“Origins” are things that multiversal creatures gain each time they enter a universe for the first time. Some multiversal creatures are mightier than others, even if they themselves don’t know that. Santi himself is an exceptionally powerful multiversal creature capable of attaining many origins at once.
Each “origin” alters the creature who receives it in some way or another. Santi’s nature as a survival-oriented being allows him to resonate strongly with the pitiless nature of a “Mirror Demon”, which is why that particular “origin” was the first to make itself known to him. His strengthened awareness of self has allowed him to see the weakest aspects of his true nature, which is handy as he thinks about how to deal with the guard that stands between him and freedom.
At the same time, the “Stunt double” of his is diligently working on the paperwork that the eerie being has to do. The stunt double clone is a perfect clone, one that is both fully subservient to its creator and one who possesses all of the powers of his creator. This allows him to benefit from the same set of mysterious perks and abilities that make his creator an extraordinarily versatile being. And it also allows him to experience the same curious awakening that his creator undergoes even as the monstrous being contemplates whether or not to kill the reflection of the security guard he is staring at.
Both the original being and his clone momentarily stop moving as they gain a specific, supernatural awareness of their surroundings. This ability of theirs fills their shared mind with a curious array of information. Both the clone and his creator are suddenly able to sense whenever feelings of love, lust seize a heart or or acts such as sex, the conception of new life, and any sort of pleasure-inducing actions occur at a range of a little more than the size of the city around themselves.
The city houses well over a hundred thousand people, and the mirror dimension’s version of the city is every bit as populous, so this is a tremendous amount of information to begin receiving all at once. The creature is still as he gives himself a beat to adjust to this information, which makes itself known to him by manifesting as “alerts” and to begin to make sense of the mysterious energy he feels surging into him every time he gains awareness of a new event he is supernaturally able to sense.
In the mind’s eye of the figure he is now able to sift through the hundreds of alerts he receives with every passing second. Some of these are as simple as a kiss shared between a man and his boyfriend, or as complex as the thoughts a businessman has about his secretary or a housewife has about the pool boy her wife hired a few weeks ago. In every case the figure and his clone sense mysterious, exciting energy be created by the actions and thoughts, energy which proceeds to supercharge every one of their cells, just begging to be used in some way or another.
Eventually though, the figures recover from the staggering effects of this new information flowing into the two of them. To them it felt like they were stunned for a long time, but in actuality they only lost a few moments as their supercharged mind took in a dizzying amount of information. In almost no time at all the true body of the figure has turned his full gaze back on the security guard.
I study the inverted version of Carol sitting behind the desk. She has Carol’s exact features, but among other subtle differences like wearing a slightly different shade of uniform than Carol is wearing she’s also left-handed and Carol is right-handed. She is doing her job, but I can tell she’s not actively paying attention.
My array of abilities gives me a chance to have fun here. I could simply use my water to make Carol’s mirror-equivalent pass out or I could have more long-term fun with her…
My essences, other than my celestial grimoire and celestial forge essences, are all about control and influence. The virus essence I possess lets me control sicknesses, even allowing me to create wholly new and supernatural illnesses as readily as it allows me to use something as common as the flu. My corruptive goo essence allows me to, for the most part, gain control of someone if I can get them to touch the goo I can generate and manipulate.
If I use my dollmaker essence I can gain total control of somebody, their loyalty becoming absolute, so long as my energy can overwhelm them just once. The last essence I know that I possess allows me to create and give out video game style “classes”. This particular essence is… weird. When I focus on it, a nearly transparent text box that asks me if I wish to a create a “Class”, or to pick a class from a small sample of pre-made classes appears in the middle of my field of view.
This list of premade classes are all things that fantasy fans would be familiar with. It is filled with staples of video game genres, such as “Fighter”, “Bard”, “Cleric”, “Monk”, and “Paladin”. It’s a fun list, especially since even though I’m far from a fantasy fan even I have enough familiarity with the genre to know that one of the classes in the list, the “Wizard” is immensely powerful if someone who possesses it gets to reach a high enough level…
I decide to experiment and see if I can grant myself these classes. I fiddle with the menu and select “Wizard” but when I try to assign it to myself I am disappointed to find that I am an “Ineligible target”. This disappoints me, but I am unsurprised that this is the case. This wrinkle as far as my efforts to explore and hone my powers does allow me to realize something though… My other essences being so centered around control and influence makes perfect sense.
Thinking about my essences, coupled with intellect boosting “Perks” I’ve received from the celestial forge, one of which is brand new and puts me in the same league as someone named “Megamind”, allows me to easily come up with viable strategies regarding how to mix and match perks and essences in my possession. It takes me the same effort it would take me to do simple math to come up with a range of strategies for cleverly mixing and matching all of my fun supernatural gifts.
As I look at her I begin to feel a curious urge well up within me. Carol looks positively bored as she sips on a cup of coffee in front of her. She seems so… unambitious, so lifeless, as she meaninglessly does a job that a computer could do just as well as she does. The more I study her, the more that I want to make her seemingly boring life mean something.
When she next lifts the cup of coffee to her lips I reach out with my mind and I subtly stir the coffee, turning it into a liquid under my control. This allows me to use elemental perks I possess on the liquid itself, which is incredibly handy.
Carol’s inverted reflection downs more of her coffee. The instant that the drink enters her mouth I sense the perk, an elemental perk named “River of Two Souls”, activate and I smile as I sense my mind filling with all sorts of knowledge all about Carol’s reflection. A scattering of her memories play all at once in my mind, and I sense her unimportant role in the lives of the people she interacts with.
Carol’s reflection is a mousy, quiet woman living a boring life and, assuming nothing drastic changes in her life she’s almost certainly destined to meet an unremarkable end. It is enough to make someone with more drive and ambition pity her, as everything about her screams that she ought to be nothing more than a side character in the lives of more important, more interesting, and more ambitious people.
The understanding of her that I possess, thanks to my perks, allows me to know that she’s not unhappy, but even if she were no one would know… But someone could opt to make her life more interesting, all it’d take is someone taking an interest in her. And since no one else has, I suppose it might as well be me. Sadly for her, my interest is more… academic than personal.
Carol is still downing her coffee when I strike. I still the coffee that is slipping down her throat in place with a thought, utilizing my ability to control liquids. It actually takes a moment for her to notice, but when she does her eyes widen as the blockage begins to impede her ability to breathe. She attempts, somewhat calmly at first, to force herself to cough but it doesn’t work and that causes her to begin to panic.
The woman thrashes about for a few moments, but aside from me there’s no one close by. I silently wait for her to collapse and when she does I begin to ooze towards her. I eventually climb up her desk and I turn some of the water that comprises my current form into a wet pseudopod that I extend to the top of her head.
If I had an heart it’d be pounding in my chest as I feel the thin, surprisingly soft sensation of Carol’s hair at the edge of the wet limb I am using against her. I place it atop the woman’s hair and I will one of the pools of supernatural energy that I possess to flow from my core, to my arm, and then into the woman.
As I do this I am able to truly feel the dollmaking energy that I own for the first time. This energy is an orderly substance that stills emotion, quiets ambition, and shuts down the most essential parts of freewill and personal identity. The sensations that accompany it are mighty enough that as I pour it into Carol’s reflection I feel my own emotions dulling a touch, but just as quickly as any of my emotions dull enough for me to notice the energy backs off of that particular emotion.
I watch as the energy I am pouring into Carol begins to subtly overwhelm her. It is easy for me to notice some of the less subtle changes like her hair darkening and transitioning from light brown to jet black, or her lips becoming fuller and more prominent. Some of the less subtle changes, such as her teeth becoming perfect, are a bit harder for me to notice but I can detect them nonetheless as she begins to become more and more my plaything.
The process by which I transform someone into a doll is that the two of us engage in a contest of the wills. My energy is vaguely akin to a suppressant, and when it enters someone, its goal is to suppress their freewill long enough for their bodies to completely transform into living dolls under my control. Along the way, assuming the energy is ultimately successful, the people transformed into dolls become beautiful in ways that I find attractive even going as far as to transform into women if they weren’t women in the first place.
With Carol none of the ways she changes are particularly overt. She is becoming more eye-catching, sure, but she isn’t becoming a supermodel or anything. Over the course of several seconds the unconscious woman’s mind and soul are invaded and corrupted by the potent energies under my control.
In almost no time at all, thanks to her inability to muster a meaningful resistance to my powers, I sense her becoming mine in every way. When the energy reaches the bottom of her feet, and courses through her heart, I sense her fully become mine.
“Hello Carol.” I mutter, without bothering to change my form. Carol’s eyes open and she gazes at me, smiling all the while. Her refined beauty makes her less of a plain Jane and more of a… simply beautiful Betty, or something like that.
“Good morning, Santi. It’s nice to see you again.” She says, pleasantly.
“In a few moments, get up and follow me.” I tell her, and she simply nods at me.
At the same time as I tell her that, I begin to flow out of the building. And deep within me I sense my celestial artifacts cease their motion altogether. Until now they’ve been constantly working deep within me, actively generating new power and new powers, and rewarding me for my hard work. I am curious about this until an alert fills my mind’s eye and I read through the contents of the newest textbox to appear in front of me.
[Alert: Celestial Reboot
Due to the power of your soul meshing with the celestial artifacts inside of you there has been a powerful overflow of cosmic energy within you. This energy is currently being transformed into the aetheric stuff which produces essences, which will be given to you when they are safe to absorb. In the meantime, your celestial artifacts are shutting down for maintenance.
This is greatly inconvenient, but the rewards that accompany it are great indeed. One of the rewards that you will be given to make up for the time you lost will be that your celestial essences are upgraded into the [Essence of the Shop], which allows you to buy everything in both essences and much, much more. As a form of apology please accept this consolation prize: the [Essence of the Unnamed Darkness].]
When I finished reading the contents of the text box I feel my body morph against my will. I go from being a curiously lively puddle of water to being a cat-shaped and tiger-sized cloud of absolute darkness that hovers just off of the floor of the building I am in.
I let out an involuntarily yell when this occurs and I suddenly switch back to my native form, even as the back of my mind fills with knowledge of the mighty essence I have just attained. As I sense my body return to the form I want it to be in, my enhanced intellect takes in the curious nature of this mighty, though resource-intensive, essence.
Carol looks at me, but does nothing and when I eventually nod at her to relax she does as I command. At the same time I create a small clone by splitting off into a somewhat smaller animated puddle of water, and the clone accompanies me when I dart out of the building.
The original sapient puddle of water watches his clone dart off towards a nearby warehouse, while he patiently waits for the doll he created to get up and leave her workplace. It doesn’t take long for her to do so, and before a minute has passed after the figure exited the building he approaches the doll and oozes up her legs.
“Take a step forward.” The puddle commands, and the doll does as she is told. At the same time the figure activates a powerful ability known as “Breaking the 4th Wall”. By using this ability the two strange beings are teleported from the mirror dimension to the primary reality of the universe of Santi’s birth. This powerful ability allows for instant teleportation between dimensions, and it is one of many frightening abilities in Santi’s arsenal.
Meanwhile, the clone of Santi’s within the mirror dimension manages to reach the nearby warehouse it was targeting. The place is not empty, but that is unimportant to Santiago.
The clone fearlessly enters the building, and ignores technology meant to detect intruders as well as the sly eyes of individuals tasked with overseeing the goings on of the warehouse. He is a skillful infiltrator, adept at the cloak and dagger arts that any “Trickster” would be well-versed in.
The clone is not interested in any random part of the warehouse either. It spends several minutes carefully exploring the storage facility, mentally mapping out every corner of the building at a breakneck pace.
The “hungry” being, determined to make skillful use of the strange powers that are part of [The Essence of Unnamed Darkness], is unaware of who owns the warehouse and it is indifferent to such mundane plights, even as it reaches a corner of the building and attempts to devour a small shipping box filled with pencils. It is not stopped from doing this, but finds the act… unsatisfactory, and it does not grow because of the consumption, which it knows for a fact it was supposed to.
Clones of Santi’s are perfect clones that possess all his perks. The possession of intelligence boosting perks cause this clone to wonder if something about the fact that it is located in the mirror dimension is inhibiting its ability to grow by making local objects not compatible with it. It quickly questions its creator and asks if it can shift to the prime dimension of the universe, which Santi agrees to allow.
The clone shifts from being in the inverted dimension to being in the mundane reality which serves as the primary hub of life in the universe of Santi’s birth. As soon as it has its bearings the creature mischievously pounces on the closest box of pencils in the room it has appeared in, an exact match for the last room the man was in in the mirror dimension, an attempt to absorb them. The creature moves its eerie ink-black body over the box and the items inside of it.
The second its body engulfs the box and its contents the body of the creature grows a bit larger, just a little bigger than half of food, and the box the food was in. This realization brings a smug smirk to the fact of the clone’s creator, who somehow senses that this is a monumental moment and can’t stop himself from smiling though much more subtly than his clone.
“Success…” The figure mutters, the smile on his face genuine and easily reaching his eyes. He is delighted at this curious sequence of events, seemingly quite content with the new essences he now possesses.
“I should get to creating some classes, shouldn’t I?” The creator of the clones tells himself, as he turns inward and begins to get ready to create classes to give to those who willingly follow him. Meanwhile, Carol is silently following her new master, a dogged expression on her face all the while.
Before long the day has been going on for hours and the clones have been hard at work the whole time. Even their creator has been interacting with Carol, and getting to work creating classes, which is not a super quick process, even it if normal classes are free to make.
