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There were multiple uses for resonances, Erick thought, as he walked across the courtyard of the Castle, hurrying to get back into his guest room and distract himself from watching Tenebrae almost die.

Anyway. Resonances.

There were positive feedback loops, which would be a small physicality that built damage over time. There was the idea of making two spaces harmonically identical, which was Erick’s current guess at one of the major pieces of the [Gate] puzzle. And then there was the idea of denying the harmful sound magics of others, or, what was more likely, was denying the harmful side effects of his own harmonic magics.

Magic itself also had harmonies. Many of Erick’s experiences with creating spells was based upon the idea of discarding disruptive aspects and heightening positive aspects; to refine mana until it was as close to perfectly aligned with other parts of itself and with Erick’s own intent, thus resulting in a better spell.

But working with actual, physical sound was different than working with magical ‘sound’. Magical ‘sound’ certainly had a soul-aspect to it that you could only hear through non-physical means. Particle Sound Magic would have to be solely based on wavelength, amplitude, and medium; on mana affecting the material world. All of these ideas were largely unexplored by Erick, though, and from Tenebrae’s disregard for ‘Sound Magic’, he suspected that they were largely unexplored by everyone else on Veird, too. Except for maybe one people, in one particular place.

The Songstresses of the Songli Highlands in Nelboor probably knew much of what Erick was already thinking about… Or maybe they didn’t? Maybe they hoarded their knowledge, too. Whatever the case, that leg of this Worldly Path was yet to come, and right now, he was pretty sure that there were three categories to resonance.

Positive, neutral, and negative.

To make any of these spells, he would need to be able to target the physical resonances of a target.

Erick ran into his first problem.

Targeting the ‘resonance of an X’ was a non-starter. People, plants, rocks— Okay, maybe not all rocks. Anyway. All of those were systems with millions of smaller parts that all resonated differently. It was only when most of an object was in harmony that—

Ah. There’s the solution, and the hurdle to overcome; putting a target into a single resonance state. That was one of the spells; the starter one, perhaps.

Or maybe not?

That idea knocked loose a few others that Erick had forgotten about, and that’s when his ideas finally began to crystallize.

Back on Earth, an object was said to have a number of ‘normal vibrational modes’ intrinsic to itself, as a matter of its molecular makeup and a whole lot of other factors, and in a bastardization of the term ‘superposition’, objects as wholes could be said to vibrate in a superposition of all of these nodes at the same time. Harmonizing those molecular ‘normal modes’ down to one, which could then be excited or diminished or whatever, would be the responsibility of the magic that Erick was going to make, and would thus allow two spaces, or any number of spaces, to actually be harmonically the same.

This was just a better explained version of what Erick was trying to do with [Gate].

It was probably a good thing that Erick wasn’t out there, right now, singing a song to make new magic for Tenebrae to witness; his ideas were there, but the depth of his ideas could use some work. So Erick took out an empty notebook and started writing, trying to see the problem from multiple angles and to understand exactly what he wanted. Magic could fill in a lot of gaps, but Erick needed to get as close to the goal as he could, and the closer he got, the better the end result.

Attuning a collection of objects to one harmony didn’t seem like it would be a problem, but attuning a person to themselves might be a problem, and [Gate] needed to attune the people that went through it, right? And that meant getting through Health to affect the person shielded by that Health—

Or. No.

This was an ‘outside-in’ problem. Magic worked from the outside toward the inside, so attuning a person might not actually be all that difficult. It wouldn’t be a damaging spell, anyway. Actual damage would be blocked by Health, but status effects? Not so much. Erick’s new spells would likely create a brand new status effect, called ‘Harmonized’. Yeah. That would work, wouldn’t it?

Erick probably didn’t need to consider souls or Health when making this new magic. This was physical magic, after all.

Anywho! Work work.

Erick wrote, thought, made dinner for himself and his family when Jane and Teressa got back, and then worked some more. He went to bed for a few hours, which was enough, honestly, and then he got up and continued to write in his notebook. He wrote by wardlight, in the courtyard, while the stars glittered overhead, Rockys and the occasional Senior walked through, and everyone else slept.

He had never used a notebook before, because he never wrote down any ideas, because he never wanted any of his ideas to be stolen and used by the wrong people. But his current series of ideas were likely not a big deal, because there were only four spells here, and one of them would automatically negate the other three; three to turn a targeted system into an actual system, and one more.

Positive, harmonized, negative, and ‘restore natural superpositions’.

[Restore All Normal Modes] would be the first spell to make. Whereas the first three would empower, solidify, or weaken vibrational effects, the last one would be able to negate these adjustments. Since Erick wanted these spells to go into the Open Script, Erick felt good about himself for first making the counterspell to this entire new branch of magic. Well. Mostly new. He had already made one ‘sound magic’ spell already.

His spell, [Stillness].

That spell took all the minor physical effects in a Super Large Area, read: loud noises, and turned them to light. [Stillness] was outside of this current 4 part theory, though. That would be the fifth part; the shifting of sound into some other element.

Maybe he could try reversing that spell, in order to turn light into vibrations. He already had a light Domain, and there was probably something interesting lurking in a combination of all five of these spells...

The sun rose. Erick made breakfast, ate with his people, then went back to work on his ‘Sound Magic’.

Tenebrae did not wake under his own power. Palodia said that he was getting better, but he was not good enough to see any new magics.

Erick went back to his ideas and continued to refine them. When they were good enough, he sat back in a reclining [Scry] chair, flickered on his mana sense to become one with the mana, and then took a small step outside of the current timestream as he sent off a hundred mana to the God of Death and Time. He had some questions of new Particle Magic, and Phagar had the answers.

The world crystallized into stained-glass fractures. Divine fire filled the mana.

A god in the shape of Erick stepped out of that glass and pulled up a chair out of the ether, saying, “Hey, Erick. I’m not actually the God of Death, you know. That’s just what people think.”

Erick happily said, “And I am one of those people, it seems.”

Not-Erick grinned, saying, “What kinda magic are you making today?”

“Maybe not today, but soon enough.”

Erick laid out his ideas, while Phagar listened.

Erick ended with, “Broad strokes: Positive, Neutral, Negative, and Normalize. Four new spells based on a Particle understanding of the world, but I want them to be open to everyone, so I won’t make them at full power. They should be at the same level of power as [Stillness].”

Phagar said, “Sounds like you have a good plan. It’ll work, too. But just so you know, the magic that you are trying to make has already been made.”

Erick’s mind blanked, briefly. “… What!”

Phagar laughed, then said, “Song magic was made long ago at the dawn of the Script and then, with a century of stagnation and with the clarity that it would never be strong enough to be its own field of magic, ‘Song Magic’ was subsumed into Elemental Thunder; pruned into what it is today. Never improved upon beyond that, either, for no one had the skill or the understanding to do so, and everyone confused Sound and the natural actions of Force.” He got up from his chair and the stained-glass of the world turned back into fragmented Reality, as he cheerfully said, “So go ahead. Rewrite the book on Sound Magic. Good luck!”

Phagar’s divine fire vanished as Erick came back to himself.

Erick went back to working on his theories and his applications, though there wasn’t much more to do. He was mostly waiting for Tenebrae to get better. He didn’t know how long that delay would be, so...

Erick decided to take Phagar’s words to heart, and literally write a book on Sound Magic. Just a small one. It might not even be correct, if his spells didn’t come out exactly as he plotted. But he wrote down what he knew in the most concise manner possible, giving broad strokes first, and then refining those ideas down into something more manageable.

For the first time in his time on Veird, he missed having a computer. Writing by hand sucked!

Another day came and went.

Palodia was scheduled to cook again. Tenebrae was finally healthy enough to not need eyes on him 24 hours a day. They still kept eyes on him all the time, though, but he was getting better. Erick looked forward to Palodia’s cooking, but he had magic to make, so he sat in the courtyard, writing in his notebook. Hours passed.

Dinner was an hour away, and so was sunset. Erick wrote in the shadows, and he hoped that the shadows weren’t being too nosy, but they probably were.

The door to Tenebrae’s tower opened.

Erick looked up.

Tenebrae walked out of his tower under his own power. He did not walk fast, but he did not walk like the old man he was, either. Rock and Obsidia walked on either side of the old archmage. Erick stood up, and smiled.

“Hello there!” Erick called out.

“Yes yes. Hello hello. Pleasantries everywhere and all that shit.” Tenebrae’s voice was weak as he walked up to Erick, saying, “Time to prove that the squiggles in your notebook are real and not the delusions of an idiot-savant.”

“I’m glad you think enough of my squiggles to spy on me,” Erick said, with good cheer. “I was worried it was just Melemizargo out here.”

“Bah! Call not his name. Are you a dumbass? Oh wait. It’s you. Of course you are,” Tenebrae said, without any heat to his voice. He pointed at the notebook. “I want to see that in action.”

“I was just waiting on you! But before we do that.” Erick pulled a small box out of his pocket. He held it toward Tenebrae, saying, “Want some Stat gems?”

Tenebrae eyed the box, but he did not reach up to take them.

Erick could already see why, for an Ophiel turned on [Blood Sight] as soon as Tenebrae’s door opened. The man could barely hold himself together. His muscles looked atrophied. His heart pumped slow. He was drugged up right now, for sure, and with a bit of [Mana Sight], Erick saw that he was supporting himself with several magics. [Force Platform] derivatives, no doubt. Tenebrae was not walking under his own power.

Erick had overheard most of the inadequacies of healing magic over the last few days. [Greater Treat Wounds] was great to repair physical damage that could be repaired, and that did not have time to set in. [Regeneration] was great for bringing back lost limbs or body parts, or healing chronic damage. [Soul Healing] was a rare magic that adjusted the soul to better heal the body. [Restoration] was decent for healing age-related problems, but even that failed past a certain point.

For while healing did not accelerate aging, it could not decelerate aging, either.

The one solution he could have taken, he did not. Tenebrae could have gotten a new [Polymorph] form, and lived a whole new life. ‘Tenebrae’ would die, though, eventually. That ‘Familiar Form’ wouldn’t age if it wasn’t lived in, but eventually, death came for all living things.

And besides that, the ‘[Polymorph] Solution’ was abhorrent to every civilized nation in the world, and was not a viable option for those who still had their morals. For all of his bluster and power, Tenebrae was not the sort of person to take another’s form, even if it would save his life, even if he could take the form of someone who was already doomed to die, like any of the people headed for any executioner block in any city the world over.

Now that was a very loud conversation between Obsidia and everyone else. The black rock woman had argued that ‘all these bodies just lying around after executions the world over! Just take one! They’re not using them anymore!’. No one confronted her words, directly. Most people just went quiet when she started arguing her points. The only people inside the Castle that Obsidia did not talk to, to try to get them to convince the rest, was Erick and his people. Erick had no idea what he would say if Obsidia did try to talk to him about ‘the [Polymorph] Solution’.

Erick could not do anything for Tenebrae’s actual problem, but he could help in his own way, and thus, the gems.

Erick continued to hold the box toward Tenebrae, saying, “I know that Stats can’t really help, but they might be able to make you feel better. I know they made me feel a whole lot better. I should have offered them days ago, but… I know they won’t actually help you.”

Tenebrae took the small stone box. He could move his arms! Erick smiled.

Tenebrae thumbed open the box, revealing silver spheres nestled in fabric. He asked, “What kind are they?”

“All Stat.” Erick added, “Well. All of the four original Stats. If you want one of the New Stats—”

Rock stepped in, saying, “No. We have no idea what the new Stats do.”

Tenebrae softly said, “I can decide for myself, Rock. But you’re right. No experimenting with Stats, today.”

Rock scowled at Erick, then said to Tenebrae, “You shouldn’t even use those. Stat sickness would be just as bad as an unknown New Stat.”

“There’s no Stat sickness with true All Stat gems.” Erick said, “At the most, it feels like waking up in the morning, or something like that. Perfectly natural. But, you’re right. I don’t know how they’ll react to someone with health issu— You don’t have to use them if you don’t want. They’re each plus 10 to All Stats, and I made them all at the same time, so there shouldn’t be any resonance issues with attaching them to a single item, or splitting them up.”

‘Resonance’. Ha! Erick had laughed when he looked back at his Stat enchantment books and their mention of ‘resonance’. Completely wrong, and yet, not. It was little things like that, and a whole mess of preconceived notions from immortals, that likely confused the Arcanaeum Consortium into teaching that Force and mana had some relationship with sound and light.

Tenebrae flipped the box shut and handed it to Rock, saying, “I’ll look at them later. Let’s go see you make some magic.”

“Do you want to go in person? Not through a [Scry]?”

“I have witnessed new base spells only once in my life, and that was when the Headmaster made that [Condense Hydrogen] spell in front of us at your little talk at Oceanside, and then again, when I made my own tiny Particle spells, later.” Tenebrae stoutly said, “I wish to see new magic shake the heavens before I die, Erick. The entire sky, if you would be so kind.”

Rock turned concerned. Obsidia frowned, then wiped away a silver tear.

Tenebrae, however, was completely engrossed in the moment.

Erick said, “I think I can do… exactly that, perhaps. So… We need somewhere without anything destructible. We can’t do this here. Want to take a trip to the northern coast? That’s only a few lightsteps away.”

“We will not be doing that.” Tenebrae said, “Rock here will take us wherever you want in the world. You can do your magic there, and then we can come back.”

Erick knew he wouldn’t lose his Worldly Path Quest unless he actively chose to abandon it, so a little trip through a [Gate] wouldn’t be a problem at all. If it was, he would have already lost his Quest, just by stepping into the Green Labyrinth.

So going through a [Gate] to somewhere else? Sounds like fun!

Erick excitedly said, “Let’s go somewhere I haven’t seen before, with wide open spaces. Big spaces and an open sky.” He added, “And water. By the ocean? Not Oceanside. But yes. By the Ocean.”

Tenebrae said, “Pick a location, Rock.”

Poi stepped out of the guesthouse, saying, “Teressa and Jane are out hunting and if Ophiel leaves here, something will attack.”

Tenebrae scowled, saying, “We’ll be back soon enough and Slate and the others can defend the castle for an hour or four. We are fifteen kilometers up. All the big monsters can’t get up here. So get your [Greater Treat Wounds] rod ready, Poi.” He chuckled, weakly, then said, “I want to see Erick bleed for his magic.”

“… Ha?” Erick chuckled nervously, saying, “I hope it won't be that bad.”

Poi leisurely closed his eyes, as though processing that the old man wanted to see blood. Then he said, “Okay.” He walked into the room and came right back out wearing his armor with the healing rod in hand. He placed the rod in the pocket of his thigh armor, and said, “I have sent messages to Jane and Teressa. They will come back here to help defend the place while we are gone.”

Erick perked up. “Oh. Okay! That works. Thank you, Poi.”

Rock gestured to the left. A purple shimmer coalesced in the air—

“Oh!” Erick said, “We’re going already?”

“Yes,” Tenebrae said. “I’ve got five good hours in me, then it’s back to bed.”

Erick looked around with his [Greater Lightwalk], checking his supplies both on hand and in his room.

… Nothing he couldn’t live without.

—Purple light expanded, dilating, becoming a window to another land, and then a door. A breeze blew onto the beach beyond, scattering white sand away from the purple portal. Tenebrae and Obsidia wasted no time as they stepped through. Erick and Poi followed, while Rock took up the rear.

Erick had already peeked through the [Gate] well before he walked through, using his sunform to scout out the place. He saw nothing untoward.

With a single step, he had moved across the world!

Erick marveled at his new life, again. And then he marveled at their new location.

White sand stretched for kilometers upon kilometers from south-ish to north-ish, while the wind blew in from the ocean to the west, and green prairie stretched toward the east. In the distant east, across the sandy dunes, trees grew. In the west, laid an ocean that was as clear and as pure as few places were on Earth. There were sand bars under those waters; the ocean was shallow for a long ways away, as far as Erick could see.

This was actually a really nice place.

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye came through the [Gate] along with a few Ophiels, but then the purple portal snapped shut and the caster of the ethereal eye and all the Ophiels not right beside Erick were way out of range. The [Scry] eye popped. Erick lost feeling for the remaining Ophiel; they dissipated, too.

Not really a problem. Erick just started summoning more Ophiel. Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye could return in his own time.

A cool breeze blew in from the ocean’s surface. The sky was blue. Few clouds marred the heavens, and Erick felt pleasant, watching the sun shine brightly above the horizon. It was almost sunset here, too. They must be near-enough the same longitude.

Erick said, “This is a nice beach!” He cast a [Cascade Imaging] through one of his Ophiel, atop the dunes and twenty meters out of the way, searching for rads; searching for monsters. He let that run.

Tenebrae eyed the misty spell as it became less misty. “What is that for?”

“Searching for monsters,” Erick answered. One cursory examination later, and not thirty seconds into the run time of the spell, he said, “Doesn’t appear to be many monsters. The spell needs a few minutes to be sure, though.”

Tenebrae dismissed caring about Erick. He said to Obsidia, “Chair.”

“Of course.” The black rock woman conjured a fluffy black chair onto the beach. “Let me help—”

Tenebrae grumbled as he patted away her hands, not accepting that much help, and set himself in the chair. He relaxed into the fluffiness, then said, “It’s too hot!”

“Of course, dad.” Obsidia cast a [Temperature Ward] across her father.

“Too windy! Too bright!”

Obsidia cast a [Weather Ward] and then a disk of shadows above and behind him, blocking some of the light. Erick smiled, then decided to help out.

He [Stoneshape]d some of the white sand into stone, then into a pair of sunglasses without the ‘glasses’ part. For that missing piece, he cast a permanent lightmask on them, creating some polarized glasses, exactly as he had made for his own strolls through the Crystal Forest, and for the workers and delvers of the light dungeon he had left in the Headmaster’s care.

He handed the pair to Tenebrae, saying, “Here. Sunglasses. Makes these sunny places easier on the eyes.”

In the center of the handoff, Rock said, “No magic, father. Don’t [Inspe—”

“Bah! I can use some! Doctor said I could.” Tenebrae took the glasses. He put them on, then looked around, pausing to look at the water the most. “This is a weird fucking lightward. How come can I see into the water better? My [Inspect] isn’t helping me identify the effect.”

“I can’t answer that without giving a lot away, but the [Ward] is permanent and should come back if you don’t disturb the effect too much. Have fun figuring it out, when you get better.”

Tenebrae frowned, hummed, then said, “Very well. I’m going to pick apart your gems, too, so it’s a good thing you gave me eight of them.” He waved a hand forward. “Get on with it.”

Erick checked the map. No nearby monsters. He switched it to search for people, then said, “I’m mapping for people, now. Soon as that clears, we're clear. No monsters nearby, though, which is kinda unexpected. Where are we, anyway?”

Tenebrae scoffed at Erick. “No monsters at all?”

Erick amended, “There are some 20 kilometers from here. In the water and on land. Mostly in the water.”

“We’re somewhere in Archipelago Nergal, though. One of the many small islands,” Tenebrae said. “Did you pick a rare, monsterless island?”

Rock said, “West of the North Arc of the Archipelago. It's a good location. About 10,000 kilometers from Eidolon and Continental Nergal, which are down past the East Arc, and around 7000 kilometers from Nergal in the west.”

Tenebrae said, “Rather uninhabited, I would say.”

Erick looked to the map. Zero people, except for the four currently around Erick, which made five. “This seems like excellent land, though. Why no people?”

“There’s nothing here and extra land doesn’t matter. Obviously.” Tenebrae said, “If there was something here, then there would be people!”

“Okay. Well… That… Makes sense.”

Rock said, “No powerful people means no defense means no people at all.”

“Right.” Erick nodded. “I knew that.”

Tenebrae smirked and chuckled. “Did you? Hard to tell what you know sometimes.”

“Hard to tell what I know most of the time.” Erick clapped his hands, then stepped forward on the beach, saying, “So let’s test my thoughts, and see if the mana agrees with me!”

“Yes! Yes! On with the show!” Tenebrae snapped at Rock, “Down in front!”

Rock had been slightly in front of Tenebrae, between him and Erick, but at his father’s outburst he moved to his father’s side, to guard the old archmage between him and Obsidia.

Erick made a [Prismatic Ward] to the side, for Poi, which Poi gladly took, then he looked to the other three people. “Are you going to defend yourself? Or do you want me to? I can, if you want.”

Tenebrae harrumphed, eyeing Obsidia. Obsidia moved into action, and suddenly, a splash of massive, Solid Ward crystal, flashed around Obsidia, Tenebrae, and Rock. Tenebrae nodded from inside the protected space. Erick nodded back. He had no idea how good of a protection Obsidia had provided, but he trusted them to know what they were doing.

Erick turned toward the ocean.

He breathed in the humid air, feeling the salt on his skin and the taste of brine in his mouth. He focused on the world before him, on the tiny sounds of birds flitting across the sands in the distance, on the crashing waves that made the water seem inviting, on the sounds of the wind rustling through the grassy dunes, and the shuffling of sand.

Ophiel’s violin sounds seemed to echo, somehow, in the vast open space all around them, in time to the crashing of waves, and the flow of the sky.

He breathed, and became one with the world, his sense of the mana around him becoming like an extension of himself. Perfectly normal perfection manifested in his mind, and everything he saw was good. Everything was normal, and exactly as it should be. This would be the first spell; the one that would negate the other three, and possibly a lot more.

He spoke,

“The banshee’s wail is gone today.

“The drummer’s drum has no reprise.

“The piano’s gone, it’s so passe.

“Hear now of death! We eulogize

“past lows and highs. We [Normalize].”

Wind rustled, waves crashed, the sun shone down on everything, and nothing was out of order.

Magic filled the world, and nothing changed.

And yet, everything changed, as it had done before, and as it would do again.

Erick knew his eyes glowed white, and that Poi tapped him with the rod because blood dripped down from his nose, but the normal release that happened at the end of every spell did not happen. The mana held him, waiting. He had teased a new possibility as he reinforced normality, but the mana wanted more than that.

As blue boxes blinked into Erick’s sight, he blinked them away.

Tenebrae said something but Erick didn’t hear. Poi quickly realized something was wrong, but all Erick heard was the vibration of the universe, and that vibration demanded a voice.

So Erick went right into the next spell.

He spoke again,

“The singer’s come again today

“The band is here with more allies

“A symphony doth start to play

“Now hear this! A galvanize

“of all that’s here. We [Harmonize]!”

The world crystallized.

Waves suddenly began to crash upon the sand in sync. Grasses waved in harmony. Wind blew in lockstep. Schools of fish became perfectly organized, which would not normally be odd at all, but then they started to swim in cube formations, and tetrahedrons, and rectangular prisms.

The three hearts of the three mortals on the beach each began to beat in sync.

Obsidia’s crystalline Solid Ward did not block this new magic.

If Erick had been able to, he would have seen this:

Tenebrae gasped, just a bit, a smile on his own face to match the one on Erick’s, and the tiny one on Poi’s. Rock leaned over on one side of his father, suddenly concerned like the world was ending. Obsidia did the same thing on Tenebrae’s other side. Both of them did not realize that they moved like mirrors to each other, and then both of them suddenly realized that they did.

Erick felt a pain in his chest that mirrored the pain in Poi and Tenebrae’s chest, but then Poi healed Erick and no one bled at all. Erick felt older. Poi likely felt older, too. But Tenebrae felt, and looked, briefly, like a man half his age.

A blue box appeared. Erick couldn’t see it.

Mana was already rushing out of his throat.

He spoke,

“A note is held, to high refrain!

“The chorus sings to glorify

“A power builds, of high arcane!

“Now hear this! We purify

“all that’s here. We [Amplify]!”

The waves crashed higher. The wind turned sharp, like kitchen knives. The ground began to shake. Everything fell out of resonance with everything else, and into its own personal hell.

Erick bled from his eyes, his ears, his mouth and his nose. Poi tapped him with the rod, telling him to stop. Tenebrae, Rock, and Obsidia were gone. Erick did not notice their departure. He was in the grip of the mana and it would not let him go.

From outside of himself, Erick watched.

He didn’t so much speak as simply will world to shift.

Sand blasted away. Erick floated in the light. The beach dropped out from under his feet, becoming a crater that extended into the ocean. Saltwater rushed away from him. Poi, unable to hold his ground, was flung backward, through the [Prismatic Ward] and into the dunes beyond.

Words came forth from every part of Reality.

“A song is snapped; fragmented breaks.

“Chaos walks, there’s no accord.

“A power stills, and nothing shakes.

“Now hear this, and be floored.

“Witness the apple of [Discord]!”

Harmony broke.

Waves crashed and did not rise again. Schools of fish broke apart, the individuals each swimming in different directions. The wind stilled, unsure of which way to go. Ophiels flew in every direction, unprepared for whatever Erick had done, and with no idea how to act. Poi was somewhere in the dunes, crawling out of the sand. The rod had been in his hands before, but now, it was not.

The only semblance of normalcy was when the ocean broke the bank of the beach and crashed into the crater that Erick had dug out of the sand. Erick, though, crashed into his body, all semblance of harmony with the universe gone, completely. And then he fell down into the churn of seawater below him, also falling into the crater he had just made. He was already unconscious.

- - - -

Poi watched as Erick did some stupid shit that no one would had considered as stupid until after the fact. Erick got hurt, again.

Don’t anyone worry, though! Poi was there to save the day, as always.

Anyway.

Poi pulled himself out of the sand, [Dispel]ed the effect in the sky, then found his rod of [Greater Treat Wounds] with a quick application of [Telekinesis]. And then he briefly despaired. The rod was almost dead. The light at the bottom of the silver object was barely visible; low charge.

Half a second had passed since the magic ended and Erick fell into a crater filled with water.

Poi almost wasted time cursing at how the rod had been at full charge not five minutes ago. He was already diving into the new crater in the beach and reaching for Erick with mental force.

He found Erick fast enough. The crater was five meters deep and a swirl of water and sand and a few rocks, but Erick was there, bleeding out, like always.

Poi did not let himself get angry. He just tugged Erick onto the beach and did a quick check. Ah. Yeah. Lungs full of water and blood. Not breathing. Not good. He tapped Erick with the rod of [Greater Treat Wounds] and the rod broke; the last charge used.

The magic took hold, though. Erick’s body began to repair, but the magic could only do so much while there was water in his lungs. Time to fix that.

Poi telekinetically hoisted Erick into the air, by his feet, then [Airshape]d a breeze into his open mouth. Bloody water came out, as well as the contents of a recent snack. Cheese and crackers, Poi remembered.

Erick gasped, coughed most heartily, and pure disorientation flooded out from him. Poi had to gird his own mind in order to stop from falling over himself, but he managed to set Erick back down before the man could get even more disoriented. Erick retched for a while, then calmed, then went unconscious again. This time, he breathed just fine.

Poi avoided the sick on the sand and sat down beside Erick.

Barely ten seconds had passed since Erick had finished his magics, and gone under the waves. It was good that Poi was already sitting down, because he would have passed out otherwise. That was too much excitement. When he took this assignment, he was hoping to guard an old man who only wanted to grow some vegetables. Ahhh. Oh well. Plans change.

He looked to Erick.

Erick breathed well enough. Poi threw a [Cleanse] over the two of them, turning saltwater into normal water, and vomit and blood into thick air. Erick began to breathe better; calmer.

Ophiels fluttered overhead, watching the whole thing happen.

Poi waved at Ophiel, “Think you can make us some housing for the day? They planned on leaving us here, so we might as well get comfortable.”

Ophiel responded by turning small as they pranced up to Erick. Some landed on his chest. One of them threw another [Cleanse] over everyone, which did nothing for anyone.

Poi asked them, “Are you sapient yet? Sentient?”

Ophiel twittered in concerned and unsure violins and guitars.

Poi sighed. “Not sapient yet.”

An Ophiel landed on Poi’s shoulder and threw a [Cleanse] on him.

Poi laughed. He grinned as he looked to Ophiel. Then he turned his attention back toward Erick, and then the ocean. The waves lapped against the shore. The sun shone down. The wind blew.

And Poi waited.

If he hung his head and vented about Erick almost killing himself, again, at least no one was around to hear him. Ophiel didn’t count. Not yet, anyway.

- - - -

A [Scry] orb that did not belong to Yggdrasil appeared in the air above Poi. He hadn’t moved much except to make himself and Erick’s sleeping form a bit more comfortable on the beach. The [Scry] orb went to Erick, watched him for a few seconds, then turned toward Poi.

Poi purposefully sighed in the direction of everything that the orb was and who it belonged to.

The orb vanished.

Ten seconds later, a purple [Gate] opened twenty meters away.

Teressa and Jane stood on the other side, looking through the purple hole in reality, trying to comprehend what they were seeing. Poi got an impression from them fast enough. They had both just come back from killing monsters in the Forest, and were still armed for such occasions.

They both raced through the [Gate].

Both of them had been lied to about some monster attack and that Erick was unconscious and a whole slew of smaller, perfectly crafted lies, except for one. Rock and Obsidia had ‘needed to get Tenebrae out of there as soon as possible’. The old archmage had been exposed to Erick’s new magics, and while he wasn’t truly injured, they had not wanted to take any chances.

Their whole ploy, taken as a whole, was easily seen through, but some of the Senior Rockys carried some of the Mind Magic within them that Tenebrae had collected over his long life. They had used that magic against Jane and Teressa, and thus, here was Jane, and right behind her, Teressa. It was a violation, but whatever. Tenebrae was practically untouchable, and this ‘violation’ wasn’t something to get mad over.

The [Gate] closed behind Jane and Teressa.

Jane raced for her father and slapped him with a charge of [Greater Treat Wounds]. Erick gasped, as even more healing flowed into him, but he did not wake. Only Teressa had noticed that the [Gate] had shut behind them.

Before Jane could get even more worried—

Poi spoke, “Erick is fine! But keep healing him, Jane. As you can see, Ophiel is still here. Erick is still alive. There is no lasting damage. There is no monster. You were lied to about a lot.”

Teressa was the first to understand Poi’s words; it only took a bit of mana sense to confirm the world around her, and to see what had just happened with a manual use of [Witness]. She discarded the helmet to her armor and wore her displeasure openly. She was now about 70% mad that Tenebrae had tried shit, and an assorted other percentage of various other feelings, most of which centered around concern for Erick’s wellbeing, and disappointment at the looming reality that they would not be further exploring the Green Labyrinth. Poi would have to shift most of her anger with a few choice words, because he highly doubted that this was the last they had seen of Tenebrae, or the ‘Green Labyrinth’, which was not its real name. Further anger would be disruptive to that eventual future.

And speaking of anger...

Jane stared at her father, and then at Poi. She went from raging warrior, to scared little girl in the blink of an eye, and then she swung back toward some halfway point that would probably swing again soon enough. And… Yup. There’s the swing. All of Jane’s emotions pointed in one direction: Anger at Tenebrae. Poi would have to shift her rage, too.

“Lied—” Jane’s eyebrows danced as her words stuck in her throat. She calmed, for a certain definition of ‘calm’. Rage became cold, and calculating. She said, “There was no monster that ‘came out of the ocean because he was making magic’. Did Tenebrae knock him out and toss him here? Why? To—”

Poi stood up, and tried to discourage any misunderstanding. “They did not injure your father. He injured himself making magic. What has happened to us is that the Senior Rockys obtained Arbor Redarrow’s full prognostication from Erick himself, and with that, they managed to convince their father to abandon his current quest for [Gate], and to shove Erick onto the next step of his Worldly Path—”

Far down the beach, a purple [Gate] spawned and spat out a collection of luggage, and then closed.

Ah. Good. Poi had hoped that they wouldn’t have everything stolen from them. How much had Tenebrae returned? Probably none of the magic books.

Poi continued, “… They conspired to shove Erick out of Tenerbrae’s life and onto the next part of Erick’s Worldly Path. Their hope is that when Erick finally figures out [Gate], that he will come back and teach Tenebrae.” Poi stressed, “Erick was here, and he was making magic, and Tenebrae had high hopes that he would be able to witness Erick creating his four new sound spells, but even witnessing him create two of his four new spells was too much for the old archmage.” Poi said, “Rock and the others finally convinced Tenebrae to accept being humbled, instead of accepting the other option, which was death.” He spread his arms down and around, as he said, “And so, we are here.”

Jane went through a dozen emotions. She settled on resigned anger.

Teressa discarded her anger. She changed the subject, asking, “Where is here?”

“Erick currently thinks we’re in the Northern Arc of Archipelago Nergal, and the sun is setting on the horizon, but that was a lie.” Poi said, “We’re actually in the Southern Islands of Nelboor, a few thousand kilometers from the mainland, and that sun is rising.”

Jane frowned, looking down at her father. “And he didn’t see through that lie? You didn’t tell him?” She narrowed her eyes, and sent, ‘Testing. Message for Poi.’

‘Yes. Hello, Jane. Good use of proper protocol to check the validity of the people around you. And of course I didn’t tell him. I am honor bound to not use the knowledge that I have gained through mental means either against or for anyone.’

Teressa didn’t need confirmation. She had [Witness] to see it all, almost first hand. Jane didn’t check on Poi’s claim until she was sure her father was safe, though, and that was a breach of protocol. Upon seeing him next to her father, she should have probed him right away, but… Whatever. Poi let that slide, for now.

Teressa said, “Nelboor is a shit continent.”

Poi nodded, saying, “As for why Erick did not see through Tenebrae’s lies: Your father had his doubts, but he prefers to see the good in people, and I’m sure that if he were awake, he would not care that they shoved him further along his Path.” Poi shook his head. “But enough of that. We are in the lands of eternal war and I am not as constrained when we are in danger. Erick is unconscious, and healthy, but we can’t [Teleport] the unconscious, and he will likely be unconscious for a while longer. He did a lot of magic. I don’t think that there will be much actual trouble in the near future, for that [Cascade Imaging] back there shows all nearby people in 500 kilometers, and it’s only showing us four. So now that we all understand the situation, let us work to minimize our chances of death.” He said, “Jane, look after your father. Heal him like you are already doing. Teressa. How does Erick look to you?”

Teressa had already checked him out with her various Sight spells, but Jane didn’t know what Teressa knew yet, and Poi wanted everyone on the same track.

Teressa said, “Soul damage. Minor compared to the damage from Shadow’s Feast. Already healing, too. Blood damage is healing. With that Immunity to Health Exhaustion and a younger body, he shouldn’t have any healing complications. He’s just exhausted. Or something. He’ll wake soon enough. If not, we have a difficult journey ahead of us, to get back to civilization.”

Jane tapped her father with another cast of [Greater Treat Wounds] as she looked down at him, worried.

Poi declared. “Teressa. You and I are on shelter-building. Everyone keep an eye on the Imaging. If anyone shows, we will erase the Imaging with a [Dispel] and we will make new plans based on whatever shows.”

Jane said, “Okay,” as she picked up her father on a bed of shadows.

Teressa pointed at the supplies down the beach, saying, “I’ll get those.”

Poi said, “I’ll start on the shelter.”

They got to work.

- - - -

Erick woke to the smell of barbecue and the twittering of Ophiel, and then he blinked. He had half a thought and then his world became vibrating pain. Light spiked his eyes. He jolted out of bed, reflexively, out of control, and disgorged watery bile as roiling, head-splitting pain shocked through all of him.

Jane was suddenly there, at his side, touching him with a glowing blue hand and speaking in muted sounds. Erick puked again, but nothing came up. Ophiels sang, as though underwater. Everything sounded as though it was unde—

His hearing came back with an inner-ear pop.

The world stopped shifting under his hands and knees. He breathed. He puked some blood.

And then he felt better.

But darkness came on, anyway.

- - - -

Erick woke to quiet words spoken on the other side of the room.

Jane slapped down a card on a conjured table, followed fast by Teressa, and then Poi. Poi took the pile and that floor of the Wizard’s Tower.

Jane frowned. “I’m starting to think mind reading is a better way to cheat than shadow spying.”

“Wizard’s towers is a game of skill more than luck.” Poi smiled as he said, “So take your loss and slap down another warrior so I can steal that floor, too.”

Teressa set down her cards. “He’s awake.”

Jane was suddenly beside Erick, having slipped through the shadows to be there. Deep worry filled her eyes, and then she softened. She breathed. She touched his arm. “Hey there, dad. Feeling better this time?”

“A lot—” He sat up and the world swam, but then the world calmed. He had some messages, but he ignored those for right now. He breathed. He said, “I feel a lot better.”

They were inside a stone building that was not the guesthouse at Tenebrae’s Castle, for it was only one story tall, and the windows showed a beach just outside. They were still at the beach? Either a lot of time had passed, or not much at all, for the sun shone outside. Erick guessed that a lot of time had passed, because Tenebrae had vanished with Rock and Obsidia when he was halfway through making his new magic, but they didn’t come back. How long had he been out? A day? It had to be some length of time because the others had conjured furniture and were playing card games.

Erick asked, “Is Tenebrae okay?”

“He’s fine.” Jane’s voice sounded more hurt than angry, as she said, “He abandoned us, but that’s Tenebrae for you.”

“… Ah.” Erick understood. “I see.”

“Yup,” Poi said.

Erick sighed. “I was hoping he could see all the spells I made. They weren’t supposed to be that… powerful.”

“And then they were,” Poi said.

Teressa said, “I saw the whole thing through [Witness]. That was some strong magic. You were floating without a flight spell. Super Large Area, too.”

Jane asked, “The first one negates the other three, right? That’s what you planned on.”

Erick mentally flipped through his latest blue boxes, reading them as he went. “… Yeah. It negates... Er. No. It also weakens, uh, other magics? Huh. That one turned out weird.”

--

Normalize 1, instant, super large area, 250 mana

<Empower normal physical functionality throughout the physical world, creating a myriad of individual effects. Directly weaken some forms of magic.> Lasts 10 minutes.

Exp: 0/100

--

Harmonize 1, instant, super large area, 250 mana

<Shift the physical into individualized order.> Lasts 10 minutes.

Exp: 0/100

--

Amplify 1, instant, super large area, 250 mana

<Fill the physical with rising power, enabling a myriad of possible physical effects.> Lasts 10 minutes.

Exp: 0/100

--

Discord 1, instant, super large area, 250 mana

<Shift the physical into discordant chaos.> Lasts 10 minutes.

Exp: 0/100

--

To Erick,

That was a lot of magic, and all at once, too. Good job!

+12 points to you, as is appropriate.

All of your new spells are alpha spells with those little alligator teeth, as you have called them, because what they do is not what is written, and they are supposed to be basic tier spells. I’ll figure out the proper wording after I see you use them for a while.

As for the spells themselves:

My first instinct was to deny them from the Open Script and make them Particle Mage only, for I can see what they can do, as I am sure you can, too. But denying this new branch of magic would be wrong. Unless anything truly breaking happens, your new spells will be absorbed into the Open Script in a year and a day, like normal, but only Normalize, and likely a lesser version of it; Medium size, perhaps. People will have to study and understand that one in order to get the others, like people have to do for the Worldly Path Quest, from [Blink], to [Teleport], and then all the rest.

Thanks for your hard work!

~Rozeta

As always, this message will delete after it is read and understood. Thanks again!

--

Erick watched as Rozeta’s words vanished, then he read over his new spells again. He said, “These are going to be confusing for a lot of people.” He handed them out to his daughter and his people, saying, “What do you think?”

Poi dashed the boxes away, saying, “Now that you’re awake, I think we need to talk about where we are, and what we’re doing next.”

Erick blinked. “… Right. That is a good point. Is Tenebrae actually okay? I considered that we would be abandoned, but I didn’t think… Well. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Jane was reading the spell boxes, but she looked to Erick, and sighed. Teressa grunted disapproval at further mention of Tenebrae.

Poi said, “Tenebrae will eventually be fine. He’s not getting near us again, though.”

Erick sighed. “Yeah. Probably for the best. Good for him for deciding to be with his kids instead of denying their requests. I was hoping that he’d pick that option. Where is ‘here’, though?” He looked to the window. “How long was I out? It’s already the afternoon?”

“You’ve only been asleep for a few hours.” Jane said.

Poi explained everything.

Erick listened.

And then he went, “Huh. I noticed the lies, but I did not notice that the sun was rising, instead of setting. I feel like I should have noticed that.”

Jane snorted.

Erick clapped once, then rolled himself out of bed and stood up, saying, “So! We’re in Nelboor! And close to the Highlands? I think I know our next step!”

Teressa laughed, then said, “Let’s slow that [Teleport], Boss. Nelboor ain’t like any other continent. Did you read about this place?”

Erick sat back down on his conjured bed. “Yeah, I read about it. Lotta war, all the time.”

Jane said, “A lot less monsters.”

“A point in its favor.” Teressa said, “But there’s a reason for that.”

Poi said, “There are roving bands of mercenaries that call themselves soldiers or clans, depending on how they operate. They’re great at keeping the monsters mostly dead, but they tend to threaten the same against everyone else they meet who doesn’t fly their colors. You might as well call them privateers.”

“Or bandits,” Teressa added.

“Yes, but we won’t antagonize them by calling them that, will we?” Poi asked.

Teressa happily raised her hands and mocked, “I surrender, sir! Please take only all of my money and possessions.”

Jane frowned. “Please tell me it’s not going to be that bad.”

“It might be!” Teressa said. “I’ve heard stories about this continent.”

“So.” Poi asked, “Are the four of us going to pretend to be a clan? Or soldiers? Either choice will be difficult. With a fake clan-name, other clans we find will challenge us for duels, and if we call ourselves a known clan name, we might have to fight for our lives, or we might find unexpected friends that will hate us even more if they find out we lied. If we pretend at being soldiers, then… That’s complicated. We probably shouldn’t do that. If we pretend to be adventurers, we will likely be press ganged by armies, or be toyed with by clans, or maybe even killed if we’re found outside of towns, and we will be found outside of town, because there are no inns for adventurers. Adventurers are violently discouraged from being here, but mostly it's just beating and robbing. But, we could pretend to be adventurers, anyway. It would be the closest to the truth, and thus easiest to fake.” Poi said, “But, more importantly, didn’t you want to go incognito, now, Erick? That’s gonna dictate how we do everything from here on out.”

Erick smiled wide. “Yes! I want to go incognito.” He briefly thought of the clothes he had left behind in Spur, along with everything else he had put together in order to be incognito, and decided that he could always get more, or make more himself. “How do we buy stuff if they don’t like adventurers? Can we just be people on a world tour? Or sightseeing? A fourth option?”

Teressa said, “This place isn’t like Spur, or Treehome, or Oceanside. Every city is owned by a clan or an army. Or… Maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway: You have to be approved to enter cities, and adventurers are automatically un-approved, far as I heard. Even the Mage Guild isn’t appreciated, but they are tolerated, if only to empower the massive anti-Spatial magic spells that blanket every city. If we go as unaligned tourists then we will get targeted and then attacked. No matter how we do this, we’re going to have trouble.” She smiled as she said, “We were not prepared for this leg of the trip.”

Erick chuckled. “Do you want to beat people up?”

“I would not be against such outcomes,” Teressa said. “But the problems I see happening is that these people are going to take it too far, and I don’t think you would like that. I can keep my anger in check.” She looked to Jane. “Can you? This won’t be like those Celebration Hunt duels.”

Jane frowned a little at Teressa, and asked, “All we’re doing is going to the Songli Highlands, though?” She said, “I admit, I did not read up on them too much, but I did read that the Highlands were neutral ground. We’re just going to lightstep in there, right? Shouldn’t require too many lies or fights.”

Teressa went, “Ehhh.”

Poi raised an uncertain eyebrow.

Erick had read up on the Highlands, though. He said, “The Songli Highlands are a bunch of villages and a few major cities located to the west of the Wanzhi river. They try to teach anyone who shows aptitude for Song Magic, but they only allow those who become part of the clan to actually learn their major secrets. I’ve heard that they’re peaceful in their interior, and that they’ll trade with anyone, but they’re ruthless to those who try to take what’s theirs.” He looked to Teressa and Poi, and said, “And I heard that they liked tourists. We’re just going to have to stay in the designated parts of the towns and such.”

Teressa shrugged. “You might be right. It is a large continent.”

Poi said, “I did [Blink] past a lot of detail, this is true. Nelboor is almost twice the size of Glaquin, and home to many different cultures as there are Clans and Armies, and there are a lot. But, broadly, we are going to have problems in Nelboor that we could solve now with a bit of preparation.”

Erick nodded, “Of course. I’m going to prepare by leveling these new spells I just made, and… I smelled barbecue before? Is there any left?”

Teressa said, “Yup! Poi cooks a good fish.”

“Yeah.” Jane walked over to a stone box set against the wall and opened it, saying, “I did not expect Poi to be able to cook out here just as good as he could cook at home.”  She took out a stone tray of fillets, smothered in sauce. “This guy just walked through the dunes and found some spicy weed growing in the sand and turned it into a sauce.”

Erick’s mouth began to water as he caught the scent of the cooked fish.

Poi practically beamed. “Thank you, Jane.” He added, “Sweetgrass grows wild almost everywhere that people have fished the ocean. Not so much in inhabited places, but everywhere else. It spreads like dune grass and almost looks the same, but it has a slight orange tint. Anyone can do what I did.”

Jane conjured a table in front of her father and handed over dinner, which was actually more like lunch according to the sun’s position outside. Erick cast a [Heat Ward] on the plate. It started to sizzle, slowly, but it would take a minute to heat up. He breathed in the smell. It was full of umami with a hint of sugar.

“How did you make the sauce?” Erick asked.

Poi said, “Dry and pound sweet grass to a powder in a stone bowl, then mix it with [Cleanse]d ocean water and bring to a boil in that same bowl. Easy as can be.”

“Convenient!” Erick said, “Someone made that a long time ago, I guess?”

“Yeah, but no one knows who.” Poi said, “So about our plans and the dangers ahead…”

Erick dismissed the [Heat Ward] and conjured a fork, as he said, “Love to hear about it.”

Poi nodded, then spoke in detail about clans and armies and expectations of the pervasive tribe-like culture of Nelboor, but most of it was generalizations. Most of it likely wouldn’t happen, but it was better to be prepared than not. Teressa added her own knowledge to the talk, while Jane asked questions. Erick mostly listened and ate dinner. The fish was delicious.

While they were talking, he experimented with his new spells through an Ophiel hovering a good ten kilometers out to sea. Erick got a good idea of what they all did, and then he started power leveling them, dumping mana into [Normalize], [Harmonize], [Amplify], and [Discord] until they all became level 10.

Erick fully came back to the conversation when Poi dropped a minor bomb.

Poi said, “And the Quiet War is in full effect in this land, so you two, Erick and Jane, will likely get some challenges, but they should all be open and honest challenges as I have already discussed. We’ll have to watch for assassinations at night, especially if we don’t use [Prismatic Ward], but I think we should use [Prismatic Ward], and if someone finds out who Erick is, we’ll deal with it.”

Jane frowned. Erick grumbled.

Teressa’s eyes brightened as she happily said, “I could take those challenges for you! That would be fun.”

Poi said, “That would be bad. Don’t forget that code of honor I talked about.”

Erick said, “Eh. We’ll be fine.”

Jane said, “I’d be happy to slap down an uppity young master.”

“A ‘young master’?” Erick said, side-eyeing his daughter.

Poi sighed.

“Oh, Poi!” Erick said, “We’ll be fine! The Songli Highlands are supposed to be friendly!”

Poi said, “None of this is going to go how you think it will go. The Songli Highlands are only friendly because they have the power to be friendly; we will have to submit to certain measures if we want in to any of the towns. If we break those measures, then they will go after us like they would any other law breakers. Maybe even more so.”

“Eh! The more you tell me, the less worried I am.” Teressa said, “All anyone says about Glaquin is that we’re all a bunch of adventurers who knife each other in the back and sell our souls to Shades, but I know that isn’t true.”

Jane laughed. “Some people do sell their souls to the Shades, though! Don’t forget about Bulgan.”

Erick said, “It’ll be fiiiiine!”

Jane asked, “But what are we going to call ourselves?”

And so began a debate, with much arguing, and laughter, and jokes. Even Poi started to smile and get into it when Jane started throwing out names like ‘Dragon Killers’ and ‘Demon Hunters’, which would surely draw the exact wrong kind of attention. Poi suggested ‘World Conquerors’ and Erick groaned.

Jane suggested, “Oh oh! Treehuggers. Because of Yggdrasil.”

Teressa laughed loud while Poi gave a sensible chuckle.

Erick helpfully supplied, “I heard that ‘treehugger’ refers to someone who fucks trees. Or rather, treants. Or possibly trees that they have [Treeshape]d. I am unsure.”

Teressa laughed louder.

Jane said, “So no to the ‘Treehugger’, then.” More laughter. Jane added, “I’m not hearing ‘no’!”

- - - -

Tenebrae opened his eyes. He reclined in his bed, his arms and legs feeling like antirhine weights, but a fire of pure magic blossomed in his chest. A raging hope. An audacious series of thoughts tangled in his mind, clashing with each other like a thousand conflicting [Lightning]s. Those strange thoughts had woken him.

Something fell to the stone floor. He turned his head. Palodia had gotten up from her chair and dropped her book; she was already walking toward him. Rushing toward him, really. Asking if he was okay.

He said he was fine. She nagged at him again and again, and he said that he was fine, again and again, but his heart and his mind wasn’t really focused on her, anyway. He had woken up under his own power, this time, and then he remembered.

The world; harmonized. Reality made subjective. His own heart beating in time to Poi’s and Erick’s, while the waves crashed in perfect sync with each other.

He laughed.

Erick had called out to the world with his stupid little song, and the world responded. That idiot-savant managed to do it again.

Tenebrae laughed.

“Oh gods, he’s hysterical. A potion reaction?” Palodia called out, “Obsidia! Rock! Slate!”

The others rushed up the stairs, their stone feet smacking stone like the tumbling of several boulders. Bah! His children were too damn loud.

Tenebrae decided to say as much, “Too damn loud. I’m fine. I’m awake. I’m better.”

Rock instantly declared, “No you are not! We agreed—”

“Bah!” Tenebrae felt a tension inside of his chest, so he relaxed. He breathed. He said, “I know. I’m not going into the Green Labyrinth ever again. But…” He smiled wide, and looked to his children, and to his oldest friend and the best cook in the world. “I don’t have to go in there ever again. Erick will figure it out. And if he doesn’t?” Tenebrae laughed. “I’ll throw him at the Dragons, and he and I can both get [Gate] that way. Erick is a Wizard.”

Rock, Slate, and Obsidia each startled in their own way.

Palodia stared down at Tenebrae with focused eyes. “Have you any proof?”

“I don’t.” Tenebrae said, “I saw no mana come from him. I can prove nothing. But I know. Palodia. I know he is a Wizard.”

Palodia leaned back, a slight frown on her lips. “If there’s no proof, then he’s not a Wizard.”

“Rock.” Tenebrae asked, “What did you see out there? Obsidia?”

Rock frowned.

Obsidia said, “What I saw was that you failed to be healthy enough to witness the entire spectacle, and that my barrier did nothing.”

Tenebrae sighed, with a smile. “All true. It was a status-effect. Not direct damage. An oddity that somehow got through your barrier, perhaps. It matters not. What matters is that Erick is a Wizard.” With great effort, Tenebrae lifted his hand and held it out, palm up. “Give me his notes.”

Rock stared down at the upturned palm. “No. You can barely lift that arm.”

Tenebrae didn’t fight. Instead, he dropped his arm, saying, “Fine. I have time. We took everything of his, did we not? Is the Estate moving yet?”

“We took his notes but gave back everything else. We’re already headed back to Wyrmridge.” With obvious distress, Rock said, “We’ll be there in a few days, and then Slate, Obsidia, and I will depart. You should be better by then and I am sure you don’t want us here.”

“No.” Tenebrae said, “Don’t leave. Stay. You already moved back in, so make it more permanent.”

Tenebrae felt lighter after saying those words. He was never able to say those words before, but he suddenly found himself able to speak the desire he had buried for so long. It was a stupid system they had created all on their own; every new not-Rocky rushing away as soon as they could. They had thought he wanted them gone. He used to want them gone, this much is true. But no longer.

As the words he had spoken settled into the room, everything felt right for the first time in a long time.

Rock, Obsidia, and Slate, each startled in their own way, again.

Slate smiled first, and said, “We will stay.”

“Yes!” More softly, Obsidia repeated, “Yes. We will stay.”

“Of course, father,” Rock said.

“Good.” Tenebrae felt lethargy claim his excess energy. He had glimpsed new magic, and he wanted to do everything, but he couldn’t; not right yet. And so, he closed his eyes again, saying, “I feel like sleeping again, so go away, but not too far.” He remembered something. He opened his eyes, and put a little heat in his words, as he said, “Ophelia needs to write me an apology! Two pages. I won’t ever see her again until she does.”

That was a lie. He’d see her if she showed, even without the apology.

Obsidia chuckled, while Rock and Slate smiled.

Almost timidly, Palodia whispered to the other three, “Is Erick a Wizard?”

Already drifting off to sleep, but still able to hear and respond, Tenebrae said, “Probably, Palodia. Probably.”

- - - -

Erick walked along the beach, barefoot and happy, sporting shorts and sunglasses. It was a good day, and feeling the hot sand between his toes was a good feeling. He would have liked to have actual beachwear, but they only sold stuff like that in certain markets, like for the pearl divers of Portal, or for other underwater professions. Beachwear for leisure didn’t really exist on Veird. ‘Shorts’ didn’t really exist, either, but getting a pair of those only required the sacrifice of some pants and an application of [Fabricate].

Jane wore a bikini made from an extra pair of her own clothes. She kicked the surf as she walked beside Erick. It was just the two of them, right now. Poi and Teressa were back in the shelter, sleeping inside a [Prismatic Ward], while a few Ophiel played in the dunes atop the shelter and kept a lookout. Other Ophiel flew high in the sky, or played in the surf beside Jane. One sat on Erick’s shoulder, twittering in contented violin sounds, while a pair watched over the Imaging, vigilant for the appearance of new blue dots. They watched for monsters and people, switching the map back and forth whenever they felt the need, which was every 5 minutes or so, apparently.

The map was only there as a normal precaution, but this place was rather empty of everything. Monsters or people, neither were here. It was nice. Even Yggdrasil’s eye had managed to find Erick again, though it had taken him a while to do so. Erick was glad that he hadn’t accidentally gotten out of range of the big guy, and had Yggdrasil pop like the Ophiel had, though he suspected that ‘getting too far from Yggdrasil’ was a feat that might be literally impossible.

Erick and Jane had walked a good kilometer down the beach, talking about nothing in particular; just enjoying each other’s company. Erick’s soul was slightly damaged, but nothing too bad. It was mostly healed, too, which was good. He wasn’t done making magic today.

And because of that thought, he turned the conversation toward magic, asking, “How’s your [Shadow Replication] working out?”

“A few problems to fix, yet. Failed to make it exactly how I wanted, but I can make it again tomorrow.” Jane said, “But since we’re talking about magic and it’s just you and me, Poi said that one of your spells made you float.” Jane walked closer, then matched his stride. “Said you looked like you were supporting yourself on a [Thunder Wave Aura]. When that spell dropped, he said he had to pull you out of the water and you almost drowned.”

“… Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have done that so close to the beach.” Erick asked, “Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” Jane said, without anger. “You need to pick up the Quests for [Greater Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration]. That way, Ophiel can heal you the next time you almost kill yourself. By the way, you counted for 1 person out of the 5000 that I need to ‘rescue from death’ in order to get [Regeneration].”

She had said the words casually, but she was just hiding her hurt.

“Sorry.” Erick said.

“I love you, dad, but just like how I have my own life and that hurts you, I know you have your own life and that hurts me, too.” Jane looked away, saying, “I’m not… I’m not actually mad at you. It’s just a part of life to watch the people you love get hurt. I’m more mad at that fact, but you are the one hurting yourself, so there’s some obvious overlap.”

They walked together, down the beach, atop the wet part of the white sand. There was no separating line of broken shells between the dry part and the wet part, as there would have been back on Earth. Erick distinctly recalled from his time in Florida that there should have been a line of jumbled shells up on this beach, but this world was too young, and not many seashell-type animals had been made. That realization did not hit him as hard as realizing that he was hurting his daughter just by exploring this world, and that her plan would have visited that same hurt upon him.

And that there was no way to avoid that.

Jane matched her stride to Erick, and Erick did the same for her. She grabbed his hand, and he squeezed hers. Both of them smiled for a little while, ignoring the truth of reality. They walked hand in hand in the sun, across the sand. And then Jane broke away.

The wind blew warmth across the beach.

Soon enough, Erick broke the silence, asking, “What’s the difference between [Greater Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration]?”

Jane handed Erick a blue box.

--

Greater Treat Wounds X, instant, touch, 250 mana

Greatly heal the injuries of the target. Greatly increase the natural healing of the target for one full day. Greatly increases Health Regeneration. Effect breaks if damage is incurred.

--

Like speaking from a book she had read, Jane said, “While [Greater Treat Wounds] will repair broken bones and has the ability to restore minor losses of flesh when used right away, [Regeneration] is focused on the secondary effect of [Greater Treat Wounds] and can be used well past the window where [Greater Treat Wounds] shines. For actual medical treatment, and when discussing healing outside of battle, a healer is not a healer if they do not have [Regeneration].” On a more personal note, she added, “[Polymorph] sort of makes both of them obsolete if you use it right, but not many people have [Polymorph], and injured, unconscious people can’t [Ploymorph], anyway.”

“You’re going to be a healer?” Erick asked, “I heard about [Restoration] helping to restore vibrancy to the body and making all other healing magic easier. Have you considered that one, too?”

“I’m not going to be a healer, but yes, I am. Can’t have two healing quests at the same time, though, so [Restoration] is going to have to wait.” Jane said, “I’ve been working on that Charm magic, too. Charms won’t be as good as actual rods of [Greater Treat Wounds], but we’re out of those, now, and I won’t ever let myself be out of the battle because of an injury.”

Erick smiled. “I’ll have to get those Quests, too.”

Jane nodded, happily saying, “Good! Start with [Greater Treat Wounds]. That should be the most practical for you.” She asked, “But what are you going to do with your new spells?”

Erick looked out across the world, and said, “I need to play around with them, first.”

“I know you leveled them already. No ideas yet?”

“Ohh!” Erick smiled. “I’ve got ideas.”

“Good!” Jane smiled, then she hopped back the way they came, saying, “What form won’t be affected, you think?”

Erick shaped a [Stillness] over his daughter, along with a [Prismatic Ward] from an Ophiel, saying, “[Lightwalk]. You should be able to see through the light of [Stillness] with that one.”

Jane glowed with an inner brightness, turning partially transparent and mostly dark blue inside the dome of protective magic. She called out, “Let ‘er rip!” but it came out as simple spoken words and a flash of white brightness.

Erick smiled, then he turned his attention to the ocean. He had a grand plan for his four new spells, but like all grand plans, it started with a few steps.

[Normalize]. Aurify.

The world around Erick turned safer, it seemed. Not much happened except for a slow drain on his mana. A good distance away in every way, there was a great lot of nothing. This was the expected result. These spells were not meant to be used individually, after all.

A blue box appeared.

--

Normalize Aura, instant, super large area, 1 mana per second

<Empower normal physical functionality throughout the physical world, creating a myriad of individual effects. Directly weaken some forms of magic.>

--

Erick cut the aura, then moved onto the next spell.

[Harmonize]. Aurify.

Waves began to crash upon the shore with purpose, and in sync. The wind moved like a solid object. Sand moved in that wind, becoming fractal swirls. Grass swayed in harmony. A blue box appeared.

--

Harmony Aura, instant, super large area, 1 mana per second

<Shift the physical into individualized order.>

--

Erick cut that aura. The effect lingered, briefly. Then chaos came back into the world.

Moving right along.

[Amplify]. Aurify.

Erick was the center of a still pond, and then, he was the disturbance. He moved a hand, and ripples raced away, like itty-bitty shock waves, guided by the surface of his body. Those waves crashed outward, going a lot further than Erick would have expected before they dissipated.

A blue box appeared.

--

Amplify Aura, instant, super large area, 1 mana per second

<Fill the physical with rising power, enabling a myriad of possible physical effects.>

--

Erick wasn’t done with this one.

[Amplify Aura] was the damaging part of what would come. He needed to understand it more than the other parts.

He snapped his fingers and his aura rang like a gong, like dropping a boulder into Reality at his fingertips, creating shockwaves that radiated from the entirety of his body, and that continued to radiate, like a gong smacked hard. Sand blasted away from under his bare feet, quickly leaving him standing above the ground. He floated on his own shockwaves as those shockwaves rushed across the beach and into the sky, pulsing away dunes and turning the tops of cresting waves into mist. He took a step—

A problem appeared.

He couldn’t walk on the air, like this, like he could with [Greater Lightwalk]. He stepped forward and only managed to flail his feet. His flailing only managed to increase the shockwaves coming from his whole body, which in turn forced him further into the air, away from the land, in a way that was likely ‘away from the closest solid object’, which was Veird itself. Erick wasn’t quite sure what was happening there. All he knew was that he began to rise into the air as shockwaves continued to blast away from him. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was just odd. He smiled, and enjoyed the lift. It wasn’t nearly as loud as he had expected, either, but that was likely because it was his aura, after all.

He heard the gong noises, sure, but they did not hurt him.

Ophiel’s experience of this aura was completely different.

Shockwaves crashed over Ophiel, and Ophiel fluttered backward, away from Erick, taking minor bits of damage with each pulse. He complained in flute sounds that were more telepathic than aural, since Erick couldn’t really hear anything except for his own gonging. This was a much better result than what he had expected. He had expected the noise to be worse. He had expected his eardrums to rupture and for blood to splatter from every part of him.

He also expected to shut down the spell well before it got that far. So this was good! All good results, so far. Better than expected.

He glanced to Jane. The entire bubble he had put around her was bright white; the result of [Stillness] turning sound to light. Ophiel was there with her, in his white sunform, protecting her while Jane used her own lightform, looking rather blue.

Erick noticed the waters ahead of him. Some fish under the waves had turned to mulched sushi. A lot of fish, actually. The water was pink and frothy and the mist off the waves was also pink in some places.

Ah.

Erick pulled his aura inward, trying to mitigate the damage—

He immediately turned his aura off, as his own [Personal Ward] began to flicker bright white, taking damage, and the gong sounds ramped up to 11, and then well past 12. Without the shockwaves to support him Erick plummeted into the new hole in the beach. The ocean rushed in to congratulate him on his magical success with a bit of impromptu drowning.

After an embarrassing rescue from Jane, Erick was once again on dry land.

He joked, “I didn’t swallow any water this time!”

“Yup!” Jane said, as she poked him with a dark glow. “You’re bleeding from the ears, though, and now you’re not.” She glanced to the air. “No Quest credit, that time.”

“See! I was perfectly fine!” Erick threw a [Cleanse] over himself and turned saltwater into normal water and stray blood into thick air.

“Don’t sound too much like Tenebrae, dad,” Jane said, as she moved back to her protective bubble.

Erick cast his next aura.

The waves ahead of him crashed down and turned into indistinct ripples that moved in every possible direction, including away from the land. Schools of fish that had come to eat the sushi results of the previous aura, began to move in uncoordinated ways.

… Sand, disturbed from a dune, began to roll uphill.

A blue box appeared.

--

Discord Aura, instant, super large area, 1 mana per second

<Shift the physical into discordant chaos.>

--

Jane left her protected space, looking at everything. And then she looked at the footprints she was leaving. Holes in the sand resettled like water coming back together; like a tiny splash. That splash continued upward, to form footprints that extended above the sand, inverted.

She walked closer to Erick, but eyed the upward footprints, saying, “That’s fucking weird.”

Except the words came out static; just barely above silence. Erick could only understand her because he noticed her lips moving. He instinctively read them when no sound came out.

Jane waved the air in front of her and sent, ‘Sound wave canceling aura?’

‘And a few more unintended effects.’ Erick sent, ‘The sand is acting weird. And so is the water. But… It’s actually quite relaxing.’

‘Yup.’ Jane said, ‘Now turn it off.’

Erick did so, then said, “The combination aura will be all of those effects, as I choose.”

“No [Stillness]?” Jane said, “Make people think you’re shooting light when you blow shit up. Make it easier to move around with [Greater Lightwalk]. I noticed you had trouble walking, there.”

“Eh… Maybe. But, no. I want this completely separate from lightform.” Erick said, “It’ll be a [Particle Domain Aura], or whatever it ends up being called.”

“Light is a particle,” Jane teased.

“… A valid point.” Erick said, “But, no. I want to be able to see through this magic. Not blind myself. And I don’t want there to be any elemental conversion shenanigans that other people can exploit. Adding [Stillness] would create way too much light.”

“Fair enough. It was just an idea, anyway.” Jane poked him with another finger full of dark blue magic. “Whatever the case, if you don’t like what you make, you can always remake it in ten days.” She went back toward her protective space, saying, “Good luck!” just before ducking back into safety.

Erick smiled at his daughter, then he turned back toward the water. He breathed. He held up a hand and began channeling mana through his new spells, to check to see if his new auras made any unintended sounds different from his Particle Spells. He expected static, just like all of his other Particle spells.

His eyes went wide, as his ears, and his soul, heard sounds that were not static.

There was an underlying calmness to [Normalize Aura]. A unifying density to [Harmonize Aura]. A rising tension, in [Amplify Aura]. And finally, some jazz-like oddity to the ordered chaos that was [Discord Aura]. Erick laughed a little. What a happy accident! He wasn’t particularly fond of Jazz, but he liked the sound of [Discord Aura].

With a thought, Erick had four Ophiel flutter down to stand with him on the beach. Each one took a part of the new magic, and each one helped to bring them all together. With a ringing joy in his heart, Erick cast.

A vibrancy filled Erick’s aura, spreading out like a symphony, touching the world, and turning it all more solid. He snapped his fingers, and a controlled gong broke the beach under his feet, splashing away water and flinging dirt in every direction as shockwaves crashed from his whole body. The crater was only a five-meter-wide crater, but Erick was standing on air again.

He flexed. The crater expanded.

He pulled back, turning on Discord. Sand flowed like water, into the space it had been before. Erick pulled back his whole aura, like a breath withheld. The world turned normal as his feet met the sand, again. He walked, like normal—

And he fell over, falling into the sand like it was made of air, all the way up to his chest. He cut his aura, instantly.

… And now, he was stuck in the sand. One arm was completely submerged, the other free to flail around. His mouth was barely above the surface and the beach pressed in from all sides like a tight blanket. Erick couldn’t help but laugh, and so he did.

Jane stepped out of her safe space, saying, “Don’t fall too far down! You don’t have [Stone Body]!”

Jane didn’t get a chance to get close enough to help. Erick just turned to light and stepped out of the dirt.

He spread his arms, indicating that everything was fine, saying, “There’s a learning curve.” He looked around. “Now where’s that box. It’s taking its sweet time—”

A blue box appeared.

--

Physical Domain, instant, super large area, aura, 5 mana per second

<Produce a myriad of Physical effects.>

--

Erick hummed, then handed the box to Jane, saying, “Something tells me that there’s hidden depths to that tiny description.” He glanced at his other, really good Domain, and then at his third Domain, which read differently than how it used to read.

--

Lodestar, instant, close range, aura, 1 mana per second

Shine Timeless Brilliance.

All of your Light effects are supercharged, and difficult to corrupt.

All of your Light effects require 10x more mana to Dispel.

Your Light effects are uncorruptible and undispellable while they exist inside your Lodestar.

--

Domain of the Withering Slime, instant, super long range, aura, 2 MP per second

Provide an anchor for the Withering Slime to exist on your world.

Slightly empower all physical damage dealt when in use.

Particle Mage Only.

--

[Domain of the Withering Slime] did not have that ‘Slightly empower all physical damage dealt when in use.’ until recently, until Particle Magic was integrated into the Open Script and all those alpha-spell carrots in all of Erick’s spells got removed, and the spells were adjusted to be closer to what they actually were. He hadn’t experimented too much with his Withering Domain since then, but he suspected that the ‘revealed attribute’ had actually always been there, it was just unnoticeable. A lot of magic had effects that weren’t listed in their little blue boxes, like the Restful space of [Prismatic Ward] making [Duplicate]d metals automatically be ‘wrought quality’, and ready for enchanting. Particle magic had more ‘hidden effects’ than most. [Condense Hydrogen], [Condense Oxygen], and [Condense Carbon], was just one such trio of spells with untold secrets.

Erick handed over the other two Domains to Jane, saying, “[Physical Domain] obviously has hidden depths.”

Jane read the three boxes, then dismissed them saying, “Maybe [Physical Domain] needs [Stillness]. And then you should add [Domain of Light].”

“I had considered [Stillness] and all of that—” Erick said, “The idea is to have separate powers, though. Why combine everything?”

Jane shrugged. “I’m combining everything these days and it feels nice to switch through Elements as fast as I can make them. [Illusionshape]. [Gloomshape]. [Plasmashape]. I made them all. Just the other day, I started practicing with [Prismatic Body] and using Shape spells to pull those aspects out of me, and then cast them away like minor [Fireball] like effects. You just wrap them up tight and then throw them at a target. It’s all exceedingly clunky and none of it works that well. Most Elements are about as useful as bonking monsters with an active [Stoneshape].” She said, “But some are great.”

Erick happily said, “I want to see! I didn’t know you were doing this.”

Jane blushed a little, looking embarrassed, then she said, “Okay. Here. Watch.”

Jane turned to a rainbow watercolor, then stepped to the side, and pointed down the beach. A dark fragment of her radiance flung away like a spreading blot of— Ah! It was Elemental Gloom. A mix of Shadow and Air. Gloom spread like, well, gloom, quickly expanding into a large blot of wispy shadows that drifted away on the wind like so much smoke.

And then Erick frowned. “Ah. I just realized. I know what it feels like to [Lightshape] my own lightform, even if those feelings have been secondary and mostly experienced through Ophiel.” Ophiel chirped in flutes, agreeing with him; it was painful! Erick asked, “Doesn’t that hurt, Jane? Like, a lot?”

Jane returned to her body, and said, “Not really. It’s a small pinch from the whole. I tried this with [Greater Shadowalk] and yes, that is painful if you do it wrong, but if you do it right, then you can make all sorts of strange effects, like shadow spears and whatnot.” She gestured to the spreading gloom, saying “And now I have shadowed air to move around in, but I didn’t have to make the spell first. I can do the same with plasma for an explosion-like effect, or fires to start a fire, or sand to throw in a monster’s face. [Lightningshape] is a bit… uncontrollable at the moment. But I’ll get that one right, soon enough. [Prismatic Body] is every Element, and those Elements come back fast enough.”

“Is this useful, though?” Erick said, “I remember seeing you in your [Greater Shadowalk] and spearing wyrms with a bit of [Shadowshape] to start off the process. Why not work on getting [Greater Prismatic Body], and all of this… self-injuring Shaping would be a lot more effective. And not so injurious.” He added, “And besides. The Shaping spells make those elements weightless and non-injuring until you let them go, which just screams of danger, to me.”

Jane said, “It’s not that useful right now, and a [Stoneshape] released above a monster still does a lot of damage, but I’ve only been trying for a few days. And I can only sustain [Prismatic Body] for ten minutes. It’s been difficult to understand how to upgrade it to ‘Greater’.”

Erick asked, “Did you upgrade to [Greater Lightwalk], yet?”

Jane instantly turned reluctant. She frowned. “… Not yet.”

Erick pressed on, saying, “I probably can’t help you with [Prismatic Body], but I know I can help you with [Greater Lightwalk]. I helped Kiri with some advice, but I can do a lot more than advice.”

Jane glanced down and away, frowning. Then she looked up, right at Erick, and said, “Okay. I’d take some help with that.”

Erick smiled wide. “Great!” He cast a bit of [Stoneshape] to create two stone seats on the beach, facing each other. He sat down, saying, “Come! Come, sit.”

Erick began to glow with light, and the world seemed to glow with him, humming alongside him as he sat across from the seat which would eventually hold his daughter, if she would hurry it up! He was happy that she was letting him help her, and happy that she had helped him with her healing spells while he was… injuring himself. But none of those temporary, fleeting joys compared to the bliss of just being here, in the moment, with the person he loved most in the universe.

Jane… sat down across from her father, and turned on her own lightform.

Where Erick’s form was almost an exact copy of himself, but brighter, Jane’s was herself, but darker, lighter blue.

Erick began at the beginning.

He said, “Feel the world around you, and the light of it all.”

“This is so weird, dad,” Jane mumbled.

“Come on now! Give in to the New Age thinking!” Erick teased, “Or maybe, pretend I’m a massive dragon and you’re a little spider.”

Jane laughed. “Careful, dad. He might hear you.”

“Bah.” Erick said, “Of course he can. He’s listening right now, I am sure! But whatever. Now do as I say.”

Jane smirked, briefly, then wiped that emotion from her lightform and raised her head and soaked in the sun, glowing just a bit brighter, but not much. She had a blockage of some sort, for sure.

Erick channeled [Greater Lightwalk] into the world, and shifted his sight outside of himself, for while Jane was a body of light locked into her imagined form, Erick was a being of brilliance much larger than the small lightform sitting on the stone seat below. He regarded the lightform of his daughter, and then he shifted his own lightform a little, matching hers, but not completely.

Erick’s white core tinged with blue. Jane’s dark core of herself responded, glowing white, glowing brighter.

This too, was a resonance. Exactly the kind of resonance that Erick had worked with all this time, in matching various pieces of spells to other pieces of other spells, and driving the resulting spell to higher heights.

Pulses of radiance echoed from father to daughter, granting her a semblance of a secret that he had understood, but she had not.

Erick saw the exact moment that something clicked inside Jane’s soul. Changes radiated throughout her whole lightform. The dark blue light of her lightform shifted, becoming brighter, becoming bluer, but not changing too much at all, as instead, Jane expanded.

- - - -

Jane felt her soul shift.

She was the light, and the light was so much more than what it had been.

Jane opened her eyes.

In a way that normally only happened when she was her shadowform, Jane was under the ocean, swimming alongside fishes. She played in the grass, watching as the sun soaked into the green. She was in the sky, flying with Ophiel. And she was also sitting across from her father, who was currently beaming with pride and a lot of white light, and a bit of blue.

She smiled, and came back to herself, to her too-small physical self.

A blue box appeared.

--

Greater Lightwalk, instant, long range, 10 MP per second + Variable

You are the radiant day.

--

Jane laughed loud, and then her father was there with his arm draped over her shoulder, singing her praises. She shoved him off, playfully, speaking of how it wasn’t a big deal.

And yet, it was.

- - - -

Erick stood on the beach, watching his daughter play with shadows and light about thirty meters away. She had gotten [Greater Lightwalk]. All it took was some resonant harmony between his own glowing lightform, and hers. It was magical. It was easy.

Well. It was not easy. Helping Kiri had been ‘easy’. All Kiri needed was a few hints. Helping Jane had been… A good workout. Erick would not delude himself into thinking his experiences were the experiences of everyone in the world. What he had just done had taken a lot of magical knowledge, strung together through a myriad of experiences, and a great deal of control, in order to—

She called out, “You can start experimenting, too! I’m watching!”

Erick smiled, then started his own experimenting.

[Physical Domain].

Nothing happened, and then, tiny ripples flowed from his skin, into the world. Resonance built, because Erick let it, quickly becoming gongs that heralded the start of the shockwaves.

Erick adjusted his aura, letting the shockwaves happen well outside of his body, while keeping his body safe. It was an almost instinctual reaction that he had yet to understand, but he would. The gonging sounds lessened, as he fiddled with his new power. Soon, he could hear the world outside of him like he wasn’t the center of a constant producer of pressure waves.

He lifted his foot from the sand, and he stepped forwar—

His foot sunk. He caught himself.

But his shockwaves suddenly grew even larger, pulsing across dunes and disturbing sand, and racing across the waves, kicking cresting waves into mist. [Physical Domain] continued out much further than was comfortable at the moment.

This aura was massive. Controlling this aura was not like controlling his lightform, with tendrils of intent and fine control. This aura was more like [Domain of the Withering Slime]. It was about designating parts of the world to be affected. In [Physical Domain]’s case, Erick understood he was choosing which of the four individual facets of the spell that he wanted to enact upon the world; choosing location, along with quantity, and quality. At a decision of control, and with a flick of intent, the land, sea, and air around him was now ‘normalized’, instead of ‘amplified’.

The shockwaves instantly stopped.

Erick lifted his foot out of the sand, and the sand poured off of his foot exactly as it should have. The displacement of his foot left a small hole in the beach.

The ocean waved onto the land exactly as it should. The wind moved as it wanted to, and nothing seemed out of order. This was the Normalize part of his new aura, and it read: <Empower normal physical functionality throughout the physical world, creating a myriad of individual effects. Directly weaken some forms of magic.> But what did that mean, exactly? A myriad of effects? Weakening certain magics?

He’d figure it out, eventually.

The next test was Harmonize and Amplify at the same time.

He started small, releasing Amplify around his feet like pairs of shoes, not allowing that shift in his aura to cover the rest of him. It was a very small change, and Erick had trouble keeping it that small, but he managed it just fine. His feet vibrated the sand and he sunk down a bit into the beach, but that was it. He had excellent aura control due to quite a few factors, not the least of which was his extensive use of his aura to carry out many different minor tasks, like using his [Flight of a Thousand Hands] to chop vegetables, or using his [Greater Lightwalk] to pick up a book. The greatest affect on his aura, though, was probably his Class Ability of Sculpt Spell, that allowed all spells to be affected by a Major Mana Shaping, for free.

[Physical Domain], though, had some obvious problems.

His feet were getting hot. It was already a bright day, so standing on the white sand was already a minor test in endurance, but as the vibrations stirred up the beach and the sand was not able to escape that heating process, his feet got hotter. And even more worrying, his [Personal Ward] began to flicker across his legs. He was taking actual damage. Not much damage, but still, there was damage.

It didn’t feel that good, either.

Erick cut the vibrations and stepped out of the burying sand.

He held up his left hand and localized an Amplify to just outside of his palm, and not against his skin. He allowed the Amplify to expand to a decimeter across. He realized, right after he had done it, that it was an affectation to use his hand to indicate the position of the ball; his aura controlled where the ball was, not his body, and though there was correlation between the two, there need not be.

He dropped his hand, and concentrated on the ball, now hovering in front of him.

He didn’t do anything to the new experiment, except to look at it, to try and understand how the space transformed over time.

It wasn’t long till tiny shockwaves vibrated across the interior of the caged space. Very tiny. Not much to see, there. With a thought, Erick expanded the space to a full meter, and then to three meters wide; something between a small-sized space and a medium size. He pushed the space away, just a bit, and watched.

Shockwaves began to manifest, more visibly. Like white impressions in the air, ripples bounced back and forth, growing large, trailing smaller shockwaves fore and aft of the main disturbances. A small, droning sound came from the space, but it was not that loud; everything outside of the space was Normalized, after all.

Erick threw a Discord into the center of the vibrating sphere.

The shockwaves instantly stopped.

He removed the Discord, and allowed the shockwaves to naturally begin again. It took half a minute, but the shockwaves started again, and once again filled the space like a cacophony of crisscrossing ripples.

… He added Harmonize to the sphere.

The ripples turned into soldiers, falling into line with each other. Soon, shockwaves began to rip out from the center of the sphere then hit the edge, then bounce back inward to where the waves once again shot outward. It was as though Erick had created a 3D pond surface and dropped a rock in the center, except these ripples only became larger with time. Erick watched, mesmerized.

The sphere caught fire.

Erick startled as heat washed over him, singing his hair and doing damage, but not much. Erick ignored the minor pain.

Flames washed outward from the ever-building shockwaves, escaping the sphere. In three seconds, the fire extinguished itself, but the shockwaves did not. Vibrations had turned the contained sphere into something else. Air became plasma. Light ignited in the sphere, and poured outward.

A bright pink light. A bright blue-white here and there on the edges, and only faintly, but the sphere was a bright magenta for sure.

That wasn’t the problem though. That was only a happy accident. Erick decided he would Alter his mana signature to neon magenta, for he could change the color of most of his magic, but magenta was the color that plasma nitrogen emitted when it was inside an electrical field, and there was no way to easily change the color that was seeing right here.

But still...

“That’s… not right. It’s not hot enough for that.” And it wasn’t. “Oh. It’s just turning everything into a soup. … Okay. Which is why there’s an electrical thing going on, too, I suppose. Interesting.”

And then Erick noticed his [Personal Ward] was flickering white, but barely, like sand was striking his body without his knowing. As time progressed, Erick started to resemble a powdered donut.

Mostly, though, he noticed that the magenta shockwave-orb was growing, overtaking the Normalized air all around it with each pulse of inner light. When Erick noticed this, he started to act against the process, wrapping Normalized Reality tight around the magenta sphere.

It was like holding onto an expanding balloon, or maybe like holding onto one’s own bicep; you could control the strength of your grip, as well as the flexing of the bicep. The only problem here was that the ‘bicep’ was growing.

Erick instantly introduced Discord to the energetic space.

The purple plasma suddenly dulled. The shockwaves ceased. Erick dare not cut his new Domain, though. Instead, he cast a second aura, his [Cleanse Aura]. Thick air seeped up from all around him.

Yup. Radiation.

Erick frowned. He cut his [Cleanse Aura], and focused on his [Physical Domain]. The pulsing sphere was gone, now. This was good. There were surely uses for Discord beyond this ‘sonic canceling’ application, but that would require more experimentation.

For now…

His new [Physical Domain] covered a space that was easily 5 kilometers in radius. At that range, he could not even imagine approaching a town and remaining incognito. His aura would be seen by anyone with a mana sense. So, he tried something… different.

He shrunk his Domain onto himself, with the Normalize aspect active.

… No side effects appeared throughout the whole shrinking process. In moments, his Domain was layered against his skin. It didn’t actually do anything at that range… Did it? Probably not. Anyway! He could hold his [Physical Domain] against his skin or out of the way any time he wanted. Good.

He tried to use his Domain like his [Flight of a Thousand Hands], to lift himself into the air through a direct, gripping-the-ground action. Failure. This aura was a Domain. Not a telekinetic force. None of his Domains could actually, directly affect the world. Even [Lodestar] was only a boost to [Greater Lightwalk]’s telekinetic-like force.

Fair enough.

But he was certainly able to produce a force upon the world with his [Physical Domain]. And force, meant action, which meant reaction. So..

Erick kept himself inside of Normalize, but then he activated Amplify and Harmonize outside of his skin. In seconds, the natural vibrations of the world turned into radiating force, and Erick was standing atop another new crater in the beach. This crater was much smaller than before. Maybe only a meter deep. His Domain was still directly against his skin, after all. Only a small portion of his power was drilling into the ground.

His Ophiel, as outside observers, relayed to him that he was making a whole lot of noise. They began to ‘gong, gong, gong’ in mimicry of him, as they flew around in the sand storms and sea spray that he kicked up.

He stepped forward, and his feet flailed in the air, exactly as before.

So, he cut the Amplify and Harmonize that was in front of him, leaving only the Amplify and Harmonize that was happening against his entire backside.

Action caused reaction.

With a great big gong, Erick suddenly found himself twenty meters out to sea. He turned his aura off in panic, fell to the ocean as gravity dictated, and then skipped across the crests of waves. Once, twice. Then he sank below the surface.

As he swam back to the beach, Jane was there.

She called out, “Looks like fun!”

Erick did the backstroke, saying, “The water looked great, you know! Had to try it.”

Jane reached out with a tendril of light and tapped him with a [Greater Treat Wounds]. She walked back to her own part of the beach, smiling.

Back on the beach, Erick played around with a whole new way of flying, which was more like controlled gonging. It wasn’t very precise, but that would come with time, for sure. It was, however, very loud, and that would be a problem. He could solve that problem… probably.

Meh. Flying was dangerous. He probably didn’t need to fly, and if he did, he wouldn’t be gonging himself into the sky, for sure.

Erick stood upon the beach, and proceeded with his last experiment. The big one.

… Not the ‘big one’. Let’s go with something slightly smaller.

He released his aura to its full size, and then, with a bit of control, Erick exerted his Intent into his aura, choosing a roughly large-sized section of reality just ahead, about a hundred meters forward, on top of the water. Amplify and Harmonize overlapped. Nothing happened at first. And then the ocean waves under the sphere caused ripples to break upward, into the sphere, and the wind rippled against itself.

It took a fair minute, but soon enough, the whole space clanged into itself, exactly as the smaller version had done. The edge sent shockwaves inward. Those waves crashed against each other. The inside sent shockwaves outward. The ocean below the sphere burst away from the effect.

The entire space turned into a crashing, breaking sphere of power that pulsed like the beating heart of some magnificent monster. Salt water became mist. Air flexed and bent. Power rose and kept rising, but the ‘normalize’ effect outside of the sphere kept the breaking power contained. The sphere expanded, for sure, but it was far enough away that the expansion wouldn’t be a problem.

After a full minute, the space shifted. Fire burst from the sphere. Briefly, it was as though a second sun had descended. And then the fire flowed away on the wind, and the plasma in the sphere exuded a bright magenta light.

Electrified nitrogen was pretty. The oxygen had burned away, but it had come back and was present in the faint white-blue hue and in the tiny fires on the exterior of the sphere.

Now, was the time for the actual experiment.

Erick methodically created a tunnel of Harmonize from the far edge of his wide, wide, aura, enabling a tunnel of harmonious power between the breaking sphere and the edge, way off in that direction where there was nothing except more ocean. He made sure that Normalize was around his daughter, and also Poi and Teressa who were still sleeping, back at base. He checked the [Cascade Imaging] closer to the base; still no people within 500 kilometers of here.

With the exploding magenta orb pulsing larger every second, Erick connected the Harmony tunnel to the—

The roaring, blasting sphere of power shattered out of its container, like a purple explosion from a cannon. Sound and violence shook the world as magenta light blasted down a multi-kilometer long tunnel that clipped the surface of the ocean like a carving knife. Water turned to mist. The ocean separated left and right.

And beyond the tunnel, where aura met the open ocean, a soundwave blasted outward in all directions like the knocking of a god.

Erick could barely hear it. He was protected by the Normalized air.

The effect was very visible, though!

After his magenta explosion hit the ocean, it traveled left and right and overhead, across the edge of his aura like a vaguely magenta line, turning white as its initial power diminished greatly the further away it was from the release of his control. The shockwave still managed to turn a small part of the ocean to mist and knock clouds backward, just a bit.

… He canceled his aura as the explosion fully wore itself out.

Jane was already beside him. “Way to go, dad.”

Erick watched as the separated ocean crashed back together, then levelled out, leaving seafoam to mark what had once been a temporary canyon.

Jane grabbed Erick’s attention by saying, “This is how far I’ve gotten. Look.”

Erick looked.

Jane pointed a finger at the sand, and a red dot a hand span wide appeared on the beach. Jane had made a laser beam with her [Greater Lightwalk]. She said, “It’s not quite on the level of the Red Dot spell you just made, but I can make it bright enough for the coherent light to appear under the full sun! I’ll find a use for it yet! Maybe if we had some cats— Spur has cats, right? Fun!”

Erick deadpanned, “You are teasing me.”

“I am!” Jane happily said, “I could already do laser light before but the joke seemed appropriate. Good job breaking the balance. Again.”

A blue box appeared.

--

An update.

Several spells are now Particle Mage Only.

Several spells are now harder to acquire.

~Rozeta

--

The box vanished.

Erick felt a great relief. “Rozeta just put all of these spells into ‘Particle Mage Only’.”

Jane laughed. “Yay for active developers!”

- - - -

In a cloud-filled sky, that was neither full of clouds, nor sky, Rozeta hunkered down on a particularly fluffy imitation cloud. She turned, and glared at the unwelcome visitor to her domain that had been here for the last hour, watching Erick with her. She wondered what he would say.

They had plenty of time to talk; the current moment was stretched to infinity, after all.

The Darkness crossed his arms and stretched his wings, as he sighed toward the [Viewing Screen]. “The problem is that you have given everyone access to the magic of everyone else. This version of your Script was doomed to failure before it even began.”

“Besides the fact that you used to support Wizards into supporting others, so that their magic would live forever in their descendants—” Rozeta glared at the Darkness, even harder. “If you cannot understand why we did that, then I cannot talk to you right now.”

Melemizargo, the God of Magic, and also Rozeta’s father, said, “Your reasoning was unsound and made in the heat of the moment. None of us are proud of what we all did—”

“You aren’t proud.” Rozeta said, “I am proud of what we Relevant Entities managed to accomplish. Extremely proud. It is only because we have held out against you that we are even able to have this talk; that pieces of our universe still exist, at all.” She held her head high. “Besides. We have had this discussion before.”

Melemizargo said, “And I stress that your reasoning for making the Script as you did was unsound. No one should have unearned power. Wizards raising descendants with their power is much different than the Script enabling power for all.”

“We did this to stop you. Our first versions were not able to stop your machinations, so blame yourself if you wish to blame anyone.” Rozeta said, “Because what we did worked. And, more importantly, we discovered untapped potential in every single person who gained the Script. The powerless, who, when granted power, became beacons of civilization. It is the same tale that was told across the Old Cosmology, all the time: A young mortal finds a jewel in the dirt that brings them power, and they use it to create worlds and empires that last for thousands of generations past their own deaths. All we did with the Script is give those jewels to every single person.”

“And trapped them on a single world—”

Rozeta glared, her eyes turning to white infernos.

“—which I will accept partial blame for.” Melemizargo said, “But even with these powers, most of them cannot properly wield magic. You have given the world crutches and expected them to outgrow the need, but your Script does not help anyone reach higher.”

“The Script helped Erick reach higher.”

“Bah! He is a Wizard. He would have gotten here anyway.”

“So what? That is a detail. The fact remains that when some people get the Script, they learn the basics, and their own drive helps them to learn the truths. The only difference between the Old Cosmology and the New is that now everyone has the opportunity to see if they want the power, not just the select few that luck into it, or are able to secure a proper apprenticeship.”

“And the other side of that tale is that a select few who don’t deserve magic are lifted up, and kill others, robbing us all of further opportunity.” Melemizargo said, “For all of our futures, you must see that there’s an entire uninhabited continent out there, Rozeta. Glaquin is dead. Nergal is barely inhabited.”

“And whose fault is that? You are the antagonist here, father.” Rozeta said, “There’ve been countless attempts to resettle Glaquin, but the Shades have stopped every major one.”

“… I will accept partial blame for that. But not all, and you do us both a disservice to blame me for all this world’s ills.” Melemizargo said, “A human settles on Glaquin’s shores, then a raiding party of incani comes and kills them and their whole town. Or the other way around. The dragonkin suffer the same fates, but their issues are even more insidious. The orcols are tainted with wanderlust and unable to advance as a society, which brings up another point against the Script: When the answers to everything are given to everyone, then there is no reason to create solutions, or to attempt to understand the world.” Melemizargo said, “As one who has given unearned power to mortals, I can securely say that giving the wrong people all of the magical solutions they would ever need leads to horrific acts of terror and genocide.” He stressed, “You are doing exactly as I have done these last fifteen centuries, but you see your Script as an act of good. You refuse to see the truth. That all your tiny acts of kindness are actually acts of destruction.”

Rozeta glared, but then she sighed, and looked away. She did not have the desire to argue with her father. Though he had gotten better, he was still slightly insane.

Melemizargo said, “If I were to remake the Script—”

“Never going to happen.”

He continued, “— I would start with one of the other planets out there, not with Veird. I would plant the core and wrap the shell of the Script around one of those worlds to trap the atmosphere, and then enable some way to create more mana inside that barrier, and then see what happens. No control. No spells, sold for a point. No Status.”

“Doomed to failure, and instantly, too.”

“Why?”

Rozeta smirked. She almost said, “Like I’d tell you.”

But that would be ridiculous, for multiple reasons. Primarily, Melemizargo already knew all the ways in which the Script worked; what it did, and how it did what it did. He was obviously speaking in simplifications and rushing past some of the necessary details. She just wanted to be petty, because she could.

But also, he was rushing past all the necessary details.

So Rozeta actually said, “That is so inadequate. And you know this. The Script needs a certain amount of mana to start, and what you propose is not the way it would have to be. Are you actually in there? Or is this darkness that appears before me merely a shadow of what once was?”

The answer was yes. Yes; this darkness was a fragment of what came before. Everyone knew this. But… Okay. Rozeta was fine with being petty, but at least she wasn’t being petulant.

Melemizargo didn’t seem to mind her tone, and if he did, he didn’t show it. He happily said, “To solve the initial problem of mana, I would suggest there be permanent [Gate]s linking the worlds—”

“Father!” Angrily, Rozeta said, “All these planets ALL MOVE! This entire sun system moves! No [Gate]s allowed!”

“Bah!” Melemizargo said, “A detail to overcome. We could organize the [Gate]s to open at certain parts of the year, or something like that. With regard to moving across the universe, we’d set up stations in the Void, outside of any solar system. These stations would cut down on travel time between parts of the entire rotating galaxy. Every little issue with making a proper Script and exploring and populating this New Cosmology is just a problem to overcome. Precision will be a problem, though, so with regard to the needed precision: Have you seen the computer that Erick and Jane brought to this world? Or their car? They’re pulling that car apart in the Wasteland Kingdoms, and they have found its onboard computer, but they are completely lost.” He suggested, “You could get one of Erick’s copied computers to them. Give them a second system to compare. That would enable them to understand what they are seeing by quite a bit.”

Rozeta laughed. “Now who is giving out answers for free!”

Melemizargo briefly scowled. “Technology is not magic. It is not a means to shape the world as one sees fit. One day, it might be, but pure magic can overcome every technology I have ever seen, both real and imagined, and that includes manaminers and spaceships and all of that. One good thing about your Script, is that you can account for those variables, as you did when you rescued Veird from the Sundering.” Melemizargo said, “But technology will be the key to travel to other worlds. Of that, I am sure. Physical systems to aid mana to populate a physical universe.”

False clouds floated in a false blue sky, and Rozeta sighed.

“We don’t have enough mana. We’re barely at positive flow these days. Veird cannot support another world.”

“All we need is more people, daughter.” Melemizargo said, “And with my antagonism ending, and with Erick cleansing the world of major threats, we will get those people.”

“And we’ll get more monsters, too.”

Melemizargo said, “Yes. More mana means more monsters. We might even see monsters with glorious rads for cores. We will surely see a sudden explosion of magictech, too, which will require those cores. You might need to activate that option to let mana condense into crystals.”

Rozeta said, “You could help to prevent much of that. You could reign the monsters in.”

“I will not.”

Rozeta scoffed.

Melemizargo said, “And you know why. I help Those Who Aspire to reach their pinnacles. Monsters are a natural phenomenon, and I do not take away power from the natural world. I do not regulate power. And you shouldn’t, either.”

“You would have killed us all in the beginning if we had not regulated power through the Script. Veird will never bow to you, for that simple reason. You broke ten thousand years of goodwill and the mantle of the God of Magic when you stood against all that remains of our Cosmology.” Rozeta snapped off, “Maybe I should send some monks to dissuade the Wasteland from learning the secrets of that ‘car’.”

“Now you are being petulant, though you have every right.”

Rozeta buried her anger, deep as it could go, as she considered her father’s plans for the future, and how he would fuck over everyone as he usually did.

Melemizargo looked away.

Silence stretched.

Rozeta said, “You will not get any more talons into this Script, father. Kirginatharp will continue to hunt down the Wizards you try to raise into weapons against us all. Do not try me.”

Melemizargo laughed. “What about Erick?”

Rozeta spat, “Are you taunting me, now? Claiming Erick as your own! How foolish!”

Melemizargo stopped laughing. “I apologize, again. That was a rude rejoinder.” He calmly said, “I am just trying to understand your perspective and I went about it in the wrong way.”

“Whatever.” Rozeta said, “Erick is done for the day. You can excuse yourself from my personal space, father.”

“Very well, daughter. Thank you for making his new spells his own.”

Rozeta spat, “I did NOT do that for you. You even saw the other messages from other Relevant Entities rolling in! Sininindi almost manifested herself after that shockwave tore across the world. No doubt she’s already upped her plans to kill the man, just because he exists.”

“I know you didn’t do it for me, and I would never presume, but I still felt the need to thank you. You acted like a true God of Magic in that moment.”

“Are you trying to make me undo it, or is this some other, stranger ploy? Are you insulting me for being lenient the first time, for trying to allow Erick’s spells into the Open Script, which was what he wanted? That’s what Wizards used to do! They used to teach everyone and raise immortal dynasties on the magic they created! But this isn’t the Old Cosmology, father. We can’t let Wizards teach all their magic to everyone they want. We do not have countless other worlds to live upon if this one blows up!”

“I see I have angered you unduly. I apologize. These were just honest words of thanks and praise, my daughter. I shall take my leave.” Melemizargo turned to darkness and retreated, his last words echoing, “I’ll bring some pulled beef next time!”

Rozeta felt, more than saw, as her father left the cloudy sky.

When he was gone, she roared out her anger across the sky and tore apart several clouds. Then she calmed, and exited the timeless moment of Erick’s spell creation. She began to review the problems that she had neglected for a few solitary seconds. There were a lot.

Rozeta sighed, feeling her anger fully vanish, for anger was beneath her. Anger was unproductive. And Rozeta needed to be productive. She began fixing small problems and answering prayers at an increased pace, until she caught up with the normal flow of issues.

… The Script had a few problems, sure. One of which was the necessity of ensuring the thing ran as well as it could. If there was one thing that Rozeta would switch about the next version, would be the necessity of all this oversight. Looking over one world was easy, and Rozeta loved this part of being the Dragon Goddess of the Script. But accepting this same godly mantle for multiple worlds? Impossible.

She could do it for a while, but she would burn herself from all ends if she tried to meet that demand.

Even the dragon that held the mantle of the God of Magic in the Old Cosmology would only hold on to that power for a few hundred thousand millennia; it just got too tiring. And besides that, when her father had been the actual God of Magic for the entire Old Cosmology, her father barely did any actual work! Mostly, he delegated. He did not have to wrangle mana itself, all day long!

Rozeta could not delegate the Script’s demands to any lesser powers. She could not give that power to mortals. That would be the height of foolishness. Worse than giving Erick’s new [Physical Domain] to everyone who had an extra 9 points!

“… Dammit, dad, now you got me thinking.”

And so, while Rozeta worked, she thought of what would go into the Script 2.0.

“Bah!” Rozeta mocked, “Buh buh buh ‘Have I seen Jane’s computer? Have I looked at the ‘car’?’ buh buh buh.” She harrumphed. “Insulting, is what it is! Nothing but insults from that decrepit old man. And what a foolish idea! An untended manaminer? In this Cosmology! What hubris!”

- - - -

Erick and Jane arrived back at the temporary base to find Poi and Teressa both still asleep. Neither of them had heard the sound of his new ‘explosion Domain’, so Erick woke them both and explained what had happened. Poi rapidly suggested they move base. So they did.

In a new spot a good hundred kilometers away from the first, and more inland, dinner was fish again, but this time with rice. Erick had a container of extra seeds in his bag that Tenebrae had been kind enough to leave him with, even though he took many of Erick’s magical supplies, so with rice in hand, Erick soon had rice in paddies. He even used filtered seawater to grow the plants. No need to alert people to their location by changing the weather, no matter how brief.

He practiced changing the natural color of his magic for a while. Mostly, it was easy; all you needed was a bit of Mana Altering, and Erick had done this much when he was creating his new All-All-Stat rings and belt, back during Shadow’s feast. The hardest part was getting Ophiel to be magenta instead of white. That took a good hour.

But soon, Ophiel was a bright magenta. It was a great color, actually, but it was also a very incani color.

The color of an incani’s magic usually laid somewhere between red and blue, with a great many of them having magic that was an offshoot of purple, and with a heavy correlation with their skin color. Humans tended to have ‘natural colors’ as some would say; blue, red, yellow, green, white, black. Dragonkin almost always had magic signatures the same color as their scales, but usually a brighter hue, and some of them had metallic-looking magic. Orcols were greens, browns, and greys. Wrought were as varied as the people they resembled, but also with metallic accents in their mana signatures.

And so, Erick’s ‘incani’ color led the team to deciding some cover stories. Erick would be demi, or half-incani, as some would say, or, half-human, as others would say. Horns were unnecessary; some demis looked exactly like humans, or incani. No one but the most rude of people would ask for proof, either, but everyone would recognize him as a demi, since he had a human look to him, but magenta magic, and that was not a normal human magical color. If anyone did ask for proof, he was well within his rights to tell them to fuck off.

He would likely need to tell people to fuck off quite a bit, but with his Avowed Pacifist Silver Star on his chest, and claiming to be a demi, he would mostly be off of the radar for casual fights, which seemed to be a normal occurrence between Clans in Nelboor.

And that was another thing. They had finalized the idea of pretending to be an insular clan, out exploring the world for the first time.

Jane would likely get a lot more challenges than Erick, but being in Erick’s company would likely drive off most obvious warmongers, for he would still step in as Jane’s father, even if he looked too young for the part.

They’d have to come up with new names for everyone, though…

Jane readily immersed herself into the idea of false identities, coming up with false backgrounds for everyone, and false names, too. Teressa happily joined in, though Poi remained on the periphery of the whole ‘false identity’ thing happening all around him.

From what he saw, Erick suspected that Poi had some issue with him pretending to be demi, but Erick didn’t poke too hard at that revelation, and Poi didn’t seem too put-out about the discussion happening all around him. As the discussion slowed down, Poi agreed that the ideas paraded around were good ideas. Being a demi was a good cover story. Erick would need to put a lightward over his Silver Star to make it look less like silver crystal and more like plain silver, though, but that was just a detail; one of hundreds that would need to be accounted for, and that would likely fail fast enough. This was Erick’s first time out pretending to be something besides an archmage, after all.

Night fell. Eventually, everyone slept.

While they slept, Ophiel patrolled, flickering his magenta eyes across the world, looking for trouble.

When Erick awoke, Ophiel reported on the many events that had happened while he slept. There was lightning on the horizon! Some bugs ate some other bugs in the dunes! Fish swam in the ocean! There were crabs on the beach!

In other words, nothing had happened. Erick patted Ophiel, told him he was a good boy, then waved to Yggdrasil’s [Scry] orb. He got up and recast his [Personal Ward] as magenta, and went about the normal business of being the first awake.

The sun rose across the dunes, heralding the start of another bright day, as Erick made a stir fry breakfast out of leftover fish and rice and sweetsauce.

As they got ready to move on, Erick remembered something. He went to his bag and found what he was looking for. A small container of potion dyes, meant for the eyes. Cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and white. They would last for 26 hours, and one drop per eye was all you needed. Erick used his lightform to quickly mix a drop of magenta and a drop of white, and then poked himself in the eyes with the new color. He blinked several times. He looked at his own eyes with an extension of his lightform. Bright pink irises looked rather fetching, actually.

Jane looked at his eyes, too. “Looking chuuni, dad.”

“… Middle School Syndrome?” Erick asked, “Did I remember that right?”

Jane snickered and waved it off, saying, “Looks good. Very pink. Your disguise is complete.”

Erick smiled. “And it won’t come off in a [Cleanse], either!”