Chương 84: Small(ish) World

I hadn't visited the Liminal Lands in a few days, which was probably why Mort had gotten away with so much. The first thing I noticed was the space. At first, the Liminal Lands had been the size of a small room. Now it was roughly the size of a football field, most of it empty darkness with Lifna floating in the center like a glowing marble. And not only was the space larger, so too was Lifna, although not to the same degree. I knew Mort had been busy, but… Damn. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

She was now the size of a hot air balloon. How much did that little bugger cost me? I wondered. Still, I couldn't get too mad. It was for Lifna, afterall. Almost as if reading my mind, Lifna greeted me with a complaint, "Why don't you visit me more often Father?" Fudge me. What is it with women and guilt? Is it some innate ability?

"I'm sorry. I know I should have visited sooner. I've just been busy. I'll try to visit more often," I tried to console her. Even to me, though, my words sounded kind of… pathetic.

"You better, or I'll ask for a lot more materials from you know who," she said. She was about to say something more when the 'you know who' in question came around from the other side of Lifna, "Isn't our baby growing up so quickly?" Mort strutted toward me like a proud daddy while glancing guiltily behind him.

"Uh, yes, she is, and I've been meaning to speak to you about that," I said as I walked toward him. Mort had been avoiding me lately, probably because I kept on yelling at him. In fact, lately, everyone had been yelling at him. Of course, that was to be expected when you steal everything not nailed down and some things that were. What bothered me was that Mort started hurrying toward me while making 'stay right there' motions. Sighing, I walked a few more steps forward and saw what Mort didn't want me to see.

Behind Mort was a pile of metal, wood, and plastic scraps. If it had just been that, I might not have been upset. What bothered me were all the other items. Almost everything I'd stored in the attic was piled up haphazardly, just waiting for Lifna.

"Mort," I said. He froze with a length of copper pipe in his paws.

"Abe. You're here. I wasn't expecting you. This isn't what it looks like."

"It looks like you stole a hardware store and everything in my attic."

"Then it's exactly what it looks like. In my defense, Lifna was hungry." I looked at Lifna. She was still a baby by planetary standards, but she was growing fast. Mort had been feeding her well. I closed my eyes and counted to five. Then I opened them and decided to deal with Mort's kleptomania. I wasn't even mad any more. I was just tired. Really, I can only blame myself. I've been so busy I missed the obvious.

"Okay Mort," I said.

"Here is what I want you to do. Get Pierre, or one of the others, and have them drive you to the trash dump. Then go wild." I'd lost so much money because I couldn't come up with such a simple answer to Mort's kleptomania. By Gaia, I was so close-minded. I bashed my head into the problem again and again while the solution is right in front of your eyes. Just embrace what you have. What an idiot, I thought, referring to myself. We're all idiots. Why didn't anyone think of this?

Instead of trying to stop Mort from being Mort, we should have just redirected his energy. After taking one more deep breath, I walked past the stunned Mort to see what I absolutely had to salvage. While I doubted there was anything really important, I wanted to check, just to make sure. As for Mort, he just stood there, stunned that I'd given him a place to go and permission to go wild. He looks like… nevermind, I thought as I watched him faint in excitement. While he was passed out, I sorted through the…

mess and looked for any nicknacks, photographs, or whatever other sentimental item needed to be saved. What depressed me was the fact that none of the items turned out to be important at all. Most of the items were old suitcases, broken fans I had been meaning to fix, clothes I would never wear again, and an assortment of other items I couldn't bear to part with, just in case. Shaking my head, I waited for Mort to wake up while I circled Lifna slowly. I examined her surface with both regular and divine sight.

The mana structure was dense and stable. Mort had been feeding her a good mix, iron for her core, organic material for her outer layers, and whatever random junk he could steal for mineral variety. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. The result was a proto-planet that was developing the way actual planets developed, just compressed into a timeline that would make any geologist lose their mind. I then turned my attention back to the expanded space.

Nanabozho's mana had pushed the boundaries outward significantly, and most of that new space was empty. Just flat ground and distant darkness, waiting to be shaped into something. The plague rats came to mind immediately. Ninety of them were headed toward my territory. They were immune to poison, resistant to healing, and smart enough to avoid traps. Nanabozho had said cold iron and containment were the keys. I had cold iron available through Derek and Loki's knowledge of dwarven forging.

But containment was the harder problem. How do you contain ninety plague rats in the physical world without the smoke from killing them spreading the disease? You don't. You bring them somewhere else. I looked at the empty space around Lifna. I looked at Lifna herself, a proto-planet so hot that her surface could melt iron. I thought about what happened when organic material got close to her. In addition to all of the stolen stuff, Mort had been feeding her dead leaves and whatever organic scraps he could find.

She'd absorbed them instantly. The heat alone would destroy anything biological, and the mana structure would break down any magical contamination. The plague rats were biological. Their disease was mana-based. Lifna's surface temperature would incinerate the biology, and I could use my authority over the Liminal Lands to cleanse any residual bad mana. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

When I noticed Mort stirring, I asked slowly, "Mort, If I brought something alive into the Liminal Lands, could Lifna absorb it?" I already knew the answer, but I wanted to make sure. She wouldn't be able to do so on her own since they had a will of their own. But, if the rats were forced to touch her… That was a different story. Mort tilted his head, obviously confused by my change of topics while he was out of it.

"She absorbs everything I give her. Dead stuff, metal, rock, organic matter. She's not picky." He paused.

"Why? What are you thinking?"

"Plague rats. About ninety of them. They're headed this way." Mort's expression shifted from curiosity to concern.

"Plague? As in disease plague?"

"Mana-based plague from a different plane. The rats carry it in their biology. Fire spreads it through smoke. Poison doesn't work. Healing makes it worse." I looked at Lifna.

"But if they were absorbed by a proto-planet hot enough to melt rock, the biological component would be destroyed instantly. And I can handle any leftover mana contamination because in here, I control everything." Mort was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You want to feed plague rats to my baby."

"I want to feed plague rats to our baby," I confirmed. Then I asked Lifna, "You okay with that Lifna?"

"That's fine with me," she said, but I could tell she was confused. Apparently, she wasn't all gung-ho on absorbing real live animals.

"I know, it's a lot to ask, but it might save lives and I'll feed you at the same time. Just so you know, the rats in question attacked school kids."

"Then yes, I'm in," Lifna said. Mort was clearly still worried though, "Would it hurt her?"

"She absorbs dead organic material every day. The rats would be incinerated on contact with her surface. The heat alone would destroy the plague before it could interact with her mana structure. And even if some residual contamination survived, I can purify the Liminal Lands because this is my domain." Mort looked at Lifna. Then at me. Then at Lifna again.

"She'd get a lot of biomass from ninety rats," he said.

"That's good for her outer layers. Organic compounds, carbon, nitrogen." Then he paused before reluctantly saying, "Fine." The next problem was getting the rats here. I couldn't exactly open a portal in the middle of the forest and expect ninety plague rats to politely walk through it. I needed a funnel, something that would direct them into a confined space where I could transport them. That's when I remembered the hole. We'd dug it during the Wild People crisis.

The plan had been to trap the cannibal dwarves by luring them into a pit near the property line. The hole was about the size of a small basement, maybe ten feet deep and fifteen feet across. We'd reinforced the walls with lumber and lined the bottom with rocks. Then the situation changed. We'd managed to deal with the Wild People differently, and the hole had been sitting there ever since, half-covered with plywood and slowly filling with leaves. A useless hole left over from a plan that never happened.

Unless I turned it into a gate. I could connect the hole to the Liminal Lands. A permanent or semi-permanent portal at the bottom of the pit. The rats would be funneled toward the hole using whatever method worked best, probably cold iron barriers to direct their path. Maybe Groot's thorn walls could block alternate routes. They'd fall into the pit and drop through the gate into the Liminal Lands. Once inside, I'd use my authority to push them toward Lifna.

She'd absorb them, plague and all, and convert them into planetary mass. The hole becomes a gate. The gate becomes a funnel. The rats become food. It was elegant. It was practical. And it used resources I already had instead of requiring me to build something new. At least mostly. I kept thinking, looking for any problems. The hole was near the edge of the clearing, not too far from the cabin. The church was farther east. If I set up the funnel correctly, I could direct the rats away from the church.

Then I could steer them toward the pit with barriers they couldn't cross. I'd need Derek for the iron barriers. Loki could help since he'd been eager to prove himself. Pierre and the predators could herd the rats along the funnel route. Groot's thorn walls for additional barriers. Claire for any government resources she could pull. And me, in the Liminal Lands, ready to receive them and push them toward a hungry baby planet. I looked around the expanded space one more time. Then another thought came unbidden.

This could be more than just a storage space for Lifna. If I could shape the terrain in here, and I could, since the Liminal Lands responded to my will, then I could create environments. I could create small spaces where my followers could train, fight, and grow stronger without risking real injury like in the real world. I could make forests, caves, and obstacles. I could even populate them with constructs, maybe targets that fought back but couldn't actually kill.

A training dungeon built inside my own divine domain, where the difficulty could be adjusted based on who was inside. The idea appealed to me. However, coming up with the idea was the easy part. Making it happen was another thing.

"Okay, we've got a plan," I said, almost to myself as I pushed the future plans aside for now. I turned toward the exit and stepped back through into the cabin. For some reason, I actually felt happy. Even though the plague rats were about to arrive, I had a plan to deal with them. I just had to get it started. It felt good, like I was back in my element.