Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

The Artist sat on the porch, ignoring the wet slapping of mud falling apart nearby as she plied her trade. With grace and care, the clay of the river was lifted up in her hands , and was shaped into a beautiful urn, striped with red and black, colors taken from her pouch of tricks.

To the side, however, the apprentice showed no such calm as she sat in the river, hands splashing in the water with reckless abandon. With desperation, she attempted to stitch up the soil beneath her, her needle passing through the pillars of mud that rose up in the riverbed even as they sloughed away, chunks falling apart as they decayed before her eyes.

A simple box of medical supplies sat next to her, bandages, ointments, unguents, and yet more things left ignored in favor of her preferred tool, floating nearby, tied to the wooden porch to keep it from being swept away.

The river nearby served neither of them, inexorably pushing forward, splashing their works with haphazard carelessness. The cruelty of nature stifling the artist.

"No, no no no," the apprentice wept, needle passing uselessly through the mud as it washed away, the sutures failing to do much as the pillars oozed between her fingers, the faces on them sagging into nothing.

She fought to avoid the gaze of the artist next to her, the artist who looked at her with disgust as she shaped the clay she lifted up from the ground.

She could feel their sneer, cruel and dispassionate, one long weary of the apprentice playing with their mud and toys.

She could not see into the house they were both near, but she knew within it lay urn after urn, works of art long since dried, filled with measures of the river's water. A crucial resource for the art to be made.

The artist hoped as all did, to one day dam the river. To protect her home from its flow, before the foundations wore thin beneath it.

The apprentice was a blind animal, too simpleminded to ignore the sight of faces in the mud, too foolish to lift up what she wished from the river, and too ignorant to attempt anything useful.

"Will you be the one to dam the river?" The artist asked, time and time again, only to be ignored. The artist believed this answer to be unsatisfactory.

Salty tears fell into the water as the apprentice sewed up what could not be held together by needle and thread.

For a moment, it seemed as though the child's frustration would erupt at any moment. A tantrum in the river would be disastrous for the faces in the mud, and yet it may turn up the precious clay beneath. Perhaps once such a tantrum ended, the child would be ready to ply the artist's trade.

However, there seemed to be some hope for the apprentice. Faces were ignored briefly, as the apprentice was struck with realization, and began to pull stones from the river, piling them up behind her as she giggled in an unhinged way.

For a moment, the artist watched, but soon grew disappointed. The apprentice had stopped piling up the stones, as soon as it seemed that the river's diverted flow would leave a few of the faces in the riverbed untouched.

A job well-unfinished, the apprentice rocked back and forth in the water, watching with glee as her little pile of stones diverted the rivers flow ever so slightly. She could no longer see the pillars of mud be washed away in her little patch of the river.

Her attention was so drawn to the fruits of her small labor that the artist's own work was left ignored for the moment.

This one would not be the one to dam the river, the artist was now certain.

A traveler soon began walking down the road nearby, a sickly, withered old woman with a load far too large on her back. Crude barrels held sloshing liquid as the withered hag approached, grinning like the devil.

Her face was stained with blue, as if she had been devouring some messy, sickly sweet fruit.

"Sissy! I brought you something nice!" she shouted, tromping through the river without a care in the world, splashing blue from the barrels on her back.

With a renewed sneer, the artist pulled her clay pot away from the hag before this design could be ruined by her careless motions that threw the river's flow into turbulence.

"You're unwell," the artist said, looking at her deranged sister with concern. The doctor was so far away, and her sister looked as if she had aged years since they last met, eyes bloodshot with mania.

The hag looked up from where she was ruffling the apprentice's hair, the child uncaring, or perhaps not noticing.

"I'm just fine you old bat! Now do you want what I've got or don't you?" the hag said carelessly, ignoring the years of ettiquite that they had learned in their youth, in favor of the slang of the children.

"Let me see," she said, demandingly as she pulled her sister up onto the porch.

The river continued to flow, heedless of the dribbles of blue that diluted the water as it spilled from her barrel.

"I got whatchu were wanting, sissy, so, you going to share some art with your ol sister?" the hag asked, pulling from her side a fat waterskin, stained with the blue liquid.

She waggled it in front of the artist, only to have her hand forcefully shoved away. "Not even a taste?"

The artist had no intention of drinking the fluid, having seen full well its effects.

But even still, the color called to her, a vivid blue that stained what it touched so brightly, even in spite of how quickly water could wash it away.

"No. But I will take it from you, as we agreed," she said, reaching out and taking the waterskin from the hag's wrinkled hands.

"Right, of course," the hag cackled, winking at the artist as she relinquished the skin, and began pulling the barrel from her back.

"Should be enough to get you started. I'm sure you'll figure out how it's made, won't you, [Queen Shaper]?"

The artist scowled. "Not in front of the child. She must not know her heritage," they responded, glancing at the apprentice, who looked up for a moment, confused for a moment by their surroundings.

Soon, however, the dream became a dream again, and she returned to gazing at her faces in the mud, smiling as they smiled back.

"You are out of line," the artist said quietly, dipping a finger into the liquid, and examining it with caution. The substance was interesting, but she had little intention of tasting it.

The hag took a swig from another flask at her side, grinning toothily at her sister.

Down that path lay madness. Her sight, smell, and touch would suffice for this discovery.

The hag's eyes darted to the sky, and her mad grin became a frown.

"What is it?" the artist asked, unable to see what hallucinations, or perhaps, visions, that her sister apparently did.

"...There's a storm coming. My child has grown strong on the drink. Perhaps I have as well," the hag responds, the cloudy grey tinge to her pupils fading into a startling blue for a moment so brief that the artist almost wonders if it was a trick of the light.

"You have not. This drink is killing you," the artist responds plainly, her eye for detail seeing all the signs present on the withered hag's body.

Instead of arguing, the hag continues to stare, as if seeing clouds on the horizon. "If you don't drink, you may not be strong enough to weather the coming storm," she says mysteriously.

"I've survived fine on the river's water. We have faced storms before," the artist responds, uncomfortable with this line of discussion.

The hag smiles. "The water you've saved won't last forever, and already, the weather has changed. Be safe, won't you, Sissy?" the hag says, standing up and grabbing a pot full of clay, and starting to pull herself through the river again, climbing up onto the banks on the other side, and walking off in a random direction.

The artist watches until she is gone, before turning to the apprentice.

"Come along, child. You don't want to get caught in the rain," the artist says, imagining what lay further upstream.

She imagines droplets of blue, falling from the sky. She imagines pulling her apprentice up onto the porch as a drop of the fluid plops onto her mousey nose, tugging them under the roof as the child looks at the faces in the river with worry.

"They will keep for now, child. Let us teach you a new trade, where his majesty cannot see," she says, pulling the child inside.

With the barrel came her sister's crude drawings, stick figures in blue, with big smiling faces inked onto them.

With a sigh, the artist shakes her head, smiling. Her sister had always proven better at deciding where art must go, true, but creation of quality art lay solely within the hands of The Artist, as these scribblings can attest.

[Callsign Change Request: Artist] she said out the window, awaiting an answer from the bird sitting on the branch nearby.

[Rejected], the bird responded, for the eight-centillionth time.

Queen Shaper frowned, but returned to her plan, closing the window and, drawing from her private box a fine needle, dipping it into the blue ink until the needle's hollow was saturated.

The child shuddered, wondering what purpose it would serve.

"You are strong, child, are you not? If you will not shape the clay, then do not complain when I offer you an alternative," the artist demanded, planning in her mind the art she soon would create.

The artist imagined that rain began to fall as they worked, lines of blue tattooed onto her precious apprentice.

She imagined that the rain was a vivid, bright cerulean, and that in the sky, blue, red, and black warred for dominance, peals of thunder raining down as the river coursed out of all control.

---

Amy gasped, falling out of her bed and thrashing, she could feel her corona potential going wild, a burning heat rampaging through her as light began to burn through her veins, energy coursing through her uncontrollably.

A scream erupted from her, but it was a choked, half-hearted thing, there was no air for her to shriek, no muscle control for her to exhale in full the pain she felt.

"Amy?! Amy!" Vicky said, smashing through her door at the sounds and the thumping.

In moments, it was done, and she collapsed bonelessly onto the floor, feeling within her body all the veins and vessels that her power denied her from seeing in her own flesh, while permitting her to see in others.

"Mom! Something's wrong with Amy!" Vicky said, picking her up in a princess carry and running through into Carol's bedroom.

The hospital was called, but Amy was off in her own little world, prodding with terror the parts of herself that her power forbade her from affecting.

As Vicky flew with blinding speed to the nearest hospital, Amy felt relief as her power still refused to allow her to do anything to her own self. She couldn't reshape her own flesh, it was safe from her temptations. Instead, she sensed within her every cell an energy that felt so familiar to her.

Through her vessels, intangible vitality flowed intermixed with her plasma. Through her skin, a faint force was emitted. Through her lungs, a slight breeze as the energy was reabsorbed from the air. Every organ, a flow. Every tissue, an ebb. Chemical, Physical, Thermal, Electrical, and now, present within her at long last, Magical.

Her fingers twitched as a mask was put over her face, and a flashlight shined into her eyes by a doctor.

Her hand moved, and the river winding through her body changed, the red flow of blood and the clear flow of skin shifting briefly out of line with a faint pressure before returning to where they belonged, and the illusion of solidity was returned to them.

Her fist clenched, and she felt her power eagerly set upon the energy she once lacked the tools to shape.

---

[] Interlude: Lisa
[] Conclude Interludes