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Lemon cookies scented the air with fruity sugar and a hint of sour, while coftea provided a pleasant dichotomy of bitter to the senses. Archmage Syllea had flavored her coftea with way too much milk, according to Erick, but after his initial suggestion to only put a bit of milk in the tea, and her turning her brown drink to the color of pale wood, he left off his suggestions, and paid more attention to the lesson unfolding in front of him. Syllea’s voice had gone from simple professional pleasantness, to happy, to awe, as she spoke of Mana Altering. The joy in her voice had become infectious.  

Erick was almost as lost as he was interested. Thankfully, he had gotten his mental feet under him, and was beginning to keep up with her words. He would need to experiment a lot with Mana Altering and aura control on his own in order duplicate the effects Syllea wanted to show him, but he would get a taste of what was to come, right now.

Syllea said, “This first one is [Illusion Infusion]. It will make your Light-aspect magic act at unknown angles.” She held her hand up, and Erick felt a small weight on his shoulder; with Meditation’s ability to see intent imposed on the mana, Erick recognized a spell similar to his own [Flight of a Thousand Hands] touching him. She asked, “Ready?”

“This won’t affect my [Familiar]’s imbued magic, will it?”

“It should not affect your [Familiar]s, but tell me if it does.”

“Then I am ready.” Erick said, grinning at nothing in particular, happy to get back to exploring magic for at least a while.  

“You’re going to want to try some small spell. Very small. Not [Greater Lightwalk]. Not at first.” Syllea pulsed with clear magic; Intent flowed down the connection from her to Erick.  

[Illusion Infusion] took hold, flushing through his body like a distant roll of thunder, felt everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  

Erick gazed through the Ophiel still at Candlepoint, and saw no change at all to their [Greater Lightwalk] forms. They were casting those spells themselves, and keeping their own mana high by floating back to [Prismatic Ward]s to regenerate when they got below half, so that made sense. In fact, almost all of Erick’s magic was imbued into Ophiel, and since he never fully dismissed the [Familiar], except for that one time that he had been Mind Controlled by Messalina, they still had all of his magic inside of them. He came back to himself, and lightly touched on the mana inside of him. It felt different, but almost exactly the same.  

Syllea waited, her bright eyes watching him.

Erick, for his part, felt very little change at all, after the spell settled down. He asked, “I just realized, your spell doesn’t have a duration.”

“It’s twenty thousand total mana, 5100 converted mana, or dismissal. The duration varies depending on how you stress the buff. Casting spells and using the buff is easier on your body than dismissal. If you dismiss it, then these buffs of mine will act like normal buffs when they expire. It won’t be fatal, but you’ll feel like you want to die.” Syllea ignored the heavy caveat she just dumped on Erick, saying, “But that doesn’t matter. Try something! Mana Altering is great! You can get some really strange magics, though, so try something inconsequential, at first.”

Erick glanced out his window. Night had fallen, and the moons were on their way to slivers, so it was rather dark, but he could still see his garden in the light spilling out from the large windows of the room. He asked, “How about [Tree of Light]?”

“Ohh! A fine choice.” Syllea smiled wide. “This is a very interesting interaction.” She glanced to the window with Erick, asking, “Maybe not near the other trees, though.”

“I can make that happen.” He stood up. “Shall we go to the back yard? We can stand on the back porch; no need to venture into the night, or outside of the [Prismatic Ward].”

Syllea stood, saying, “Let’s.”

There had not been a back porch in Erick’s original house plan, but after the Myriad Citrus came down and destroyed the whole back yard, Erick rebuilt it better than it had been before. In addition to evening out the experimental farm, and gathering up his compost bins and sorting them out, there was now a porch. It was not a large porch and it did not have an awning, but it served a function that had been missing. Namely, the function of having a porch.  

Erick led the way into the night, but not too far, while Syllea, Bayth, and Poi followed. Teressa stayed just inside the house, for the porch wasn’t large enough to support three orcols. The lighting wasn’t that adequate, either. So Erick reached up and cast a lightward—

Syllea giggled, as the lightward came out wrong. For a brief moment, Erick thought back to the ones he had created when he was first experimenting with lightwards, almost a year ago. Instead of a spotlight, a ball of glowing fog spilled misty white light onto the ground, like a flood released, to spread out across the experimental garden. Light wisped into the night air, and was not like a fog at all, except on the edges.

He said, “I was not expecting that.” He stared at the land, filled with liquid, the night above, and the swirling mists between the two zones. “It’s like the surface of a lake; half underwater, except it’s clear light.” He looked to his feet. “My shadow is… odd.”

At his feet, his shadow was a splashed out bit of something darker, under the waves of light that came up to his waist. He lifted a foot, and the shadows came with it. He set his foot back down, and the shadows spread out again.  

Syllea said, “[Illusion Infusion] makes all plain lightwards act different. Yours appears to act like a fog. Mine acts like a light with no source.”

“What about special lightwards?” Erick asked, thinking of a spell he almost used in his light slime dungeon.

Syllea paused in thought, then said, “Let’s do this one, first. [Tree of Light] has a rather special reaction with [Illusion Infusion].”

Mana Altering sounded more interesting with each new bit of information. With a thought, Erick directed the Ophiel on his shoulder to blip over to the garden. With another blip, the night air in front of Erick and Syllea flashed white and shadow, revealing a seven meter tall lemon tree in the center of the experimental garden.  

Syllea said, “Ah. Uh. No. We need a sapling, or a new growth entirely.”

“It makes a difference?”

“Yes.” Syllea said, “A great deal. The reaction is not as great if the tree doesn’t grow with the spell active. It still works, but… It’s not the same at all.” She explained, “Trees grown under [Tree of Light] and its variants display a large affinity for the spell later in life, to the point where they could almost be described as magical plants. Trees buffed with [Tree of Light], later in life, are not capable of fully utilizing the effects of the spell.”

“… I made a myriad citrus tree with seven types of fruit, using [Tree of Light] from seven seeds. Seven trees became one tree.” Erick asked, “Is that a problem?”

“… Maybe not. Did you try to plant the seeds from the tree? Were they viable?”

“Yes. Three new trees, each with the same qualities as the original.”

“Hmmmm. Have they hurt anyone?”

Erick readily came to the defense of his creation. “Quite the opposite. They give fruits freely to people, though they do strike back when someone strikes them. The fruits are good, but I haven’t had one myself.”

Syllea scrunched her face. She said, “You made a magic plant, but it’ll probably be fine. You won’t know the outcome for years, but if they start hurting people, you will have to kill them. Since you made them with [Tree of Light], they won’t show their full power under normal [Grow] conditions.” She shooed her hand toward the lemon tree, growing in the garden in front of them. “Let’s see some Illusion!”

Fair enough; Erick had already suspected most of what Syllea said, and had resolved to do much of that.  

Erick grabbed a lemon from the tree, and blipped the tree back to the normal garden; like it had never left that growing location. His Handy Aura made short work of retrieving the seeds from the citrus. Erick looked to Poi, and Poi reached up and set a [Weather Ward] across the group, while Erick conjured platinum rain from the sky. With his Handy Aura planting a lemon seed, in the center of the field, he cast [Tree of Light], while glowing rain descended from the flashing dark above.

The growing seed became a tree over the course of one minute, but it did not glow neon, like when Erick normally cast [Tree of Light]. It grew, and grew. The trunk thickened, turning from green to brown, as branches spread. Lemons popped out of brown branches. The tree looked like an entirely normal lemon tree, the whole time it stretched up, into the air. When it had reached a good seven meter height, it formed a perfect version of itself, with even growth on all sides and a perfectly straight trunk. Growth stopped, but Erick knew the spell was still active.

 Erick tried to figure out what he was looking at, but he saw no differences between this tree and a normal lemon tree; besides the perfect symmetry and growth.

Erick asked, “What’s supposed to change?”

Syllea had smiled the whole time the tree grew. She kept smiling, as she said, “Hit it with an attack spell. A small one.”

Erick did as he was told, throwing a [Force Bolt] at the center trunk—

The bolt of white mana curved in the air, flowing through the body of the tree, to land in the soil beyond.  The tree remained, untouched, even though [Force Bolt] had directly struck the trunk.

Erick hummed. The whole tree was an illusion, wasn’t it? Or was there something else going on?

Syllea smirked, offering. “Try something stronger.”  

Erick conjured a [Flying Striker]; a two meter long sword, thin as a blade of grass, but strong as inflexible will. The sword flew at the tree trunk, horizontal with a great sweeping [Strike]—  

And whiffed.  

Syllea giggled. Erick smiled, both because of the unexpected magic, and because of Syllea’s uncomplicated happiness at seeing magic in action. Erick felt the same way. This was an interesting problem! What was going on here, exactly?

His next experiment was a simple poke with the tip of the sword. He scratched the bark, this time, but when he applied more pressure, the tree simply turned to illusions, and the sword slipped through. So weak actions made it through the ‘[Tree of Illusion]’ buff, but stronger actions did not? Erick tried a few more testing pokes, and his intuition proved true. And then he just went for it, with great, sweeping [Strike]s, flying the weapon through the canopy. The canopy was fake. The sword slipped through like it was touching air, or maybe thick light. But then suddenly, the sword caught the center, slicing the tree in half.  

While a couple tons of greenery slowly left its support structure, the severed trunk flickered with light and shadows, like a sparking electrical cable. The illusory magic died, completely. The canopy fell to the ground with a great whooshing, crunching sound.  

“So what was that, exactly?” Erick asked, looking at the blue box for [Tree of Light]. “The blue spell box didn’t change, either.”

Syllea said, “Spells affected by Mana Altering in this way will not change their Box Display. The only way to know their full effects is to experiment with them to see what the new effects are. In this case, I’ve already done all of that experimentation. What [Tree of Light] does, is enable the tree to activate itself as an illusion, in order to avoid danger. If you were to attack it with Light or Shadow, you would be doing half damage, but it would not be able to avoid your [Strike]s.” She added, “[Tree of Illusions] is incredibly difficult to get on its own, but with Mana Altering it’s easy to achieve this magic. This is a great spell for protecting Arbors from attack, though you never want to create an Arbor with this spell, since it will make that Arbor able to avoid most attacks.” She said, “Don’t make a magic plant with Illusion magic.”

“Seems prudent.” Erick said, “I’m actually thinking about making a tree [Familiar] but I’m hoping it won’t become an arbor for a long time. I’d like to talk to you about that, too, at some later date.”

“You are?” Syllea looked down at Erick. “That’s not a good idea. Magic plants made with [Tree of Light] are one thing, but tree [Familiar]s turn real faster than most.” She looked to Ophiel on Erick’s shoulder. “And you already have a [Familiar]?”

Ophiel trilled in violins.  

Erick patted the little guy, saying, “He’s great. But I need some more stable way to defend locations, and provide rains.” He was also feeling the pinch of 10 maximum Ophiel, but he didn’t mention that; instead, he said, “If the eventual plan is to push back the mimics, then I’m going to need some way to provide for green spaces around the Crystal Forest.” He added, “Anyway: Particle Magic is still 40ish days from becoming a part of the Open Script. I’m not going to make a tree [Familiar] until I can use [Call Lightning], or maybe even [Gate].”

Syllea seemed to reevaluate her earlier statement, looking pensive for a moment. She said, “If you keep your tree [Familiar] to tier 2, it might take 50 years to turn real. That should be fine.”

“I calculated out 100 years?” Erick said, somewhat defensive. “I used the Compendium of Summons.”

“Ehhh.” Syllea frowned a little. “Your goal is a [Familiar] spell that is uncapped, correct? No limit of 3, or 10?”  

“Ideally.”  

“… We can talk more about that, later.” She gestured to the experimental garden, and its single, dead occupant, saying, “But: Back to Illusion. The general theme you should notice is that defensive Illusion is either not where it appears to be, or is incapable of being struck by physical means, while offensive Illusions will strike from unknown angles.”

Erick asked, “What about this?” He brought out the box for [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]. “How would that work as an Illusion?”

--

Kaleidoscopic Radiance, instant, medium range, permanent, 500 mana

A medium-sized lightward of evershifting brilliance supports the growth of Light Essence creatures.  

--

Syllea read the box, and almost said something, but she stopped. She read the box again, narrowing her eyes. She asked, “Permanent? I mean… It’s obviously a lightward. A specialty lightward, and those can be made permanent. But it has an effect… and...” She narrowed her eyes, curiously, asking, “You made an active spell out of a plain lightward?” She rapidly added, “Obviously not ‘plain’.”

“I thought the ‘support Light Essence creatures’ was the impressive part?”

Syllea shook her head, saying, “That’s just a rare variation on Rift magics not many people are capable of achieving.” She asked, “Did you put one of these up in your light slime dungeon?”

“No.” Erick said, “I got this while crafting the dungeon, with very complicated lightwards. The Headmaster did not want a [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] on his property.” As he said the words, he remembered that the Headmaster did not say that, exactly. “Ah. No. He said to put one or two up at the bottom, if I felt like it. But I did not.”

“I hear your dungeon is already producing a lot of slimes, anyway.” Syllea said, “I had thought the Headmaster had filled the place with Light Rifts, to speed up the process. But I guess not?” She said, “That’s what you can do with magic like this, when you have an under-performing dungeon. You put up rifts or other essence support magics, and more slimes will pop out.” She said, “How’d you make it permanent, though?”

Erick explained, “I’ve been working on permanent magic for a while. I’ve already got my artifact rings, and I’m working on figuring out the Grand [Prestidigitation] Stove variations, but the goal is permanent magics of any of my spells. Another of my long term goals is figuring out a [Renew] Basic Spell, or whatever tier it has to be, but something low. Something anyone could cast on an ongoing spell, to [Renew] the duration of that spell.”

Syllea looked off into the distance, thoughtful. “That’s a very interesting problem.”

“I was thinking that I would like your assistance on this [Renew] problem, too, if you’d like to have a discussion about permanent lightwards, and such, some other time. Your ability with buffs might be what I’m missing.” He gestured back to his house. “This [Prismatic Ward] is permanent, too.”

Syllea’s eyes had been glinting with an unseen light, as Erick spoke, but at his last words her eyes went wide, as she looked around at the dense air. Syllea said, “I can tell it’s Restful, but… Permanent, too?” She looked at him, asking, “Why do you want to make permanent magics, Erick?”

Erick almost laughed at Syllea’s questioning gaze, but she seemed serious, so Erick spoke candidly, “So I can protect people long after I’m gone, of course.”

Syllea looked away, thoughtful. “Ah.” She said, “We can talk more about permanency, later. With regard to your [Kaleidoscopic Radiance], it reads like a more subdued version of a Rift attuned to supporting Light Essence creatures. The wording on a spell like that usually reads like this.” She popped out a blue box, and handed it to Erick.

--

Light Rift, instant, medium range, 150 mana

A medium-sized rift of light empowers all Light Essence creatures and magic cast in the area. Lasts 12 hours.

--

Syllea continued, “My spell uses basic language and says ‘empowers’, but yours uses words like ‘evershifting brilliance’, as well as stating it supports the growth of Light Essence creatures, but no nod to affecting magic in the area. Based upon that, I feel that your spell is likely of a higher refinement than mine. The ‘Radiance’ part of it means that you’ve dipped a short ways toward Fire, for some reason, and that’s rather interesting… The permanency effect is unknown to me —I never try for permanent buffs.” She added, “There’s not much use for your spell outside of dungeons, or raising specialty animals, either.”

Erick asked, “How about for use on shadelings, to bring them back to themselves?”

Syllea frowned, as she looked away, in thought. Erick waited.

Syllea said, “Spells like my [Light Rift] are used to heal and support the growth of those types of creatures.” She added, “It’s possible. I honestly don’t know what it would do to shadelings, though. You’d likely have to try [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] with [Shadow Conversion], in order to achieve the best results.”

Erick said, “I used [Tree of Light] on a grove of those fruit trees I mentions, and the people seemed to like both the glowing fruits and the glowing trees.”

“They’re eating the fruits of your magic plant?” Syllea said, almost incredulously. “Well. Okay?” She added, “Conversion from Light to Shadow is rather easy. Some people find the action almost instinctual. That’s probably what’s going on with your [Tree of Light] trees and the shadelings. There’s entire groves of those kinds of plants inside Ar’Kendrithyst. I hear Treant, the Shade of the Garden, has enchanted his whole stretch of land with various growing spells.”

Erick asked, “What about going the other way? From Shadow to Light?”

“Difficult, but doable.” Syllea said, “It’s easier if you leave the direct path, and go from Shadow, to Void, to Starlight. The final step to Light is simple.”

Erick smiled. “You rattled that off, rather easy.”

“You get a feel for it, after a while. With regard to transforming Shadow to Light, you can go through Illusion, but I find the purity of not traversing through Illusion to be much better for most solid actions.” Syllea said, “I prefer solid spellwork, but it all depends on your goals, really. Do you want to hit hard, or do you want to be less present on the battlefield?”

“The second, for me.”

Syllea smiled, small. “Me too.” She thumbed back toward Bayth, standing behind them, saying, “She’s all for the former, though.”

Bayth huffed, “And it works!”

Syllea said, “Let’s go back inside. You’re going to want to try out the rest of your [Illusion Infusion] in a larger space, through your [Familiar].”

Erick smiled as he threw a [Cleansing Flame] on the remains of the tree, igniting it to white fire, casting shadows and light across the flat orange land of the Human District.  

The rest of Erick’s experiments with [Illusion Infusion] involved sitting in the sunroom with Syllea, and casting spells through Ophiel, at raised stone pillars in the dark dunes of the Crystal Forest. Syllea watched through her viewing screen.  

Ophiel held a wing forward, casting Light-aspect [Force Beam]s from the tip, but the spell did not just erupt from his feathers, but also from three different spots in the air around the [Familiar]. Each line of white zipped away from Ophiel, to hold in the air like the [Familiar] had dashed four different ways through the sky; but he hadn’t. Each burning line of light carved tiny furrows in the stone pillar, all of them going wide and then swinging back to target, like they were drunk Rookies, unable to aim properly. A few more tests of the same spell, now knowing what he was looking at, enabled Erick to throw the four beams around with a slight semblance of control. They were still drunk Rookies, but now they were drunk, focused rookies.  

Erick was excited to try his next spell, but if he was honest with himself, he was also a little afraid. [Luminous Beam] would come out weird, for sure. But how weird?  

Ophiel held still in the dark air, his wings fluttering, his eyes trained forward. A ball of light flashed in front of him, casting brilliance into the night sky, shading wings and eyes into deep shadow and brilliant light, as the spell opened up like a raging river pushed through a pin hole. Luster and glitter instantly surged a kilometer forward; a cone of light and otherwise that crashed against the stone pillar and a good few hundred meters in every direction, obliterating—

Ah. No. That’s not what happened. [Luminous Beam] lasted five seconds, but it was only in the final moments that Erick understood what he was watching.  

The original [Luminous Beam] moved at the speed of light. This one did not. That was the first major change Erick noticed. This barely moved slow enough to see countless blasts of light carve forward through the maybe-90 degree light cone. But half of those bolts struck the land, and did nothing. Another half struck the land, and burrowed holes into the dunes. Another half, somehow, were completely invisible, carving holes into the orange sand where no light had been. When the spell ended, the land was swiss cheese, and rapidly caved in on itself.

Syllea stared at her viewing screen, laughing, asking, “What was that!”

“Particle spell.” Erick handed Syllea the box for [Luminous Beam].

--

Luminous Beam X, instant, super long range, 500 mana

Conjure a coruscating, tightly controlled plume of severing light that deals <massive damage> and lasts for <5 seconds>.

Particle Mage Only.

--

She read the box, disbelieving. She tossed it away with a laugh and a scowl, before quickly coming back to something that was mostly professional, but still full of disregard. “Light is not a particle.”

Erick smiled wide. “You are correct, but only on a technicality.”

“… Fine. I guess I can accept that one of the Elements is not exactly as I always envisioned it to be.”

Erick laughed. “What! You changed your mind that easy?”

“Well of course.” Syllea said, “The spell says ‘Particle Mage Only’, therefore it must be a Particle Spell. That’s easy enough to understand. The Script doesn’t lie, though it always obfuscates.” She added, perhaps a bit darkly, “On the other path, it could be that you’ve been lying to us about what ‘particles’ are, this whole time.”

“You didn’t think I’d give away all my secrets in one lecture, did you?” Erick asked, “Are you telling me everything you know about Veird’s Elements?”

“… Okay. I see your point. One lecture could never cover everything.” She said, “If everything is made of ‘particles’, then light must be made of particles, too? I can accept that. What about shadow?”

Erick waved his hand. “When I first came here, I heard from someone trustworthy that they didn’t believe shadow existed, in truth, but only in magic.” He said, “Honestly, I have no idea what Shadow is truly supposed to be.”

Syllea frowned a little, then asked, “What other Elements are actually particles?” She offered, “Fire is particles moving fast. Ice is particles moving slow—”

“Cold,” Erick corrected. “Not ‘Ice’. To me, Ice is not an element, but a thing that water becomes when it is cold.”

“… Cold then. Electricity is those electron things?”

“Electrons, yes.” Erick added, “And electricity is much more complicated than just electrons. Literally everything has an electrical charge. Sometimes that electrical charge is ‘zero’. Visible light is actually a cross between electrical charge and magnetic charge; a wave of power moving through the fabric of reality, but also quantized as a particle.”

With a far off look in her eyes, Syllea asked, “When you gaze upon the world, how many elements do you see?”

Now that, was a tricky question. Erick could have given the answer Syllea already knew, that there were  something like 150 elements on the Periodic Table, but that’s not what she was actually asking, and Erick wasn’t even sure about that ‘150’ number. It had been a long time since he saw a Periodic Table.  

The last table he had seen was actually back when he was at Oceanside, when people had been compiling a ‘list of elements’ and Erick had been privy to that gossip. That endeavor had gotten up to 100, last he knew. Last he heard, Rozeta was gearing up to release [Condense Element], as the base Particle Spell, too, and grandfathering in all those basic spells people had created to interact with specific elements.

But that wasn’t what Syllea was asking. She was asking something much deeper than about the ‘elements’ of Erick’s reality. But just to make sure…

Erick asked, “What are you asking?”

“This [Luminous Beam] is clearly different than the elements you spoke of, and this is the first I’m hearing of electrical and magnetic ‘fields’, or whatever those are. It’s like… Like...” She paused, as her eyes went wide. “It says ‘Particle Mage’, but you’re actually a Force Mage! OH my gods. You’re a Force Mage! But you’re not! OH!” Like a cloudy sky opening up, revealing a sunny, pale blue eternity, Syllea’s eyes glinted bright and clear, as she said, “You’re a Reality Mage!”

“… A what?” Erick said, his throat feeling constricted.  

Had she just called him a wizard?

That wasn’t good.

“What’s with that reaction!” Syllea brushed him off, saying, “It’s not a real Class; just an informal designation of those who take their chosen field far enough to be able to affect everything. Force Mage, which is what I actually am, is closer than most to becoming a Reality Mage...” She eyed him.  

Erick chuckled nervously, saying, “What?”

“Oh. I get it.” Syllea said, “I did not call you that. You’ve probably been called a Wizard before, haven’t you?”  

Erick tensed.

“People are uneducated.” Syllea shook her head, saying, “When you’re raised on stories of Wizards ending the Old Cosmology, or experimenting on souls to drown nations in undead, or Wizards creating monsters and furthering Melemizargo’s insane agenda— Whatever the case: People will call Reality Mages what they know to call them; Wizards. And they’re wrong, obviously. Doesn’t stop the occasional mage from getting murdered by their neighbors.”  

Erick gave a weak laugh.

She paused again, and looked at Erick, again. “OH my gods. I’m so sorry! You were probably called that a lot, weren’t you?” She mumbled to herself, “I should have realized that before I opened my mouth.”

Erick had only been called a Wizard by one person, and only in anger over having her job taken from her, but even Krakina apologized for doing so, later, when she became a part of the Farmer’s Council. Krakina had called him that in anger, and that was fine. But besides her, the Headmaster certainly implied he was a Wizard, didn’t he?  

… And Silverite had warned him that ‘You don’t invite Wizards into your home’.

… And then there were the big names who had called him a Wizard, and weighed that fact against his life, in a divine trial, in a blackened crater, in some godly part of the world. Sininindi, Phagar, Atunir, Koyabez, Rozeta. All of the gods had labeled him a Wizard.  

Erick brushed her off, saying, “Don’t worry about it.” He lied, “I never understood the insult. What’s the big deal about a Wizard?”

Syllea quickly said, “You just don’t understand— I can tell you: Wizards were responsible for the Sundering. The deaths of untold trillions. The slavery of people, the Corruption of Melemizargo. The deaths of gods! The end of a universe, Erick.”

“Let’s just… forget about… that.” Erick put on his least complicated facial expression, and asked, “What’s a Reality Mage?”

For the briefest of moments, Syllea looked like she was speaking to someone incapable of understanding, but she recovered fast. With a calmer voice, she said, “It’s not Wizardry, at all. Reality Mages are just able to tap in to the fundamentals of reality. Take Force, for example. Force is undifferentiated possibility, condensed down into a solid form. But a good Force Mage, or Force Warrior, or even a few of the Prismatic Classes out, we’re all able to become Reality Mages or Warriors, if they apply themselves toward Reality, instead of toward any specific, singular magic.

“Stone Mages will never get there, because they like Stone too much. Same goes for Fire or Water or any of the other, more esoteric Elements. Sword and shield fighters would never get there, either. It’s only when you have a focus on influencing what actually exists, instead of what you believe exists, that you can awaken to the path of True Magic. The Path of the Reality Mage.” Syllea said, “Like me, with all my Mana Altering. I went down this path in order to understand more about the base components that made up the Old Cosmology, that compose Force. Eventually, I found Fundamental Force; the basic building block upon which magic is based. It’s really nothing to do with wizardry at all, and I am sorry for bringing that up.”

“Well…” Erick wasn’t sure what to say, so he said, “Thank you.”

Syllea smiled, saying, “And your Particle Mage is just like Force Mage, except you’ve focused on the Fundamental Force of this New Cosmology, whatever those might be?” With a cheery voice, she asked, “So what are they? Particles, sure! Light is another one? Or is that wrong?” She decided, “That has to be wrong. But how wrong?”

“No. That’s not...” Erick felt… odd. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Syllea was a beautiful, cheerful woman, and Erick found he truly liked talking magic with her, but something felt off. Maybe he shouldn’t have shown her [Luminous Beam]? But, eh. That was fine. He was just being nervous, after almost being called a Wizard.  

The cultures of Veird had a strange relationship with Wizardry, with the exact definition between what was magic and what was Wizardry being outside of Erick’s understanding. Wizardry was a case of ‘You know it when you see it’, and Erick had no idea what it looked like, but he understood why people hated it. According to some, Wizardry killed the Old Cosmology. According to Rozeta, herself, Melemizargo was a Wizard.  

Darkness and Wizardry were often interchangeable terms.  

He said, “When people experiment enough with Particle Magic, I’m sure you’ll uncover at least two of the Fundamental Forces of this New Cosmology.” Briefly, he felt like life had decided to do a repeat of nearly a year ago, when he spoke to the crowds in Sirocco Zago’s Mage Guild classrooms. He did not repeat the exactwords he had said then, but they were similar, “But I don’t feel I should upset established magic that much, just yet. I’m sure with enough experimentation that others will get there, and have much more math and knowledge to go with their words, than I have, right now.”

Syllea said, “Right, right.”  

An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Syllea picked up her tea, sipped it, then frowned as she sat it back down, and conjured a [Heat Ward] over the cup. Erick’s own coftea was cold, too.

Syllea changed the subject, “So how much do you have left on [Illusion Infusion]? It’s getting late, and I can leave you with [Shadow Conversion] to try out on your own. I’m sure you have other necessities and I am—” Like a highschool girl that Erick had seen in the halls of his local school, but in a way wholly different from anything he had ever seen from Jane, Syllea blurted out, “I have made a Royal Ass of myself, with my unkind words, and I wish to salvage this situation on another day.”

Erick reflexively said, “Okay. Yes. Let’s do the rest of this some other day— after I’ve had a chance to try out some of your suggestions.” He asked “Awareness of these new elements is key to using them, yes?”

Syllea relaxed, her shoulders losing tension, as her eyes focused from the wall behind Erick, to Erick. She stood, saying, “Yes. Much like how your elements are the same. That is the quick and bloody of it— Waitwaitwaitwait. There’s one, fast thing we can do.” She asked, “How would you like to find out your Element?”

Erick had stood with her, but he almost faltered. “… My Element?”

Syllea put on a happy face,. “It’s fun! You might like it?”

“Okay. Sure.”

“First, you just have to expel whatever is left of [Illusion Infusion]. Dismissing makes the buff end rather uncomfortably, though.” Syllea suggested, “Just cast a really expensive lightward outside?”

Erick went with Syllea’s suggestion. With a mental command to the Ophiel on his shoulder, that ball of feathers blipped out in to the middle of a sandy, dark nowhere. Erick cast. 3000 mana went into the Variable cost of a lightward, producing a rainbow tetrahedron that stretched across the sky, which then began to morph into a fractal. The floating, glowing shape multiplied itself on every triangular face, then did it again, but smaller, on its new surfaces. Erick watched for a few moments as the lightward ended up being ten times more complicated than he expected it to be, as Illusion took his idea and ran with it, creating a triangular air that folded endlessly into itself, and spread out into the land, turning sight upsidedown, or sideways, or backwards, as it was wont.  

Back in the sunroom, Erick took note of how he felt, as the buff faded. Like a buzz in his ears that he didn’t know he was hearing until it was gone, [Illusion Infusion] ended. He breathed deep, centering himself. He said, “Not bad.”

Syllea said, “I’m sure you can learn how to make good buffs, too.” She smiled wide again. “But let’s see where you should start!” With a quick reach into the pockets of her leathers, she pulled out a six sided die. She held it out to Erick, saying, “One side for each main element. All you do is hold it for a moment, then roll it as many times as you want. It’s not an exact magical item; more like a toy, that taints itself with your aura, and activates based on that.”

Erick smiled as he picked up the die that was sized for orcol hands. Three centimeters across, each side was emblazoned with an elemental symbol. Erick hefted the die; it was pretty weighty.  

“Cup it in both hands,” Syllea said, “Then roll it.”

Erick did as she suggested. The first time the die ended, it landed on ‘Air’. He kept rolling, puzzling how the die was magically weighted. Syllea smiled, as one element turned up a lot more than the others.

Air. Air. Air. Light. Light. Water. Air. Air. Light. Water. Air. Air.  

Erick had done enough. He picked up the die, and did not roll it again, saying, “That’s a lot of Air.”

“I knew it!” Syllea said, “It makes so much sense. The Lightning. The Rain. Obviously, you’re Air, Light, and Water.”

“How does this die work?” Erick asked, “What are you?”

“The die comes up pretty much evenly, for me.” To accentuate her point, she took the die from Erick’s hand, and cupped it in her hands, and began rolling. It turned up every element, before rolling duplicates. There were, maybe, one or two more ‘Water’ and ‘Stone’ for every set of rolls, but Erick wasn’t really counting that closely. She said, “It used to mean something, back in the Old Cosmology. Whatever you rolled determined where you should most focus your talents. It still means something, these days, but not nearly as much as it did.” She picked up the die after it had rolled every Element for the fourth time, saying, “These days, a lot of people just use it as a dating guide.” She put the die away, saying, “It works based on tasting your aura and combining that with the essences infused in each face of the die, and a weight in the center that moves away from what you are.”

“Dating?” Erick smiled, asking, “What element should a lightning and rain guy go for?”

Syllea teased, “Something to keep you grounded, for sure.” She glanced to the dark window, saying, “It’s getting late. Would you like to experiment with [Shadow Conversion]?”

“Yes.”

Syllea reached over and tapped Erick on the shoulder. Magic flashed between them, to soak into Erick’s being. The tiny difference in his sense of the world was noticeable, this time, but still not detrimental. She said, “That’s 9000 mana of conversion. Have fun—” She looked to the door to the room. Bayth stood there, ready to go. Syllea nodded to the massively muscular woman, then said to Erick, “Time to go. Contact me when you wish to continue, or after you’ve had some time to experiment with the odder elements. If you want a book on the subject, I recommend ‘Esoteric Elements’. It’s what got me started on this whole Mana Altering jaunt, twenty years ago. It might be written for children, but there’s a lot of knowledge packed into that tiny book!”

Erick said, “Thank you, Syllea. I’ll look for that book. I hope your people’s trip to Ar’Kendrithyst goes well.”

Syllea lost some of her joy. “I hope so, too.” She stepped to Bayth, adding, “We’ll have to take the quick route, Erick. Sorry for being rude.”

Erick said, “It was great to finally talk to you again.”

Syllea smiled. “It was great to talk to you again, too, but my bargain of trade isn’t nearly discharged yet. See you later.”

Syllea and Bayth flickered with clear light, and vanished from the sunroom.  

After a long moment of staring at the space they had occupied, Erick removed both Syllea’s and Bayth’s [Prismatic Ward] permissions. He sat back down, and heated up his cold coftea in a quick [Heat Ward], while he nibbled on one of the two remaining lemon cookies. And he thought.  

Poi walked in, asking, “Is everything alright?”

“Not really.” Erick asked, “Are Teressa and Justine asleep?”

“Justine is upstairs on the third floor veranda, tending to her plants. Teressa is walking here right now.”

Teressa walked into the room, but paused. “Uh. I can go away if you want?”

“No. That’s not it… I just… I haven’t had to deal with being called a wizard in a long time and it’s making me wonder where all my people are. If they’re safe.” He asked, “Kiri will be here tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” Poi said.  

“Good.” Erick said, “I don’t know why I faltered at being called a Wizard. That was strange. We even have a deck of Wizard’s Towers cards over there.” He gestured to a bookshelf in the room, then said, “What’s up with that?”

Teressa looked to the shelves, and offered, “It’s… fun to use such an awful thing in a playful light?”

“Wizards are Moon Reachers, sir—” Poi paused, then said, “I mean. Boogeymen?” He asked Teressa, “When was the last time you heard of one?”

“The only one I grew up hearing stories of was the Wizard of the Fractal Citadel.” Teressa said, “She’s some Reacher in some lost Fractured Citadel, in Quintlan. That’s a four hundred year old story, though.”

Poi looked a little disappointed at Teressa, while the large woman scoffed at him, as if to say, ‘What’?

Poi turned to Erick, saying, “The last known Wizard was the Hullbreaker, in the Letri Ocean—”

“Oh yeah,” mumbled Teressa. “That was twenty years ago.”

Poi continued, “The Headmaster took care of Hullbreaker, though. Sent out a good hundred Elites to kill the Wizard Pirate. Hullbreaker took out half of them, but they got him before a month passed, from Hullbreaker’s ascension to power.”

Teressa joked, “A lot of people thought you were a Wizard—

Poi cleared his throat.

Erick looked away, as Teressa soldiered on, “But anyone who knows how can make a Particle spell.” She said, “You’re not a wizard, and I’ll punch anyone who says otherwise, Boss.”

Erick smiled at the window, and kept his smile as he turned back to Teressa. “Thank you.”

“Of course, Boss!”

Erick changed the subject, “Has Jane spoken to Kiri, and then to you, Poi?”

Poi said, “Not about anything in particular, but they are housing together in Windy Manor. Jane is fine, as far as I know. She is running missions for the Headmaster and getting some personalized instruction in return, but that is the extent of my knowledge.”

“She said she was coming right home, but that’s hasn’t happened yet—” A lightbulb went off, and Erick’s eyes went wide. “I should invent texting!” He frowned. “One more thing to add to the pile.” He asked Teressa and Poi, “So that was Syllea Wyrmrest. What did you think of her?”

Teressa reported, “About as kooky as I’ve heard, but still deeply knowledgeable about many esoteric magics. That die she had you roll was something she invented herself, and has been trying to popularize ever since she graduated from Oceanside, 25 years ago. The mana-sensing dice tradition comes from South Nelboor.” She added, “Aside from all that: Orcols have a long history of buffing magic because we can endure the aftereffects easier than most other races. This was why I started down the path of developing my [Warcry], but Syllea has taken orcol buffs to extremes unheard of until she came along. Not to mention the whole ‘archmage’ thing. Most people focus on the ‘archmage’ thing, though. Big explosions and magical solutions to every problem are all anyone really sees.”

“She was fine.” Poi said, “But I still feel that buffs are dangerous.”

“And they are.” Teressa said, “But small edges here and there can mean a lot in any fight.”

Erick decided, “I’m going to have to learn some buff spells. At least something approaching your [Warcry], Teressa. The percentage buff to damage and defense cannot be overlooked, going forward.”

Teressa said, “You’re going to have to learn from someone else besides me. I know I got it wrong.” She brightened, to say, “But when we visit Treehome, I’m sure you can find a proper instructor, or at least a good book on the subject.”

Erick smiled. “I will do that, then.” He asked, “Now… I think I want to put up a [Kaleidoscopic Radiance], but with this [Shadow Conversion], up at Candlepoint. But that’s just an idea. I’m asking your opinions, first.”

Teressa subtly froze. She said, “Uh.” She went silent.

Poi spoke up, “I cannot give you a suggestion, for I would never trust anything Shadow. That is a blind spot of mine, especially since my people have vetted Justine as being her own person, without any controls on her mind. You should have this conversation with Justine. Alternatively, I can ask Silverite.” He heavily said, “You should ask Silverite, sir.”

Teressa thawed, and said, “I think you should do this for them. Make them come back to themselves, sir. Help them become real again.”

Poi turned toward Teressa, his bluescaled eyebrows furrowing. “Really?”

“Yes.” Teressa stood tall, saying, “If it works that way; if it actually brings them back to themselves, then you have to. But you should be able to know if that spell of yours would actually work how you think it would work. I don’t know much of anything about dungeons, but I do know that working dungeons are highly controlled, with daily changes to keep the slime populations well regulated. I didn’t know they did it with rifts, though.”

“Right.” Erick said, “If what I made is like the spells they use to regulate dungeons, then there should be some information somewhere about how Elemental Essence boosting magic affects essence monsters— shadelings do have shadow essence in them, don’t they? I wasn’t sure, but they have to, right?”

Poi said, “Yes. Enough essence for [Shadow Blend].”

Teressa said, “People hunt shadelings for shadow essence, sometimes. Mostly, they don’t. But it does happen.”

Erick got up, saying, “I’m sure I have those dungeoneering books in my library, somewhere.” He nodded, he said, “Okay… Now I need to talk to Justine.”

Teressa said, “I’ll go get her.”

“Thank you, Teressa.” As she left, Erick said, “Poi, can you ask Silverite her opinion? She’s still awake at this hour, right?”

“Yes. I will ask her.” Poi sent out tendrils of thought.

When eventually Teressa returned to the sunroom, escorting Justine. The incani woman looked to Erick with tired, but strong eyes, saying, “Hello, sir.” And then her facade cracked, and seemed like a woman headed to an executioner’s block. Erick’s heart almost broke as she sat down on the couch across from him. Her facade was back in place.

Erick said, “I know today has been rough, but it’s getting better.” He got right to it, “I just wanted to ask you about spells that boost the growth of shadow essence monsters— I mean. Shadelings.”

Justine blinked her ruby red eyes for a few moments, then said, “How do you mean?”

“I wish to help shadelings come back to themselves, easier.”

“Ah.” Justine said, “These spells do help shadelings come back to themselves, yes, among other powers. The same is true for any spell that boosts the growth of light essence creatures. Though the second option requires a certain ability among the shadeling in question, in order to begin the conversion, and not everyone has that ability.” She said, “A spell that supports the growth of shadow creatures will likely do a lot that I am unaware of. I suggest you ask someone else more knowledgeable on that particular situation. I was never one for dungeon work.”

“What about something that boosts illusion… Well. Not essence. But that boosts illusion creatures?” He said to himself, “I should have asked Syllea if there were such a thing.”

Justine, unsure, said, “I… have no idea. I’ve never done much with buffing, or dungeon work, or illusions, for that matter. The only person I knew who ever did was the Witch, but I never worked with her. I have no idea what the effect would be on light essence or shadow essence existences.”

Teressa tensed slightly at the mention of the Witch. If Erick didn’t know about Teressa’s history with that Shade, he would have missed her reaction.

Erick said, “Okay. Thank you, Justine. And what level are you?” Erick offered, “If you want an escort into the Crystal Forest for an hour tomorrow, I can get you to 32 rather fast. Maybe a bit beyond.”

Justine sat straighter, saying, “I’m level twelve, and have been pushing myself, daily, to the edge of Mana Exhaustion. I would appreciate a boost in the morning, or at your leisure.” She said, “As far as leveling plans are concerned, I will be going for Focus, unlike how I went for Willpower back when we first met.”

Erick smirked; he saw what Justine was doing. “It’s my understanding that most would see a Scion of Focus as an underpowered Mage, but that’s just one of the many cultural things I do not understand.”

Justine just nodded.

“Then it’s decided: we can do some boosting in the morning.” Erick then set a small stone box on the table between them. Ophiel had blipped it in when Teressa went to go get Justine. Erick said, “I should have given you one of these earlier, especially since Koyabez vouches for your sincerity. I think you already know what they are.”

Justine gazed down at the stone box. Water blurred her ruby red eyes. She blinked, as she took the box. As she opened it, and saw the pair of silver rings inside, small tears rolled down her pale skin. She said a shaky, “Thank you.”

“They should make you feel a little safer; I know that’s what they’ve done for me. Each one is plus-25 All Stats— Heh. I’m going to have to stop calling it that.” He said, “If they’re not your size, I can make others.”

Justine shook her head, as she took the rings out and slipped them on her fingers. “These are perfect.” She smiled, sniffled, and laughed, then said, “They feel good, too.” She held up a hand, and smiled at the silver band upon her finger. “No Stat Sickness, just like I heard.”

Erick smiled, to see Justine happy.  

- - - -

Ophiel flew under the dark sky, his wings almost invisible in scattered starlight that barely reached the rolling dunes below. The moons were on their way out; nothing but slivers of pink, silver, and white, hanging up there in the cold void. It was cold down here, too, in wind-whipped air that fluttered through the [Familiar]s feathers, but failed to reach any core, or chill any blood. Ophiel had no core, or blood, so he was fine with the cold.  

The only true chill in the air tonight, was through Ophiel’s connection to Erick, who was safely ensconced in a warm room, in Spur, in the light, and down below, in the myriad shadows, hunting in the dunes.  

Ophiel paused. This was a good enough spot as any.  

Erick cast a dark, searching magic into the air.  

A ball of shadows, even higher in the sky than Ophiel, was only visible by the tendrils of anti-light that blinked out the stars beyond. The more visible part of the spell hovered around Ophiel, eliciting swirls of some inky magic that flowed into a form, that was more a space, than a working spell. Erick watched. It took a good minute, but swirls of darkness came together, the expanse of shadow condensed down into a shape Ophiel, and Erick, recognized.  

It was a map, but it was made of shadows and darkness, and hidden in the depths of the night. Erick cast the spell again, searching for a common enemy.  

Red dots appeared all across the map, like drops of blood fire, inky and insubstantial. A quick check revealed that yes, [Cascade Imaging] could image just fine; the map corresponded to the mimics below. Another cast for other targets Erick did not want to hit, put the red dots far, far away, to the south, at Spur—

And a spot a hundred kilometers to the west. There were some people out here, at night, apparently.  

… Well they weren’t here. So Erick got on with the next experiment.  

Ophiel held his wing forward, pointing at a stone pillar raised from the ground moments ago. Erick cast one of his strongest spells, and the world turned darker, as a ball of shadows erupted from Ophiel, forming a line in the night that cut, spilling shadows where it struck the sands and the ground. Erick dragged that line of power across the dunes and the pillar below, severing a small part of the world from itself. Sand caved downward. The pillar fell over. The spell ended.  

In the aftermath of a shadow-shifted [Luminous Beam], there was no molten sand. There was no heat at all. Dragging the spell across the ground only had one effect: pure destruction. Annihilation, perhaps. The dunes where the beam had struck had certainly folded in on themselves.

Erick frowned, to himself. Was that the true nature of Shadow? Annihilation? Or was that just how [Shadow Conversion] operated on [Luminous Beam]?

Ophiel flew back up, to continue the experiment.  

With a cast toward the sky, the roof of the world broke into shattered fragments, as something darker than black rushed down to fill the world with power. Wind stilled. Sound ceased. Shadows descended, and spread, far and wide, and thin. Thinner than paper, those shadows flowed in across the ground, turning the land below into a dark ocean, where dunes became islands brushed by high, shadowy waves, and mimics drowned in cloying magic. Everything drowned in cloying magic.

Erick watched through a hundred eyes, and high above, as mimic after mimic fell into that shadowy sea, pulled down by something stronger than gravity. They struggled. They flailed. They failed. Crystal Agave did not struggle, but they, too, fell into the shadow ocean.  

When the [Shadow Conversion] [Vivid Gloom], came to the last moments of its existence, it had formed a shadow mockery of the land for twenty kilometers in every direction. Shadowy dunes. Shadowy flat lands. But no shadowy life. The world was wiped clean of every living thing for twenty kilometers in every direction.

When the spell ended, and began to dissipate, the fake land flaked away like so much broken ash, revealing a new depth to this part of the Crystal Forest that had not existed before today. Erick had made a canyon. The scratch in Veird’s surface was deep, winding from east to west more than north to south; a depth to the world that starshine could not penetrate. There was still a darkness down there.  

The darkness shifted. Flickered. Then sunk below.  

The canyon stood revealed to the night, and Erick’s heart stopped beating wildly. He calmed. He considered making an actual shadow spell, if that’s what it took to kill Shades. But much like how he could throw stones at Ancient Stone Elementals, and do some damage, looking down at the canyon he had made… Actual shadow magic would be a lot of collateral damage, wouldn’t it?

As his heart calmed, Erick tried a few smaller spells.  

Under the power of [Shadow Conversion], lightwards became shadowards, spilling obscuring fog into the night. Force spells cast in bright Light, became dark mockeries of themselves, annihilating all they touched. [Vivid Gloom]’s change, from turning the land molten, to eradicating the land altogether, was the largest difference of all of the spells he tested.  

Before Syllea’s [Shadow Conversion] ended, and after he was able to speak to Silverite, Erick shifted his sights to Candlepoint.  

After waking up Mephistopheles and Zaraanka, and getting Slip involved, who was overlooking the lake with dreamy, white eyes, he told them what he wanted to do. Zaraanka was thrilled to get a potential shadow source, as she called it, and rapidly took over the placement of such a spell.  

In a blocky building in the southern side of the city, two stories tall and well away from other structures, Erick was free to work his magic. It was dark inside, but Zaraanka carved open the roof with a wave of her hand, pushing away stone, letting in the starlight. Her pink dress glittered in the shadows both from above, and from the open doorway that led out into the glowing city. She smiled, and stepped all the way into the building.  

She said, “I was going to make this a restaurant, eventually. A food kitchen, tomorrow. We have a good thirty people waiting for that to happen. But we can forgo that for a proper shadow source.”

Erick, through Ophiel, asked, “What’s it going to do?”

Zaraanka smiled wide, saying, “A few minutes next to a Shadow Source, and all shadow monsters begin to naturally heal, like a minor [Rejuvenation] and a [Treat Wounds], at the same time. The Lost Ones will naturally congregate here, so this can be theirs for a while. After they come back to themselves, we can turn this into a healer’s pavilion.” She spoke with reverence in her voice, saying, “We can be a city of people! No more wandering on the streets, like they’re drugged out of their minds. We can go adventuring out into the Crystal Forest, and as long as we come back fast enough, we don’t need your healing magics.”  

Erick had heard all that before, from Silverite, not minutes ago, when he got her involved, through Poi. She had been much more knowledgeable than either Justine, or his own Oceanside dungeoneering books, about what it meant when a spell said, ‘supports the growth of Shadow Essence creatures’.  

She had also said that Erick could go ahead and give Candlepoint this boon, if he wished. It could be dangerous. But if they were real people, of which Silverite was now about 35% sure that they might be, then they would need help to survive the world.  

Erick, through Ophiel, turned to Zaraanka, and said, “That is what I heard, too.” He looked up. He cast.

The original [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] was every pastel and saturated color of the rainbow, and some of those outside of the visible spectrum, too. Infrared. Ultraviolet. All in a swirling, churning, five meter wide whirlpool of light. Yellows, reds, blues, greens, and every color in between. That was the original spell.  

What took hold in the air above was that, but not at all.  

A shifting whirlpool of rainbow shadows floated in the air, like gasoline on dark waters. Whatever [Shadow Conversion] had done to the spell, the light of the original magics still existed, but now that light glittered in a space beyond touch.  

Erick stared at the spell, wondering if he had made the right choice.  

Zaraanka stared at the spell, too, her grey-light eyes catching every color, briefly, and maybe remaining rainbow in the edges, as the center greys became something clearer; whiter. She breathed deep the cold night air, and stretched her arms down to her sides, as she bathed in the light of the dark prism. She blinked, long. She opened her whiter eyes, and smiled. She tore her sight away from the spell, and said, “That feels really good. I’ve had a sore in my foot for a day, but it’s gone, now.”

Erick watched, casually saying, “It might not be good for your eyes to stare directly into the shadows.”

“Of course not.” She said, “It’s always bad for your health to look upon true shadow. But since we’re shadow monsters, I think we can handle a little reverence.” She clasped her hands in front of her, one over the other, and bowed. “Thank you, Archmage Flatt; Liberator.”

“Ehhhmm— Maybe no special titles.”

She raised her head. With a sly smile, she said, “I will find you a title you like.”

“Never mind that.” Erick switched the topic, saying, “Everything seems to be going well in town, but looks can be deceiving. What could be done easier, or better, with my help?”  

Zaraanka frowned a little, as she scrunched her eyebrows together. She said, “I do want to actually talk to you about sex work. You said ‘no’, but quite honestly, this is my life, and the lives of my men and women. I would either like your blessing to continue, or at least to not be called out on it when we begin again.”

“… I have not prepared for this conversation.”

“Quite alright. If you could tell me what you’re worried about, then maybe I can alleviate some of your fears. Is it, perhaps, how they do it in other parts of the world? Have you heard the stories of Nergal, or Nelboor?” Zaraanka quickly added, “Prostitution is a noble profession in the Greensoil Republic. Courtesans. Escorts. And yes, sex work, but—”

Erick decided that if this was really happening, that he’d lay his fears out there. “My problem is that I don’t want you taking advantage of people who have nowhere else to turn to but selling their bodies and damaging their emotional lives in order to turn some yellow.” He stressed, “I am particularly against the reality of sex trafficking and slavery.”

Zaraanka listened, then she said, “I can see the reality of my profession in Nergal and Nelboor has prejudiced you against the rest of us, and that is a shame.” She said, “There is no trafficking or slavery in my Pink House, and there never was. And this part about ‘damaging their emotional lives’ is something I take major issue with.  

“A major part of my profession, as I run it, is emotional labor. We help each other get though the hard times, but we also help our communities survive when death is all around and we have nowhere to run to escape it all but the softness of each other. And yes, there is sex for money. But there is also empowerment, betterment, stability of a community, and many other benefits.” She said, “But besides all that: We are all adults, Erick. No one gets into my Pink House either as a client or as an escort, without knowing what they’re getting into. There is no abuse under my roof, unless someone pays for it and all parties consent. The ideas of Nelboor’s whorehouses and Nergal’s slavehouses have no place in my Pink House, and never have.”

Erick needed to research this topic more, before he continued this conversation. But for now, he said, “I will not stop you from opening your doors, but if I see something I don’t like, then I will confront you in private.”

Zaraanka bowed again, down and up, then said, “I will not disappoint you.”

“I hope not.”

Ophiel hovered away, leaving Zaraanka behind in her room of rainbow shadows.  

First, he checked on Ava. The snake woman was still sleeping in the bed he had summoned, but the food beside her had been eaten, and she was not in the same position he had left her. He departed before she woke—

She sat up, and yawned, exposing fangs for a brief moment as she stretched into the dim light of the room, saying, “Hello, Archmage Flatt.”

“Hello, Ava.” Erick dropped Ophiel’s partial lightform, to fully materialize the feathered [Familiar] into the room, a good five meters from her bed. “Sorry to wake you, I was just checking to see if you were okay.”

She smiled, and her green eyes briefly turned from human circular, to serpent slits, then back again. Anyone else might have brushed it off as a trick of the light, but Erick knew what he saw, with Ophiel’s twelve eyes pointed in Ava’s direction. She said, “I’m fine. Thank you for the meal and the accoutrements of proper civilization. I will have to get my own, soon.”

“You are welcome. I’m glad you made it.” Erick asked, “I heard you’re to be the sewermaster?”

Ava seemed to have heavy thoughts behind her eyes, but she only said, “I am.”

Erick decided to talk business. “The lake has three inlets, not one, how I thought it had.” Erick said, “I capped them off, but the problem got a lot larger before I noticed the streaming eels, pumping out young from every other centimeter of their bodies.”

“The size of this lake and the nature of the infestation is nothing to worry about. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before, and with much more complications besides.” She said, “I plan on hunting mimics for a short while, then getting to work.”

Erick asked, “Do you want an Ophiel to boost you, tomorrow?”

“I could use a guide, and someone to talk to about the outside world, but I am fully capable of killing mimics on my own.” Ava said, “I heard that the people of this town are in danger from the rest of the world. How true is that?”

“Very true. There’s been constant attempts to kidnap shadelings, thinking that they know how the unique magical items were made.” Erick said, “Ophiel here has [Teleport Other]’d about a hundred people out of the city since five days ago, when I gained control. Only five today, though.” He asked, “Is there anything you need, to make your job easier?”

“Yes. But I’m going to get them myself.” Ava lounged on her bed, saying, “This city is going to be great, Erick. It will be a monument to beauty, and I will make it happen.” She smiled, and stared off into nothing, saying, “The more I think of it, the more I see this as an opportunity for something new. Something better than what came before. I have a new life. New options.” She laughed. “A lake on the surface of the Crystal Forest. That just doesn’t happen.” She added, “As long as we can defend ourselves from those who wish to take what is ours, we will have good lives; I promise you that. This city could be another Spur.”

Erick couldn’t help but feel some of her joy. “I think that would be great.” He said, “I’m here to help.”

Ava laughed, a tinkling chime of a sound, then she stopped. She pondered. She asked, “Do you know if the Jadescale Clan is still around?”

Erick ripped the bandaid off as politely as he could. “They are not.”

Ava sharply inhaled. “… Surely you have investigated me more than that.”

Erick said, “I know that they died out due to a cascade of failures, around a hundred years ago, or close to that. What was left of them moved to a different clan, and when the Jadescale city became a nest of shadows soon after, the Obsidianscales had to evacuate, too. They left their homeland and moved closer to the surface.” Erick said, “The Obsidianscales still exist.”

Ava listened. She stared off into the distance, her green eyes going unfocused. When Erick finished, she blinked. She said, “Thank you for telling me.” She looked out of a window, and saw night. She said, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to sleep.”

Ophiel backed away, as Erick said, “I’ll see you later, then. Call out to an Ophiel when you want company for your mimic killing, but know that I’m also boosting Justine Erholme, the other person who succeeded in reclaiming themselves. I will have to stagger your appointments.”

Ava nodded, then laid back down, facing away from Ophiel. She pulled the covers over her body and breathed deep in her cotton cocoon.  

Erick departed, leaving to find another person he needed to speak with.

Ophiel quickly scoured the town, looking for Slip. It wasn’t until Erick journeyed to the other side of the lake, to the western coast, far away from the town, that he found his quarry.  

Slip sat on the stone railing that surrounded the water, hunched over, relaxed in his armor, watching the waves ripple under the wind, and glitter under the starlight. Candlepoint wasn’t even a glow on the horizon.  

On Earth, the horizon was only about three and a half kilometers away. On Veird, that number was closer to 6.7 kilometers to the horizon. It was only when you got at least a hundred meters up, that you could actually see the entirety of Candlepoint’s lake, and the barest bit of the land beyond.  

But here, just above the surface, next to Slip, it appeared as though half the world were nothing but water. It was a calm location, even with the maybe-Shade sitting here, staring out across the wind-stirred waves, with his bright white eyes. Erick watched with him, for a moment.

Slip broke the silence, “Damned violet eels. I really want to go swimming. And fishing.” He sighed, adding, “And sailing.”

“… Do you want a boat?” Erick said, “I could get a small one for you, though I have no idea what kind of boats there are in this world.”

Slip smiled. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to [Grow] the pieces and put it all together, myself.” He added, “But we could use some books on law enforcement, and city charters, and all of those things that make a city run. We got people from all over the world out there, all with different expectations of running a city. Now that Bulgan is gone, some people are doing blood magic. Some are doing necromancy.” He said, “I don’t know what to enforce.”

“Are there problems I can fix?” Erick asked, worriedly. “With the city, or with outsiders coming in?”

“Not yet, but there will be. Mephistopheles is doing his best, but his best is the best of a commoner.” Slip said, “The ones who knew how to do this properly are all dead.” He stared out across the water, saying, “I was following the lead of a man named Karoo, who was following the lead of a man named Judias. Judias died to Bulgan a week before the spidering. Karoo died to automatons in the spidering.” He said, “It’s only 10,000 people, but it’s 10,000 scared, hungry, angry, high level people.”

“I’ll look around for those books.” Erick moved ‘law research’ to the top of his ‘to-do’ pile. He’d have to get Silverite involved for that. He asked, “How are jobs and work and purpose, going?”

“We’re figuring it out. Got a few bakers working with the wheat farmers. Made some of our own loaves, today.”

Erick felt a flush of relief. It was small, but it was not nothing. “That’s good.” He asked, “So how’s the lake looking? Problems there?”

Slip waved his hand, saying, “Nah. No real problems. Just the eels. The mud flits are winning again, now that you killed those streamer eels and plugged the holes.” He said, “You could go down into the depths with your [Familiar] and look for the greater purple eels, if ya want. There’s bound to be at least one upstream. Somewhere in the mazes down there, past all the other streamer growths. I heard it could take a week to find the bugger, so no one’s expecting that.”

Erick gazed out over the lake. Would he have to do that?

Slip added, “But we’ll probably just reroute some of the waters down below and avoid the problem all together. That’s what people usually do. I talked to Ava about it for a little while, and she says we need some bobber worms and glow fish to fully seal the problem on this end. I doubt that’s all of her plan, but it was a good suggestion, and leads me to have high hopes for the woman.”

Erick smiled, though Ophiel gave none of that away. “Good. I’m glad to hear that, too.” He said, “If there’s anything else you can think of that you need, go ahead and ask. Ophiel will be around.”

“Sure thing, Erick.”  

Erick nodded Ophiel, and left.  

Mephistopheles had gone back to bed, so Erick wasn’t going to disturb him again. Valok was asleep in his own room in a house on the north side of the city, overlooking the farms. Daetrio bunked with others, in another room of that same house. A lot of the farmers lived together, for now.

There just wasn’t enough good housing in the city, but as Ophiel looked down from above, he saw the dark roads and the rubble of the destroyed parts of Candlepoint, and also the new housing, and new roads, and new lights, of the parts that people had managed to clean up. It would take at least another full ten days, maybe less, for the destruction and construction crews to fully repair the city. But even those repairs would be temporary things, at best. Temporary housing, temporary roads.  

Rerouting water and getting fabrics for beds, and clothes, and all of the hundreds of smaller details that would make a city a good place to live…

That would take a year. Candlepoint, even before the destruction and by all modern sensibilities, was a hellhole. This shadeling city was not nearly as bad as the scant places Erick had seen over in the Sovereign Cities, but that was only because these people had had the spells to make livable quarters, to bridge the gap between destitute and surviving. But even so, some shadelings were still living on the streets. Some were bedding on sand, because it was slightly softer than stone. Gruel was still the common food served in the food kitchens, and though it was chock full of vegetables and some meat, yes, it was still whatever they managed to put in a pot and boil for twenty minutes, before a group of twenty needful people ate it all down.

These people were making something better for themselves, but it would take a long time for this place to resemble a real, living, working city.  

With one final check over the city revealing nothing too problematic, Erick went to the fractal tetrahedron lightward he had created earlier, out in the middle of nowhere. The rainbow illusionary space still hung in the sky, a kilometer across and churning into itself, altering sight into odd directions, along prism-like angles. With the last of his [Shadow Conversion] buff, Erick threw out another lightward into the center of that folded space, creating a crystal splash of shadows a good twenty meters large, for no more reason than it he imagined it would look pretty. He had been right.  

The massive lightward would eventually fade from power, but for now, all that light and rainbow and shadow was a magical thing to witness, hovering there, all shifting and shimmering, with the stars above, and the orange sands below. There was a complicated order to the large lightward. When the disordered fractals got too complicated, such that a fourth of the tetrahedron was more like a hemisphere, than a prism, that whole side would blur together, and then pop, like a soap bubble, reverting a fourth of the lightward back to its basic triangular shape. And then it would start fractioning itself back into a complicated shape, while the same process played out in uneven measure across the whole light sculpture. Erick watched for a while, happy to witness the random beauty of it all.  

Ophiel trilled as Erick got up from the couch. It was time for bed.  

- - - -

Erick didn’t sleep much; he hadn’t needed to, ever since he got Rozeta’s Boon, for Recovery. He hadn’t dreamed in a while, either, because eight hours was just something that didn’t happen. That night was no exception.  

Erick got up and made breakfast, feeling great. Pancakes and bacon went out to Poi and Teressa, who came to the kitchen at almost the same time. Justine came in halfway through the meal, and had her share.  

Erick asked, “So I think I want to reinvent texting.”

Teressa scrunched her face as she got more pancakes from the pile, asking, “What’s ‘texting’?”

Smiling, Erick said, “I’m glad you asked! I’m imagining I’ll need to do some sort of [Telepathy] spell, but keyed to an auto-writing paper and pad, maybe some sort of table? Enchanted to numbers. Everyone can get a number, and then you can just [Telepathy] the number and it will write down your message on the paper. This way, you don’t have to contact people directly.”

“Sounds like Mind Magic,” Teressa said, looking to Poi.

Justine said nothing, but she too, glanced at Poi.

Erick looked to Poi, too, because the idea of ‘texting’ sounded like Mind Magic to him, too. The Mind Mages would likely have a great deal to say about such a device.

Poi was dismissive, “Eh.”

“What’s with that reaction?” Erick asked.

“Already invented, and they’re not that good.” Poi said, “Here are the problems of such a device: One, people would have to buy a variant of [Telepathy] to get it to work, and that’s a problem. Two, when they are invented, once people know your ‘number’, the machines get flooded with prank calls, either eating up your paper supply or your rads, and leaving you with nothing but a bunch of dick drawings—”

Erick laughed.

“—Three, you have no idea who sent you the message, since this magic device removes all accountability.” Poi added, “Which leads to even more dick drawings. Or death threats, or visually upsetting images. Or… Well.”

Teressa said, “Oh! That campfire story!”

Now it was Erick’s turn to say, “What?”

Teressa said, “It’s a spooky story you’re supposed to tell around the campfire, about how this mage invents a pen that lets him communicate with people back home. The whole thing hinged around paired pens, and then his family would write him messages and when he put his pen to paper, those messages would come out. What you’re supposed to do, is say that the mage is adventuring on a quest much like then one your group is already on—” With a small smile, she said, “There’s scary messages, and stuff like that, but the twist at the end is that a Moon Reacher is moving the pen. Then you’re supposed to conjure some silver fur and leave it on people’s bedding.”

Erick paled.

Teressa noticed, saying, “That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.”

Erick frowned, “That is terrifying, Teressa. Why would you do that to your party?”  

Poi harrumphed, agreeing.

Justine said nothing, but she looked to her meal a bit more intently.

Teressa defended herself, “What! It’s good to be scared sometimes! That was just an overview, and you got scared anyway? Let’s go camping, so I can tell you some real good ones.”

“Ah.” Erick said, “So we’re never going wyrm hunting again, I see.”

Teressa laughed.

“But anyway! Texting!” Erick said, “What about text only?”

Justine spoke up, asking, “How do you make a pen write text only? You’d have to break it somehow, right?”

“That’s easy.” Erick said, “An enchanted typewriter.” When he got two befuddled looks, and Poi’s frown, Erick elaborated, “A machine that writes specific letters, and specific letters only, with button presses. I suppose I could invent the printing press, too, but that seems like an extra step, and one I can skip, for now.”

Poi said, “Rozeta likes handwritten books and writers honor her by handwriting their works. She doesn’t accept works done by a machine.” Poi added, “And that actually circles back to another problem: automated writing isn’t honored by Rozeta.”

Erick went, “Bah! Why not? What do you get out of her approval, anyway?”

“To answer the first half: I don’t know.” Poi said, “But when you write a book or, to a lesser extent, transcribe a book, it’s like completing a minor Quest. Handwritten books, journals, cooking guides, all of that, can award you a point. If they’re especially good, you can get a Boon.” He added, “Though, actually trying for a Boon, as your goal, never works. The common event is that you publish a book and then a year later, when it’s a bestseller, Rozeta issues you a completed Quest that you can turn in for a point.”

Justine nodded. Teressa ate her pancakes.  

Erick glared, over incentivizing the luddite-ness of it all. He said, “That’s ridiculous. You still have to type it all out with a typewriter—” He frowned. “But… I suppose you could just enchant a typewriter to automatically create stories. Oh. That’d be a convenient propaganda machine. Oh. Do some countries already do that? I bet someone already does that.”

Poi flippantly said, “You mean, like creating a machine that automatically measures the attitude of a group of people and then automatically creates stories that they will love, for the purpose of setting them up for something horrific five years down the line, with the machine’s increasingly purposeful memetic narratives that drive its readers to think a certain way?” In a way that was completely unsubtle, and the complete opposite of the meaning of his words, Poi said, “Of course that’s never happened.”

Erick argued, “Every single spell can be used for evil purposes.”

“True.” Poi said, “But you have to draw the line somewhere.”

“Well… That’s fair.” Erick said, “So no texting.”

Poi just shrugged.  

“Bah!” Erick said, “Well I’m not ready to fight the Church to make reading more accessible—”  

“Now that’s a weird argument.” Poi said, “Anyone with Script access can read. It’s a natural effect of Matriculation, if you couldn’t already read before.”

 "... Oh," Erick said. 

Teressa said, “[Comprehend Languages]? Is that what it’s called?” She said to Erick, “I used the one you left me at Irogh, to learn Ancient Script.”

Erick smiled. “Good!” He asked, “Why’d you pick that one?”

“To be able to identify magic items that have been removed from crime scenes.”

“That’s a good reason.”

Breakfast finished, for everyone except Justine.

While Teressa began cleaning, Erick looked to Justine. “Ready to kill some mimics, today?”

Justine spoke definitively, “Yes.”

“How are you planning on doing it, anyway?”

“… The normal way?” She quickly added, “Decay Beams.”

“… I thought you were a Light Mage?”

Justine faltered. “Uh. I was just a Light Mage to make you think better of me; I’ve been almost every Class there is.”

Erick laughed.

Justine said, “I was going to go Poison Mage this time, because it’s useful against almost everything, but because of the prevalence of [Cleanse] in almost every society, most people only see Poison Mage as a monster killing Class.”

Poi said, “The Wasteland Kingdoms won’t see it that way. They’re the nearest nation to Candlepoint, too.”

“One society out of hundreds doesn’t change what I’ll need to be when the whole world is watching.” Justine said, “Besides. When I go back to Candlepoint and when visitors see I’m a Poison Mage, they’ll think… They’ll think some complicated thoughts. But you are right. And the Kingdoms are right next door, which I believe is a good reason to choose to be a Poison Mage.”

Poi said nothing more.  

Erick asked, “Have you considered Illusion Mage?”

Teressa spoke up, as she was putting away pans, “She’d get assassinated in under a week showing up with a Class like that. Too ripe for abuse and subterfuge.”

“I agree that someone would try to kill her,” Poi said. “But I disagree that it would actually happen.”

Justine said, “I did consider Illusion Mage, but I need something unoffensive. But I’m not an assassin. I’m a diplomat… ostensibly. Poison Mage is about as unoffensive as there is.”

“It’s just so weird.” Erick said, “Poison Mage as unoffensive? In my world, without [Cleanse] I think a Poison Mage would be a worldwide disaster. Especially if you can make some long lasting magical poison and just seep it into the water, or something.” Erick shivered. “Kill whole cities, that way.”

Poi said, “Your world seems terrible, Erick.”

Erick laughed. “It wasn’t all that bad!”

Teressa stood beside the stove, saying, “I agree with Poi. Every other thing I hear makes it sound bad.” She added, “And that reminds me: They caught the Blighter. It was some disgruntled employee fired from the bluemetal wrought, Kip’s —the rice guy— fired from his part of the Garden. She didn’t kill anyone, so all that happened was an exile.”  

“Why did she do it?” Erick asked. “Why was she fired?”

“Stealing money,” Teressa said. “Nothing too untoward with all of that. Basic stuff.”

“Hm.” Erick turned back to Justine. “Is there any help you need with your Poison Mage stuff?”

Justine gave a small smile, then said, “No. I am capable of everything, myself, as soon as I can get some levels.”

Erick asked, “So you’ve been through a lot of bodies, right? How does the tiered magic work for that? Do you still have thousand day long cooldowns on spell recreation?”

Justine shook her head. “Nope. The Script followed my soul through each recreation, but everything I gained was left behind, each time I was forced into a new vessel. Most of those times were… Less than pleasant. I was only allowed to study magic and correctly create my own spells a handful of times. I’ve never managed anything castable above a tier seven.”

Erick smiled. “Tier seven is still pretty impressive! What have you managed so far?”

“Just some rudimentary spells.” Justine said, “Can’t make anything large inside the house.”

Erick stood up, saying, “Ready to go in ten minutes?”

Justine only had a stick of bacon left. She said, “Yes. That would be great.”

- - - -

- - - -

“Wait a second,” Erick said, as he almost stepped away from the table. He turned back toward everyone. “When Syllea mentioned ‘book’ as an element… That means… You can just take a machine and enchant it with ‘book creation’? It can’t be that easy, can it? How the heck does that work!”

Poi said, “The Librarian does this. She takes a starter book, and feeds it through five different magical tools, each the same, along with snippets of other source materials. What she ends up with is five different versions of the next book, one of which is liable to be decent. Wildly illegal in most of the world, but she does it to create new novels with her favorite characters.”  

“Oh. Wow.” Erick said, “Okay?”

Poi said, “They don’t always work out, and the next novels from the actual authors usually turn out better. But, yes. This is the one of the most prevalent uses of the ‘Book’ Element.” He added, “Though not many can actually cast those spells.”

Teressa said, “I don’t even understand how ‘book’ is an ‘element’?”

Erick guessed, “Enforced by Rozeta? Or enabled by Rozeta?”

Justine said, “Probably. Either of those.” She added, “And those Book Makers are artifacts crafted from the souls of writers that journeyed to Ar’Kendrithyst, but who failed to please her. They’re not simple magic items.”

Erick shivered.