The Gifts of God: Omnilium is a Wonderful Thing

[Ahana Varma]

At first, the journey is relaxing… soon, however, I begin to notice there being more turbulence than there really ought to be. I’m confused as to what can possibly be causing this, though my consternation lasts only for a second; one glance out at the desert speeding past tells me immediately that the cart is moving far faster than it would have been capable of back in my world… and it takes but a few moments more before I can be certain that it is still accelerating.

Unfortunately, with the stabilising magic seeming not to have been boosted along with the speed, I’m in for a bumpy ride. Pillows scatter and bounce around as I cling onto the wooden wall for dear life and the vehicle races over the dunes, moving faster and faster with each passing instant, the wood creaking worryingly beneath me.

Or at least, it would be worrying, without my Protections. I feel as if the vehicle could flip over or fall apart beneath me at any moment, but after the surprise wears off, I grin broadly and even whoop with joy. The wind, at this speed, is more than enough to cool me off, despite this land being as hot as it is. I clamber towards the front of the cart, still gripping the side with at least one hand at all times, until I reach where I was headed and can grab one of the poles – the one on the right – connecting the cart to its silken sunroof, at which point I manage to haul myself up into a standing position.

From here, I can see that the vehicle, as I would expect, has taken my command to head forwards literally; it is moving in a perfectly straight line, not bothering to drive around dunes or slow down at all for them. Of course, these are both commands I could give it, if I so desired… but I’m enjoying this too much to care.

Still holding on with all the strength my right hand possesses, I throw my left arm out to the side and laugh into the wind, glorying in this wonderful speed. I’ve seen the odd mage with speed-enhancement spells, of course, but I’d had no idea that they could feel so great. It’s amazingly liberating. The cart is tilting and caroming around dangerously and I know that were it not for the runes engraved in its sides, it surely would have crashed already…

But I just can’t bring myself to care. Despite my hold on the pole, I feel as if I’m being tossed about like a rag doll as the vehicle bounces crazily. But it’s just so. Much. Fun.

Laughing wildly, struggling to even remain standing, and feeling the winds in my hair and on my skin, I imagine that if the concept of freedom could be imagined as a physical sensation, it would be something like this: chaotic, utterly out of control, yet undeniably exhilarating.

And likely to end in disaster.

The cart speeds directly up the centre of one dune, much larger than any other it has driven across so far, and upon reaching the crest, it takes flight. I give a cry of elation. It doesn’t occur to me that there’s no way my rigid, wooden conveyance can possibly handle this landing, and that all that Omnilium I’ve spent on it is about to go to waste. I’m too enraptured in this sensation to pay much attention to such minor details as the realities of my situation.

And then it touches down. The ‘nose’ has dipped, so all of the cart’s weight lands on the front wheels. Suddenly, wood is splintering and shattering, fabric is tearing, and sand is everywhere. I’m thrown forwards, still clutching a sliver of the now-utterly-annihilated pole. Hitting the ground feels like being struck with dozens of sledgehammers simultaneously, and the air is knocked from my lungs before my laughter even has time to turn into a scream.

It’s been so long since I felt pain that I actually don’t recognise the sensation for a moment, as the remains of the cart pound against my body and pick it up, spinning and smashing against the ground again and again as momentum carries them on, and me along with them. The sand in the air is tinged with red now. Blood. My blood. My everything hurts so much that I can’t even determine which part or parts of my body have been dealt such harm as to be torn open like this. My depth-perception is gone, though, that much I can be sure of; my left eye is jammed shut and it hurts so bad that I'm sure there must be something impaled in there.

It isn’t until I finally stop tumbling – done being dashed against the sand – lying on my back, torn and broken, gazing up into the sky, struggling to breathe, incapable of moving a muscle, that I realise there are tears running from my intact eye…

I cough, almost choking on some liquid, before hacking it up. A metallic taste. Blood, of course. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be some trade-off for all these amazing powers Omni bestowed upon me. He granted me the ability to summon anything I desire, but as payment He took my invulnerability from me. I can see my foolishness all too clearly now…

But I’m not done yet.

“Bah-” I’m cut off halfway through my agonised moaning of the spell-word by more coughing, more blood. I must surely have at least one burst lung. I need to do this, though. Just one word. Defence isn’t the only thing my flames are good for.

“Bahaal!” I immediately break into a fit of coughing, but it doesn’t matter, it’s done, I’m…

Exactly the same?

It slowly dawns on me that my Protections aren’t the only thing weakened by Omni. In fact, it would seem that another ability has been stripped away altogether.

Well…

Shit.

Feeling excessively sorry for myself, I close my eye and try to ignore the agony burning through every part of me like a lightning strike that somehow lasts an eternity. Fresh tears flow as I fret over whether Omni will even bother to bring back a woman so stupid she managed to kill herself not even a day after arriving in His Omniverse.

Eventually, the pain or the blood loss or the exertion of the day takes me, and I fall into a deep slumber, certain that the next time I wake – if there is a next time – will be when I return from the dead… however it is that that works.

Instead, I awaken to darkness. Not the darkness of the void, though, but regular, night-time darkness. Opening my eyes – both eyes, somehow – I see a clear, star-strewn sky, which I might have thought beautiful, if I were in the mood for appreciating the scenery. As it is, though, I have a few more pressing things on my mind. First and foremost amongst them being the cold.

I already know that deserts are supposed to get chilly at night, of course, even if I haven’t ever actually visited one myself before… but this is unbearable. All the sweat soaking my body probably doesn’t help. Every tiny motion sends lances of pain through my each and every muscle, but I do eventually manage to raise my head enough to get a good look at myself.

Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘How the fuck am I not dead?’. Ripped clothes, caved-in rib cage, shattered limbs, a few bones even protruding out of my torn flesh… much of my skin has a thick coating of dried blood. That which doesn’t is badly sunburnt.

I let my head thump back down into the sand and bright lights fill my vision as a flash of agony like the birth of a sun sears my brain from the inside out. I have no trouble screaming this time. I guess I’d better add ‘fractured or broken skull’ to that mental tally of injuries.

I do notice that I’m now able to breathe properly, though… somehow.

I’m not sure how long I lie there, exactly, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. At some point, it occurs to me that I’m thirsty. Extremely thirsty, actually. Using my arms is clearly out of the question, so I attempt summoning water directly into my mouth.

The first time, I fail. I’m too distracted by the pain and don’t manage to hold my concentration long enough to manifest my desire. On my next attempt, I get that far… but can’t manage to swallow without almost choking to death.

Coughing and spluttering, I roll onto my side a little – more lights bursting and flashing before my eyes in another wave of agony which elicits a weak sob as my shattered bones are jostled and twisted – and gag up the water.

On the third attempt, I have better luck.

I’m not not sure how long I spend on this, passing in and out of consciousness all night, summoning one more mouthful of liquid every few minutes (it seems that no matter how little water I make, the time taken to create something reaches a certain point after which it just doesn’t decrease any further), sure that if my wounds somehow aren’t the end of me, the cold surely will be. At some point, a breeze picks up, blowing sand in my eyes until I give up on keeping them open and chilling me further, leaving me shivering compulsively, despite the pain that wracks my broken body with every tiny motion.

I can tell immediately, as soon as I think of summoning one, that I don’t have enough Omnilium left to make up a sturdy shelter to keep me safe, so I try for a tent instead. This takes at least twice as long as creating a glass of water, but I somehow manage to keep my feverish mind on the task at hand until the shimmering, multicoloured bubble fades.

I have no blankets, and I still rest upon the freezing sand – the tent has no floor – but the worst of the wind is kept out… though even these petty draughts cause my construction to shudder at their touch. It is abundantly clear that should a true sandstorm form, I won’t stand a chance.

I sleep, then.

At some points I wake and expend slightly more of my ever-diminishing supply of Omnilium to state my thirst, before sleeping again.

Eventually, I open my eyes to find that there is sunlight shining outside my tent, and that the breeze seems to have gone.

It isn’t long before I feel pangs of hunger gnawing at my belly and know that I’m starving. Food will be more costly to summon than water, though, and I still have dehydration to contend with.

I know I can’t hope to last long like this, but I hold on anyway… I’ve noticed something strange, which gives me a small amount of hope.

My wounded eye and what I assume must have been a punctured lung were the first signs, when I awoke some time ago to find them no longer bothering me, but now other, more visible, indications are slowly becoming apparent… it’s hard to say for certain, given that much of me is still covered in dried blood, but I could swear that my injuries are growing less severe… and even the sunburn from the previous day seems to be fading much faster than it ought to.

I continue to drift on the edges of consciousness, summoning more mouthfuls of water almost by habit or instinct by this point, whenever my mind is clear enough to manage the focus necessary for using Omnilium.

Time moves on in fits and starts, seeming to drag by interminably when I’m lucid, then rush forwards in a blur whenever my grasp on consciousness weakens.

Eventually, I awaken from a slumber I hadn’t realised I had fallen into to find myself once again shivering, soaked in cold sweat, with only the dim light of the stars peeking in at me and slightly brightening the interior of my tent.

This time, though, something is different. My body seems to have subconsciously curled into a foetal position in some attempt at losing less heat to the frigid air… and yet, surely it shouldn’t have been able to. Not with those injuries.

I slowly, cautiously straighten one arm, and wince in pain. Still sore, there’s no doubt about that… but I can move it now. As gently as I can manage, I experiment with moving around the rest of my body, pushing through the sharp pains that leave me all too aware that I’m not healed yet… I am improving, though. That’s beyond doubt now.

I might be more tempted to thank Omni if I wasn’t also freezing and starving, though. I manage to crawl to the entrance of my shelter, push aside the canvas flaps that serve as its ‘doors’ – dull green in colour normally, they seem almost black with so little illumination – and stare out at the sands beyond. I focus my mind on a patch of ground no different than any other, visualising an area a couple metres wide, just a short way from my tent, covered in a glistening kaleidoscope of Omnilium.

Seconds pass, and then – just as I’m beginning to think it won’t work – it begins. The moments and the minutes drag by, their crawl torpid enough to make slugs and snails look positively energetic by comparison. Eventually, the sand in my chosen spot has been broken down and can be reabsorbed as Omnilium. As soon as that’s done, I’m backing through the tent’s entrance.

Inside isn’t really any warmer than outside, but at least the thin walls mostly keep out the draughts. Immediately, I begin summoning food. hot food. It’s a struggle not to use every ounce of Omnilium at my disposal on food and water – can Omnilium even be measured in ounces? I have no idea – but I know there’s no point in stuffing myself until I’m sick, so the meal I make isn’t big, and it’s simple fare, nothing more than rice, chicken and some random, generic, tomato-based sauce. I’m no chef or gourmet. Food is food, and I’ve eaten a lot worse over the years.

There was a time, once, long ago, when I was vegetarian… most people back home were, before the wars broke out. By the time I’d slain my first few dozen people, though, it started to feel a little silly to turn down perfectly good food for ‘moral reasons’. Plus, for soldiers, good food isn’t always the easiest to come by, so it just made sense to eat what I could get.

As hungry as I am, it’s quite a trial to force myself not to shovel the meal down my gullet as fast as humanly possible, but I do manage to control myself, thankfully. Eating helps, a bit. It’s certainly a relief to put paid to the pains in my gut… at least one part of me is a little less sore, now, and the hot food does warm me a little… that won’t last long, though, as cold as this place is at night.

So the next thing I create, from what Omnilium I have left, is a thick, warm blanket. Wrapped up snugly in that, trying not to move too much, so as to avoid straining my bruised and battered body, I eventually drift off once more.

When I awake, I’m boiling. It’s bright out, the sun having risen whilst I slept, bringing with it the usual, unbearable heat… kicking off my sweat-soaked blanket with a disgusted moan, I jump to my feet.

Then pause... shouldn't that have hurt more?

Slowly, I stretch a little. Aside from a few small twinges, my body seems almost as good as new… it’s extraordinary… I mean, yes, back before I was stripped of much of my former power, I could probably have just healed myself with a single word… I was never actually injured in battle after mastering my defensive enchantments, so as I didn’t learn it until after that point, I never really had the opportunity to test that healing spell. In theory, though, it ought to have worked.

But even then, my body never had any sort of ‘built-in’ regenerative capabilities beyond that of a normal human. It’s so strange to think that life-threatening wounds could just… vanish, over the course of a couple days.

Still, I only stand around feeling awed for a moment before more pressing matters occur to me. First, lying wrapped in a big, warm blanket in the middle of a desert for hours has left me pretty damn dehydrated, to put it mildly… frankly, I’m lucky not to be suffering heatstroke. And on top of that, I feel fucking disgusting.

Being covered in blood and sweat and grime may not have seemed like such a big deal by comparison back when I felt so bad as if I couldn't possibly have more than minutes left to live, but now that I’m on the mend, I want desperately to be clean.

I hold off on that thought for the time being, though. Not dying of thirst comes first. I don’t even restrict myself to a glass this time, knowing that I won’t be content with just a pint. Instead, I spend several minutes creating a large, ceramic pot – almost three feet tall, and about as wide – of the sort often used to carry water back from wells and streams, filled to the brim with icy water.

I gulp it down greedily; what I can, anyway. Of course I'm only able to get through a small portion of what I’ve summoned. That done, my thirst quenched, I finally leave the tent, squinting against the harsh light of day. The Omnilium I had built up while I rested was enough to cover the cost of the water, but for this next bit, I’m going to need more.

I kneel just in front of my tent, facing away from it, palms on the sand. My pose is similar to that which I took a couple days before, when extracting Omnilium from the sand to build my enchanted cart… but this time, I make sure to take from an area which isn’t directly beneath myself… I’d rather not almost bury myself alive again.

It’s as tedious a process as ever, but eventually, after something like fifteen or twenty minutes, I’ve successfully made a bigass hole in the ground and enriched myself somewhat. Next, it’s time to actually summon something, so now I repeat the process in reverse. And another twenty minutes or so later, I’m done with that as well.

Getting up, I admire my creation; my own little miniature oasis, roughly circular and about six metres wide. The base of the hole I’ve lined with a thin ceramic… like a giant bowl, which I’ve filled with cool water. And as an added bonus, I've even made myself some soaps and scented oils, along with a towel, a hairbrush and a few cloths.

After taking another drink from my probably unnecessarily large water pot, I peel off the torn and bloodied remains of my sari and get to bathing.

I take my time with this, partly because it’s the first chance I’ve had in… I’m not sure how long, to actually relax properly. Even before being granted access to Omni’s reality, I had been engaged in a military campaign for… for a while, to put it mildly. And those aren’t generally associated with long, luxurious baths.

My enjoyment is only a part of it, though. The other reason is that all the dried blood and sweat has turned my beautiful, hip-length hair into a revolting, matted lump, which takes an enormous amount of soaking and washing to restore to its usual lustre.

At long last, when I finally judge myself sufficiently clean, I summon another sari to replace my ruined one, then climb out of my oasis, dry off and dress, noticing as I do that the final aches seem to have vanished completely from my body. I take yet another drink, while I debate internally my next course of action.

Eventually, I reluctantly decide to give magical transportation another shot. Hopefully I can just order it to travel at a more reasonable speed this time… though if that doesn’t work, I’ll at least know to leap overboard before it crashes. Having to trust in another such contraption after the first proved such a failure is hardly ideal, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to trudge uncomfortably through a desert when I have the power to summon virtually anything at my fingertips.

So I gather yet more Omnilium, re-absorbing my tent, blanket, water carrier, oasis, bathing supplies and ruined clothes, as well as a whole lot of sand and, of course, the shattered remnants of my previous transport. This unsurprisingly takes a while, but when I’m finally done I have an identical replica of my first enchanted cart. Once more I climb inside and order it to move off in another completely random direction, in a perfectly straight line... though this time I take great care to stipulate in no uncertain terms that it should never exceed the pace of a leisurely jog.

For a time, I’m on edge, worrying that whatever strange phenomenon so greatly enhanced the accelerative capacity of the first cart might somehow infiltrate the workings of this one as well and increase its speed the moment I take my attention from it. Eventually, though, I manage to relax… convinced that my instructions have done the trick.

It isn’t long afterwards, however, that I find myself growing bored. Not wanting to risk going faster, but with no clue where I’m headed or where I should be headed in order to find any civilisations that might be out here, I’m well aware that I could potentially end up lost for a very long time… or for my entire life, perhaps, if these dunes truly are as endless as they seem.

So for the first time I bend my will towards summoning something with no specific form… I want information. I don’t care whether it comes in the shape of an illusion-projection crystal, a vocal-record runestone, a book, a scroll, hells, even a stone tablet… I have no idea how people in this Omniverse record information, and it doesn’t particularly matter to me how it’s presented. What’s important is that I get some indication of where I should be aiming to reach and how to get there, at the very least.

Better still, I need access to everything it’s possible to learn about this inexplicable plane of existence and its many peculiarities.

After several minutes of summoning, I’m confused to see a small, blank, perfectly plain, gold tablet appear on the thick rug that coats my wagon’s floor. At a glance, I’d say it’s somewhere about seven centimetres wide, fifteen centimetres long and one centimetre thick. It has no sharp edges, but the bottom corners are more rounded than those on the front face… I honestly don’t have the slightest clue what it’s supposed to do, but the moment I pick it up, countless miniscule, white runes flicker and flash and run across the front surface for a moment, before that entire area is subsumed in light.

Some sort of display appears. It seems this object is slightly reminiscent of one of the illusion crystals I’m used to, though rather than a three dimensional scene projected into the air around the viewer, this thing seems restricted to a single, two-dimensional plane. It’s no big loss, though, and after a few experimental taps on the object’s face, I find myself bringing up something called ‘the Dataverse’.

A narrow, empty, rectangular box fills the centre of the screen and when I tap it, another box shows up, this one covering the entire lower half of the display, and being filled with every letter of the alphabet. I hit some of these, writing out the word ‘desert’, then hitting a box labelled ‘Search’. A moment later, I’m astonished to see a huge list of entries describing a place called ‘the Endless Dunes’. This sounds about right, so I tap one of those – which sends me off to another page – and begin reading, determined that by the time I actually need to interact with anyone, I’ll know enough to keep from making a fool of myself...