strung points that complement and enhance the feel of the song, up and down in continuous notes that tell a life's story.
Heath closes his eyes, guiding himself to the metre of his memories. The wood below him of his stage reacting to his music unexpectedly, creating twisting vines of growing thorns that slowly grew around him as a maypole arch, the dense canopy of leaves shielding him in listening to the high-pitched warning of their own species. The piano rocked itself in motion to the blossoming of flowering cones that redden and harden in seconds, all leading to the soft slam of the 'keyboard' and the violin instrument fading out.
"I wish I knew this piece's name." Heath opened his eyes and looked around in confusion, noticing the canopy-based growth around him. He shrugs his shoulders and continues with a fluting instrumentation and a minor choir by altering the 'keyboard' sounding.
(Roxas' Theme by Yoko Shimomura.)[2]
He plays the full 5:05 minutes of the song, a song sounding holy yet unique to any known religion, a rise and fall of lines that could tell the time of kingdoms and mennskr alike. History noted through music unbound and idolatric through the ages.
The plants reacted further, dropping their now hardened cones to embed into the stage below him, rooting themselves in a half semi-circle, growing around him as quickened saplings that swayed away from him in a display much like a Siamese fighting fish. Heath kept his eyes open this time, playing with the similarities to these composed pieces that felt closest to the rare chance one can continue a dream by immediately falling back asleep. It ends, and the new growth wilts away, leaving only stumps of the vines and saplings as proof.
"*Sniffles*" Heath heard this in the distance by where the portal was. Staring in that direction, he saw it was Agnarr, green tears threatening to spill yet again. "I thought to ask you a question. . ." He sits, controlling his reaction. "*Hueh*That was beautiful." . . .
"Do you know the name of the second song?" Agnarr says with the deepest probity. This time, this question was met with a nod from Heath. "A melody from the Kingdom Hearts game. Of a character known as Roxas." Heath explained, sounding more grounded with increased morale from playing his hobbies. "While I wish to hear more songs, I wonder whether we can adjust the electronics, they are more efficient, but many believe it is too quiet." Heath scrumped his eyebrows. "Is that not a good thing?" He questions.
"They feel the old humming of the machines was comforting for their sleep, a natural background noise, an alacrity of calmness." Agnarr explained enough for him to easily think up a solution. "Gather many to gift a new device. I'll be introducing a noise machine for that."
Agnarr grins with his coppery teeth that glint with a pride of being frequently cleaned. He walks off, and Heath makes a small radio machine for those quiet nights! "More efficient than keeping the old rattle." He mumbles to nobody while replicating it for each and every household. Once gifted on time before the evening, they kept a tally for those who appeared most happy about it. (Not) Weirdly enough, the deer especially enjoyed it for playing nature noises, one could hear the birds and rushing water from their congregation for many floors.
"Alright, internet time for some radio tunes~." By forcing a water-coolant setup by the first floor that forms the Auto golem factory, there is an arcanomechanically pumped reservoir that flushes temperature hyper-efficiently beside the power system for the DNA medium server.[3]
He creates the necessary auto-genetic manipulator and generator for this process to allow for this storage to alter itself in real-time with any input from a keyboard and screen which then has a new input for a type of basic 0 and 1 binaric program designer, as he has no other best known system that is then expounded upon. The night passes with the new creation of an OS, Windows 11-esque, purposefully designed to be feature-barren of bloatware, it was so minuscule in storage usage that the best comparison would be a grain of sand to the sun.
The design is tested through a modern desktop interface that shows the UI was intuitive and developed under extensive scrutiny with the additional help of other people around himself, who say it feels great to handling yet hard to understand. Which will be learnt with time.
"Now for the pod to allow for different body types to transfer their souls' consciousness to a digital format." He designs a hyper-oxygenated partial-liquid ventilation vat designed with the task of the user 'laying' or resting upon its matted flooring before being raised and suspended in an adaptable densified medium to then allow for free range of connection through a non-invasive neural device. 'A cabled flexible air-tight helmet.' Heath finishes the point in checking its durability, designed as self-repairing through standard runic inscriptions.[4]
'Once the life span issue is removed, everything would probably last eternally.' He silently chortles while also checking the mechanism that generates and draining out the fluid when in use. Everything works as intended when viewed within and outside of itself.
Other features, such as the Musculoskeletal Hyperplasic Developer that helps with realignment and equal adaptive maturing and buildout of a living body, the Nutrient-Initiating Hypertrophic Dynamo that helps with full strength and nutrient buildup through internal hormonal and reactive accumulation while quickly filtering certain acidic buildup in the body, and the Purifier for ilnesses, genetic or physically degrading abnormalities to be dealt with are set and ready for testing with some volunteers. 'Where would I ask for them?'[5]
He changed the design again, feeling it was not intuitive enough. He added omnidirectional resistance bands for each limb's portion that will automatically stimulate the muscles better than locked electrostatics for more efficient growth under the nervous system's control.
He notifies through the armour to find Gorm, Leif and Sigrid. "Hey! Can we-" He asks for the message to be passed around for all to arrive at the top of the left tower again. The first round of testing will be a small game tournament through a Blade and Sorcery knockoff using a neuro-reader setup for the imagination to create the weapon's designs held. Before that is done, he copies and pastes this Uni-pod as he calls it and recreates 99 of them. 50 for mennskr, 50 for deer. "Before that, however. A nice introduction."[6]
He sets up the TV screens to play a video detailing the game and fliers that are on each and every table. With the final boss of this show being the very Ender Dragon they had seen in their showing a few weeks prior, which will be the perfect tell of a final battle.
"Enemy encounters throughout the first parts, first through the Overworld with the Pillagers, then to the Piglins controlled by Malgosha, how should I design the civilisation of the Endermen. . . Feudal with a dash of teleportation-based power supremacy." All set in rounds of 2 nights per wave, with 10 waves each representing an individual dimension. Once the games are complete and there are no issues with the technology, he will introduce custom matches and the larger game of Universe Sandbox.
"Would the people react negatively or too overtly by becoming Gods in their own right in that digital creator?" He remembers the times he would act too carelessly and cause the destruction of his life-bearing worlds by dialling some features like its orbit and speed.
"Nah, should be fine." He never reacted that badly, just felt bad and returned to a previous save, so what harm could there be? Though he will add greater detail to the plants, such as proper city structuring and higher LOD for the designs with actual artistic and architectural integrity from their cultures or 'ages.' "Maybe I could add some other new features, such as a cross-play between worlds over a distance. Where the more advanced a civilisation is they have the chance to travel in space, interacting with each other." He purses his lips.
"How could I create that, however?" Heath pictures the program in hand, creating an intent for it and wasting a large amount of magic in the inefficient restructuring of real-time DNA alteration to create a base program for it to run. Even if wasted, it took less than expected.
"What in R-" Adal nearly called his creator Rod's name once he saw the contraption. It appeared as a solid block of stringed jelly within an archaic design of metal, cable and pipes that was half as tall as himself. Even if in direct sight, it has no sense to it, he could feel a dense sense of life-force coming from it. "-a mind?" He stares through the foggy transparent material into its internal machinations that dumbfound him enough to feel as when he first was made of clay along his home's lake shore.
"Close enough, it is a mind of sorts, yet never to form a consciousness, for its structure is not confined to such biological laws." He pats the casing, its sound a watery drum that promised great future possibilities. "I use it purely for simulations, or for projects of my home realm."
Adal stared intently towards Heath, a mixture of pride and shame, for he only just met him, yet felt as an uncle who saw his nephew achieve their version of the Nobel Peace Prize. "You truly are from another world." He smiled widely, knowing this achievement would dictate the future of their reality, just as everything else he had done. "What, you put that under suspicion?" Heath asks sarcastically, then laughs to himself. "Actually, yes." Adal comments, leaving Heath to stop in the middle of a "*-ahah?*" He asks for an explanation that never comes.
'Cryptic.' No reasonable expunging. Another tallied annoyance in Heath's growing repertoire. He rolled his eyes and continued working on the proper connectivity issues and synchronisation in case the perspective of different players see what is not there.
Then for other minor bugs or possible glitches for duplication or entity breaking for individual parts of the game, while keeping to their programming's personality matrices. It was not too hard to finish after everything else he has made, but he is now running out of time as he can hear their footsteps clamber from the nearest portals, they see the machines that are twice the height of the deers beside them with an open sliding door into its own small chamber of smooth metal walls, generators, filters, locked two-way ports and siphons.
Heath spent his last magic to keep it just right, spending 5 / 8ths of the way. Leif had joined and could feel the lesser presence of Heath's divine aura and gave a frowning look in not following their promise. 'We will have a talk later.' He states through their mind-link.
Heath hides that he gave a sardonic smile. 'Alright.' He agrees and cuts off the communication. "People of the Völsung and deer clans, great news!" Heath acts as a grand playwright.
(Another thing, I have changed domovoy to vǫrðr, to better match Old Norse themes!)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X36LbZZ1P84
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73ZjSYHRdkA
[3] From Chapter 31: "A synthetically manufactured DNA medium!" 'Of course! Unlike the G-RAID SHUTTLE 8 that I had owned for my old experiments, this storage system can hold billions of times more information than 192 terabytes. If a box about the same size were made, it would be about, uh. A few ronnabytes, give or take?' He smiles. "How could I create a DNA replicator and manipulator, however?" Now he pulled a very constipated face. 'Wish I could have gone further, like electronic quantum holography, but I do not have the theoretical knowledge.'
[4] ᛉ (Protection / Shield / Elk,) ᛇ (Yggdrasil / Yew Tree / Dream Rune,) ᚱ (Horse / Ride / Journey / Thor Rune,) ᛟ (Heritage / Estate Rune,) ᚾ (Need / Hardship Rune,) ᛗ (Man / Human / Self Rune,) ᚠ (Cattle / Livestock / Wealth Rune,) ᛖ (Horse / Twin Forces Rune,) and ᚨ (Odin / Inspiration / Wisdom Rune.)
[5] From Chapter 31: Heath turns down towards the room he had crashed in for a night with Valyria in tow, they talk about many of Earth's original technologies and concepts, which led to them to create a 'pod' of sorts. Through a combination of automatic muscle-stimulatory systems to maintain or even possibly enhance toning, optimal nutrition cycles per individual to allow for said body to keep proper body composition and internal health, and scanning with the usage of the magic shown beforehand to deal with illnesses borne externally or genetically-It would allow them to eternally keep themselves in a private cubicle if necessary. To interact with the real world as a synthetic 'sleeve' body, or for them to access their own digital lounge, close to virtual reality, while keeping all sensations fully in tune with the device.
[6] Rules of the game: 1. For the weapons, one can choose from a pre-existing list or create their own unique weapons from their imagination. 2. These weapons cannot be changed or adapted after a game starts, only edited during the menu or pause periods. 3. The Sorcery utilises two concepts, Density and Vibration. Proficiency at this sorcery is through first learning to guide the lightest of elements until reaching heavier and heavier states. The more reactive it is, such as at higher temperatures, or the heavier it is, the harder it is to control. 4. To add onto that, the colder it is, even if it is a solid such as dry ice, it would be easier to control than carbon dioxide as an example. One can add affinities to their weapons to allow for easier control of a certain element, or if their weapon and skill is adept enough, one can add multiple affinities for full control. 5. If one wins this game, they will be gifted the weapon they have created in real life and the knowledge of its use.