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The rift in the roof of Enduring Forge’s cavern showed stars and the hint of a sunset far away, while down below, where Erick stood, the city remained lit with diffuse light. The shadows were relegated to the deepest corners of unused housing, but there was not much of that to be had, for the city was rather packed. Upon this land of several square kilometers, between 130,000 to 140,000 people lived, though precise counts failed due to the transient population that moved in and out as they desired.

Erick was rather concerned with those transient populations, but only for one reason. He shared his concern with the people standing next to him, “I don’t want to be responsible for an accidental death that is easily avoided. Someone could come into the city with an underlying problem and not know that there is a danger. But if you’re sure…” He let his voice trail off, not sure what his own implication was in doing so, only that it felt right to let these people fill in the blanks on their own, with whatever they wished to think.

Erick stood on the steps of city hall, looking across at the platforms for the noble district, and the Smithy, while down below lay the main land of Enduring Forge. He was not the only one standing on those steps. Arakag Adama, the current Mayor of Enduring Forge, along with Grosgrena Adama, the Old Smith, and Barir Adama, the General of the Armies, stood nearby. More people besides those stood further away, near guards or on their own to witness the spectacle of the night. All of everyone present was dressed in finery, fit for a party, for the banquet was scheduled to start right after Erick had finished with the [Withering]. All of the people here except for Erick were all quite sure that whatever monsters Erick happened to kill would be small things, while the idea of a person dying was ridiculous.

Erick was wary, though.

Arakag explained, “Our methods for detecting core formation are rather more expansive than you might be used to on the Surface. Not only have we actively Scanned for all cores in the last few days, but we’ve also hung up a few discreet detectors in the doorways of many well-trod areas across the city; at the entrance to the churches, and the beer halls, across a few roads here and there, and even in the entrance of city hall.” She gestured behind them all, toward the large double doors. A thin metal frame addition had been stuck inside the main door frame. Runes upon that addition were lit with detection magics. She added, “We even retrofitted much of the runic web to include these additions, while in some places, we merely replaced and recharged old systems, for much of this has been overkill; or normal systems catch all possible cannibals, anyway.”

“I noticed all of those, and I thank you for taking the time... Even if they are redundant to your usual methods.” In a moment of vulnerability, and since there was almost no one else around since this was the time between daylight and night hours, Erick sighed, and said, “It seems that my recent problems with a war in another part of the world has caused me to be spell-shy when it comes to using a few of my magics how they were meant to be used.” He added, “At least this one is still prevented by a basic [Weather Ward].”

Barir said, “Our Beastmasters are prepared; we expect no casualties there.”

Grosgrena said, “And the Smithy has a special allowance to let this spell flow into there; this day only.”

“It took a while, but we got it done.” Arakag said, “We have ensured that no one is hurt that doesn’t need to be hurt. We’re ready whenever you are, Archmage Flatt.

Grosgrena smiled small, while Barir stood tall and Arakag gave a small nod. None of them said it, but they would wait here with Erick, for as long as it took.

Erick decided to get on with it.

Ophiels flew out into the city, each one casting [Domain of the Withering Slime], each one supporting a three-meter wide sphere of ghostly white light, summoning a tsunami of thick air out of the manasphere. Their intangible spells crashed, silently, effortlessly, into the main platform down below, and up across the platforms above, some spilling outward, some lifting up. Three Ophiels started the show, but more came soon enough. Soon, seven orbs of light had spread throughout the entire cavern of Enduring Forge, easily covering the entire city and some of the lands beyond, but Erick kept the spellwork mostly inside the cavern. While [Weather Ward]s had been laid down some of the larger tunnels to protect the Reset, there was no need to go pressing against those spells.

Instantly, notifications started pouring in.

Erick warily listed them off, “Rockmite larva, Rockmite queen, cloakers, slimes of all sorts—” Erick paused. He asked, “Steel ooze?” He was struck with several simultaneous problems with that latest notification. “But it’s steel? Not water-based?”

Arakag went stock still—

Grosgrena laughed. “Ha! I knew we had one of them! Fuckers are smart.”

“Where was it?” Barir asked.

“No idea. I could scan for it later?” Erick counted up the zeros in the notification, then said, “I think it was level 82.” Didn’t budge his own exp numbers, though.

“It was at the Smithy.” Grosgrena said, “And it’s technically a platinum ooze, but naming conventions are what they are. Been around for a long time, too, if the stories of platinum slimes could be counted as true. Every so often someone reports a platinum slime, but then the little critter vanishes. An ooze had to be hunting the slimes, for sure, but no one could ever catch sight of the beast. And now it’s gone! Ha— Oh. This means we might get a platinum slime spawn, soon.” She added, “I’ll have my people search for the body. Bet there’s a good deal of odd treasures wherever it laired.”

“But it’s metal,” Erick came back to. “And oozes don’t have cores?”

Grosgrena shrugged. “What can I say; before today it was more myth than known fact. Maybe it was just a really big slime with a proper core and named funny by the Script?”

“Well. Sure. I’ve seen stranger shit.” Erick was not sure if he had ever seen a misnamed Kill Notification, though, but he let it go. He read off another strange listing, “Rune slimes?”

Grosgrena smirked. “Unique variety, but rather standard around here in the main platform’s sewers. They like to eat at the exposed runic web, sucking down magic that is not theirs to suck.”

Erick nodded, then he saw the next notification and prepared himself for a bad time. “What’s an ‘adamantium sucker’?”

No one seemed to care, though.

Barir was the first to answer, “It’s a bug-like monster about the size of an adult’s torso that eats the magic out of the adamantium chains, like the runic slimes. It’s mostly harmless unless we get a massive, massive outbreak of them and they manage to drain the defenses, though that almost never happens.”

“It’s happened twice before,” Grosgrena said, unworried.

They let the topic drop…

Which meant that adamantium suckers weren’t a problem.

After a bit of searching, Erick found one of the non-problematic monsters. In the cavernous, broken land below the city —Down Below, as it was known— there were black-body dried monster corpses laying here and there, like they had fallen off of the adamantium chains directly above. Which is probably exactly what happened. They looked like shriveled spider corpses, but stockier, blacker, and thinner, with mouths that looked like a lamprey’s. If they were alive, Erick suspected that they could easily hide among the house-sized black chains of Enduring Forge.

After the initial burst of notifications the rate of new kills slowed down considerably, and then, after a little more than a minute since the last notification, stopped altogether. Through Ophiel’s eyes, Erick watched thick air play through towers and caress the adamantium chain links that held the city in the center of the cavern. The whole city had been notified previously that this was going to take place, and so some people were out on the roads, running their hands through the thick air that rushed down their streets, like they were at the bottom of a fast river. Some kids played in the streams. Some of the very young tried to swim, but you couldn’t swim on thick air.

After another full minute without another notification, and feeling like he had tested Fate enough, Erick said, “That’s all, it seems.” He ended the spellwork. Thick air retreated back into the fully-surrounding light, vanishing like mirages into the middle distance. Erick said, “Done.”

Grosgrena giggled like a woman a tenth her age, saying, “Amazing! Thank you, archmage.”

Arakag bowed a little, saying, “You do us a great service, but I am glad to see our own methods have already mostly secured our lands.”

Barir asked, “How many adamantium sucker notifications did you get?”

Erick checked. “Looks like 1500.”

Arakag breathed deep, looking supremely happy.

Grosgrena had a much more practical response. She said to Barir, “Even if he got all of them, don’t you slack off. They’ll come back stronger than ever if we don’t keep up normal patrols; they always do.”

“I’m aware.” Barir said, “I’ll divert sucker patrol to seeker squad. See if we can disrupt the egg cycle.”

Erick took a small joy in the naming of Barir’s squads; they were most certainly the jokes of various soldiers—

Arakag asked, “So? No people, correct?”

“Ah! Yeah. No people.” Erick happily said, “No people. Good prep work, you all.”

Grosgrena smirked. Barir relaxed a fraction.

Arakag announced, “Then, it is with great pleasure, that I announce that the Reset of the Cavern and of Enduring Forge is complete, and without incident.” She spoke to everyone present, “Thank you all, for your hard work in achieving this working.” She said to Erick, “And thank you, most of all, Archmage Erick Flatt.”

Grosgrena bowed to Erick, alongside Barir, and Arakag. The nearby black-armored soldiers stationed to the sides of the wide staircase bowed, and all the other nobles on the stairs followed suit.

Arakag rose. Her voice took on a deeper, distant flow, as she spoke to the whole city, but also just to them, there on the staircase of city hall. “Let the celebrations commence!”

Erick’s train of thought derailed as a bright, sparkling light launched from the top of a tower near the middle of the city. That light shot up into the sky, and suspended, briefly, before it exploded into a shower of red and white glints that spread like a blossoming flower.

Erick’s heart was in his throat the whole time as he watched the [Fireball], but everyone else seemed perfectly calm.

Then the next exploding ball of light showered the air with blue and green glints, followed rapidly by many more fireworks launched from many different towers, here and there across the city. People down below were already breaking out into celebrations, with people opening kegs and starting up bands and clapping hands with their neighbors. Some people got into the mood quickly, to start dancing to the music with others who were similarly happy.

It was then that Erick realized he was having a minor War Response, instead of being happy that everything had gone well. The feeling remained, but Erick successfully pretended to not be spooked by the loud noises and bright lights.

Arakag spoke proudly, “If we could all please reconvene at the noble district, the primary celebration will begin in half an hour and last about three hours.” She said to Erick, “I have been informed that many of the houses have various runic artifacts in their various possessions that they wish to display for your perusal. Should I inform them that you are interested?”

Erick’s PTSD was temporarily fully forced back into the background, as he smiled, laughed a little, then said, “Yes! I’m very interested in that. How did you kn— Ah. Well. I never made any attempts to hide what I wanted, did I? What sort of runic artifacts?”

With a pleasant smile of her own, Arakag gestured to some of the people present, explaining, “House Whitesteel, with Scion Yarlinnia, has an Arcane Attuner which allows for plain, channeled mana to produce a Solid Ward of decent size. House Slate, with Patriarch Jalrock, has a Sliding System which you will surely enjoy. House Platinum, with Patriarch Rial Plat has a Slime Spawner which allows various spellwork to produce metal slimes on command.” She gestured to herself, saying, “And House Adama has a secret about runic webs that we wish to share, in the hopes that you may bring this magic to the rest of the world, but we do not speak of this particular secret out loud.”

Erick’s eyes went wide as he looked upon the gathered people, and smiled at the opportunity presented to him. This was going to be great!

Before he could respond—

Grosgrena blurted out, “They’re taking that one out of storage?” She stared at Barir, demanding, “Really?”

Barir nodded, saying, “It’s the least we can do for the Archmage.” He said to Erick, “House Adama has many secrets, but this might aid you more than others. Our sincerest hope is that if you discover something interesting that you share this knowledge with us.”

Even though he had no idea what they were talking about, it seemed important, so Erick had absolutely no problem saying, “Of course!”

“I’d like you to figure out how to take adamantium apart, too, Archmage.” Grosgrena said, “Because you need it too, right! I bet that [Grand Fireball] staff you made is already rusted to shit.”

Erick laughed easily, saying, “It is, and you’re right, too. I’d love to know how to work adamantium, too.”

Grosgrena said, “Good! Long as we all have our priorities straight.” She waved a hand, signing off, “See you all at the party. I’m taking the shortcut.” And then she blipped away in a flicker of black and thick air.

Many of the other nobles bowed, before they, too, blipped away.

Arakag glanced backward.

Teressa, Nirzir, and Jane, stood back beyond the congregation. Poi was the only one of Erick’s people who remained a mere two meters from him. All of them wore their best set of clothes that they had brought with them on this trip.

Arakag asked, “Does everyone know how to get to the party? I could take your people if you have somewhere else to be at this particular moment.”

Erick took the offer, saying, “They’d love to follow you. Poi and I will meet you there shortly.”

Jane frowned a little, probably more because she had wanted to be there when Erick met with Darabella to intimidate the woman. Honestly, Erick was thankful for Arakag’s offer, even if the making of such an offer indicated a high degree of spying.

Arakag, Barir, and the girls left through the Teleport Square first.

And then it was Erick and Poi’s turn, but they went somewhere else.

- - - -

The main city was almost entirely in celebration with people drinking and singing in the streets, while restaurants and vendors sold food from windows and from carts. It would be at least an hour before people really got into the party spirit, but some happy fools were already bare chested and deep into their cups, and looking to get deeper.

Most of those people stayed off of Steel Street, itself, since this was a particularly ritzy part of town and these people preferred parties inside their multi-level homes. But Steel Street had a Teleport Square at one end of it, and there were people out tonight.

Erick mostly avoided the crowds.

Mostly.

“AYYYY! It’s the Archmage!” Yelled a particularly happy woman from the second floor balcony of her mansion, as she looked over the railing, directly down at Erick. Her chest was barely covered, and she sported two mugs of ale, one in each hand, that seemed small in comparison to her massive breasts. “Ey! Everyone! It’s Erick down—”

Poi calmly said, “This is not the Erick you are looking for.”

The woman, right as other people up there with her were beginning to clamber forward, announced, “False alarm! Just an Ophiel.”

Erick smiled wide.

Some man further up there yelled out, “You’re drunk!”

“And looking to get drunker!” said the boisterous woman, turning back to her party. “Tell that band to play louder! Louder, I say! Ha ha!”

Someone cast a spell near the band up there, and their music suddenly pounded out into the bright night. They weren’t the only band playing loud. Ophiel twittered on Erick’s shoulder, joining his own quiet song to the music that poured out of high class beer halls and private parties here and there.

And so passed the third non-event in the last three minutes since stepping off of the Teleport Square, or at least the third one that Poi directly prevented from happening.

Erick chuckled a bit as he walked on, toward his destination.

The road itself was skinny, at only three meters wide. Compared to most roads in most other parts of the world, Steel Street was more of an alleyway, since the buildings on both sides towered above and there were no lawns to be had. Each bordering structure was at least three or four stories tall, but there had been a pair of towers seven stories tall back there. Despite the cramped quarters, there were no shadows down here. Light was everywhere inside Enduring Forge, after all. Walking here didn’t feel nearly as claustrophobic as Erick had feared.

There were some nice sights down here. One of them was ahead and to the left.

The Church of the Forgotten Light. It was a remarkable building of spiraling columns with firelights contained inside those columns, and walls made of opaque, white stone. In some places the opaqueness of the stone had been drawn back, like mist, allowing the wall to become clear crystal, forming windows. From afar, and at first glance, the building appeared plain, but the entire thing, inside and out, with multiple stories and multiple alcoves of importance, was carved up like an altar to Atunir, with hundreds of thousands of small dioramas playing out all across the opaque stone, and even in some of the crystal-clear spot. A normal person could probably spend a full day studying the sculptures and maybe get through half of them.

Erick wanted to go in there and spend an hour looking at it all. It might take him that long to understand the full story on display. Erick had never heard of the Church of Forgotten Light until he came here, so this was all very new to him, but there were no people inside the building, and no one seemed to be interested in the place. It seemed… Forgotten; but that seemed too on-the-nose. And yet it wasn’t forgotten at all; the place was clearly kept together and clean and presentable by someone.

A brief check through the manasphere of the past revealed what appeared to be normal people going into the place to pay their respects to the sculptures in the alcoves. A bit more looking revealed an old man in white robes who cast various spells as he walked around the place for maybe an hour in the last 12. Erick got the impression that the church was dedicated to the Old Cosmology. There were definite sculptures of broken worlds in there.

But that mystery would have to wait for later.

Because on the right side of the street was a mansion like most of the others, but Darabella sat on a small chair in a room in the front, reading a book by a window. She looked wonderful. Erick had only taken a few minutes to distract himself with the mystery of the Church of the Forgotten Light, but now, it was on to better things!

He walked over to the front door, which was set back from the road, and triggered a few [Alarm Ward]s as he knocked upon the door. A pleasant chime echoed inside the well-appointed abode. Erick tried not to pry too much, though he did have his mana sense open as a matter of course.

Darabella heard the doorbell and promptly flipped her shit, throwing her book across the room where it slammed into the wall and tumbled down. She ignored the crumpled reading material as she rushed to the front door, touching her reddish-brown hair as she went by a mirror, making sure her flyaways were less airborne. Then she rapidly moved to the door, and then calmed, before opening it, and saying, “Hello, Erick.”

Yellow dress, sunny overcoat, a bright smile, and kind eyes to match the cute dimples in her cheeks.

Erick honestly said, “You’re beautiful. Hello, Darabella.”

Darabella’s slightly red-brown cheeks tinted even redder as she giggled, saying, “You’re pretty nice, too.”

A nice, calm moment passed.

And then Darabella stepped out of her house and closed the door behind her— “Shall we—” but the door didn’t latch. It swung back open. Darabella stared at the offending, misbehaving door for a second, then she rapidly grabbed the handle and yanked it hard, slamming the door shut with a click. She breathed. She casually touched a set of runes in the doorframe and an [Alarm Ward] filled throughout the entire structure; it wasn’t a Solid Ward at all, but at least it would alert her if someone entered the place without her permission. And then she turned to Erick, asking, “Shall we take the shortcut?”

“Yes.” Erick let his light touch Poi, while he held out his hand to Darabella. She slipped her hand into his gave a gentle squeeze, sending Erick’s heart to flutter right alongside her own. Erick smiled, and said, “We’ll take the shortcut.”

“I’m ready,” Darabella said, with a happy lilt.

White light flashed, and then they were elsewhere.

- - - -

The noble district of Enduring Forge, upon the third platform of the uppermost tier of the city, and with a good view of the crack in the cavern above, looked exactly as it should have looked, considering that not many nobles actually lived here full time. It was a place of unchanging stability, of mansions built for looks and for storage, rather than for individuals and assorted populations. The walls were ornate and runed all throughout, with some holding way too much power to be easily taken down and reapplied as they would have to be, if the people here moved freely. So they did not move freely at all. Knowing what he now knew about this place, Erick could tell that the noble district was more of a storage yard pretending at being a living space, than a living space with storage options.

Some of the more solid constructions here and there were completely opaque to Erick’s mana sense, with windows that were little more than ornate fakery upon solid walls that were solid steel, meant to keep everyone out. From the air, which was heavily crisscrossed with [Alarm Ward]s and all sorts of detective and preventive magics, and from far away, because there was no way Erick was letting Ophiel get close to some of those defensive spells, Erick guessed that the whole noble district was about 85% fake.

But that was the function of the noble district.

What it actually looked like, though, was opulence in comfortable wood and creamy stone, with carved magic emplaced behind very delineated property lines, with short walls between properties that even the un-Matriculated could hop over, if they wanted. Inside those property lines, in what had to be some sort of showing-off contest, it seemed every house tried to outdo their neighbors with style and beauty. Soaring towers. Sky bridges. Artistic lighting illuminating countless balconies and courtyards all over the place.

Only about 30% of what was out there was habitable, with at least 70% of the more solid-looking ‘houses’ here and there being secured facilities that were hardly ever meant to be opened. The entire place was filled with Anti-Magic runes of all kinds, too. Erick didn’t see any hostile runes in any of the workings, here or there, so anyone probably could fly in here, or whatever, and try to get around, but good luck to them actually getting inside any of these places. You probably couldn’t blip, or [Stoneshape], anywhere within a hundred meters of this place.

Erick was almost tempted to try, to see if he could. He refrained, obviously, but the small voice telling him to try, to test the magic, and see how it worked, was never far away.

They weren’t headed to any of those well protected places, though.

Erick, Darabella, and Poi appeared upon a hexagon of white stone, off center of the platform. Six roads led off in six directions, but the largest road, the one to the north, split into two roads further down the way, heading left and right. The entire platform had been divided into seven somewhat equal-sized areas. Their destination laid down the largest path, to the north.

Guards and escorts stood apart from the Teleport Hexagon, and it was easy to tell which was which. The guards were in black armor. The escorts were nobles themselves, for sure, for they called out new arrivals onto the square by name, and were dressed in finery that matched those of the people blipping into the space. Most people were here for their friends.

But Erick had an escort, too.

Not two seconds after appearing on the hexagon, Jalrock called out, “Archmage!” The young patriarch of house Slate waved as he came forward, happily saying, “Welcome to the noble district!” He bowed, then raised, saying, “Thank you for your service.”

Some of the nearby nobles also bowed, giving small thanks. Darabella involuntarily squeezed his left hand, obviously nervous that many eyes lingered upon her. Erick returned the gesture, hoping to calm her, but really, she was the one who knew everyone here; Erick was the one who was out of place. And speaking of being out of place, Erick decided to move their little gathering off of the Teleport Hexagon, for other people were coming and going from this location rather rapidly.

Once he had relocated to the side, Erick said, “Thank you for the invite.” He gestured with his free hand, asking, “The party is that way?”

Jalrock nodded, saying, “A short walk down a small road, to the House of Adama. Your daughter and other people went that way, not fifteen minutes ago. The party is already underway.” He asked, “As far as order of events is concerned, we would like you to take your seat at the high table for a few talks while the banquet is served, but after the meals are over there are any hundred of options for magical learning stationed all across the noble district. Everyone wants to talk to you, and to show you what they have, in case they might tempt your interest.” He smiled gently, adding, “We’re glad you came out tonight, too, Darabella. It’s been a while.”

Darabella smiled; a strained expression. “It has been a long while, Jalrock. Sorry I didn’t come to your ascension feast. You’re taking well to your position as the Face of Enduring Forge.”

Erick raised an eyebrow.

Jalrock noticed, and said, “It’s my duty to ensure that guests of honor are well received. I was to be your guide for tonight, but if you wish, Darabella knows everyone here, too.”

Darabella instantly, but quietly, refuted, “No no. I can’t do that—” She paused. She glanced to Erick with hope in her eyes, and then told Jalrock, “I heard you managed to repair the Sliding System.” She said to Erick, “You really should see that one. It always breaks down after every use, but when it’s in motion it’s a miracle of runic engineering.”

Jalrock gave a small grin as he said, “They fixed it up two days ago in preparation to show the archmage.”

Darabella gave a small, “Eee!” Then she looked up to Erick with a sudden flush of worry in her eyes and calmly said, “Uh. If you want to see runic systems I suggest that one above all others.”

Erick smirked, saying, “I want to see this ‘Sliding System’, too.” Arakag had already mentioned that one, specifically, so Erick was happy to see that it was mentioned multiple times. Erick added, “After the festivities.”

“Then since I seem to retain my job for now—” Jalrock gestured down the road. “Please follow me, Archmage Flatt, to a night of cheer and cuisine of the finest order.”

Jalrock took the lead. Erick followed with Darabella holding onto his left hand, and Poi taking position in the rear.

Jalrock Slate gestured to a few of the houses on the way down the road, explaining who lived here or there, and what they primarily did for Enduring Forge. The brief tour didn’t cover much of the noble district, as the road wasn’t more than a few hundred meters long and most of the houses were elsewhere, but Erick did learn a bit about House Slate, which was their tourism and public relations house (though Jalrock did not call it that), and about House Silver, which was primarily responsible for the mining of mundane materials in the city. House Platinum had a beautiful home of steel and silver, and they were responsible for much of the magical metal trade that flowed through Enduring Forge.

At the end of the street, where the road split left and right, there was an open gate. Beyond that gate lay their destination; House Adama, the home of those personally responsible for the defense of the land. Originally, there had been only one ‘House’, of Clan Adamantium, but that mansion was the city hall, and everyone had moved their storage houses over here hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

The new home of House Adama, the main House, was a brilliant white land of squarish towers and peaked roofs and at least three wings all joined together at a dome in the center. The whole place reminded Erick of a layered cake, or the Taj Mahal, or the Kremlin, but done with four-sided architecture in mind. It had plenty of balcony space on the backside, though, and that was where the party was, but they had to go through the house to get there.

Erick and his party passed a few guards in black plate as they approached the main doors, which were wide open. Small groups of people stood beyond, discussing various topics while they sipped beer from mugs and ate finger foods off of small plates.

The room itself was a massive atrium with a grand staircase beyond that led to the second floor where anyone could wander down any of a dozen different hallways. Everything was white stone, including the underside of the central pyramid-dome of the house, which was just overhead. A blazing white light hung in that space up there, giving off warmth and light like the sun, but less oppressive. Some plants were even growing in the corners of the rooms, soaking up the light.

It was a nice space.

People were already looking his way, many of them eager to speak with him, but Erick got the distinct impression that an order of meetings had been set up ahead of time, due to the way certain people stood here and there in the foyer. Erick would likely meet with them all soon enough.

Jalrock decided to get away from that actual process, though, saying, “I’ll hover around you if you need anything, archmage, but otherwise I will remain unobtrusive.”

“Before you go.” Erick asked, “Does Enduring Forge have other archmages?”

“No.” Jalrock seemed to hide all of his emotions, as he said, “Enduring Forge has no other archmages. If you chose to stay, you would be our only one. This would afford you a certain level of prestige all your own.” And then he bowed, taking his leave.

Poi did not stop himself from leveling a brief, withering glare at the man, but he cut the glare short. Poi’s look was not nearly as hate-filled as it could have been. In response, Erick shoved thoughts at the man about how Spur was still his home, and that he would not leave without good reason.

To which Poi just rolled his eyes—

And there was no more time to dissect any personal interactions, because Arakag Adama stepped away from her people to meet with Erick, saying, “Welcome to House Adama, Archmage Flatt.” She gave a small wave to a nearby caterer who popped right over with three drinks on a white stone platter, as Arakag began, “House Adama thanks you for your service, and hopes you enjoy the vintage. Perhaps you’d like to meet some of our clansmen?”

Erick took his drink while Darabella took hers, and Poi grabbed one, too, but likely only to hold in his hands, to keep up appearances. Erick sipped his wine, and it was good.

Erick said, “Lovely wine. I would love to meet new people.”

And so he did.

The first meeting was most telling of what the rest of the evening would bring.

Rial Plat, the patriarch of House Platinum, was a severe man of thinning hair and thinner proportions. He got right down to it, saying, “House Platinum wishes to extend to you the offer of amicable trade deals with Spur for various magical metals and assistance with runic web creation and maintenance, if you bring a Gate to this land. We are even willing to work with Candlepoint, though we would prefer not to work with unknowns, you understand. Not until we are sure they aren’t a trick.”

Erick said, “As soon as I figure [Gate] out, I would be very willing to supply Enduring Forge with a Gate. I’m pretty sure that there are still many secrets to that magic hidden away in this place, anyway, so you’ll have to help me find them before any real plans can be made.”

Rial, and more than a few observers outside of Erick’s current little group, perked up at that. Rial asked, “You think we have the secrets of [Gate] here? In our city?”

“Of course you do.” Erick said, “You’re the only runic society I’ve ever heard of and it already makes a lot of sense for runes to be useful in the creation of [Gate]. This method of enchanting is beyond wonderful. Why, just yesterday I set a glacier on fire with a staff of [Fireball]s! I even handed off the staff to one of my people and they fired off the same [Fireball]s that I put into the thing, using a novel method of triggering that I read about in the books Darabella here loaned to me.” He smiled at her, and said to them both, “I managed to make a [Prestidigitation] trigger.”

Darabella gasped, saying, “You did! How! I’ve been working on that for a year!”

Erick chuckled, saying, “It was difficult, and the trigger only works for a specific application of [Prestidigitation] and that specific staff, but what you do is point with [Prestidigitation], and the five [Fireball]s fire off in that pointed direction. [Force Bolt] is fine for precise ‘touching’ of a nearby target, but this is [Fireball] we’re talking about here; ‘precise’ isn’t exactly needed.”

There were a few polite laughs.

Erick said, “Any other application of [Prestidigitation] simply launches the spell out of the Escape clause, so in that case you have to point the actual staff in the desired direction. Still works, though.”

Darabella stared at Erick for a good while, uncomprehending, and interested, but mostly uncomprehending about how he could have figured out what she had left incomplete in her own notes.

Erick left that alone for now, though, and returned to the secrets of [Gate], explaining, “But as I was saying: the answers to [Gate] might be here, inside Enduring Forge. Or maybe more appropriately, there are good hints. That is more realistic. I might have already met one of those hint-holders, too.” He asked Darabella, “You were working on a way to extend [Teleport]’s range with runic Teleport Squares, yes? They weren’t in your notes, but you spoke of them earlier.”

Darabella snapped to the moment, saying, “I haven’t had much time to devote to theoretical workings, but I had planned on sharing those notes with you sometime soon. I would love to discuss this topic in a research setting.” She hesitantly added, “I haven’t touched that project in a long time.”

Rial, and a few outside observers, had a hesitation among them as they heard Darabella’s words.

—Arakag spoke up, “If you feel you could do well with theoretical runework then I could speak to the Old Smith on your behalf. We might need to train up a few more Rune Smiths anyway, if Archmage Flatt’s enthusiasm for runework carries with him back to Spur.” She asked him, “Do you think we will be getting orders for runic web installations in the future?”

“My enthusiasm is stoked, for sure. Runework is amazing.” Erick said, “So unless there are some incredibly easy ways to break the system, I cannot believe that more places don’t use them.” He did not specifically answer her question.

Arakag understood the implications. She said, “It’s no more or less easy to break than any other city defense.” Arakag looked to Darabella, saying, “Would you agree, Rune Master?”

Darabella said, “I don’t know enough about the intricacies of other systems to say, for sure, but I would say the ease and capabilities of runes are well documented. It’s great for defense, but you have to watch out for certain problems that only runework brings, and only when malcontents know how to corrupt the runic system.”

Rial Plat said, “I would say that runework is a few steps below the usefulness of a truly gifted archmage, but we’re about equal with the Singers of Songli and an average archmage. Runework is vastly superior to the usual cadres of archwarriors some places employ to defend themselves, for sure. The high-end formations for runic defense can get a bit too much, though. If you create too many walls, you might find yourself locked in a very small room.”

Arakag and Darabella lightly laughed at that; it must have been an inside jo—

Ah. All of the noble district was covered in defensive layers, locking a lot of people behind those self-imposed walls.

Gallows humor, then.

“The walls seem well-made.” Erick asked, “You can even stuff anti-magic runes into the webs, too, though I gather that you only do that up here, in the noble district? I didn’t see many of these anti-magic runes down in the main city, or really anywhere else. Is this because too many anti-magic runes lock you in place?”

“Exactly right.” Arakag nodded, as she said, “The protections in this area are much tighter than those inside the main city, for it is oppressive to live under these defensive layers, and also sometimes dangerous. In times of trouble, most people in the main city quickly retreat into the bunkers, with [Teleport] getting them close and then they proceed inward on foot. But here? The caretakers have to hunker down and hope that their walls are enough, for it is a chore to take down the runes that secure some of these places.” She added, “It took us an hour to open up this house for this party, but some of the tighter areas would require full weeks of magic bleed to let the doors open a crack.”

“I see Solid Wards all over the place, but am I to understand that they don’t have permissions?” Erick wasn’t quite sure what the problem was with making walls that the user could walk through, but as soon as he had that thought, he had another. There was probably even Tricking Magic that allowed people to walk through walls. Hadn’t one of the Shades back at Last Shadow’s Feast displayed an amulet that let them walk through all magic, unimpeded? Yes, there had been; but it also cut the user off from all of their own magic. Therefore, a mundane wall would stop that sort of intruder. Erick said, “I suppose the mundane walls could be on timers, too.”

“Solid Wards are not as safe as some believe. Anything that allows permissions is suspect,” Arakag said.

“Ah. I suppose that is true.”

Arakag nodded. “But even those Solid Wards are merely the surface protections. Individual defensive matrices vary, but we do have violent magics in some of these locations, and yes, there are timers and doors connected to them, too. We try not to kill people who brush up against walls, but there are only so many reasons to be in certain locations around here, so some levels of violent defenses are kept active at all times.”

“Do you get many simple interlopers around here?” Erick asked.

The patriarch of House Platinum said, “Three or four simple interlopers every month. Maybe one or two capable interlopers. We sometimes find bodies, but most of those criminals get a shock or a burn and limp away to heal their wounds. The first layer of defense is simple physical deterrent, while subsequent levels of deterrence increase rapidly depending on the items that need protecting.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “That’s honestly a lot more burglars than I expected. I imagine there’s actual violence occasionally, too.”

“Yet another reason we don’t like to live up here.” Rial said, “No one wants to get caught up in the crossfire. We should be safe tonight, though. You’re here, after all.”

Erick almost laughed, but that would have been the wrong move.

Ah…

Worldly Path, don’t fuck up now!

“We have opened many of our vaults to you tonight, Erick, and people find these things out, as they always do,” Arakag said, “We’re confident that tonight will proceed without incident because we have many soldiers on the ground, physically defending the more important locations.” She added, “However, most of the biggest secrets are still under runic lock. Some of the deeper secrets can only be shared with trust and cooperation.”

Erick smiled, saying, “I’m happy to get whatever I can, for now. Trust can only be developed with time, so I thank you for humoring my curiosities.”

“Almost anything for the Savior of Light.” Arakag smirked a bit, and said, “We do things a little less formal down here, so whenever you’re ready, the banquet is ready, too. Right up there.” She gestured up the grand staircase, then said, “I believe your people are already there. After the main event, House Adama has a special treat to show you; Grosgrena is getting it ready as we speak.” She took a step toward the grand staircase, saying, “A pleasure to have you here, Archmage. I’ll leave you in Darabella’s capable hands.” She gave a small nod toward the suddenly flustered-yet-keeping-it-together Rune Smith, then Arakag was off, companionably slipping her arm around Rial, the both of them headed off toward the banquet together.

Suddenly on the spot, Darabella gestured toward the next nearest person, who was someone she knew, saying, “Ah! Erick. This is…”

After a fashion, the first rounds of introductions went well, with Darabella sliding into her apparently-appointed role as both guide and date. The second, third, and subsequent introductions went much better. After a half an hour of small meetings, Erick had solidified his planned route of artifact visiting, and gotten a good appreciation for Darabella’s expertise in the matter of runes; she wasn’t the Master Rune Smith of Enduring Forge without good reason. She spoke up when she knew Erick would want to see something, and was as polite as she could be regarding what she knew to be… less than great.

A few of the meetings were strained because the other people thought they had something very interesting, but Darabella’s strained-yet-pleasant smile indicated what they had was worthless. Or at least what they had was something that Darabella found less than fantastic.

One of those meetings in particular stood out from the rest. Though Darabella and the woman on the other side kept everything very, very polite, it was easy enough to tell that Darabella seemed to either hate House Whitesteel, or perhaps she only hated the scion of that house. Yarlinnia Whitesteel seemed like a nice enough woman, but she was the same age as Darabella, and they were both Rune Smiths, with Darabella being elevated from commoner stock, and Yarlinnia being a part of a noble house. Erick suspected that the noble/commoner thing was just a nuance to the actual problem, for Erick had already been introduced to several commoners, and Yarlinnia was standing next to a friend who had also once been a commoner, according to what Erick was seeing.

Darabella and Yarlinnia never said those words, but Erick saw through enough of the obfuscation of polite society to see at least some of the truth. But! None of that really mattered, and no one said anything truly poignant. They were probably both saving their words for later, for when Erick (And Darabella, too!) met with Yarlinnia at House Whitesteel to see the Arcane Attuner, which was capable of transforming channeled mana into a Solid Ward effect.

More than a few people simply wanted to meet with Erick to try and woo him to remain in Enduring Forge, either indefinitely, or to actually move here.

Soon enough, Erick had gotten through many of the meetings, and most of the party had moved on, up the grand staircase, through a massive church-like door, to stand on a balcony out back of the house. It was time to eat, and the good smells had been taunting Erick for a while. He was hungry.

- - - -

A balcony of white stone stretched alongside the windows of the main house, going both left and right while extending outward a good ten meters from the mansion. More grand staircases dropped down from ends of that balcony toward a lower level, where a small orchard of specialty-product fruit trees grew alongside carefully maintained berry bushes. The orchard was only four trees in total, but two of them instantly caught Erick’s eyes. One of them was a myriad citrus, the other was a cocoa tree, while the others were varieties that he did not recognize. One of the bushes was of Erick’s make, as well, but it was not a berry, but a bean; they were Erick Beans, the product of [Exalted Rain] when left running for 24 hours.

A few people were moseying around the orchard and the berry bushes, looking up at the trees or down at the bushes, engaging in small conversations while sampling from food stations that were preparing dishes from those various plants, as requested. It reminded Erick of sampling treats at a supermarket, when the sellers were trying to get you to buy their stuff. Erick would likely go down there and request something from the myriad citrus table, but for now—

The main party was on the balconies, with tables set up everywhere and many people already talking. Small finger foods were set up at the side, but the main course was waiting to be served. Erick could see the teams of servers gathering beyond the door in the center of the gathering, rushing about in last second preparations. On the other side of the balcony space, a band played stringed instruments, which Ophiel seemed to enjoy, as evident by his tiny bouncing upon Erick’s shoulder. Yggdrasil’s eye also bounced in time to Ophiel’s movements. Erick smiled at that.

Jane, Teressa, and Nirzir, were already seated up by the high table; they were not directly at the high table. The high table wasn’t that high, though, which Erick was glad to see. Erick’s destination seat was stationed upon a short, decimeter tall platform. This was obviously to facilitate ease of movement and discussions, which some people were already doing, and would probably continue to do throughout the actual meal. Jane was currently talking to a Rune Smith who Erick had seen working underneath Darabella, while Nirzir was talking to Rial.

Erick’s own table was set for two, though; Darabella was expected to sit with him.

Erick smiled as he said to Darabella, “It’s always weird meeting new people. Thanks for accompanying me.”

Darabella’s eyes had been momentarily locked to the high table for two, but at Erick’s words, she calmed. “Thank you for the invite. I hardly ever make it out to these things anymore. Not since my husband passed away. Been ten years, now.”

Erick sent her, ‘Are you comfortable? I want you to be comfortable. I also want you to know that you’ve been a great help with knowing what runic artifacts are actually worth seeing.’

Darabella smiled small. ‘I’m better than okay. Everyone is being really nice tonight. Usually the claws come out more than they ha— Ah. I forget myself. If you could pretend that I never said that some of these people make wolves look civilized, then that would be great.’

Erick managed to keep his own grin small, as he sent, ‘But you never said that.’

‘Thank you.’

As Erick moved to the head table, people all around began to clap for him, for what he had done either by accident or by design. Many of them were surely clapping for many different reasons.

The next few hours passed in a blur of small speeches and really, really good food. Grosgrena showed up eventually and spoke a bit about how Erick’s Particle Magic was already revolutionizing metallurgy itself, but that real breakthroughs always took time, and they had not had nearly enough of that to discover everything about particles that they could. The next decades would be amazing to see, for sure! Her small speech ended with perhaps the loudest round of clapping yet.

Eventually, Erick managed to get down to the garden and try out some of the citrus items, which included orange icies and lemon cake. Both dishes were just shy of divine.

And then eventually, the food was all eaten, or put away, and no one else wanted to give anymore speeches, while the band played rather loud enough to allow people to have somewhat private conversations here and there. Erick probably spent too long talking to Darabella about various runic designs, and not enough making connections with everyone else, but he really liked the woman.

He did not like the occasional glares Jane leveled at Darabella, though.

Those introductions could have gone better, for sure.

Erick mostly ignored that incident, which was probably for the best. Darabella was certainly never talking to Jane again unless she absolutely had to, and Erick didn’t feel like smoothing any of that over at all; not yet, anyway. This was just a small date, and there were many more factors involved in a relationship these days than simply liking each other. But at least Darabella did seem to honestly like him!

He liked her, too.

Too bad a relationship probably wasn’t on the table, because, for the fifth time that night —Erick started counting after the third incident— Darabella mentioned her late husband and how much she missed him. Erick hadn’t collected many clues about the man, though, aside from the fact that he had been a noble, and then he had died.

It didn’t seem like Darabella was ready to let him go, though. Erick had noticed the various paintings of Darabella and her husband in her house, too. Those paintings were still on the walls like the guy could show up at any minute, though he never would ever again.

… Or maybe Erick was reading too much into the situation. He probably was.

The party ended after only three hours of mingling and meals and theorizing about different runic designs. Erick participated in a few metallurgy discussions, but mostly to ask questions; though these Smiths didn’t know the exact components of the metals they worked with, they had been working with them for decades upon decades, so they knew their shit.

As people began leaving, Grosgrena pulled Erick aside, saying, “We’ve got a treat for you, before you go to all the other houses out there. You too, Darabella. Even you haven’t seen this one, yet.”

Darabella paused. “I haven’t?”

- - - -

Through the more defended parts of House Adama they went; down, down, then into a short tunnel into the depths of the platform of the noble district. Arakag and Grosgrena led the way, tapping off various runic defenses on four different doors and in the walls of thick, oppressive hallways. Erick’s mana sense dwindled down twenty meters, then down to nothing as they came upon a main vault door made of adamantium and runic power. Beyond that black separation was an emptiness in the manasphere, or perhaps the mana inside was simply trapped.

Erick’s paranoia was yelling at him to escape, to not continue, but he had to keep going. Besides, Poi was with him, though the girls had been left behind, while Darabella, Grosgrena, and Arakag were all displaying perfectly normal behaviors… Theoretically. Grosgrena and Arakag were obviously excited to show Erick whatever it was they couldn’t talk about, while Darabella was practically vibrating with excitement.

As Erick spied the main vault door, most of his paranoia vanished. The black expanse was inscribed with an old runic inscription, done in a style that was listed in Darabella’s notes and which Erick found fascinating, but which no one practiced anymore. The door was guarded by a poem.

Erick would have asked after it, but they were under strict orders not to talk or [Telepathy] while down here; the runic defenses were strong and would not appreciate any overt attempts at communication while they were still active. So he saved his questions for later. Poi seemed able to get away with using his normal [Telepathy], though, so that was odd.

And then Grosgrena ignored her own warnings and spoke the poem aloud; the words lighting up as she said them.

“From ages past there comes a time

“Of dripping blood and endless crime

“Of bones set down, unhallowed ground

“Of life reduced, of futures bound.”

The poem ended there, but Grosgrena continued to speak, triggering some hidden mechanisms in the runework that unwound locks inside the vault door. But Erick couldn’t hear those words. Grosgrena spoke in unknowable, invisible vibrations, as something within the runework all around them pulled her words out of the air, out of the manasphere, and from her throat, simultaneously hiding everything about her in those brief moments. In that time, Erick could only tell that Grosgrena was a short woman, shrunken with age.

And then Grosgrena was done. Her features returned like someone had removed smudges from the screen. The door flickered. The rims flashed. There was a loud CLICK.

The black door slowly swung open, and power flowed outward, bending the very air before runic power captured that air and succeeded in holding back the expansive force inside. Now, Erick could mana sense inside the chamber beyond. He instantly knew what he was looking at, even though he had never seen one before, and no one had yet mentioned it by name.

The room was adamantium and cubic, three meters to a side, with a pair of pillars that protruded from the top and bottom of the space to meet in the middle, around the object. Runes stretched across the entire interior of the room, even spiraling up and down the protrusions. Where the runes met the object, they bathed in the light of bloody, divine fire, soaking in the power, strengthening the magic inside the runes. Erick would not be surprised if this room was completely self-sufficient, never needing to be charged with magic from the main runic web in the house.

For it was divine, for sure.

It was a red sphere, and for some reason, staring at it was like staring at a scale model of a planet made of solid silver metal, with a fully-covering ocean of red waters upon that planet, and with an atmosphere of divine, gold fire. If Erick reached out and grabbed it, the sphere would fit in his palm. It would probably fit well, too.

The red ocean. The divine fire.

It was a Tear of Aloeth, for sure.

It all fit.

Quilatalap had mentioned these artifacts once. They (for there were many of these things, not only one) were supposed to be able to protect an entire city from attack. In retrospect, it made sense for Enduring Forge to have one. They obviously didn’t use it, otherwise it would be out there, somewhere, and not contained to this bright, dark room. Or maybe they did have a second Tear out there, somewhere, hooked into the runic web.

Supposedly, the Tears of Aloeth were the precursor to City Shields. They were obviously the precursor to the runic webs of Enduring Forge, too. Probably a lot more than that, too, for the Tear looked like a power source. But if you could replace the power source, which Enduring Forge obviously had, then you could stick this thing in storage and forget about it until it was absolutely needed.

While Erick thought of all that, the door finally finished opening.

Red light bathed the hallway all around Erick, and the others. Darabella gasped as she laid eyes upon the artifact, making a small, happy sound. Arakag measured Darabella’s response and found it adequate, but when she tried to measure Erick’s, she got a bit worried. Would he try to snatch the Tear? She saw that he clearly knew what it was. But then Arakag turned professional again, and seemed to banish those easily readable thoughts from her body language.

Grosgrena spoke, “We can talk now; the defenses are mostly down. Still can’t go into the chamber itself.”

“It’s a Tear of Aloeth,” Erick said. “It makes so much sense that you have one.”

Grosgrena laughed. Arakag went on edge again.

Darabella demanded with her cute voice, “Now how do you know that! These things are super secret! I’ve never even seen one, and I’m the Master Rune Smith!” She glanced at the Tear, saying, “But I guess those rumors were true, huh?”

Grosgrena said, “If they got one of these in Ar’Kendrithyst then Enduring Forge would pay a handsome price to acquire it.”

Erick said, “If Ar’Kendrithyst has one then I don’t know about it. But if that place ever did have one, it probably got stolen in the raids after Last Shadow’s Feast. Everyone and their whole extended family tried their luck, ransacking that place for all it was worth—” Erick rapidly asked, “This didn’t come from Ar’Kendrithyst, did it?”

“No.” Grosgrena said, “This one has been here in our care for a very long time. The history of Enduring Forge and our caretaker of the Tear predates most historical events, but you never know what sort of shit they gathered inside that Dead City.”

Erick briefly debated whether or not to use Quilatalap’s name, or his moniker of ‘Caretaker’ that he used while he was pretending to be a Shade inside the Dead City. It was not by accident that Grosgrena used the word ‘caretaker’ in her response.

Erick avoided that bit of intrigue for now, asking, “Does Aloethag care that you have one?”

“Yes, but also no,” Arakag said, opting to speak now that she had decided that Erick wasn’t going to simply steal the treasure. “This is a tear of Aloeth, not Aloethag, and that makes all the difference. Besides; if that corpse of an elven goddess ever tried to take it, we’d destroy it sooner than let her have it.”

Erick paused.

His thoughts derailed, and then several ideas reorganized themselves. He eyed Arakag, and then Grosgrena, and then Darabella, and then the massive containment song scrawled inside the entire Tear room. Erick couldn’t read those runes, though, for the song was written in some unknown language, but it had to be a song. There were repeated runes here and there, and a general organization that had to be that of music. The whole thing reminded Erick of the adamantium crusher back at the Smithy, with its spiraling runes, but… More.

There was something otherworldly about this particular space, of which the Tear was only a half of that feeling. The room itself was different from normal runework. Erick got the feeling that he looked upon hieroglyphics instead of Ancient Script as he studied the flowing scrawls across the black metal.

Suddenly, Erick connected a few widely distant dots, along with an offhand comment Jane had made about Enduring Forge days ago.

Erick asked, “Does Enduring Forge have ties to the extinct dwarves of the Old Cosmology?”

Arakag resigned herself to something that she had been dreading.

Darabella glanced at Erick, then turned to face the Tear room, saying, “That’s a leap of logic, but I guess you’re good with those.” She asked the others, “That’s supposed to be a secret too, right?”

“Yes, Darabella,” Arakag said. “Supposed to be.”

Grosgrena smiled wide, explaining, “Our ancestors were a group of humans that the dwarves rescued from the Sundering as they fled from the Primal Lightning that killed the Old Cosmology. I won’t bore you with details, but yes, our ancestors knew the dwarves, personally. For a short time there at the beginning, they were even living together. And then Melemizargo attacked every Underworld city at once and wiped out 95% of every single settlement under the Surface. The dwarves and our people both survived, but there were only three remaining dwarves and four remaining humans. Our ancestors could rebuild with humans and eventually a few incani from the Surface, but the dwarves were never able to recover.” She said, “Each dwarf was able to live for centuries past that troubled time, but eventually, time makes a mockery of all mortal life. The only thing they could do to ensure their legacy was to ensure that runework was understood by all, and not held in secret by the wrought, and that their human friends could survive the Dark. They managed this much.”

Erick gazed upon the runes in the room, and as Grosgrena spoke of legacy, he felt something stir inside the power inside those runes. Something very soul-like lined those runes. In a flash, Erick understood. The creator of this place had not simply carved meaning into the world when they made those lyrical scratches. They had used their own soul to carve this power into this room, entombing bits of themselves and their Domain inside the space.

Erick’s own [Lodestar] remained nestled at his back, along with an active [Greater Lightwalk], so he could have tested the walls if he wanted to, but that seemed like a very bad idea. This place was old, though Erick doubted the room itself had been here in this location since the dawn of Veird, but even if it had been moved around a few times, this place was locked to this location now, and that afforded it a certain amount of home field power that only a fool would test.

Grosgrena turned back to the Tear, saying, “Knowledge of runes was granted to us by the legacy of the dwarves, but for actual defense, we had this Tear; a captured tool of the enemy elves, twisted to provide all the power a runic web could ever need. We don’t use it anymore, but the runes in this room and the Tear itself are a safeguard against ultimate disaster.” She smiled. “I didn’t agree with the decision to let you see this room, but now that we’re here, I can tell it was the right decision. One look is all it took you to understand everything about this place.” She looked up at him, asking, “Am I right, Savior of Light?”

Erick said, “I think you are. The dwarves were right to leave you their legacy. You’ve done well by it.”

“Good. Then this vulnerability was worth it.” Grosgrena rapidly said, “Now let’s not tempt Fate. We’re closing her back up and she can stay down here forever, Good Gods willing.”

Arakag gave a small prayer, “May the Bloody Witch remain forever bound, and this world never know the tyranny of elves.”

It wasn’t just a small prayer, though. At her utterance, the walls of the tunnel came alive with faint, white glows that flowed into the doorway, ticking off a set of runes that began to seal up the room, once again. The black door slowly swung back into place. Within moments, the Tear was once again locked behind dense spellwork, hidden from view, and then hidden from mana sense.

Grosgrena placed a hand to her mouth, indicating that sounds were back to being a bad idea. The five of them exited the tunnel, and as they did, more and more runes began to light up in their passing, further closing off the passageway to the Tear of Aloeth, like curtains closing.

There was little discussion on the object once they were out of its reach, for Grosgrena said that they shouldn’t speak of it outside of that space, anyway. Enduring Forge had gone through many different diplomatic disasters over the centuries because of that item, so while most of the powers out there had been driven off, some new idiots were always getting ideas in their heads about what they could and should steal.

Before they met back up with Teressa, Jane, and Nirzir, Erick did ask one important question, though.

“What about the orcols?” Erick asked, “Do they know of this?”

Arakag answered, “The Arbors do, and some of their people do, too. The people themselves tend to be split in their demeanor. The priests tend to want it, but the average person wants to destroy it. Neither choice is an option we’re willing to entertain, so we’d prefer if today’s revelation did not lead to any of them getting ideas that they could ever possibly take our history from us.”

Erick simply nodded.

After a moment of seeing that Erick had accepted her words, Arakag asked, “Next location, then? Next set of magical runework?”

“I would love to see the generalized mana conversion systems.” Erick asked, “I imagine they’re based on what we saw back there in the tunnel?”

“Which is why we chose to show you that one first.” Grosgrena said, “But this is where I leave you. I’m old and it’s late. Good night, Archmage Flatt.” She gave a small bow; as much as her body would allow.

Erick returned her bow, saying, “Thank you, Grosgrena. I’ll see you again before I leave, for sure?”

Grosgrena gave a small, almost sad smile. “With any luck we’ll meet many more times after today, archmage, but perhaps I shouldn’t tempt Fate like that.” She steeled herself, and stated, “You seem pretty decent with what we’ve taught you, and you seem willing to spread this knowledge. I approve. Enduring Forge approves. We look forward to watching runes and true metalwork spread across the world, in ways it has never been allowed to do before. Good luck with the Headmaster, and with the wrought. We can’t go against them, but maybe you can.”

Erick understood a great many things in that moment.

He met Grosgrena’s fervor with his own solidity, saying, “The world is changing. Maybe we’ll have more than one world soon enough. Live to see it happen, Grosgrena; you’re not that old.”

Grosgrena’s minor sadness vanished under an overwhelming wave of anticipation. The old woman’s face seemed younger as laugh lines deepened, and then she gave a boisterous guffaw. She continued to laugh, first a little, and then a lot, and then a little again. She waved even as she was still laughing, and then chuckling out of sight.

Arakag seemed more certain of something than ever before, as she asked, “Will you continue to the next location?”

“We shall.” Erick asked Darabella, “Are you okay to continue?”

Darabella quietly said, “I am ready to continue.”

Arakag said to Erick, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Archmage. Take care. I leave you in Darabella’s capable hands.”

Erick told her, “Thanks for the invitation.”

And then Arakag walked away, too.

Darabella seemed to be having some emotions about being put on the spot, but she kept them mostly hidden, so Erick did not pry.

Soon, they met back up with Jane, Teressa, and Nirzir, and then it was off to the next location. Erick debated with himself about whether to talk to Teressa about her thoughts on the Tear of Aloeth, but it wouldn’t happen tonight, anyway. Maybe some other day.

- - - -

The generalized magic conversion array was located at House Platinum, in a room just off to the side of the foyer, with Patriarch Rial Plat there to introduce the device and explain its functionality. Darabella seemed perfectly capable of doing this, too, and soon, she was discussing the item with Rial, as Erick asked questions, and poked around at the item.

He could have spent days playing around with the array, but Erick contented himself to a half an hour and a bunch of poignant questions, for the system was about four times more complicated than it appeared.

Overall, the array was a set of ten nested gold rings, with the largest a meter across and welded directly onto a splash of possibly-gold metallic crystal that resembled giant quartz, but in metal. The crystal might have been a rare form of fool’s gold, but Erick had no idea; it wasn’t runed, whatever it was, but it did seem to have some sort of anomalous effect on the rest of the system.

The largest golden ring did not move, for it was affixed, but the nine smaller concentric rings did move, each of them freely rotating within the system, slipping left and right as they were wont to achieve the effect in the center of the system, which was to give birth to a baby metal slime. The type of slime produced varied a little, but usually they were iron slimes. Erick was told that the slimes usually only survived for about an hour without iron ore to mine from cave walls, but this system was defunct these days, and the Slime Spawner was more of a relic than an artifact. They had transitioned away from using iron slimes to mine for iron long, long ago. Usually, they simply traded with Homeland, the goblin capital city, for their iron needs.

This sparked a small, enthusiastic conversation from Erick about how he had seen and moved one of their Iron Beasts just the other day. Rial explained that the iron-fungus farming beasts were about a hundred times better at farming for iron than slimes, and you didn’t end up with accidental iron oozes with the goblins’ system. Iron oozes were not nearly as nice as platinum oozes apparently were; that revaluation on the city hall steps had been a large oddity to Rial, too.

But back to the Slime Spawner.

Spellwork of any basic kind, from [Force Bolt] to [Alter Size], went into the exterior ring, and then flowed through some ethereal connector runes to the next ring, where various other runes shifted the meaning of the power flowing into them, and then flowed that new shaped power into the next smaller ring. This flowing process repeated, with spellwork shifting more and more into the desired shapes and meanings, with each ring rotating as needed to facilitate the flow and shift, until the magic met in the middle ring. When anywhere from 900 to 1500 magic power flowed through the system, a metal slime would be born in the center.

“Variations in requirements are mostly due to the environment.” Rial said, “The cleaner the environment, the less mana required. Slimes are a result of bacteria turning monstrous, and most bacteria aren’t capable of becoming monstrous, so this is to be expected.”

Erick smiled upon hearing that. He teased the dryly sarcastic man, “That’s a theory that isn’t fully accepted by the Arcanaeum Consortium, Rial.”

“There are a great many things we do that aren’t accepted by the Arcanaeum Consortium,” Rial deadpanned.

Erick laughed, then turned back to the system, saying, “This is truly remarkable. I barely understand how it works, but I’m beginning to.” A question struck him. “You don’t make gold slimes, or osmium slimes, to help mine for those metals?”

Rial said, “Feel free to copy this system and adjust for those metals, if you wish. We’ll buy such a system from you for a good price.”

Darabella asked the question Erick was about to ask, “You’ve never had luck with gold or osmium spawners? After all this time?”

“We’ve failed every time, my dear,” Rial said.

The spinning rings and the flowing magic were a lot to try and understand, but Erick managed to figure out most of it. Superficially, anyway. He’d have to make one of these himself to see if he truly knew what he was doing.

Erick gave his thanks to Rial, and they moved on.

- - - -

Darabella smiled wide as she stood in front of the machine, saying, “Now this one! This one is the most impressive runic machine I have ever seen.”

Jalrock smirked, saying, “If only it didn’t break down every single time.”

“It certainly looks like it could break down every single time,” Erick said.

They had moved to House Slate, and then to a storage shed away from the main house, and past several protective runic webs. Inside of a room dedicated solely to it, sat a marvel of runic engineering known as the Sliding System. Whatever it was, it was very large and way too complicated. Compared to the ring system of the slime generator, the Sliding System was literally centuries ahead in rune tech.

There were rings of various sizes and configurations floating or locked in place here and there. There were floating plates, etched with singular runes, hovering in the vicinity of the rings. Pillars of rotating runes rose here and there among the system. There was a book of runes with metal pages, and then off to the left there was a small shelf of paper books. A boiler, for some strange reason. And, above all, a fuck ton of gears and belts and otherwise, holding it all together.

The most prominent feature, though, was a square meter of black metal that acted as a screen, fastened to the front of the machine, and the keyboard with runic keys that jutted out from below the screen.

Darabella looked to Jalrock, asking, “Do you mind if I explain…?”

“Go ahead.” Jalrock gestured to the machine, saying, “You’re as good with this as I am.”

Darabella giggled a little—

Which caused Jane to roll her eyes.

—and she then walked closer to the machine, explaining, “The overall direction-of-intent of the Sliding System’s runic structure is primarily based on [Identify]. The end-effect is similar to what you get with an identinomicon, but with an important difference. This system doesn’t query your own mind or a set of enchanted books to help you find the answers to your questions. It questions magic, itself.”

Erick was not the only one to have his focus suddenly narrowed down to the machine sitting in front of them. Nirzir gasped. Teressa huffed a disbelieving laugh. Erick’s mind instantly went to the fact that Melemizargo and the mana were basically the same thing, so was this machine querying that Dark God? But then Jane spoke up first.

Jane said, “Ask it about [Gate].”

That was a good question, too.

Darabella’s good mood took a small dive. She very much understood that Jane did not like her on a personal level, so that explained some of Darabella’s response, but there was more to that new, sad look than simple dislike. Whatever the case, Darabella recovered fast enough, saying, “It breaks with the large questions.”

“Of course it does,” Jane muttered.

Feeling more secure, Darabella continued, “The Sliding System breaks down all the time, with runes and breakers burning out as the first stage of breakdown; the steel flowways melt and this is by design. Or at least those flowways are supposed to break down before the rest of the machine. Sometimes they don’t break like they should, and then the machine is down for a while.”

Erick asked, “Is it a problem of money?”

Because he would supply large amounts of money if this machine actually did what Darabella said it could do. He had a few questions he wanted to ask ‘the mana’. ‘Why did the mana drag him and his daughter to Veird’, was just a start.

Jalrock spoke up, “A full repair costs more than money. Some of these materials are hard to replace, and some of the deeper mechanisms are impossible to replicate, for the people who made them are no longer alive and we have no one capable of working in some of these designs.”

Darabella nodded, saying, “Hence the flowways breaking down before those important parts.”

Erick asked, “What sort of questions are allowed?”

“Questions on the nature of magic are very dangerous; don’t do that.” Darabella happily said, “But everything else is an option! The closer you are —physically, metaphysically, whatever— to the subject of your question, the easier it is for the machine to answer you. Questions about specifics are difficult. Questions about specific locations are difficult. Questions about the future are difficult. Questions that have nebulous answers are difficult. But down the other path: Questions about the past are easy. Questions about nebulous locations are easy. Philosophical answers are sometimes wildly difficult, causing the machine to break down rather instantly. But sometimes the answer is simple. Asking ‘What is the meaning of life’ will get you ‘what you make of it’, almost every time.” She smiled, then said, “A bad question is, ‘Who or what will cause the most difficulty in my life, going forward?’ This one is way too nebulous to get you a good answer because, by answering that question, it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then you get a feedback loop. A good question is, ‘What killed so-and-so.’…” She paused. She said, “That one usually gives you a direction to find out the real answers, but sometimes that doesn’t work, either.” She looked to Erick, saying, “You should treat the Sliding System as a way to narrow down possibilities. To give directions. Not to give a true answer.” Darabella looked to Jalrock. “Anything you want to add?”

Jalrock spoke up, “It’s based on Elemental Book, like [Identify]. Treat it like a very elaborate identinomicon which is able to temporarily enchant the very world itself, or at least this small part of it. This includes the user. So the more receptive you are to the idea that the system works, the easier it will work.” He asked, “Any idea what you’d like to ask it? We might have already asked whatever you’re thinking about.”

Erick had already considered the possible questions, but hearing all of the caveats narrowed down his options to a single one. He said, “Perhaps, ‘How can I make this machine work better?’.”

Darabella smiled brightly. “It breaks down instantly.”

“We’ve tried that one a few times.” Jalrock offered, “You could try one of our beginner questions?” He went over to the machine and plucked the metal book out of its slot near the keyboard. The ‘book’ couldn’t have been more than ten metal pages long, but it was made of rustless steel and bound in the same. He handed it over, saying, “That’s the Sliding System diagram and general question booklet.”

Erick flipped open the book and read for a few seconds, before flipping through the rest of it and rapidly understanding all of it.

He closed the book, and said, “This doesn’t explain why it’s called the ‘Sliding System’, either.”

Darabella spoke up, “Oh! I can answer— Uh. Jalrock? You want to answer?”

Jalrock smirked, saying, “You go ahead.”

Darabella wasted no time in getting right down to it, saying, “Spatial Magic plays a large part of the Sliding System, in that the ‘sliding’ of the system is how it shifts through various possibilities to arrive at a proper answer.” She gestured to the bookshelf, saying, “That bookshelf sometimes gains or loses books based on how the system ‘slides’ through various Realities in its search for answers. The bookshelf is only the most prominent example of a ‘slide’, though. Everything shifts through Realities if you look closely enough. Thus, it is called the ‘Sliding System’.”

Teressa stared, focusing her mana sense even further, to try and understand what she was looking at. And she wasn’t the only one. Jane flickered some light here and there, looking for herself, while Nirzir stood on her tippy toes to get a better view of some of the parts.

Erick was even more impressed. “So it’s literally sliding through Realities to find answers?”

“Yes; but with a lot of caveats.” Darabella said, “Near-Realities better than further Realities. The further the Sliding System goes the more it breaks. Some answers are factual and recorded in the books the system slides into its shelves, though, so those come easier than others. Some answers require deep scans through subjective Reality in order to find factual realities with answers. Some answers are factual throughout all Realities, so these are the easiest to answer; it doesn’t have to slide far at all.”

Jalrock said, “It’s all terribly complicated and that book doesn’t explain any of it in depth. This is why we can’t repair it easily if something large breaks.”

Erick hummed, then asked, “So why can’t it answer about [Gate]? [Gate] is Spatial Magic, too. And I know a lot about Spatial Magic, as well.”

Darabella looked hopeful, but she kept her hopes small, and she looked to Jalrock.

Jalrock was deeply nervous, with a cold sweat breaking out across the otherwise-stoic man’s body. And then he collected himself, swallowed, and said, “If you want to ask about [Gate], go ahead.”

“… But that would break the machine.” Erick said, “Nevermind that one, then. I have a better question.”

Darabella said, “Then to ask it, all you have to do is type in the question using this rune matrix and then we wait. An answer usually takes five minutes to appear.”

Erick stepped forward—

Jane asked, “What are you going to ask?”

Nirzir was locked in mana sensing the machine, studying how it worked, but at recognizing that the talking had resolved her quiet desperation erupted out of her mouth, “What about questions of love? Could I ask the machine who I’m going to marry, and if I will love him?”

All eyes turned to Nirzir.

“What! It’s a perfectly reasonable question with far-reaching political consequences.” The young woman stood her ground, saying, “If necessary, Void Song will pay for the use of this machine, after Archmage Flatt has had his turn. We can pay for the repairs of most damage.” She added, “If this machine can actually do what you say it can do.”

Erick glanced from Nirzir to Jalrock—

Jalrock got the hint, and took Nirzir’s question seriously, saying, “Questions of love are too nebulous so they strain the machine more than most, especially when younger people are involved. But I can tell you that the machine responds favorably to such questions, in that it always answers the question —though poorly— and then breaks in the same way, which is easy to repair.” He pointed to a set of parallel lines of steel in the back of the machine, clearly visible under lightwards. “That’s the main breaker. Questions of love break the first three, and the books in the library sometimes have to be replaced alongside a retrofitting of many smaller parts. Such a repair is usually between 15,000 to 17,000 gold, but such questions do get answered.” He stressed, “No one has ever been satisfied with their answer, though.”

“Ah.” Nirzir said, “I will have to think on this.” And then she stepped back; satisfied for now.

Enough dilly dallying.

Erick went up to the machine and began hunting and pecking at the Ancient Script keyboard. It didn’t take long for him to begin touch-typing and for everyone else in the room to suddenly tense, as they read. Letters began to appear in the air atop the screen, flowing out from the right-hand side toward the left. When Erick hit the question mark key, the whole sentence flashed in white light.

“What are the things I must know about Enduring Forge to gain a good outcome for this step of the Worldly Path?”

If he couldn’t ask about [Gate], directly, then perhaps if he broke it down into parts, then that would be acceptable. A hint or two about Enduring Forge, itself, would also be nice. Jalrock’s paling face betrayed his worry that the people of Enduring Forge had fucked up and made Erick feel unwelcome, but there might have been some worry over the machine’s ability to handle the question, too. Darabella’s almost-manic grin as she stared at the workings of the machine told him that his question was too large, but it was comfortably large; she might not have cared about the question itself, but she certainly wanted to know how it affected the machine. Erick found he liked that about her; Darabella loved her specific brand of magic and runework, and in that frame of mind, she was very willing to break things to see how they worked.

… Erick looked to Jane, too. His daughter seemed to be interested in the question, as well, but her glances at Darabella betrayed how deeply unhappy she was about the woman.

Well. Whatever.

Erick gazed upon the machine and hoped he had asked the right question.

The machine whirred. Gears turned. Fans caught magic, then began spinning up, faster and faster, their spellwork catching ambient mana and flowing it across the rest of the system—

Huh! The machine used ambient mana for something! Interesting! First time seeing that, thought Erick. He would likely be dissecting everything he saw here for many days to come, but for now, amid all the small, building noises of the Sliding System, came one noise in particular that gave Erick pause. He heard music, and there were no musical instruments or machines in the Sliding System’s workings.

So where was—

The manasphere was singing, and Erick wasn’t the only one that could hear it.

Nirzir whispered, “You hear that, right? Erick? The music?”

Jalrock looked to Nirzir. “What?”

“She hears what I’m hearing, and yes, I can hear it, too.” Erick watched as the letters on the screen flickered and faded from sight, yet remained in the ethereal illusions of the manasphere, transforming from reality to Reality, before being sucked into the screen then into the workings of the machine. “There’s a song. A chorus.”

“I can’t make out the words.” Nirzir said, “But I think they’re speaking… Of Fate? Maybe. Not sure.”

Darabella’s breath hitched. She briefly glanced at Erick and Nirzir but then she turned her attention back to the machine, searching for answers that only she might see or understand.

“I’d call it ‘Of searching through possibility’,” Erick said.

“Oh! Yeah. I could see that,” Nirzir said.

Erick said, “But ‘searching through possibility’ is almost the same as calling it ‘Fate Magic’, anyway. Don’t think there’s much of a difference.”

Jalrock stared at his family’s machine, asking, “It’s Fate Magic?”

Darabella gave a great big gasp. “Of course it’s Fate Magic! That’s the piece we’re missing to properly repair it all!” Darabella laughed loud, as though she had a few questions of her own answered tonight. “Fate Magic is basically Spatial Magic but by another name!”

Something had clicked in Darabella’s mind, which then clicked in Erick’s mind, too.

“Huh.” Erick said, “I suppose you could say tha—”

The machine had been whirring up, going faster and faster, but like a switch had been thrown, it began to slow. The black screen flashed.

Darabella whispered, “Oh. That was fast.”

Words began to form in the air above the black metal as the shadows in the room seemed to lengthen. No one noticed the shadows moving except for Erick, and they weren’t coming from Jane, so there could only be one other source.

Everyone else was focused on the screen, though.

“You have found what you needed to find, but now comes a choice. Slower, or faster. If you hesitate, the decision will be taken from you.”

“Huh,” Erick uttered, unsure.

The weight of those words hit hard.

First came the notion that the machine was stronger in Erick’s presence, since he was currently wrapped in the Fate Magic of the Path, and the Sliding Machine worked off of Fate Magic. Maybe something was happening there in that meeting of forces. But this was only a passing idea, only evident by the speed at which the answer was given, and that the machine hadn’t broken at all in order to churn out its answer.

A corollary to the first notion was that Melemizargo was up to Shenanigans. But Erick ignored that, for now. He was always up to shit.

Second, came the idea that someone was actually controlling the machine from elsewhere, and that this was all an elaborate ‘smoke and mirrors’ routine. (This ‘someone’ was not Melemizargo in this scenario.) This was probably false; the machine was probably working exactly as advertised. Not only could Erick see the vast amounts of power flowing through the runes of the machine, but based on the pure emotions coming off of Jalrock and Darabella, they could both either be in on the ruse, or this machine had actually surprised them, too. He got the impression that it had surprised both of them in the past, many times, as well. Erick chose to believe the machine was not purposefully lying to him, and that there was no one pulling any strings except for him, and possibly Fate.

Third…

Erick read the answer again. The answer seemed to imply that he wasn’t capable of leaving the Path right now. He could only go faster, or slower. If he did nothing, the choice would be taken from him. Settling down in Enduring Forge and simply forgetting about [Gate] was apparently, implicitly, not an option.

Not ten seconds after Erick had gotten his answer, before anyone could say much about it at all, Erick went to the machine and pressed the runes for ‘erase board’. He ignored Jalrock’s aborted attempt to slow him down, and typed out another question. Everyone else watched, transfixed.

“Which option results in fewer deaths; slower, or faster?”

If him asking a second question was ‘hesitating’, then so be it. Erick wasn’t about to be shoved around by the words of a machine, and especially not if those words were actually coming from Melemizargo.

Darabella giggled a little, nervous, as she read the question and the machine whirred back to life. Light flashed. Books shifted in the shelf without moving at all, becoming different sets, and then flashing back to what they were before. Shadows and magic crawled through the machine, flowing along gears and inside runes like iridescent oil.

Erick had seen many types of magic before, but this one here was the first to make him freak out more than a little. This was actual fate fuckery, here. This seemed like true reality-bending. It made him a bit giddy, if he was being honest with himself.

He liked it.

The first breaker flash-fried, sending sparks flying as a gear snapped on the left side of the machine and then the next three breakers blew like a transformer struck by lightning. Sparks showered the room. Most everyone flinched and covered their faces, except for Erick and Jane.

Jalrock rushed to the machine, to flip a main breaker—

“Let it ride,” Erick said. “Please.”

Jalrock warred with himself, briefly, and then he stepped away from the break—

The machine began powering down. Jalrock almost collapsed to his knees in relief, muttering about how thankful he was to all the bright gods that it had stopped.

A readout printed:

“All options pale in comparison to each other, depending on where you stand. But those options are no longer yours to influence. You hesitated. Now all you can do is ride the dragon.”

Everyone else felt doom and gloom upon their shoulders, for sure.

But Erick laughed at the proclamation, saying, “Ah! That’s fun.” He turned to Jalrock. “Thank you for this diversion. I completely believe that your Sliding System works as advertised, but the world’s best Prognosticators already find me infuriating, so… Whatever!” He turned to Darabella. “Let’s go see the next machine?”

Darabella was a bit pale, but she mustered herself, and gave assent.

There were a few more small pleasantries between everyone, with Erick thanking Jalrock for showing him the Sliding System, and Jalrock back to being his overly-pleasant self, but with an undercurrent of apprehension that wasn’t there before. Nirzir spoke to Jalrock about repairing the machine, and he gave her a quote which seemed high to Erick, but Nirzir was fine with it.

Soon enough, Erick and his people were out of House Slate and onto the next location.

- - - -

House Largerock showed off some ‘runic locks’ that served as blocking nodes among the runic webs that stretched inside the five different platforms of Enduring Forge. These were the heavily inscribed items that transferred wanted power, like wardlights and [Envelop Item], while also preventing unwanted power from traveling along the runic web, like tampering [Fireball]s, or any other manner of damaging spellwork.

Erick spent a good hour there with Darabella and the people of Largerock, talking over how the system actually worked. Nirzir even got into it a bit, going so far as to request whether it was possible or not to get Enduring Forge to come to Eralis, to see about securing some runic webs for themselves. House Largerock gave some small promises to open talks with Eralis and with Clan Void Song about possible runic webs, but nothing as of right now. They were hesitant to offer anything more than that, since this stuff was integral to the defense of their own lands, but they’d bring up the topic with the other houses at their next meetings. They would have a better answer for her at that time.

Erick thanked them for their help, and moved on to the last stop for the night.

- - - -

Scion Yarlinnia Whitesteel greeted Erick at the gate to mansion Whitesteel.

Darabella was back to being on edge, for Yarlinnia did not like her, and the feeling was mutual. Erick was not here for the drama, though, so he had mostly ignored everything about Yarlinnia, even if he knew he shouldn’t. Yarlinnia seemed like a perfectly nice woman, too; she wasn’t haughty and her voice was perfectly sincere. But Erick was here for the Arcane Attuner, and not to get involved in whatever was going on between the two women.

The Arcane Attuner promised to be even more transformational than the Slime Spawner Erick had seen back at House Platinum. This machine, according to Yarlinnia, could transform normal [Ward] power into a Solid Ward of varying strength, size, and shape. Marvelous! Simply marvelous! The possible applications of such a working could not be understated, with most applications falling under the umbrella of ‘defense for the commoner’.

If only the 1 mana to 1000 mana conversion problem could be fixed. Or at least lessened. 1 to 10 would be great. 1 to 100… Less than ideal, but good enough. 1 to 500 was as good as they had ever gotten it, though, but that was only for perfectly cast [Ward]s imbued into the machine. 1 to 1000 was much more normal, and the point was to have any mana be used to fill up the Solid Ward; not just [Ward]. Not everyone had the spell [Ward], anyway, and even fewer people could cast it well.

Yarlinnia gestured down the third hallway since the entrance, saying, “Just a few more hallways. Sorry about the positioning. We’ve been stolen from before and my great grandfather—” She gestured to a painting on the wall, among a bunch of others. “That’s him. He got disgusted with people stealing from him, so he made all our runic devices welded into the actual house. They’re a lot harder to steal these days.”

Darabella scowled at Erick’s side, holding back some sort of remark.

There was a reason they were going down this hallway, for sure. There were other hallways to get to the Arcane Attuner, but this hallway had paintings, and Yarlinnia wanted to show them off without showing them off. And for good reason. She wanted to fuck with Darabella.

Several of those paintings held the images of a man that Erick had seen before, in the paintings of Darabella’s house. The man was Yarlinnia’s brother, and also Darabella’s late husband.

If the quality of the various paintings was not indication enough that they were the same person, it was hard not to notice when Darabella’s heart beat hard when glanced at the first such painting, and then when she purposefully did not look at the rest. Yarlinnia certainly noticed Darabella’s reaction, too; she had planned this.

The two of them did not hate each other because of some noble/commoner tiff, but because Darabella had married Yarlinnia’s brother, and then the brother had died, and Yarlinnia blamed Darabella for that death. Yarlinnia hated Darabella, and she was simply waiting to drive in the knife, as soon as Darabella gave her an opening. Darabella had yet to give her that opening, but she was getting close, for sure.

Erick tried to shift the conversation away from the building confrontation, asking, “So that’s why everything in these other rooms is wrapped in steel bars inscribed with anti-[Metalshape] runes? All of it looks very interesting, though.”

Yarlinnia gave a small, professional grin, as she said, “If you see anything in particular that catches your eye, let me know. We have much more than the Arcane Attuner to show.”

Before Erick could answer—

Darabella spoke, “How about the Teleporting Pads? He might be interested in those.”

There was a hidden edge to Darabella’s words, and Yarlinnia briefly looked like a woman about to enact her long-awaited vengeance. She had prepared, and now she would pounce.

Yarlinnia said, “I’d be delighted to show Archmage Flatt my late brother’s inventions.”

“We invented those together! You had no right to take them from me!”

“And if you would have died instead of him, then perhaps you would get credit for their invention and I would still have my baby brother.”

Ah. So it was like tha—

Jane took a sudden edge; was Darabella going to kill her father in some magical ‘teleporter accident’, too?

Erick almost stopped everything to take his daughter aside and tell her to calm the fuck down, but that would make more problems for everyone, and Jane wasn’t going to act on her wild thoughts… Probably not going to act on her wild thoughts.

Nirzir, Poi, and Teressa, however, had a much better reaction.

They pretended they were blind and deaf. Much more normal response, there.

Erick decided to exert a bit of his presence, saying, “We’re not doing this sort of argument tonight—”

Both women suddenly realized who was standing next to them. Yarlinnia looked suitably chastised. Darabella looked briefly vindicated, before she realized she fucked up, too. Ahh… Erick wished she felt better in his presence. But he couldn’t fix that right now.

“— But after the Arcane Attuner, I do want to see these Teleport Pads.” Erick said, “Darabella has asked for my assistance in that field of study and I have my own reasons for seeing any esoteric Spatial Magic runework, as I am sure you are well aware.”

Yarlinnia refrained from a full blown scowl toward Darabella, while Darabella looked mostly blank, like she was hiding in plain sight, unsure of how to feel.

Yarlinnia gave a quick bow, saying, “It will be as you desire, Archmage.”

The Arcane Attuner wasn’t too much further down the hallways.

It was a rather simple machine with a floating-concentric-circle design, not unlike the Slime Spawner, but it was made out of adamantium with runes filled in with gold. It was an odd design choice, for sure, but Yarlinnia explained that the creator had a gold-tainted aura, and they worked best in gold, so that is how the machine was made. Darabella responded, politely, saying that ‘filled-in-runes’ were an esoteric way to create runes, for runes laid down in actual-material instead of through void-creation-in-material did not shift with use; Shifting Runes did not work with that style, at all. Yarlinnia, also politely, responded that not everyone thought that the Class Ability Shifting Runes was good, and that it was an odd design choice to fill in with metal, but it worked. Darabella agreed.

It was the most honestly polite interaction the two women had had all night long.

Activating the machine was as easy as pouring casts of [Ward] into the receiver runes. After pouring in 5 mana, making a 500-power [Absorption Ward], the runes began to light up and a Solid Ward of indeterminate make appeared in a sphere around the space. The sphere was a weak thing of only maybe one or two points worth of defense.

Teressa touched the sphere and it broke like a bubble.

Erick then tried channeling normal mana into the set of runes labeled ‘Intake’. After a full 900 mana, the same bubble began to appear around the room as before. Another gentle touch broke that Solid Ward sphere, too.

Erick stepped back and looked at the Arcane Attuner.

This was [Renew]. It took an odd form, and only had one specific result, but this was [Renew]. This was it. This was his big spell that he had been working on for over a year, now. A spell that would change the world. This was just the physical representation of the magic that Erick would make later, but…

This was [Renew].

Erick’s shoulders relaxed. He let out a sigh, and then a small chuckle. “This is— Well. This is half of [Renew]. I already have all the other pieces.” He turned to Yarlinnia, saying, “Thank you very much, Scion Whitesteel.”

There were a few surprised reactions around Erick, but Yarlinnia was the first to speak, “Is that really all it will take you to make [Renew]?” She rapidly asked, “Could you make your [Renew] work with runework, too?”

Erick said, “I think a runic web that carried [Renew] would be a lot easier to make than a runic web of various functions all jumbled up together, and scattered piecewise across a neighborhood. Less points of attack that way, less infrastructure needed. So I would not want to patch [Renew] onto the web you have running through Enduring Forge. I would want to make an entirely new system.” He smiled. “I doubt you’d want to change your systems, anyway. There’s a lot of defensive measures in there that a [Renew] web couldn’t replicate.”

Nirzir asked, “What part of the Arcane Attuner was it? Which part was the answer?”

Erick gestured to a few parts, saying, “This here is similar to the structure of the Slime Spawner, but more generic. It looks like two different methodologies each tried to do the same thing, and each arrived at a separate, correct answer, which is already in-line with my own ideas of ‘bouncy mana’— But that’s a long discussion that we don’t have to go into right now. Let’s see the Teleport Pad, and then I have work to do before moving on from Enduring Forge.”

Yarlinnia immediately went to the door, speaking as she moved, “Right this way, Archmage.”

Erick followed, with Darabella quickly rushing to keep up and everyone else following close behind.

“Is that really it?” Nirzir asked, “Will you make [Renew] now?”

“Soon, Nirzir.” Erick said, “Later.”

Nirzir nodded, staring at Erick for a moment longer, before looking away, lost in thought.

To get to the Teleport Pads they took a rather distant route. Erick and everyone else followed Yarlinnia down a hallway to a back door, then across an open field to where a lonely tower of white stone existed separate from the rest of the house. Darabella momentarily froze upon seeing that place, whispering a quiet prayer to a long dead man that Erick did not remark upon.

Yarlinnia’s breath momentarily hitched as she put her hand on the door at the base of the tower. “This was my— My brother’s workshop.”

Erick prepared himself for some drama.

Darabella went rigid as the door swung open, partially forgetting to breathe as lights inside cast shadows reaching outward, and [Alarm Ward]s and defensive spellwork broke away from the entire structure. The insides had been hidden behind obscuring spellwork, but now they stood revealed to Erick’s mana sense. The lack of contents of the tower revealed a story of loss, and purposefully forgotten history.

Yarlinnia went in first.

Erick went in next.

Darabella came in third, and she almost collapsed as she gazed upon the emptiness.

The first floor was a foyer without any welcome to it. The walls were bare of pictures, though there were hooks that could have held some. Desks were empty of everything. Darabella went still as she stared at places which might have once held something important, but which now held nothing. Tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. Yarlinnia watched Darabella and something seemed to break in her, too, like she was seeing pain that mirrored her own.

On the third floor was the actual living quarters, which contained room for a bed which was no longer there, closets full of nothing, and a bathroom that had been sterilized of all comforts. The only thing the room held was two chairs, next to an antique window table, next to a window that looked outward across the cavern of Enduring Forge.

Yarlinnia ignored the rest of the first, empty room, and walked up the stairs to the second floor. Erick followed. There was only one thing on this floor: the Teleport Pads. Darabella came up behind Erick, briefly shielding herself from the room’s contents and from Yarlinnia’s gaze, before she stepped out from behind Erick…

She stared at the Teleport Pads and wiped away sudden, silent tears, trying to appear as though nothing was wrong.

The pads themselves were solid Deep Sky Silver hexagons, each two meters across and several centimeters thick, and situated three meters apart. The edges of both were lined in runework, written small and neat and meticulous, and if not for the conflicting writing on both, then Erick would have suspected that they had been [Duplicate]d. Maybe the original hexagon had been copied, actually, but the runework set them apart from each other. The main differences were in the center of both hexagons where large letters had been laid down, each a meter across; the pad on the left held the runes for ‘Beginning’, while the other was inscribed with ‘Destination’. The runes around the Beginning pad told a story of displacement, while the runes around the edges of the Destination pad told a story of solidification of possibility.

With an exhausted, sad voice, and an expression to match as she stared upon the Teleporting Pads, Darabella whispered, “I can’t believe you haven’t done anything with them. These were his life’s work, Yarlinnia. He deserved more than to be forgotten.”

Yarlinnia quietly said, “These Teleport Pads are an achievement, but their misuse killed him, and you were an absolute mess to deal with, so we locked them up until now.”

Jane calmly asked, “So these pads killed the man?”

Erick spoke before anyone got mad at Jane, saying, “Unbound Spatial Magics can easily kill people. It’s one of the few magics that routinely do.” He explained, “The Wayfarer’s Guild has a hefty lock on Spatial Magic, which is backed up by the Arcanaeum Consortium, because in the process of Remaking [Teleport] many, many students accidentally perish and create [Partial Teleport], instead.” He asked Yarlinnia, “Is that what happened to your brother?”

Darabella went still, again.

“We’re not sure. My brother was a Spatial Mage for the Wayfarer’s Guild so he knew what he was doing…” Yarlinnia said, “These things would have changed how we transport goods, but… It was just another day of testing when it happened…” Her voice faded.

With conviction in her voice, Darabella said, “We had broken the 1000 kilometer barrier of the Script’s [Teleport] many months prior. Goliro—” She paused.

Yarlinnia watched, silently.

Darabella recited history, “Goliro wanted to try Underworld testing, and so we did that. There’s some math involved in how to compensate for [Teleport]’s reduced range down here, and so we compensated. To further compensate for these dangerous jumps, Goliro didn’t jump, himself; he used [Teleport Other]. In this way, we completed an effective 2500 kilometer jump from the starting point at one of Whitesteel’s near-Surface mines, to here. The materials used in the creation of these pads greatly outweighed the cost-benefits of such increased range, but no one ever said that making new magic was cheap—” She smiled; remembering. “Goliro would have loved to have met you, Erick.” She returned to the past, saying, “But at 3000 kilometers; at three jumps? Turning 250 base mana into 750 means tripling shipments per day. Costs could be recouped after long enough use— prototypes are always more expensive than the real thing, anyway. And so... There was the 3000 kilometer test. We succeeded in that one! It was amazing. One ton of material, shipped over three thousand kilometers in one spell! Everything was going to change… But…” She stopped talking.

Yarlinnia picked up the story, “Goliro wanted to try ‘jumping’ himself. He never appeared at the Destination pad.”

Darabella stared at the blueish-silver pads, saying nothing. She wiped away another tear.

There was a long moment of silence.

Erick asked the obvious question, “And you’re sure he’s dead, and not simply run away, or something like that?”

Yarlinnia had no trouble answering, “His soul came when we called—”

“A week after the accident,” Darabella nearly spat. “It took a week for him to appear. I know he went somewhere, and they killed him for some reason.”

“Who killed him, Darabella?” Yarlinnia nearly hissed at the woman. “That’s right. No one did. He probably landed half in a mountain and died from exposure.”

“His memory was faulty! If he was stuck in a mountain he would have been able to tell us that!” Darabella said, “He was killed. Someone killed him. I don’t know who but I know he was murdered. It wasn’t an accident.”

Yarlinnia looked to argue further, but her anger suddenly guttered like a flame snuffed out. She spoke with true care in her voice, “You should get over it, Darabella. This system was great for jumps of less than 2500 kilometers, but your insistence that he was murdered has ruined everything. If you want to know why we kept these pads and never did anything with them, that is the reason. Father couldn’t allow you to go uncredited, but you had to be a witch about it all… We could have actually had something here. Your stupid insistence that Goliro was murdered ruined everything.”

Darabella’s anger vanished.

Yarlinnia said to Erick, “Feel free to inspect them. Imbue [Teleport] into both pads, and then every time you stand upon the Beginning pad and [Teleport], you will arrive at the Destination pad. You will have no control over that destination. [Teleport Other] or Object will achieve the same result.” She turned to Darabella, asking, “Can we talk? Upstairs? I want to talk, Darabella. It’s been… Too long.”

Darabella simply nodded and went to the stairs. Yarlinnia followed.

After they had vanished from sight, Erick turned to his people, sending, ‘Well okay then. So that all happened. Thoughts?’

Nirzir sent first, ‘Songli needs this magic, but not if it’s not safe.’

Jane sent, ‘I think Goliro was a Spatial Mage who had already Remade all the way up to [Teleport Other], so he was on the Worldly Path when he did these tests. I think this pad was his attempt at a [Gate] but Darabella and Yarlinnia never considered that option, possibly because of Fate fuckery. Or maybe they did! I don’t know. But Fate certainly fucked over Goliro, sending him somewhere, and he died because he couldn’t handle the danger on the other side.’

Teressa and Nirzir’s eyes went wide as Jane laid it all out there, but Poi just nodded.

Erick sent, ‘Exactly what I was thinking. So… Should I step on and see where it takes me?’

Jane frowned.

Teressa instantly sent, ‘NO. You should NOT do that.’

Poi sent, ‘Erick is done with Enduring Forge, and... We already discussed this, him and I, the other day. I did not expect that our paths would diverge this soon, but looking back, I can see why I felt the need to have this particular discussion back then. I have the distinct feeling that if Erick steps on that pad, he’ll go somewhere else, and we cannot follow.’

No one said anything for a minute.

Jane sent, ‘It’s entirely possible that Goliro got half-blipped into a rock face and he took a week to die.’

‘That is a possibility.’ Erick said, ‘Luckily, I have [Greater Treat Wounds], along with [Greater Lightwalk]. The chances that I end up in a situation that is physically dangerous that I cannot recover from is low, because I won’t be in my physical body when I blip.’He added, ‘And considering that Goliro would have needed to have an Elemental Body— Ah. He could have had aura control. Maybe he did get stuck in a mountain.’

Everyone stared at Erick.

Erick sent, ‘I won’t get stuck in a mountain.’

Teressa glared at Jane and Poi, then at Erick, sending, ‘I cannot believe that you think this is a good idea! You’re going to die if you step on that damned thing!’

‘The chances of anything happening at all are very low.’ Nirzir said, ‘The runework seems rather solid… from what I know of the subject. Chances are, he will simply end up at the Destination pad.’

Teressa breathed out heavily, sending, ‘No. Something will happen. I can tell already. But I have no idea what it means.’

‘What are you seeing?’ Jane asked.

‘… I’m seeing myself and Poi at Spur, and Silverite yelling at me,’ Teressa confessed, her eyes clouding over with the briefest of grey lights. She blurted out, ‘Fuck! And I’m also seeing that we’re fucking needed there, too. There’s a shadow all across the whole fucking place. Dammit.’

Erick sent, ‘I’m going to step on that pad, and you should all go back to Spur. You too, Jane. At least until the danger passes.’

‘You know…’ Jane sent, ‘[Teleport] can take two people.’

‘I need to do a manually-cast [Teleport] to make the platform work as intended, and I’m not going to risk your life to do that.’

Nirzir gasped. ‘Manual [Teleport]! No. Too risky.’

‘Fuck,’ sent Teressa.

‘So you’ll risk your own life?’ Jane asked, ‘All for yet another spell to add to your arsenal?’

‘Yes.’ Erick smiled, saying, ‘Magic is wonderful, and I mean to learn everything I can about all of it.’

Nirzir actually grinned a bit, as though the idea of Erick being this foolish was beyond the pale. Erick hoped she would forgive him, and that she wouldn’t be scarred by this.

Jane knew Erick wasn’t lying, though. She went to her father, and hugged him tight. ‘See you on the flip side. If there are any monsters then fuck them up, but if there are people on the other side and they fucked with the advancement of magic by killing Goliro, fuck ‘em up even harder. Be ready for it.’

Erick hugged his daughter tight, sending to all of them, ‘I’ll see you all when I see you. Good luck! Don’t let people think I died. And make sure none of these people here think that they did something wrong, either, okay? This is my choice, and I’m going.’

‘Sure, dad,’ Jane sent.

Poi nodded while Teressa looked on, her eyes going hard.

Nirzir still didn’t believe this was happening.

Erick pulled away from his daughter, sending, ‘Darabella is going to be needed for everything else that is to come, but I doubt a relationship is in store for us. She was giving off all sorts of ‘I don’t want to be here’ signs all night long. Can you tell her it was a nice night, and leave it at that?’

Jane smiled wide. ‘Yes. I can do that.’

Erick went to Nirzir, sending, ‘It was lovely to meet you. I’ll see you again when I see you, okay?’

‘Uh. Sure.’ Nirzir frowned a little. ‘… You’re not actually going, are you? You’re not serious, are you?’

With a great deal of sadness, Teressa sent, ‘Yeah. I can already see the divergence in the manasphere. Fate will take him away as soon as he steps on that pad and I have no idea when he will return.’

Erick went to Teressa, and held open his arms. The large woman looked at him, briefly, then she grabbed him up in a full hug, plucking him off of the ground like she was picking up a toddler.

Erick laughed a little, sending, ‘I’ll see you later, too, Teressa. Don’t worry about this.’

‘Kinda hard not to worry, Boss!’ Teressa let him down, blinking away tears. ‘I don’t see the endgame of this future.’

Nirzir loudly sent, ‘You haven’t invented [Renew] yet! You can’t go anywhere!’

‘Yes he can.’ Poi sent, ‘This is a choice, and he’s making it.’

Erick held out a hand to Poi and took his guard’s gauntleted grip into his own. He pulled the man closer, and patted him on the back, sending, ‘Good luck solving the problems I leave behind.’

Poi laughed as Erick stepped away. Jane chuckled, filling the space with sound for the first time in a minute. Upstairs, Darabella and Yarlinnia were having their own silent telepathic conversation. Nirzir and Teressa remained silent, one stuck in disbelieving, the other mentally distancing herself from losing someone she had come to see as more than her boss, but less than a father.

A prized uncle, then.

Erick sent to Teressa, ‘I’ll be back. I’ve glanced at my own future, too, and I don’t see any impenetrable shadows.’

Teressa sent, ‘That doesn’t mean anything when it comes to you; you’re notoriously hard to read. Even Redarrow had trouble. I’m surprised that the Sliding System didn’t instantly catch fire and melt to slag.’

‘I expected explosions,’ Jane sent.

Poi sent, ‘I expected it to scream and the books to catch on fire.’

Erick smiled. He was the only one.

Nirzir looked to Erick, sending, ‘You’ll come back to Eralis, though? Right? Eventually?’

‘Yes. Eventually.’

Nirzir nodded, finally believing that this really was happening, if only a little bit. She’d believe that he was gone when he was actually gone, and not a moment before. ‘I’m taking the rune notebooks, then. I’m a future archmage, so it’s my prerogative to be like that since I’m doing it for the good of everyone. If you take too long, then when you return to Eralis you might end up seeing the Void Song sung from the sky, without needing to actively be sung all the time.’

Erick nodded. ‘Good luck with that.’

Jane sent, ‘You spoke of Darabella asking after your help with a Teleporting Pad before today, and now we’re here, and you’re getting on the pad that killed her husband.’ She looked at her father, and said, ‘This is suspicious, dad. It looks really bad for her. If nothing happens, then nothing happens, but I want you to be aware.’

‘Darabella is simply a desperate woman in a position of opportunity, trying to nudge a crazy archmage into helping her find out why her husband died. There was never anything wrong with what she asked of me, or with what is happening right now.’ Erick smiled at his daughter, and said, ‘I love you, Jane.’

‘I Love you, too, dad. Safe travels.’

‘You, too.’

Suddenly, Erick found himself with nothing more to say.

And no one had anything else to say to him.

Oh, sure, they could find more words. Invent more reasons to delay. But… No.

It was time to take another step on the Path, and to that end: An Ophiel blipped into the room, holding a backpack with Erick’s stuff that he had been gathering over the last few minutes, once Erick understood what was happening. It contained some water, his adamantium rune knife, some papers, and some hard foods; it was enough. He slipped the backpack into position and secured the straps while everyone else watched. Nirzir still didn’t believe this was actually happening.

Erick gave one final nod, then he stepped onto the—

- - - -

Jane watched as her father’s foot touched down upon the hexagon of silver-blue metal and he instantly vanished in a wrap of brilliant white light. Not even a full step. A half step! And then he was gone from sight. Jane felt her heart tense and her shoulders tighten, and a spike of nerves unfurl inside her stomach.

And the Beginning Pad powered down, white light flickering among the runework; Her father’s magic, vanishing.

The Destination Pad remained inert.

Ophiel had remained behind, either unwillingly or accidentally, like a bundle of white feathers and eyes hovering briefly at shoulder height, unaware that he should be falling. He squawked in annoyance, and then in worry as he fell a bit, then caught himself before he fell all the way. But then something broke inside of the [Familiar]. His wings stilled. His eyes glazed over. He dimmed. He died.

Ophiel crashed down to the ground and broke into a million pieces of glittering magic that slowly began returning to the manasphere like so much broken dry ice.

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye had gone with Erick, though, for some reason.

Nirzir, wide-eyed and full of worry, stared at the pad, and at the remains of Ophiel. She yelled, “OH, FUCK.”

Teressa slumped to the ground, to her knees, then to her butt. “Ah. Shit.” She whispered, “I couldn’t protect him, Poi.”

Poi put a hand on the large woman’s shoulder.

Jane found that she could only sigh, her breath coming out ragged as she clenched her fists.

And then the people upstairs realized something had happened.

Events proceeded rather fast from there.

- - - -