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Erick woke and it was still dark outside. Ophiel trilled at being disturbed, asking in his own way if it was time to get up already. After blinking in the dark for a few moments, Erick decided that yes, it was time to get up already. He felt pretty good, and there was stuff to do, like organizing his stuff for the return to Spur, and figuring out [Cascade Imaging] a bit more.  

So he got up.  

He went to the bathroom, shut the door, and flicked open the shutter around the light orb, over the bathroom mirror. Ophiel complained in flutes at being locked on the other side of the door as he usually did, but he quieted down soon enough. Erick shucked his clothes as he prepared to hop into the shower. [Cleanse] was good enough to fall asleep with, but he had forgotten to take a bath last night, and there was no better way to wake up than to a hot shower—

He saw himself in the mirror. He paused.  

Life on Veird, walking everywhere, or blipping somewhere to then walk more, or sparring with various people as he trained in his magic, had been good for Erick. His 48 year old dad bod had looked the best it had ever looked. He imagined that if he had gone to the bathhouses in Spur, that were still open even after water season because of his extra rain, he would only feel half as inadequate these days. Orcols were still way too damn beautiful for Erick’s Vitality to ignore, but at least he was not the ugliest duckling in town.  

But something had changed last night. It was probably Rozeta’s Recovery.

Erick saw his body, first, because how could he not. There were muscles on his arms and chest and shoulders and ass, like he was 25 again. He had never been big, but he had certainly been attractive. His long trail of satisfied lovers could attest to that. And then there was his face! It was like he was wearing makeup, but better, because he wasn’t. The bags under his eyes were gone, and the loose skin of his neck had tightened, and the creases on his forehead and his laugh lines had vanished. He looked 30, maybe? 35? He was still 48, but he certainly didn’t feel 48, and he didn’t look his age, at all. Except for the grey in his hair. That was still there.

As he was staring at himself, he realized that his eyes were better, too.

Erick had never needed glasses, though he was starting to squint sometimes. But apparently that was a thing of the past, too. Even without using [Hunter’s Instincts] he could count the hairs on his eyelashes, without leaning into the mirror to get a better look.

He activated [Hunter’s Instincts] and suddenly the world felt malleable, like he could reach out and touch Reality to break it, or save it. Muscles corded down his forearms as he made a tight fist. It was hard to make a fist first thing in the morning, but as he continued to force a fist, his strength came to him. Bones seemed to creak, then settle, as his fist tightened hard, his body fully waking to the day. He smiled, as he glanced at his HP. It didn’t drop from full even with [Hunter’s Instincts] demands.  

Erick smiled. He stretched his arms up—

Oh. A strange feeling twinged through his shoulders and back, and then it was gone. It was like he pulled a muscle, but it healed almost immediately. He stretched his arms forward again, and his body moved fluidly, like it did when he was much younger.

He stretched again, this time down, to touch his toes. The same pulling sensation came, then went, as he settled into his new position. He wrapped his fingertips around his toes. He bent further down, to put his palms flat on the ground, without bending his knees or lifting his feet. Whatever stretching sensation passed through his groin, and his calves, and his back, felt like a small sigh as his body seemed to say, ‘I guess we’re doing this now’, and promptly obeyed his wishes. The taut feelings in his muscles relaxed.  

He stayed like that for a moment, just pressing against the ground with the palms of his hands, while his legs were perfectly straight. His body didn’t seem to mind its odd position.

On a lark, he put his weight on his hands, and did something he hadn’t been able to do in 25 years. He slowly, but easily, lifted his legs off of the ground, careful to avoid the walls of the bathroom, and did a handstand like it was nothing at all. He swayed from one hand to the other, then transferred over to one hand, supporting all his weight on one palm. He had never been able to do that before. He had tried, a lot, when he was younger, and he had even tried on the sands of the arena a few times before he gave up, but he had never been able to do a single handstand, until now. And it was easy, too!

Blood rushed through his body as he laughed at the floor.

With all the grace of a gymnast, Erick methodically lowered his feet to the ground. Blood rushed around his body, filling out other, more sensitive locations, as he stood up straight and smiled at the mirror. Vitality was amazing, for sure. He smiled. He poked at his muscles. They seemed real enough, and he was able to cast magic and bring up his Status, so this wasn’t a dream. Or if it was, it was a really well done dream.  

He mentally poked Poi, ‘Hey, Poi. Are you awake?’

Poi grogged back, ‘Yes.’ He rapidly asked, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Probably.’ Erick cast a [Cleanse], blowing away a tiny bit of thick air from his body and the room, as he began to put his nightclothes back on. ‘Something weird happened to me and I want your opinion. Fair warning: I do not look like I looked when I went to bed.’

‘… I guess it’s time to get up, then.’

‘It’s practically morning anyway!’  

Erick exited the bathroom, to stand on the balcony that wrapped around the second floor. Poi opened his door, and saw Erick. Both of them were in their nightclothes, though Poi liked to sleep shirtless. Erick smiled, while Poi stared. Poi frowned. Erick smiled wider, then laughed.  

Poi said, “You…” He thought. He said, “You got Immune to Health Fatigue, somehow, didn’t you?”

Erick frowned. “How did you know! Dammit! Is it really that easy to be young again?!”

“No. It is not. And you’re not young again.” Poi asked, “When in all the hells and heavens did you switch your Scion— You didn’t switch your Scion at all, did you.” He frowned again, saying, “This was one of the abilities you got, wasn’t it. Is this permanent?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.” Erick smiled wide as he thumbed backward, saying, “I just did a handstand in the bathroom. One handed!”

Poi sighed out, as he turned around and walked into his room, muttering, “Guarding an older man was so much easier. Shit.”

Erick laughed.

Rats opened his door on the third floor and came to the banister, yelling, “Don’t you know what time— Oh.” He looked down at Erick. “So I wasn’t hearing things. That’s strange. But good. You didn’t switch your Scion but you got Immune to Health Fatigue, didn’t you.”

Erick smiled, saying, “It’s pretty great!”

Rats said, “You should wear some heavier clothing so no one can tell.”

Erick balked. “All the lines on my face are gone, too!”

“Are they?” Rats said, “Oh. I guess so. Maybe? You don’t look that much different to me.”

Erick balked, again.

While Rats dismissed Erick’s looks, Kiri came out of her room on the third floor. Her room was above Erick’s, so she moved around a bit to the north, to look down from that banister. She came into view, and paused.

Erick waved.  

Kiri said, “Shit.” She deflated a bit, saying, “You got Immune to Health Fatigue. My gods, what were the options you gave up?”

Poi walked out of his room, still putting on his uniform jacket, saying, “This is why I told you not to say anything, sir.”

Kiri threw her hand out, exclaiming to Poi, “Anyone with any adventurer training at all would know what he got by looking at him! You all did, right away!” She put her hands on the banister, daring Poi to say otherwise.

Poi just frowned.  

Erick chuckled a little, feeling his body move in ways he hadn’t felt in years. Mostly, there was a lot more weight in his upper body. He wished he could have kept going to the gym, back on Earth, but he slowed down like everyone did when they got to his age. Now, it was like he never missed a day.

Without someone to tell her to stop, Kiri continued, “It was the Recovery option, wasn’t it? No. Wait. It could have been Resilience.”

Poi said, “This is why I said not to say anything, sir.” He added, “If this Fatigue Immunity thing going on with you is anything like normal Fatigue Immunity, you’re likely to age at half-rate, too.”

Erick felt his heart pump hard, and the feeling that simple action gave him was one of adrenaline, instead of a half-realized thought to if he was having a heart attack or not. After he sorted that emotion, he asked, “Half rate?”

Teressa hummed from the balcony beside her door; she had come out when Erick wasn’t looking. She looked down to Erick, and said, “Congratulations.”

Rats said, “Congrats.” He added, “And I worked a 20 hour shift. Are we going back to Spur today?”

“Not till the afternoon, at least,” Erick decided, just then.

Rats said, “Thank the gods. I’m going back to bed.” He went back into his room and shut the door.  

Teressa smiled, and said, “If we’re up, we’re up. I’ll start breakfast.” She walked to the stairs downward, saying, “You must be hungry, sir.”

Erick felt his stomach rumble as a primal need for food overtook all of his desires. He declared, “Yes. Oh wow. Very hungry.” He muttered, half to himself, “When did that happen.”

Teressa chuckled as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen.  

- - - -

Teressa did most of the work of making breakfast by beginning with bread, but Erick helped by washing and chopping a good dozen potatoes. Poi got an early start on telepathically talking to whoever he usually talked to; he sat on the couch, drinking coftea, radiating varying numbers of intent-filled lines into the manasphere. Kiri, for her part, pored over a meter wide red book on [Identify]. It was the same one Erick had started to read last night.  

 Teressa placed the kneaded dough into an oiled bowl, and said, “I once knew a guy who switched his Scion to Vitality later in life. He was 80 years old and done with the adventuring life, but he wanted to see if he could actually do the switching quest.”

Erick listened as he boiled potatoes in a heat ward, to get them ready for oven frying faster. “Oh?”

She smiled as she said, “It took him a year without a Scion, but he managed to do it. He came back to the village...” She frowned. She faltered. She put on a happy face, saying, “For a little while, everyone thought he was his son.” Her smile seemed to turn genuine. “He played a lot of tricks on a lot of people for about a week, before everyone decided to play a trick back on him, and declare him legally dead. We had a funeral and everything, but he turned that around on us when he gave a speech about himself.”

Erick chuckled, saying, “Sounds like a fun guy.”  

Teressa grabbed sausages from the cold box, smiling faintly as she said, “He was.”

Moments passed. The scent of grilled sausages soon filled the air with spicy, meaty flavors.  

And Erick was feeling a little weird. No one seemed to care that he had undergone a massive physical shift. Or. Maybe it wasn’t that massive? According to Teressa, his own experience was the normal experience for those who acquired Fatigue Immunity later in life, just like him… So… Maybe this wasn’t a big deal?

Erick asked, “Does anything special happen when you have stacking Immune to Health Fatigue? Or Mana Exhaustion, for that matter?”

Teressa said, “No idea. Professor Rue Downs might know.”

Kiri spoke up, “Four times normal life span for stacking Fatigue Immunity. Constant low-grade [Treat Wounds].”

In a quick emotional sense, Erick felt the floor drop from under him. Four times normal life span? Constant [Treat Wounds]? What?

“Where’d you hear that?” Teressa asked.

Kiri paused. “I’m not sure where.”

Teressa said, “You might be right about the life span thing, but that [Treat Wounds] effect comes from having a high Health Regeneration somewhere in the 5000 range. It’s often conflated with Immunity, but they’re not the same. A lot of orcols will spec into Vitality just enough to get break that threshold and get that effect, since we’re naturally pretty close.” She added, “Like me.”

Kiri frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Completely sure.”

“Well...” Kiri said, “Good to know. I’m pretty sure about the life span times-four thing, though. That’s well documented— Oh.” Kiri paused. She said, “I read about that in a book on the nuances of Vitality. It was written by an orcol, now that I think about it.”  

Teressa smiled.  

Kiri said, “I have no idea what stacking Mana Exhaustion Immunity would mean.” She paused. She eyed Erick a little, glancing down, but she returned to her book as she said, “Probably nothing, now that I think about it.”

Erick slowly came back to himself, listening to Kiri and Teressa talk. He noticed steam billowed up from below. He looked down. The potatoes were boiling. He quickly poked one with a knife on hand, then seeing they were soft, he took the boiling chunks of potatoes out of the [Heat Ward]. He drained the water in the sink. More steam filled the air.  

He turned back to the room, holding the potatoes. He said, “You’re probably right about the mental Stats, Kiri. They don’t make you smarter, after all.”

“Of course they don’t.” Kiri said, “The Script was created to stop the abuses of the Old Wizards. If the mental Stats made you smarter, then that would just make mages that much more dangerous.”

Erick smiled. Everything was nominally stacked against mages, but he was having a pretty good go at being a mage, wasn’t he?  

He took his potatoes and added oil, salt, and pepper. Then he shook them up a bit, just enough to break up the outermost layer but not enough to break them apart. It was a technique that gave them a nice outer layer which would fry up well in the oven.  

He turned back to the room, and said, “I could see that being true, about not wanting to make mages strong again.” He asked Poi, “No intelligence enhancing spells out of the Mind Mages?”

Without missing a beat, Poi looked up from his concentration of telepathic lines, and said, “There are no intelligence enhancing spells. There are no temporary buff spells.”

Teressa huffed out a laugh, adding, “There are, but they’re Mind Mage only, and they can’t share for whatever unknown reason.”

Poi frowned, repeating, “There are no temporary buff spells.”

Kiri said, “I was told that they do more harm than good and that they’re especially bad if you don’t have that telepathic knack, but I honestly don’t know.”

Poi sighed, repeating, “There are no temporary buff spells.”

“Are you sure, Poi?” Erick said, smiling, teasing. “I’m getting a lot of conflicting information, here.”  

Poi let out a long suffering sigh, and gave no further response.

- - - -

Breakfast was wonderful. Erick did not eat as much as Teressa, but he was a close second. They finished their meals just as the sun began to rise on the eastern side of the house. The yard and the ocean to the west were still dark with night.

- - - -

The day started surreal and it only got weirder. When Erick moved, he felt more secure in his movements. When he gauged walking through a door, he hit his larger shoulders. When he bent over to pick up a twenty kilo tome at the bottom of the crate, he just did it, without a strain in his back or any difficulty at all.  

Over the years, he had picked up a lot of nuances to how he moved to make sure that he didn’t hurt himself. A lot of those nuances went away when he fell to Veird, as he began to get a new feeling for how his body worked here, and as he learned how to enchant huge Strength Stat accessories. But he still didn’t ever get on his knees to look into the back of a bottom cupboard, and he didn’t sit down on the ground because getting up was still not the easiest thing in the world. Vitality did a lot, but it didn’t save him from age. Hochnihai even died of old age, not too long ago.  

And yet, as the morning dawned, Erick had taken to the front yard with loose pants, a plan, and nothing else. Now, hours later and in the sun, he was still playing around in the yard, doing gymnastics, testing how far he could push himself.

Handstands, hand walking, cartwheels, leaps and tucks and turns, Erick played around with his new, old body. He had been in rather good shape when he was 22, but this, right here, was something else. His muscles tensed as he told them to, they held his weight as he wanted. He wasn’t secure in his movements, but the falls to the ground and the demands on his Health to support his very strenuous activities were not harsh demands. Meditation’s Rest state was more than enough regenerated Health to cover for his missteps, when he landed on his face, or when he landed wrong on an arm, or a foot.  

When he was happy with his base movements, he [Conjure Item]ed boxes and walls and hoops and rails to test himself some more. Soon, he turned on [Hunter’s Instincts], and the Health drain was barely noticeable past his natural regeneration.  

With [Hunter’s Instincts], the entire world seemed full of influences and directions. The way the leaves curled with the wind, the way the grass held the dirt secure enough to support his weight a little extra, so that he could push off the ground a little harder. Erick knew, suddenly, the best way to move to get from one space to another, to hop through a hoop and to curl his body as he fell to the ground on the other side. He moved with grace from barefoot toes to his bare hands as he twirled across the lawn and over temporary obstacles. There were no missteps this time. His body did exactly as he wanted, and when he overextended, his body made up for his mistakes with a stretch and an adjustment to its new capabilities. He recognized each time his body stretched, too, because each time his Health dropped a few hundred points.  

If his new Health Regeneration wasn’t so high, that might have concerned him, but his regeneration was that high, so it didn’t. If he had tried to do some of those movements out in the field, without Rozeta’s Recovery, he knew he would have injured himself. Maybe even pulled a muscle or sprained something bad enough that he wouldn’t be able to walk or bend like that again until an application of [Treat Wounds].

Introducing himself to the extra Elites the Headmaster had set out around his house was something of a tense moment, for he wasn’t sure if they would think him an intruder, but they had seen him inside the house, making breakfast. They had listened in. And though that was both creepy and a massive invasion of privacy, and Erick was not comfortable with that at all, he knew he would soon be out of here and back in Spur, so he let it slide. He told them off a little, but just enough so they knew he wasn’t happy, just to set a boundary. Should he have done that? Probably not. They were just doing their jobs. But he tried to be diplomatic about it, so he put that out of his mind, and went on with his day.

As the sun spilled warm light across the lawn of Windy Manor, Erick walked around on his hands and laughed, as sweat dripped down his body and Ophiel trilled in the air nearby. He was still a 48 year old man, but magic could do a lot with a 48 year old body. For not the first time, Erick was really happy he chose to focus on Focus.  

- - - -

Sweat dripped down Erick’s chest onto the torn up grassy lawn, as the sun beat down from above. His hands tightened around the white staff in his hands. He set his feet into position on the loam; one in front, the other behind. He took aim. [Hunter’s Instinct]s flared. He launched forward, staff aimed at Kiri.

Kiri’s eyes flared with the activation of [Evasive Stance] as she deflected the blow and sidestepped with absolute grace, like Erick was moving in slow motion and she was as agile as air. She countered with an obvious strike to his exposed side, but Erick rolled away, out of range.

Halfway through the roll he [Blink]ed to Kiri’s back, hoping for an opening, using his continued momentum to swing his staff at her shoulder.

She turned and smacked his hand. His staff went flying but he caught it with [Telekinesis] and whipped it back around to Kiri’s other side. She blipped green, out of the way. She reappeared and smacked him on the thigh before he could bring the staff up to deflect the blow, but he managed to get his staff back up in time to intercept her next strike. His blow cracked and broke Kiri’s green staff. He took aim at her stomach.  

Kiri huffed out fire as she demanded her body to move faster, to twist, to avoid the worst of Erick’s incoming strike. He almost managed to land a hit, but Kiri blipped again. She reappeared with another green staff in her hands. She struck him on the back. His skin flashed bright white as he went sprawling forward, face planting into the dirt.  

Erick tucked and rolled—

“I’m done!” Kiri said.

Erick was already on his feet, already aiming for Kiri with his staff, ready to [Blink] again, but he stopped. He breathed hard, laughing as he said, “I still haven’t sent you flying!”

Kiri breathed out fire as she dropped her green staff into the ambient mana. She winced as she held her hands, and her wrists. “I think I almost broke something.”  

With a thought, Erick bade Ophiel to drop down from the air above, to touch Kiri with the rod of [Treat Wounds] the [Familiar] had been holding since Erick and Kiri started sparring. As a white glow transferred from the rod, to Kiri’s shoulder, she relaxed.

She touched the rings on her fingers, saying, “Even with these Stats, it’s still tough to counter a hit from that kind of power.”

Erick smirked, disbelieving. “You have to have more Strength than me.”  

“I would have thought us the same, yesterday, but I’m still training my body to be able to use all of these extra Stats, while your recovery gave you a shortcut.” Kiri said, “Almost everyone has a mental limit on the amount of Strength they can actually utilize so they don’t damage their body in the process of doing something that they really shouldn’t even try.” She breathed out fire, huffing out heat where others would sweat.  

Erick breathed deep. He glanced at his Status and Health, watching as the numbers rapidly ticked back up. He was a thousand Health from full, but that would all come back in a little over two minutes. From the state Kiri looked to be in, she would take considerably longer to get back to full Health. But then she flickered green, and a gentle glow took hold across her body. She breathed deep, her [Rejuvenation] rapidly healing her for two times Willpower per second. She had bought the skill a little while ago to better deal with the physical demands of her various fighting classes. It was a good buy, according to her.

With Sunny, who was currently hanging out in the sky with Ophiel, she could actually heal people at range in a battle. She wasn’t a Healer, like Rats, but with her [Familiar] she was a close second.  

Erick still had yet to get the one healing spell allotted to him by the Script. Maybe he never would. He had thought, in the beginning, that maybe he could try inventing an immortality spell, but right now, with his body feeling better than ever before and Fatigue Immunity doubling his lifespan…

… Was there a need for immortality?  

Immortality wasn’t an uncommon thing on Veird—

Kiri asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Immortality magic, and if there is a point.”

Kiri smiled softly. She said, “The biggest causes of death on Veird for people like you and me are monsters. Hocnihai was an outlier, by a lot, but if anyone is capable of making it to old age it’s usually Warders. I don’t think I’ll make it past 60.” She glanced around. “Not with this life I’m living.”

Erick paused. He blinked. He said, “Fair enough.” He added, “Let’s stop. I want to run a few more tests with [Cascade Imaging]. Are you packed and ready to go back to Spur?”

“Halfway packed.” Kiri added, “The rest won’t take long.”

Erick fixed the torn up lawn with a bit of stoneshape. He called down platinum rain to heal the grasses and stood under the gentle drops, feeling the cool waters wash away the sweat. He smiled. He felt great.  

- - - -

Erick conjured his map on the front lawn then went inside to get actually clean and change into something else. When he came back out twenty minutes later, a five meter wide opaque white map imaged everything up to ten kilometers in every direction. He stepped into the map, to stand in the ocean just outside of Windy Manor’s location. Kiri was already out here, waiting for him, next to the map.

Erick looked up the to green trees all around him, then proceeded with the first test: ‘green’.

Nothing happened on the map.  

He tested for ‘leaves’.

The forest turned into blue dots.  

Kiri asked, “What was that for?”

“The first one was for ‘green’, the second one was for ‘leaves’.”  

“Ah. Testing for ethereal constraints vs physical constraints.” Kiri said, “It really can’t see the ethereal, can it?”

“You were right, yesterday.” Erick held his hand out and cast [Find Object], searching for ‘light essence’. A white arrow appeared above his palm, pointed directly at his own chest. “[Find Object] can, though.” He added, “That’s light essence.”

Kiri looked down at the white map around her waist. “It’s not a large constraint.” She added, “If you had something to go on, you could probably find most things.”

“Yup!” Erick said, “And one of those things is searching for active magic.”

She said, “Magic is mostly ethereal, but you were able to search for [Ward].” She paused. “But not [Invisible]. So what’s the difference?”

“I’m guessing that it’s the same as most magic; if you can’t do it yourself, you can’t enchant it or empower the runes for it, or even search for it.” Erick said, “But we can test that. What’s a magic you have that I don’t? Just channel some mana through the spell so I can hear it. Don’t tell me what it is, though.”

Kiri said, “You know all of my magic and almost all of it is instant, so it wouldn’t really serve as a test… Probably.”

“Maybe. We’ll come back to that later, but that is a good point.” Erick called out, “Any of you Elites have [Invisible]? Or some other durational magic?”

A wind rustled through the trees, just like it had been all morning long.  

Erick said, “Please?”

The air blipped pink, ten meters away, as a red-skinned incani woman stepped down onto the grass, near the cliffside.  

“Ah!” Erick said, “Hello, Tyli. Were you on duty this morning?”

Tyli spoke with complete professionalism, “No, sir. Your wishes were made known to me so I am here. How may I assist you?”

“I need a duration spell that I don’t know, that you can channel mana through so I can hear the resulting sound.” Erick began powering [Perfect Hearing], as he said, “Hold out your hand and channel mana through the spell and your palm, like you were going to enchant a Stat item.”

Tyli paused for the briefest of seconds. Then she held out her hand, palm up, and channeled a deep, resonant, pink sound. It was the sound of stone snapping shut, but maybe it was more like an avalanche. It was a trap sprung, and an enemy held tight.  

“Thank you. That is enough.” Erick said, “Now I need you to take that spell and cast it around the forest a few places.”

Tyli said, “It already is. Sir.”

Erick smiled, then said, “Very well, then.”

He turned to his map and imagined that hum, that deep trapping rumble that held tight. He recast the map. Nothing changed. Maybe he wasn’t imagining the real spell, because he thought this would have worked. No matter. There was a backup plan.  

Erick bade Ophiel come down from the air, to the map. He had heard Tyli’s magic, too. Erick made him sing the song of her magic and cast [Cascade Imaging] into the spell Erick had already started.  

Still nothing.

Erick tested Ophiel’s ability to search for anything at all, by having him search for ‘Tyli’.

Nothing.  

So Ophiel wasn’t a real being with real memories… Erick knew this. Still, to have it pointed out so solidly still felt weird.

Erick got his mind back in the moment. He transferred his senses into Ophiel, and had Ophiel search for ‘Tyli’. A blue dot appeared where it should have. That was proof enough that with Erick riding Ophiel, Ophiel’s ability to search was similar to Erick’s own. With that test’s positive confirmation, Erick had Ophiel hum Tyli’s magic, as Ophiel cast the search. Nothing appeared on the white map.

“We can do more testing later, but that seems like a dead end.” Erick turned back to Tyli, and said, “Thank you for your assistance. That will be all.”

Tyli bowed, then puffed away in a blip of pink light.  

Erick searched for [Sleep]. He had seen Alibeth cast that spell enough to hear the sound it made multiple times. He imagined he would get at least one hit all the way at the hospital, which was barely at the edge of the map, just in front of the foggy edge. After all, there was at least one rune there that was constantly charged with that magic, in Jane’s room.

Nothing appeared on the map.

He searched for ‘Jane’. Her dot appeared exactly where it should have. ‘Alibeth’ returned a blue dot higher in the hospital tower. They weren’t currently interacting, so that meant that Jane was certainly sleeping—

Erick just cast a [Scry] on Jane. Yup. She was sleeping.  

He dismissed that spell and returned to himself. He searched for [Teleport]. It was an instant spell, but there was a slight delay between the cast time to the activation time, which was mainly due to people needing to really picture their destination before the spell would activate. [Blink] was usually much faster than [Teleport], because all it took was looking at the destination, and blip, there you were.

After a minute of waiting, and explaining to Kiri what he was waiting for, one blue dot appeared, near Oceanside. Erick smiled. That blue dot faded, but other dots soon came into sight. Those too faded, as the spell was no longer there after it departed that location.  

Erick searched for [Teleport] and [Dispel] at the same time, hoping to come upon some of the anti-[Teleport] runes that were surely in Oceanside. And sure enough, a few dozen blue dots appeared here and there in the city. Erick’s eyes went wide. He quickly searched for the color ‘red’, to clear the map as fast as he could. By successfully searching for [Teleport] and [Dispel] he had found every single secured location in the northern half of Oceanside.  

Whoops!

Kiri said, “That was an anti-[Teleport] search, wasn’t it.”  

“… Maybe.”

Kiri just laughed. She said, “This means you need to buy some of those restricted-by-law spells, too. [Invisible] and [Force Trap] are the big ones.”

Erick paused. He asked, “Is that what this means?”

“Oh yeah.” Kiri said, “Merit is going to love you. Killzone too, probably. He was always going off about how much he hated [Invisible]. Two-copper adventurers always thought that they could sneak into Ar’Kendrithyst without getting noticed, and sometimes they could, but mostly they’d get caught and their bodies would get waved at Forward Base because they didn’t properly enter the city.”

Erick stared down at the map floating around his waist, and considered a scan of the Dead City. Ar’Kendrithyst was about 140 kilometers in diameter with an average depth of 50 kilometers, and full of kendrithyst crystal towers. [Cascade Imaging], cast from Spur, could likely see the whole of the top layer of the Dead City, but the middle layer and the bottom layer were out of the question; that evil place ran too deep into Veird.  

This spell was not a solution on how to assault the city; to find defenses and eradicate them in a methodical, terrible manner. But it was a long range [Scan] that someone like Merit or Silverite, or probably Killzone, now that he thought about it…  

Yeah. Killzone would know how to use this to best kill every single Shade.  

But getting to that point would take some time. None of the leaders of Spur desired the destruction of Ar’Kendrithyst, and it wasn’t because of reasons the Headmaster believed. Spur was not profiteering from the Dead City. The Dead City was simply too strong. Every single Shade was as powerful as an immortal archmage, and each of them controlled enough shadowy creatures to each count as the general of their own personal army. It took a Champion to kill a single one of the more powerful Shades, and Jane only managed to kill one of the weaker Shades because circumstances placed them both in a sea of antirhine shards, and her in a position of absolute power, wielding an antirhine mace designed to kill magic-users.

So getting everyone into the mindset of needing to kill the Dead City would take some time.  

Whatever they were planning in there, whatever the rumors were about Ar’Kendrithyst shifting around into a new internal structure, political or magical or theatrical or whatever, whatever it was that was going on in the deeper shadows of the Dead City…  

It would likely be terrible and vast. But it would also likely mean that others, aside from Erick and Jane, would soon desire a final end to those monstrous Shades.  

But for now, there was one final string of testing.  

Erick asked, “Kiri. Can I have a drop of your blood?” He thought for a second, then added, “Ah. Wait. No [Polymorph] form, right?”

Kiri frowned a little. She said, “Not yet… I was thinking of light slime, though.”

“That would be good.” Erick said, “Talk to Poi or clear it with Calzin or Merith, or whoever you need to. Do you think you could get it done in an hour?”

“Yes.” Kiri asked, “Then we test [Polymorph]?”

Erick nodded.

- - - -

Kiri returned to the front yard of Windy Manor wearing nothing but a green [Conjure Armor] in her normal design; mostly cloth, done up like normal-looking clothes, but constructed like Jane’s [Conjure Armor], with tight, kevlar-like threads, and plates inside the cloth, over her chest. Her armor was slightly brighter than her own green scales. She walked through the map to Erick, and used a talon to nick a finger. She placed a bright red dot of blood onto Erick’s hand, then walked out of the map.  

Erick searched for ‘Kiri’. A blue dot appeared on the map exactly where she was.  

He ignored the drop of blood in his hand as he searched for ‘Kiri’s DNA’, trying for a purely mental idea of a search; one where he wouldn’t need a part of the person he was searching for. The map turned white; nothing found.  

Erick focused on the drop of blood in his hand, and searched again. Nothing.

He channeled mana through [Cascade Imaging], into his hand. A bright, splashing orb appeared in his palm, around Kiri’s drop of blood. He searched for her DNA, again.  

Swaths of blue layered through the house, and the yard, and many different places in Oceanside.  

Kiri looked from Erick’s hand to the map, saying, “That’s unconventional.”

Erick smiled. “I can search for people based on blood.”

Kiri seemed stuck between concern and surprise. “Blood magic?”

“Oh? No. Not actually blood magic.” Erick said, “I could do the same with a hair or something. Well. Not the hair itself. But the biological material at the root of the hair, I think. Or a scale, in your case.”

“Connection searching, then.” Kiri smiled small, relieved. She added, “Onto the next test.”

“There are traps out there in the forest, so be careful.” Erick said, “I’m pretty sure that Tyli’s spell was [Stone Trap], and it’s cast in more than a few locations.”

Sunny lifted off of Kiri’s shoulders; she would stay here for a little while.

In a brief moment, Kiri transforming from a young dragonkin woman in [Conjure Armor], into a bright ball of white light nestled into the neck opening of her [Conjure Armor], on the ground. Her voice came out of the air, “This is such an embarrassing spell. I don’t know how Jane does it.”  

Erick smiled, looking down upon his apprentice.  

“So just go anywhere?” she asked.  

Erick looked down at the map. It was still covered in blue. He pointed to a white spot out in the forest. “Here. Or anywhere that you might think of going that isn’t already blue.”

Kiri, still on the ground, said, “I can’t see where you’re pointing.”

Erick pointed up at Sunny, floating in the air above, looking down at both of them. “You can’t?”

“… Right. [Familiar].” Kiri paused. Sunny turned attentive and dropped down on top of the map. Kiri said, “Okay. I see where I need to go.”

Kiri vanished in a blip of green. Her [Conjure Armor], now separated from her body, began to disintegrate into the ambient mana.  

Erick watched as an unexpected dot of blue appeared where he had pointed.

“That shouldn’t have—” Erick said to himself, “Right. Contamination. Probably a rub off from her armor.” He sent, ‘I need you to blip again.’

‘I see… Yeah...’  She paused.

Another blue dot appeared in another blank part of the forest, not too far away. The first unexpected dot began to dissipate, but there was still a blue smear on the forest floor where she had been. DNA just got everywhere, didn’t it?  

Kiri sent, ‘I’m still there?’

‘No. This is a cross contamination, for sure. If you were a flame or acid slime I doubt this would be a problem because you would have already destroyed your outermost layer. Go take a dip in the ocean, or one of the lakes in the interior, or something. Get really clean then come back to somewhere else in this white space.’

‘Sure.’

Kiri’s second blue dot began to dissipate as a third dot appeared down the cliffside, on one of the tiny beaches near the vertical stone wall. Kiri’s blue dot did not move, but instead slowly fade as it began to spread out. Erick felt a spike of worry.

‘Are you okay? Your dot is spreading out a lot!’

‘Just a [Watershape] bath.’

‘Oh. Okay. Good. I didn’t expect it to look like that.’ Erick said, ‘Saltwater on a slime can’t feel good.’

‘It’s not pleasant, for sure. I feel like I’m drying up, but I’m okay.’

‘Try a [Cleanse], too.’

‘Already done.’

‘… And yet it didn’t change the blue smear.’

After a while, the blue smear near the water went still.

‘Looks like that did it.’ Kiri said, ‘Whatever you were tracking did not track me here.’

Erick looked down at the map. There were no new blue dots. ‘Where are you?’

Sunny dropped down into the map, pointing her tail at a white space. ‘Here.’

Erick sent, ‘That solves that. Cross contamination will ensure tracking until measures are taken to clean the target. So it’s kind of like scent tracking, but better. This is good.’ He added, ‘Come on back. We’re done. It’s time to go back to Spur.’

- - - -

Erick opened the front door to the house. “Hello, Krigea. We just got through packing the books away.” He stepped to the side, toward the crates of books ready to be taken back to the Headmaster. “Come on in.”

Krigea, the seafoam green short orcol liaison between Erick and the Headmaster, paused. She stared at Erick. She asked, “You uh. You are?—” She stepped past the dense air over the door and said, “You are you. Sorry. I heard but I did not expect the change to be so drastic.”

Erick smiled, saying, “Neither did I. Apparently Fatigue Immunity is rather rare.”

Krigea stepped toward two of the crates, saying, “Rather rare, yes. Only 2 or 3 people out of a thousand are Scions of Vitality, when you take into account the number of people who never reach 50 in a single Stat, and even then you’re only looking at 3 out of a hundred.” She gestured to the crates. “Did you discover how to [Scan] through [Polymorph]?”

“No, but if [Eyes of the Goddess] still manages to narrow down the range to 500 kilometers, then I think I might be able to pull off the search the rest of the way. Still not sure, though.” Erick said, “If I can find her killers then I will do that. Hopefully she’ll go away after she’s had her revenge.”

Krigea hummed a little, then said, “Hopefully.” She perked her head up. She paused. She looked to Erick, and said, “The Headmaster would like to speak to you before you go.”

“Sure. I already have a pot of coftea prepared. I’m just waiting for him to show.”  

“Then I will say goodbye, Archmage Flatt. The Headmaster will be right along as soon as he finishes a prior engagement.” Krigea put her hands on the crates. “Until we meet again.”

She blipped away in bright green light, taking the crates with her. Erick stared at the spot she vanished from for a moment. And then he went to the kitchen and conjured a [Heat Ward] to get the coftea brewing. After a moment, he decided to do a few more things upstairs in one of the empty rooms.

It wasn’t too long before a bright gold light blipped on the other side of the open door to Windy Manor. The Headmaster stood outside the dense air that protected the house, waiting. Erick, who was sitting on the couch reading, promptly dismissed Krigea from [Prismatic Ward]’s permissions and included the Headmaster.  

He stood up and greeted the Headmaster, “Welcome, Headmaster.”

“Good afternoon, Erick.”

“Come on in. Come on in, the coftea is ready. How do you like yours?”

The Headmaster stepped into the house, saying, “With a dot of cream and a spoonful of sugar.”  

Soon, the two of them were sitting around the coftea table, while a large pot of the hot brew sat on the table, next to extra cream and sugar. Erick had poured drinks for both of them then handed the Headmaster his mug. Both of them sipped their drinks.

The Headmaster said, “I hope you and your people have found your time at Oceanside to be time well spent.”

“We have.” Erick said, “Rats is only 30 people away from completing his [Greater Treat Wounds] quest, and he’s gained quite a lot of knowledge about many different diseases and parasites. Teressa is going strong with her Mana Sense. She’s out to 20 meters, and seeing an hour into the past. She’s almost qualified for [Witness]. Kiri has managed to make a [Familiar] with her own mana pool, just like Ophiel, as well as gained part of an education that I think was wrongfully denied to her before now. Poi is… Well I think he’s happier now that I’ve learned to defend myself a little bit better.” Erick smirked, adding, “Though the target on my back seems to be getting bigger by the day.”

The Headmaster smiled. “That it is.” He added, “It is a shame that Kiri did not try to come to Oceanside before she went to the Tower. If you feel it prudent, you may tell her that I am aware of the situation around her unfortunate dealings with the nobility and the professors at the Tower. There is already a slight shakeup happening over there, but I cannot deal with that situation myself; I have merely sent a fixer in that direction. What happened to her will likely happen again, but hopefully not with the Tower’s sanction.”

Erick almost asked after what exactly happened to Kiri, but that seemed a violation, so he did not.  

The Headmaster must have understood Erick’s facial expression, because after he sipped his coftea, he said, “As far as I am aware, it was nothing overtly horrible. Just people in charge abusing their authority, as some people are wont to do. It is a problem I find quite a lot, now and then, and that I am usually able to pinch before it becomes a real problem.” He repeated, “Usually.”

Erick relaxed. He said, “Besides all that, I learned a great deal more than I thought I would.”

“As have I.” The Headmaster said, “I will not be asking after your methodology on light, though. Not right now, and likely not ever.”

“No?” Erick was taken aback. He said, “I actually have some of the experiments set up in the rooms up there, waiting for us.” He thumbed toward the second floor of the house, to his work room. “I even asked everyone to go and do whatever they wanted for an hour or two, while we talked in private. I’d much prefer to teach someone like you all of this, so that you know what to look for when someone invariably turns this into a weapon.”

The Headmaster hummed, small and concerned, glancing toward the second floor.

 Erick waited.

The Headmaster refilled his coftea, as he said, “There is a fact about magic that is seldom taught in arcanaeum, because it is a life lesson best learned outside of academia. That fact is this: Everyone’s magic is different. If you know what you’re about, then you can do great things with your own personal foundation holding you high, and strong.” He sipped from his mug, then said, “My light magic might not fit in as nicely as it could in this world, into this New Cosmology, but I have developed it with a great deal of my self invested into the magic. To cut a tangent short: I know what I’m about.”

Erick smiled. “Poi says the same thing.”

The Headmaster spoke without sarcasm, “He is a wise man.” He paused, as he turned serious, saying, “Going back to that tangent, for I feel you might actually need to hear this… There is another meaning to that notion. When you stretch it out, and apply it to every single archmage you will ever see, you will find that they all have one thing in common. You have it. Poi has it, though he is not one to actually reach for tier 8 spells, but all of the spells he does have are well made and low cost. Hocnihai had it. Kiri, if she manages to find herself, she will likely gain it later in life, though this business with her using [Lightshape] in her [Familiar] does muddy the waters. I am sure she will eventually find her truth again. Your daughter is actually a lot more lost than you might suspect. She wants to be everything, and [Polymage] can do that, but it is a dearth of vision that will limit her [Polymage] to name-only. But she is young. Kiri is young, too. Some never find their truth, but I suspect those two will eventually find their way.

“I say all this to tell you, and warn you, that Truth is a big deal in magic. The Script limits this to a major extent, because of what malformed Truth did to us.  

“The Old Wizards had Truth in abundance, you see. Too much, is the theory. None of us know the whole story, but enough of us know enough to understand the most likely culprits for what actually ripped apart the Old Cosmology. Insanity. Sociopathy. Narcissism and megalomania. Any of these taken to the extreme and nurtured in a climate of hatred and vengeance would create an alchemist’s cache, waiting for a spark to blow the whole thing sky high.

“It is not a mistake that Ar’Kendrithyst is full of evil personified, or that Melemizargo enacted the Cursed Blood against his fellow dragons. Then there are the Ancients that live around the world; old and new monsters both that constantly work for the Darkness to ensure the destruction of people like you and I. The Quiet War is yet another facet of Melemizargo’s master plan to rip apart the Script and Veird, for you see it was he that showed the Old Demons how to manipulate the Script to destroy the alvani people, and to create the incani.”

Deep worry pulsed through Erick’s mind and body as the Headmaster spoke of Jane, but that emotion was almost overshadowed by the cold that came over him when the Headmaster spoke of Ar’Kendrithyst. Numbness came after that, as Erick listened.  

“Fighting those Shades will be a large undertaking, not only for the fight itself, but they might use such a fight to precipitate a truly disastrous event.” The Headmaster said, “Melemizargo doesn’t lose, you see. He is insane in the way that all gods are insane; they are Truths that exist beyond the knowing of mortal and immortal alike. The gods anchor themselves to the people of this world and our shared needs in order to keep their minds in tune with our own. Melemizargo usually doesn’t anchor himself in this way. But recently, he has.

“This sort of anchoring is always followed by some awful event. Speculating on the nature of such an event is best left to other gods, but it is up to you and I to do our part to not be swayed by the Darkness.” He added, “And I got a little away from myself, with all of that.”

The both of them sipped coftea for a minute.

Eventually, Erick said, “I thought you wanted to talk about monster hunting and the light slime dungeon payments and the nature of light— Or. Not that last one, at least.”

The Headmaster said, “Sometimes tangents are important.”  

Erick breathed out, thinking.

The Headmaster sat straight, saying, “Monsters come and go, but they hardly ever ‘go’ without the assistance of people like you and I. I would be happy to arrange for a similar situation as you have with your Adventurer Guildmaster Mog, though our timelines would be much more reasonable than needing you to defend from an attack on Oceanside, which is something I would never ask of you.” He said, “I have arrangements like this with many archmages the world over, to solve various problems like an Ancient Unicorn that might pop up from time to time. Your ability to multiply your mana through Ophiel’s own pool is a rare ability indeed, and would put you at the top of such a list, if you wish, since this ability makes you able to be the first sword in many confrontations, without risking the rest of my people. I would see you paid accordingly for your troubles.

He continued, “As for the dungeon. I have spent over three million gold getting that place up and running, and though I will be charging a hundred thousand gold per [Lightwalk], of which I expect two per month, I would appreciate it if you would not take advantage of your option to utilize the space until I have gotten some of my investment back. You will, of course, be getting 25 thousand per [Lightwalk] that the place makes.” He looked around at the Manor, saying “This location is 5000 gold per month of maintenance, paid mainly to the groundskeepers, though a thousand of that is in taxes. Do you wish to keep Vinsez and Powell in employment? Or should I instruct them to look elsewhere, or to rejoin the pool of adventuring Elites?”

Erick smiled. He was much more comfortable talking about money and fiscal responsibility than about evil Truths that plagued the world that suddenly seemed more dangerous than ever before. He said, “Vinsez and Powell have been wonderful, and I would see them continue to keep the grounds of Windy Manor in top shape. I would pay them for their time guarding the residence out of the money coming to me from the dungeon.” He added, “But how about that lightmask I put in there? That’s the real money maker.”

The Headmaster set down his mostly empty coftea cup on the table, and began, “25 percent.”

Erick countered, “A hundred percent.”

“What?” The Headmaster balked. “Impossible! No way.”

“A hundred percent of sales, and any enchantments have to be made by the person questing for [Lightwalk]. No exceptions.”

“That is so arbitrary.” The Headmaster put on a professional, disapproving frown. “35 percent, and I will still use it to make equipment for my own people.”

“Nope.” Erick said, “Come on now!” He explained, “It’s a reward for finishing the purpose of the dungeon. It’s gotta be special. Either you let people quest for it, for at least a little while, or it just needs to get erased.”

“50 percent, and I will be using that ‘lightmask’ to make equipment for my own people.”

“I can go in there and erase it, you know.” Erick joked, “I could erase it right now, from right here.”

“Do you think I would be irresponsible with such a capability? Is that what you’re trying to prevent?”

“Are you dodging the purpose of a quest item at the bottom of a dungeon?”

“This is not some adventure you have created using my resources. It is a farm, with products growing for eventual sale. Surely you see the benefits of allowing this new magic into the world under the control of someone who would do right by it?”

“What I see is people having many more Stats than what you’ve been used to for the vast majority of time on Veird.”

“Now you’re just being contrary. By your own volition you have spread Stat items near and far—”

“Oh. That’s right. You can’t do the diamond growing anyway. I mean. I guess you can just pluck them from the walls of the dungeon, but that seems rather short sighted. But you can’t do the silver coating, either.” Erick said. “I guess I’ll take 75 percent, and let you have at it.”

“… 50 percent.”

“Fine fine.” Erick said, “75 percent, and I want you to at least respect the fact that someone should quest for [Lightwalk] before they go make themselves an item.” He added, “You just got through talking about Truths. This could be one of them. That was certainly the intention I put into that lightmask, anyway.”

“… I will let those who quest for [Lightwalk] make themselves an item, if they wish, for free.” The Headmaster said, “But I am going to be experimenting with that lightmask myself, and equipping my people with items that will ensure they can overcome the monsters of this world. I stay out of most politics, and most personal issues, but people come to me expecting me to kill their local terrors without any problems. Artifact Stat items will ensure success, and that my people don’t die on those frontlines, Erick.”

Erick offered, “Want me to enchant a mobile purple lightmask on a diamond for you, or something? You can leave the one down there for questers.”

The Headmaster paused. “… Okay.” He said, “Done. 75 percent.”

Erick smiled. That was a better rate than Erick had expected, for something anyone could do once they understood the trick. He poured out the last of the coftea from the stone pot, into his cup, and into the Headmaster’s. With a thought, he [Cleanse]d the pot, spilling a tiny bit of thick air into the room. With another thought, he cast a permanent, two meter wide purple lightmask onto the coftea pot. Everything turned purple, because he was in the lightmask effect. He set the pot on the table in front of the Headmaster.  

The old dragon looked down at the coftea pot, and chuckled. He picked up his full mug saying, “Cheers,” then took a swig.

“Cheers,” Erick said, then sipped from his mug. “Who are you going to sell to, anyway? Don’t give me a line about just your Elites, please.”

The Headmaster laughed once. “That was not a lie! I will only sell to them, and only to those who prove themselves capable of the responsibility of having an artifact.” He said, “I outfit my Elites well, but they still have to pay for the best equipment. They get money for this by questing the world over, to rid us of the more dangerous monsters and reap the rewards of those endeavors, or by working their way through monsters on the Lesser Quest board to acquire the grand rads necessary to buy that gear.” The Headmaster said, “The All-Stat items I make from this purple pot will join those already for sale to those who qualify. I will likely charge 10,000 per ring, or considerably less if I cannot figure a way to duplicate your coating and thus make them artifacts.”

Erick offered, “Do you want to buy diamonds from me?”

“No. Thank you.” He said, “I have my own resources for that. I will not be taking them from the dungeon, either. Those little light slimes truly do like all the sparkly bits all around them.” He chuckled. “I feel almost a kinship, there, in that mannerism of those bouncing light balls.”

“The option for me to sell you diamonds is open, but that spell should also be in the Script in 6 months, anyway, or something like that.” Erick asked, “Unless you can bypass that as the Second?”

“I cannot. When the time comes, I will have to spend a point, just like everyone else. The Script of the Registrar is a lot more open than most, but that comes with just as many restrictions. I will likely go the harder route, though, and try to recreate the spell myself, to save that point.” The Headmaster set down his empty mug and picked up the purple pot. He stood, and said, “It has been a pleasure, Erick Flatt. You are welcome back at Oceanside at any time.”

“Thanks for having me.” Erick stood, saying, “I might be back, soon enough. I still haven’t solved the [Polymorph] problem, but I might not need to if the [Eyes of the Goddess] says all of my targets are in the same location. I might just have to do some normal sleuthing to find them. Or I might luck out, and someone else has done all of that sleuthing for me, and I just have to ask a spell a question based on physical form.”

“It is possible. You should know that we never got a lead on the actual attackers. If we had, I would have sent you off with some mementos from those hunters. If you do feel the need to communicate with Messalina, don’t let her get into your head more than she already has.” The Headmaster warned, “She is more than capable of ruining your life.”

“She’s already put a fair dint into my plans, but I understand what you’re saying.”

The Headmaster looked into Erick’s eyes for a short moment. He said, “You did not ask, but I feel you should know that the unknown pixie was not a spy for Messalina. He was a distant family member that was visiting without checking in first. Thanks to him, we did discover that the colonies in Nergal’s jungles are in complete disarray, but the pixie teenager knew nothing beyond that. We let him go, with our apologies for his rough treatment and an offer off assistance to those still living in Nergal.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

The Headmaster nodded, then blipped away in a shattering of purple light, taking the purple coftea pot with him. Normal light returned.  

Erick sagged back down onto the couch, giving a heavy sigh as he tilted his head back and stared at the high ceiling. Whatever complicated emotion was passing through his head, relief was a major part of it.  

Relief from securing funding for further enchanting work, to securing the release of his All-Stat items into the world in a way that put the Headmaster in the line of fire, instead of just himself, to relief that he hadn’t pointed out someone only to have them killed—

Erick almost punched himself. He needed to get over that particular emotion if he was ever to lead a fight against a Shade.

Erick breathed deep. He sat up. He removed the Headmaster from [Prismatic Ward]s permissions, and simultaneously spotted a small spider on edge of the window, near the ground.

… On a whim, Erick blanked the permissions of everyone from the spell, then inundated a thorough purging pulse of magic through the spell in what felt like an appropriate thing to do, if he wanted to get rid of every possible permission he could have ever added. He had been subjected to more than a little bit of mind control over the past few months, and all the spiders around the house warned him that maybe he had accidentally invited other unknown people into the house.  

The air around him solidified as the dense air of [Prismatic Ward] held him tight. For a brief moment, he could not breath. He immediately added himself back to the spell’s permissions, and breathed easy.  

The spider by the window didn’t seem to care. It moved a little, as the air around it shook with Erick’s uncommon magical demand, but the spider settled back into his waiting position soon enough. Erick poked it with his Handy Aura, just to be sure that what he was seeing, was what he was seeing. The spider scurried a foot before stopping.  

Erick said to no one in particular, “I guess spiders are normal, home-things.” He stared down at the spider, saying, “But [Scry] doesn’t fly through solid spaces, like in this [Ward], so whoever would use you to spy must use a complicated spell. It probably kills you when they use it, too. Maybe? I don’t know enough to say that, actually.”

He began methodically adding the people he trusted back into [Prismatic Ward]s permissions. Jane, Poi, Kiri, Sunny, Teressa, Rats, Ophiel—

He called Ophiel in from outside. The winged [Familiar] blipped onto the couch beside him, already singing in violins and harps. Erick patted the little guy. It was time to go back to Spur. He called everyone back to the Manor with a short telepathic message.  

- - - -

Bags were packed. Vinsez and Powell were bade farewell on the front lawn of Windy Manor, and the [Prismatic Ward] around the house was taken down. The groundskeepers would keep the place nice and neat while Erick was away, and Erick would pay them out of money that came from the dungeon. They both smiled at that proclamation. They were happy to have the stability Erick’s decision afforded them, and they were happy for the gardens, too. Powell was beginning to really enjoy her lemon bars and cinnamon rolls, and that was fine, because she was eating for two, now. She and Vinsez would be mother and father, sooner than they thought.  

Erick stumbled over his words as he congratulated them. He quickly rummaged around in his packed bags to find a suitable present. He gave both of them each a pair of his old All-Stat rings. They were visibly taken aback at this, but Erick insisted. They accepted the rings with a heartfelt ‘thank you’.  

Erick took one last look at Windy Manor, the green forest all around the two meter high walls, his garden of lemon trees and potatoes and cinnamon trees, and at the expansive ocean to the west, past the steep cliff at the edge of the property. The wind blew in from the salty ocean, carrying the mana ocean on the eternal breeze. This place smelled of travel and vacation and magic, but Erick’s time on Oceanside had been work, work, and more work. And now it was time for even more work. He smiled to himself, thinking that retirement was no longer 15 or 20 years away, but maybe 200.

It was a much better thought than thinking of an early end because of a mistake already made, or a misstep in the days or decades to come.  

He looked back to the house. He’d be back here in a week or so to pick up Jane. Maybe this Messalina mess would be over by then. Hopefully.

Erick, Poi, Kiri, Teressa, and Rats, boarded Erick’s [Teleporting Platform], along with all of their stuff. Books, bags, luggage, equipment made and raw materials never used, all of that formed a pile almost as large as Teressa in the center of the platform, tied down with ropes and wrapped in cloth. He cast an Ophiel, which then cast a full strength [Prismatic Ward] onto the platform that would protect them from the wind and anything else that might happen along the short trip.  

They, and all of their stuff, vanished from Windy Manor with a blip of white, reappearing over the oceans. A few more blips took them to the mountains. Sunny and Ophiel followed behind, under their own power so the trip did not incur more mana costs than necessary; all of the stuff the group had picked up over the nearly three months in Oceanside already amounted to an extra five people in the [Teleport] cost calculations.  

It was 14 blips total to get all the way back to Spur, and Erick might have been regenerating 8 mana a second, but that was not enough for the full distance. They took two fifteen minute breaks on the way home. Soon, the tan and orange sands of the Crystal Forest spread out below them in all directions. It was a nice sight.

Soon, they were home.  

- - - -

Home was a pile of debris and dirt half a story tall, cordoned off from the rest of the mostly-empty Human District by small juts of stone, each with a warning against trespassing inscribed at the top of those juts.

Erick set down his [Teleporting Platform] and all of his passengers, a few meters in front of the still-standing front door of his house, and a few meters away from his greeting party. Three people had shown up to welcome him back to Spur. Guardmaster Merit, all orange scaled and dressed in silver armor, Silverite, who wore a nice white dress over her quicksilver body, and brown-haired Ramizi, who stood in attendance as the representative of the Headmaster’s Elites.  

“Morning, Erick,” Merit said. “You’re looking rather not like your usual self.”

Ramizi’s eyes went a little wide, as his face briefly turned a shade of pink. He said, “Hel— Hello. Hello again, archmage.”

Erick smiled as he stepped off his his platform, but remained inside the radius of his [Prismatic Ward], for now, saying, “I got a nice bonus for adding to the magical knowledge of Veird, just the other day. I was surprised as anyone else.”

Silverite said, “We are prepared.”

“Right to it, then,” Erick said.

“I eagerly await your results!” Merit smiled wide, showing sharp fangs; waiting.

Ramizi cleared his throat, then said, “Our people are in position.”

Erick said, “Then let’s find the targets.”  

Erick launched [Cascade Imagining] into the sky, just high enough to catch all of Spur in its effect, and eventually give a good, fully realized miniature view of the city. White light began to spill out of a ball in the sky, as a fog appeared on the ground. Erick stepped back from the forming fog, moving the dense air surrounding the platform away, along with all of their stuff, and Erick’s passengers; Kiri, Poi, Rats, and Teressa, had yet to get off the platform. Spur was a lot safer than when they first discovered that dream worms were everywhere, but Poi was the cautious type, and this was the plan they went with, for coming back to Spur.  

Merit had approved their caution, when Poi spoke to her and Silverite both, earlier. This caution seemed to have been necessary, considering that tiny blue dots began to appear on the resolving foggy image of Spur.  

“Gods to the east and west!” Merit exclaimed, “There are still dream worms in town!”

Ramizi glared at the map. “Those little fuckers.”

Silverite frowned. “I guess there are.” She grumbled, “We must still have a pixie problem, too.”

Lines of telepathic intent radiated from Merit, Silverite, and Ramizi. Erick just watched, as the three of them controlled the situation from here, directing their forces all around the city to capture and contain the exposed threat. Buildings and streets and city walls gradually fully formed out of the fog, as blue dots began to vanish, one after the other.  

“Shit.” Ramizi said, “Some of the infected are [Teleport]ing away.”

Erick said, “If you can collect a piece of them then I can track them, as long as they don’t [Polymorph].”

Merit said, “Heard and understood.”

Silverite said, “Search for pixies. Forget the worms, for now.”

Merit glanced at Silverite, but said nothing.

Erick renewed the spell, searching for ‘pixie’. Several blue dots appeared.  

Silverite said, “Ignore the one at the Courthouse. Capture or eliminate the rest. Those are the threat.”

“Understood.” Merit said, “Adjustments of targets disseminated.”  

Ramizi said, “Oceanside will follow your lead.”

“They’re running,” Merit said. “They know we see them.”

Erick watched the map as Merit, Silverite, and Ramizi went silent. Blue dots began to disappear. Not one minute passed, before every single blue dot was gone, except for the one at the Courthouse. As soon as the pixies understood they were seen, they vacated the city quick as a blip.

Erick and his people had yet to leave the safety of his [Prismatic Ward].

Silverite said, “Back to searching for worms, please. We will take the targets carefully, this time.” As Erick tuned the map back to ‘dream worms’ and blue dots reappeared, Silverite added, “Sorry that your return wasn’t met with a better outcome. I had hoped… It doesn’t matter what I hoped.” She gestured at the map, as blue dots began to reappear. “Hopefully this is Caradogh Pogi’s doing. No one has found him, either, but he was already a dangerous man before he began to work with Messalina. Now, he’s a dangerous man with nothing left to lose.”

Erick said, “We can find him, too.” He turned to Ramizi, saying, “I heard the Headmaster’s Elites hit his house but found nothing, but did you find like… a hairbrush, or something?”

“Yes.” Ramizi said, “We’ve found many items to use for a tracking magic. I’ll see to it that you get a few of them. What do you need, exactly?”

“The biological bit at the root of a hair, blood. Some physical part of Caradogh.”

Ramizi nodded, as he turned back to the map, saying, “We will get you your pieces as soon as possible.”

Erick began moving the platform, with all of his people, closer to the house. “I’m going to remake the house, then.”

Merit did not look up from the map, as she said, “This is a big help, Erick.”

He nodded, and left them to their work.

Erick flew Ophiel into the center of the house, and cast [Mend] through the [Familier], linking it with the Mana Shaping option to turn a targeted spell into an area spell, for 500 mana, and Aurify, to hit the whole house. Power poured through Erick, through Ophiel, soaking into the piles of sand below. [Mend] took hold on the front and rear doors that still stood like monoliths poking up from the sand. Sand flowed upward, turning to walls, to staircases. Erick smiled, as stone turned to home, once again. He smiled wider, as he saw beds and dressers and mirrors and tables, many things that had been broken in the destruction, come back together, back into position, before walls covered them up.

A blue box appeared.

--

Mending Aura, long range, 572 MP per second

Restore a very large, complicated, location to its prime. Time since the structure was destroyed may alter final results. Automatically repair all objects in the area of effect.  

Minor ability to affect magical objects.

--

The house came together in several seconds. Erick’s southern mage tower lifted straight up from the sand. Jane’s northern tower rose into the air like a building collapsing in reverse. Balconies and doors and glass windows reappeared out of the destruction, like they had never been broken or shattered. Al’s somewhat-Victorian architecture solidified out of the [Mend]ing stone, like a resolving image.  

When it was done, Erick summoned an Ophiel and used that mana to cast a [Prismatic Ward] around the house. He would personally recast that spell, and utilize his Clarity bonus to double the effectiveness of that dense air, later, when his own mana recovered to full. For now, he just walked to the front door, opened it up, and stepped inside.  

The ground was flat, the walls were straight, the staircase in the center of the house was wide and beautiful and curved upward just how Erick remembered, and it was all done in wonderful orange stone. It was a very nice color. The air was dry compared to Oceanside, of course, but even that was a nice return to normalcy.  

Erick was home again.  

Jane was still at Oceanside and she was technically vulnerable right now, but the Headmaster was watching her, waiting for a reprisal from Caradogh or Messalina. Erick might not have personally discussed this with the dragon in their last talk, but Poi had done a lot of his own organization for leaving Oceanside.  

Alibeth wouldn’t be the only highly qualified person watching for some errant Mind Mage to try to make a run at Erick through his daughter. If anyone attacked Jane’s location, they were in for a very big surprise. Jane was safe as could be for being unconscious.

Erick breathed deep the air of Spur. It smelled of clean stone, and hard edges. He turned around and waved his people inward, saying, “Come on in.”

Teressa hopped off the floating platform as Rats began to untie the wrapped luggage.  

An hour later, the house was mostly put together right, but there were problems. Scattered jars of coftea and rotten potatoes and other food stuffs littered the kitchen and a few of the other nearby rooms. Mirrors had [Mend]ed, but needed to be physically placed back on the walls. Beds were out of position. Pipes were clogged with various problems. The whole house was dark; every single wardlight needed to be remade, but temporary ones went up for now. When Erick’s mana reached full, he recast the [Prismatic Ward] around the house, properly, himself.

Erick fixed many of the more pressing issues with a [Cleanse], or a [Scry] down the pipes to see, and fix, the blockages here and there. Kiri, Poi, Teressa, and Rats, each attended to their own places first, then to the rest of the house.  

And now, Erick was in his tower, looking for more problems. Boxes of diamond spheres and their contents laid scattered everywhere; he had actually found some of those orbs downstairs in the kitchen, blocking the water pipes. His lathes were intact, but on the floor. The water system for capturing platinum rain from the outside to funnel it into the tower, into troughs, seemed intact, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tested them. All in all, the tower had fared okay.

He looked up.  

The globes of Earth’s Solar System and the Sun, that Erick had made with his first applications of [Stoneshape] that he had hung on the ceiling, were gone. They had not been repaired in the [Mend]ing. They were simply absent.  

Erick frowned. He sighed. He began picking up diamond orbs and setting this room to rights.

Outside, Merit and Silverite and Ramizi continued to ask for further [Scan] targets. They occasionally sent him a telepathic message, and he responded with an Ophiel on site, near the map, recasting [Cascade Imaging] as needed. A few times, they asked him to track a specific person using a sample from that person. Erick came out to them to retrieve whatever sample they were tracking the person with, and did as they asked.  

 Erick wasn’t the only one cleaning house today.