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While most of the tribe was spending the morning in bed and recovering from a night of drinking, those with other tasks and daily duties had been awake for a while. Those with children had even less free time, now that the tribe was in Treehome for Festival. Kids rushed through neighboring tribes, finding other kids to get into trouble with, and almost always finding ways to get out of doing their own chores.

But not this one, though that was only because his mother had caught him before he could sneak off to play with his new friends.

“Come on, now,” said the mother. “That dough isn’t going to knead itself!”

With his tiny fists just sitting upon the mass of brown dough, the boy sighed wistfully, as he gazed across the road. His new friends were already gone for the day. He muttered, “Stupid bread.” He looked to his mother, and started a new, old argument, “We can buy bread in—” And then something else caught his eye through the spaces in the canopy.

“We’re not buying bread when we can make it ourselves.” The mother said, “And besides. This bread is special bread. We put all that sugar in it, you—”

The kid interrupted, “Mommy? Is that an attack?”

The mother almost reprimanded her kid. But then his words sunk in. She glanced upward. She felt the blood drain from her face, and then she put on a happy mask, for she could not worry her child, though she was very much worried herself. She said, “Now don’t panic on me, but these are the drills we practice for. That is an attack up there. High level mage. It looks like Syllea’s spellwork, but I don’t know.” Her kid’s eyes went wide as she lifted up the little guy, heedless of the flour, accidentally tipping over the table in her haste to get to her child. Dough fell to the gravel floor of the campground. She wrapped him tight in her arms, and whispered, “We’re going to hunker down, and wait it out.” She yelled to the rest of the sleepy, vacationing tribe, “Attack on the—”

A piercing wail echoed through the trees. The mother covered one of her son’s ears, and pressed his head against her chest. He started to cry. She comforted him as best she could.

The entire campsite was awake in under a second. Mages reacted with [Ward]s. Warriors [Blink]ed into positions, either on top of the main caravan, or around the perimeter. Some people reacted slowly, but others made up for the difference. The mother held her son in one arm and grabbed another scared child up under the other arm. With two kids accounted for, she rushed for the main [Ward] next to the main caravan and took a spot with the other non-combatants.

And then the campground on the other side of the street exploded into glimmering light. The kids started to cry. The mother told them that everything would be okay, and that the archmages and Arbors would save them.

Stars glimmered overhead, falling faster, and faster; a sky full of diamonds, upended onto Treehome.

A warning blared out from the water tree in the center of the campground, talking of a cultist attack, while children huddled together, a neighbor roared out trying to find their son, a mage attempted a long-range [Dispel] against the falling stars, and dough sat on gravel, slowly rising.

- - - -

Some clerk announced, “Full Arbor defenses operational in one minute.”

Koropo was already speaking to a dozen people through [Telepathy], but he took the time to speak to Erick, saying, “Do whatever you can.”

Erick said, “Already on it,” as he summoned Ophiels to replace the ones he had lost.

- - - -

An Ophiel, stationed near the center of the sky over Treehome, and by a [Cascade Imaging] map, switched the map over to search for Omaz. He didn’t show; not yet. But he had been out there, for sure. Erick switched his attention to the falling stars.

A high-mana Ophiel lightstepped to the edge of the massive spell, right before most of them reached the smaller trees that loomed over the campsites and itinerant lands between the Arbor Districts. A few had already touched down, and Erick hoped that the people down there were safe, but he knew there had to be some casualties.

He cast a 36,000 mana [Grand Dispel] at the closest sparkling light drop. Dark magics impacted that drop, then spread like a shockwave of shadows and sound, popping thousands, tens of thousands, and then a full third of the [Starlight Fall] that had come to Treehome. The only reason Ophiel’s spell didn’t reach further, was because he wasn’t the only one combating the attack.

Two other casters in other parts of the sky released their own [Chaining Dispel]s, taking out another third of the [Starlight Fall]. Here and there, other mages cast smaller [Dispel]s, some which popped hundreds of falling sparkles, some which only destroyed a few. The spell was gone, and yet...

And yet, still, some of those countless falling stars made it through the countermagics. Trees had exploded. [Ward]s had popped. People had died.

Erick had zero time to spread blame, or to think he hadn’t done enough. He thought he had. But the propagation of his [Grand Dispel] was a lot slower than the fall of the stars. In less than ten seconds, the whole of that spell had fallen from the sky to the land, like a rain cloud releasing almost all of its rain, all at once.

The map in the center of Treehome briefly blinked blue on the other side of the city. Omaz had blipped into the sky. The sky over there turned to stars. And then Omaz left.

Erick was much faster with his [Grand Dispel] this time.

Ophiels moved with lightstepping brilliance, directly into the center of the swarm. A single 36,000 mana [Grand Dispel] pulsed into the sky, directly into the center of the falling stars. Theoretically, Ophiel could have spent half of that. [Grand Dispel] had a double modifier for the purposes of erasing a targeted magic. But Erick wasn’t going to take that chance.

The entire brilliant sky shimmered with stars, and then shadows ate them all from the inside out, spreading like a shockwave, turning explosive power into disjointed mana. Briefly, other shadowy [Dispel]s tried to strike the starfall, but Erick’s spell had already cleared the whole thing from the sky.

Erick was even faster with the third starfall. The spell had barely been in the sky for two seconds before an Ophiel was in the center of it all. This time, Erick could make a mistake, so he had Ophiel throw 18,000 mana at the sparkling sky. It was enough. The whole of the starfall vanished in a shadowy shockwave. That was good! Erick relaxed a fraction. He didn’t have many of these high-mana Ophiel’s left. He couldn’t throw out 36,000 mana [Grand Dispel]s all day long, and he needed to save his own mana for the important parts of the fight.

Ophiel responded to Omaz’s next appearance half a second before Erick even realized Omaz had appeared again.

Erick briefly looked upon Omaz. Omaz briefly looked upon Ophiel. Omaz had already lifted his arms to the sky. Less than a fraction of a second passed as Omaz filled the blue with sparkling stars. Almost instinctively, Erick queue’d up a [Harmonic Blood Ooze] for 3000 of his own mana and launched it at the man, while a separate high-mana Ophiel stepped into the air above and dispersed the stars from the sky. The first Ophiel, who had arrived on scene before Erick could think to send him, cast a [Ward Destruction] at the cultist, flashing power against Omaz’s skin, shattering whatever defensive [Ward] he had running.

As Omaz began to fall, and before another Script Second passed, the blood ooze wrapped around him, preventing his next cast. Erick watched as he bubbled with mana, but the blood ooze bubbled with shadows, canceling whatever Omaz had tried to do.

Time, which had seemed slow, sped up rapidly. Omaz fell through the sky. Other people blipped into the air. Some Special Forces people grabbed the man, locking Omaz down with even more spells while they arrested his fall, and arrested him, too. The blood ooze tried to carve into Omaz’s skin, but Omaz had Constitution, at least. That ooze couldn’t do much more than prevent him from casting.

Someone asked Erick to call off the ooze; they were having trouble attaching the drain collar to him because the ooze would attack whoever got close enough. Erick was pretty sure that the ooze was being a good boy and not attacking anyone, but the jailers seemed to be scared of the bloody spell, so Erick canceled it. Omaz was rapidly wrapped up in several other spells from other people and decked out with a whole suite of drain collars, one for each limb. He wasn’t going anywhere, and if it weren’t for the [Silence] spells cast upon him, Erick was sure that the man would have been yelling plenty of obscenities. He could read the man’s lips, after all. He was glad he didn’t have to listen to that as they took him away. He had more pressing concerns than the murdering Cultist, now that he had been dealt with.

- - - -

Erick sat up, and breathed. He turned to Koropo. The man had a smile on his face and was almost about to speak, but Erick said, “Syllea is Raging right now. She’s windstepping this way. I have an Ophiel on her, and she’s getting much faster with her windstepping, and I’m pretty sure she’s not just windstepping anymore. She’ll be here in ten minutes. What do you want to do?”

The stoic Witch Hunter, the Warchief of Treehome’s Special Forces, paled, briefly, and then he turned hard again. He narrowed his eyes, and said, “We do to her exactly what you did to Omaz.” He turned and stared across the room, his eyes quickly scanning the room, as he announced, “We will get Syllea under control before—”

A clerk interrupted. “[Grand Fireball]s reported near the commune. Twenty seconds ago.”

Koropo instantly ordered a woman standing by some viewing screens, “[Witness].”

The woman looked to the air, her eyes flickering ruby red. The [Viewing Screen]s near her shifted, and played back what had happened, right as the woman came back to herself, and said, “Someone attacked the commune as we were dealing with Omaz.”

“Stuff Omaz in the Hole and retask Team Takedown onto Syllea. Our priority is Syllea, IF she comes close to Treehome. The normal guard should be able to deal with the commune since they were waiting for it to explode anyway.” Koropo turned to Erick. “Where is she?” He immediately added, “Nevermind.” He looked to Poi. “He’s a Mind Mage, yeah? You’re conscripted. You already know who to talk to, so get it done. Coordinate with your Archmage.”

Erick was perfectly fine with that—

Which was likely why Poi said, “Of course.” A bevy of telepathic lines erupted from his head, as he added, “On it.” Poi spoke to Erick’s mind, sending, ‘You’re connected.’

Erick went back to Ophiel.

- - - -

Syllea had changed a great deal in the minute since Erick had left her to focus on Omaz. She was no longer flesh and blood, for one. No longer did she simply windstep across the sky. She was radiant and dark and flaming and frozen, all at the same time. She stepped through the trees of the deep Forest. Canopies, trunks, branches, and a great deal of wildlife, scattered at her undeniable passage, falling to the Forest floor as ash, or frozen shards, or melted slush, or to simply drift away as mist and gloom. Red, yet prismatic lightning gathered in her eyes and flickered across her airborne footfalls. She took a step and moved a hundred meters, causing the sound of thunder to soak into the dense Forest all around. Syllea was not being quiet, at all.

Her Rage didn’t present like Teressa’s Rage. Was Syllea still in there? Somewhere?

Poi’s voice came to him, his words much faster than if he were speaking, ‘Some orcols Rage differently than others. I am being told that Syllea’s Rage is documented. This controlled sort of Rage is normal for her, but her Rage will not end with killing her target. It never has. So try to get through to her, if you can. If you can’t, then Bayth is going to try. She has experience with this.’

Erick heard and understood.

He wrapped an Ophiel in [Pure Reflection Ward], and stepped him forward, into Syllea’s path.

Syllea flickered with prismatic lightning as she bounced off of Ophiel’s sunform, scattering all around, her entire body dispersing then coming back together on the other side of Ophiel like a sandcastle destroyed then instantly repaired. She didn’t even look back as she continued to step through the Forest, destroying everything in her path, except for Ophiel, apparently. Erick tried again.

This time, Ophiel formed a bowl that Syllea ran right into. Before she could disperse around again, Ophiel’s sunform became a sphere, trapping the archmage inside. Erick could barely believe that had worked.

Erick spoke fast, “We’ve captured your brother. Omaz is in custody—”

Syllea reconstituted into herself, inside of Ophiel, but she was still radiant and dark and a roil of elements. She pulsed with some sort of Force-based spell. It rebounded off of Ophiel’s inner reflective surface, crashing back into Syllea. She growled.

“—We have Omaz in custody,” Erick repeated, fruitlessly.

Syllea pulsed with another sort of magic, but Erick had been aiming a [Harmonic Counterspell] at her. 270 mana drained from Erick. A ripple of shadows destroyed whatever Syllea had attempted. She paused. She cocked her head, almost playfully, as she looked upon her prison made of light. She smiled, her lower fangs showing, her face looking ready to devour something. She cast again. Erick automatically counterspelled it again, but this time, it drained him dry. Over 5,500 mana, gone, just like that. He had bottomed out.

Erick came back to himself, briefly, feeling like he had been kicked by a horse. Blood trickled down from his nose. He reached for Ophiel’s connection and managed to get back to the fight right as Syllea did the same magic, and Ophiel tried the same [Harmonic Counterspell] before Erick could have him stop. Erick briefly recalled a warning from Quilatalap about using his [Harmonic Counterspell] against someone who knew what he was doing; Such a person would then use specially-made magic to trick him into wasting all of his mana to [Dispel] a worthless magic.

Erick adjusted his view to a different Ophiel in the area as the one around Syllea burst into nothing. Ophiel had tried to [Harmonic Counterspell] Syllea, too. That [Harmonic Counterspell] had cost that Ophiel his body.

Back in the conference room, Erick downed a mana potion he had already set aside for just such an occasion, then went right back to it.

‘Poi. I need a mana drainer on her. I’ll give them an opportunity. They need to take it.’

‘Understood.’ Poi added, ‘They’ll be ready in thirty seconds.’

‘I need enough time to regen, anyway.’

As Erick’s broken Mana Regen gradually ticked up, he gradually felt more and more nauseous, but he toughened through it. The edges of his soul flickered, breaking, but they were small breaks; barely noticeable. He could do this. He summoned enough Ophiel to bring him back to full, then had them buff themselves into reflective sunforms, and had them run [Hunter’s Instincts] and [Mana Sight]. He sent them in.

Syllea was ready this time. She saw Ophiel approach, and she smiled.

She touched the world, and the world responded. For a kilometer all around her, trees, each hundreds of meters tall, turned to ash, not even turning to fire, first. Ash wrapped around ash, a hundred columns of the stuff at the same time, turning denser, harder, then flashing over into something sparkling and sharp. Diamonds. A hundred swords, each fifty meters long, each made of sparking diamond. They twirled into the air, half of them surrounding Syllea like they were shields, the other half spinning around her like she was a blender.

The air whispered, “I can make diamonds, too.”

The sun beat down on the new clearing in the Forest, glittering off of a hundred diamond swords as those swords fell into the telekinetic control of the one who made them.

The first Ophiel cast a thousand point [Grand Dispel] right at Syllea, but the spell caught on a sword. Every single diamond sword briefly faltered. They did not disappear. They were not summoned constructs, but actual diamonds.

Syllea mumbled, “Do better.”

She reasserted her control over those diamond swords much faster than should have been possible. Another Ophiel cast another [Grand Dispel] at her, faltering her swords again. But she controlled them right away, reasserting her control much quicker than the first time. Erick ran through his Ophiel, one right after the other, each one casting a thousand mana [Grand Dispel], each hoping to strip away whatever control Syllea had over those swords. Some of the swords fell out of her power, but she maintained enough control over some of them to turn them into missiles, or cleaving edges, catching two of Erick’s Ophiel with what were obviously some sort of [Strike]s that also avoided the necessity of the Script Second.

Two Ophiel exploded, followed quickly by two more. An Ophiel threw a [Harmonic Blood Ooze] for 8000 mana at Syllea, before Syllea carved that Ophiel in two. Syllea tried to block the blob with a sword, but the red blob sailed through the sword and crashed into Syllea’s brightness.

The next [Grand Dispel] onto the swords brought a much larger falter than before, as the blood ooze soaked into Syllea’s prismatic form, bursting a single bit of shadow, before it went dormant again for another Script Second.

Syllea ripped one of her swords through her own body, scattering her form, but failing to dislodge the ooze—

No. Her body reformed well away from the blood ooze, dropping the offending bit of magic to the ground.

“Ha,” Syllea laughed, once, then went silent, as her swords swept through the sky.

“Stop using Quick spells!” Erick said, “It makes you much harder to take down without hurting you!”

Syllea laughed again, louder this time, giving three chuckles before falling silent, all the while swinging swords through Ophiels. The feathered [Familiar]s began to dodge her attacks; it took a bit of practice, but they had acclimated to her cadence.

Poi’s voice briefly came to Erick, ‘Backup cannot get close to her, but she seems focused on you. They want you to wear her out. Bayth will appear when Syllea is weaker.’

A hundred swords, each a hundred meters long, whipped through the air, filling the battle with a great keening sound as swords turned to little more than blurs. Ophiels popped off manually-cast [Force Beam]s, a dozen apiece, attempting to carve into the maelstrom of slicing diamond, while simultaneously getting into a rhythm of their own, each one popping off a [Grand Dispel] when they could, and switching it up with a [Harmonic Counterspell] against whatever auras Syllea flooded into the battlefield. Swords sometimes shattered. Shards became even more dangerous than the swords, carving through Ophiels like telekinetically controlled swarms, before coming back together, reforming the diamond sword it had been before.

Erick sent back, ‘She has a lot more mana than I thought she would!’

Bayth’s voice came to Erick, ‘She’s manually restoring her mana. It’s a trick she learned long ago, and the Rage lets her do it effortlessly.’

‘What about rad condensation?’ Erick asked, as another ten seconds of the battle passed, and he summoned an Ophiel with practically every single one of his Script Seconds. while waiting for his mana to refill enough that he could cast something larger. ‘And why can’t I [Dispel] her [Prismatic Form]? Why are my [Counterspells]s not landing properly?’

Bayth instantly sent, ‘I can’t tell you her secrets. She can, when she comes back from the edge.’

‘Just tell me if it’s her Domain, Bayth.’

‘… I cannot tell you her secrets.’

So it was her Domain. Erick had a lot of tricks left to learn about Domains.

Erick let his conversation with Bayth go, and focused on Syllea.

The woman was a four-meter tall pillar of light and fire and darkness that bled into her surroundings like a blot of radiant watercolors. And Erick’s current tactics were not working. Syllea cut down three Ophiel at the same time as she stepped across the battlefield like a woman taking a stroll through a garden, picking off Ophiels like she was selecting flowers for her bonnet. She was acclimating to this fight much, much faster than Erick.

Just to be sure that he wasn’t missing something obvious, he threw a [Prismatic Breaker] at Syllea, right as she advanced on an Ophiel. Briefly, she flickered, her light and power fading, before coming back even stronger than before. The next [Prismatic Breaker] failed completely, as Syllea laughed like she had just heard the best joke in the world. All the while, she continued her slice across her targeted Ophiel, sundering the [Familiar] with a [Quick Strike], or something similar. Erick wasn’t quite sure how she was able to cast so many spells so fast, but she was certainly stronger than any of the Shades he had ever met… Or maybe not. Hard to say, really.

Was she manually casting every single one of her spells? Maybe she was.

Erick tried a new tactic.

With a coordinated cast, several Ophiel dodged, as they pulsed mana. High above, where the sky was bright and clear, motes of Force coalesced into something stronger. An inevitability took hold of the upper range of the fight, waiting to fall as it could.

Syllea glanced upward, then paused, wondering why the spell wasn’t coming down faster.

And that was enough of a distraction. Every single Ophiel released their Handy Aura. They attempted to grapple the diamond swords. Most of those telekinetic, airy hands failed to do more than get cut by the spinning swords. Some managed to grab. Some even managed to hold on. It was enough. [Teleport Object] sent those swords away. About ten kilometers back the way Syllea had come, actually.

One second saw the removal of seven swords. Two seconds saw the removal of six more swords from the fight, for Syllea had cut down an Ophiel while he tried to blip away the sword. Syllea’s joy temporarily turned curious, then angry, as she frowned, and every single sword became a mess of prismatic might. Erick was waiting for that. A [Harmonic Counterspell] from one of his fresh Ophiel negated Syllea’s magic just long enough for the removal of even more swords. If she wanted to get more she’d have to get to more trees, but she didn’t look interested in that. She only had lightning-eyes for Ophiel, and she was determined to take him down. Syllea tried something else, but an Ophiel had snaked a Handy Aura hand close enough to her rainbow form.

A blip moved Syllea up, up, all the way to the edge of the Script, high, high above, putting her even further out of the range of backup physical objects, like those swords. Ophiel followed her into the sky.

‘Where did she go?!’ demanded Bayth.

Poi answered, ‘To the edge of the Script. Erick didn’t want her to have any more resources and she was going to overcome the removal of her swords soon enough.’

An Ophiel was already waiting for Syllea to appear. This time, when the Archmage crashed into Ophiel’s bubble of a body with its reflective interior, Ophiel swarmed, and locked her inside, flooding the area with a [Domain of Light], denying almost all other resources to Syllea. It was enough of a mode-shift that Syllea flexed out several Quick spells that instantly turned to sparkles, giving the rest of Erick’s Ophiel enough time to swarm upward, and lock the Raging archmage behind even more reflecting [Lodestar] forms.

Syllea flashed some bright spell at them, only to have it bounce around inside the cage of Ophiels. Another ten Quick spells flexed out, some of them turning to weak light, some of them turning to sparkles, and nothing more. Erick did not relax, instead, he focused harder.

Erick watched through an Ophiel’s [Mana Sight] and through another Ophiel’s mana sense as Syllea began flickering with some test spells, small things, taking control of the air around her with gentle brightness. Erick didn’t even bother counterspelling those attempts at magic. The airblades she made with the bright air merely bounced from Ophiel’s reflective surfaces, while the air itself was more like a gentle breeze, once the magic was stripped from it.

The flat horizon had become a curve of green all around as the blue sky was replaced with utter black, and stars glittered just beyond the Edge of magic. Syllea’s rainbow watercolors began to shift, and expand. This was her Domain and her [Prismatic Body], for sure. Erick hoped he could withstand it with his own Domain, half-removed from his personal control.

Bright fire bloomed inside of Ophiel’s cage, while luminescent ice crashed upon the other side. Erick selectively let that ice crash through, not bothering to defend where he didn’t need to defend, for Syllea was not just using her Domain to push against Erick’s, she was also trying to escape, and with his mana sense and Ophiel’s [Mana Sight], Erick watched as the fire part was her main body, and the ice part was not.

The ice crashed through Ophiel, taking some of Syllea’s radiance with it. The small bits of Syllea that managed to escape, just dissipated. Her main form remained inside. Erick watched as she tried again, flickering light and shadows in different directions, but she was in the light, and the shadows were just a diversion.

Erick realized a flaw in his prison a second before Syllea realized the same. He had a second and third Ophiel flicker around the first Ophiel, forming a compound shell, just in case Syllea tried to trick him with her own control over her mana. In case she pretended to be the larger bit of herself, but was actually the smaller bit.

Syllea flexed out a hundred bolts of radiant ice. Erick let some of that ice get through, into the next shell of Ophiel.

Syllea, much diminished, fell into the second shell of Ophiel, while her main power remained behind. Erick quickly extricated that main part of her body from the prison, leaving Syllea in the second shell, while the radiant watercolors in the first shell naturally lost cohesion; like sugar dissolving into tea, Syllea’s former intent-filled body dissolved back into the manasphere.

Erick held Syllea onto the inner surface of that second Ophiel, then constricted the shell, pulling Syllea together into a small space perfectly sized for her, as he spoke through Ophiel, “We have your brother in custody. You won’t be able to attend the execution unless you can be a part of Polite Society again.”

She suddenly turned fully physical, abandoning her [Greater Prismatic Body]. Red, prismatic lightning flickered in her eyes, but she said nothing.

Erick would have to ask her, later, if she had never learned how to recreate the [Teleport] spells, for surely she could have gotten away if she had learned those magics. But that thought was gone as soon as it occurred. Syllea cast a few more low mana spells at her Ophiel cage, before trying to trick Erick with a sudden expenditure of mana. She held her hand up and out, and mana roared. An Ophiel beyond her cage, but with a part of himself sticking through the reflective surface of that inner Ophiel, tried to [Harmonic Counterspell] Syllea’s new major magic. That second Ophiel popped as his entire existence was demanded to pay the cost of that [Harmonic Counterspell]. It still wasn’t enough.

A tiny star appeared on Syllea’s open palm.

… A tiny star packed with enough mana to beggar Erick back when he was wearing that +150 All Stat belt. Not a trick, then!

Syllea let the star go, a manic smile upon her face, showing her joy to the world as a pit of dread opened up inside of Erick and threatened to consume him entirely. He reacted with a [Teleport Other], shoving Syllea a hundred kilometers toward the north.

He had barely been fast enough. Every Ophiel around the blossoming star instantly vanished, as waves of Void and Light and Syllea’s Domain, no doubt, flashed through the world like a concentrated supernova. A few Ophiel managed to get away, or to reflect most of Syllea’s major spell away from them, but many did not.

Erick frantically conjured Ophiel, sending them on their way, as Syllea’s [Supernova] continued to fill the sky with power.

The archmage was laughing as she fell through the sky, blood dripping from her nose, her right hand missing and spurting blood; the hand she had used to hold the [Supernova]. Blood splashed through the air as Ophiels recaptured the Archmage on a fluffy bed of light, inside a [Domain of Light], while more Ophiels rushed over as fast as Erick could summon them. One of them brought Erick’s rod of [Greater Treat Wounds] from his hotel room at Arbor O’kabil.

But before the healing could start, and while Syllea was still giggling like a schoolgirl, Erick cast a [Drain Mana Ward] into the air around her. Giggles turned to Rage again, and Erick doubled up her temporary trap with a [Drain Health Ward], too. Syllea went from Raging and slamming the fluffy edge of Ophiel with her fist and her stump, to ripping at her own skin with long fingernails, and the edge of her broken radius and ulna bones, as the itchiness of the [Drain Health Ward] fully flowed around her. She tried casting a small spell, but Erick saw that it was small, and let it happen. The resulting flash of blood impacted her imprisoning Ophiel, and rebounded, clipping Syllea on the shoulder. She glared at her soft, reflective prison, and tried something a bit larger.

Erick shut down that spell with a [Harmonic Counterspell].

She threw something like a [Dispel] but darker at the air around her, but Erick reinforced the [Domain of Light] with his Ophiel’s [Lodestar]s, exactly as he had been shown in that book from the Librarian. The [Domain of Light] held. She cast a [Dispel] at the Draining magics, and she broke those, sure, but Erick recast them easily enough.

Three minutes and a hundred other attempts at breaking free later, as well as scratching her skin raw in many places while not caring at all about her broken hand, Syllea finally collapsed onto the softness of the Ophiel all around. To his [Mana Sight], she looked half dead. [Soul Sight] showed her as ragged, but healing. [Blood Sight]… Erick had an Ophiel rush in with the rod of [Greater Treat Wounds]. With a tap, her skin began to heal over, and her arm began to regrow, slowly, but surely. Internal injuries flexed into wholeness and bones set into their proper positions.

Her eyes still glittered red. Rage still held her in its grip. But this was going a lot better than it went with Teressa. Erick really should have thrown some [Drain Ward]s at Teressa, back then.

Two more minutes passed. Erick canceled the [Health Drain Ward], but left the mana one active. Syllea’s arm and skin began to regrow and heal, even faster. Soon, her eyes turned heavy. She blinked long, then she closed her eyes for a moment, before going wide-eyed again as she struggled to stay awake and active. She stumbled to her feet, trying to stand on Ophiel’s softness, but Ophiel flexed and landed her back on her butt, back onto the bed of light.

Erick maintained his prison over her, having Ophiels [Harmonic Counterspell] anything that looked to be over a hundred mana. He could tell the mana-cost difference, himself, after watching and countering so many of Syllea’s spells. To Erick, the smaller spells looked like a shift in Syllea’s interior mana, while the larger ones looked like a pulse, thrumming through her, before erupting into the world. That much was easy to tell apart from each other. But the difference between 50 mana spells to 300 mana spells looked more or less the same to him. Ophiel could tell the difference, though. Ophiel was much better at countering the instantaneous spells of the Script, too, either because he had several bodies on the scene and each of them were ready to counter, or because he was just better at that sort of thing; Erick wasn’t quite sure at the moment, and he couldn’t spare many more thoughts on the subject at the moment.

Disaster was still unfolding across Treehome.

- - - -

Erick briefly came back to himself, back to the conference room, where reports of firefights and battle came from the viewers all around, and Koropo organized what he could.

A man in front of a [Viewing Screen] reported, “Commune walls are down. Shadelings flooding outward, into the city.” He added, “The shadelings are killing the guards.”

Another person said, “Reports of explosions at the Hole. Omaz has likely escaped.”

A woman reported, “Prognosticators are telling us to prepare for another wave of large-scale magic.”

Bayth breathed in, gasping just a little, almost too quiet to hear.

Koropo instantly turned to Erick, repeating the woman’s suggestion, “Can you bring her here?” He looked to the woman who spoke, “Is that a safe move?”

“… Unclear.” The woman said, “Syllea’s Rage is almost gone but she’s going to be useless afterward.”

A man said, “Arbor Home’s defensive line is breached. Cultists disabled the anti[Teleport] runes and appeared inside of her.” With a heavy voice, he said, “Elder Atanaro-Home is leading that contingent of Cultists.”

The room fell silent for the briefest of moments.

And then a woman said, “Prognosticators are saying that Syllea is in danger. Move her!”

Koropo said to Erick, “Move Syllea closer, but not into the city.”

Erick was already on it. He simultaneously erected another [Domain of Light] closer to the city, and moved his Ophiel over first, before blipping Syllea into her new container, right as something solid and cylindrical smashed through the space where she had been. The [Domain of Light] where that cylinder touched turned to motes of uncontrolled mana. Like a solid [Dispel]ing object had sailed through the space. That object continued upward, through the Edge of the Script, briefly disrupting that Edge, before crashing right back down, like it had struck something solid and been repelled.

Erick did not have a lot of time to wonder at what his nearby Ophiel had just seen, but he thought he recognized that object. It was a dull grey metal. It was lead. It was antirhine.

And someone had just fired it from below.

There were several things about that occurrence that stood out as ‘odd’. But the biggest one, was that they were in the middle of the Forest, and antirhine couldn’t be moved by magical means— Or. No. That was wrong. You could probably put it on a conveyance with a separator between itself and the antirhine, and then you could move that conveyance really fast. You still couldn’t blip it around, for antirhine just wouldn’t go through a [Teleport], or a lightstep or anything like that, and probably not even a [Gate], but you could certainly move it around if you planned ahead.

… Or if you had some friendly prognosticators. They certainly seemed to know a lot.

Ahhh! Erick needed to look into future vision, too, now!

An Ophiel dropped down to the Forest floor, tracking where the antirhine had come from and where it had gone by following it through the near-past, followed the line of absence that the antirhine made in the manasphere. Erick rapidly found a blank spot in the mana where the antirhine had likely been for a little while, before firing upward at Syllea.

The antirhine missile’s trail continued off into west—

Erick came back to himself as a shockwave passed through the building and the skylight cracked. Spiderwebs ripped through the glass, as Wyrmrest, high in the sky, was both on fire, and lit with a million tiny stars, and fighting that fire—

Poi lifted his finger, and pointed at a man to the left of the room. The man fell to the ground, insensate, as Poi announced, “That man was planning on exploding at this point in time. My duty as a Mind Mage compelled me to take him down when he posed an immediate threat.”

Koropo almost rounded on Poi, his face full of anger, but Poi finished speaking, and Koropo shifted tracks. “Fucking Cultists!” He glared at Poi. “Who else?”

“I cannot say.” Poi said, “They pose no immediate threat.”

Koropo snapped his fingers at two people, one of them staring down at the collapsed man. “Take Yoron into custody. I want him alive to answer questions.”

At Koropo’s snap, the two people moved.

Erick snapped out of it, too. Yoron? A Cultist? Shit. Yoron had helped to take down half of the people they had taken down yesterday. And at that thought, Erick had another. There were other Cultists in the room, but Poi hadn’t taken them out because they posed no immediate danger. Almost casually, Poi looked to Erick, blinking once, in a way that seemed on purpose. Erick put that out of his mind, for now.

He asked Bayth, “Syllea is partially down. Her mana has to be rather low. She’s still Raging, but it’s an easy thing to negate. You want to go in?”

“YES!” Bayth repeated, “Yes.”

Erick touched her arm with a bit of light and intent, as he said, “Don’t worry about the drop.”

Bayth barely had time to react to his words before Erick blipped her away, into the middle of the sky. With a glance toward the Ophiel Erick had on scene, he watched as the muscular woman landed on a mattress of soft light, right outside of Syllea’s cage. Red lightning glittered across the archmage’s skin and she tried to cast something, but her resulting spell was a simple thing of spherical ice and light that Ophiel easily contained and bounced right back at Syllea, knocking the woman back onto her butt. Bayth watched it happen then tried to defuse the situation with something funny, to which Syllea’s red glow switched to something less vibrant as she shot off another spell that Ophiel locked down; that one was at least a thousand mana, according to what Erick saw. Bayth yelled affront. Syllea frowned, her glow dimming. And then Bayth started talking, and Syllea’s Rage began to fracture.

Erick split his attention, taking a second to glance at his mana. He was barely half full. Had he really gone through that much mana taking care of Syllea? Or. No. His Regen was just that much shittier than usual. He didn’t feel that great, either.

Wordlessly, Poi said, ‘If you can spare some Ophiel to combat the larger spells in the city, they would appreciate that. I am sending you location data, now.’

Erick could spare some mana.

He wasn’t anywhere near top shape, though.

But he could also spare some Ophiel to combat the large-scale spells erupting in the west, around the commune, while he also tracked that antirhine missile, wherever it had landed… Oh! It had to be in the tree above, somehow. Those branches were broken up top but there was no ‘missing line’ in the manasphere down below—

Poi interrupted, ‘I know that is important, sir, but—’

Erick found the antirhine missile in the canopy. He briefly noted that the tip was an enchanted gem, and broken, while the stabilizing tail was a grand rad that looked more like the plume of a rocket flare than a normal grand rad. The tail was also broken. The length of the missile, the important part, was lead.

Erick had an Ophiel grab the missile by the tail, his Handy Aura destabilizing a little bit but not enough to matter, while a second Ophiel glimpsed at a section of the Forest nearby that was erased from the manasphere, which had likely been the result of concealing magics. The people who fired the missile had been looking for it too, but Erick got there first. He couldn’t find the attackers, but with their attack in his grip, Ophiel raced through the sky, holding the missile by its non-lead parts, as he came toward Treehome, trying to carry back the one clue Erick could find as to who had tried to kill Syllea. That bit wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of this dangerous moment, but it would be important later; of that, Erick was sure.

While that Ophiel was doing that, the others protected Syllea and a few lightstepped back to Treehome, then to the west, toward the commune but not yet there.

Right as Poi finished saying, ‘—but the commune guards need assistance, or a diffusing of the situation.’

‘On it!’ Erick sent, ‘Ophiels are now over— Holy shit.’

Arbor Home’s District was the closest one to the commune. Erick had briefly seen Home’s District on his excursions through the skies of the city. It had been a rather nice place filled with placid hills tiled with farmland all around, while a large, squat tree sat in the center of it. Arbor Home had reached half a kilometer into the sky while being almost just as wide, with a sparse green canopy that looked more like a roof rather than like leaves. She had been a barrel-shaped, home-shaped Arbor, surrounded by nice white-walled buildings with nice green roofs.

She was half gone. Fires burned in her upper half, exposing the labyrinth of tunnels and housing inside of her main body. The land around her was on fire. Fields burned in blues and greens and whites and reds.

Poi answered the question Erick had barely asked, ‘Yes. Rain would be good. Home is far from dead, but her main body is hurting.’

Erick responded with a few casts of [Control Weather] into the skies over Treehome and several consecutive casts of [Call Lightning] over the most on-fire parts of the city. Home wasn’t the only place burning. Wyrmrest was burning, too, though he had his canopy mostly extinguished by the time the rains started.

And then a great keening filled the skies over Treehome. Stars began to fall, once again.

Omaz had gotten free?!

Erick rapidly came back to himself, just in time to look up, and see the skylight fracture. Glass broke, as Wyrmrest, high above and still lightly on fire, broke. A thousand thousand stars attempted to crash into his canopy, and while most of them burst upon stars lurking in the manasphere, there were a million of them. A lot got through. Erick didn’t even have time to [Grand Dispel] any of the attack before it was almost over.

Smaller branches and massive leaves and person-sized starfruit began to fall; knocked loose by the attack from above.

One of the larger branches snapped as Void and Light broke it at its base. That branch had to be a kilometer long, and it had to weigh millions of tons. From this lower distance, it barely moved, but Erick could tell it had likely fallen hundreds of meters already. Erick only barely registered those facts, for Koropo was already yelling,

“We’re fine!” Warchief Koropo roared, “Wyrmrest can arrest that fall. It’ll take more than that to wound him.”

Almost disbelieving that the Arbor actually could do what Koropo said he could, Erick watched, as the star-filled Domain in the manasphere all around them turned into something denser. Stars seemed to rise out of nothing, soaring upward. Light flickered high above.

Erick flickered an Ophiel closer, and watched, as what was likely a [Gravity Ward] sized for the branch itself, took hold of the air around the falling branch. The ponderous weight fell a bit more, but soon slowed, and then reversed course, floating back into the sky. Back into position, to where the fractured stump of the limb’s base stuck out from Wyrmrest’s top like a mangled and half-missing finger. Wood flowed like water. The branch reattached. Falling starfruit turned to energy to soak into the Arbor himself. Star-filled mana pulsed out from Arbor Wyrmrest, stifling fires all around, repairing buildings, and healing many, many orcols who had been hurt by all the fighting. Wyrmrest did not heal everyone, though. Erick watched as a line of Cultists toward the east, or perhaps they were just opportunists, who were balanced against the defenders at a bank, were suddenly overrun by guards that could not be harmed. Heads rolled.

Erick came back to himself, as the rains began to fall. He sent a few Ophiel over to Arbor Home, to have them become radiant funnels to personally control the rain, to drown fires, to do for Arbor Home what she could not currently do herself.

The attack over there, led by Elder Atanaro-Home, who Erick had briefly seen, was done, too. Cultists, either dead or in chains, were locked into [Woodshape]d barrel-like containers with only their heads poking up from the wood. Most of those people were just dead, though.

With a thought, an Ophiel went to the map Erick had left in the center of the city. It was still searching for Omaz, and Erick expected many others to have used this map to track the man, for stars had been falling for a little while now, until they stopped. Erick didn’t worry about those starfalls, for other people were [Chain Dispel]ing those monstrous spells. But now, as he looked upon his map, he saw a problem. Omaz’s blue dot was there, but he was in the center of the commune.

And the commune was still fighting.

A ring of tall stone walls stood fractured around buildings that were just as broken, in a clearing in the Forest that was also broken, and on fire. Few shadeling orcols slunk around in the shadows, throwing high-powered spells at orcol mages flying high in the sky, and just out of range of most magics. But those were the outliers. Erick casually had an Ophiel throw a [Grand Dispel] at some of the fires in the area, extinguishing a good hundred meters of flickering flame, while he himself cast a [Grand Dispel] at a fireball larger than most that had lifted off of the ground and tried to hit the people flying high above. That [Grand Fireball] vanished in a puff of magic.

Most of the fight was not magical, though. Most of the shadelings were upright, full of shadows, and swinging around swords made of darkness. They fought against orcols who had been guarding the commune the last time Erick had seen this place. A battlefield had erupted since then. Lines in the mud had been drawn and guarded against, past the western wall of the commune, with healers in the backlines of both sides, throwing [Chaining Healing Word]s at the front-line fighters who clashed in the middle. Mud churned with blood and worse as warriors crashed against warriors, and death came to many.

With a casual [Harmonic Counterspell], Erick dismissed another house-sized fireball as it shot out of the shadows, before it could arc over the front line and strike at the guards on the other side of the battlefield. Four seconds later, while rain began to fall heavy, Erick dismissed a similar [Grand Fireball] from Treehome’s side.

Someone yelled from the shadeling side, their voice empowered over the roar of battle, “The Fire of the Age joins us! Push back the non-believers!”

That voice boomed with power. A shockwave passed through the rain, pressing it away as it passed over the battlefield. Shadows crawled over every person, making shadeling swords swing faster, and weighing down the feet and arms of the orcols on the other side.

Disgust and displeasure roared through Erick. These people were fighting their own, both sides egged on by their own emotions, sure, but those emotions were being played with by the Cult. Could they not see this? That guy who had called out about ‘non-believers’ was already dragged from his position and stabbed from five different directions by five different shadelings. Erick instantly saw that these ‘Cultists’ were mostly not. Maybe one or two of them were, but certainly not the whole.

Erick cast a thousand mana [Grand Dispel] at the shadeling side, ripping away that empowering magic, as his own voice boomed across the battlefield, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING! STOP FIGHTING!”

No one listened. If anything, the fighting intensified.

Erick punctuated his displeasure by absolutely filling the sky with lightning. Bright white flashes broke the heavens, and continued to break, in a coruscating, thunderous roar, much, much louder than anything going on down below. A flash of inspiration struck halfway through his display of power.

He displayed control, when he vibrated the lightning itself to thunder out, “Stop. Fighting. Now.”

Eardrums broke. Blood trickled out of eyes and ears and noses.

Surprising even himself, some of the people stepped back from the front line. Some shadelings fell to the ground, to the wet shadows, and pulled back. Some orcols retreated. Erick cast a shaped [Domain of Light] directly down through the center of the fighting, zig-zagging the eruption of saturated brilliance through the worst of the fighting, through the places where the shadelings had broken through, and across the places where the forces of Treehome had advanced into the commune.

Shadelings fell out of their shadows, forced to retreat or to take a hit. Guards found their [Strike]s of fire or lightning or ice flicker with nothing more than sparkled light.

Forces on both sides tried to [Dispel] the [Domain of Light], and they failed, completely. It would take another person with a competing Domain to take down that barrier, and no one Erick could see on this battlefield had such a thing.

Erick’s Ophiel floated into that separating gulf of Light, and spoke with his voice, “Here is the ultimatum: The Cultists who have committed crimes for the sake of harming this world or any other, are to be served up to the authorities. Every other shadeling who wishes a better life, who doesn’t want to stay and answer for the crimes of those who demanded you follow them into the maw of battle, you’re invited to Candlepoint.” He announced, “Make your way there on your own, right now, or await for my assistance, but certain criminals will not go unpunished. Omaz Wyrmrest! Answer for your crimes against your own people! You threw down starfalls against your own city, for gods’ sakes!”

Koropo’s voice railed through to Erick, forcing him to come back to his body, “What the fuck, Erick!”

The man almost loomed over him.

Erick got up from his seat, saying, “I’m solving your problem. Help me, or fail to do so, but the duties of your station have been successfully discharged for a long while, don’t you think? We did a lot of good work yesterday, and you could easily find another line of work if you wanted. Perhaps in Candlepoint?”

Koropo stared down at Erick, while Erick stared up at the Warchief and simultaneously put out a dozen different fires near Arbor Home, canceled a dozen other high-mana attacks from both sides of the dividing [Domain of Light] between the shadelings and their prison keepers, and kept a good dozen eyes on Omaz’s blue dot and on his person. Omaz was still in the center of the commune, in what looked to be a non-important building that was only half intact. He wasn’t moving. He was waiting.

But the shadelings in that battle were not waiting. Dozens moved all at the same time, turning to shadows, retreating to the commune and then beyond. The shadeling line broke, like a dam. They rushed away from the fight. Some went to Omaz’s space in the city, their retreat turning into a strategic repositioning. But only a few did that. Most disappeared past a broken curtain wall, into the Forest, sneaking away as they were always able to do, but never did for what was likely a myriad of reasons. Maybe that wall had anti-shadeling runes on it? Anti-[Shadowblend], for sure, and at least.

And then that curtain wall erupted in deep, frosted stone. Stone rose higher, and higher, as freezing fog rolled off of that burgeoning rock. Some had escaped already, but most of the fleeing shadelings raced back, away from the stone, back toward the commune. They were locked into the commune, encircled on all sides, with a barrier of Light and a war on one side, and that stone on the other. Erick flickered an Ophiel toward the icy stone and threw a [Grand Dispel] upon the biting cold of those erupted crags.

The cold briefly vanished, but then the crags shifted. Golems made of stone and ice lifted from the broken land. They did not attack, but they did reposition, taking a stance like a company of soldiers, each ten meters tall, their line of golems ten deep, waiting for their orders.

And then a smaller man made of stone stepped forward, directly into Erick’s view.

He waved, and in a pleasant voice, the rock man said, “Archmage Tenebrae wishes you to reconsider what you are doing, please!”

Okay. So.

ALL OF THIS...

All of this was a bigger problem than he had signed up for. A lot of power was coming out of the woodwork, and Erick needed to deal with it. After he dealt with other, certain things.

Erick, back in the conference room, said, “You or any of your team want a place in Candlepoint, you have it, Koropo, but I suspect Treehome needs you now, too, and I fear that I have overstepped some line in the sand.”

Koropo became the man he was when Erick first met him; hard edged and emotionless. He said, “Eri—”

Peron burst into the conference room, demanding, “Erick Flatt! You are under arrest!”

Instantly, several people stepped out of the stone, the air, the shadows, and even the light. Erick had noticed them before, but paid them no mind. There were more important things going on at that moment. And besides. He wasn’t defenseless, despite whatever thoughts might have been flowing through Peron’s mind, making him do whatever fool thing he was currently trying to do.

As soon as Peron yelled his first syllable, Erick transformed into his sunform, clipping Poi in the effect. Both of them watched as a [Curse of Locality] spilled across the dome of Erick’s light like a pitiful splash of gasoline on water. Another person cast a [Mana Drain Ward] onto Erick, while another cast a [Health Drain Ward]. Both spells turned to nothing more than expended mana when they touched upon Erick’s sunform. Erick expected nothing less, since even Shades had had trouble with his [Lodestar]. Anyone without a Domain would have trouble even touching him, unless he wanted it to happen.

Erick turned his gaze upon Peron, who had turned from angry to stoic, his face becoming a mask of indifference.

Peron said, “I knew it was too good to be true. You are a Cultist.”

Erick narrowed his eyes, and said, “You blind yourself, Chieftain.” He turned half of his attention back to the commune. His voice echoed over there, and inside the conference room, “My goals are nothing less than the eradication of actual dangers to this world, and the next. Your petty vendettas against outdated hatreds are but small problems for my goals. Problems that we can all overcome. I assure you, that there will be justice for the crimes committed in the past, and when that occurs, that will be the End of those issues. No more hate. No more subsequent persecution. We will have Peace. We will have integration. Prepare and act accordingly.” He gave a small, personal message to the rock man standing in front of his golem troops, “I need your blockade to end or I need to talk with Tenebrae.”

The rock man nodded, saying, “We eagerly await your arrival to discuss all of that.”

Erick fully turned his attention back to the conference room.

Peron glared at Erick’s words.

Koropo backed away, a single, slow, half step.

Everyone in the room, except for Poi, backed away. Poi stepped closer to Erick.

Erick turned his gaze toward the commune and then he lightstepped there in one flashing, radiant moment, with Poi at his side. The skylight above broke just a little bit more, in his passing.

- - - -

Erick landed on the air, just above the ground in front of the rock man. He maintained his sunform, and said, “I need you to let these people go. Please clear out.”

The rock man bowed, slightly, then rose, and said, “Apologies, good sir. We cannot do that. Tenebrae is contracted with Treehome with bargains much older than the one he has with you. One of these is that he has been tasked with preventing the mass escape of the commune if such an event should come to pass. And besides, you have called for justice, so let us have justice.” He added, “We are merely the first responders to today’s events. There are other archmages on their way, and already watching, and you will not be able to handle us all, so let us play nicely, please.”

Play nicely? Erick balked, and then he considered.

With a sudden shock to his mind, Erick realized that he had overstepped some major lines. Everything had rapidly and terribly spun way out of control. He only meant to stop the fighting. He did not mean to step in and take away Treehome’s autonomy to deal with their own criminals. But… The fighting had stopped! That was good, right? But.

But why the fuck had he spoken like that to everyone? Telling them that there would be an End to… whatever it was he had promised. Thinking back over his words, he had no idea what was going through his head at the time.

But he rolled with it. He plowed forward, telling the rock man, “There will be justice. I trust that Tenebrae will not interfere as long as they don’t try to escape without that justice?”

The rock man said, “That is not truly acceptable to Tenebrae, but it will be as it will be. Tenebrae says that as long as Treehome bothers you before they bother him, then he doesn’t care what happens here.”

“… Okay.” Erick said.

He turned away from the rock man, and the deep lines of rime-covered golems. He faced the commune, and the shadelings standing far behind him, near the ruined walls, and on the edges of the shadows. Most of them were ready to retreat into the darkness at the first sign of trouble. But some stood tall, and in the open. They waited for Erick to come to them.

He obliged. Erick stepped across a field of broken stone and grass, his feet flashing light as he walked, rain all around him turning fires into steam, and dirt into mud. Poi walked beside him, supported by Erick’s light. The silence all around him, from the people, from the city, from the golems waiting for war not twenty meters away, threatened to crush Erick, the tension and coiled intent in the air dense enough to see for those who had sight for such a thing, and Erick certainly did.

Mana roiled in the shadows, and in the stone, and in the fire, and in the people. Eyes and fangs and scales and wings; Melemizargo was nearby, but he was as silent as usual. Erick would not call out to him, or to any other gods. That would just be making everything much more complicated, and this event was already complicated enough.

Erick glanced to Poi, wordlessly asking for assistance that he knew the man might not be willing to give.

Poi nodded, then said, “I can help with that.”

Erick banished the sudden smile from his face. And then he walked forward, to meet the two people who stood before him, waiting for him to come closer to the broken commune. Both of them were shadelings, and also orcols. One man, one woman. Neither wore nice clothes, but their clothes were certainly nicer than the clothes of the shadelings at Candlepoint, back when they were first brought to that young city.

The woman and man stood straight. They each slammed a fist to their own chest, rumbling the air with the sound as gentle thunder rolled overhead.

Erick asked, “Are you two amenable to clearing out the dangerous aspects of this place, and finding a new home elsewhere, perhaps at Candlepoint?”

“Sir, yes sir!” they said, in unison.

The man said, “We’ve been waiting for someone we can trust to come in and break the hold they have on us.”

The woman announced, “We didn’t know we were waiting for you, but at your announcement, we realized damn fast that you were our chance.”

Erick asked, “Are you Cultists?”

“NO!” Spat the man, before realizing he probably shouldn’t have done that. He looked ashamed for a half-second, for yelling at Erick.

Erick didn’t hold it against the man.

“We are not cultists.” The woman replied with a bit more tact, but her face showed the difficulty in holding back her anger. “They call us that because we look like this. That is all.”

The man, now calm, said, “If we were cultists, then we wouldn’t have turned shadeling!” He wasn’t that calm when he finished speaking, but emotions were running high, and this much anger was expected. The man said, “We just didn’t want to be connected to the Red Dream anymore, and now we’re not. Some of the people in charge of Treehome didn’t like that.”

“I want to say that that is surprising, but it is not.” Not after what Erick had seen already. Erick nodded, then gestured to his side, at Poi, saying, “This is my friend and Mind Mage, Poi. He will be helping me to solve the problems here, quickly, for those who will allow such a thing.”

The man instantly glanced to Poi, his softly-glowing white eyes turning softer, sadder, and perhaps angrier, before he turned back toward Erick.

While Poi bowed, ever so slightly, Erick raised his voice, so those outside of his immediate encounter could hear, “But denying such a mental intrusion will not result in a denial of your plight. Justice will just proceed slower, is all. Even if most of you are not Cultists, there is at least one Cultist here, and I think some of you know who I am talking about.

“I am here, and I am willing to help, and I have the power to back up my desire to help.” Erick spoke up for the benefit of others, outside of the current conversation, “How do you wish to start? For my own purposes, it would be helpful if known Cult operatives would be brought forward. I honestly do not care about those who have helped you when others would not, or those who have done nothing violent against Treehome, or other people. But some of the Cult is hiding in this commune, and they have contributed to murder and mayhem, therefore I need to see them Ended for Peace to begin.”

Some shuddered at Erick’s voice. A few slunk off into the deeper shadows, racing away.

The woman glanced to Poi, too, but her brief look was one of longing, and hate, and acceptance, all at once. Then she focused on Erick, and spoke with hope in her voice, “Then I wish to be cleared right now. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know many who would accept a Mind Mage clearance, if that’s what it takes to get out of this cesspit of a ‘commune’.” She said the word wish such derision that Erick felt it in his gut, then she said, “Clear me, and I will help you scour this commune, and then I will accept a place at Candlepoint, since no one in my former Treehome would accept me.”

“She’s clear,” Poi said, without prompting. “She’s tried to get Mind Mage help several times, but we could not intervene without another power backing us up, and no one was willing to do that. You are that power, now, Erick.”

Erick accepted that, and asked the woman, “What is your name?”

“Lashii, sir!” said the woman, Lashii.

Erick looked at the man.

“Toruke, sir.”

Erick glanced back to the map he had left over the center of the city. Omaz was still in the center of the commune. Erick came back to himself, and said, “Then let us go meet with Omaz. He seems to want to say something, since he hasn’t moved much since he broke out of the Hole, killed a bunch of people, and came here.”

Lashii frowned, deeply, as she practically growled.

Toruke said, “He’s in House Four. That’s where the Cult gathers.”

Erick asked, “Has the guard or anyone else actually tried to speak with you? To treat you like people?”

“Some.” Lashii said, “But most of those people have turned out to be Cultists themselves.”

“Omaz Wyrmrest was one of those people,” Toruke said. “Practically half of the guards are cultists, too. But the only way our story gets out is through those people! Of course the world would think that we’re Cultists, but anyone with half a brain would know that the only ones that got turned into shadelings were those that didn’t believe in Melemizargo!” His voice got away from him again, as his anger flowed like a fresh wound. “That’s how it fucking works! They know this, too.”

Erick said, “I’m not here to prosecute Cultists, anyway. I’m here to defuse the threat of Omaz and any co-conspirators, and then to End this poor treatment of you, either through reintegration to Treehome, or offering an invitation for you all to come to Candlepoint.” He gestured to the broken commune beyond, pointing at one building in particular, saying, “I’m going in there. I advise you two to find and secure everyone who you wish to secure, and to prepare for a full accounting. There will be no more war today. There will only be an End to whatever is going on here.”

Lashii and Toruke slammed fists against their chests again, as they stepped to the sides.

Erick walked forward, into the commune.

The buildings reminded him of how Candlepoint had been, before Erick took over. It was a sad sight. Treehome had failed these people; through a combination of fear, segregation, and hidden conspirators in the shadows, the people of this commune had been failed by those who they had trusted. Maybe some of them had chosen to take multiple Stat fruits in order to willingly become shadelings to separate from Aloethag. Maybe some of them had been lured into the promise of power. Maybe some of them actually were Cultists, if not before they turned shadeling, then maybe afterward. Toruke was a Cultist, for sure. Erick saw as much when he protested so strongly against the Cultists.

Though he wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that.

Erick made it to the building with Omaz without incident. Many shadeling orcols watched him walk through their city, their eyes glimpsing out of the shadows like tiny, paired stars. He watched many shadelings vacate the shadows around his intended building, like bundles of magic whisking away, through the half-darkness all around.

Erick cast a [Domain of Light] upon the building, tumbling several shadelings out of the eaves and darkened corners of the place with as much gentleness as he could muster at the moment. Some of them crashed outside a little harder than was necessary. And then Erick walked inside. It was a boring building. Stone walls. Glass windows. Bare floor. Furniture of rough make and little comfort.

Omaz sat on one such couch on the second floor, surrounded by severed heads. He looked to Erick, as Erick walked into the room. Then he glanced down to the fresh heads around the room. Erick recognized four of the eighteen heads. They were the heads of those on the boards, back in Koropo’s conference room. Erick recognized a few of the other heads, too, including one Elder he had briefly spied earlier, and wasn’t that a surprise. Some of the heads belonged to complete unknowns.

No one spoke.

And then Erick spoke, “A lot of orcols can survive with their heads cut off. This could all be fake.”

Omaz smiled. “True. Then at least you could think of this as a gesture of goodwill. Maybe all of these people are still alive and waiting for judgment.”

“What do you want?”

“… I’ve been thinking that I could learn to live under that Blessing of yours.” He looked to the Silver Prism on Erick’s chest, saying, “I was against the idea, at first. I even had a good ten backup plans so I would never need to get to this point. The Hole only held me for a minute!” He smiled, then he lost his smile. “Had to burn a lot of favors on that one. I thought that my base out in the Forest was defended rather well, too. Literally no other Scan has ever been able to find us there. The spells defending that place were centuries old and filled with power. But your [Familiar]s are way too strong, Archmage Flatt. Your Scanning spell is too new. Too much of a battlefield shift.” He added, “And then Melemizargo stopped talking to me. That was the final straw. I went all out! I tried to accomplish what no other had before. And I failed, just like all the rest. So I wish to repent for as long as it takes.”

He was lying about wishing to repent, but Erick said, “Okay.”

Erick flickered the Silver Prism to real, shifted it around the room faster than the speed of thought, and slammed its magic into the back of Omaz’s head, the exact moment he had agreed to Omaz’s request. Omaz flinched forward. Magic roiled through his body. Erick cast a [Harmonic Counterspell], denying whatever Omaz was doing, as a sliver of soul magic soaked through the orcol’s Shroud, invading his core, making a home for itself before becoming one with Omaz’s entire being.

Maybe he had thought he was better than the Shades who had fallen to the same magic? It was possible. He seemed rather arrogant out there, when he was taunting Syllea.

Omaz’s wide, angry eyes, turned soft, as he crashed to the floor of the room, already crying, his eyes going wider as he turned toward the heads laying around the room.

Erick added, “And if you think that whatever parts of yourself you have divorced away are somehow able to come back and break through what has happened here and now, then you must truly be delusional.” He declared, “I wish you well in your pursuit of redemption, for wishing for that is wishing for the good of us all. You will receive no further help from me, and you will likely die if you don’t run. If you get a godly Quest, then good luck with that. Goodbye, Omaz.”

Omaz reached for one of the heads; a woman’s.

He never touched it. Erick blipped him away with a [Teleport Other], sending him into a spot of the Forest he had already scouted ahead of time, into the carved-out knot of a tree. An Ophiel watched as the man curled his outstretched fingers into a fist, followed fast by his entire body, curling in on himself as tears streamed from tightly-closed eyes.

With an insouciant shrug, Erick said, “Glad to see it works on non-Shades.” He stared down at the heads. They glimmered quite brightly in the surreal glow of the [Domain of Light] all around. Blood seemed as rubies, and emerald eyes truly resembled emeralds. He said to Poi, “Can you let them know Omaz has been soul-shackled with Empathy, and that several heads of the cult and one Elder are possibly dead. There is some overlap in those two groups, too.” Erick added, “They can start moving in some investigators, now.”

Poi resolutely said, “Done.” He added, “They’re on their way.”

Erick stepped out of the building, to stand upon the short stairs leading up to the place. He and Poi were soon joined by others, but not by soldiers of Special Forces, or anyone else from that direction, but instead by Lashii, Toruke, and lots of other shadelings. The people of the commune stood in the shadows, and in the rain on the street, but they stood tall, and proud, shoulder to shoulder, gazing up at Erick where he waited on those short stairs into the building. They looked at him like he was the only path leading out of a forest fire. In a sense, he was.

Lashii spoke for the people she had gathered, “Greetings, Archmage. We are those who would be cleared by Mind Mage, and who would like to move out, right now, to Candlepoint.” She added, “We will need your assistance to get through the blockades, as all of our own Spatial Magic has been stripped from us.”

“Okay.” Erick quickly counted, then said, “There’s about eighty of you.” He looked to Poi.

With a dozen tendrils of intent coming off of his head and more being added every second, Poi answered Erick’s unasked question, saying, “I can do this. It will take a little under a minute per person to uncover anything but surface thoughts.” As a wave of worry silently passed through the crowd in front of them, Poi silently sent to Erick, ‘This is very irregular. There will be blowback from asking this of the Mind Mages, and you know this, but I must actually say it so that you understand.’

Erick acknowledged Poi with a nod, then spoke to the people in front of him, “We’ll finish in groups of ten, and then I’ll send those people on their way, but know that you do not need to do this mental probe. This is just for speed of departure. There is nothing wrong with doing this the harder, longer way, with background checks and the support of Treehome, and with final farewells to anyone who you might be leaving behind.” He repeated, “Once again, agreeing to a mental probe is not necessary to leave this place, or for joining Candlepoint.”

A few people in the crowd stood relieved, their shoulders loosening and their eyes relaxing. Others looked to Poi like he was their quick ticket out of this place. And he was.

Lashii spoke for herself, and for many of those behind her, saying, “We understand, Archmage Flatt. We’re ready to leave as soon as we can, but I will go after everyone else.” She stepped to the side, shouting behind her, “Form lines and ranks! We’re doing this as fast as possible.”

Before many people could move, Toruke spoke up, “I’m going to wait for the law of Treehome to clear us, as will many of us.” He said, “Full disclosure: Many of us participated in the battle that you ended, because they were coming after us. The Cultists have infiltrated much of the guard here, and we had to defend ourselves.” With a hard voice, he said, “We will not be held accountable for defending ourselves from those people.”

Quite a few people in the crowd behind either nodded, or gave small ‘Yeah’s.

Erick narrowed his eyes, and said, “You will be held accountable if you actually participated in that fight, as will I be held accountable for stepping into Treehome’s affairs like this. But the nature of that accountability will be subject to politics instead of summary judgment. I will ensure that you are treated fairly, to the best of my ability.”

The crowd didn’t know what to make of that, and that was fine. Erick felt like he was talking out of his ass, but he made it work, as best he could. Who knew what Treehome’s response would be, now that Erick had taken this position, and already dealt partial judgment to Omaz, one of the worst terrorists of Treehome, according to his own words.

Poi stepped to the side, Erick keeping him safe inside of his Light-filled Domain, while the orcols under Lashii lined up. A sort of silence descended, as many people watched the first person get a memory probe.

Poi declared, “What you are about to participate in is a full mental scan. Nothing will be shared with anyone else if you consent to this action, except for Cultist status and any malicious murders you might have committed. These two statuses will be publicly shared. Do you consent?”

“I do,” said the woman, with steel in her voice.

Poi nodded, then stood there, his eyes partially unfocused and staring out into the middle-distance, while tendrils of intent floated away from him to intersect the young woman. Poi’s tendrils did not just touch her head, but also her chest, legs, and all the rest of her, seeming to soak into the woman’s skin, to catch upon her bones and layer across her flesh. She raised her right hand just a bit to look upon the tendrils. Oh? Ah. For a brief moment, Erick stopped all of his unnatural, magically enhanced Sights, and saw that Poi’s intent was visible to normal vision. The color of his magic was the faintest blue, like a clear sky. Erick resumed his magical sights, and his straightforward gaze.

Twenty seconds in, with no one nearby speaking, but several small voices asking questions of other people in the deeper parts of the crowd, Poi’s eyes focused, as he turned to Erick, and said, “Warchief Koropo Ikabobbi and a few Chieftains, including Peron Wyrmrest, are asking to speak with you about your current actions. Would you like to meet them at the guardhouse, back across your dividing light at the first battlefield?”

“No,” Erick said, “Tell them to come here.”

Poi withheld a sigh, then said, “Chieftain Wyrmrest’s words are as follows: They will not treat with a vigilante in the middle of a field of monsters.”

Erick said, “Then they will not get their meeting, for I am a very busy person at the moment, and so are you. Please continue as you were, Poi.”

Poi nodded, then went back to scanning the woman in front of her.

Erick stood on those steps leading up to the building, stiff as a statue, devoting half of his attention to seeing through the eyes of his Ophiel, to make sure certain situations were either resolving, controlled, or not worth his time, while also maintaining Domain strength and keeping an eye out on the line of golems, and the various forces gathering all around the commune. He had an Ophiel cast a [Prismatic Ward] across him and Poi, just to give himself a bit more of a buffer if someone should decide to attack.

Poi softly said to the woman, “You’re clear. Please step to the side.”

An unruly tear fell from the woman’s left eye, but she brushed that away as quickly as it had come, then did as she was asked.

Erick had a half-sized Ophiel come down from point defense, to float to the woman’s side, as he said, “I can take one at a time, too, if you wish to go now.”

The woman said, “Please!”

Ophiel wrapped the woman in light, turning into a reflection of the sun, while others looked on, and Erick said, “You’ll be there in under ten seconds, so just hold on to the light.”

The woman nodded once, and then she was gone, along with Ophiel and his sunform. Erick briefly watched as Ophiel lightstepped without stopping. Five seconds later, and Ophiel deposited the woman into the center of Candlepoint, not too far from the waters, and rather close to the bright white Crystal in the center of town. Slip and a few other guards stood to the side, for Erick had already notified them of what was happening. The Guardmaster of Candlepoint waved, then tried to start a little speech.

But the woman broke down. Tears of joy rolled down her face as she thanked Ophiel and the man, profusely, and Slip went with it, handing her off to one of his orcol guards. Erick noticed that he had a minotaur guard, and then he noticed an incani guard that was not a shadeling. She must have been recently transformed back into her former race, for Erick didn’t remember seeing her before now. Good for her.

Back in the commune, to Erick’s left, Poi was already scanning another person; a man.

But that look back to Candlepoint got him thinking.

He spoke up to the crowd, “There is a Dark Temple at Candlepoint, where one can speak to Melemizargo and rid themselves of their shadeling status, if you so wish. It is not a pleasant experience, just so you are aware.”

A chuckle started in the crowd.

Toruke took up the chuckle, and turned it into a laugh, as he said, “You should have led with that!”

Erick warned, “It’s not a sure thing. I’m not sure what happened in the Well with those other orcols who went there and came back as themselves.” The laughter died. “Whatever personal meeting you might have with Melemizargo in that Dark Temple does not mean that you will come out of it whole and unharmed. The very process of recapturing your previous self is filled with danger.”

Toruke said, “Aye! And that’s fine with me. I thought I hated the Red Bitch, but I’d take her over any more of this. I’ll miss Constitution and Dexterity, but they’re not necessary.”

Someone shouted in the back, “They wouldn’t let us all go to Ar’Kendrithyst!”

Another shouted, “Some of the cult tried to get one of them Dark Temples up and running here!” A few people turned to the newcomer, and he spoke louder, “Yeah! That’s the rumor I heard. If we had a Dark Temple here, then we could have scoured these New Stats from us and gone back to Treehome!”

“Why didn’t they do that?” Erick asked. Though he had a guess as to ‘why not’, he still asked the question.

Toruke spoke loud enough for everyone, as he said, “The Elders and the Chieftains voted against that. Couldn’t have a Dark Temple here, even if it would have let some of us brave that transformation. A few Elders tried to get it to happen, but they couldn’t.”

“Which Elders tried to get the temple?” Erick asked.

Toruke blanked. “I’m not sure.”

Someone spoke up, “Elder Atanaro-Home and Elder Bilovac-Nosier.”

Erick nodded. He expected the first name, but had no idea who the other person was.

Silence descended once again, filled with the sounds of rain.

It’s not like the Chieftains and Elders were wrong to not let a Dark Temple be put up in here, but it still would have solved a lot of problems. Maybe the commune would have dissolved on its own, as people chose to walk away from Melemizargo after hearing what the Dark Dragon had to say. But… At the same time… Erick could understand not wanting people to ever speak to the Darkness. That was just asking for trouble. Which is likely why Elder Atanaro-Home wanted the temple here, in the first place.

Another person spoke up, “Wouldn’t let the Registrars visit, either!”

“That’s just downright wrong,” Erick said.

Erick briefly watched as Poi gestured to a waiting Ophiel, and softly gave the man he had been scanning the all clear. The man stepped toward Ophiel. Ophiel whisked him away to Candlepoint in a flutter of light, then came right back, by himself, chirping in violins as he fluttered back into his waiting position.

Erick asked, “Why not let the Registrars in?”

Toruke said, “Not sure.”

Lashii responded with a shrug, but then immediately went back to the line for Poi, giving a few people the evil eye who had tried to push forward.

Poi gave his little speech to the next person in line, “What you are about to participate in is a full mental scan. Nothing will be shared with anyone else if you consent to this action, except for Cultist status and any malicious murders you might have committed. These two statuses will be publicly shared. Do you consent?”

“I do.”

Erick watched Poi, and many other things, all at the same time.

Poi got a few seconds into the next person, when he turned to Erick, and said, “Warchief Koropo and a small team wants to be here for this. They have ended the various threats concurrently happening around Treehome.”

“Sure.” Erick said, “I will attend to them as we are doing this. Tell them to bring some paperwork or whatever for whatever criminals that they need to find, and to come directly into the building behind us.” He looked up at the sky, and though he didn’t really feel the rain, and it was putting out small fires all over the place, it was likely mightily uncomfortable for everyone standing in the streets all around. Some of Treehome was still burning, though. He asked, “What about the rain. Do they still need that?”

Poi had already returned to his scan, but he said, “The Arbors are all using the rain to repair. Every single one of them was struck hard today. Leave it raining, they say.”

Erick sighed. He was sorry that he hadn’t been there for more of that fight. He did see as some [Grand Fireballs] struck the great stretching branches of Arbor Nosier, and watched as stone rumbled through the streets of Arbor O’kabil, upsetting buildings and breaking much, but he was maxed out on Ophiel. He could do nothing else except for stopping the fight at the commune, which, admittedly, was the largest fight. Others helped to end the Cultist threat in the rest of the city, for Treehome was very much not defenseless, with the Arbors themselves providing much of the counterattack. But still… Erick was sorry he couldn’t have done more.

Poi, deep in his scan, mumbled, “They say not to worry about it. Ending the fight here was a win for them, too.”

Erick allowed himself a small smile, and almost said something else. But then he turned around to face the interior of the building. He flexed his control over the Light in the air, and let a [Teleport] happen. He had picked up quite a few tricks from that book on Domains, and after seeing the Arbors of Treehome, and how effortlessly they denied certain spells, it was not a large stretch to employ such methods with his own Domain. Blocking [Teleport]s coming in was easy. All Erick had to do for that was to make the space a bit more constrained, thus shunting out all inward-bound blips toward the outside of the Domain. He’d need anti-[Teleport] runes in the walls, exactly like the Arbors used, if he wanted to block people from blipping away, though.

The air blipped, and a small platoon of people appeared in the open room beyond; Koropo, Naervion, and a few other Special Forces members. They were dressed for full warfare, with heavy armor, but without any weapons, or paperwork. Maybe they were prepared for war, and not for paperwork? If that were the case, then Erick was disappointed. But it was understandable. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

Erick greeted them, saying, “Hello, Special Forces. The heads are upstairs. Omaz has been soul-shifted into repentance and he’s out in the Forest in a safe spot, for now. That’s as much as I am doing for that murderer and traitor; the rest of his existence is on him. If you wish to pursue him, then you can, but as you have no doubt noticed, I have already dismissed the map in the center of the city. There will be no easy searches for him, this time.”

Koropo rumbled, “We’re going to talk about all of that, Erick. But we’ll deal with the heads first.” He touched the Light in the air, asking, “This you?”

Erick nodded. “Yup.”

Koropo grunted, then turned to the stairs, taking the forward position as he walked upward. Naervion did a little bow at Erick, before rapidly following Koropo and everyone else. She seemed to be taking up the rear. Erick would watch her closely. She was a very good actor. Erick turned back toward the shadelings of the commune, to watch over them, and to watch over Poi, to make sure his friend stayed safe while he worked.

“Thanks, sir,” Poi mumbled, as he continued to scan the person in front of him. “I can do multiple things at the same time, though.”

Erick smiled, then thought at the man, ‘I didn’t want to say it earlier, but you seem to be messing up your telepathic messages and your verbal ones.’

Poi flinched as though struck, coming back to himself with a start. His sapphire scaled face briefly turned darker, then he focused again, sending, ‘Well… It won’t happen again.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Erick sent, ‘Thank you, Poi. This is much more than I expected, and I won’t forget to repay this to whoever needs repayment.’

‘We’ve decided to throw in with you, sir.’ Poi sent, ‘But if you’re worried about repayment, then Imaging for the various monsters we’ve already discussed is more than enough. In fact, we would still owe you quite a lot.’

‘… Well okay then. I did not expect that, but it is rather nice of you, Poi, and everyone else on your side.’

Poi just nodded, as he continued to scan the person in front of him.

Erick quietly watched over the proceedings, along with everyone else on the streets. Soon enough, Poi released his current target with an all clear, Ophiel took them away, and Poi moved onto the next person, repeating his request for consent. The next person in line readily gave it, and the line moved up.

- - - -

After fifteen people had gotten through the line and even more shadelings had chosen to get into the line, Naervion came down the stairs. Erick turned toward her.

She said, “We’ve confirmed the heads of fourteen of the eighteen up there. A few of them are the heads of those who broke him out of the Hole. A few belong to the guard who we had stationed around the commune—”

Toruke shouted, “We told you!”

Naervion didn’t engage with the man. She ignored him completely and kept going, “And a few more of them were a surprise. Which is what we need to talk about. Can we talk?”

“I want to. But that depends.” Erick asked, “Why did Koropo not step down here to tell me this, and what is the discussion going to be about?”

As if expecting the question, Naervion said, “Warchief Ikabobbi is currently engaged with the entire Conclave of Elders over the identity of some of the heads up there. Firstly, the discussion will be about locating the rest of the bodies up there, and the people themselves, if they live. I don’t know what it’ll be beyond that.”

Erick nodded. He neither sensed nor saw any lies from Naervion, but maybe that was just because she had told the truth and the people who sent her were lying, or due to the fact that she was a rather good actor. He decided to go along with her request. He said, “Sure.” And then he stepped forward.

Naervion led the way upstairs.

He set another Ophiel to watch over Poi, and followed the Special Forces woman up the stairs, to the room with the heads. Naervion stepped to the side and made herself available, but out of the way, while the rest of the soldiers had the heads separated around the room, and labeled. Erick saw some paperwork, this time, on the clipboards in the hands of some people, and in a box set to the side. Koropo Ikabobbi stood off-center in the room, his fingers supporting his forehead while tendrils of thought radiated from him. He turned to Erick, then turned away, muttering that he’d be a moment.

Erick waited.

Ten seconds later, Koropo dropped several tendrils of thought, and turned to Erick, saying, “A lot of people who have been sympathetic toward the shadelings are now dead, and the Cult shows itself yet again.” Before Erick could get mad, Koropo pointed to three of the heads. “Specifically Elder Atanaro-Home, Elder Huni-Rottundra, and Elder Demetriol-Leaf-Cutter. We don’t know when they were replaced, or if they were turned long ago. We think that Huni and Demetrio were replaced at least four months ago with some unknown magics, the least of which were [Polymorph]. Atanaro was turned. Arbor Home is inconsolable at the moment. Atanaro had control over much of the commune, and was responsible for much of the anti-shadeling sentiment that kept them separate from the rest of Treehome, along with a great deal of the sentiment that kept this place from being bombed to an abyss.” Koropo added, “He worked over both sides, trying to establish more power by holding the looming threat of the shadelings over them all. It wasn’t hard, for though they look like people, they are monsters, Erick. You know this.”

“Yes. They are.” Erick said, “But so are dragons, and if it weren’t for their Blood Curse they would be monsters that weren’t crazy like all the rest.”

Koropo paused, alongside everyone else in the room who had been listening. He said, “It does the monsters downstairs no benefit to compare them to dragons.”

“You’re right, of course.” Erick asked, “So who needs finding?”

Koropo pointed at the three heads. “The Elders, first, to make sure they truly are dead. From there, our people are going to do some heavy [Witness]ing to see if we can find out who helped Omaz to do all of this.” He looked to Erick. “And we need to find Omaz, if you could help with that, too.”

Erick glanced through the light, then he turned back to the room, saying, “He hasn’t moved much. He’s still crying. I can’t help you find him, though. He has been soul-shackled, too, and I have a responsibility to let that play out.”

Koropo frowned.

Erick gestured toward the woman’s head Omaz had been reaching for, saying, “That one has some special connection to Omaz. Not sure what it was, though.”

Koropo glanced to the head, then said, “Yeah… Her. That’s Blackfist Groka. She was a major player in the Adventuring scene out of Steel-Branch’s Guildhouse. Look. Erick. This is a fucking mess. It’s gonna take us months to get through all the shit that unloaded all over this city today. What can I do to speed along whatever you’re doing out there? I want them gone, and their problems vanished from my purview.”

“… I appreciate the pragmatism, Koropo, so I accept your help.” Erick said, “A lot of them don’t want to accept a Mind Mage rooting around for secrets and hidden murders in their pasts, so any help you can give to clear the rest of any malicious murders or known connections to the Cult? That’s what I need to get them out of your city and into mine.”

Koropo asked, “And what will you do if we find out they’re Cultists?”

“Two people who’ve gone through Poi were already found to be Cultists.” Erick said, “They committed no crimes and enabled no murders. They’re already safe at Candlepoint. I’m not sure what we’ll do about the Cultists who don’t submit to a mind probe. I suspect I will hand them over to you.”

Koropo sighed. “Just like that? Eh? You really trust those monsters that much?”

“They’re only technically monsters. Every single one of them has their own mind, and is their own person. If there was one thing that I learned when I was at Shadow’s Feast in Ar’Kendrithyst, it’s that Melemizargo doesn’t do mind control. If there’s a monster that can speak and reason with you, then chances are they’re not that monstrous. They just have bad urges sometimes.”

Koropo asked, “You know that Moon Reachers can trick you and speak Ecks and hunt just as good as any person, right? With traps and feints and planning. Does that make them people, too?”

Erick stared at Koropo. “… Moon Reachers are people too? Fuck me. Shit.”

“Ha!” Koropo chuckled, then said, “That’s not where I thought you would go with that!”

“You’re— You’re lying to me, right? Moon Reachers aren’t people, are they?”

Koropo lost all of his mirth. “They know enough to pretend to be people long enough to get where they need to get in order to do the most damage. They enjoy hurting the people they hunt. They rip off legs and arms and watch as people wonder why they can’t walk or why they’re suddenly bad at using a sword. They’ve been using a sword their whole adult life. They can’t even imagine why they thought they were good with a sword, though, because they don’t have any arms.” He pointed down at the floor, toward the entrance to the building, saying, “That’s what everyone sees when they see those shadelings pretending to be people, because that’s the type of monster they’ve always been. That’s why they were in a commune and separated from everyone else. A lot of people were calling for their deaths, but a lot of people decided we couldn’t do that simply because they resembled people so well.”

Erick suddenly recalled something that Al had told him, long ago. The Headmaster routinely had to break ‘idiot, naive nobles’ from believing that they could talk to the monsters and play nicely with them, or that the taint of monsterhood could be removed from a monster. He had experiments set up for all of that. People could try to talk to monsters, or watch them, or do their own experiments. Almost always, the experimenter came out of those experiments with a newfound appreciation for monster killing. Sometimes, that wasn’t enough, though. Once a person was done with the idea of civilizing a monster, they moved onto the more radical procedures.

One of those experiments was the raising of monsters in captivity, and the separation of rads from a forming fetus. Those baby monsters never developed right, and routinely had to be euthanized for they were in constant, never-ending pain, for the constant removal of nascent rads from their bodies always left heavy wounds that never healed quite right. If they let the rads form, though, the monsters became what they were meant to be, their damage healed, and they were as murderous as any monster found in the wild.

Except for shadelings. And dragons. And Ancients, with their powers of speech and thought, like the Queen Unicorn that Jane fought. And the Shades themselves…

Those monsters were perfectly capable of being civilized, for a certain definition of ‘civilized’.

Erick said, “I don’t have all the answers, Koropo. All I know is that there are two types of shadelings. Those who have lost themselves to the monster therein, and those who have woken up to who they were before the Darkness claimed them. It appears every single person who took in more than one of the New Stats is of the second type. They never had to go through the trouble of regaining themselves through reincarnation, and they are lucky for that.”

“I don’t know that word, ‘Reincarnation’. But I do know [Polymorph]s. I do know pretenders. I know of changelings in the dark that lure you in with pretty words and long forgotten faces.” Koropo asked, “Do you know of those horrors? Or are you willingly looking the other way?”

“I know that what I believe to be true is vastly different from what you believe to be true.” Erick said, “So let us discard this discussion, and get the problem out of your city and into mine.”

“… Fair enough.” Koropo said, “I’m gonna need some cooperation from you and your Light. It blocks the shadelings, right?”

“It blocks whatever I wish to block, but if a shadeling is not using their [Shadowblend], then no, this [Domain of Light] will not block them.”

“… I’m gonna need a desk and space where you can keep the people I send safer than under just their own power.” Koropo said, “We’ll clear this backlog of shadelings, and send them on their way.”

Erick said, “Thank you, Warchief. I can imagine that this space is a rather black mark on your violent crimes records.”

Koropo let a sly smile loose, then he schooled that away, and said, “Archmage.”

- - - -

Soon, desks and people and papers and permissions came down to the commune. Clerks stood under [Weather Ward]s, while it rained, and shadeling orcols came up to them for initial clearances. Back by the building, Poi’s line shrunk as people went to the desks, and the clerks.

A lot of drama happened outside of Erick’s purview, and that was fine with him. He was running on fumes. Too much magic cast too many times. He glimpsed his own soul and the damage was much worse than it had been before he started with all this awful killing and terrible justice. Ragged edges circled his body and spotty glows filled his being. By contrast, the souls of the shadelings in front of him were solid and whole, but really small and really dense, for those souls were contained to the rads in their chests.

Erick briefly checked himself over for rads with a [Cascade Imaging], cast small, and overlaid with his body, producing a map of himself right in front of himself.

Blue dots glowed just below his ribcage.

Ah. Yeah. He had used too many mana potions too recently. With what was probably a bad idea, he briefly turned partially to light, ripped the nascent rads out of their current tracks to his heart, and spurted blood onto his shirt. He had an Ophiel immediately tap him with the rod of [Greater Treat Wounds] before he could collapse in pain.

“Ouch,” he mumbled, as he tossed the small flecks of solid magic onto the muddy ground.

A small [Cleanse] took care of the blood.