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Erick stepped back through the [Gate] to Storm’s Edge, into the disused throne room of Regency Castle. Pillars of blue stone formed a spacious hallway through the center of the area, separating the place into three parts. Metal fish and sharks and other sea life swirled up and down those pillars in a frozen ode to the ocean. Blue and gold tapestries held to the sides of the room, while everything else was pure white stone. Pure white light filtered down from massive ceiling windows providing ample illumination for the space, though here and there on the pillars, and on the tapestries, a faint blue light also provided illumination for the room, giving the whole place an almost underwater feel.

But there was no actual throne in the room, and though there wasn’t any dust either, this place hadn’t seen visitors in days, according to the manasphere. Just the cleaning lady two and a half days ago.

“Are you sure you don’t want to become an actual king, Augustive?” Erick asked, as he looked around the architecturally-interesting-but-empty room. “You have the throne room.”

Augustive smiled a little bit, as he adjusted his gold-coin shoulder cape. “We might not be quite a democracy, but we’re close, and after talking with your Overseer Mox I believe I prefer being the custodian of the city instead of an outright ruler. Besides that, I believe a Regency connection to House Benevolence and you taking over the dungeons here will directly solve many of our problems, as it wasn’t until those dungeons a decade ago that we ever had any real problems with our various powers here in Storm’s Edge.” His voice turned a fraction serious, though, as he added, “The Regency will still get the agreed-upon taxes from the delvers, yes?”

“20%, if Gold Taker is up to continuing the task?”

“He should be. I haven’t had a chance to speak with him, but that is likely due to his reluctance to be around you at all.”

“I hope to alleviate whatever terror he might feel about me soon enough. Should I approach him? Or do you have a better idea?”

Augustive was a little bit surprised that Erick was asking for his opinion, but he rapidly found he liked the Wizard asking him for his opinion. “I’ll put in a word for you. Through his work in the dungeons, he knows that he doesn’t know anything when it comes to truly powerful people, and that makes him rather skittish around people like you, and others. He absolutely won’t speak to The Headmaster at all, and we asked if he wanted to see the Arbors of Treehome and he completely refused for various reasons. There aren’t a whole lot of people in the kingdom that know who Gold Taker actually is, and I would prefer to keep it that way, if you please.”

“I can do that, and I’ll wait for him to approach me.” Erick moved on, “So then, will you be going directly into meetings? Would you like my accompaniment for any of the major ones? Get everyone in a room and I’ll [Hasted Shelter] us so we don’t take forever to talk.” He added, “Or, I can give you a [Hasted Shelter] for yourself and your people to use.”

“… The second option, please, though I would appreciate your attendance at a later date, maybe in a few hours? After I get the full news out to my people.”

“Of course. Ophiel? Please help Augustive with whatever he needs.”

Ophiel hopped off of Erick’s shoulder, saying, “I’m here! I help!”

Augustive couldn’t help himself but grin at the little guy. “The Regency thanks you for your service.”

As Ophiel flitted onto a very surprised Augustive’s shoulder, another Ophiel flitted into the room and sat down on Erick’s shoulder, where he usually sat.

Erick said to Ophiel, “Cast whatever normal spells he wants, Ophiel.”

As Augustive reflexively gasped a little bit at the power Erick had granted him, no matter how temporary—

Ophiel happily said, “I can do that!”

Erick nodded, then opened up a [Gate] to his next destination; the Pit. And then he stepped through and closed the [Gate] behind him.

Back in the disused throne room, Augustive quietly tested Ophiel, “Could you give me a [Gate] to my offices? Please?”

“Yes!”

And then Ophiel opened a [Gate] to Augustive’s offices, where a few surprised clerks and one overeager guard went on sudden high alert, only to become very, very confused as Augustive stepped through. The Regent was giggling a little bit, but he stopped that, faking a cough to hide his giggle, as soon as he realized what he was doing. He was not used to this level of power, and it was a quaint thing to have.

Erick pulled his Sight away from Augustive—

- - - -

—to focus on the task at hand.

As the sun began to dip down behind the western mountains that encircled the Pit, casting much of the newly Shaped land into shadows, Erick watched as Archmage Wiloza flew through those shadows, anointing the land with great big transparent balls of radiance. She placed the final wardlight over the last dungeon, providing ample light above all seven black holes in the world. It seemed that Aroido had moved all of them back into position, and then moved back inside those dungeons to hide from the world, or something. Erick could not see any of them out here, and a quick search with Ophiel revealed no Aroido outside the dungeons.

He did see some flying fish made of more spines than anything else, floating through the air, flying down the northern monster road. Monsters once again followed the thick mana in the air, as it led them toward the Pit. It was nice that the system had not been disrupted much. Erick had an Ophiel fly over to the northern entrance to that road, to see if ‘Gold Taker’ was funneling mana through that road once again...

Everbless was not there.

A quick check of everywhere except for Everbless’s harbor revealed that the giant tentacled avatar of the world tree was nowhere to be seen.

And now that he was looking at the monster roads, he saw a problem; he saw the results of Everbless not funneling the mana like he usually did. There were a lot of monsters fighting in the northern, southern, and eastern monster roads. The anemic flows of naturally-drawn mana were still sluicing through the grooves in the ground, pulled along by the dungeons, but the bounty inside the chests of the other monsters was causing a bit of a pileup, as monsters fought to kill each other instead of to follow the flow to the bounty up ahead.

… Rather anemic, really.

Erick frowned at that.

He could fix that himself. Maybe he should. Show Everbless that if he didn’t want to come out, that he would be replaced. It was a bit of a dick move to do to a kid, but Everbless wasn’t a normal ‘kid’.

“Hey Wiloza!” Erick called out to the archmage.

Wiloza was about two kilometers away, but she heard him well enough.

She floated over to him rather fast, and then began to slow down as she approached. “Is something wrong, Wizard Flatt?”

“Not really. We’ve got most of this whole dungeon thing sorted so I’m going to be having some meetings with your people later, under a [Hasted Shelter]. You’re welcome to attend those meetings, but from what Augustive explained to me, you take a rather hands-off approach to the Regency?”

Wiloza set down onto the battlement next to Erick, saying, “I don’t get involved with the daily events or anything like that. I try to stay out of all Storm’s Edge politics, for that’s a mire that one can easily get lost inside.”

Erick nodded. That was much the same as Augustive had already explained. “A lot of the people in power don’t like to be in power around here, do they?”

Wiloza gave a small, easy grin. “That’s been the Regency’s official stance for a long time. There have been a few power-grabs by certain regents in the past, of course, but those times in history have always ended poorly for one reason or another. Shades come calling, sometimes, but often the outcome is a simple exodus of people to other, less authoritarian islands, or an execution of the regent in the worst of cases.”

“I’m kinda surprised about that. There are monsters out there, but I suppose those lands are more inhabitable than they are not?”

“Oh yes. The Archipelago is a vast string of inhabitable lands home to millions of people, and everyone can grab their boat and move to one of the other islands if they wish— Or [Teleport], back when you could do that sort of thing.” She said, “Once you’ve secured some walls, and made a few blind harbors, most of the sea monsters can’t get in and those that do you’re going to be able to kill, or to escape from.” She waved a hand toward the Pit, adding, “Even the flying fish will have trouble with a wall that is curved over toward the waters. The Tidewalkers have always been some of the more reputable, open handed wall builders around, though, so though the Regency might only oversee Storm’s Edge, we have friends in all the islands.”

Erick nodded as he took in the sight of the fortresses Wiloza had built around the Pit, saying, “Excellent Stone Shapers, all around. Have you taken on many apprentices?”

“I have trained hundreds of students on stonework now and again. You can buy [Cityshape], after all, but most people don’t have the engineering knowledge or perspective to not have Shaped-houses crash down on them.”

Erick asked, “Did you train Gold Taker, in order to do the mana flowing, too?”

“Ahh… Yes. Gold Taker isn’t doing his usual job, is he. I did train him, actually. But only a little. He’s rather good at mana flows, and your [Control Weather] does much of the heavy lifting.” Wiloza frowned a little bit toward the Pit, asking, “Are you going to kick him out of a job, too? Like you are with the Aroidos?”

Ah. She was angry that he was taking over here. Well. It was her land, so she had every right to be angry.

Erick spoke as the Apparent King, saying, “This event right here will require everyone on board in order to make it function well, and Gold Taker is one of those requirements to a proper function. I don’t want to replace you, or him, or the Aroidos. So the question then becomes: what sort of job do you want here, Wiloza?”

“On-call backup; emergency response only.” Wiloza said, “But unofficially, I want to be involved with this every step of the way. This is my land, Wizard Flatt; I have overseen the safety of my people here for a very long time, and until I die that will not change.”

“No daily duties?”

“No.” Wiloza said, “I’m pushing 90. I like baking bread, going to plays, and doting on my great grandchildren whenever they should visit. I don’t actually like collapsing oceans onto enemies, or such-and-such.”

The Apparent King nodded. “I will then require you to speak and work with Vanya. Do you wish for an introduction?”

“Not today; a week from now, if you could. I am a bit squeamish around necromancers. Usually we kill those kinds around here.”

“Fair enough, for now.” The Apparent King asked, “Then what are we to do about Gold Taker’s unwillingness to appear before me? Augustive said he would ask Gold Taker to visit me first, but I want those monster roads handling the mana better. If necessary, I will enact some mana-shaping spellwork and a node network of my own, fully pushing out the need for Gold Taker at all.” Erick didn’t actually have such spellwork himself, for ‘moving mana around’ was more of an aura control thing, and not a real spell. But he could make such a spell rather easily. “It wouldn’t work nearly as well as a World Tree moving the mana of the world around, but with a large enough node network it would functionally be the same.”

Wiloza did not like that idea, but she spoke diplomatically as she said, “It’s good for Gold Taker to be involved with the dungeons, for he loves them more than—”

She never got a chance to finish her sentence.

A large tendril, blood red and thick as a dragon’s tail, slapped out of the sky, crushing into the space where Erick had been standing, sending stone flying, as a childish, angry voice screamed,

“MY DUNGEONS!”

But Erick had stopped time before the tentacle had crashed down.

As that tentacle still held in the air above his crown of black horns, Erick had casually moved Wiloza aside through an application of the only spell he could really use at-will, outside of the Script Second; [Gate], and only because of his Class Ability Gatemaster. Rozeta had said many years ago that he should be able to open and move around [Gate]s at will, and he could.

Gatemaster also allowed for something else that normal [Gate]s could not do, and that was to move without breaking.

In a near endless moment, Erick opened a portal of white lightning to Wiloza’s left, and then swept that portal over her, depositing her in a similarly-moving portal on the other side of the Pit, several kilometers away. And then he moved himself in the same way, to a position ten meters away from where Everbless’s tentacle would smash down.

He allowed time to resume.

The tentacle smashed. Stone flew. And then another tentacle smashed down again, right onto where Erick had moved.

Erick didn’t bother with the timeless trick this time. He simply lightstepped to another spot another ten meters down the wall of fortresses.

Everbless screamed, filling the air with red-tinged vibrations as he appeared in the sky in his full octopus-avatar. He was a crash of a thousand kilometer-long tentacles, each of them whipping back and forth, each of them lined with suckers and fangs for gripping and tearing. If he had any eyes in that form they were too small to see. He kinda looked like a tangled hydra, but a lot more menacing.

“MY DUNGEONS! NO STEALING MY DUNGEONS!”

Erick allowed Everbless to attack.

Twice more the child struck with a single tentacle, whip-fast, too fast for a normal person to evade at all. That was why Erick had needed to [Time Stop] the first time, but he honestly could not have said if that spell cast was another of his Class Abilities working, Failsafe: [Time Stop], or if he had been ready and waiting to cast that spell himself. Either way, he was here now, and he was acclimated to the battle.

He lightstepped another ten meters down the edge of the Pit.

Everbless screamed and attacked with multiple tendrils at the same time, sweeping the battlements and smashing down onto Erick five times in quick succession. Each time, Erick moved out of the way. Soon, Erick decided to only move a few meters out of the way, in order to test Everbless. He was here, wasn’t he? Might as well see what the kid can do.

Everbless smashed down once, lightly, and then tried to grip and pull Erick into the sky.

Erick moved—

The air turned solid, Forceful, as Everbless’s Domain spread across the land.

Erick held firm his own sunform against Everbless’s Domain, but he did not push back. He did not want to break the kid, for a broken Domain was a specific kind of hurt that sometimes sent people into comas. What Erick wanted, and the reason for him openly taunting Everbless like he had, was for Everbless to show himself, to see how Everbless handled that situation. Perhaps Erick had handled that poorly, though. There had been no need to truly taunt the kid. But then again, Erick hadn’t thought that Everbless would actually respond as he had.

So Everbless was handling this poorly, too.

Perhaps…

Perhaps, all Everbless had ever learned in the dungeons, from Aroido, from the delvers, from his entire life so far, was force, and so when someone actually threatened him with something as simple as the removal of his toys, this was how he responded. Erick suspected that Everbless saw his removal from the dungeons more as Erick threatening the ‘removal of his entire life’; not just the removal of toys. Everbless was still a kid, and this experience he was having was highly likely the very first time anyone had ever threatened him emotionally at all.

Raising Yggdrasil had been easier, since Erick had been there the whole time.

Erick dodged another seven strikes—

As Everbless screamed, “GO AWAY, SCARY WIZARD!”

Calmly, Erick said, “I will not go away—” Words were interrupted by another dozen tentacle slams, all at once. Everbless continued to attack, but Erick managed to keep his voice calm throughout the whole assault. “Stop this nonsense and let us have a talk, or else I will be forced to put you in a time out, Everbless.”

The assault tripled down. “Why you know me! Intervention no work!?”

“Take your pick of reasons,” Erick said, stepping left across the battlements of the Pit. A trail of tentacle-based destruction followed him. “I’m sort of like your father, for one. Yggdrasil is your brother, and he’s still a part of me. Any of the godly blessings I’ve gotten over the years. Many different reasons all could be valid; I don’t know. If you feel like having more discussions, then you must cease this assault. If you do not stop, then I will be firmly taking these dungeons from you, and you won’t have any say in them at all. All I’ve done is talk about what needs to happen next. All you have done is ensure that you’re seen as not mature enough to handle this sudden responsibility befalling the Archipelago.”

Everbless struck once more, but all the threat of the attack failed halfway through. The tentacle slapped down on the battlement and then flopped away, as the sky turned darker with sudden clouds. In a moment, the tentacle avatar wilted, and then a wailing filled the air as ‘Gold Taker’ vanished completely, disappearing from the sky.

Rain began to fall across the entire island and much of the local ocean, turning visibility down to near-nothing. It was not the storm of a century, or a sky filled with tornadoes or anything like that. It was just a storm of rain. But then again, it had only been ten seconds since it started, and it could get worse. Erick sent his senses outward to see if it was getting worse.

A quick check through Ophiel confirmed that the storm was nothing more than a dense rain, falling everywhere within Everbless’s reach.

Five minutes later, it was still just heavy rain.

It could rain for a while; that was fine.

Okay. So… This wasn’t that bad. Could have gone a lot worse.

Erick had spoken with the Arbors of Treehome about how to properly raise young Arbors many times over the years, even though almost none of their advice would actually apply to Yggdrasil, being as he was divinely sealed to Erick’s soul. Even with that major caveat, Holy O’kabil and Wyrmrest and Nosier and Home had explained a lot of ways of being that should still hold true for Yggdrasil, as they did for all Arbors.

Young living trees weren’t like people, with emotions that ran dry after ten minutes because their brains got tired of having those emotions. Their emotions did eventually run dry, and for much the same reasons, but an emotion due to an exceptional stimulus might last as long as a full day, or maybe a week. Younger Arbors experienced time faster, so a young tree might take a day to return to an even keel.

‘Leave a young arbor alone for a few hours after any sort of traumatic teaching moment, but don’t leave them alone for any longer than that, and especially not if their sadness causes problems for others.’

That had been the Arbors’ general consensus.

… And the rain wasn’t that bad? Yeah. The rain was fine.

Erick would go visit Everbless at sunset and introduce him to the Arbors at that time. They would likely have quite a lot to say about Everbless’s current behavior, and today seemed like the time to force that sort of introduction. The stormy guy was probably going to remember this first real interaction with the ‘scary wizard’ for the rest of his life… Which was kind of a shame, but if Erick had to be the stern uncle, then that was fine. Everbless probably needed a lot more solidity in his life than he was getting…

Erick looked to the raining sky again...

Lightning flashed, and the rain seemed to get heavier.

He needed to speak to the Arbors of Treehome right now, actually, to get their professional opinion.

- - - -

“And so that’s the current situation with Everbless,” Erick finished.

It had taken Erick half an hour to set up this meeting and then ten minutes to explain the situation, here in a meeting room near Arbor Holy O’kabil. The room itself was glass and steel and on the edge of O’kabil’s dominion. The tree herself grew outside in the distance, looking like a kilometer tall silver chalice, holding greenery inside silver wires and surrounded by silver spires. The other Arbors were not visible from this place, but three of their avatars had come in person, and all the rest had shown up as [Scry] eyes. Each of those avatars or eyes sat or floated atop their own large chair.

No one spoke outwardly for a good half a minute, after Erick had fully divulged the situation down in Storm’s Edge. Or as much as he could, anyway. The intervention prevented people from knowing that Gold Taker was Everbless, even up here, a quarter of a world away.

Erick had managed to speak around that intervention, mostly, but all the Arbors were talking amongst themselves while Erick explained everything to them, and—

Arbor Home, who had shown up as a brown and green eye, asked, “Pardon me, Erick. I’m still confused on the part where Everbless is killing people, but the dungeons are reviving them. I thought you had to die in a dungeon to get that resurrection?”

“Dammit. What is…” Nosier, who had shown up to the meeting as a lanky, 4 meter tall orcol who veered more toward the troll side of that heritage, was having a problem. “It’s some sort of mind lock, isn’t it? I feel it slipping away from me— I HAD IT, though. I had it. And then it went… What were we talking about?”

O’kabil, who had shown up as an older orcol lady wearing a silver dress with a white fur coat, said, “Explain it again, Erick. Smaller and less nuanced this time.” She took a drag of her long pipe.

All the Arbors nodded at that.

Erick succinctly said, “I took away Everbless’s toy because he was abusing the toy, and because other people need it more. And then he started crying and now there’s a minor hurricane developing across Storm’s Edge and the nearest islands. I am not going to return his toy; not yet, anyway. Other people need it much, much more than him. But, I think I want him involved with that toy, and in a very large way.” Erick said, “And also, I’ve gotten permission from Sininindi to finally interact with him, and also I want to introduce all of you to Everbless. Apologies that this meeting had to happen like this, and under these circumstances.”

Wyrmrest, who had shown up to the meeting as an elderly orcol man in a suit made of soft starlight, clarified, “And he attacked you when you threatened to keep his toy out of his roots, yes?”

The Arbors all stared at Erick; some disbelieving, others worried beyond simple words.

“Yes,” Erick said, “I didn’t fight him, but I did avoid his attacks. He destroyed a freshly-made fortress trying to get at me.”

Nosier frowned, asking, “And he knew who you were?”

“Yes.”

All the Arbors looked to each other again. Somewhere deep below the ground, their roots all tangled together, and they spoke privately about everything all the time. That conversation was likely going to last a long, long time beyond today—

O’kabil said, “I want to see him.”

The others looked to her.

Firebrand, an eye wreathed in fall-colored leaves that were also on fire, declared, “I want to see the boy as well, but not today. Not in an emergency.”

A few others agreed with that.

Wyrmrest said, “You need to be the sterner parent in this situation, Erick. You should Drain him dry. He’s a real tree, and it would simply put him into a torpor.”

Erick went a little wide-eyed at that. He knew that he might need to do that, but… “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do that.”

None of the Arbors looked positively upon Erick’s answer.

O’kabil stood, saying, “I would take a [Gate] to him, to see the problem for myself. Perhaps there is no need to crush him under the heel of necessity.”

Wyrmrest stood, saying, “I would go as well.”

Nosier said to the group, “I have no stomach for ill-mannered arbors. I would always say that they should be spared, and that they will grow up differently, but the fact is that what an arbor is when it is young is exactly the kind of arbor they will be when they grow, and once you get to this point where they’re already speaking… You will wish you had never seen them when they were young, and you had said that they were making simple mistakes, for that will always weigh upon you when they start killing others.” He said to O’kabil and Wyrmrest, “You two should go and evaluate, and save the group the strain.”

Erick hastily added, “He’s not a bad kid. He’s just… He has some issues.”

Home said, “This prophecy of this ‘Storm not of Sininindi’s make’ could easily mean Everbless.” She added to the group, “He was ready for an introduction to us years ago, and yet the Church has said no, preventing our meeting! None of them wanted us to see what poor parenting they’re doing!”

“Wait a moment,” Erick asked, “You’ve tried to contact him before?”

Wyrmrest said, “Yes, but not seriously. We have heard that he was cognizant and we have sent representatives down there, but we have been rebuffed from more than a cursory glance at the youngling. I would have that in-depth glance now, Erick, if you would, and I would have you with us and leading the way.” He said to the others in the room, “Perhaps we should all keep our preconceived notions to a minimum, and approach this interaction with the severity and openness that it demands.”

Rapidly, many of the Arbors decided that Wyrmrest had the right of it.

Nosier said, “I don’t like it.”

He was in the minority.

And so, Erick opened a [Gate] in the room, back to Storm’s Edge, to the beach right in front of Everbless—

It was only open for a bare half-second, but that was enough, for the other side of the [Gate] was under the ocean. Saltwater rushed into the room, sweeping across the floor and splashing on everyone—

Erick shut the [Gate], and then he took control of the water that he had allowed in, [Watershape]ing it all up before he threw it through another [Gate], back into a random part of the ocean far away from Storm’s Edge.

“Sorry about that,” Erick said, as he opened up another [Gate], much higher on the beach, and only after confirming the location with Ophiel again. As rain soaked the world on the other side and the ocean crashed far below, lightning flashed across that darkened sky, and Erick said, “It appears Everbless has raised the ocean a few meters.”

Wyrmrest walked right on through. “Looks like he’s having a tantrum.”

“Thanks for coming,” Erick said, walking through, into the storm.

O’kabil followed, frowning.

- - - -

Under a darkened sky, before an ocean crashing most fiercely, Erick stood with two not-Orcols, facing a crying child who was not really a child at all. Everbless was too old to be called a child, even though he had only gained cognizance a few years ago.

Arbors aged much, much faster than people.

Everbless was a tangle of roots, like a mangrove, but also almost like a banyan, with a canopy made of lightning-filled clouds. A ring of lightning surrounded his entire upper body, like a crown buried in clouds. There was a hurricane going on, too, so if one didn’t know where to look, they might not be able to differentiate where Everbless’s canopy ended and where the storm began.

Erick and O’kabil were under their own [Weather Ward] type magics, so the rain didn’t really touch them, but Erick’s shoes were getting soaked, and O’kabil’s mist-rabbit fur coat was not as fluffy as it usually was.

Wyrmrest looked perfectly at ease under the crashing rain. His starlight suit seemed dry, even though none of him was dry at all. He stared out at Everbless, but he spoke to Erick and O’Kabil. “This is worse than I thought it would be. That temple over there— The Blue Temple, if I recall correctly— is completely submerged. I count no less than three crashed boats, and at least two major bloody incidents. Thankfully this occurred at a church, so they were prepared for it with [Water Breathing] it seems.”

Erick had to defend Everbless. “The Blue Temple is made to be flooded with people inside.”

Wyrmrest’s opinion improved, but only a little.

“They are prepared for storms; yes,” O’kabil said, “Since this is a land of storms, this is to be expected, and Everbless is a child of Storms, so this is all partially forgivable, but…” She said to Erick, “This is yet another nuanced case and I am not sure how to handle it exactly, but Everbless isn’t striking with lightning and he’s not purposefully hurting people… But this is all a terrible way for an Arbor to be.”

“This behavior is acceptable in certain ways, yes. But not as a tantrum, over having his toys taken away.” Wyrmrest said, “That is the behavior that is unacceptable. Erick.” The orcol looked down to Erick, but only a little bit, since Erick was currently the Apparent King, with his crown of black horns and body taller than usual. “This is how this should go: I want you to end the rain, and end this tantrum. Fight and win against his control. After that, if he should attack, do not protect us; these are merely conjured flesh vessels. If he should kill us, then you are to explain to him what he has done wrong, and then Drain him to a torpor. He will fight you on this and say he hates you very much, but once he is fully Drained of mana, then he will be quelled. When he wakes, he will feel refreshed. Depending on how he acts after he wakes up, we will go from there.” Wyrmrest said, “If he should talk instead of attack, then I would follow your lead.”

Erick said, “That seems appropriate, but is a Drain truly the most appropriate thing to do?”

“Yes,” Wyrmrest said, unequivocally.

O’kabil agreed, “Everbless is a real, solid tree, so a Drain would simply be putting him to bed, as you would any unruly child. You never had that option with Yggdrasil, and you didn’t need that option, either. Yggdrasil grew up well and Wyrmrest and I look forward to seeing him unsealed in the coming year. But Everbless only ever got a wild sort of upbringing and it has harmed him.”

The news of Erick unsealing Yggdrasil was still something of a worldly secret, and O’kabil erased her words from the manasphere even as she spoke them, but all the Arbors knew. More people besides them knew, as well.

Wyrmrest nodded. “I look forward to the day that Yggdrasil will truly become a member of our community, and I hope that Everbless can do the same.”

O’kabil said, “From what I am seeing Everbless has a ways to go before he could become an upstanding Arbor, so Erick, please end this travesty of a tantrum and let us commence with discipline. I pray to Sininindi that Everbless makes good decisions in the coming minutes.”

Lightning flashed across the near sky and thunder rolled across the world.

The storm surged and then recoiled by the same measure.

If that was supposed to be a sign from the Goddess of Storm and Sea then Erick wasn’t educated enough to read it like a Storm Priest or Sailor of Sininindi could. From their looks, Wyrmrest and O’kabil were similarly uneducated.

So Erick simply said, “I hope that the Arbors of Treehome can become good mentors to Everbless, as they were for Yggdrasil.”

And then he reached into the sky with Ophiels all around, and pulled.

For one terrible moment, the very world seemed too solid, too outside of Erick’s control, as though Erick was fighting a force in the very wind and storm itself. Which was exactly what he was doing. And then he flexed his [Physical Domain] through the magic in the air and he overrode the power in the sky.

With his supreme Particle understanding of the world, Erick sundered threads of golden divinity and broke goddess-empowered lightning upon the anvil of science-backed magic. In a less blasphemous sort of way, Erick merely tore apart Everbless’s [Control Weather] with his own; the original that he had planted inside of both Yggdrasil, and Everbless, back at their twin creation.

The sky cleared. Lightning settled. Rain fell, and then stopped falling.

The seas began to retreat.

To the west, the sun glowed bright red as the golden sky shimmered upon a calm, dark sea, and clouds began to stretch out from the small thunderheads they were, into great big towering stretches of white and pink and shadowed spaces, high, high above. Those clouds were thirty kilometers tall; much larger than any natural cloud could be, so they wouldn’t stay like that for long. They’d naturally turn back into rainclouds if Erick lost control of the weather at all.

[Particle Magic] couldn’t make clouds from nothing, or return them to nothing. That was one thing that divine magic could do that he couldn’t. The rain from [Rain Cloud], which was an Elemental Water and Air spell, worked completely in mana and produced rain that vanished as soon as it fell. Divine magic could do both; it could thread both normal magic and Particle Magic together, to make those clouds overhead that didn’t vanish after they were done.

There had been a few times at the beginning of Erick’s time on Veird that he had thought that gods were just very powerful mages; maybe even Wizards. But that was simply untrue. Wizards operated within their own rules, most of them secular, while gods operated on a level far beyond mortal understanding, and almost entirely within very personal spheres of influence.

Now Erick could probably do a [Duplicate] sort of grand [Create Weather] spell, but there was no need for that. Gods didn’t need to work in subtleties like that, though; not when it came to magic.

Aside from the differences in magic, the main difference between gods and Wizards was in action.

Where a Wizard would directly change the world, a god would hear prayers before bed, and then answer those prayers through subtly guiding people as those people wished, be that guidance through the glint of light from a raindrop to draw attention at the exact right moment, or through placing a rock in the path of a cart, to make an apple fall down and roll to a hungry kid’s waiting hand. Gods were more like a force multiplier on a person’s own actions, when they were able to be that way. The two gods that had bodies (that Erick knew about), Melemizargo and Rozeta, both tended to act more as gods when they could, and less like Wizards, unless they had to.

Erick’s view of gods was not normal at all, though, and he knew that.

The normal people, all across Storm’s edge, viewed the clearing sky and piled clouds as something very, very bad. The people at the submerged Blue Temple breathed easily even underwater, but they did not breathe easier as the rain ended and the water rushed out of the concentric rings of the temple, threatening to pull them out with the outgoing tide. They all knew that the storm had started unnaturally, and that it had ended unnaturally, too. With the Storm Prophecy making the rounds today, they were worried that something big was happening.

… Erick wondered if Everbless had heard that prophecy yet.

He probably had.

Maybe that’s why he had gotten so upset.

Now that Erick had forcefully quieted his sadness, though...

Everbless’s lightning ring crown flickered brighter, as though the 1,500 meter tall tree was unsure what was happening to the world around him; why his magic had been cut off. Then he startled as he realized that yes, his magic had been cut. Questing spellwork flowed out from the stormy tree and struck Erick’s various [Physical Domain]s, centered on every Ophiel all across the sky…

Everbless dimmed—

And then he flickered, furious.

A small, angry tentacled [Familiar] appeared before Erick, Ophiel, O’kabil, and Wyrmrest, there on the hill south of his harbor. ‘Gold Taker’ was a great central eye woven inside a hub of tentacles, with a few smaller eyes here and there inside his nest of a [Scry]-eye or [Avatar].

Everbless glared at Erick from ten meters away. “What you want!” He slipped in closer, stopping three meters away, yelling, “WHY YOU HERE?!”

Erick answered honestly, “I want to help the world and every individual achieve their goals in life, without myself or others harming each other in the process.” Erick asked, “What do you want out of life?”

Everbless was confused for a moment, and then he answered, “I want my dungeons!”

“Why?”

Everbless was confused again. “… Because they’re mine!”

“But there’s a prophecy that all the lives of everyone in the Archipelago will be in danger in several months, and we need those dungeons in order to keep everyone safe. Do you care about keeping people safe?”

“Yes! I care! What stupid question. Make them safe by testing them against ocean! They fail the Rules, they die, but not for real! I did good! I help others learn!” Everbless glared. “You do bad by taking dungeons from me!”

Erick nodded, and then explained, “I’m going to be working with the Regency and otherwise in order to ensure that the dungeons grow large enough to house 22.5 million people, if needed. Vanya Silver and Soltic Cross will be the dungeon masters for the dungeons. Unless something changes, all of the Aroidos will be helping to make Vanya’s vision happen. The dungeons are not your playgrounds anymore, Everbless. They are needed for the good of all.” Erick asked, “Would you like to be a part of that?”

“I am part of it! I control mana flows! I only way they survive!”

Erick nodded. “You have done a good job so far, but—”

“I do good! I know this.” Everbless sneered with all of his eyes, adopting an affectation that was strangely similar to how all nobles looked sometimes when they thought they knew more than you. He wasn’t very good at that expression, though, for he stretched out a tendril with an eye in order to look at himself. He rapidly decided that he had made the ‘face’ correctly, and then added, “I make dungeons successful. Without me, all dungeons fail! Mommy’s priests say this. Regency say this. Aroido say this, too!”

Erick continued, “… You are the only way they have been surviving these years since you’ve awoken, but did you know that in all the rest of the world, a well-maintained dungeon is self-sufficient, and actually produces more mana than it takes in?”

“The bad ones! The ones that make homes for monsters! I make no monster homes! I make monster deaths!”

Very seriously, Erick said, “The world needs that mana, Everbless.”

Everbless faltered a little at Erick’s sudden change. He was terrified of Erick, but he was being as brave as he could be. Quietly, he asked, “World needs mana?”

Pulling back a fraction, Erick said, “This world is only as stable as powerful people like you and I make it stable, and that means making life flourish in all the ways it can flourish, while ensuring that all that life doesn’t harm each other in that flourishing. So when those dungeons break due to any number of factors, monsters pour out of them, looking for better habitats, causing problems to the people outside. If the best habitat is inside the dungeons, under the eyes and power of a mature dungeon master, then there are no breaks, and no one outside needs to get hurt.”

Everbless looked a little lost at that whole idea. Quietly, he asked, “But breaks don’t matter?”

“I heard that the last time the dungeons broke it caused the deaths of 76 people.”

Everbless went still, but not scared. He looked more apprehensive than anything; not personally guilty, but guilty-by-association. “… I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

“I’m going to guess what happened, and you tell me if I’m right at all.” Erick said, “One of the Aroidos thought he was being replaced, and he went crazy, killing people and breaking the dungeon from the inside. The event might have involved multiple Aroido, and then those Aroido went down to Seafoam Manor. Those Aroido were never seen from again.”

Everbless’s eyes went wide. “YOU KNOW?” And then he narrowed his eyes. “How you know so much!?”

“An inborn curiosity about how the world works and a desire to understand others at all times. I figure out the rest along the way, and then use what I learn to try and ensure the best possible outcomes for all.”

Everbless hung in the air, looking at Erick, trying to figure him out.

Since he wasn’t saying anything, Erick gestured to his companions, asking, “Have you ever heard of the Arbors of Treehome, Everbless?”

O’kabil and Wyrmrest had stood listening to the conversation this entire time, both of them giving slight approval for Erick’s words. They were both mildly surprised that this conversation was going as well as it was, too, considering that Everbless already had a track record of killing people and he had already attacked Erick. There was also a bit of confusion for the entire conversation, as this avatar of Everbless’s was intervention’d against people knowing he was Everbless.

Mostly, there was confusion, and O’kabil and Wyrmrest both trying to overcome that confusion as fast as they could.

Everbless looked to the orcols with suddenly narrowed, hateful eyes, his voice turning harsh. “Those are Treehome Arbors!? I hate them. Make them go away.”

Ah.

Someone was badmouthing the Arbors, or something? Not Sininindi, but probably someone else.

Someone was probably badmouthing him, too, but Everbless hadn’t brought that up; he had just acted like Erick was a deathly problem all this time.

“I will not make the Arbors go away,” Erick said, “I need you to remove your intervention from both of them, so that they can fully join this conversation.”

Everbless spat, “I asked talk with them and they said too stupid to talk!”

Erick was going to metaphorically strangle someone in either the Regency, or, more likely, in the Priesthood of Sininindi. Who had done this to Everbless? Who had made him think this way about the other Arbors of the world?

… Actually, Everbless might simply be making exaggerations based on stories he had heard, or which had been told to him. One of the well known stories about the Arbors of Treehome is that they evaluated all other Arbors in the world in a loose sort of way, and if a great tree was found horribly wanting, or outright evil, then the Arbors of Treehome usually sent orcols to kill that tree and figure out what to do with the creator afterward, if the failed arbor hadn’t already killed their creator.

“I’d love to hear more about your experience with the Arbors of Treehome and otherwise. And look, they’re here now, ready and willing to talk.” Erick gestured to his companions again, saying, “This is Holy O’kabil, and Wyrmrest. They are but 2 out of 13, now that my own son Yggdrasil is one of their number. I have known them for a long time, and they helped me connect to Yggdrasil better, helping both of us learn how to be better to each other.”

“… Stupid Yggdrasil won’t answer letters, either.” Everbless exclaimed, “You stopped letters! Why you stop letters! Stupid Evil Wizard!”

… Well. Hmm.

Erick wasn’t about to badmouth the Storm Priestesses, for he was rather sure that they were to blame for this problem. Or maybe Sininindi herself had been blocking those letters from moving on, and then blaming Erick for that. Erick was rather sure that Everbless was exaggerating, too, and there was no way to know, for sure, where the exaggeration started.

“I’m here to talk now, and Yggdrasil is, too.” Erick looked up— “Ah. Here he comes.”

An iridescent white eye descended from the sky, slowly yet surely, looking a little bit embarrassed for whatever reason.

Erick said to Everbless, “Whatever has happened in the past is in the past. We’re here now, Everbless. We’re here, and though I won’t be able to stay, I can leave you connections with all the other great Arbors of the world, if you want to talk to someone your own size.” Erick smiled a little bit, saying, “And Yggdrasil is practically your brother, too, so that’s fun! Right? That’s fun.”

Everbless rolled his eye, but he was incredibly interested in Yggdrasil’s eye as Yggdrasil finally floated down to Erick’s level. Everbless tried not to stare, as he tried to be dismissive, “You’re not brother… Are you?”

“I’m not sure,” Yggdrasil said. “I am rather certain we are twins of a sort.”

“Bah! You talk like them. Fancy. Full words!”

Wyrmrest flicked his eyes toward Erick. He was annoyed, and he was finally able to overcome a little bit of the intervention in order to show his pure annoyance. He couldn’t overcome it all, though; all he could do was look at Erick and then go back to being confused.

Erick chose to speak, “Everbless. You’re going to live forever, and you’re going to share this world with Yggdrasil, and with the Arbors of Treehome. I suggest that you remove your intervention from at least Wyrmrest and O’kabil here, so that they can talk to you. They know everything there is to know about being an Arbor and can answer any question you might have on the matter.”

The sky cracked with a flash of golden lightning stretching from one oversized cloud to the next—

Everbless looked up, saying, “But moooom—”

A smaller flicker of lightning dusted across the nearest cloud.

And Everbless grumbled, before he swung in close to both O’kabil and Wyrmrest and plucked out some golden fizzes from their chests. He moved back away, quick as he could, grumbling, “Mostly broken anyway.”

Wyrmrest breathed deep, and then he declared, “It most certainly was not broken yet, young man!”

“It breaking already. Mom said it break if I broke too much.”

Something in Everbless’s words had pissed Wyrmrest off something fierce.

The starlight-suited orcol spoke with authority, “Young arbor. You are at least 4 years out from gaining cognizance, and that’s the public story. Privately, you have likely been speaking for seven years or more. You can use full sentences, and so you will. This baby-language does you no favors with me.”

“See! See!” Everbless said to Erick. “They call me stupid!”

Erick had to take a metaphorical moment, though. Was Everbless acting with his speech? All this time? He had certainly been acting when he ‘sneered’ with his [Scry] eye at Erick. How strange! How strange that Erick had missed all that, too. He actually felt a bit embarrassed that he had missed the baby-speech thing. Had he ever considered that Everbless might be acting? No, he had not; not really. But…

Without missing a beat, Erick said, “He did not call you stupid, Everbless. He merely thinks you can speak properly, and that you are choosing not to.”

Everbless frowned as much as a ball of tentacles wrapped around an eye could frown.

O’kabil spoke, “The smaller persons might be fooled into thinking you’re somehow still too young to be disciplined and treated like a full person, but Wyrmrest and I and the other Arbors of Treehome are old enough and experienced enough to see your baby talk for what it is; an attempt at shirking responsibilities. That problem leads to this: If shirking responsibilities, then how can anyone trust you with the dungeons at all?”

Everbless recoiled a little, looking actually hurt. “… People like simple talk. Treat better when simple.”

Oh man. That was a problem and a half. Erick didn’t even want to begin with that part of this problem right now, so he focused on the other half.

“I have it on good authority that the person who Sininindi sent to oversee the dungeons is a very accomplished mage, and that you can learn a lot from her,” Erick said, “But a part of learning magic is speaking well and being as precise as you can. Sometimes fewer words are better, but sometimes explanations of even a single complicated spell will take a whole day of back-and-forth lessons. If you aren’t speaking as clearly as you can, then other people might not take you seriously.”

Everbless sunk in the air, softly saying, “Mom says I can talk how I want. No one can tell me different— And the Shades speak funny so everyone knows they aren’t serious!”

O’kabil narrowed her eyes and Wyrmrest frowned. Yggdrasil’s eye went wide in complete disbelief.

Styling one’s speech patterns to those of the Shades was something only done in very specific circumstances, the main circumstance being if one was strong enough to stand up to any Shade at all, and if one had good reason to need a speech pattern to distinguish between ‘serious’ and ‘not-serious-yet’, like Killzone of Spur. But mainly, having a speech pattern that had anything at all to do with the Shades was still rather horrific.

Code switching was a thing that was valid, but to speak of Shades like this was a problem.

Before anyone could say anything against Everbless, Erick said, “I believe you’re only using that excuse because you don’t really know what it means to speak like a Shade. We’re in a ceasefire right now, and with me at the helm I hope that ceasefire turns into true repentance; A reformation of the Shades to what they were before the Sundering. But you talking like that, on purpose, without any regard for what it actually means, is a bad idea, Everbless. Unequivocally.”

Everbless scowled. “You can’t tell me what—”

“I can and I will and you will listen and do as I say when I speak to you as I am speaking now, for this world is not a world made just for you, or for me. It is a world for all of us, Everbless.” Erick said, “I will see this civilization through to the next world and the next and the next, but you are too young to know your place in that future yet, and the more you balk and winge at my simple declarations, here at the beginning, the smaller your part will be in the coming years. It’s really quite simple, Everbless. Do as I say, and you can be a part of the dungeons again. Until then, you’re out.”

The air tensed.

Everbless almost fought Erick on that—

But Everbless faltered fast, because he had some demands of his own. “Fine. I don’t like you. Go away Bad Wizard.” He looked to the orcols beside Erick, and to Yggdrasil, as he said, “I’ll talk to them.” He asked, “Fine?!””

“It’s okay if you don’t like me, but I love you, Everbless, twin to my son Yggdrasil. I’ll go away now, but not before I leave you with a small gift.” Erick reached through the air, into a portal, and he plucked out a small, portable Gate made of platinum. He held it forward, saying, “A [Scry]-Gate. If you trigger the spellwork within it will flicker some protocols at the Gate District, and summon a [Gate]. From there, you can [Scry] through that [Gate] in order to see both Yggdrasil at Candlepoint, and then, through some [Scry]-hopping through the other Gates in the district, you can look upon almost all the rest of the world.”

Everbless’s anger turned to confusion when Erick said he loved him. Confusion became wonder, before Everbless remembered that he was angry. Anger faded again under the presentation of Erick’s gift. Everbless instantly whipped a tendril out and took the little platinum ring, squirreling it away inside of his tentacle-body.

Almost nicely, Everbless said, “Thank you…” And then he narrowed his eye, saying, “I don’t love you.”

Erick chuckled a little. “That’s fine; I’ve got more than enough for both of us. See you later, Everbless.” He said to O’kabil and Wyrmrest, “Tell me when you need a lift back.”

“Won’t be necessary,” Wyrmrest said, “We can dissolve these bodies and leave.”

“I would like a return for my coat, if you could, Erick dear,” O’kabil said.

“I can do that; Father doesn’t have to,” Yggdrasil said, and then he turned to Erick. “Love you, Dad.”

Erick smiled brightly. “Love you too, son.”

Erick gave one final grin, and then he flickered brightly, lightstepping far away from that sunset cove.

He checked back on the sapient trees occasionally, there on that grassy hill above the rocky shore, while he was in meetings with the Regency’s people. The arbors seemed to get along a lot better once Erick was gone, with Everbless seeming to falter from whatever stance he had had before, all in order to pour out questions like a tidal wave. ‘What is an Arbor?’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘How big are you?’ ‘What do with people trying to swim inside roots?’

The other three answered as best they could, with Wyrmrest becoming less and less stern, and more like a grandfatherly figure as Everbless proved both his youth, and his willingness to grow past his youthful indiscretions. O’kabil was pleased as well, Erick could tell, but she was still holding back her final judgments because Everbless was a known liar… Or at least an exaggerator.

Even still, they spoke about this and that long into the night, as the stars took hold of the dark sky above, and giant clouds began to gently pour their rain far out to sea.

Yggdrasil and Everbless eventually discovered that both of them liked fish a lot, which led to a whole new conversation that Wyrmrest and O’kabil had to bow out on; they were both firmly land trees, and they only tolerated fish-talk when they had to.

- - - -

Meetings, meetings, meetings.

It was near midnight, over 20 hours later than it had been six hours ago, back on the beach with the arbors, and Erick had finally gotten out of the last big meeting of the minds at Storm’s Edge. He honestly had not needed to do any of that; to talk with the nobles, or the merchants, or the Local Area Gate Network administrators, or with those of a priestly nature. But he did it anyway. It was good to let people know what House Benevolence’s stance was with the dungeons, and it was also good to be seen standing alongside Regent Augustive.

High Storm Priestess Tiza Nindi wasn’t present for any of it, which was strange, but not really, for early on in the evening her lackeys had privately and politely conveyed to Erick that Tiza wanted to meet privately, after everyone else had had their turn. Erick had decided to grant that request.

And so now here he was, sitting down in a nice hardwood chair, across a desk from the middle-aged owl shifter, in the second-highest room in the lighthouse of Storm’s Edge’s harbor. It was a nice room, slightly meant for public dealings with others, but the lighthouse itself was a mostly private location, with beds and personal effects in its many church-cells down below. Tiza’s bed, books, clothes, and a hand-span-sized fish lazily resting in a large tank, lay beyond a door right over there, to the side of this office space.

The lighthouse was something of a church and a guide for ships; in those ways it was used all the time. But it was also a deterrent for monsters, and that function hadn’t been used in years. Right above this office space, past a half-floor and then up in the air, sat a massive, slowly-rotating grey stone that shone with lightning all day and night.

There hadn’t been much conversation between Tiza and Erick yet; just perfunctory greetings, and Tiza holding herself back a great deal.

Erick decided to break the ice again. “So that lightning stone up above acts as a collector and discharger of divine lightning, yes? It shines rather well, too. Illuminates at least half the harbor out there and more besides.”

Tiza frowned a little bit. “… It doesn’t scare you at all to be this close to our base of power, does it.”

“Absolutely not,” Erick said. If that is how she wanted to play this, then that is how it would be played. “I know I am in good standing with Sininindi, and will be with Everbless, eventually, and I am currently the living treaty between the Light and the Dark and the rest of the world. And you couldn’t kill me even if you tried. So no, I’m not scared at all of you or yours, Tiza. Are you scared of me?”

Tiza didn’t answer. She just glared from behind her mask, that layer of wood and enamel only serving to hide the upper half of her face, leaving her frown on full display. It barely covered her upper face, too. Erick had long ago found out why shifters wore such ineffectual masks, and for most of them it wasn’t to hide. All shifters carried over the hallmarks of their animal form in all of their forms, but most had perfectly normal faces. Tiza’s eyes were a bit larger than a normal human’s eyes, and her hair had feathers in it, but that was about all. She could clip those feathers and look like a somewhat-odd human if she wanted to.

Shifters wore masks because they were ‘always wearing masks’. Whether in public, or private, in a human-form or animal-form, everyone wore masks. Shifters just decided to openly display that fact. The mask they wore was to reveal who they were to others; not to hide.

… Erick’s mind was wandering since Tiza wasn’t answering—

Erick said, “You shouldn’t be scared of me—”

“It’s not often that someone shoves me through a [Gate] and then locks me out of all the important gatherings of my home.” Tiza said, “I have earned my place here at Storm’s Edge, Wizard Flatt. As I had called you once, I call you again: You are a usurper, a blasphemer, and an adulterer, and I am not scared of you. I am disgusted by you. I am disgusted by your mangling of Lightning, your disregard for Storms, and how you have Wizarded your way into making Sininindi forgive you.”

Unperturbed at her statement, for Erick had heard a lot worse (particularly after the Teleport Exodus and how ‘beneficial’ that was for his Gate Network) Erick said, “I understand the usurper and blasphemer, but why adulterer; that part I never understood.”

Tiza narrowed her eyes. “You make mockery?”

“I do not. Explain yourself, lest I leave this conversation for more important matters.”

“To use Lightning outside of Sininindi’s domain is to cheat the Goddess of her throne.”

Erick nodded. “Ah. So that’s how you figure… Well you’re wrong and I don’t care about your opinion on that matter, so I’m still gonna do it. Cheat cheat cheat! All the way to my own throne.” He added, “Now that was me making mockery. Now you know the difference.”

Tiza scowled.

Erick didn’t often make light of the serious complaints of others, but what was ‘serious’ to Tiza was asinine to Erick, and he honestly had no idea why the woman was still being so antagonistic after all these years and distances— Well. He knew why. Tiza had told him why. She did not like that Erick had stolen the lightning from the sky. That was her honest, true complaint. Everything about her hatred of Erick stemmed from that place of understanding…

There was probably more to it, but sometimes people were irrationally uncompromising, and Erick had (mostly) learned to live with that fact.

Not fully, though.

Erick began, “I have healed Melemizargo. I have given a reliable [Control Weather] to Sininindi as well as a World Tree. I have stopped the Shades. I have made a Gate Network. I have taken down rogue Wizards, and I will ensure that we get to the next world and the next. I have gifted Veird Particle Magic and the Node Network, and OH YEAH, Elemental Benevolence, to prevent Sunderings for all the rest of existence. And then I made myself no longer a failure point for any of that, because we’ve got Benevolence dragons making Benevolence all on their own and Kiri will replace me as the Gatemaster eventually.”

Tiza glared all throughout Erick’s speech, but at the same time her breath was shallow. She was worried. A lot—

Oh.

She was worried Erick was going to execute her.

Gods above, this woman didn’t understand him at all.

Erick decided to give her an out. “I understand you must have some need to maintain your rage, but we haven’t interacted in over a decade, Tiza. I might have come into your lands and messed with your established order, but a storm is coming, and I needed to prepare, and you weren’t being cooperative, and I doubt you would ever want to be cooperative. So while I understand your continued anger, I actually have no idea why you choose to be angry with me when Sininindi isn’t even angry anymore. And so, I offer you a complete forgiveness and forgetting of what has come before. You can continue this imagined feud you have with me, if you want, but know that I am done with this feud. Please, can we move past this hatred?”

“You put shadows in the same church as the light, Wizard,” Tiza said, harshly. “Those shadows are more than enough for any sane person to condemn you as a trick of the Dark. Benevolence? Pah! A lie. A mask to hide yourself.”

And there it was, along with a deep insult about masks that only really worked with other shifters, but which Erick understood the meaning of anyway.

Whatever.

The Sininindi stuff was one of her reasons for hating him, but the Darkness stuff was the real reason. Erick appeared at Spur all those years ago, oh so close to Ar’Kendrithyst, and then he made Particle Lightning. Tiza would literally never trust him, ever. In her mind, Erick was a pawn of the Dark, and she was waiting for the moment when he destroyed everything she knew and loved.

No wonder she was terrified of him killing her.

And yet she was still confronting him? She was, wasn’t she.

There was a certain amount of bravery there, Erick thought. Almost admirable.

“Guard the walls and keep the lighthouse lit, Tiza, and don’t ever forgive the Darkness if you don’t want to. I won’t ever ask you to do that. But what I do ask for is some sort of civility in our future engagements. Can you and I agree to that, at least?”

“… I can do civility, but since you flicked me away during that conversation in that major meeting, I will no longer be pulling my [Strike]s against your actions in this land. I called you here to tell you that.” Tiza said, “I will fight you on everything you do here in Storm’s Edge. You have won the dungeons, but don’t expect to win anything beyond the Pit.”

Erick nodded. “Fair enough.” He stood.

He almost left—

But Tiza continued, “Toward that purpose of ensuring your Darkness has no power in this land, we’ve decided to resume the Church’s summary execution of all cultists found within Storm’s Edge, and we’ve decided to kick the Xoatists out. Religious tolerance is for religions, not for your cult. Never your cult. These measures will take place tomorrow. If those cultists Vanya and Soltic should come out of that dungeon, and leave that Pit, they will be executed as well. If any of the monsters those two make should try to come to Storm’s Edge, they will be executed, too.” She finished with, “And we Storm Priests will not be going inside that place when the Storm Prophecy unfolds, if it ever does and if this wasn’t all just another power grab by you. The Darkness will never be a shelter from any storm, you uneducated outlander. Should a Particle Storm develop, as I am sure you will make it happen, we will be fighting the good fight out here, against your corruption of our lands.”

Erick managed a calm tone as he asked, “Are you done?”

Tiza narrowed her eyes. “I am done. Get out of here, Wizard, and go rescue your cultists before I kill them all.”

Erick left in a flicker of lightning that took several moments to fizzle out.

Tiza glared at the lingering white sparks, dancing across her chair and the floor, until they vanished, leaving black marks on everything.

- - - -

Fury.

Rage.

And then some calmer words.

“Don’t be a tyrant, Erick. Don’t be a tyrant,” Erick mumbled to himself as he stood upon the shore of a river, deep inside the Forest of Glaquin, where hopefully no one but the free-roaming monsters could see him. And Ophiel. With false relaxation, he declared to himself and the world, “There is no need to be a tyrant, because no one has died yet, right? Right.”

Jarod Maryol. Glariol Maryol. Nero Maryol.

Those people were at the top of Erick’s rescue lists, though there were more, apparently. Erick had already had an Ophiel scan all of Storm’s Edge for those people since Tiza’s anti-cultist declaration not ten minutes ago. He had not been able to find them on Storm’s Edge, which was somewhat expected, but only after Erick had seen what had happened. The three Maryols and a few other cultists were all on the next island over.

Barda, Nero’s girlfriend/fiance/whatever, was nowhere to be seen. She might have been considered a cultist-by-association and thus left in a hurry once it became apparent that everyone she knew was getting rounded up, and then even faster when the guard confronted her. Her and Nero’s room at the Dungeon Guildhouse had been stripped. According to the manasphere, Barda had gone in there alone, tears almost falling but not, right before she had been summarily dismissed by guards of the Regency, punted through the Local Area Gate Network, off to the Greensoil Republic, to Riski, on the southern coast of Glaquin.

Erick didn’t know the other people caught up in Tiza’s crusade, thrown into the same prison as the Maryols, but he would save them, too.

Erick would save them all.

Calmly, Erick said to Ophiel, floating in the air beside him, “I almost lost it back there, Ophiel, but I managed to control my anger, and now I have a path forward. One that… Only involves me being a little bit of a tyrant. But it’s a rescue mission… And not a [True Resurrection] mission. She could have done that instead… She could have said that she had killed them all, and that if she found anymore that they would suffer the same fate… But she’s given me a day to get them all out. Or more like an hour till sunrise? That’s… Fine. So this is... Not that bad? Not that bad— Ah. But…” Erick got paranoid as she said, “She’s probably looking to see which ones I rescue, and she’s going to use that against me somehow. She thinks that there’s some great big plot against everything that she values, and there is a plot, but it’s one that Sininindi herself asked for. What complicates things is that Tiza is in league with the Regency, for how else could they have all known to keep this information away from me, which is both very normal since I’m an outsider to them, and which would explain why I haven’t heard of what happened to the Maryols all this time. Or any of the cultists they rounded up. They were purposefully keeping that hush-hush, and I suppose I didn’t directly ask for Soltic and Vanya’s full history of interactions with Storm’s Edge, which probably set off some warning bells for them…”

Ericks voice trailed away as his words started going in circles, there on the riverbank of a rather lazy river, the water gently rolling through the depths of the Forest of Glaquin. Kilometer-tall trees blocked out the night overhead, but luminescent mushrooms grew here and there among the canopy and on the ground, providing more than enough light for Erick’s Perception-enhanced senses. Erick sometimes came here to think and do other things when he didn’t go to Yggdrasil to relax.

Ophiel watched his father think.

Erick’s thoughts were interrupted by another problem.

Erick decided, “I’m going to eat something first and then I’m going back there to solve this newest mess.”

And then he turned to the left, where a monstrous chimera was charging down the river’s rocky bank toward him, rocks flying out from underfoot as it moved. It was an alligator-like thing with too many horns and too many long legs, with masses of saliva flinging from its roaring, open maw. Erick flickered with lightning, and when the lightning faded, he was a black dragon, his wings flapping out to the sides to tower over the suddenly-terrified beast. A quick swipe of claws killed the thing, while a few more swipes cut it into four bite-sized pieces. It tasted alright. Not great, but not bad either. The monsters’s Elemental Decay and Stone made it sort of like eating a meaty tart, while the bones provided a nice crunch.

When he had finished his first kill, eating everything bones and all, it hadn’t been enough.

Ophiel leapt through the air, leading the way, saying, “Big fish there!”

Erick chuckled. “Thank you, Ophiel. You were already looking for more food, weren’t you?”

“Father eat lots!”

Though the Dungeon Exodus had happened over eleven years ago, the Forest of Glaquin was still home to many different wild monsters, for unless a dungeon was properly managed, then it never grew large enough to hold all the monsters that would invade. Wild dungeons formed, deepened when they were taken over by a monster large enough to keep all the other ones in line, then through a series of perfectly normal events, other monsters rose to power inside that space and ate the bigger one, thus starting a chain of events that usually led to the core getting damaged, and thus expelling all the monsters therein. This was colloquially known as a ‘dungeon break’, but a break could actually happen in multiple ways…

Eh.

Erick was hungry and angry still, and his thoughts were spiraling. Anyway. The current problem was that the Forest was a lot calmer than it used to be, but it was not that calm at all.

As a massive black dragon with wings and bright white eyes, the Forest was deader than a doornail.

He would have to actively hunt his next meal, which he did.

Fish were easy to catch and he only really grabbed the one, for [Duplicate] solved all quantity issues. As Erick ate and ate the same fish over and over again, gradually his anger seeped away. He didn’t spend too long on the process for there were people to rescue, so he was still a little angry by the time he left the Forest behind, but not being hungry helped a lot.

- - - -

The Regent was asleep.

And then he wasn’t, because Erick came calling at 5:30 am.

Erick almost felt bad for doing that to him, so he offered, “I can wait ten minutes if you want to sleep for a good ten hours in a [Hasted Shelter]. I know you only had about an hour so far.”

Augustive looked at Erick, rapidly going from worried to a little miffed. He was slightly disheveled from having just rolled out of bed to attend to Erick’s request for an audience, but only Erick could really tell that dishevelment. The man was Classed as a Regent, and so he had quite a few niche spellworks that allowed him to forgo the usual problems of being a mortal king, such as a long-range [Clothe]-type spell allowing for instant dressing and hair and styling and cleanliness needs of all sorts, whenever he wished to spend the mana. The tiredness in his eyes still showed past that facade, though. No real cure for lack of sleep besides the New Stat, Constitution, and the Regent did not have that; not many people did.

“… I would take that sleeping shelter option after I hear and help solve whatever issue requires my attendance at this late hour— Early, hour. It’s nearly 6?”

“Only 5:35.” Erick explained, “Tiza taunted me by threatening to execute prisoners of Storm’s Edge who are thought to be cultists, just because they are cultists. What’s more, she threatened to murder Miss Silver and Mister Cross should they come out of those dungeons at any time. This is intolerable for a multitude of reasons, the first of which is that cultists are no longer allowed to be executed out of hand; this was decided by international decree, and Storm’s Edge signed this decree.”

According to his face, Augustive had expected this to happen. “Storm’s Edge cannot abide cultists of Melemizargo at this dangerous juncture, and so the ones we discovered in the city have been stripped of their property and put in cells. We are not going to execute them, though; Tiza exaggerated. We were going to exile them. Probably to Candlepoint, if you would have been amenable to that, and in accordance with that decree you’re talking about.”

“… Is that how you wish to play this action by Tiza Nindi? To be soft on her? For her crimes of over-policing others?”

“Yes. She is the harbor guardian of Storm’s Edge and her Lightning Magic can incinerate tangled hydras and worse. Her position of power is a lot less physically powerful today than it used to be, thanks to the dungeons removing most monster threats from the ocean, but should her power be required to defend Storm’s Edge then I want her to be happy with Storm’s Edge.” Augustive said, “I fully expect her power to be needed to fight against the coming Storm Prophecy.”

“… Fine.” Erick said, “Exile them to Candlepoint; I’ll take all your undesirables and give them new lives.”

“Thank you, Wizard Flatt.”

Erick offered, “Do you want a [Hasted Shelter]?”

“I would love one of those.”

Erick nodded and sent Ophiel along with Augustive, saying that he would be back later to personally take the cultists to Candlepoint. But he had other places to be right now, since the cultists-issue had been sorted.

- - - -

Seafoam Manor was lit brightly, like a beacon of civilization hidden among the night-cloaked greenery of the mountain. The outer defenses were down completely, so Erick descended upon the house without worry, down onto the lit lawn. It looked rather nice compared to how it had been before.

Instead of a slightly-overgrown lawn and trees that needed trimming, the lawn was cut, the trees were in their proper shapes once again, and the fountains burbled. A bunch of small night birds with long legs poked across the freshly cut grass, eating insects uncovered by the cutting, while the noises of the forest flowed into the air from outside the property; nightsong birds and howling monkeys, and chirping bugs of all sorts.

The house was no longer boarded up. The closed front doors were exposed to the world, in all their carved beauty, the windows were open on much of the front of the house, and the smell of something cooking wafted on the breeze. Some sort of stew, according to Erick’s casual mana sensing of the interior of the house.

Also according to that mana sensing, minutes ago, Goldie had been talking animatedly with Oozy in the kitchen, over dinner. She had taken off her face mask in order to eat with a spoon, while Oozy had just spooned some of the stew onto himself, there in his floating Force bowl. They seemed to be getting along well.

But then Erick had shown up, and Goldie had rapidly moved into the foyer of the house, to present herself for Erick’s arrival. Oozy had been a little slower than the Shade and a lot more scared, but he had come out to present himself, too.

Erick walked forward, the double doors opening before he needed to open them himself. Goldie smiled a little as she laid proper eyes on him, while Oozy quivered in his bowl.

“Greetings again, Oozy Stormcaller, last King of Storm’s Edge,” Erick said, and Oozy flummoxed there in his bowl.

“That’s not me anymore,” Oozy said, “I cannot be King.”

“Even after I turn you back into a person?”

“… I want to be a person again, but… not…”

Oozy fell silent.

Good to know; he wouldn’t upset the Regency, and all the power Erick was trying to build here.

Goldie took that moment to hand over some [Reincarnation] paperwork. “We worked on it together.”

Oozy fell down into his bowl completely and it was only through sheer fortitude that he didn’t float backward, to vanish off to someplace where he would not be seen. Erick admired him for his bravery, and in more ways than just being willing to ‘stand’ before Erick without quailing anymore.

Erick glanced over the paperwork, taking a full moment to let Oozy know that he really was looking it over. It was rather standard requests; average height, if a little on the shorter side, average build, if a little on the smaller side. He kinda wanted to look like a mix of the original Aroido, and Frydrika, which was fine. The only odd thing to stand out was that Oozy wanted a [Blessing of Empathy], because he knew he wasn’t like other people, and he wanted an easy way to understand others.

Well. That was the second odd thing.

The main one was that he wanted to burn down the house and leave forever, and he wanted Erick’s help with that, too.

“Pardon me, Oozy, I need to ask Goldie something in private.”

Oozy instantly backpedaled, floating away down the hallway in the back of the stairs, vanishing behind a corner as he said, “Of course of course!”

Erick put up a Privacy around him and Goldie and the goldscale Shade turned serious, her bubbly nature vanishing under what was obviously a concerning moment. Erick asked her directly, “How was he? Can he make these sorts of decisions?”

“Oozy Stormcaller is possessed of a certain kind of madness that makes him rather docile around people stronger than him, for he lives in constant pain and is terrified of more pain. He acts well enough to hold a conversation and he knows the largest topics of the day, for he does know how to spy on people and look at the rest of the world, but he doesn’t know where he is, who he is, or what is really happening out there. He is both 250 years behind the times, and able to work with modern magics quite well. Currently, he is under the care of himself, but only because he has lived in this house for the last 40-odd years of his life and he literally never leaves.” Goldie said, “And no; he cannot make any sort of real [Reincarnation] decision. I had to help him a lot with all of that, and I am absolutely sure that you will have to redo the [Reincarnation] afterward.”

“How did he respond to you being a Shade?”

“He comes from a different time, back before the Great Purge of Spur when we stopped making Shades all the time and Fallopolis began her job as Culler; I was only around for 40 years of the previous era, which was long before some Shade cursed Oozy. He thinks it was the Witch, because he thinks he had some sort of positive correspondence with the Librarian over some books he used to read, and the Witch didn’t like that for some reason.” Goldie said, “Back then the Shades were monsters in the dark that you prayed never knew about you, and if they did, and if they came to you, you did what you had to do in order to appease them. So when he was with me, inwardly, he was terrified the whole time, but that terror was probably the only thing keeping him on track in our conversation. He felt the same way when he saw you; he probably can’t tell that your eyes aren’t actually full-white, and that you have pupils.”

Erick looked over the paperwork again, then he dismissed the [Privacy], and said, “Thank you, Goldie. That will be all.”

Goldie slammed a fist over her chest, and then vanished into the shadows.

Erick called out, “Oozy. Can you come out? We’ll get you [Reincarnation]’d and then on your way to a new life, okay?”

Oozy peeked out from the hallway behind the grand staircase, paused, and then rolled forward. “Uh. Yes, sir. I’m ready for a new life!”

Erick nodded. “I have a question about the paperwork, though. It says you want an average height body, if a little taller?”

“Yes sir!”

He had written down ‘if a little shorter’.

“And average stature, if a little muscular?”

“Yes sir!”

He had written down ‘if a little thinner / smaller’.

Welp! Goldie was right. It wasn’t that Erick didn’t believe her, but it was good to check on these sorts of things.

Erick said, “If you don’t like what I do today then you can get another body later. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready!”

Erick was rather sure that the guy was not ready at all, but after he regained a mind he would be able to communicate his thoughts better, and quite literally better, too; oozes couldn’t [Telepathy] or do Mind Magic at all, but as a person, Oozy would regain all that capability. Erick began the transformation by making some completely superfluous gestures with his hands, winding some Benevolence glows into the air, giving the illusion that he was starting. A lot of people felt more comfortable when they knew what was coming, and as soon as [Reincarnation] actually started, people usually went directly to sleep.

Erick said, “You will feel some discomfort, but that’s because you don’t have lungs or the biology to absorb this sedative anesthesia I am creating. That will pass fast.” And then Erick began casting and real magic began to flow into Oozy. The bathtub of red gelatin and gore began to flop a bit, and then go completely rigid, body parts floating to the surface, multiple eyes wincing in utter pain. But then lungs began to develop inside the pile, and Oozy relaxed. As the patient’s lungs began to work, and proper biology began to happen once again, Erick relaxed, too, as he spoke to himself, “That wasn’t so bad. The pain part is over. Now to make you what you wished to be.”

Erick had gotten very good at making young, healthy people out of all sorts of types; the old, the infirm, the broken, and the non-person-shaped. Oozy was a slightly special case, but not really special at all. As Erick cast, and the magic took full hold, Oozy’s soul began to transform right alongside his body. The ooze had been a red-souled sort of person, but murky and full of shadows. Ten seconds into the procedure a brilliant spark of bright red blossomed within that murky soul and then overtook all the rest, like light shining through the dark. All that dark was really just accumulated spellwork and messed-up soul stuff and other assorted things that were being pushed away, as the true soul took hold of itself once again.

The ooze shifted. The lungs moved to the center. A red-boned spine developed out of the red slime—

… Red bone? It wasn’t white bone. It was red. And not just a film from the ooze? But really red?

What the fuck?

That was Erick’s first clue that something was wrong. Red bones were not the sign of a good [Reincarnation]… Probably. But then again this had literally never happened before, and everything else seemed to be working out well. Erick had no idea what was actually happening, but he would figure it out later. For now, the procedure continued.

Ribs and femurs and a skull collected out of the mana, all red, but not red like the spine. Pink, maybe. Soon, a full skeleton developed out of the gore that was Oozy. It was red at the spine, and then pink going outward, with the bones turning normal-white at the fingers and toes.

That skeleton curled up inside that Force bowl, as though it was alive already, but it wasn’t. It was still halfway an ooze.

And then red lightning flickered across the skeleton, followed rapidly by the growth of red muscle and blood and skin and thankfully the skin was pale tan, exactly as Erick had chosen.

Red lightning was funky. Not normal. But also, not causing a major probl—

The third clue that something was wrong with the [Reincarnation] had come and gone, and Erick hadn’t realized that something had gone wrong until he was staring down at a nude man in his early 20s, who looked completely normal.

Erick hadn’t seen the world shatter into fragments of futures. Erick had not picked Oozy’s fate for him—

A fourth problem occurred.

Oozy woke up.

Oozy gasped hard, his eyes slamming open as he screamed a little and flinched backward, slipping and flopping in his Force bowl. All he managed to do was to slip and slide among the parts of himself that weren’t used to make his body. Erick washed him with a quick [Cleanse] before the freshly-woken man could be too terrified of what he was laying inside, and then Erick followed that up with a quick conjuring of clothes, directly onto the lad.

Oozy’s eyes were bright red and yellow, like the sun, which was yet another thing that Erick hadn’t picked out for him. He hadn’t been awake for more than three seconds so far, and those three seconds had been completely terrifying for him, so Erick hadn’t said anything yet. Soon enough, Oozy seemed to calm down; to settle into his freshly-cleaned Force bowl.

Oozy breathed a bit heavily, but then that, too, evened out. He looked at Erick warily, but his eyes were no longer as wide as they could be.

He just sat there, waiting.

Erick nodded, then said, “Sorry, Oozy. You shouldn’t have woken up like that. I’ve done this [Reincarnation] thousands and thousands of times, and though sometimes some people wake early, usually they’re out for an average of 4 hours. I also didn’t manage to hit your targeted future of ‘moving past the horror of your past’, but as I’m rather sure that you are of much sounder mind and body, that you will be able to do that yourself. If not, then I can always redo this [Reincarnation] later. Even right now, if you want.” He asked, “Do you understand that?”

Oozy extended his head and opened his mouth, but nothing came out except his tongue. That tongue waggled around as confusion showed on his face. He tried to touch his face with his elbow, obviously forgetting that he had fingers, but then he looked down and saw fingers once again and excitement showed on his face.

He tried to stick his whole hand into his mouth to touch his throat from the inside as he tried to understand how to speak again. He gagged, instead, spit flying out as he coughed several times. He opened his mouth again, and this time he controlled himself.

“AHHHHHh—” Oozy paused. “OOOOhha… Ah? Ah? Aeee. Ahh. Ooo. Ah. Looooo. Ah loo. Haloo.” Oozy breathed deep, marveled that he could breathe again, spent a good thirty seconds not-breathing and then purposefully-breathing, and then he looked to Erick and proudly stated, “Halooo!”

He realized that he had failed to say ‘Hello’ properly. He furrowed his brows. Speech didn’t seem to be coming very easily to him, so he stopped.

Erick said, “That’s weird, too, but I suppose you were an ooze for a good 275 years. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Anyway. Do you think you want to keep your name as Oozy? Your paperwork wasn’t specified on that matter, aside from ‘I don’t know’.”

“… Ah… Ah …” Oozy concentrated hard, and then he said, “Ahh… Ark.” Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. “Bak! Baggit! Badaturitua jallak uaipatnaks.” He touched his mouth, wondering where the fuck those words had come from. “Hajlklar. Baraookl?” He tapped himself in the throat. “Ahhhlooo. Ahloo. Hellaarr. Hellooo—” Surprise! Elation! “Hello! Hello! Hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello! Hello… Mahhh. Mahhh. MY. My. Hello, my naaaaamm. Name.” Surety, and joy. “Hello, my name is Oozoliooookipal.” Back to frustration. “Oozeee.” Narrowed eyed. “Oozy. OOZY! Hello, my name is Oozy!”

The man radiated pure joy and Erick had to clap a little. “Good job. Welcome back to civilization, Oozy Stormcaller.”

“Hank yar.”

Erick chuckled.

Sure, some odd stuff had happened during the [Reincarnation], but the man had no ring of lightning around his neck, so he wasn’t a Benevolence target at all. That was Erick’s first major concern, and since Oozy had already expressed interest in leaving Storm’s Edge behind forever, Erick was rather sure that Oozy wasn’t the cause of the coming storm.

Oozy added, “I nooot starcraller… starcroooo… Storthisss. Stormmm. Stormcracker.” He stopped trying.

Erick mused that Oozy’s denial of his name was yet another reason not to worry about him calling any storms, though that reasoning was rather pure whimsy, and not based on any real facts at all.

Erick said, “How about we get you out of that bowl, and you can go sleep in one of the beds up top, or something, and then we can talk about what you want to do next with your life. We can even burn down Seafoam Manor later, if you still feel like it once you get your feet back under you. Or, perhaps you might want to sell it, so that you can have some money for your new life? Or you could just live out here, you know. It’s a nice piece of property.”

Oozy looked ecstatic and ready to burn down the house as soon as Erick mentioned it, but then Erick kept talking, and Oozy started to backtrack his own ideas of burning the place down.

Erick said, “And there’s another thing. Do you want that [Blessing of Empathy]? Or do you want to wait a few hours, to see how you feel now that you’ve already gone through one major life change?”

Oozy shook his head, then gestured for Erick to get on with it.

“… I suppose we can undo this Empathy, too, if you decide you don’t like your current choice of a body.” Erick hit him with a [Blessing of Empathy]. Light soaked into Oozy, into his soul, and turned his fiery-red soul into something… Perhaps even more resembling a fire made of blood and sun. Well that was probably fine. Erick asked, “Ready to get out of that bowl?”

Oozy took a moment to stare at the floor, and then the ceiling—

His eyes caught on the portrait of the original Aroido and Frydrika and their five kids, up at the top of the stairs. Tears fell fast. Oozy giggled, and then cried, and then breathed deep, and said, “Farmarly unn, yut I remaan.”

“They’re gone, yet you remain, but I’m sure they’d be happy for you if they could see you now.”

With reddened eyes, Oozy looked at Erick, and nodded.

Erick helped him out of the bowl, and then helped him learn how to walk again for the next ten minutes. The former-ooze could barely manage to stay awake once he mostly figured out how his legs worked, so Erick put him to bed upstairs in one of the guest rooms. Oozy was very firm about that. He wouldn’t sleep in the family’s rooms, which were all in perfect order, and they would stay that way in his mind forever more. Or at least that’s what Erick thought he was saying.

There was a lot of guesswork to understanding him, but Oozy was getting better, and fast.

Erick left him behind, and then spoke to the shadows, “That was an odd [Reincarnation]. I want him monitored at all times for the next week and to know more of his story, from whatever sources you need to tap. If the Witch did something to him it might have stuck around through a [Reincarnation], but I doubt it; such a magic would have to have been done in some very roundabout ways.”

It couldn’t have been a soul twist done on the soul itself, for a [Reincarnation] would have solved that. It would have had to have been a trick lingering in the manasphere… or something. Oozy was a ‘Stormcaller’, though, so perhaps it was something from Sininindi?

Goldie bowed, saying, “Your will be done.”

“Don’t let him burn down his house unless he absolutely wants to do that; either way, take him to Candlepoint to the intake system when he’s done here. Or I’ll be back later to help with that, if he wants it. Put a person on the guard job; you don’t have to do that yourself.”

“Aye, sir.”

Erick took off, into the sky, lightstepping away to the next destination…

Which was actually back home, to his cloud castle at Candlepoint, over the Gate District.

He was going to call up Phagar in order to deal with this [Onward] stuff, but he needed to be someplace nicer to deal with all that. Later, he would return to the mire of Storm’s Edge and pick up the cultists, but according to a brief talk with Augustive, they weren’t ready for him yet. They also weren’t going to execute the people, so there was no real rush.

Erick kept an Ophiel on the prison site anyway.

- - - -

“I don’t know, Erick; I can’t answer what happened to you, or why Melemizargo thinks the way he does,” Phagar said, looking like a carbon copy of Erick, as he moved his pawn up a space.

A stone chess table sat between them, up on one of the cloudy higher levels of Erick’s castle. All of Candlepoint and the Gate District and Yggdrasil’s Lake stretched out below; a modern day utopia of magic and opportunity and worldly connections. But up here, in this little garden in the clouds, there was just Erick, and the God of The End and Time. They sometimes played friendly games of chess, but even during these tenser talks, they both needed something to do while they talked.

This time, Erick had a large topic.

Erick said, “I felt like I was here the whole time, but with this stuff happening in Storm’s Edge, I do feel more present… Somehow.”

Phagar shrugged. “Maybe Melemizargo is right, but we gods can be rather fallible. More so these days than when we were large as a million planets. Or a trillion trillion, in Melemizargo’s case. We still don’t truly know what caused the Sundering, either.”

Erick took Phagar’s knight with his own pawn as he thought of those words. Neither of them were truly trying to win the game and it was just a distraction from the conversation anyway. Phagar would win every time if he actually tried, because there was a certain kind of power that came from knowing everything forwards and backwards, and even sideways through time.

Erick said, “Sometimes I wonder about that truth; that no one knows what the Sundering was.”

Phagar smiled. “If you find out what happened, you’ll tell me, right?”

“Sure...” Erick narrowed his eyes as a thought occurred. “Could that truth been ‘interventioned’ against you all?”

“Doubtful. But that is one theory. Not one I personally ascribe to, but I’m not anything close to truly all-knowing.”

“… What is your theory? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”

“I never had a good one, but lately I’ve been thinking it was a Big Rip. That theory you explained about the universe getting too big for physics to function. It would make a lot of sense about how none of us saw it coming.” Phagar huffed. “Perhaps one of the archfey got tired of our ‘little black painting’.”

Erick chuckled. “You really do hate that story of the Daughter and the Darkness.”

“It’s too simple. But then again, gods go through emotional transformations based on the thoughts and prayers of their worshipers, so perhaps my current feelings on the matter are how my people feel. Ever since that story got out into the world at large and since the Xoatists came about, I have been finding myself shifting a little from what I once was. I certainly wasn’t perturbed by the story before that particular Shadows’ Feast.”

“Ahhh. Now we’re talking about the trouble in Storm’s Edge, eh? Or about the Xoatists?”

Phagar captured Erick’s pawn, as he said, “Since we’re having a serious conversation this time I would like to know your feelings on the Xoatists, now that you’re ‘back’, as Melemizargo would say. See if anything has changed and all that. But we can talk about Storm’s Edge if that is bothering you more.”

“It’s that priestess, Tiza.” Erick admitted, “I was so close to… To doing something I really didn’t want to do because I know that she’s going to pull some shit… I’m not sure what she’s going to do; only that I will hate it when it happens.”

“Priests of the Storm are like that.”

Erick took Phagar’s queen, as he asked, “Any hints as to what’s coming next?”

“Probably a storm of some sort,” Phagar said, grinning as he put Erick into check.

Erick huffed a laugh, then moved his king aside, asking, “No clues at all?”

“Well I do have one. You’ve been working at the high-government level for such a long time that you only really focus on the large-scale problems anymore. If you had gone into Storm’s Edge as Erick, instead of as who you did, then you never would have known about the Maryols, for the people in charge never would have spoken about them. They also never would have been in danger, but that was never a real option since they are cultists.” Phagar moved a bishop and put Erick into checkmate, saying, “There are reasons gods don’t act openly aside from the purposes of letting people live their own lives, and that is so that we can see who people really are, behind the various masks that they show the world.”

Erick sat thinking.

Phagar added, “And the world is pretty much secured these days. You can spend time fixing actual problem areas, instead of patching small issues here and there. You can even retire if you wish. Probably only temporarily, though.”

“… I have enjoyed not being in meetings all day long. Well. Except for all of yesterday.”

Phagar smiled. “Looks like we’re at the end of this game.”

Erick nodded. “See you later.”

“Till next time.”

- - - -

Three hours later, the sun held high in the sky over Storm’s Edge, and Erick was there to personally receive and send off all the cultists that the Regency and the Church of Sininindi had gathered up in their latest purge. For many of them, all their assets were stripped by the state and they had nothing but their names. Some of them didn’t even have that, though, for the name ‘Maryol’ was a noble name, and the Maryols were not able to use that name anymore.

Even the shirts off of their backs were not theirs to keep, seeing as they were part of the prison system.

From behind one-way glass, Erick watched as a few unknowns and all the Maryols, all three of Jarod, Glariol, and Nero, were forced to change out of their garments and into the clothes provided by House Benevolence. Many of the unknown people wore state-mandated Draining-gauntlets, for they were not fully recognized as cultists, but the Regency and the Church of Sininindi had enough dirt on them to send them packing, so they had. But the Maryols had freshly-inked Drain tattoos. Those would be harder to get rid of, but he would get rid of those, too.

Only time could rid them of their anger, despair, and loss.

“This whole system is rather more punitive than it should be,” Erick said, as he turned to Tiza, who stood on the other side of Augustive. The priestess looked to him, daring him to say anything at all against her; she would find a way to use it against him, eventually. Erick almost did say something he knew he would regret, but then he said, “The Cult and the Church are no longer at odds, or at least they shouldn’t be. You set back relations a decade by doing this.”

Tiza announced, “If I cannot end them as they should be ended, then I will have them out of my lands, Wizard. Pray I do not alter our acceptance of the Dark in this land any further.”

Augustive almost said something, probably to try and alleviate the tension—

But Erick spoke first, “It was an absolute misery to meet you again, Tiza. Don’t step over any truly reprehensible lines, or else I will be forced to do what I do not want to do.” And then he put Tiza out of his mind.

He stepped through a [Gate] that put him into the courtyard with the convicts. He shut the [Gate] behind him, and then he sighed a little in relief, even as the prison-wide Drain pressed in against his body. Honestly, if they had a prison-wide [Draining Ward], or whatever they used, then why did they need to tattoo the Maryols? Or Drain-shackle everyone else? Erick didn’t let the Drain bother him.

He put the Drain out of his mind, too, as he said, “Hello, everyone. I understand that your lives have been ruined by an uncaring priestess, and then saved by a caring Regent. Allow me to help you further by helping you rebuild all that you had, over in Candlepoint, where we don’t persecute cultists at all. It’s nearly [Reincarnation] day, too, so you all get one of those if you want it; I’ve got about 1400 of those to do, so what’s 7 more. But first! Who wants those nasty shackles and tattoos removed?”

As Erick spoke, every single person there in that group had a nuanced reaction, but between the tears and the sudden, overwhelming relief, everyone was mostly happy not to face the executioner’s block.

Jarod spoke first, “I would have mine removed, Good Wizard.”

Erick opened a [Gate] to Candlepoint, saying, “This is the way to the Reception House at Candlepoint. They’ll remove all your chains and have you set up at the next part of your life soon enough. You’ll likely spend a day in a hotel-like room, but after that, you’ll be moving onto freedom soon enough.”

Jarod bowed, alongside Glariol and Nero—

Which is why a pair of women rushed forward. They had seen freedom on the other side of the [Gate] and they ran for it, both of them rapidly thanking Erick as they fled Storm’s Edge. One of them rapidly spat on the ground toward the one-way windows as she left.

The rest of the ‘convicts’ followed along rather fast.

Erick got them settled in, and then he went back for one more person.

- - - -

Erick stood in the front yard of Seafoam Manor with Oozy at his side and Goldie just beyond.

Seafoam Manor was burning.

Great plumes of smoke rushed up and out of the yellow-red conflagration, filling the sky with a great blackening. For being a stone manor, there was a lot of burnable stuff in there, and there wasn’t much that Oozy wanted to save. A few smaller paintings and a few other things were now at Candlepoint, at the Reception House, in Oozy’s temporary dorm room, but the large painting of the family and all the beds and the wooden roof and the wooden floors were all burning. Glass shattered from the heat, adding a characteristic pop here and there as the moments passed.

And Oozy looked on, tears in his flame-colored eyes, relief upon his face.

Erick said, “It’s a clean sort of break, I suppose.”

Oozy said, “I’m done killing Aroidos for the Regency, and I’m done living here. I hope I never come back to Storm’s Edge.”

Erick nodded a little. “I don’t have to erase the property completely. I could leave something behind?”

Oozy shook his head a little. “Burn it all; till it under; I’ll start again somewhere new. Let the forest reclaim the ashes and the stone—” He paused. “… But maybe a little… Family statue?” He rapidly added, “And then I want to leave, please… I don’t want to see it burn anymore, either.”

Erick nodded again. “Sure thing, Oozy.”

And then he waved his hand, and the land began to shift under the power of a [Cityshape], a spell that Erick had made a while ago, and never really used. The ground dropped away, but Erick, Oozy, and Goldie remained in the air, held up by a Platform of Erick’s.

The ground shifted.

Like a great roiling mass of liquid stone, the land of Seafoam Manor and all the walls of the building began to churn, the mountainside turning liquid, and yet remaining in place at an angle. The inferno of a house spewed up one great rush of flame before the ground twisted, and pulled everything down under. Trees and other plantlife bobbed to the surface under Erick’s perfect control. Erick took a moment to right the trees here and there, to make them stand tall and scattered across the whole property, filling in the places where the road and house had been. He had taken down the walls surrounding the place, too, and moved some trees inward, which had been outside. The trees were sparse right now, scattered as they were across the land, but they’d fill in eventually.

In a year, the forest would fully reclaim the land.

Erick set the Platform back down on the solid, loamy ground, that was perfect for growing anything at all.

There was also a perfect statue just ahead, about fifty meters away, in the exact center of where the house had been. It was a life-sized statue of Aroido, Frydrika, and their five kids.

Oozy stepped forward, toward that statue, his hand raising. But he stopped. He couldn’t go any further.

Erick softly said, “The stone around the statue is solid, so nothing should grow around there for a while. Give it a trim every year if you wish. I’ve already broken the node network all the way out here, so this is truly all that… remains…” Erick stopped talking.

Oozy was having a moment. Erick waited for Oozy to be done.

Four minutes later, Oozy shuddered, then said, “Thank you for everything, Wizard Flatt. I don’t want to see the Aroidos ever again. Will I have to see them at Candlepoint?”

“I don’t require you to forgive them, but I do require you to not start anything with them. I can make it so that you don’t see them, but unless you seek them out, they won’t know who you are. They never did, anyway, right?”

Oozy paused. “… Right. They never did, did they— Are the Mind Mages still erasing memories for a fee?”

Now it was Erick’s turn to pause. “… Do they do that?”

“As a part of extreme therapy,” Goldie supplied.

“Right. That they do.”

Oozy said, “Then that is what I will be doing to myself. Thank you for everything.”

“… You’re welcome.”

- - - -

Three non-eventful days passed without issue.

‘Vanya and Soltic’ made diplomatic inroads with Storm’s Edge, with Vanya appearing outside her dungeon, dressed in the regalia of an undead queen, with Soltic at her side, and Erick on the other side of the field.

All the dungeons of the pit were under Vanya’s control, and all the Aroidos had decided to leave the dungeons to her for a multitude of reasons, only a few of which were because of Vanya. Or something like that. Erick wasn’t privy to whatever conversations they had with Vanya, and he didn’t want to be.

Nothing was on fire, and everything was good.

Erick went into his [Reincarnation] day feeling great.

By the end of the day, he was wiped.

1759 [Reincarnations]; a full 24 hours of casting, each of them done with purpose and intent, and to the requester’s specifications. He had gone through all 49 of the Aroidos, for not a single one was staying behind at Storm’s Edge, not when Tiza Nindi was on the prowl and when Augustive didn’t need them anymore, because he had the backing of House Benevolence. Not a single one of those [Reincarnation]s were different than usual, like how Oozy’s [Reincarnation] had been.

Oozy was doing fine. He was still in a lot of physical therapy, learning how to paint, and how to walk and then run, but he seemed perfectly normal.

Goldie hadn’t been able to dig up anything about Oozy and the Witch, so that was a dead end. If Erick wished to do some digging himself, he could talk to Melemizargo directly; Goldie could not do that, she could only receive orders and give prayer.

Everbless was talking a lot with all of Treehome’s Arbors, and he had voluntarily removed the intervention from all of them. There had been a few incidents involving storms at sea in the last few days, and how the Arbors thought that Everbless should stop all storms, which resulted in Everbless pushing back hard, but mostly the stormy World Tree absolutely loved having other trees to talk with. He was getting along well with Yggdrasil, too, for the both of them had formed a fast friendship over fish.

So it was little surprise as Erick laid his head down to sleep, that he woke up standing on the surface of a calm ocean. Storms ringed the horizon. The ocean lazed below. Distant thunder echoed in the valley of clouds.

A woman with tanned skin, wearing a ship’s sail for a dress, stood on the water in front of him.

Sininindi said, “Greetings, Erick. You’ve done well. The dungeon is coming along well. Quilatalap has already transformed each of them into a positive mana flow.”

“Ah! Already! That’s good news.” Erick smiled. “I thought he was still a few days out.”

“That initial investment from Melemizargo helped save a month of growth, and now that the Aroidos are gone the whole thing is a lot smoother.” Sininindi said, “Thank you. Our bargain is almost complete, and I am grateful for what has occurred. I wish to grant you a boon in addition to the rest, if you would have it. I already gave Quilatalap one.”

Erick was a little wary, so he said, “I would hear the offer.”

Sininindi chuckled. “Ahh… I had to think for a long time what to offer, too. Too little, and I offend. Too much, and I look like I attempt to control. I considered demoting Tiza, but I certainly can’t throw her to the shadows, for though she hates you most fiercely, she loves her people even more; it is why she is so angry when others attempt to control those she loves. So how about this: When the storms come for you in your life, I will be there to see you through the worst of it, and I’ll make sure Tiza stays out of your way.”

“I accept.”

The air flickered gold.

“It is done.” Sininindi said, “I have now removed my part of Yggdrasil’s seal. I look forward to seeing how he and Everbless grow up together.”

Erick felt buoyed. “I do, too.”

Sininindi said, “I also look forward to seeing how the Last Stormcaller comes back to himself. Their entire family line was touched by lightning long ago, but that power has moved on and shifted to the Tidecallers these days, or at least the ones who try to reach for that power, like Wiloza. If Oozy can truly regain himself he might regain that power. If he does, he will be an asset against whatever False Storms might come. Let him know that, will you? Even though he has left his post, the Storm will still carry him far, and care for him the whole way.”

Erick smiled softly. “I will happily let him know.”

“Fare thee well, Wizard Flatt,” Sininindi said, vanishing into the clouds and the sea.

“Fare thee well, Sininindi.”