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Erick sat crossed-legged upon white stone. Before him lay a domed space of absolute nothing; half of it created through Solomon’s instantiation of dungeon Rules, while the other half was Erick’s own [Particle Vacuum]. The only visible indication of that space was a bubble-layer of thick air, all tumbled with mana and unable to enter into the protected space.

Beside Erick sat a few piles of various base metals; nothing magical at all. Platinum, gold, iron, electrum, copper, tin. All of it was melted and slagged ten times over and remade as necessary for more resources when an experiment blew up in Erick’s face, or whatnot. And of course, there was Erick’s adamantium rune carving knife. That thing had survived all of Erick’s accidents, and there had been a lot of those.

The remnants of the previous explosion lay scattered across the area; remnant mana crystals of various color flaking away from the ground near Erick, once again turning back into mana—

Erick mentally set aside his distractions. From the slimes bounding around downstairs, to the thoughts of Solomon and the Janes dungeon delving right now, to Ophiel making musical sounds as he played with the slimes down below, Erick ignored all of that.

Aura escaped from Erick’s core and body, and Erick controlled that mist to flow into the air in front of him. He wielded his auric self like a dense mist, pushing through the membrane of the void and the [Particle Vacuum]. It was not a wholly comfortable experience. It was like sticking his hand into cold water, or stepping out into the sun. Kinda refreshing, while also revealing just how much stress his natural body was already subjected to, just by existing in this Script-controlled, air-filled place. All around were distractions. But in the void, there was nothing but oneself.

Erick’s white aura hung out in that space for a moment. And then he twisted himself, and his aura turned perfectly clear and Forceful. He was attempting to make a plain [Force Bolt] spell, like he had made in the Glittering Depths, and which he had only succeeded at 3 times out of every 10, here in this slime dungeon. The Glittering Depths had done a lot of back-end support to make that mana gemwork function well. A lot more than Erick had realized until he had started these experiments.

He flowed mana into that space beyond his physical body, manifesting a seed-crystal that was only visible in the edges, and mostly in how light glinted off of the facets. It looked like a bit of quartz; six-sided, about 5 centimeters long, and double-terminated. Force, on its own, usually had a quartz-like manifestation. But only usually. Force could also appear fibrous, when Erick was casting any sort of string-shaped spellwork like with [Hermetic Shredder], which was not really Force-based, but it was close. The Force-equivalent spell, [Force Wires], was very much a bunch of semi-invisible crystal strands, though.

Force could also be rhombohedral, like with any Wall-type spell.

[Force Bolt] most often tried to take a double-terminated six-sided quartz shape, and this one was no exception. Most of the [Force Bolt]s that turned out like this managed to maintain integrity all the way through the process.

All in all, the crystal had turned out well. It would probably work.

Erick set the crystal down on the ground inside the experimental space, and then he picked up some… Platinum, this time, Erick decided. That metal always worked the best, though none of it worked as well as Erick would have liked. Outside of the experimental space, and with a bit of aura control and some [Duplicate] inside of a [Prismatic Ward], Erick rapidly finished the base wand that would hold the crystal.

Theoretically.

Erick was rapidly discovering, in wholly novel ways, that magic did not often behave itself outside of the Script, or outside of controlled spaces.

This wand would probably do what he wanted it to do. He had runed it with a bunch of stuff specific to [Force Bolt] and aiming, and with some intentional crafts about ‘mana given, spells gained’ around the base of the wand, which was a spiral-cage of platinum that would hold the gem, and which would be held in turn.

None of this was made according to real, known enchanting ways. All of this was attempted Wizardry, going from intention and piece-meal parts, and hoping for an outcome that was better than the sum of those parts.

A ‘real’ wand of [Force Bolt]s, made under the Script, wouldn’t use a mana crystal at all, for a mana crystal would break apart and thus the whole wand would fall apart in turn. But Erick needed to know how to work with mana crystals, so he was here, working with real mana crystals.

Erick slipped the base wand into the space ahead, picked up the crystal, and then shoved the crystal into the twisted-wire handle. A bit of simple pressure sealed the wand together.

And then Erick made to speak, but not through his voice which would not reach the wand, because there was no air to transmit his voice to the wand, but through his aura, which was already wrapped around it,

“A wand of Force, of bolts galore,

“Spills holder’s mana evermore.”

The wand glinted as its metaphysically-separate parts came together into a cohesive whole.

It had worked, because of course it had worked. If it hadn’t then it would have had some sort of catastrophic failure. As it was… It would probably fail in the other usual way.

Erick reached forward and stuck his hand into the Script-less particle-void, to wrap his fingers around the wand. The no-atmosphere hurt a little, but Erick’s constitution and Constitution were strong, even in the Script-less space, so he easily gripped the wand.

Bolts of sizzling white Force began pouring out of the tip of the wand, sucking mana out of Erick to do so like he had poked a [Force Bolt]-shaped hole in his mana pool, and that’s the only way that mana could leave him now. Which is exactly what he had done. Sort of.

That was his best guess right now, anyway.

Those Bolts flew away from the tip of the wand like slow lasers, moving perfectly straight until they touched the edge of the void space, whereupon contact with air and a manasphere subtly altered their courses, sending them a few random degrees off of perfectly-straight.

Erick released the wand, and the Bolts stopped.

“Moment of truth,” Erick mumbled to himself.

Using his solid aura, Erick pulled the wand out of the empty air, into the Script—

The wand broke in the usual, non-catastrophic ways. The crystal was, of course, breaking. But that’s not all that was happening.

Erick wrapped his hand around the hilt to experience exactly when it would stop working. As Bolts poured out of the end of the wand, Erick watched as the mana crystal in the base of the wand began to crack and unravel, and as the platinum in the wand itself began to shift and falter, platinum melting a little here and reforming into crystallized growths there, like a body reforming into tumors. It was only when the first major crack split the crystal lengthwise, though, that Bolts stopped pouring. The platinum-crystal ‘tumors’ didn’t seem to affect the outpouring of the artifact at all.

Or maybe the item just failed due to the crystal breaking first, and it would have failed due to platinum tumors if the crystal could have remained existent for any real length of time.

He waited till the Force crystal was gone, completely, before he took the platinum and crushed it, tumors and all, twisting and mangling it beyond all recognition, finally stopping when he had turned it into a plop of rather hot, not-molten metal. That lump rejoined the rest of the platinum, to be reused as needed.

Erick had not managed to create a single magical item based around a crystal that could survive under the Script. Granted, he wasn’t trying his absolute hardest. Just some small Wizardry here and there to bring a crystal into line with other magics. Mostly, he was trying to achieve magic-working mana crystals through normal measures; not simply changing the rules of reality to suit his needs.

And he had succeeded in a lot of ways.

Making mana crystals that resonated in specific ways, causing mana to become magic in specific ways, had taken him a day to get right; around 20 hours. Just basic spellwork, though. Bolts and Mana Alterings and Shapings and basic tier spellwork of all kinds had been rather easy to do.

On Veird, under the Script, you couldn’t manually cast high-tier spellwork. Erick was able to ‘get around’ that restriction by manually forcing the magic implanted inside of him by the Script to cast itself, as he desired. Or through simple aura control. But aura control could only do up to tier ‘1.5’, which was basically just normal magic Altered to specific Elements.

But here, in the slime dungeon, Erick had a no-Script space that existed outside of the Script. That meant that he could manually make mana crystals that would be able to ‘manually’ cast higher tier magic, as desired. Erick had spent 2 days figuring out high-tier manual magic in order to figure out how to cast certain high-tier spells, like [Undertow Star], or [Prismatic Ward].

Happily enough, Erick had figured out how to make Solid Wards of all types, bypassing the Script’s restriction on only being allowed to have one Solid Ward in his Status.

That old quest of Sininindi’s, the one where she asked for an artifact of [Control Weather], and instead Erick had made Yggdrasil… Erick could simply make that artifact these days. And he had. He had also made an artifact of [Luminous Beam], which had caused a lightshow to vanish into the depths of the Darkness all around the dungeon, along with artifacts of a bunch of his high-tier spellwork, made into mana crystals first, and then stuck into metallic holders and directors of that crystallized power.

None of those artifacts worked for very long when they were brought back into the Script.

The high-tier ones and all the Solid Ward ones instantly broke. Sometimes explosively.

And then there was the other problem. The tumor problem. All of those ones that actually managed to stick around had a lot of trouble working inside mundane atmosphere, with ‘tumors’ of metal forming on every edge of the artifacts, while flat spaces sunk inward, the metal there being cannibalized by the rest of the artifact to create crystalline growths.

Erick sat back and had a think.

He looked down at the recycled metals, and at the space in front of him, and then he looked down at his own body.

Ophiel sat on a small bird perch to the side, also looking at his father.

Erick explained to Ophiel, “When I first crystallized my body, I did it inside a lot of specialized Domain-work, becoming Benevolence and then rapidly turning myself into a giant crystal. When that was done, I switched over to my Other Status, becoming both a person and a crystal, in what I had thought was a normal way for Wizards to be.

“But then when I switched back to my Other Status —the one I crystallized— I was a person in that form, too. My crystal transformation had not stuck. Looking back on it… I was still connected to the Script back then, and…”

Erick listed off some suspected problems,

“I had 2 Statuses/Forms already, but as a True Wizard, I should only have one that is Paradoxically two.

“I have Script-installed magic inside of me right now.

“I am still connected to the Script.

“The Script doesn’t like mana crystals, or True Wizards, and I’m not sure which it dislikes more; hard to say.

“I have you and Yggdrasil both inside of me, too, and I’m not going to make either of you become permanent parts of myself, nor am I going to destroy you or allow you to be destroyed.

“I’m not sure if a True Wizard is just a crystal, or a crystallized person. When I asked the Well that question about Wizards I saw that floating crystal with the brain and blood vessels walking with that one god in the Old Cosmology’s Grand Wizard’s Tower, so maybe ‘a crystallized person’ is a better description of a ‘True Wizard’. But, no. A True Wizard is supposed to be able to be themselves and an immutable force, just like a Shade. Or at least that’s what everyone says. So who the fuck was the brain-in-a-crystal? I don’t know. An anomaly? Possible.

“And then there’s the particle/mana problem, with all these particles interfering with mana, and all that.

“Those are just the physical problems.

“Mentally, I don’t think I want to be able to change the world at a concentrated whim.” Erick said, “But that’s what a Wizard is…”

Rozeta believed that Erick could end the Forever War with enough of a windup and a good enough swing at it. Like holy shit. Just… Change how the world worked!

Erick frowned at that ‘mental hangup’; what an inadequate way to classify the desire to not be able to fuck up everything on a whim—

Erick looked at himself, at the piles of metal, and at the no-Script, no-particle space in front of him again. He felt an inkling of a truth settle down.

“Ahh… Hmm.” Erick said, “Other Wizards just became Wizards when they wanted to, or needed to. I might be self-limiting through the use of Particles and normal magics, self-imposing limits, so that I cannot fuck up anything too badly with an accidental Grand Wizardry… Or maybe that’s wrong, and Wizardry is actually difficult, and I still have lots of road to go to understanding all of this. Perhaps I should be less full of myself.”

Ophiel twittered on his perch, “Dad have trouble?”

“Just the usual trouble, Ophiel,” Erick said, “Trying to know and categorize the unknowable and infinite.”

Ophiel chimed in violins. “Infinity big.”

Erick smiled. “Yes, infinity big.”

… But infinity could also be small. Erick thought about the Glittering Depths, and how they had made internally infinite mana crystals that transformed into ironcrystal when exposed to the normal Script. But with some Wizardry, those ironcrystals could be transformed into real artifacts that could exist and work anywhere.

He hadn’t really tried to make internal mana crystals yet, had he?

Erick grabbed some more platinum and remade the entire [Force Bolt] experiment.

But this time when he made the crystal, he tried to… He wasn’t sure. Push in the crystal? Invert it, somehow? The spell creation chambers back in the Glittering Depths did most of the work of ‘opening up’ an infinite space inside the crystal, as it was still liquid, but there were no spell creation chambers and internal infinities to work with in this dungeon.

After two minutes of attempts, Erick achieved success.

The mana inside his aura, inside the empty space, gave way into itself.

There, hovering in his aura in the void, was a dollop of Force, looking like a perfect glass sphere.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t put any sort of actual [Force Bolt] working into it, but that was fine. Erick joined the gem to the wand, twisting platinum around the sphere, forming a handle. And then Erick spoke words similar to the words from before, asking for ‘Bolts galore’.

The wand flexed a little, and then settled down.

Erick did not wrap his own hand around the wand this time. He empowered his aura, gripping the wand, opening a sluice for his mana to flow through into the maybe-artifact—

The wand drank deep. Force Bolts flooded out of the tip, into the air, and kept right on flying until they lost coherence in the black sky above. Erick closed off his aura, and the Bolts stopped.

He pulled the wand out of the void—

Instantly, the wand began crusting over again, the platinum pitting and growths growing on the edges. It took ten whole seconds of exposure to the Script for the clear sphere in the hilt to begin breaking. By the time the wand stopped working it was little more than a spike of crusted platinum, almost broken in half. And then it did break in half. Hard to say if the gem failed first, or if the wand did.

Erick ignored the wand in the next attempt. He simply made the sphere.

Exposing the sphere to the Script was like exposing a worked mana crystal to the Script; it survived.

There, in his hand, sat a nearly-clear sphere of Force crystal, with the insides barely cracked in a fractal pattern. Ten seconds passed, and then twenty. A full minute passed, and the cracks inside the gem didn’t move at all.

It had worked…

For a definition of ‘worked’.

Erick smiled at what he had done, though it wasn’t much of a breakthrough.

Worked mana crystals could survive the Script, as long as they were very minimally made things. Erick’s accretion-counter mana crystal he had gotten from Fairy Moon still worked. So did his alarm clock. Those were less ‘solidified magic’, though, and more physical mana turned into a working object.

The difference between a worked mana crystal and a magic mana crystal was the difference between a calculator and a person, and only one of those things seemed like it would be of any use in becoming a True Wizard.

And yet…

And yet, they were trying to make artificial intelligence back on Earth, weren’t they? Those were just solid-state ‘people’… who were not really people?

There was something there...

“Maybe True Wizards are immutable because they create themselves in a solid, immutable way, as one would make a calculator out of rocks, or whatnot.” Erick rolled the ball of Force in a hand, musing, “Maybe it’s like why oozes aren’t affected by Mind Magic; they’re simply incompatible. Soul and Mind Magic wouldn’t work on a Wizard, or a Shade, because they are soulless, mindless things, that only appear to have souls and minds? Artificial people? Are Wizards simply dead, and self-animate? Like a lich? Like Quilatalap? Quilatalap is immune to Mind Magic, but not Soul Magic.”

Erick had a think.

It lasted a while.

And then he snapped the Force sphere between his thumb and forefinger, saying, “I’ll have to be a different sort of Wizard, then. One not made out of rocks… Or maybe I’m wrong about how all of this works. And yet...” Erick watched as fragments of the crystallized sphere of Force began to fragment further, like a pile of diamonds growing larger all on its own. That growth lasted until those fragments reached a tipping point, and began to evaporate like normal mana crystals. Erick thought toward his own mana; his ‘Benevolence’. “Before I made Benevolence, I theoretically could have made any sort of Element. I could have made Benevolence differently. In that action, I took unknowable and unworkable infinity and wrangled it down into my Truth, and thus made it workable, and stable.

“Maybe becoming a True Wizard requires going further; giving up the infinities of the unrealized options of mortal life, of growth and change into anything at all, in order to gain a plurality of actual options… Like giving up [Telepathy] capabilities and other such powers in order to gain immutability from outside sources...”

Erick’s voice trailed away.

“But every Wizard is different, right?

“And Wizards can still cast magic… Which means that they maintain their Wizardly mana production, which means they’re not dead. So they can still grow and change however… they want… Hmm.

“… Quilatalap is technically both dead and alive.

“Maybe all Wizards are actually liches; entirely self-created people, with biology just because they feel like they need that biology?”

Erick’s thoughts turned in other directions soon enough, as he went back to messing around with inwardly-created mana crystals. His thoughts had been turning around this way and that way for the last few days, as he played around with reality in order to understand it better.

- - - -

Poi pulled the brisket from the oven then set the foil and wax paper covered meat onto the kitchen counter. He let it stay there, as he looked over to Erick, sitting at the kitchen table. “Giving up ephemeral options to gain real options is what everyone does all the time. From kings to street cleaners.”

“But that’s different from becoming a lich-like entity,” Solomon said, sitting across from Erick. “… And yet not really different at all. Like… What is consciousness? Back on Earth, but with the Intelligence I have now, I would have said that consciousness is an emergent system, only present because of the number of neurons and connections in the brain make it so that we think we’re alive, but really we’re all just a bunch of instincts and genetic code making us think we’re sapient.”

“Yes, but now we know we have souls,” Erick said.

And Solomon nodded, saying, “Yes. Now we know souls are a real thing… But are they? Really? You and I both know that there were a lot of ‘soulless’ people on Earth.”

Erick laughed.

“I mean it, though. Like, for real.”

Erick stopped laughing.

Solomon said, “Not to get too depressing about it, but did we have a soul before we were sitting there in that dark room, looking at that gun, trying to figure out how far we’d go to make a life for Jane? When we were trying to figure out what our solutions meant for those around us? I can tell you right now that I certainly don’t remember any sort of introspection on our lives before that point. We were just going through the motions; whatever life threw at us, we tried to figure out how to ride the waves. That’s what I mean when I say ‘soulless’; just a stimulus-response sort of person. The kind that doesn’t even see the harm they’re doing until they’re made to see that harm, and empathize.”

Erick recoiled a fraction at Solomon putting it like that. “It’s really fucking embarrassing to think that we didn’t have a ‘soul’ until life made us ‘grow’ one.” Erick frowned a little. “That’s not something that we actually believe, either.”

“Maybe not an outright belief,” Solomon said. “But certainly a possible-belief. Because, like I said, we knew a lot of people who certainly acted soulless back on Earth, without any regard for anyone else. Sure, some of them, like us, were trapped by circumstance and trying to find any way out of those circumstances that might actually work. But a lot of people just never considered that other people were still people. We met a lot of them as a social worker.”

Erick wanted to disagree, but he could not.

Solomon continued, “And then we came here to Veird, and we met Shades. And then there was Bulgan, even before he was a Shade. Complete psychopaths.”

“Not all psychopaths are evil; they just don’t see other people as people. It doesn’t mean they’re soulless.” Erick said, “That’s a stereotype that we don’t need to perpetuate.”

“And we don’t perpetuate it, in public.” Solomon said, “But in private, we know those problems can be fixed with magic, and that the soulless can gain a soul. Heck! A lot of psychopaths lead perfectly normal lives, probably as a result of complicated stimulus-responses that engender within them a soul.” Solomon said, “In the Earth-sense, maybe Fallopolis gained something like a soul when she realized how badly she had fucked up calling the Great Purge onto Spur, thus ruining all of her tormenting fun forever more, and thus she had to preserve Spur and even Silverite because to do otherwise was to invite the Quiet War into her life, and she hated that even more than she liked tormenting people. But she still tormented others when she felt like it, when she could. All the rest of the Shades didn’t gain shit until we forcefully Empathy’d them.”

Erick frowned at Solomon. “Are you taking this hardline stance to be helpful, or to simply say all the hateful things that we’ve been bottling up all this time, because now you can?”

“Both.” Solomon said, “Also, if I could go back to Earth and Empathy every single CEO and high-ranking government official and anyone of any physical authority at all, I would. Now that would be a great use of that [Cascade Imaging] Super Magic that people always think we’re going to break out if their leaders speak out against us too much.”

Erick leveled a ‘Really?’ glare at Solomon. “We don’t need more reasons for people to hate us. We already get hate mail every other day.”

Poi spoke up, “From what you’ve told me of Earth, maybe a [Cascade Empathy] would be a good idea.”

Solomon laughed—

“Holy shit, Poi,” Erick said.

“Power is how every single world works. And you have power.” Poi said, “And you’re a great king. Good kings are one-in-a-billion, and they almost never gain power; it’s always the cruel ones who gain the most power.” As Poi moved to make the potatoes, he said, “Historically, Wizards are always good people, until circumstances turn them into terrors, of course.

“Personally, that’s a much more interesting topic than ‘when does a person gain a soul’. The answer to that varies by culture, with some tribes in Nergal believing that souls don’t exist until you get Matriculated into the Script. Even a sapient’s baby’s soul is little more than that of a particularly smart slime.

“Every living thing has a soul, but so what? Some people use their souls to break and kill. And that’s a more important philosophy to think about.”

Erick sat back in his chair. Solomon hummed.

Poi said, “To get back on the topic of Wizardry, from True Wizards to just the fact that a person is a Wizard at all, which is perhaps the most interesting idea to consider.

“Time and again, in all the history known to the Mind Mages, the people who are Wizards are always good-ish people. They always try to help others, to make the world better in their own ways. Some succeed. Others fail, and they fail hard, like The Anarchy Wizard almost did. On the surface Holo wanted to escape Veird and the problems of this world, but he was prepared to kill everyone to do it. And then, later, the Blue Wizard tried to avenge him. So those people went bad, but before that happened, they were just normal people trying to figure out how to live under the power of the liches of Quintlan.

“As a base fact, Wizards are always good people.

“And yet, Wizards are Wizards due to an overabundance of the Dark inside of them.

“If it’s the Dark putting power into people to make them Wizards, then what does that say about the nature of the Dark and how it tries to influence the universe through Wizards? What does it say about the Dark that the Dark makes only ‘good’ Wizards?”

Erick had literally never considered that angle at all. He was left completely speechless.

Solomon blinked a few times, and then he smirked and said, “That almost sounds like something a Xoatist or Cultist would say, but I’ve never heard anyone make that sort of connection before.”

Poi chuckled, then said, “Let’s take it a step further, too. Because the Dark doesn’t empower just Wizards. The Dark also empowers dragons. Melemizargo is a dragon. Every avatar of the Dark has been a dragon. But base-dragons are practically the antithesis of what it means to be a good person. Greed, tyranny, hoarding, etcetera.

“So why is the God of Magic and the Avatar of the Dark a dragon? Why has it always been a dragon?” Poi asked, “Is this another case of evil people rising to power over good people? Or is there something else at play going on there? Is the Dark truly just about might makes right? Most dragons are not Wizards, after all. The number of natural dragons who are also Wizards is a very, very small number, restricted to just 3 known examples in all of Veird’s history. There’s Melemizargo, of course, then there’s Idyrvamikor, who was Melemizargo’s grandson, and now there’s you, Erick. And you didn’t start off as a dragon, so you don’t even really count.”

Erick thought.

Poi chopped up potatoes and threw them into the pot.

Solomon sipped his soda, as he stared off into nothing.

Erick said, “Most ‘Wizard Kings’ of the Old Cosmology were just dragons, too. They weren’t actually Wizards.”

Solomon said, “But anyone can become a Wizard, just like anyone can become a dragon. Theoretically, anyway. You just have to gain enough personal mana generation and then have an ignition event. Dungeons didn’t exist in the Old Cosmology, so it would be harder, of course—”

Erick finished the thought, “But even in the Old Cosmology and here in the New Cosmology people could always ‘Wizard themselves’ to have more mana generation by stealing that generation from others. And from there it is a cascading event.”

“Exactly,” Solomon said.

Erick said, “So were the Old Wizards actually good people? Or… Not?”

Poi said, “Historically, on Veird, people who could become Wizards were usually ‘good’ people. Largely. According to your talk with Rozeta, the same was true for the Old Cosmology, and stealing mana generation from others was considered highly taboo and worthy of being murdered for if it was discovered that a Wizard participated in that practice. From what we know of the Old Cosmology, I suspect that the murdering of Dark-thieving Wizards was a rather routine sort of thing, like Rozeta’s Paladins going after rogue Wizards here.”

Erick nodded a little.

Solomon said, “I think it’s safe to assume that Old and New Wizards are all basically good people, until circumstances turn them otherwise.”

“Most people are basically good,” Erick said.

Solomon added, “Until circumstances turn them otherwise.” He looked at Erick, “And some people are evil until turned otherwise. Like Fyuri, or—”

Erick sighed, waving a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t like thinking about it either, but if this inability to become a True Wizard is truly a mental block, then you gotta think about your relationship to power, Erick.”

“… That is true.” Erick looked at the resting roast that Poi had made. “Is that for just us? Or should I [Duplicate] it for the Janes, too?”

Solomon rolled his eyes as Erick dodged the question.

Poi said, “[Duplicate] if you want more, but the Janes aren’t joining us tonight.”

As Erick reached over with his aura to make a whole lot more roasts—

Solomon said, “I’ll be so happy when they actually pick individual names. I heard them talking about it a bit today but they just couldn’t decide.”

“They still haven’t picked names?” Erick copied the roasts four times while Poi narrowed his eyes at the copying, visibly wondering why he was copying that much. Erick said to him, “Leftovers were important and I like your roasts.” He said to Solomon, “I really expected the name-deciding to happen within a day.”

“Me, too,” Solomon said.

Poi said, “They’re mostly done picking names, and it did only take them a day.”

Solomon and Erick both raised eyebrows, asking in unison, “What are they?”

“They’ll tell you themselves.”

- - - -

“So dad,” Jane said, standing with her father outside of the dungeon house, upon the orange/white stone. The other Janes stood just beyond her, in a line, each of them looking different from the other. From the cut of their hair, to the color of their hair and eyes, they were each superficially different, highlighting the differences they chose to make about themselves. Solomon and Poi stood behind Erick, a little bit away, while Erick stood with Jane in the middle of the gathering. Jane continued, “I know we’ve already all met, but…” Jane gestured to the girls, smiling a little as she said, “I’d like you to meet the girls again.”

“Abigail.” Her hair had a green sheen to the black.

“Beth.” She had gone blonde, in sharp contrast to everyone else’s black/brown shoulder-length hair.

“Candice.” Her eyes were orange.

“Debby.” Her nails were red, and she looked like she was wearing lipstick, but that was just a bit of a change to her face.

“Emily.” With purple eyes, and close-cropped purple hair, Emily said, “We’re still the Arachno Squad.”

Erick felt so many weird emotions—

Erick rapidly came to a happy conclusion, saying, “Nice to meet you all! I’m so glad I have so many daughters!” Making a joke, Erick smiled and said, “I might be a king, but my dowry responsibility can’t handle too many lavish weddings.”

The joke did not land well.

Jane said, “We can pay our own ways, dad.”

Now that Erick would not abide; she was lying to him, and in a rather awful sort of way.

Erick called her out, “That’s a lie, Jane.” He looked to all his daughters, and said, “I haven’t actually looked it all up, but now that we’re here, and now that I’m seeing you all for the first time, I can tell that none of you have set up bank accounts or other mundane things, because none of you expect to live. So yeah, you can ‘pay your own way’, but only because you don’t expect to have to pay anything at all. No weddings, no house payments, no food bills, nothing.

“Tell me if you have bank accounts and I’ll stop talking and apologize.”

The girls looked called-out; none of them said a word.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” All of his girls looked completely normal; stoic, even. But Erick knew Jane. They were all breaking inside. Erick allowed them a moment, by turning back to Solomon and Poi and saying, “You’re going to survive this, too, and you also need bank accounts and all of that—” He turned back to his daughters. “Just like you all need bank accounts, so that you can have lives after this Sundering search. War is not life. War is what you have to get through sometimes in order to have a life.

“We’re going to get through this. All of us.

“I need you all to understand that.” Erick said, “You are not just copies of Jane. You’re all my daughters, and I will treat you accordingly.” Before he broke down himself, or any of the girls could break down either, Erick rapidly added, “I might not have as much time to smother all of you as I tried to smother Jane, though. But that’s okay, right? I assume that’s okay because—”

All five of his new daughters rushed Erick and wrapped him in their arms, and then Jane came over and did the same, all of them crying small tears—

And then Poi shoved a reluctant Solomon forward, to join the group hug. Solomon was welcomed with open arms and small words about being an uncle, or some other confusing name for whatever the heck this was. None of that really mattered. All that mattered was that everyone here was a real person, with ‘real’ memories of who they thought they were.

Jane’s voice cracked as she said, “Let’s— Let’s get to work?”

“Exactly!” Erick said, “Let’s go get all of you signed up with bank accounts and otherwise!”

That’s not what Jane had meant at all, for she wanted to get back to delving. All the others wanted to get back to delving, too. But Erick barreled on ahead, pointing toward the black hole in the house-cavern roof, as he spoke of getting out there and getting some paperwork done. He had 5 new daughters, 1 brother, and 1 extra friend who needed connections with the outside world in order to—

“I already set up a bank account for myself, Erick,” Poi said. “But I haven’t done the same for any of you. So go on ahead and I’ll stay here.”

Erick paused, his hand dropping a little. “Ah?”

Right. One dungeon master had to stay with the dungeon at all times. Ah. Shit—

“Go, Erick,” Poi said, smiling, and being completely serious about that command.

Poi went back inside the house.

And then all of Erick’s daughters were at the forefront of Erick’s mind, and his ‘brother’ Solomon was ready to go but reluctant to take control of the situation, and so they all went out to town.

It was a weird, fun, different sort of experience, with Erick talking to each of his daughters as they felt like talking to him, which was a lot, or talking to Solomon, which was also a lot, or to each other, which was also a lot. There were six of them, for Rozeta’s sake; it was a lot of talking, at dinner at a really spice-heavy restaurant at Aniduun by the ocean, and then more talking with Mage Bank people in town, and then adventurer/delver registration at the guildhouse.

- - - -

Six hours later, Erick split off from ‘the squad’, the girls going back to their hotel to plan for tomorrow and sleep, while he and Solomon went back to the house in the dungeon.

Poi smiled as he called out, “Sounds like you all had a good time!”

“It was so strange,” Solomon said.

Erick said, “But great!”

“Fantastic, really.”

Erick said, “I almost wanted to check in on Ezekiel, but… He's doing good, right?”

Poi nodded. “He’s doing fine. Already has a life for himself. He’s determined to be ‘the backup’, though. He doesn’t want to get involved with this.”

“… Okay,” Erick said. “I suppose…” His voice trailed away.

Solomon finished Erick’s thought, “That’s what’s best for everyone, even if it’s not the best for him.”

“When this is over and no one has died,” Erick said, “We’ll all go see Ezekiel.”

Poi smiled a little bit, as he nodded.

Later, when Erick was laying in bed and trying to sleep, he thought of what it really meant to have 6 daughters. It was a lot of work. He knew he never could have managed such a thing back on Earth. But here… It was kinda nice.

He wished them all the best that life had to offer.

Today had been a good day...

Erick hoped that tomorrow wouldn’t rapidly devolve into tragedy, for all the girls and Solomon were at 15,000 base mana generation. That wasn’t enough for deep dives into the Dark, but it was enough for smaller forays, and that’s what the girls were going to do tomorrow. Solomon and Erick would stay ‘home’, and watch from the Dark Mirrors… Which they still had to make.

That should go fine, though. If it didn’t, then the ‘schedule’ would be delayed by a day or whatever, and that was fine, too.

- - - -

Inside Solomon’s mage tower, under the light of the dungeon core sun, Erick stood beside Solomon and Poi. The Arachno-Squad was still getting ready for the day, out there elsewhere. But the guys were here, planning the next move.

Solomon spoke, “Rule change.”

A black box with white lettering appeared.

- -

<22> new rules available for instantiation <today>.

<1,000,000> mana per new rule.

SPEAK NEW RULE HERE:

[_______________________]

Final upkeep cost of new rule is <estimate=~unknown>.

Accept new rule? Yes / No

- -

Erick and Solomon spoke at the same time, their voices echoing each other, “Portals of Sight to pierce the night, allowing light on all Dark plights.”

The black screen flickered and shifted.

- -

<22> new rules available for instantiation <today>.

<18,700,000> mana for new rule.

<new rule uses 18.9 rules>

SPEAK NEW RULE HERE:

[Sighting Mirrors]

Final upkeep cost of new rule is <1/day per mirror>.

Accept new rule? Yes / No

- -

Solomon said, “Instantiate the Rule.”

- -

<New> Rules:

7: Sighting Mirrors into the Dark.

~Notification: The Dark sometimes stares back.

- -

Solomon dismissed the new notifications, saying, “About as ominous as we expected.”

“I expected worse,” Poi said.

Erick and Solomon both stared at the man in complete disbelief. Why would he tempt Fate like that?

Poi smirked, saying, “How bad can it be?”

Erick walked away, saying, “Well now you’re just trying to tempt Fate.”

“Fate is already here, Erick!” Poi said, still smiling. “You should try making some Fate Magic inside those no-Script spaces.”

Erick stopped in his tracks.

Solomon went wide-eyed.

Poi nodded. “Yup. Might even work, too.”

Erick turned back around. “… You know… It just occurred to me that maybe what I’m missing from this whole True-Wizard-thing is the inclusion of all magic; not just what I can currently access.”

Solomon smiled, saying, “That thought just occurred to me, too, brother!”

And now Erick was surprised for a different reason. “We’re going with that terminology?”

“I’m trying out ‘brother’, yes.” Solomon added, “And I’m going to try out some Time Magic inside a no-Script space, too. It might work perfectly inside there, and you can pull me out if something goes horribly wrong.”

“That sounds like a great idea, or a great way to accidentally [Onward] yourself toward infinity.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fiiiiiine,” Solomon said.

Erick gestured toward the outside. “A Sighting Mirror, first?”

- - - -

Erick stood with Solomon on the beach-like white cliffs that surrounded the slime dungeon, where the slimes were meters behind and below, and the white stone ahead led straight into shadows, gloom, and the Dark Itself. That Darkness hovered vertically like a mist-covered ocean, the deeper parts of it swirling as things moved in the Dark, just beyond sight.

Solomon spoke, “A Sighting in the Dark.”

His voice rippled out and touched the gloom, rapidly precipitating mist and wavy black into a solid vertical surface that spread outward like the settling of a gong. Vibrations slowed. Possibility condensed. And then like the final step in accretion, when countless facets on a core turned to a smooth infinity, the Darkness rang out with a black pulse, leaving behind an utterly smooth plane at least 20 meters wide that hovered just beyond the white stone ground, revealing the softly-crumbling edge of the dungeon floor.

Erick and Solomon stood 10 meters away from the Black Mirror, and in a rather mundane sort of way, the mirror acted like a normal mirror. There lay Erick and Solomon’s reflections upon the Black, and there was the white stone ground underfoot, and Ophiel fluttering on Erick’s shoulder. Somehow, Erick expected something else.

Erick glanced at Solomon, and Solomon reciprocated the look. Erick nodded.

Solomon picked the chosen target that they had already discussed, and said, “Show me Poi at House Benevolence.”

The mirror flickered and wavered. And then nothing happened. Kinda expected. Poi at House Benevolence wasn’t in the Dark, but also, Poi wasn’t at House Benevolence right now.

Erick tried this time. “Show me Poi at the cloud castle above House Benevolence.”

The mirror rippled and did nothing.

Solomon instantly tried, “Show me Poi at the cloud castle above House Benevolence on the continent of Glaquin.”

Nothing but a ripple.

Erick said, “Show me House Benevolence.”

The mirror rippled.

… Nothing.

Solomon said, “Show me Poi in the slime dungeon.”

The mirror flashed to perfect imagery, the surface of the mirror seeming to vanish completely. Beyond the mirror lay Poi in the kitchen, a few kilometers behind Erick and Solomon, where he was making cinnamon rolls.

Erick said, “So it can only show things in the Dark.”

Solomon nodded. Then he spoke to the mirror, “Show me a person who knows a lot of actual Wizardry.”

Erick raised an eyebrow, surprised that Solomon was going after that target so fast—

And then he looked at the mirror, and laughed.

The mirror laughed with him—

Ha ha!

Ha ha!

Ha ha~

Solomon chuckled, too. And then he ran a hand through his own hair, and the guy in the mirror did the same. “So that was kinda a bust.”

“So that was kinda a bust.”

“So that was kinda a bust.”

“So that was kinda a bust.”

Erick did not like that feedback system.

And if they were going after the big targets, might as well go after the biggest ones.

Erick said, “Show me a True Wizard.”

The mirror expanded.

Eyes opened up in the Dark like ten thousand distant suns.

And then glowing white fangs appeared, each of them larger than a skyscraper. Melemizargo’s voice filled the dungeon like a soft avalanche, “Oh! It pinged on me? Well I guess I am, but we’ve already discussed True Wizardry. What are you searching for now?” Melemizargo stepped through half of the world, shrinking all the while, gloom and Darkness forming into his draconic body as he sat down on the slime dungeon floor. He came to rest with his arms upon the ledge of the edge, like he was sitting in a pool, his serpentine neck angled down toward Erick and Solomon, his tail flicking at one of the deeper water parks of the slimes. Just like how his body had shrunken to something less world-sized, his voice transformed to fit the size of the venue, “Like I said last time, I have given you all the tools to become a True Wizard but I cannot help you take those final steps. I believe Rozeta gave you the same information.”

The slimes shied away from the Dark Dragon.

Erick and Solomon did not.

“We have some specific questions,” Solomon said.

Melemizargo nodded.

Erick asked, “Is there an interaction between particles and mana that make it literally impossible to become a True Wizard in this New Cosmology?”

“Though the particulars have changed, extra influences are poison to a True Wizard. This is a fact that is as true in the Old Cosmology as it is in this New Cosmology. There is a reason that finding out about Particles helped me to come back to myself, for once you know the influences, you can work around them, or with them, as desired.

“That you ask such a question indicates that you have finally come to realize something that I have already told people; Particle Magic has brought me back to my senses. Of course, I don’t exactly blame people for not believing me, but that’s all in the past.”

Erick frowned a little, realizing that his question was a bit redundant now that he was here, and asking it. And yet…

Solomon asked, “It’s always bothered me... Why wasn’t Particle Magic invented before we got here? Even basic people playing around with the physical world would have noticed that Particles exist and could be manipulated in specific ways. Alchemy should have evolved into chemistry, for example.”

Melemizargo smiled a little, then said, “I’m rather sure the Sundering Source is still existent, or perhaps the collective trauma from the Sundering Source is all that remains, and that is what held us back from new magic for so long.

“Perhaps a memetic curse was made long ago in the killing of Knowledge, ensuring that Particles remained undiscovered. I don’t believe this, but I don’t know what caused the Sundering, either, so what I believe hardly matters when compared to the truth.

“But there have been certain advances in Particle-like Magic, once upon a time.

“There was that Atomic Cult that existed for a short while, long ago. They were Forgotten Campaign’d rather thoroughly, and their magic Banned most heavily. Perhaps the wrought have been actively suppressing progress for forever, and they’ve been better at their jobs than anyone realized?

“That is merely postulation, though. You will find out more when you go delving into the Dark, viewing the Source Of All Magic for yourself, searching for the cause of the Sundering.” He added, “But! Perhaps you will not discover anything. This outcome is likely preferable to all parties, for if the Sundering is truly over, then maybe we can begin to move past the Sundering and out into this New Cosmology. I highly doubt that will happen without a few major upsets along the way, but dreams are wonderful sometimes.”

A soft wind blew across the dungeon. Water rushed down small slides, where slimes played in the waves.

“The Old Cosmology and the New Cosmology were linked before the Sundering.” Erick asked, “Are there Wizards from the Old Cosmology which still exist in this New Cosmology? Maybe someone is still alive out there, somewhere?”

“Planars never stopped falling to Veird and the mana of the Old Cosmology is still out there, in a lot of places. I just cannot feel it. There are connections between Here and Other Places that I cannot sense, like holes in the ground that reach into True Voids, where Other Things live. If there are Wizards out there, perhaps they would be a boon to find, but they could also have been heralds of Destruction and death, for maybe the Sundering Source was from this New Cosmology, and not from the Old Cosmology at all.

“My ultimate goal is to expand the universe, so if malevolent entities came to Veird I know not of what I might have done to them while I was crazed.” Melemizargo said, “Perhaps some of them did try coming here… But I have no knowledge of that, either due to self-imposed forgetting, or whatnot. Perhaps you can make such knowledge appear for me, through some Wizardry in the Dark.”

He could make himself forget things?

… Didn’t that change everything about this Sundering search?

Erick wasn’t sure how to think about that right now.

Solomon asked, “What do you wish to come back from the Old Cosmology?”

Melemizargo grinned. “Everything.”

Solomon's question and Melemizargo’s answer had almost derailed Erick’s current thoughts, because they were almost too big of questions to hold. A lot of little things were adding up for Erick, and yet the direction his thoughts were going was really quite nonsensical.

Erick asked the question anyway.

“Circling way back a moment.

“Mana makes magic when exposed to intent.

“Particles make electricity and chemistry and otherwise when exposed to biological-based entities who know what they’re doing with those particles, but it is strictly a physical process.” Erick asked, “Do these two things seem comparable to each other as different forms of ‘magic’? Or am I way off base here?”

Melemizargo frowned a little in thought.

Solomon was silent as he considered Erick’s words.

“A strange question. Do you have a reasoning for this postulation that Particles are the base ‘mana’ of this New Cosmology?”

“No, not really.” Erick said, “But going back to the idea that people have been transporting from the Old Cosmology to the New Cosmology and other Cosmologies before the Sundering, since there had always been planars… did the Goddess of Knowledge go comatose from an ‘inundation of new knowledge’? I have a hard time believing that right now, for if she knew everything about everything, then shouldn’t there have been planars from this New Cosmology inside the Old Cosmology anyway? And shouldn’t the Old Cosmology have known of Particles before I came along?

“Obviously this thought experiment only works if the Goddess of Knowledge truly was knowledgeable about everything.

“But she had to be, right? Everything everyone has ever said has been ‘yes, the Goddess of Knowledge knew everything’. That fact is even provable, if sacrificing her to obtain the Grand Translation is really what happened, which everyone agrees is how the Grand Translation happened.

“So then… Some other sort of divine magic must have been what caused her to go comatose. She did not go comatose from an overload of Knowledge about this universe. She had to have gone comatose from either a loss of Knowledge, or through malevolent entities causing her to go comatose.”

Melemizargo stared. Solomon watched, wide-eyed and curious, trying to line up everything he knew with the words coming out of Erick’s mouth.

Erick was on a roll.

He continued, “And other realities have mana, right? Or is it just the Old Cosmology that makes mana?

“I doubt the Old Cosmology is the only Cosmology that made mana.

“So does this New Cosmology actually have its own form of ‘mana’? Are particles that mana? Or is there something else?” Erick asked, “Is it possible that whatever caused the Sundering was something… That exists here? Eh…” Erick frowned. “Ah. Sorry. Lost my train of thought. Still trying to put it all together right now—” Erick rapidly added, “And then there’s Apogee in Spur! He comes from a world of dragons that oversee everything and everyone; it’s why he hates dragons. Or at least he did the last time I talked to him which was years ago. And then there was that elf who came in from outer space on a ship, and that ship is down inside Stratagold’s vaults. Never got to see that ship, though.

“I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this…

“I just think that the Dark has a lot of boons that we can extract from it, but I am not sure if the Dark actually has the answers to the Sundering, because it is very possible that the Sundering did not originate inside the Old Cosmology. Maybe it came from this New Cosmology.”

Solomon cocked his head a little bit as he listened to Erick, mulling over the facts and postulations stated.

Melemizargo had stopped staring at Erick a while ago, instead opting to narrow his eyes upon the middle distance, his thoughts far from here.

Erick had a lot more he could have said on the subject, but that was more than enough for now. And so, he waited.

“An interesting theory of which we have no way to explore, for now.

“As for ‘mana’, as an overarching designation of ‘ephemeral power’ and not as the mana produced by the souls of living things here on Veird...

“Mana exists out there in the New Cosmology, same as it existed back in the Old Cosmology, and in roughly the same sort of ‘mana is possibility’ way that mana exists here. The possibilities out there, though, are vastly smaller than the possibilities here. It’s like this: Veird is a great big bowl, capable of holding all the different manas in rather equal form, and other places cannot do that. Just like how we didn’t have Particle Magic until you came along and added that to the soup, a lot of places out there are not capable of holding mana at all, or in any great quantity.

“Mana is much more ephemeral than particles.

“The production of mana is something that happens within the Darkness of a person, beside that thing which many would call the ‘soul’.

“Did souls exist where you came from? Sure. Is your soul stronger now, here on Veird? Very yes.

“So whatever mana production is out there, is much less than it is here on Veird, among the Darkness. Perhaps the veils between realities are weaker here on Veird, or they’re stronger out there, or whatnot. Hard to say; I’m stuck here on Veird just like you are.

“On a slight tangent...

“The Old Cosmology was riddled with passageways to new Cosmologies, some large and some small. This New Cosmology is possibly even older than the Old Cosmology, but not by much. The timescales upon which the Killing Sun seems to operate are rather intriguing to think about, especially when distant stars could have existed for much longer, or shorter, and then there’s the whole ‘light travels slow’ thing that seems to be a hard-ish limit in this existence…

“Benevolence didn’t exist until you made it, so it is possible that some other sort of invisible, intangible ‘mana’ exists that caused the Sundering.” Melemizargo shrugged. “I do not know.” He waved a wing toward the dungeon, and fluttered the other in the gloom of the Dark, near the Mirror. “Thus, this search.

“But! One part of what you say does hold a grain of maybe-truth.

“Maybe the answer is not here, in the Dark.

“Perhaps after you grab whatever you wish from the Dark, you can journey to Stratagold and plunder their vaults, too, and grab yourself a spaceship.” Melemizargo smiled. “I had posted a Quest for such a thing on the Quest Board of the Garrison of Candlepoint before you took over that land. Mephistopheles has that Quest Board in storage, gathering dust, but the Quest that is still on that board is still a Quest that I offer. Like the Quests at the Core of Veird, my own Quests to expand into the New Cosmology are evergreen.”

Erick instantly said, “And Yggdrasil will get us there in 90-ish years. You can wait alongside everyone else.”

Melemizargo laughed at Erick’s rapid answer. Then said, “As you desire.” He asked, “Do you desire more True Wizard answers?”

“A few quick questions. First question: Do you believe that mana in the Old Cosmology is more or less complicated than DNA and biological life in this universe?”

“They’re different. Mana is clearly better, but particles function decently enough as a baseline anchor for mana to grow upon.”

“What about from a Healing Magic perspective?” Erick said, “Healing magic is incredibly complicated here on Veird, because biology is very nuanced. Was Healing in the Old Cosmology just as difficult?”

“Healing Magic in the Old Cosmology was about as complicated as it is now, with all aspects except the most basic of supportive healing requiring fantastic amounts of assistance or skill in order to not mangle a body into horror.”

“… I honestly did not expect that sort of answer.” Erick said, “I expected realities made of mana to be easier to influence than ones made of particles.”

Melemizargo grinned. “It’s all easy to influence, Erick, for people like us. Would you like a small demonstration?”

For one incredibly deep moment, Erick paused.

And then he said, “Yes.”

- - - -

Melemizargo was a human angel of ten thousand wings floating atop a white beach.

Erick was a centaur. Solomon was a satyr. Ophiel was a flugehaper, sitting on Erick’s saddle-position.

They watched an ocean filled with fishmen play under the waves, hopping atop corals and swimming between eddies of whitewater. Erick was filled with awe as he watched the water-people play in the water. Just… All that water. All over the place! Water! Amazing. Much better than the Dryness everywhere else. Oases truly are amazing.

Melemizargo said, “In this place, dungeons are oases and you don’t know what a dungeon is, but you do know what a desert is, for the entire world is a desert.”

Melemizargo waved five thousand wings—

- - - -

Melemizargo was a human.

Erick was a Benevolence Fairy. Solomon was a Benevolence sprite, and Ophiel was a wisp.

They watched a forest filled with monkeys climb up ropes and swing down vines, and make little homes under big green ferns. They were all so fragile, those monkeys. A fire could come through any minute now, or a plague, or any sort of cataclysm, and they’d all die. Just like the Old Ones died. The Fae didn’t die; they were above that. But also, there was a beauty in death, in finality, that Erick rarely ever saw.

Melemizargo said, “In this fragment of reality, we’re cultivating semi-sapient people, to try and bring back the Old Ones. We’re having little success.”

Something clicked in Erick’s mind.

Melemizargo waved his ha—

“Wait!” Erick demanded, “Back to normal! Not here! This is wr—”

- - - -

Melemizargo was a tome ten books tall, floating above the Library of the Endless, where corridors of stacks delineated the world.

Erick was a traveler’s book standing in the center of the forbidden floor, where no books should walk, lest they be destroyed by librarians. Solomon was an imperfect copy, laying on the ground, too tired to open his covers and look at the world. Ophiel was a post-it note clinging to Erick’s binding.

They were in the Printing Room, and—

NOTHING WAS RIGHT.

Melemizargo started to say something—

Erick demanded, “Bring us back!”

The edges of Melemizargo’s pages glinted in the light, like fangs, like a smile.

He snapped shut.

- - - -

Erick was Erick, standing tall, a dragon Wizard in a human form. Solomon was Solomon, laying sprawled on the ground.

Ophiel whined a little on Erick’s shoulder, complaining, “I’m tired, dad.”

Erick put a hand on Ophiel, and the little guy slumped down into Erick’s arms, softly snoring in tiny flutes. Solomon was already knocked out and laying on the ground. Erick had no idea how he had remained awake. His eyes were heavy—

Erick endured, remaining upright. He glared at Melemizargo, the big black dragon staring at him from only five meters away. He was grinning. Erick was not grinning.

Erick demanded, “What the FUCK?”

Melemizargo leaned back, smiling wider, looking vindicated as he said, “That’s what I mean when I say that all realities, be they mana or particle, are easy to influence.”

“What was that? Why did you do—”

“You’re a lot further along in your Wizardly journey, so you managed to maintain consciousness. Solomon will take some more time before he can claim the same power. But all reality is easy to change, Erick. The big changes, like what you just experienced, were easy for you to notice. That’s why we went through those few realities. I knew you could maintain yourself in the brush of an infinity.

“And so, with your consent, we went.

“That’s what it really means to be a Wizard; it means you can maintain in the face of everything else that comes your way.” Melemizargo said, “You’re pretty close to getting there.”

Erick had a few rapid thoughts as Ophiel stirred to wakefulness in his arms.

The first thought was that he should never have consented to a ‘small demonstration’.

Like really, Erick, that was almost as bad as thanking Fairy Moon on the beach near Stratagold.

Next came the idea of ‘Oh. That’s what Establishment is; the cementing of other realities here, in this reality.’

And then his thoughts rapidly circled through what ‘different realities’ meant.

Next came ‘Gods make realities all the time; they’re called afterlives’.

Erick thought about the nature of gods. In the Old Cosmology, gods ‘solidified’ the space where their worshipers lived, actively determining things like the flow of time, to the cycle of days, afterlives, and otherwise.

Like a lightbulb going off, Erick said, “Gods determine the overarching setting of the universe.”

“Yes.”

“And Wizards determine their personal settings.”

“Also yes!”

To make sure he was on the same page as Melemizargo, Erick asked, “What does the term ‘multi-verse’ mean to you?”

Melemizargo considered, then he said, “Just another term for ‘Cosmology’.”

“Oh.”

Oh. That was big. Okay. Oh.

Erick had a lot of thoughts forming on that, but Solomon was waking up, and Erick helped him to his feet, as he looked upon Melemizargo again, and asked, “What do you want to come back from the Old Cosmology, specifically?”

And holy shit does the term ‘Old Cosmology’ mean something so much more different to me, now.

As does ‘New Cosmology’.

‘Old Multiverse’. ‘New Multiverse’.

Solomon chuckled in Erick’s arms as he got all the way to his feet. Had he heard the latest series of questions and answers, before he woke up? Or was he reviewing the recent past in the manasphere, to see what he missed out on? Was he going mad? Erick hoped he wasn’t going mad.

Or maybe Solomon was just happy that Erick was backing him up on his question of Melemizargo’s ultimate goals in the Sundering Search. ‘Everything’ was not a productive answer, and Melemizargo definitely wanted something specific out of this Sundering search.

Melemizargo mused, “Conflict is a thing upon which the entire system grows and multiplies, but right now a major conflict would be bad for everyone. So I don’t want to start a conflict. I do truly want everything to come back, though I doubt such an event is truly possible.” He looked down at Erick, saying, “I’m sure whatever you find will be good for us all, but I have other events to attend to today so I cannot remain. Good day, Erick. Good luck with understanding the New Cosmology.”

Without another word, Melemizargo vanished into the Dark surrounding the dungeon, moving like a slippery dragon, but also like tentacles suddenly vanishing below the surface of the vertical ocean.

… He had avoided that last question, hadn’t he.

“Hmm,” Solomon grunted, rubbing his eyes, still a bit out of it.

“Hmm,” Erick agreed.

Ophiel twittered in low drum sounds.

Solomon said, “So I checked the manasphere for what I missed… And I’m not sure what happened. We were… somewhere else? I got that you were a centaur for a moment?”

Erick sent Solomon an information packet—

Solomon froze for a long moment, as the gravity of what had happened unfurled within his mind.

Erick waited.

Solomon whisper-shouted, “ ‘Cosmology’ means ‘multiverse’?!” He instantly added, “No. That can’t be right… It doesn’t jive with everything we’ve learned so far… Well… Maybe it does?” He paused. “Wait. This makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it.”

“Maybe from a certain perspective, it’s true,” Erick said, “We already figured that mana was a multiverse, what with Benevolence and Fae and Dark all existing and reachable from Veird, I just never considered that ‘Cosmologies’ were singular multiverses unto themselves.”

Solomon said, “The Old Cosmology and New Cosmology were not just different dimensions, but they were entirely separate multiverses.”

A moment passed.

Clarity came.

“Gods determine the over-reality,” Solomon said.

“And Wizards determine their own personal-reality,” Erick said, “Extending their Reality onto the over-reality; extending their personal Element and self-created dimensional plane, like Benevolence, into this over-reality.”

“Wizards are the gods of themselves,” Solomon said, “Crystallized and set in stone, unwavering in the face of the over-reality, ever-producing their own version of reality within themselves.”

The moment of clarity passed by.

“And Wizards can pull from other versions of themselves?” Erick said, suddenly not too sure about his words or where he was going with them. He continued anyway, because talking out problems sometimes helped to solve those problems. “That could explain certain types of Establishment; you’re taking a piece of a different personal Reality and setting it into the shared over-reality?”

Solomon seemed to lose some forward enthusiasm too, as he said, “But are you interacting with your multiversal-self in order to do that? Like, consider that centaur version of yourself. If you were to transform into that person, are you actually instantiating that Reality into this reality, and… leaving the other Reality without that version of yourself?”

Erick thought for a second, but he had nothing positive to say about Solomon’s conjecture.

Solomon changed tactics. “Okay maybe the centaur-thing isn’t a good example. How about [Teleport], then. Taking into account what we know now, we know that [Teleport] worked off of alternate Realities being instantiated into this reality. The whole ‘macro quantum wavelength’ state was just our way of first visualizing what was clearly Establishment magic, as per Phagar; as in ‘Establishing’ your position in reality where you want it to be. Establishment magic is taking things from other realities and making them happen here.” He asked, “So what happens to the realities left behind? Do they just cease to exist, because you ‘killed yourself’ in that previous timeline?”

Erick hummed in thought, then said, “I highly doubt that Wizards are moving through countless realities and leaving behind the old ones to perish. Even in the Deep Paradox that Other Erick complained about how I was the real one and he was the fake. That means that there is one over-reality, and that over-reality is this one. I am willing to bet that the other realities did not exist until looked upon.”

“Maybe so,” Solomon said, “But is this reality the only real one because we have gods here, determining which reality is real? If you did Wizardry outside of their influence, would you go crashing through into Paradox unknown? Phagar once said that Establishment could lead to weird things, like waking up and finding yourself being a woman all your life, or other such oddities.”

Erick found his footing again, saying, “Well then that neatly explains why gods and Wizards always worked together, right? Gods cemented the over-reality, and Wizards pulled in things from side-realities whenever they needed or wanted those things.”

Solomon paused. “Well. That… Yeah. That is a nice framework. Interesting.”

Erick nodded. A moment passed in silent thought.

Solomon turned back to the Dark Mirror, gazing upon his and Erick’s reflections in the black.

Erick got back on track. “The girls will be coming soon.”

“Absolutely,” Solomon said. “You know… All of this recontextualizes this whole Sundering Search. The Relevant Entities all understood what we were doing here before we did; that we’re searching side-realities made possible through our very presences in order to create miracles that are not found on this world anymore, to prepare us all for the coming shifts. That’s why only a few people, like us, or like Jane, could do this.”

Erick nodded. “It certainly simplified everything for me, too.”

“The gods set the over-reality,” Solomon began.

“And we Wizards set the local-reality,” Erick finished.

Ophiel chirped, “And I help!”

Erick smirked at that, and Solomon chuckled. They told him that yes, he did help a lot.

Soon, Erick and Solomon were back to playing around with the Dark Mirrors to better try and understand how they work. They didn’t search for anything dangerous at all, but they did learn how to search for known things in the Dark rather well.

“Ah!” Solomon said, opening his aura and flowing it toward the Dark Mirror. White glows flowed into the black, and Solomon said nothing.

A pink slime with sparkles appeared, playing in the waves of a lazy river with a bunch of other slimes.

Erick turned around, and matched the Mirror’s vision with the slime dungeon. He found the pink sparkle slime. “So the Mirror can search non-verbally, too; you just gotta connect with it through your aura.”

“It seems more responsive when I do it this way, too,” Solomon said, “For instance…”

- - - -

Knowing what they now knew, Erick and Solomon looked down at the Mind Mage artifacts with a newfound sense of clarity.

The Crown of Self, which isolated a person from the world.

The Lidless Eyes, which prevented hostile Mind Magic and other changes in Reality from happening to the wearer, at the cost of things possibly affecting the wearer if it ran out of eyes to soak the spellwork.

The Shackle of Memory, which prevented the wearer from forgetting anything.

Solomon said, “Neither of us can wear the Crown, because you’re tied to Ophiel and Yggdrasil and other outside magics, and I’m tied to this dungeon. I can probably wear it if I disconnect from the dungeon, but I’m not doing that.”

Poi said, “Not yet, anyway.”

Solomon was less sure about Poi’s ‘suggestion’, but he said nothing against it.

“I’ll take the Eyes, you take the Shackle?” Erick asked.

“How about no one wears the Bracelet right now,” Poi said. “Neither of you have been to a dungeon core breaking, and you don’t need to see more than you’re already capable of seeing. In fact, Erick. You should take off the All-Seeing Eye. And you should separate from the dungeon now, Solomon.”

“… Well that’s a bit more cautious than it needs to be,” Erick said.

“Eh. Poi is right,” Solomon said. “You take the Lidless Eyes. I’ll take the All-Seeing Eye. And then we switch next time.”

“We’re looking at the breaking through the Mirror,” Erick said, not feeling the same level of cautiousness that everyone else was feeling. “We’re not actually going to the breaking.”

Poi leveled a glare at Erick.

“Fine, fine!” Erick said, as he began taking off the All-Seeing Eye. “No need to see anything more than what I can already see.”

And Poi told Solomon, “You can disconnect from the dungeon, now.”

Solomon didn’t want to leave Poi alone, but after a few back and forths, Solomon relented. Soon, Erick was wearing the Lidless eyes, and a dungeon-disconnected Solomon was wearing the All-Seeing Eye. It would be easy enough for Solomon to reconnect to the dungeon after the day’s dungeon breaking was over, anyway.

- - - -

Ophiel hovered in the sky above the Mondariska Mountains, located west of Greensoil. Nothing really lived in this part of the world, except for the target. The Mind Mages had quarantined this area months ago, and then kept it that way, until today.

Down below, nestled into a green crack in the mountain, lay a black portal into the Dark. Normally the mountains around here had a lot of green, but this place had green of a different color. Instead of a green forest, there was a toxic swamp of bright green Decay. Vines and mist and slugs, all green and subtly glowing, spilled out onto the mountains. Nothing was actually radioactive —no Extreme Light here— but it certainly looked that way, while the unseen danger here was much more toxic than simple radiation.

One mountain over, Jane spoke to the assembled squad, “Final words time. I’ll keep it short. We’ve all done this before, but technically five of us are new. Not a big deal. This is just another routine dungeon kill, and our father and uncle will be watching us from the Dark Mirror. If the worst should happen, then they’ll rewind time and get a message to us through Ophiel, who will be stationed near the entrance of the decay dungeon.

“We won’t be searching the Dark for anything. We won’t be lingering.

“We get in there, kill the threats, look around for a moment, then we come back out, and come back here.”

Abigail, Beth, Candice, Debby, and Emily, all nodded professionally. Jane nodded in return. Jane was the team leader today, though every single one of them was capable of being the leader of the group, but a structure had to be established, and so they had established a structure.

In the next few moments, all six of them transformed into enormous tarantulas, five meters across and two meters in height, each of them a color of the rainbow with Jane as blue, and the rest as green, yellow, orange, red, and purple. Ephemeral [Conjure Armor] draped across their bodies, hugging them tight. The dungeon had Script access, but in a very specific way; that armor would likely not last for long, but precautions were precautions, and the Arachno Squad took precautions when they could.

Most of their real defenses were internal, though.

They made their bodies physically sealed against crawling slugs and toxins in the air, vines and all sorts of liquids and otherwise. Though they couldn’t spin webs in that controlled form, it was necessary for the upcoming dungeon. They all even had bones and exoskeletons, along with re-oxygenating organs and redundancies everywhere, and were more than capable of doing everything they needed to do, even if they had to go without their webs. Not having access to those multipurpose threads was a hindrance, for sure, but it was a hindrance Jane, and all of the others, were used to.

Decay dungeons were a sort of dungeon that went ‘bad’ all the time. This one was a particularly terrible variant that produced putrescent slugs, that Mind Magic monster that erased its presence from the minds of all it infested. It had been responsible for an outbreak of the anti-memetic monsters across four different villages of the Greensoil Republic. The dungeon had been scheduled for destruction for a while now, but since it was so remote and so dangerous, it was low priority.

It was just the sort of dungeon that Jane and her sisters could handle, though, so they were here.

- - - -

Erick stood upon white stone, watching the dungeon from the inside, from the Mirror.

The dungeon was a horrible space, filled with Elemental Swamp and Decay, and matching those two Elements rather well. Murky, deadly water stretched out in every direction, like floating rivers in the black. Dying trees formed the barely-living ‘bones’ of the dungeon, whereupon streams of rivers flowed through the air, like splashed and whirling airy waters, filled with muck and death and crawling vines. Inside that Escher-like space, slugs grew inside every living thing. Those slugs infested decay slimes that barely moved in the algae-choked water, making them seem like worm-filled eyes here and there. Slugs slimed upon the vine monsters that attempted to grow on the ever-dying trees.

The worst parts were the zombies, floating in the water and flopping on the trees.

They weren’t zombies. They were former dungeon masters, turned into living feasts for the putrescent slugs; copies of the few adventurers that had made it into the dungeon and then escaped… Theoretically.

Solomon had questions, because he was rather disconnected from the world without Ophiel or Yggdrasil. “You said that the adventurers that showed up at Greensoil were all infected… and that they were all copies of each other, yes? Is it possible that the original people are still in the dungeon? Somewhere?”

Erick stared at the flowing twists of Swamp water, and at the infested everything. “That’s what I found out with Ophiel. But… yeah. What you’re thinking is highly possible.”

Poi spoke up, “We have no way of knowing if the ones who showed up at Greensoil were originals, or copies. They were too far gone; minds and souls shattered by this experience. It’s highly likely that the originals are still here in the dungeon, but if they are, then they’re too far gone to save.” Poi pointed at a fungus that grew upon the back of one of the zombies. “That’s a control fungus. It only grows on dead things, or things that it has made dead. Those zombies aren’t even proper zombies; they have no animating soul; just that fungus. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything in there is dead.”

Erick frowned. “This dungeon is a horror show.”

Solomon nodded.

Erick gazed through the Mirror, toward the entrance, flicking his aura across the surface of the Mirror, and the Mirror moved with his sight.

Solomon asked, “Not going to look for the core?”

“You’ve gone out on dungeon hunts with them, but I have not, and I want to see them from the beginning.” The dungeon was scaring him, because it was a very dangerous place for anyone to be. And yet, Erick tried to be calm and even a little bit joyful; this was his chance to see his daughter at ‘work’. “Maybe we should get some popcorn—”

Jane crashed through the front portal of the dungeon, directly into the waterways, and then through the air to the lower levels, which seemed endless. Her sisters followed right behind her, the five of them fanning out as they descended upon short bursts of prismatic power. Water splashed. Trees shattered.

And then the bodies floating in the waters all popped, spores and slugs and blood and bone getting everywhere.

Poi corrected himself, “Detonating controller fungus.”

“Or just ripe,” Erick said.

Poi nodded a little.

The Jane Squad rapidly descended through the main waterways, their armors disintegrating, leaving behind completely smooth tarantula bodies in every color, but without mouths or anything organic looking at all. They reminded Erick of the idea of robots; sleek and deadly.

Half-decayed alligators and clumps of blood magic and fungus tried to counter attack, as the rivers swirled, filled with toxic slugs, trying to drown the Janes.

The Arachno Squad ripped the enemies to shreds, but they were still under slug-infested waters, and that was not goo—

The Janes adapted.

It started with the Red Jane; Debby. She flickered red lightning into the waters, frying everything that she touched. Water exploded away from her, and once again she was out of the river, to stand on top of the poison. Within a second all the rest of them began shimmering with Lightning Magic, in all the other colors—

Like hundreds of popcorn kernels popping in rapid sequence, the green slugs in the water burst and boiled. The water became a soup of dead things that fell back down into the airway-waterways, still faintly glowing due to the Decay magics of the slugs.

Erick amended his earlier statement, “Maybe not popcorn.”

Poi joked, “We got those chewy star-candies at the house. I bet they have a better slug-like consistency to go with the ambiance of the dungeon.”

Solomon burst a laugh. Erick chuckled.

Erick retrieved the star candies and copied them for everyone.

Solomon grabbed a handful of his own supply, saying, “Is this a bigger dungeon than normal?”

The girls were doing well; going fast and sure, without any seeming need to slow down. So Erick turned the ‘camera’ of the Black Mirror downward, down, down, through the floating waterways of the dungeon, past some truly massive slug-cocoons that looked woven from glowing slime, down into the part where the Elemental Swamp of the dungeon changed into Elemental Abyss, and the monsters got bigger, and meaner.

Mostly bigger.

Some of the monsters were true horrors. A wyvern that was sluggified, with green slugs spilling out of every orifice, and out of the mouth, like a weak dragon’s breath. A wyrm, too; probably from some hidden cache of eggs from some stupid dragon who wanted to do things ‘the old way’ and set their eggs out in the mountains. That thing was 100 meters of decaying, fungus-covered zombie, that gorged itself on everything it could find. ‘Everything it could find’ seemed to only mean massive pools of slugs that went into the scooping mouth of the wyrm, and then slipped out of holes in the zombie-dragon’s body—

Solomon suddenly said, “Oh my gods. I see the controlling fungus, but… Is that wyrm actually still alive? It still has a hunger response. Maybe it could be saved. Turned over to Inferno Maw and his wyrm-reincarnation tanks.”

Erick paused the camera with a flick of his aura. He studied the wyrm for a moment, watching it eat slugs. “… Oh. Shit. I think it is.” Erick’s attention was drawn to a different part of the Mirror. “And those humans look a lot less zombie than they do… I’m not sure.”

“None of the other bodies were alive, but...” Poi asked, “Do those repros have a soul, or are they just controller fungus’d?”

The wyrm ate from pools of slugs, but nearby stood a stone ‘village’, filled with repros. They walked around on a layer of stone, near cave-like rock piles, all of them nude and spilling slugs everywhere. Small fungi grew from their shoulders, but they certainly didn’t look fully dead and controlled. They were still completely defenseless and completely out of it—

Poi said, “I need to know if they can be saved, Erick.”

“I know. I’m already trying to see if— Shit.” Erick moved his aura across the Mirror, and yet it wasn’t changing Sights. “I can’t change it to soul-view. What am I doing wrong here?”

Erick knew that he was doing wrong was that he wasn’t wearing his All-Seeing Eye, and thus the Dark and this Mirror both looked a whole lot more opaque to him. Once again, Erick had thought that his senses were top-notch, but having useful tools like the All-Seeing Eye helped a lot.

Solomon took over, his aura flowing into the Mirror as Erick pulled away. “It’s like this.”

The Mirror shifted.

The Sight of the Dark Mirror changed to [Soul Sight].

And the bodies of the people were completely empty, save for a ‘net’ of fungus that acted like muscles and skin, along with hundreds of brighter souls everywhere inside of them; the life-glows of slugs. Poi relaxed a fraction, and then sadness came. Erick and Solomon had similar reactions. There was no saving these people, either.

Solomon said, “They’re just husks.”

Erick said, “These ones will probably also explode if anyone gets near them.”

“I didn’t expect to find any survivors, but we didn’t explore much of it before we called in a quarantine.” Poi frowned. “Jane’s on scene, so she probably already sees all of this.”

Erick asked, “Maybe there are real people beside the core? Check out that wyrm again, too, Solomon.”

The wyrm was very dead, as most wyrms were. Erick or Inferno Maw of House Death could bring those sorts of people back to life, and they often did when anyone found a wyrm, or a wyrm’s grand rad, but this one was… Not possible. Solomon shifted the view to [Soul Sight], and revealed the true damage of the slugs. No grand rad inside of that body at all.

Solomon said, “The cores are gone.”

“Looks like an animating slug at the center of it all,” Erick said, frowning. “Okay. On to the dungeon core? Let’s make sure there aren’t any surprises awaiting them.”

Solomon shifted the Mirror downward, even further, into the putrescent depths. The Mirror flashed by house-sized birthing cocoons that glowed in the murky water, like green poison in a floating river. Those rivers spiraled down into the dark, past more wyrms that were copies of the first wyrm, all of them animated through controller fungus.

The dungeon core glowed green in the middle of a mansion-sized cocoon, where millions of slugs swam around the radiant white core, and three larger slugs hugged the core itself.

It was a trio of queen slugs. They were a semi-sentient hive mind, which explained the oddities of the slug attacks against the Janes, but they weren’t much of a danger at all. The main danger of these slugs was that as soon as a person was infected, the slugs turned invisible to that person, and then hosts spilled slugs everywhere they walked. Those slugs then tried to get into whatever other organic structures they could find and corrupt into breeding grounds. The original host wouldn’t die from the infection for a very long time. For all of that time, the host would live out their lives completely unaware that they were spreading these anti-memetic monsters everywhere they walked.

But the Janes were completely sealed, and they had faced memetic threats like these slugs before. They were safe.

“I expected to find some living people,” Solomon said. “A wyrm core stored near the dungeon core. People wrapped in stasis pods, or whatever. But there’s nothing?”

Erick asked, “The only reason these repros and wyrms are actually dead is because the area is too filled with slugs, so the slugs have no reason to keep their hosts alive?”

Poi said, “Correct. Putrescent slugs are one of the few monsters which are incredibly more dangerous inside a dungeon. You’re going to have to scour the land outside the dungeon for any stray slugs, Erick, as planned.”

“Already? Sure.” Erick set Ophiel above the dungeon to do just that, then he said to Solomon, “Back to the Janes?”

Solomon nodded, not adding anything, as he threw the camera upward, to where the Janes were killing slug/slime-aggregates now.

Lightning did very well against the oozes made of slugs, so the girls were making good time. Debby seemed to have been put on softening duty for now, focusing mainly on long range red [Chaining Lightning Beam]s. She triggered exploding bodies and otherwise long before the team reached those threats. The others focused on much more cost efficient, close-range lightning, wrapping that spellwork upon their forelegs and feet, allowing them to be cost efficient with their mana, as they took down threats like insanely fast double-orcol-sized nightmare tarantulas. Made of lightning.

Erick shivered as he saw the pure speed of his daughters.

Nightmare fuel.

He tried to say something positive, “They certainly work well together.”

Solomon smiled a little. “They do, don’t they.”

“Jane used to be all into horses when she was younger!” Erick suddenly complained. “Why did she have to go with spiders?”

Solomon laughed loud. Poi smiled.

“She even has that unicorn form,” Erick said.

“Well, from a practical standpoint, spiders are much more dangerous than horses. Much more versatile,” Solomon said, “And she uses the [Aura of Freedom] she got from the unicorn all the time.” He gestured at the Mirror. “Right there. Emily went right through that cocoon to kill the queen at the center—”

Poi spoke up, “The dungeon is disgorging. All Mind Mage personnel have departed.”

Erick looked to the right, his senses rapidly demanded elsewhere. “That’s my cue.”

High overhead of the dungeon, Ophiel watched as the green glows of the infected valley began to slither outward, into the surrounding dead lands. A [Cascade Imaging] high sky revealed the true escape. Under a bright, cascading star, a 3D white map of the world populated with blue markers that appeared and then swarmed outward in distant areas, kilometers from the initial infection. The dungeon was opening escape tunnels for its monsters.

Ophiels unleashed [Physical Domain]s as they began to descend into the surrounding lands. First came warnings to people, indicating the Mind Magic threat in the area, but there were no people around; his words were just precautions.

In a coordinated assault starting ten kilometers out from the main dungeon entrance, Ophiels linked power and began beating the world like a grandma beating a dirty rug.

Mountains cracked and broke. Rocks spewed up, turning to dust.

Erick churned the surface world into a desert, killing everything on that surface, except for the original dungeon entrance; that, he left alone. Every extra dungeon entrance winked out as Erick’s power killed whatever appeared, ripping it to shreds through [Amplify]d [Harmony]. His power briefly passed into the dungeon itself, here and there, rapidly disintegrating everything in the top layer of the dungeon into death, before those dungeon exits closed, to get away from his power. His power didn’t go too far into the dungeon itself, because as soon as he touched those entrances, those entrances closed.

Jane would be fine even if she were exposed to this for any length of time. She had a Domain, and she was a rather big creature; the wavelengths of Erick’s Domain were small, tuned to killing small things before they killed big things. Even now, as Erick turned the world around the putrescent slug dungeon into sand and dust, there were monkeys and birds and other such creatures that were easily able to escape the destruction, which Erick focused upon the ground, and upon the slugs.

A lot of things were still going to die, but Erick had extra Ophiels grab what he could and take them out of the destruction zone. The wildlife around the area had learned to stay away from the slugs over the last half a year that the dungeon existed, or rather, they had been made to learn.

Erick asked Poi, “How often do you guys have to quarantine dungeons like this?”

“Not too often,” Poi said, “This one was particularly bad, but it was contained; we even sealed off the underworld so it couldn’t open up down there. We would have gotten to it eventually. Maybe next month.”

“I’m glad I’m able to help with this, even if it wasn’t a strict priority,” Erick said.

Poi nodded.

Ophiels continued to disintegrate the land around the dungeon, like kilometers-wide subtly-purple spheres of detonation, swirling around the area in a clockwise direction. The Janes continued to delve into the dungeon. Over the next 20 minutes Erick reduced the land around the offending valley into a proper desert. Dark holes in reality continued to pop open here and there within that space, but quick spreads of [Physical Domain] rapidly vibrated those entrances and the spilling slugs into nothing.

The valley remained, like a cracked plateau rising up half a kilometer from the surrounding land, its top caked in green slugs that slipped past that valley, like radioactive rivers, to fall into the destructive desert. Erick kept the pressure going outside.

And eventually, Jane, Abigail, Beth, Candice, Debby, and Emily, all reached the core cocoon.

The stronghold of the slugs floated in the Dark, a radiant green sphere the size of a mansion, with several floating rivers connecting it to the rest of the dungeon. In even more defiance of normal reality, the Arachno Squad stood upon those rivers like water striders, each of them crackling with subtle lightning, electrocuting everything that tried to swim out of that water and attack.

Like two horror shows meeting, the girls leapt at the cocoon and began burrowing, slime and slugs going everywhere as tarantula legs and claws proved more than up for the fight. Lightning flickered, killing and killing.

The Dark Mirror showed everything. The sounds were almost worse than the visuals.

And then an ethereal voice called out from the center of the dungeon, “Hark! And advance no further, Beautiful Spiders! We would grant you boons for letting us live!”

Erick flinched; he always flinched when things that seemed sapient and sentient asked for leniency.

Solomon flinched, too.

The Janes did not. In a sudden coordination, the Janes zapped everything, rainbow lightning linking with each other, and then rapidly turning red as Debby’s power expanded over everything, for she had been saving up for this moment. When everything was dead, Jane, Abigail, Debby, and Emily tore at the core itself.

The world screamed.

Beyond the Mirror, the world fractured and broke, cracks reaching past the surface of the—

- - - -

The world was a ruin of everything and nothing, of fractal trees and impossible geometry. Erick could see everything all at once, and also nothing at all.

Erick stood divorced from himself.

Another Erick stood beside him; a Different Mirror of himself. The Other Erick was not Solomon, he was someone else, shaped in the same sort of way that Erick had been originally shaped, with a sagging belly and a few wrinkles and a bit of grey in his hair. He was a Nothing At All, for his fraction of the multiverse did not exist until Erick gazed upon it, and yet, here he was, in the flesh, the only part of the fractal mess that made any sense at all.

Other Erick looked at Erick, his eyes filled with light, his voice strangely calm, “It’s all about communication. That’s the reason for everything happening in your life. And yet, you are nothing. We’re all just motes of our reality, shoved outward in hopes of understanding the Great Other.”

- - - -

Erick came back to himself.

The Janes floated through the Darkness beyond the Mirror, swimming in clouds of black that ate and crushed everything they touched, like continents colliding. Glowing green remnants of the dungeon burst like whale bodies left out on beaches for too long, popping and exploding and sending slugs to their tiny deaths among the encroaching Black.

The Dark brushed against Red Debby, and Debby became the Dark on that leg briefly, before swimming faster and faster, to get away from the crush. Blue Jane and Green Abigail grabbed for their sisters and pulled them up faster and faster. Orange Candice and Yellow Beth ripped apart a wyrm that had survived, spilling gore and slugs everywhere, further clearing the path on the way out. Purple Emily, having saved her power as much as she could for the trip, expanded that power now, either shoving aside the Dark, or blending with it in order to push it away, Erick wasn’t sure.

The six of them rocketed out of the cleft in the slug-filled valley, the world behind them disintegrating back into the Dark, the portal geysering with one last radioactive-green explosion, before slamming shut on everything that hadn’t managed to escape. Rapidly, the girls set to evaporating the remaining Mind Magic threats upon the surface, Debby’s red lightning flashing hard once again.

Erick helped with Ophiel.

Soon, the threats were gone, and all of Erick’s daughters were getting run through a standard Mind Mage decontamination protocol, which they were easily passing, but precautions were precautions. They’d be back here at Ascendant Mountain in an hour.

Erick began to relax.

And for now, Erick turned to Solomon and Poi, and started with, “So what happened to you all when the dungeon core broke? I got told some cryptic shit by an Other Erick while we floated in a fractal kaleidoscope of reality.”

Poi went first, saying, “I got nothing. I’ve either been second-hand exposed to enough of these events to not affect me, which is a consensus among the Mind Mages, or, as a dungeon master still attached to his core, I was simply insulated from the effects.”

Erick nodded.

Solomon breathed in, and then he said, “I was about ten million different slimes, experiencing around that many different lives. Most of them ended when I was eaten by something else.”

Erick frowned a little. “Well that fucking sucks.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Erick realized that the problem was larger than his small, instinctive comment.

Solomon winced.

Poi said, “We don’t have many records of repros experiencing dungeon core breaks… Like, we have 2 of them. Most repros want nothing to do with dungeons as soon as they separate, but those that do still touch upon dungeon spaces will almost always refuse to take part in a core breaking. Those 2 reports of dungeon core destructions by repros are not helpful here; both of them were forgotten memories, with both people unable to recall what happened.”

Solomon said, “It’s already fading for me… I’m rather sure that Intelligence and having this All-Seeing Eye on my neck is the only thing that allowed me to understand what I was seeing at all. But I was still a slime, and slimes have terrible vision; it’s basically all shadows. Past 5 or 10 meters it’s nothing at all.”

Seeing himself as a slime was obviously the beginning of an existential crisis.

Erick said, “The others will likely have experienced something similar. So how about we stop here for the day. Cut out all experiments and whatnot, and go see a play, or something like that. Or I could make a nice dinner— Oh! Better yet. Let’s all go get wasted at some bars in Aniduun; they’re supposed to be really fun!”

Solomon smiled a little, in a broken sort of way. And then he banished all untoward thoughts, standing straight as he said, “It’s standard to take a week off after a dungeon core breaking, right?”

“Something like that, yes,” Erick said.

Poi said, “You’re taking a week off, and from what I’m hearing already the girls are experiencing some of their own existential crises, so they’re on mandatory leave, too.”

Erick put on a happy face as he smiled wide, announcing, “Then it’s settled! We’re going to do some good old fashioned partying! Or something.” He admitted, “I think I’ve forgotten how to party properly, though.”

Solomon smirked, then demurred, “I’m going to reconnect to the core here, and then we can maybe see what Ascendant City has to offer in the way of nightlife. Maybe Poi can come along, too—”

Poi instantly said, “I am not a hermit, Solomon. I’m here, but I’m also at Candlepoint, overseeing ten simultaneous and normal day-to-day events and one 1-star crisis, in the form of this putrescent slug dungeon breaking, to ensure that the infection is fully cleared. And Erick already did almost that entire job for us, anyway.” He said, “I appreciate the worry, but you do not have to worry about my mental state. Go and have fun.”

“I’m still going to connect to the core,” Solomon said, brooking no argument.

- - - -

“I was a slime,” Abigail said, seated at the dinner table, opening a discussion that they had all briefly touched upon, and then put away as fast as they could.

Once the girls had come back to Ascendant Mountain, they had rapidly shot down Erick’s suggestion of ‘partying’. Everyone except Jane had a hollow look in their eyes, and they had wanted to simply eat and relax, and so Erick had decided to whip up the best dinner he could make. They ate in the large dining room that rarely got used, even back at the original house, instead of at the kitchen table, since there were 10 of them. That had been two hours ago. Now the dinner had been cleared away and dessert was served. It was huge slices of chocolate cake, thick with frosting and moist as a 9-Star Cook could make. Erick was a decent cook when he wanted to be, but the cake was not his; he had bought it from ‘And Dessert!’, his flagship chocolate store he had begun with the ladies from ‘Meat! Bread! Cheese!’ a decade ago. They churned out some fantastic chocolate cakes, as always, though they weren’t the only Cooks on staff by a long shot anymore.

It was almost a good enough cake to lift some spirits.

But Abigail’s words reopened an existential wound.

Beth said, “I was a slime, too. It was really fucking weird, and kinda hit home that we’re not really Jane, and that’s painful, but it’s fine. Right? Not a big deal.”

“Not in the grand scheme of things, no,” Candice said. “We’re all just different people, and that’s fine. This really solidifies that fact. We’re expen—”

“You are NOT expendable,” Erick harshly said, interrupting what he knew was coming. “Even if you suddenly hate yourself, know that I still love you. You are loved. And I don’t like you talking like that about people I love.”

Emily suddenly spat, “You don’t get it—”

“I don’t have to get it,” Erick said, “And you’re all a lot more stable than this mental upset.” He looked to every girl in turn, and then to Solomon. “You are some of the strongest people on this world, and we will be facing something that has killed a whole lot more people than we could ever envision. So if we have to take our time, that is fine. We can get through all of this.

“Or, you could just stop.

“None of you are expendable. All of you are necessary.

“But if you don’t want to go searching for the Sundering, then you can stay here with Solomon, Poi, and I, as we watch from the Mirror. We all had breaking experiences, too.”

The room was silent.

Jane said, “I’m still going out there to explore the Dark.”

More silence.

Debby said, “I was… I was a slime in that vision, but I was also… Erick.” She winced. “I think I was the slime encased in the asteroid belt just ten centimeters away from the one that became Solomon. It was… A really weird experience. I barely remember anything about it, but… Everything is too different for me to continue like I was. I’m taking a week off, as per industry standard guidelines. You know, the ones that we helped to write.”

Everyone except Poi was surprised by Debby’s announcement.

Debby added, “Maybe I’ll be ready to go back in a week. All I really know is that I’ll be delving for base mana production, and not doing much more than that. We had to ration mana way too much in there.”

There were some small agreements at the ‘too much rationing’ part.

And then Emily dropped a bomb, “I was a slime, but I was also a man, raised by our mother and not here on Veird at all.” Angry, and trying to hide it, Emily said, “I truly think that if we would have been born with a penis our mother wouldn’t have given us to dad.”

Erick was stunned.

The girls were not.

“Oh my god—” “That BITCH!” “Somehow completely expected—” “—And yet not.” “I know, right!”

Beth said, “Well thank the gods we ended up with our dad!”

Erick suddenly laughed, because he had no idea what else to do at the moment. “I’m glad you ended up with me!”

The Janes were a bit too embarrassed to say anything more about that. They’d probably talk about it all when they were away from him, though, and that’d be fine.

Erick changed the subject, “When Melemizargo showed us some alternate realities today, I was a centaur in one of them. Imagine if you could have been an actual horse girl! No spiders at all.”

“Now what’s wrong with spiders,” Jane demanded to know.

The others instantly joined in on that topic.

Debby said, “Centaurs are cool, but spiders are cooler.”

“Even in pure utility!” Abigail said, as she stuck her fork into her chocolate cake. “You got the webs, the full-vision eyes—”

“And horses are fragile as shit,” Solomon said, joining in on the conversation, smiling wide. “Spiders are much cooler.”

Erick mocked offense, “You’re turning on me, now?!”

Jane said, “Solomon is now ‘Cool Dad’.”

Solomon instantly conjured sunglasses on his face, saying, “It is Law!”

Laughter, mixed with groans.

Jane said, “I rescind my recommendation.”

“What! No!” Solomon said, “No backsies!”