He had spent the last weeks drawing quick and dirty runes, wanting to test many hypotheses one after another in quick succession. Right now, he wanted to test all that he had learned, and try to engrave the very best rune he possibly could, without worrying about time.

  First he chose what he would visualise. He had not noticed a significant difference between the global efficiency of different principles which would justify concentrating on a particular one, so he decided to focus on an elemental world for now. He had started with them, and it was the one he had the most fun with.

  Because he was imagining a black hole, he envisioned four colored planets orbiting it, each symbolising an element. He then concentrated on one world at a time, assigning to each one an admittedly stereotypical swarm of elemental creatures to inhabit it.

  They still felt extremely barren, being nothing but colored balls with dozens of tiny stickmen on them, so he spent a considerable amount of time detailing the planets, notably by constructing a densely populated city. He couldn't realistically completely elaborate a world as complex as earth, but he could imitate video games, create a few very realistic sites, from which one would logically infer that the rest of the world was equally as developed.

  He started with the earth element, in 2D with very low definition, picturing a simple circular wall filled with various rectangular blocks, with a huge pyramid in the center. Afterwards, he gradually added in details and variety. The triangular pyramid became a plain aztec-inspired temple, and the nondescript rectangles transformed into recognisable but blurry houses. The city walls gained gates and guard towers, with a dirt road leading to a nearby mine.

  On his third passage, he went further in-depth, the pyramid gained an ornate ceremonial altar on top of the stairs, coupled with a few engravings of strange earth gods. He then turned his attention to the residential city, rotating houses around, changing their height and width, adding balconies and decorations to break uniformity.

  It was not perfect, for example there was no commercial area, all of the houses and areas looked equally rich, and he had not prepared anywhere for the denizens of the city to work, but he was content with it. He had to know when to stop, as there was no limit to the amount of thought and details he could add, but his time and patience were finite.

  The next step was to add some life to the picture, by populating the city with residents. Since this was an earth world, he imagined a group of golems, sentient piles of rocks in a roughly humanoid shape, to inhabit the city. He didn’t spend too much time on them, and just had a lot of variations in sizes and color according to the material each golem was made out of.

  He was about to call it a day and turn to the other worlds when he was struck by inspiration. He quickly created a new group of golems, gave them clothes, and made them act out a sacred ceremony in front of the central altar, their prayers causing a column of brown earth energy to emit from the pyramid.

  He had no clue if tying elemental energy to worship was helpful or not, but he was in a creative zone, so he skipped the tests and cost/benefit analysis and simply added it in anyways.

  Satisfied the city was complete, he “copy/pasted” it around the globe, simply varying the size and filling in the empty spots with towering mountains, before turning his attention to the fire planet.

  Making a note to distinguish them from each other in their style of architecture and landscape, he made the fire world much less bulky and structured, forfeiting coordination and order for the vibrancy of randomness.

  The city had a very odd irregular shape, and was filled with a chaotic mess of buildings. The architecture was inspired by oriental moske, filled with very open and very colorful buildings with high circular spires and bulb shaped roofs. The population was also extremely diverse, consisting of a multitude of half-corporeal fire spirits of all sizes, shapes and colors.

  To mirror the Aztec temple of the earth city, Avery designed a huge lotus made out of fire, in front of which the fire spirits would bow and give worship, providing fire energy to the black hole.

  He fashioned the air planet in a similar manner, making flying steampunk cities filled with turbines and clear tubes of gushing steam protruding everywhere. The natives of this planet were a variety of mechanical lifeforms, and the religious building they worshipped was a huge glass-like tower, a tower that completely traversed the gas planet.

  Lastly, the water planet was themed after greek and roman mythology, complete with imposing structure, beautiful parthenons and statues everywhere. Avery had already run out of imagination at this point, so the inhabitants of this world were boring mermaids, but this was also the only planet where he thought to add in other species than the “main one”. Basically, he threw all of the marine animals he could think of in the ocean.

  Running out of inspiration and eager to admire his work, Avery took a mental step back and “zoomed out” to get a better view of all four planets. He was dismayed to discover that the three worlds he had detailed before the water world had severely deteriorated, and had almost reverted to being colored balls.

  He had become too focused on the water world, and his mind had forgotten his previous work, necessitating his return to repair it.

  He had overestimated his mind, and had forgotten dreams were impermanent. If he focused on a particular part of the picture, it was only natural the rest would become blurry. It was obvious in retrospect, but since he had been banished to this hellhole, he had done nothing but repetitive work, alone and without distractions. He realised his thought patterns and common sense were probably heavily impacted, and the thought that his tireless work in this dim place was leading to him regressing instead of steadily improving was more than he could bear.