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Erick hung in the void like a particularly bright jellyfish that had done several improbable things in just as many moments. He would need to do more improbable things if he was going to survive this mess.

Nothanganathor was hungry, and angry, and staring at Erick from the surface of the sun, his immense backlit body coiling in and out of the glowing white surface of the star, all of space filled with Malevolent, Red Lightning.

Erick was not ready for this, so he would try his best to escape, and if escape was not possible, then he would fight. That was his goal right now. His tools included his new True Wizard self, which meant that he wouldn’t die instantly, and a whole bunch of magic that would probably be useless against Nothanganathor, considering the Erased One, The Dragon Who Could Not Ascend, had just called Erick out as ‘number 17,212’. Erick imagined that most of his alternate reality selves would have died, unknowing, in that little bureaucratic illusion down there; lightning eating them away without them knowing that they were about to die.

Erick had avoided that major trap.

But the fact that he was subject to that major trap at all was a big deal. How had his ascension in the God Pact reality caused him to end up here, at all? Erick had thought he had stepped Forward, into himself. Not through a dozen or however many realities to end up here.

Obviously, this was a trap planted long before Erick ever got to Veird. It had not been a trap for him, specifically. Obviously. Rather, it had been a trap for all Wizards. Erick was just the latest in a long line of victims. How did Erick know this? Because of the fact that no True Wizards had been on Veird ever since the Sundering.

Any True Wizard ended up here, in Nothanganathor’s trap.

Why was Nothanganathor’s trap shaped like Earth Bureaucracy? Well. Probably because there was some sort of recursive magic happening in there that—

Well because—

Erick was thinking too much, and not escaping like he should.

Erick checked his triple status readout.

- -

Mp: 79,971/∞, ↑ [+6012, +a lot]

Hp: 78,510/∞, ↑ [+6012, +a lot]

Pp: 597/∞, ↓↓↓ [+6012, -6189] Warning: Under directed attack. Time to death ?? seconds

- -

Ah.

Nothanganathor was gradually killing him, trying to end him softly, without him able to understand he was under attack.

Erick rapidly reoriented his directed regeneration.

- -

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 4%, 3%, 93%

- -

His mind cleared instantly.

He had been going down a deep thought hole.

His Status started to repair.

- -

Pp: 11,229/∞, ↑↑ [+16,773, -6189] Warning: Under directed attack. Time to death: nope

- -

And now he was here—

Nothanganathor’s face was still half-buried in the surface of the sun, his single left eye staring out at Erick, all the local universe flashing Red around both of them.

Somehow, in that moment, Erick got the distinct feeling that Nothanganathor was slightly miffed.

The solar system vibrated, a little less casual, but still holding the same amount of anger as before, “You’re going to be one of the annoying ones, aren’t you.”

Erick kept an eye on his Status but other than that he continually flew away from the sun—

“Get back here.”

And suddenly the sun inverted, light collapsing inward, Nothanganathor becoming a glowing white dragon resting above the event horizon of a black hole.

Erick watched as his Status rapidly switched warnings, going from a subtle mental crush to a massive physical and mana collapse. It was tens of thousands of damage per second; an attack that threatened to kill, but there was no actual draw of gravity upon Erick. Maybe there should have been, but there was not.

Erick smiled.

What was a simple concept like gravity to a True Wizard?

In fact, he was ignoring the gravity, so why not ignore the damage, too? As soon as Erick had that thought, the damage numbers on his Status flickered and faded.

This was what a Wizard War was, at its core. This sort of confusion. This sort of false narrative and intent to damage through absolute power and enforcing one's frame of reference upon the enemy. It was a battle of vectors and an ignoring of those vectors through Wizardry of one’s own.

Erick knew the damage he was able to take was, first of all, measured in ‘damage’, and not something as esoteric as ‘gravity’. Gravity could crush and kill near a black hole, for sure, but Nothanganathor was obviously not damaging himself, so this was not a true black hole threat.

Erick kept right on flying away, Red Lightning flickering into his tentacle body, Red power snapped up by Benevolence, Erick’s Status rising by tens of thousands of mana per second in every category.

The solar system harrumphed.

The light of the sun came back and the Red Lightning around Erick pulled away completely.

“I’ll kill everyone on Veird if you continue trying to escape. There will be no harvesting. Only death.”

“One doesn’t negotiate with terrorists!” Erick said, rapidly flying away—

Erick suddenly realized he was flying slower and slower for some reason. Nothanganathor and his sun weren’t getting further away at all. The sun still took up 90 degrees of the horizon. Maybe 92 or 93, actually, as split moments turned to full moments. The sun was getting bigger, because Erick was falling toward it faster than he could fly.

Ah.

Fuck.

Erick shouldn’t have responded at all.

He was somehow caught in a trap of conversation.

Nothanganathor taunted, “Scared little wizard, caught in an inescapable trap. Give in to the urge to negotiate. It might go well for you.”

“This conversation is over.”

And Erick meant it.

Suddenly the [Tether] on him snapped, and Erick rocketed away from the sun, the 93 degree angle of the celestial body turning to 92 degrees, then 90. Erick was moving fast, but not fast enough.

“It’s over when I say it is over.”

The solar system flickered and Red Lightning began to crawl around Erick, filling the void at such a far depth that it looked more like the universe was turning red than the crawling lightning it was. Erick flew faster. Within a flashing instant Erick had reached the edge of the enclosure, but the enclosure finished. Erick burst out of the Red—

Everything was fire and heat except for the mountains in three out of four directions. A tunnel led into the fire and heat down there, in the central direction. And then Erick realized where he was.

He was on the sun, inside Nothanganathor’s half-solar-submerged jaws.

Those mountains were teeth the size of Jupiters, or larger. The red and white land below was the surface of the sun. That tunnel into the mountains was a fraction of an astronomical unit wide, leading into a shining abyss of power and Red. It was the gullet of Nothanganathor. The nuclear fire of the sun was an ocean pouring down the Unascended Dragon’s throat, but at this distance, at these scales, nothing seemed to move at all.

“Be honored you lasted this long.”

Flames and Red and power exploded out of Nothanganathor’s throat, moving faster than it had any right to move. The front of the breath attack was not magical at all. Nothanganathor had noticed that Erick was absorbing his direct power, so he switched to something else.

Erick wasn’t sure how he knew it, but knew this was an atomic blast, directly from the core of the sun.

This, then, was a death—

But that was defeatist thinking.

Time seemed to slow as Erick thought, and probably as Nothanganathor fucked with time, as he usually did.

Erick had a way to survive this. He was a Paradox Wizard. It wasn’t like mana weighed anything after all, so Erick’s next logical jump was easy. The attack was too big to avoid, so he wouldn’t avoid it.

Erick flickered with multiple Domains at once, because that was something he could do now. Obviously.

Obviously, Erick told himself. Of course I can do this.

[Physical Domain] became a thing of harmonics and vibrations, absorbing some of the shockwave, turning absolute death into a wave to ride, like when he was playing around with the surfboards with the kids. [Lodestar] became a core of power that was unassailable yet easily moved. His [Pristine Benevolence] body and Mana Siphon was already doing a great job of absorbing all the actual Malevolence and Destruction mana that managed to touch him, so all he had to really do was ride the atomic blast coming for him.

And he also had to pierce through the Domain blocking him from escaping.

The sky of the sun was solid red; there was no void of space to be seen at all. Nothanganathor had drawn Erick here and also locked him down, aiming to crush him between a rock and a hard place.

Erick had not experienced Nothanganathor’s Domain except for a little bit in the transposition of grabbing him and placing him here, in the path of this breath attack. It had not been a direct Domain attack, either; simply a movement of space within which Erick happened to be. The Unascended Dragon was very good at Domain combat; he didn’t attack directly with his Domain until Erick was here, fully within Nothanganathor’s power. Attacking with an actual Domain was something you did against people you didn’t respect, or out of desperation, for the cracking of a Domain was debilitating.

Nothanganathor was suddenly scared, eh? Scared of Erick getting away?

It was better for Erick to think like that than the other possibility; that this was an inescapable trap…

But it was actually easy to think like that, now that Erick was watching atomic fire come at him and Red walls blocked his escape. Nothanganathor had tried to kill him in so many different ways already, and now the Erased One was trying this over-the-top breath attack? It was kinda pathetic that he needed to bring the full brunt of his power against Erick.

With a smirk, Erick made himself as weightless as light, and just as ephemeral.

The blast wave hit and Erick sailed away, shooting off at the speed of light and a little bit faster, because Time Magic was involved in how fast the blast struck.

Erick went sailing.

Domain met Domain, and Erick chose to quantum tunnel through the Red wall.

As the Red Sun vanished in the distance Erick was very glad that he hadn’t tried to use his own Time Magic back there. Obviously Nothanganathor was very accomplished at Time Magic; anything Erick would have tried would have been corrupted.

In moments, the Red Sun was maybe 40% of the horizon in that direction; smaller than it had been since the start of battle of this major conflict—

The Red Sun flickered and Nothanganathor dissolved his Domain back down to something able to track Erick.

Red Lightning hung everywhere out here. It moved with impossible speed and accuracy, trying to surround Erick once again, but Erick was moving too fast for it this time, and every capture ended with Erick simply not being there, inside of the bubble of Red. Erick had seen that trick once; he would not allow himself to be captured and ported back to the jaws of that monster.

Erick hadn’t done any sort of counter attack yet, but it was time to do a few things of his own before Nothanganathor changed tactics—

Erick rapidly realized a few different things, as he contemplated his counter attack.

One: He was using a frame of reference of Nothanganathor as the center of the solar system of Veird. This was bad. Erick was never going to escape if he kept doing that. Sure, Nothanganathor had some gravity down there, but Erick wasn’t affected by gravity unless he wanted to be, as he had already decided earlier. Gravity wasn’t the problem here. Thinking of the Unascended Dragon as something that could not be denied, like the sun, was giving him way too much metaphysical weight.

Two: There was some part of Erick’s soul that Nothanganathor was tuned into, for there was no other way to explain how he had ended up in this predicament at all. There was probably Red in his Script-enabled Status. He needed to purge that.

And Three: The only Script spells that were not instantly nullified by the lack of manasphere out here were those spells that took place inside his body, or Particle Magic which caused a particle effect far beyond the initial start.

Erick started his counterattack with Particle Magic.

Erick focused parts of his spreading, tentacle-like body into his good-old standby, [Luminous Beam].

As he sparked the starts of quasar-based celestial prominences in his extending aura, he fueled the spellwork with Benevolence and Paradox, aiming to overcome all barriers of cause and effect.

Flickers of magic ignited into the most brilliant sources of light in the entire universe.

Erick became a spot of tangled brilliance in the endless Red void, his core so dense it was a darkness, while light shone from every tendril like hyperspatial knives. He didn’t rend the Red; he sailed through obsolete Red, flying faster than he had any right to fly, unable to be touched at all.

The sun was nothing behind him, and then it was gone.

Quasar knives parted the universe in front of him, and pushed him forward even faster.

- - - -

Erick passed into something that felt like a ripple in space, but which he recognized as multiple things at once. The first thing he recognized was the edge of Nothanganathor’s actual Domain; everything behind him was all softly oppressive, but now he was out of it and his magic shone brighter. The Red Lightning remained in the void all around, but it was lesser now. Less directed. More uncontrolled. More sparse.

Erick passed beyond the termination shock of the sun, into the heliosphere of Veird’s solar system as it traveled through the void of space, in the desolate edge of this [Renew]-shaped galaxy. The Red here was distant. Unseeable and unknowable outside of Erick’s enhanced senses. He was seeing faster than light could show. He was moving faster than light could move.

And then suddenly Erick was beyond the heliosphere entirely, having passed outside of the Red and the solar system, breaching the heliopause which was the final layer of delineation between Veird’s system and the void between the stars of the galaxy.

Beyond the heliopause lay cosmic winds, and nothing else.

Erick slowed down and then stilled, his [Luminous Beam]s fading away.

He couldn’t even see the sun of Veird behind him. It was there, somewhere, lost among the other stars of the universe…

Erick stopped looking before he drew Nothanganathor’s attention through sight alone.

Erick turned toward the void. He wanted to breathe.

So he turned mortal again, and breathed in air that was only there because he desired it. He breathed out air into the void, expelling a plume of frozen mist. The void between suns nipped at his body, touching his nudity, but otherwise did nothing. Erick floated there for a moment, breathing air that was not there until he made it exist, because of course it existed.

His Status was looking fine; tens of millions of Mana, Health, and Mind. There had been some time dilation in his escape, and probably in all of that entire encounter back there. How much time had passed? No way to know. Erick’s Status still had the same time readout as it had had all this time.

Erick was okay, for now. He almost considered going back to fight Nothanganathor, but that would be foolish indeed. It was probably only a matter of time before the Un-Dragon started making real threats and then following through with those threats, causing actual harm that Erick couldn’t escape.

It was time to proceed to the next phase, and hopefully this wasn’t jumping out of the pan and into the fire. Erick’s Lightning Path said that this was the proper way forward, but it was a weak sort of forward. He could go literally anywhere from here in order to fight Nothanganathor. He could even go back to Veird, to help them directly. Any decision he made right now, except going back to fight, could be the right one.

Erick “#17,212” had survived.

Nothanganathor would probably kill everyone else if Erick didn’t show back up with help.

And so, it was time to get that help.

Preparation first, though.

Erick held out a hand and plucked an iron chain necklace out of his blood, transforming iron into more iron and discarding the rest until he had something usable. He made it to resemble black scales, with a space in the center for a jewel. This piece of jewelry was much rougher than the one that had been his All-Seeing Eye. It still resembled Melemizargo’s or Erick’s own dragon eye, because Erick liked that style. It was a reminder of home.

With his other hand, Erick pulled a much deeper trick, plucking Yggdrasil’s Gift out of nothing, bringing it to himself, because of course it was always with him; Yggdrasil had said so. The white star of power shone with a radiance that was only as strong as Erick’s fingernail now, but Erick loved it anyway; it was a gift from his son. He put the little seed of power into the necklace, turning the Gift into an eye. Doing so dampened the outflow of light from the Gift into something much smaller; more ‘held’ and less ‘displayed’. He put the necklace on and it seemed like a much dimmer piece of him than all the rest, even though he was flesh and bone and nothing else right now.

Erick plucked a hair from his head and transformed it into a little thread of cotton; a minor transmutation, all in all. After copying and weaving that cotton, Erick had some decent clothes fit for a somewhat-king. The fabrics seemed to glow bright in the absolute nothing of the void, but maybe that was simply Erick’s fault.

He needed more.

So Erick shaved off a bit of fingernail and Wizarded it into platinum. One sliver of platinum became many buttons and embroidery and a few small pieces of jewelry. Erick did this because it was important not to appear like a pauper when greeting The Powers That Be.

Erick’s dragon horns were already out, all six points of absolute black jutting up around his head like a crown.

He was ready to make the Call.

He breathed deep the void once more, and then he extended his aura out of his body and began making a little lightward copy of the Veird’s solar system. There was the sun. There was Veird fourth from the sun. There were the other planets. And then he dialed outward. The solar system crashed down to a point of light, and in flowed all the galaxy, shaped like a ring of [Renew]—

The spell took itself over.

The universe crashed down to a uniform grey in every direction, and then it expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded—

The grey parted, becoming cosmic strings and then galaxies and then here.

The spell flowed out into Everything and Elsewhere. The Call was made. It would hopefully be answered this time.

If Nothanganathor had seen this —which he probably had— he was probably mad. Good. Erick hoped so. Fuck him.

Erick only really worried about Veird and everyone he knew and loved. And yet, he trusted Veird to survive whatever might be coming their way. FENRIR was damaged, but it was still back there, back in the God Pact reality, and Veird itself was more protected than ever thanks to all those layers of adamantium and new magics surrounding it. Veird had the Lifeblood Heart. It had Solomon. It had dungeons, and soon dungeon slimes would spawn on the upper surfaces and those dungeons would fill with slimes, and fast, which would contribute a lot to any possible upkeep costs that the enlarged Script and Veird might demand.

They’d be fine.

Erick waited.

- - - -

He didn’t have to wait long.

There was a disturbance in the void.

A square of light appeared, like the cracks around a door.

The door opened slowly, invisibly, the ‘door’ not existent at all.

A cautious man appeared on the other side. He was blue-skinned and wearing what looked like normal clothes, except he had a fake half-cape of green leaves falling over his left shoulder. He was also wearing a spacesuit, but it was completely see-through. The suit reminded Erick of one of those home-spa infomercial things that people could buy for installments, wear once, and then promptly never wear ever again. Maybe they’d get to watch a movie while wearing it and it wouldn’t spring a leak, but it’d still be walking around wearing a good hundred pounds of water, and that just didn’t work out like you’d want it to work out.

The guy locked eyes with Erick instantly, but he also looked around, his eyes going wide, his heartbeat spiking. He spoke some words in a language that Erick didn’t know. Erick made a show of looking behind the guy, to the empty space beyond the open door.

The guy hadn’t stepped out at all. He didn’t like Erick looking behind him.

He looked at Erick.

He paused.

And then he bowed, saying something that was probably ‘sorry’, before he closed—

Erick flickered and moved inside of the room. While the guy suddenly panicked, yelling loud as he slammed the door shut—

And suddenly there was air in the room. Erick took a deep breath of real air. It tasted of a clean forest and subtle flowers. There was no manasphere, though. Erick tried to push through the walls and hit a very strong Domain. In the interest of peace, he did not test that Domain. His Lightning Path was telling him to relax a little, but not too much, so that’s what Erick did.

The greeter guy was not relaxed at all, even though Erick wasn’t making any threatening gestures. All these moments the guy had been yelling in some other language at the walls, and now the walls of the silver room were flashing pale red and the guy was freaking out even more.

Erick had thought that the people here would have translation magics, or something like that.

Obviously they did not, or they weren’t using them, so Erick decided to search himself for a spell that he had used many times in the past, but which he hadn’t needed to use much in recent years. It was still a part of his past, though, so Erick did a little ditty in his head, casting magic from another time and place onto himself.

I’m here on an important mission; so in with the clutch, [Language Acquisition].

It’d take a while for the words to start to make sense, but probably not that long—

And now the room was filled with angry words and small ports opened up in the walls and tubes came out and pointed at Erick, while the guy with the leaf half-cape rushed around Erick as much as he could, avoiding the ‘dangerous person’ in the room to bang on the other wall of the room. There was obviously a door on that wall, but it was a seamless door.

Erick just stood where he was. He waited.

More angry words.

Erick said, “Hello. I mean no harm unless you are Nothanganathor’s enablers, and then I mean you all the harm. Or perhaps I can free you from his oppression? I’m probably operating under a lot of misconceptions here, so how about we figure out how to end these misconceptions?”

The red lights stopped flashing somewhere around Erick’s ‘all the harm’. The guns pulled back. Erick finished. The guy stopped banging on the closed door.

An intercom came on and a person with a deep voice spoke in heavily accented, slightly excited, and broken Ecks, “Greetings. Is Veird have Ascended? You Veird? Or not Veird?”

Whatever the person was intending was not coming across much at all. Erick guessed they were enthusiastic about Erick being here? Hard to say.

The guy stuck in the silver box with Erick was not excited at all. He had slumped to the ground, on his knees, his head against the wall. Looking him over again, the guy’s clothes were nice, but not super nice. He was likely a guy thrown out here to the wolves, to whatever had made the Call, which they were —probably— forced to respond to; they did not choose to respond to the Call because it was the right thing to do.

Erick had envisioned the Call as some sort of ‘call up the people in charge’ sort of thing, but the Call was looking more like an emergency SOS, maybe, which required people to respond? These guys were just… normal people. Maybe.

Erick wasn’t going off a whole lot here, so he decided to be truthful. “I am a Wizard who Ascended with the help of Veird.”

The voice was truly excited now, “You Ascended Veird! Okay! You fight fight? Or talk talk?”

“Talk talk.”

“OKAY! Talk talk time! I hand you better talker. You speak Margle? Fluent? Tabarikia? Draconic?”

Erick easily switched to draconic, saying, “Is this the language you mean? This draconic?”

The guy huddling on the floor calmed down and turned. “Oh. Sorry. I—”

“Excellent,” said a third voice. “Hello, greetings, and welcome to the Margleknot Emergency Response Communication Yorddle. MERCY.”

Erick almost asked what a Yorddle was, but he decided to go with the flow.

“… And that answers our first question. You are Ascended; otherwise you would have asked what a yorddle was. To answer your unasked question: a yorddle is a thing that invites communication and responds similarly. It is the mechanism by which you summoned that star map and then ended up pinging us, here at Margleknot.

“There are many cities like Margleknot, but we consider Margleknot the center of the universe.

“You are currently on Layer 0, which is where you are right now.

“The layer you came from is Layer 789, at the location of Nothanganathor, Arbiter of Veird. Please keep this name in your personal records should you wish to return to this land. We have already left your previous layer behind.”

Erick blinked, feeling a hateful wrath coil within at the mention of Nothanganathor and ‘Arbiter of Veird’ in the same sentence. He pushed that feeling aside, as he focused on the fact that he had already left Veird’s general location in the universe.

All Erick could really say was, “Okay.”

“Excellent. You appear to be non-hostile. Would you say this is true?”

“I am very hostile toward Nothanganathor and would like help erasing him from all universes. I am also hostile toward all evil, but otherwise I am rather benevolent.”

The formerly worried guy was now sitting on the ground, his back to the not-door, looking at Erick and frowning, his eyes saying a whole lot of ‘really?’.

The intercom voice said, “Violence is permitted in Layer 1. Here in Layer 0, the main city, violence is not permitted. Do you agree to this?”

“… Tentatively, yes.”

“That’s all we can really ask from Ascended, so your acknowledgment of the main rule is appreciated. Know that as an Ascended, we cannot control you, but you are a single person, and we have a lot of Ascended here who like the peace, and a lot of normal people who would simply die in a real fight, so keep that in mind if you get angry.” The voice said, “Please keep your various forms of mana, magic, resons, syth, usurpage, kindling, smoke, fire, breath, pulse, cultivation, accretion, talents, powers, and all other forms of reality altering inside of yourself at all times. The Dragon District is the only place where you can freely let yourself be a dragon, and all that that entails. Do you understand?”

“I do understand.”

“Appreciated. Moving on—”

“Pardon me, but I have some questions of my own.” Erick looked at the guy sitting down. “Was this man in this space suit a sacrificial pawn in case I turned out malevolent like Nothanganathor?”

The guy nodded, whispering, “That guy is a fucking psycho.”

“Ah-hem,” said the voice. “Our greeter here is fully soul-sleeved here in Margleknot; he would not have died if you had killed him. Other people are not so fortunate as to have this job, Jeremy.”

Jeremy —whose name was probably not spelled how Erick was thinking it was spelled— waved a dismissive hand, ignoring the voice, whispering, “Glad you hate him, too.”

Erick felt a weight leave his shoulders. He almost chuckled at the relief. These guys weren’t evil. They were just papershapers and call-responders; normal people.

The intercom voice said, “Ahem. Death is painful, of course, so we ask that you refrain from causing it. May I have your name?”

Ah.

It’s like that, is it?

Erick wanted to see them try.

“Erick Flatt.”

A little wind passed through the space. They had tried to affect him with something when he said his name. It was fairy magic, though, which, of course it was, which Erick had been prepared for with a question like that. ‘May I have your name?’ Really? Fairy Moon had helped Erick get over all of his fae magic weaknesses long ago, even if she wasn’t actively trying to help; she still helped through opposition.

Jeremy raised an eyebrow at Erick.

And the voice said, “Ah… So. That’s the other major question. Uh. Fuck. You. Uh… You felt that, didn’t you.”

“I did. Hello, fairy.”

Jeremy’s eyes went wide and terrified.

The voice on the other side of the intercom didn’t fare much better. “Uh… Will you… Uh. Forgive?”

“I demand to speak with someone who can help me erase Nothanganathor from all worlds, and who would want to help me do that.”

“I can do that!” said the voice, once again excited.

And then the silver walls fell away like the prop walls on a movie set falling, the ceiling and floor vanishing in the very same moment.

Aside from seeing what he was seeing, which he would get to in a moment, Erick checked the manasphere first.

The air was almost dry in feeling, but it was also filled with different manas of all kinds, along with something like a Domain. Maybe tens of tiny Domains, actually. Erick had trouble understanding what he was feeling, but he rapidly recognized that his mana senses and various other sensing capabilities only went out to about a hundred meters in every open direction, and maybe a meter into the ground. Beyond all that was either a density of confusion that prevented all mana senses, or a Domain underground that prevented everything.

There was power here. Erick trusted his mana sense about as much as anyone could trust their mana sense in an unknown environment filled with odd Domains and strong powers, which meant not much at all.

Visually, the place was much more understandable.

Erick stood upon grasslands wide enough to build a city or two, but Erick wouldn’t really call it ‘grassland’. More like a forest clearing. Everywhere on every horizon there were trees of all colors and shapes, not a single one looking like the other one, except in the most general of ways. And then there was the ten-thousand kilometer tall tree that towered above all the rest. It was gold and green and shimmery, and mostly dark.

Crystal buildings rose in the distance, beyond much more normal-sized trees. The grass was soft under Erick’s bare feet while the lights of ten suns, each of a different color that added up to white, were warm upon Erick’s face. More suns shone beyond the canopy of that tree for sure, but they were beyond Erick’s sight.

The very second the ceiling evaporated and the walls fell to the sides, Jeremy’s personal spa space suit disintegrated and he sprouted wings and dashed fast into the grasslands, eager to get far away. Two people waited outside of the silver chamber. Other people were in the distance, completely disconnected from this event right here, with Erick. They flitted around like they were fairies, which they probably were. Only two people mattered right now, though.

A little pink boy fairy, about a meter tall, floated on pink sparkles beyond a corner of the room.

A shadowy girl fairy, the size of a normal person and wearing greys and blacks, stood on the grass beside pinkie. She had no wings. She looked almost normal, except her ears were pointed and her face structure was distinctly fae.

Pinkie announced, “I have your person right here!”

“You still owe me, Parando,” said the shadowy person.

“What! No!” Parando said, “I paid off my debt to you, too. This guy is an Ascendant arisen from your shitty little cosmology. I found him for you!”

Erick rapidly churned through that information and, assuming that what the guy said earlier was true, and since fairies never lie directly because it physically hurts them, Erick said, “He still owes you because he responded to a normal Call, as his duty requires of him.”

The shadowy person grinned wide and stared Parando down.

Parando went wide-eyed. He began to back away. “… n—”

Shadow ate Parando as one would eat something that was already inside one’s mouth. Erick wasn’t sure, exactly, how she did it, but that’s what she did. And then she looked at Erick. “You’re the real deal then. An Ascended risen from Veird?”

“Technically yes.”

“… I don’t like that ‘technically’.”

Erick said, “And I don’t like that Nothanganathor is apparently enabled by this ‘Margleknot’.”

“… I like that about you. You might work anyway. I aim to kill the bastard that unmade my universe, and you’re going to help.”

‘Her’ universe?

Ah.

Erick saw a familial resemblance now.

“Would you happen to be Shadow?”

Erick hadn’t said that name with so much emphasis; it had merely happened that way. Saying it like that had done something weird to Shadow. She puffed up a little bit, everything about her deepening and thrumming, and then she became herself once again. It was as though a cloud had passed overhead, even though there weren’t clouds anywhere.

Shadow looked at Erick, and… started to say something, but then she Looked at him, and said, “Oh. You’re a great grandchild, or something. Then I’m glad I ate Parando! Bastard should have seen that before I did. I should eat him again when he reforms… And I think I will.” She asked, “So are the dragons not doing the whole scales and wings thing? Base human-shape these days? But with the horns? I like the horns. Come on. Let’s let great granny gran gran get you settled into Margleknot. We got a lot of shit to cover to take down Nothanganathor, and most of it is the intractable bureaucracy of this shitty place.”

“… It’s nice to meet you, Shadow. I fear you are operating under some misunderstandings, but we can clear them up. Fairy Moon and Gregarious are doing well now, if you wish to know more about them.”

Shadow hummed, then said, “I probably am operating under misunderstandings. I put too much of myself into that universe and you didn’t return any power or memory to me like you should have... Okay. Well. Moving on. Good to know about mom and dad.” Shadow gestured the city in the distance, walking, saying, “So who the fuck are you?”

Erick felt a surreal bit of joy as he walked with Shadow, the main creator of the universe that Veird had come from, saying, “Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence, Apparent King, Gatemaster, and planar from Earth, not from Veird.”

Shadow froze. She said to Erick, “That’s all good, but that last part? Leave that out.”

“No. I’m not going to lie, and especially not to fae.”

“… Shit. Fuck.” Shadow scowled and walked, saying, “Okay. Okay. I can work with this— You’re still a part of my Old Cosmology, obviously, or else you shouldn’t have been able to reach Veird—” She rounded on him. “You’re not some space-faring human person who goes around mucking up other people’s universes, are you?”

“Not to my knowledge. Are you a space-faring fae who goes around mucking with souls and Darkness in order to create universes?”

“I have been known to do this from time to time.” Shadow smirked. “You got any other names? The only one unique to you is probably the Benevolence one and ‘Apparent King’ and your base name, none of which matter to me. I don’t know Urth.”

“People kept calling me Xoat.”

Shadow hummed. “He’s long dead. You’re probably not him. If you are then that would be good for us against Nothanganathor, but you’re probably not him.”

Erick nodded, then said, “So we sort of skipped past introductions back there and I assumed you were Shadow. But who are you, exactly?”

“Some fae will try to trick you like those ones back there, but I never will as long as we’re on the same side.”

“That’s not good enough. Claim the mantle on your own, if you can.”

“A task easily done.” Shadow kept walking, intoning, “I am the Daughter of the King and Queen of a Realm Beyond Mortality. I stole a painting of two possibilities from the Prince’s workshop and made a universe out of them. A universe which became a remnant. A remnant which became your genesis.

“I was not born Shadow,” Shadow said, her stride evening out, her back straightening, everything about her changing from commoner to Power in Truth, though nothing physically changed at all. “I became Shadow in the Truth of my own creation.

“I claim the mantle of your partial progenitor. I claim the mantle of creator of the Painted Cosmology, of the founder of the Radiant Depths, of the splitter of the Crack Between Worlds, of the spiller of the Blue Ocean, of the adventuring queen and scoundrel king, of the older prince and the youngest daughter and distant cousin who leaves a letter that starts you on an adventure, of the Warrior, the Mage, the Wizard, the Shade, the Priest. The mother of dragons. The father of leviathans. I claim the progenitor of your draconic shape, and of the founder of your ultimate rise to power as an Ascended.

“I claim all this for myself, and you would be wise to heed my words and my wisdom in our joint effort to erase Nothanganathor and his Malevolence from our reality, for in your Ascension you have tied yourself to myself and my cause. For this time, for this future, we are as one in purpose: To stoke the fires of our Shared Existence and spread into Infinity, while burning down all who oppose our Glory.”

The world had taken on a shadowy quality as Shadow spoke, which Erick suspected was either on purpose or simply a side effect of her expression of her True Self. When she was done, her clothes were finer. The suns were brighter and shadows deeper. Darkness loomed in the hidden gloom.

Erick said, “I appreciate the actual introduction.”

“Yes. We probably should have done that first but I am rather excited about you being here. Do you know anything of what is happening to Veird? In truth? Also, you’re handling this very well. Have you been Ascended for long? I can’t imagine you have been Ascended for very long. Nothanganathor eats everyone he can.” Shadow scowled, saying, “He is breaking all the rules of his stewardship by doing that, but I haven’t been able to prove it to the satisfaction of the Enclave. Hopefully you can prove it for me.”

Erick processed Shadow’s gush of information and said, “I know some of what is happening with Nothanganathor, but not completely. I have been ascended for maybe several hours, or months. Time got wonky back there. How does time work here? Depending on how time works here we can either have this conversation long, or short. I do need to get back with allies and erase Nothanagnathor from existence.” He stressed, “I do not care for the bureaucracy of this place, if it empowers Nothanganathor. If I need to, I will purge whoever I need to purge.”

Shadow smiled wide. “Love that attitude, but we’re not tackling the Big Problems right now. You have Ascended from Veird, and thus Nothanganathor is going to come back and try to smack you down once again, and we need to get ahead of that. I wish to save my universe and rekindle that fire to once again grow large and cast deep shadows. Do you agree with the general thrust of this plan?”

“… Tentatively.”

“Good.” Shadow waved a hand. “Time is relative; don’t worry about it. For us Ascended, we spend exactly as much time in Margleknot as we need. Time has been fluidly frozen for me ever since the Sundering. I have failed to win against Nothanganathor in the courts for ten thousand years, or maybe just a summer. Probably closer to the former than the latter. How long has passed on Veird since the Sundering? 7,400 years? More than 10,000?”

Erick relaxed a fraction, his tension fading slightly. With that sort of time dilation there was no true need to get back to Veird, because, yeah, he was a Paradox Wizard. Time was navigable now. Theoretically. “It’s only been 1452 years since the Sundering, though with the Forgotten Campaigns erasing memories and probably time, it might have been more than that.”

“Ah…” Shadow frowned a little. She looked at Erick. “What is this about ‘Forgotten Campaigns’?”

“I get the distinct impression that you are not allowed to truly see or know Veird. Is this correct?”

Shadow went silent. “… I suppose we should start with bringing you up to speed, and then you can tell me your own story. I’ve argued myself to every color of face against the Enclave, so it doesn’t really matter if I get news of My Everything until later.” She glared at Erick. “But mark me now, Erick Flatt. I will have complete news of Veird before we go into court.”

Erick usually had a position of ‘trust, and then let them break trust first’. But that was a bad idea with fae. They would always break trust at the worst possible time for you, which would always be the best possible time for them. Giving Shadow the trust of a true alliance was not on the table right now, even though Erick needed allies.

“You’ll have as much news as I feel like giving.”

“… I agree to this.” And then Shadow sighed. “I suppose I’ll give you a lesson on Margleknot before all the rest, too. We have as much time as it takes.”

“I assume that if this all works out in our favor, that we end up going back to Veird with some sort of army or mandate to eliminate Nothanganathor?”

Shadow smiled, cackling slightly, her fangs glinting in her wide maw. “That’s one of my major goals.”

“And what is your ultimate goal?” Erick asked, Lightning Path flickering, demanding to be grounded. “Are we truly on the same side?”

Shadow’s voice gained an eternal depth as she shared her very Truth, “To experience everything everywhere forevermore, with possibilities expanding or closing or becoming or ending, to help and harm, to raise and collapse, to bring forth and to banish, and to grow. To grow. To grow.”

A Dark wind flowed.

The suns shone brightly.

And Shadow stared into Erick’s soul, asking, “What is your ultimate goal?”

Erick stared her right back. “For the good of all, and every individual, we give assistance to those in need and do what we must to prevent apocalypse before it happens, to found and cultivate an evergrowing cycle of less war, less horror, and more hope, for now, and for all always.”

Moments passed.

“… Hmm.” Shadow said, “That’s a good one. Did my Father help you with that? Or did Mother? Sounds like something Father would say more than would Mother.”

“She did.”

Shadow smirked a little. “Nice to meet you, Erick Flatt. This is how you get around Margleknot.” She stopped walking and stood still. She raised a hand to the air, straight up, palm flat, saying, “Attention Margleknot. This one requests travel from this Timeless Forest to The Mortal Lands, just outside of the Dragon District.”

Words appeared.

Acknowledged.

Fairy Goddess Shadow detected. Unknown Ascended detected.

Priority Scan of new Ascended demanded.

Scan complete.

Request denied.

Orders: Shadow to depart. New Ascended to wait for the next portal.

The words faded and a portal of spinning green and gold appeared. Most of the land beyond was obscured by the swirling power of the portal, but Erick could see tall dark crystal buildings and bright lights and people everywhere. Erick had been walking with Shadow toward the very same arrangement of crystal buildings the distance beyond the grasslands of this forest.

So there had been no need to walk at all?

Was the walking just so that Shadow could talk to him before she summoned the portal? Probably. Whatever the case, it seemed that Erick and Shadow would be parting ways right now, due to whatever machinations of Margleknot were happening behind the scenes. Kinda surprising, but not too surprising in retrospect.

Fairy Moon had often spoken of how they needed to be ready to be servile toward the true fae of this ‘New Cosmology’, should they ever show themselves. That’s who Erick had been ready to meet, back when he made the Call to the Universe. Meeting Shadow had been a surprise, but Erick had been ready to meet someone on this level of power for a while now.

Shadow was fully surprised, though. Fully and completely. “What? No. I want—” She had been about to get angry, but she decided against that. She looked to Erick and rapidly said, “That’s how you should be able to get around Margleknot. This is unusual. Look. Erick. It was nice to meet you. Find your way back to me when you’re done with whatever this is. You might be able to get a direct portal and—”

Shadow to depart.

Now.

The portal pulsed and Shadow began to slide across the grasslands, into the portal.

She called to Erick, “If you can’t find me directly I’m usually at the Black Crystal Tavern in the Dra—”

Shadow swirled into the portal, her voice fading as she vanished.

The portal snapped shut.

The world around Erick for 25 meters in every direction turned subtly stronger as the eyes of some great Power descended upon him. The mana that was outside of Erick’s body was removed from his ability to sense. Erick’s interior flickers of his Lightning Path were the only source of mana sensing left to him, and it told him to wait.

Another portal opened. A golden wall lay beyond.

Power flowed from that portal like a gold and green tsunami, the grasslands turning into a field of flowers and sudden trees, the sun turning bountiful and the very land itself nourishing Erick through his bare feet.

Please join me.

Erick walked his Lightning Path, through the portal, to another land of Margleknot.

- - - -

Erick stood on a solid surface of nothing, halfway up the trunk of the thousand-kilometer-tall tree, but rather far from the tree. The tree was likely larger than ‘a thousand kilometers tall’, too. Like with the ‘battle’ with Nothanganathor, and with the planet-sized [Terraforming] storm on FENRIR, and with all of space, really, it was hard to tell sizes and distances when it came to the really big things, and this tree was one of the really big things. For a moment, Erick felt as though he needed glasses, for he couldn’t make out the individual leaves on the tree at all.

The trunk was basically a solid wall of gold, so very, very far away.

The whole thing was gold of bark and green of leaf with a canopy that was the entire sky, spanning from horizon to horizon. Those horizons looked funky, though; almost like mirage glass, as though they might exist, or they might not. If they did exist then they were far, far away from here.

Erick imagined that the invisible surface he stood upon stretched out all the way toward that indeterminate horizon.

He glanced down, and saw the roots of the tree. They were gold, too, and they extended out from the trunk of the tree like thick, geometric-shaped fractals, mostly square-shaped, like crystal bismuth that curled into itself. The blocky tangles of roots down there seemed to curl down into infinity. Some of the curls were not so blocky; they were more triangle-shaped. There was a pentagonal-shaped curl of roots, each edge of the pentagon curling off into another set of pentagonal roots, that then also split and curved into more and more pentagonal shapes.

Erick was pretty sure he was seeing leaves down there, too, obscuring the deeper curls of the roots.

The branches were almost a mirror to those below, but their arcs and curves were more graceful, less geometric. It was an infinite tangle of curves and arcs. And then Erick saw some branches that were higher than other branches, but which appeared lower on the tree; it was a non-euclidean tree.

The portal vanished behind Erick.

And Erick’s necklace, which held Yggdrasil’s Gift, shattered.

Erick almost sighed, but then Yggdrasil stepped out of the air in front of him. Erick’s heart beat hard as he saw his largest son again; all green skin and orcol-shaped and wearing a simple tunic and pants. Erick rapidly moved from relieved, to sad, as misinterpretations and logical deductions warred within him to try and make sense of what he was seeing, and why.

Yggdrasil was not here.

This was someone else pretending to be him.

Yggdrasil did not have the same bearing as he usually had on Veird, but there was a certain sadness there, upon his green face, in his dark eyes, that seemed all too familiar. He had looked the same way when he had given Erick a Gift that Erick would not be able to lose.

… Maybe this was a recording?

“You’re not my father, and yet you are,” Not-Yggdrasil said.

“… You’re not a recording.”

“I am not.”

And Erick sighed. “When Yggdrasil spoke of being not only my son, but also someone else, he was talking about you. Wasn’t he.”

“I was talking about me.”

Erick’s breath caught. He forced his breath to evenness. “It’s a fairy-regaining-themselves situation, then.”

“Or you regaining your memories of Ashes in that Old Cosmology.”

“… Ah.”

Not-Yggdrasil waited.

Erick had too many questions.

He was also too concerned about Yggdrasil himself to ask those other questions.

Erick looked upon Not-Yggdrasil, and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not really. But I’ve gone through this sort of event before, and now that you brought me here the memories are clearing up. It was a slow, confusing transfer before. It will be speeding up now.” Not-Yggdrasil said, “Let’s talk about Veird, father.”

“… Can I still call you Yggdrasil? Or…” Erick’s voice fell away.

“I have ten million names but people call me Margleknot here, though that’s not my real name either. My real names are the names my fathers, mothers, and originators have given me. Yggdrasil is my real name. On Veird and in the worlds to come from there, I am, and will always remain, your son, Yggdrasil.”

Erick was a little choked up. “I feel I have done something incredibly wrong without realizing it.”

“In my creation you went big. You had divine help. And you reached back through time to create me on Veird. These are the normal ingredients to connect to the universe at large, and I am the gathering of that connection. All True World Trees connect to me. I am every True World Tree in this uber-universe. I contain multitudes, father.” Yggdrasil said, “There is nothing wrong with what you did, and I am still Yggdrasil. But I’m also a lot more than that. Just as you are a lot more than you appear to be.”

“I would rather be sure you’re okay before we talk about me, or even about Veird. What do you mean you’re ‘not really’ okay?”

Yggdrasil paused, then said, “It has to do with everything happening on Veird, what you’ve found out with Nothanganathor, and how large the problem has become now that you’re here. This is a rather normal situation for True Wizards adding to the Margleknot, for everyone comes here with problems. That’s the reason that I’m ‘not really okay’. I have gone from being mostly secure in my year-to-year life, and now I have new concerns that are truly pressing. This is a rare situation, but it’s also normal. There are rules that I must keep in order to keep the peace, and one of those rules is that I cannot inject my own desires into these worldly matters.

“I would solve this worldly problem, if I could, but this problem is already in the Eternal Courts, and thus I cannot touch it. And make no mistake; this is a worldly matter. If this was a universal matter, then I could interject, but the Painted Cosmology stopped being a universe when Nothanganathor killed it.

“Shadow will argue that it could become a universe again, and it might. If she does win this new suit then I could step in.

“I would not trust her, though, for she wants the raw churn of life and death and horror and glory once again. She is the true embodiment of the original Goddess of Magic of her universe; in every sense of the word.

“And yet, you must work with her to make that happen. It is the only way to rid Veird of Nothanganathor.

“I cannot help as much as I want, because they’ll block my desires to help, but I will be there giving you weight of character.” Yggdrasil said, “I’ll also be there on Veird, at the same time, ensuring that Veird survives until you and the others might save it. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to actually fight Nothanganathor or drive him off more than I already have.

“He already has my mandate from tens of thousands of years ago to try and figure out what happened to me in the Painted Cosmology, and I have never revoked that mandate, even after the Sundering, even after all that he has done, and continues to do.” Yggdrasil became Margleknot, as he said, “In fact, that is why FENRIR both worked, and failed; because I made it work and didn’t go far enough to stop it from failing. The Veird you come from is safe, but Nothanganathor is largely unaffected.”

Erick rapidly processed all of that, and then said, “Well that’s just great. I don’t know how to process that.” He frowned. “Did we become enemies?” He rapidly answered himself, “No. No we didn’t, obviously... Unless we did?”

Margleknot, still in the shape of Yggdrasil’s young male orcol body, smiled softly, and said, “We did not become enemies. I’m an enemy to no one, father, and sometimes I make mistakes that I cannot take back, as I did when I empowered Nothanganathor all those years ago to find out what happened to myself in the Painted Cosmology.” He added, “I had to leave him an out in the creation of FENRIR because of those empowerments. I have a certain neutrality in all non-universal matters that I must maintain, though my instantiation as Yggdrasil and all the memories thereof have given me a great new perspective on his actions.”

Margleknot went silent.

Erick had a moment to breathe, and think.

Erick was thankful for that.

This was A Lot.

“Got any good news?” Erick asked.

Yggdrasil smiled. “Yes. Quite a lot of good news, actually. It’s been about a year and 3 months since the creation of FENRIR and the expansion of Veird. Everyone is doing well back home. Now that I’m connected and can dictate Margleknot’s flow of time with regard to the outside, for every year you spend here, about a day will pass back there. Nothanganathor is already pissed about that. Veird is existentially impervious as well, now that I have this fun new Element of Benevolence to play around with. It’s already helped to solve 3 universal collapses, and every day, with every spell you cast and every iota of mana you produce in this land and I absorb into my roots, and with the mana I’m producing as Yggdrasil, I’m solving problems on many different universal scales.

“You tipped over a domino when you made Benevolence. There are truly no other Elements quite like it, though there have been many attempts at such. That is what is going to truly bring you acclaim here in Margleknot. You’re saving trillions of lives already, but trillions more die each day. On the whole, though, the trajectory of life has inclined upward in this uber-universe by a noticeable fraction of a percent.

“These various achievements of connecting to me and the creation of Benevolence have earned you property in the Old Dragons District. I’ve taken the liberty of creating a small house for you there, and ask that you Mana Siphon and expel Benevolence whenever you’re home, because we have ‘node networks’ here, too, and they’re mainly in the Dragon District as cleanup for all the various mana, ki, manna, cultivation, resons, talent, hero power, etcetera, in order to both clean up that land, and also power all the rest of Margleknot.” Margleknot said, “I might not be able to help more than I already am, but you will surely find more allies in the Dragon District, and you are already helping yourself by your continued existence. Power is currency here, and your power is growing, father.”

Erick breathed for a moment, feeling slightly better, then said, “Okay. That’s good.” He thought. “… So it’s all Old Fae here? How difficult is that going to be to navigate?”

“Ah. No. The Old Fae— The Fairy Enclave, is what they call themselves, here. Fairy Moon would call them Old Fae, or Other Fae, or something like that. I know who the absolute powers of this land are, and while the Enclave is close, they are not at the top. They are the most powerful faction, though, since they are natural dimension hoppers. You’re almost fae yourself, and you will be as soon as you figure out how to make yourself reborn inside Benevolence. From what I am seeing now, you’re not too far away from that reality.

“You don’t have to ascribe to any modes of thinking you don’t desire to follow, though. Like the whole ‘don’t thank people’ thing. You’re a True Wizard, so you’re beyond that weakness.

“Aside from the fae, which are at the near-top of the political structure of Margleknot, there’s the second layer, which is where you are right now. True Wizards, any Ascended, any True Immortals who are not Fae themselves; they’re the second layer, and they’re the people in the Dragon District. You’re in the Old Dragon District, so you’re top of that pile. Anyone at this layer is a Power Unto Themselves. Shadow is right there with you at this layer, though she is on the low end of capability and political weight. She used to be much higher.

“Then there are the Talented; those who might one day become Powers, or those who might never become true Powers. They’re both in the same category. Sitnakov would be counted among those types, along with Kromolok and all of the Benevolence dragons you made, and Jane and the girls and Evan. Un-True Wizards would be at the very top of the Talented pool; people like Solomon and Destiny.

“Then you have the mortals; by far the largest group at all. They don’t exist in Margleknot except under a Talent or a Power or an Ascended. The Fae don’t have many mortals under their care, but those who are under their care are expected to go far in life, ending up as either Talents, or Powers, or maybe even Ascended or Fae themselves. A fae raising a mortal to fae is rare indeed.” Margleknot said, “As for places of interest, there are many. Here.”

A small booklet materialized in front of Erick. It was green and kinda thin, with gold inlay on the green cover that resembled the geometric roots and the graceful curves of Margleknot’s roots and canopy. Erick took the book and rapidly read through the entire contents using his mana sense. Aside from the fact that the book now felt like a part of his person, almost like Yggdrasil’s Gift had felt, there was a lot written there.

Erick had a lot of sudden questions, but he focused on one part in particular.

“You have fucking slavers in this city?”

“Worse than that, really. True Slavery is just one of the forever-problems of Margleknot. There are also black markets, debt traders, name sellers, fae traders, horrors that stalk some streets and leave eldritch in their wake. Etcetera. Violence is not permitted here, but ‘violence’ is a very broad category of which murder —under certain circumstances— does not qualify as ‘violence’. A lot of people go outside of the city to commit actual violence and then come back here with their spoils of war, which includes people.” Yggdrasil said, “Honestly, father, if you wish to solve these problems, you can try, but Margleknot always reaches an equilibrium between good and evil. It was how this place was built; a land of true neutrality. If good should ever triumph too much, then evil will make a grand resurgence, too.

“Sometimes the fae decide to eliminate the good organizations in this land just so that they can attack the evil organizations from a better angle, and maybe win.

“Your arrival here might be one of those times.” Margleknot asked, “You saw the lands I labeled ‘good’ versus the lands I labeled ‘evil’, yes?”

“… I would circle back to that phrase you said at the beginning. What is ‘True Slavery’?”

“The soul, mind, and body shackling of a person to make them into the perfect slave of another. Some would say a single type of shackling is enough to qualify for True Slavery. Others would say you need all three to qualify. Soul shackling is perhaps the most widespread ‘True Slavery’ of Margleknot. What you did with your [Blessing of Empathy] to the Sovereign Nations would be considered a very poor idea of slavery by many slavers of the Slaver’s Den, but even so they would count you among their number.”

Erick had no words.

And then he found some words, “Okay. Well. I can work on multiple problems at once.” He looked at his new book, with its golden inlay cover. “You really can’t… You’re really neutral, then.”

Margleknot nodded. “Everyone prospers under my boughs. I only stop the worst of offenses. Everything else Balances out.”

“… That’s one way to do it.”

Margleknot grinned. “It works that way not out of any directed, malevolent plan, but because all of the various powers here pollute everything with thoughts that turn tangible. That’s how it works on Veird, too, and many other places, though those places are overseen by overmagics that manage to Power Alter their pollution into better systems. We do what we can here, and if you wish to help, you could sign up with Elder Lionshard in the Old Dragon District. He oversees the various power systems that underlay much of the common lands of Margleknot, keeping the worst powers to a minimum. Meeting him will not be completely different from meeting Al, the Sewermaster of Spur; they fulfill a similar role.”

Moments passed, as Erick considered the complete trajectory of his life.

Things were getting kind of insane right now.

Hopefully he could eliminate Nothanganathor and solve the problems of Veird, and then relax… But who was he kidding. He would never relax, would he? Not really, anyway.

“All life is a series of the same events but with different people, but...” Erick’s words came to him as easy as opening his eyes, “Ideally, it’s an evergrowing cycle.”

“For now, and for all always.”

That was Erick’s Truth of Benevolence, wasn’t it…

Erick openly wondered, “Am I the only one of me to make it here, Yggdrasil? Isn’t this land… infinite?”

Was this land infinite? Erick wasn’t even sure of that.

He wasn’t sure of much right now.

“Infinity has a way of closing off here in Margleknot; it keeps everything simpler. If you were to die and vanish another one of you from a different reality might come forth, but they wouldn’t be you. It is quite possible that the person who you used to be had lived once here in Margleknot, and he had died, and now you’re here to replace them.

“If those other Ericks ever ascend, then they wouldn’t be directed here, to Margleknot. They’d go to one of the many different infinite cities out there, in this uber-cosmology. It’s Fate magic.” Yggdrasil said, “As soon as a person gets here, and no matter where they go afterward, they will always be the version of themselves that comes here to Margleknot, until they perish in Truth.”

Erick decided to let that full mystery stand for another day.

In fact. All of these problems? They could wait.

Time to get back on task.

“I have problems to solve at home, Yggdrasil.”

Yggdrasil breathed happily at the mention of his name. He easily said, “And home is waiting for you to return triumphant. So get some allies, father, and then return exactly as you planned. I could open a portal there right now, but as soon as you leave, then Nothanganathor might be able to spend a century at the Enclave, turning them harder against you. You have a chance now, and you need to take it before you go back.”

Erick wasn’t sure what to say next, except, “Yggdrasil is already you, and you’re already him, right?”

Yggdrasil/Margleknot nodded. “Yes. It would have happened anyway had I not given you that spot of light, but it would have taken time, and I would not have known who you were right away, as soon as Shadow requested my Sight and my portals.”

“So you’re still my son. You’re still Ophiel’s younger brother. You’re still siblings with Jane, Abigail, Beth, Candice, and Evan.” Erick wasn’t sure if he was asking questions or stating facts. “You’re still all of those things, but you’re also more.”

“Yes. I also have many duties beyond you. Many, many duties.”

Erick rapidly said, “That’s fine! I do want you to be happy, though. That’s all I really wanted, aside from all the smaller duties— I never wanted you to be obligated to work a gate network, though. I was very clear about that. Are you happy working this Margleknot network?”

Yggdrasil softly grinned. “I’ve handed that over to other people long, long before you and I happened, father. I just look in on it from time to time. Aside from that: I tell you now, father, that you are among the best creators I have ever had. Veird is, and will always be, a great home for me. FENRIR looks like great real estate, too. Do you know how many other spheres there are in this uber-universe, father? Less than a million.”

Erick felt a tiny thrill of joy at that...

Erick asked, “Can I get a hug?”

Yggdrasil stepped forward and embraced Erick, and Erick hugged him back.

Erick mumbled, “This is still weird for me, but I do want to be a part of your life.”

Yggdrasil sniffled a little. “I want you to be a part of my life, too.” He pulled back, looking his father in the eyes, saying, “Invite me over to dinner sometime, father. You have a home here, now.”

Erick nodded.

There were more small words and they were important, but soon enough Erick waved his son farewell, for now, and stepped through a swirling portal of gold and green.

- - - -

Yggdrasil watched his father depart.

He let his avatar stand there for a while, under a much larger version of himself than he had ever imagined that he would become...

He almost shifted perspective back to his ‘normal’ perspective, but he decided to stay Yggdrasil for a while longer, both in avatar, and in Truth.

Maybe he’d stay this way for a while, actually.

There was a certain beauty of thought that came from immersing himself in this person that his father had created. A peacefulness. A purposeful clarity. ‘Margleknot’ was always so passive. Yggdrasil was active. Margleknot liked being active when he actually felt like being active.

And he had been rather active ever since he recognized Erick, down there in the Timeless Forest.

Thanks to Benevolence he had already solved 1 existential threat to 2 different universes, and he created 7 truly good twists of Fate to enable something Better to happen in the near or distant future for 15 other places. Some of those forecasts were rather uncertain for now, for the Benevolent Sky back on Veird was focused on Nothanganathor. Yggdrasil had to really press at the Sky to get it to show him what he wanted to see…

And yet his eyes were drawn to all the Red in the sky, most of all.

‘Yggdrasil’ found he had a lot of powerful, disparaging thoughts regarding that dragon ‘he’ had raised to power so long ago. Chief among those thoughts was the overriding refrain that Yggdrasil had promised himself so very many times over the course of his long, long life, and which he had broken so very many times already.

‘Don’t raise people to power; they will always disappoint you.’

Why did he raise people to power anymore? It always ended poorly eventually.

… And yet, here was Erick Flatt, simply the latest in a very long line of people that proved that some people sometimes did very well with power. How had Erick gotten his power, though? Self-actualized?

Mostly self-actualized, considering how many Ericks got eaten by Nothanganathor. Powerfully self-actualized, too, considering the number of Establishments he managed to pull off to make his entrance today into Margleknot. Yggdrasil didn’t think any other Ericks would make it to this land, though. Already, Nothanganathor was reporting a drop in attempted-wizard events.

Solomon was still on Veird, though. He would make it as soon as he tried. So could Destiny, really.

“But they all stemmed from Erick and his Benevolence, which is still rather unique. Fairy Moon deserves some praise for her assistance in that creation, but who else influenced the creation of Benevolence? Erick did, for sure, as for the entire culture of Earth and then Veird… But were there any specific Powers?”

Yggdrasil went searching—

“Oh.

“Well.

“Hello.”

-

-

-

-

-

“Okay.”

- - - -

A great platinum dragon had been resting on a bed of softest moonglows and supportive cosmic webs.

And then there was a twinge.

Waking from his afternoon nap, which had been rather short at a few years long, Lionshard went to the kitchen first and had a wonderful breakfast of starfire and crunchy diamonds, and then he turned into his mortal form and had a much more delicious meal of leafies and eggs in a rice porridge. Lionshard might have been far removed from his mortal roots but he had made sure long ago that he would retain his love of the common things. He had never seen fit to remove those casual pleasures, because of course the casual things in life were worth keeping around and enjoying.

Wearing his mortal guise and a robe of moonglows —because while many things were good in their common forms, moonglow was just nice— Lionshard strode through his little mansion to arrive at the sympathetic model of the Great Tangle of Margleknot. This great flow-ways of pulse-knockers and orbitals is what allowed him to do what he truly enjoyed in life which was to clean up the universe by starting at the center. Other people might win wars in other lands and thus affect this Great Orrery, but Lionshard could do the same thing in a general sense from this room right here, extending influence all across this uber-universe of Margleknot to set better stages here and there.

This orrery was Fate Magic beyond the measure of most to understand, and it certainly couldn’t affect the largest players in the universe, but it was good for keeping eyes and counterbalances on corruption, while also serving to balance all the rest… Hmm. No new corruption, it seemed?

Lionshard hummed, mumbling, “Now what woke me up...”

Lionshard stared at the pulsing colored orbs and the flow of magic from this location to that location, and the trillion little stars that marked the largest of big influences that this sympathy was actually capable of tracking…

He studied the map for an hour until he found it.

“Oh!” Lionshard said, “Someone activated the MERCY system and they actually got into the city—” Lionshard’s mouth shut and his eyes went wide as he tracked the new person, who was first classified as Talented, then rapidly escalated to Ascended, and then rapidly labeled a True Power by Margleknot Itself— And then Lionshard saw something he had only seen a handful of times already. “Oh stars and wells!”

Lionshard rushed out of the Orrery to the very nearest balcony, which was outside of the room and pointed toward Margleknot in the far, far distance. After one incident long ago, where Lionshard had needed to break a wall to see what he wanted to see, Lionshard had arranged his house and this exit to the house for exactly the reason he was using it for right now. Sure, sometimes people used this entrance to sneak into his house to see the Orrery, but those people were easily captured—

All thoughts fled and then came back as Lionshard stared at Margleknot.

The tree was the size of a mountain in the distance, too far away and too large to ever really see except in a general sense. That’s how the Great World Tree looked from everywhere in the city. This ‘Vision of Margleknot’ was the one constant of this endless land. For the last hundred thousand years of subjective Margleknot time, the tree had been gold of bark and green of leaf.

As Lionshard watched, the tree was changing, just as he knew it would, just as it always did when Margleknot decided to accept the new life granted to him by some World Tree creator.

Lionshard reflexively put a hand over his chest and whispered, “Stars and wells.”

Margleknot was turning ever so slightly white of bark, green of leaf, and with a rainbow crown around his canopy. As Lionshard watched for a minute or an hour, Margleknot began to glow. Greens became green fire. Whites became starglows. The crown turned bright and radiant—

Words appeared in the air before Lionshard.

My new father has arrived in the Old Dragon District. His name is Erick Flatt. We have already met. He calls me Yggdrasil. He will have problems with an incident which was thought solved by the Enclave; Nothanganathor versus the Painted Cosmology.

I have directed Erick your way.

Please temper his expectations with the Enclave. I have told him that I have no real power, but he does not believe me.

Also, he is -

-

-

-

-

Lionshard’s eyes went wide. And then he said, “Of course, Margleknot. Will you be accepting your new name, as well?”

That will be complicated for a time. Call me as you wish; everyone always does. With any luck, Erick will be calling me ‘Yggdrasil’.

“But you changed your appearance? You don’t normally do that.”

I have, haven’t I.

The words read plain, but to Lionshard, he saw a small joy in those letters.

“I suppose that says it all, then.” Lionshard said, “Congrats on your new look. It’s rather brilliant.”

It’s a bit flashy, but I do like it.

Check out Erick’s mana Element either before or after you meet him. Probably after, if you want to have a cleaner introduction. You would be too excited if you checked it out before. You’ll probably be awake for a while for the near and prolonged future, so I hope your nap was well.

Lionshard chuckled. “It was a pretty good nap, thank you.”

The words vanished.

Lionshard rushed back inside his house… And he paused.

He could go left and check out Erick’s new mana, or he could go right and get properly dressed to go meet a new True Power.

To the right, Lionshard decided, an instinctive use of Guiding Fate crunching his decision into becoming the correct choice.

“Newcomers are always so suspicious, though, so I have to be careful about my Guiding Fate,” Lionshard said, ripping through his collection of meeting clothes. “They usually have reasons to be wary, of course— Oh! This red one— No. Not red at all. That would be bad, somehow. … Somehow? Somehow. Ah! I’ll just—” Lionshard released a flicker of Guided Fate, his hand grabbing a grey and white robe thing that he hadn’t worn in centuries, not since that commoner party down by the docks. He stared at the thing, wondered for a moment, and said, “I suppose understated is good.” He hummed as he held the garment up to the light. “… He must come from a rather mundane sort of world.” He decided, “Simple things can be good, though.”

Lionshard took another moment.

This new person was probably going to have a lot of culture shock, so appearing to him in proper clothes would probably do more harm than good. Plus there was whatever that ‘Nothanganathor versus the Painted Cosmology’ was all about. Lionshard didn’t quite remember that happening, but he recalled it was an Enclave decision. Erick would be going against the Fae Enclave, then.

He was in for a lot of heartache, then.

He would need allies.

Holding up the garment again, Lionshard decided, “Yes. This is good.”

He put on the plain garment.

- - - -

Erick stepped through a portal onto solid brown ground in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Several things happened almost all at once.

Margleknot stood on the horizon far over there, looking all green and gold, but he began to transform as Erick looked his way, turning radiant white and glowing green with a crown of rainbows. Erick wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He hoped that Yggdrasil was still Yggdrasil back home… And yet even back home, Yggdrasil had known he was more than who he thought he was—

But did he? Fully and completely? Not until Erick had delivered that Gift to Margleknot.

And now Yggdrasil was Margleknot, and Margleknot was Yggdrasil.

It was a kick in the balls, for sure. Erick felt some kinda way about all that, and he had no idea where to even begin processing that… grief? Yes. Grief. A loss of what had been, for what is new and unknown.

Erick turned his eyes to the sky in thought.

The sky was funky, here. Suns of every color, and a great big black hole in the very center that was like a hundred suns ringed around a black hole; a brilliant corona of light that was made all the more bright by the absolute black of the center.

And then the horizon over there suddenly held a mansion on a cliff overseeing a lake. It was tall and white, all cathedral-like stone and silver roofs and flowering vines on some walls. Fountains sparkled in the lights of the suns. That property took up an eighth of the horizon. It was a really nice castle.

And then two more similarly-sized castles took up another eighth and another eighth of Erick’s horizon in that other direction. One of them had expansive gardens filled with flowers and vegetables and orchards, all with glowing or radiant or shadowy parts. The castle-house on that first property was a tower, more than a castle. The other property had a similar garden, but the castle on that one was more of a compound, than a towering castle. The builders of those properties looked like they had built in opposition to each other. Erick wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he saw what he saw.

And then he moved on.

Other houses popped up on the horizon, most of them only taking up a sliver of the distance. Some of the houses appeared closer than ‘on the horizon’, like there were roads leading toward them, but there was nothing there; only mirages. In fact, mirages were everywhere, on every horizon, separating the brown land here from the land beyond.

Everything was non-euclidean here, it seemed—

The brown dirt of the land under Erick began to flex.

And then a white root lifted out of the ground, a kilometer in width, a leviathan surfacing from brown waters, and then ground dropped down, revealing deep, clear waters. The lake bottom was made of layers of geometric roots half covered in dirt. Long streamers of glowing green plants sprouted from that dirt, unfurling upward, providing the lake with more light.

Erick focused on the main root; the one that breached the surface of the new lake. It was a ten-sided circle that ended up being a wide crescent, mostly above the waves, with almost every part of it covered in thick greenery.

A house popped into existence at the apex of that root.

Erick got the distinct impression that this was his house, because it looked a lot like a combination of many different housing styles of Veird. There was the mage tower, common on mage houses. There were the porches that Erick loved. It was very possible that all housing architecture in the universe was more or less the same, but Erick doubted that, because that other house in the distance over there was made of a bunch of spheres, and that other house in the other direction was made with crystal spires. This house was made of stone and glass and other normal things.

It looked sort of like a lighthouse with one great mage tower ten stories tall and just as thick, with a castle compound to match. If one were looking closely, they’d think it was just a nice castle on a green island. But it was from Erick’s perspective, ten kilometers away from that house and floating atop the waters, that he saw the house as made of something like eternal stonewood, and the island itself as an extension of Yggdrasil.

And then Yggdrasil stepped out onto a balcony of the castle, and waved Erick over.

Erick took a moment.

And then he flew over and landed on the balcony. “Hello, Yggdrasil.”

Yggdrasil smiled. “So I forgot to say congratulations on your Ascension. It went well. You did a lot right. Most people don’t leave room for themselves to grow as easily as you have. You also have an inborn ‘Find the Way’ ability, which is crucial to any proper True Wizard. Every single True Power here in the Dragon District has something like that; it’s the only way for them to survive here in this land. Also: that book I gave you is yours, unchanging. Unless you change it yourself. It’s the same trick I did with the piece of myself I gave to you to give to me. I think you already recognized that fact, though.

“Also, I’ve already grown fond of myself, so I’ll be Yggdrasil for a while now. The last time I Changed was something like 11,187 years ago. The me down on Veird is not the me up here, but we’re mostly the same. Yggdrasil is a code-switch for me up here, but down there Margleknot would be the code-switch.

“And not to come at you too fast, but I need you to formally claim this house and lands.”

Erick took that all in, and then said to the land below, “You’re mine now.”

The world clicked.

And Erick suddenly felt—

Yggdrasil said, “Excellent! They forgot the name for what you did down on Veird, but here they’d call that Claiming Authority. You’ll always know every part of your house here, sort of how Benevolence is primarily yours. You can Claim Authority with a lot of different things, places, etcetera, but not here. I moderate all authority here at Margleknot at layer 0, so your house is now pretty much inviolate in any grand way. If you ever go to layer 1, the war zone, you’ll be able to claim Authority in order to be a little safer in that land.” Yggdrasil stressed, “Do not go to layer 1 yet, father.”

Erick nodded, already feeling the truth of Yggdrasil’s words as he pushed his senses through the land. Everything here finally felt normal, instead of the jumble of power and influence and stray domains and otherwise Erick had felt back at that grassland, and when meeting ‘Margleknot’.

One thing was weird, though.

He asked, “What’s happening at the edges, with that pull and flow?”

“That would be the part where the cleaner systems of Margleknot are interfacing with this Old Dragon property to keep it from spilling out influence everywhere. It’s like your Node Network, but different. All Old Dragons expel waste power, and we use that waste power to grow everything else.” Yggdrasil asked, “Do you want some mana injectors into this land, so you can Siphon them and transform them into more Benevolence? Or to simply make yourself stronger? You seem like you have a Siphon power of your own. Seems rather clean, though, but I don’t actually know.”

“… I suppose I need to learn how to use different manas?” Erick thought for a moment. “Sure? How would such a system work? Maybe a little orb thing that gives me the mana I ask for?”

Erick was feeling quite overwhelmed right now, but also strangely invigorated?

New magic? Great distraction.

“Yes, I could parcel out the mana for you, but I would prefer to open the tap on the unused, intentless power, and you can figure out how to better use it all yourself.”

“I like that idea better too.” Erick suddenly had a lot of questions. “Is there stuff like Fate and Purity and Pirate? What can you even do with Pirate?”

“All that and a lot more. There are even rarer ‘mana’ types than that. Veird comes from a universe where everything makes mana, but there are stranger places where everything is made of particles, but individual Shards touch individual people and give them singular powers that are more like grafted muscles than true manas. There are cultivation universes where there’s only one ‘mana’ to harvest, and people turn themselves into mana to become immortal. This uber-universe is full of resons, and that’s the primary currency here on Margleknot, that we turn all other manas into. There’s lots out there, Father.” Yggdrasil pointed to the side, to the end of the curve of his crescent island root, where an archway led off to a road in the mirages. Beyond those mirages lay a city of tall black crystal. “That’s the main road of the Dragon District, which leads to all houses of all Powers who choose to attach to the road. Most Powers walk to each others’ houses and ask to be let inside. If someone tries to invade your property you are fully within your rights to expel them however you wish, but a peaceful expulsion is the normal sort of expulsion. Most normal people won’t be able to reach you without you letting them, but the Old Dragon District and even the Dragon District don’t have many normal people inside them. At the edges, sure, but inside? No one here is normal.

“Call for a portal, father, and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

Yggdrasil came in for a hug—

And Erick easily returned the hug—

And then Yggdrasil pulled back, holding Erick at arms length, saying, “I gave you some basic amenities in the house. Nothing fancy. Love you. Talk to you later, father.”

“I love you too, Yggdrasil,” Erick said, the words true, but different somehow.

“It’ll feel less odd after this thing with Nothanganathor is solved and you can go back to Veird for a time and see a version of me that is more the one you raised, directly.” Yggdrasil said, “But I want you to come back here, too, Father. Anyway! That’s all in the future.” Yggdrasil stepped away. “Margleknot will be one of your many vacation homes.”

And then Yggdrasil stepped backward through a portal.

Gone.

Just like that.

‘Welcome!’ and then ‘See you!’

Erick stood there on a balcony of his new castle—

He sensed a new weirdness opening up inside the castle, in a room that was on the bottom level, below the surface of the white root of Marg— Yggdrasil. That room opened downward, turning into a staircase that went into the root, into a new chamber deep inside the kilometers-wide white root, revealing a line of power in the very center of the root that was completely outside of Erick’s ability to sense. That line of power contained an infinity of an odd, flowing sort. That would be the ‘intentless power’ that Yggdrasil spoke of earlier—

“Hello! New neighbor!” came a voice, carrying on the wind.

“Holy shit,” Erick exclaimed, things moving too fast right now.

Erick went to the edge of the balcony.

There was a man in sparkling grey robes standing just on the other side of the archway that led to the road with the black buildings. He seemed friendly. He also seemed to have a complicated set of curling platinum horns. So. Dragon.

Erick’s Lightning Path had been acting oddly for a while, but now it zeroed in on this guy.

Maybe this was the guy Yggdrasil’s guidebook mentioned? Lionshard, the platinum dragon.

Erick called out, “Who are you?”

“I am Lionshard of the Roots, and I see you already have a root with your house! Such a nice lake, too. Amazing! May I come in?”

Erick wanted to trust his Lightning Path, and Yggdrasil…

But these people here were all True Wizards…

Trust first, and if they prove unworthy of my trust, then I will discard them.

That was Erick’s usual way of doing things, and he wasn’t in a hostile area right now (probably), so that is what he would do.

“I invite you inside.”

Lionshard’s eyebrows went up. He declared, “I accept! Do you mind if I step to your balcony?”

“… Come on in, then.”

Lionshard stepped onto the property. Another single step took him all the way to the balcony beside Erick. He was just a bit shorter than Erick and rather human-shaped, in a normal, comfortable-body sort of way. His eyes were a little too platinum, teeth a little too sharp, ears a little too long, his bearing a lot more solid than his form seemed capable of being, so he surely wasn’t human, but he was human-shaped. Erick couldn’t see past his skin, which was probably only because Lionshard allowed that much visibility at all; his aura was solid as adamantium just beyond Erick’s mana senses. His clothes were comfortable cotton, if a lot more fancy than Erick’s current attire. All of that added together to show a man who was secure, and not full of himself.

It was probably all an affectation, but affectations were important.

Lionshard said, “Hello. You’re Erick Flatt, the new father of Margleknot. I’m Lionshard of the Roots. It’s great to meet you! I would like to gift you your absolute most favorite food as a welcoming to the neighborhood, if you’d permit it.”

Erick paused, concerned. And then he got interested. He would, actually, like to see what this was all about. What sort of magics would he cast?

“Sure. Love to know what my favorite food is.”

Lionshard smiled a little as he raised an eyebrow. “Let’s find out!”

And then Lionshard put his hand, palm up and horizontal, in front of his chest. With a casual ease, he rotated his arm. Platinum light flowed away from a large and laden plate that had not been there before. Pastries practically piled upon each other. Lionshard raised an eyebrow at what he had brought forth, looking partially confused, as he said, “Usually it’s one item, but— Ah. I know. They’re from multiple people in your life.”

Erick rolled with it, chuckling. “Yeah; they are.”

There were three cinnamon rolls. One of them was from Kiri and it was perfectly made; good enough to appear on a Knowledge Mage’s report. The huge one was from Teressa, all thick with white frosting and big enough for an orcol, or for Erick in his Apparent King form. Another cinnamon roll was from Poi, absolutely laden with cinnamon. And then there was a slice of purpleberry pie. The pie was a recent addition both for how happy Ophiel looked when he ate it that one time, in his living form, and also because Quilatalap had made it. It was a pretty great pie and Erick enjoyed it, but Ophiel enjoyed it more. Yggdrasil had once made Erick a spun sugar fish, and that was there too; it was bright gold and red and stuck on top of some spun sugar blue waves.

And then there were a few little baklava, all improperly made and kinda ugly, honestly. They were an exact copy of the ones Jane had made back when she was in culinary in high school. She had brought them home, so proud of them. Erick had loved those little things, and Jane had loved that he loved them. It was one of Erick’s favorite memories of Earth.

Erick looked at the pastries for a moment longer, then asked Lionshard, “How do you feel about the slavery in this land? Or the various other injustices, like the Corrupted Void Sanctuary, to the Wraithborne Tower, to the Corrupted Archive?”

Lionshard’s eyebrows went up again. He set the pastries down on a small breakfast table on the balcony, and said, “I do what I can to minimize their influences, but as for eliminating them... There are better things to do with your time than trying to fight infinity. Like discussing your reasons for coming to Margleknot, or what sorts of magics you might like to learn, or maybe we can talk about cultural expectations for operating in these lands?”

Erick decided to leave the question of ‘will you help me overthrow all evil’ for another day.

It was just a wild, crazy suggestion, anyway.

He lowered his scope.

He sat down at the breakfast table, and took a bite of Jane’s baklava. It tasted exactly as Erick remembered. He chuckled a little at that, and then he set the partially-eaten pastry down on a plate he created at that moment. “Delicious. Thank you. I would love to hear your ideas of the culture of Margleknot, if you would sit and share those ideas with me for a while, for I honestly don’t know if I’m being rude right now, or if you’re a threat, or if any of this is going to get me back home with allies in any sort of timely manner. This whole business with Yggdrasil / Margleknot is a large mind fuck. Still trying to wrap my head around that.”

Lionshard sat down across from Erick, asking, “You did not expect to bring a shard of a new World Tree to the Great World Tree of Margleknot?”

“I didn’t know of Margleknot at all until today. I suspected that there were universal fae, or something like that, and that I could ask them for help against Nothanganathor, and link them with the fae back home, but all of this?” Erick gazed out across the large ‘lake’ and ‘island’ of ‘his property’, and said, “I’m rather certain I did not fail to escape Nothanganathor, and that I am not trapped in a dream right now, but I’m feeling untethered.”

Lionshard nodded. “You came here during a time of your own troubles and did not expect to land into a different sort of fire.”

“Yup.”

“Well the fire here is ever-burning, and most Ascended are a decent sort of people until you anger them or make mortal enemies in some other sort of way. No real need to focus on the trillions and trillions of mortals in this land unless you truly want to. A lot of Powers do that, but I do not. I focus on this land. I left my mortal world behind millions of years ago, and my specialty helps me to maintain the systems that keep this land truly running well.” Lionshard said, “I am what most people with mana-centered inclinations would call a Fate Mage. That’s how I figured out your favorite foods, even through your immunity to direct control; it was a common reflective sympathetic resonance instantiation, so it wasn’t even intrusive at all. Have you tried Fate Magic before? I would assume you have, for it appears you have some sort of Fateful power around you already, but whatever you have going on is not Fate at all.”

“… In the interest of being honest, I will say that Fate Magic concerns me. Deeply.”

Erick wanted Lionshard gone, even though his Lightning Path was saying good things right now. Erick’s knack for reading people and knowing people was internal, but the Lightning Path was an external thing by its very nature, so it was very possible that Lionshard was influencing it somehow.

“Most people are very wary when dealing with Fate Mages, so this is normal. That I can work Fate Magic even beyond your immunity is concerning. So I will give you just a few lessons in culture, and then I will depart.” Lionshard said, “Ascended are mostly good people as long as you are good to them, just never meet an unknown Ascended in the War Zone. Everyone below Ascended can be any sort of way under all the suns. If you know who an unascended works for then you can get a good idea of where they fall on the spectrum of Good and Evil.

“Everyone tries to walk or take public transportation when they’re going places in Margleknot, except here in the Dragon District. You can’t get around here without invitations or power.

“People will try to be polite, so try to be polite back, because oftentimes no one knows who is working for who, or if the person you’re talking with today will come back as an immortal in a thousand years and wreck your day. Plus we’re all from different worlds, and politeness goes a long way toward making a peaceful society.

“No purposefully permanent killing inside layer 0, but everything else is fair game.

“If you want to do the greatest amount of good —and I get the impression that you do— you can find someone with an Elemental Good mana signature, or an Elemental Peace, or Elemental Honesty, or any of the other odd, good Elements, and raise them to True Power. No one ever gets to power on their own, and raising good people is the best way to ensure that there’s more good in the world than evil.”

Erick was feeling better about Lionshard, but not quite to the level that Yggdrasil had suggested; like this would be meeting Al back at that initial meeting in Spur, all those years ago. Erick wanted to believe, though.

He lowered his metaphorical walls a fraction, and asked, “What if you already had an Element like that at your use?”

Lionshard’s eyes sparkled platinum. “Then pump out power into the root systems of Margleknot, and people the city over will be blessed by your blessings. If your power is one of the truly good ones then you could fund things like the auto-res system, which is constantly taxed with people waiting in line to be resed, who often end up resurrected as slaves by necromancers in that Wraithborne Tower you mentioned. The longer a person waits in line to be resurrected then the larger the chance that someone will bring them back for untoward reasons. Most people try to keep ahead of their res-payment schedules so that doesn’t happen, but trillions of people live here, and people fall through the fingers of fate all the time.” Lionshard stood, saying, “And that’s enough of a first meeting. You came into Margleknot and ended up in the very deepest end of the city. I feel you are getting a very odd idea of what is possible here in Margleknot, and you are feeling threatened.

“Of course, people will try to hurt you. But even if Margleknot Himself wasn’t looking over your shoulder, you’re an Ascended, and one of the better ones, Erick. No one can touch you unless you let them. You seem to have three rather stable and guarded ways to attack you, though. That’s a lot less than most people. You’re rather safe.

“I encourage you to go out and check out the mortal lands. Suffer an attack from someone who doesn’t know any better. Banish them to Layer One and let their own actions sort them out.

“I thank you for inviting me to your home today. When you come back from your visit to Margleknot city, I Invite you into my home. It’s that nice one over there; we’re neighbors! I can show you the circulatory system of Margleknot, and you can see how big the city truly is.”

Lionshard seemed like a truly good guy…

Erick wanted to believe. Yggdrasil had even vetted the guy…

Erick still wasn’t sure about ‘Margleknot’...

Erick felt the need to apologize, though, because politeness was politeness, so he said, “Sorry about being wary, Lionshard. Thank you for your words, and for the pastries.”

“It’s completely understandable that you’re like this right now. I don’t know about your Nothanganathor situation, but it was probably dangerous. That name tickles my memory… but nothing more than that... Ahhh... I should mention: When Margleknot put you here and changed his form he made everyone aware of your person. Everyone is already researching why you’re here, so I’m sure I’ll learn about Nothanganathor again soon enough. You’ll probably learn a lot more about whoever that is soon, too. It was nice meeting you.”

Erick suddenly felt small. As though Veird’s problems were unremarkable. But maybe, in the grand scheme of things, they were unremarkable? At least to Margleknot, anyway. To Erick, Veird’s problems were top of his list of things to solve. On the plus side, though, if Margleknot thought Nothanganathor was a ‘small problem’, then that meant Nothanganathor was solvable.

So that was good news.

Erick said, “It was nice meeting you as well. Good day, Lionshard.”

“Good day, Erick Flatt.”

And then Lionshard went to the balcony and hopped over, to land on the soft grasses and moss below. He took his sweet time walking over to the edge of Margleknot’s root, to fall off the edge of that, too, to land on top of the water and start walking toward his property in the distance. Eventually, he passed through the mirages to stand upon his property once again, and then he vanished from sight.

“… so Stepping toward people is okay, but walking away you take your time?”

Weird.

Erick spent a while coming to terms with his own level of wariness, versus what a good level was, versus what was necessary here in these lands. For some reason, Erick didn’t think he could ‘solve’ the slavery issue here. Not in one lifetime.

Veird needed him first, anyway.

- - - -

Lionshard walked into his home and felt a bit bad about that interaction with Margleknot’s newest father. Erick was a very new Ascended. Less than a day. He would need time to see the true size of his new universe.

Whoever this Nothanganathor-person was, they were probably fucked…

But Margleknot could only influence the background; not the actual players. Just like Lionshard.

Lionshard went to his tomes to research this ‘Elemental Benevolence’, mumbling, “It seems too broad from my little interaction. I wonder why Margleknot approved of it so much. Erick himself is way too wary so Benevolence can’t be that useful, otherwise Erick would have opened up…” Mumbling some more as he grabbed infinitome-B, Lionshard began moving through the letters, saying, “I was all ready to teach him some useful magic, too. But I probably spent too long there. ‘Always beware strangers bearing gifts’. It’s not a bad lesson… to… heed. Hmm.”

Lionshard had found Elemental Benevolence, as categorized by Margleknot himself and populated to this book here.

The information therein had already taken up 3 thick pages. It was one of the larger entries. Lionshard read, eyes going wide, and then he grabbed the last page and worked an edge until one page split into two, turning the information in the book into 4 pages of Margleknot’s musings on the element, everything reorganizing to account for the new information.

Within a minute Lionshard had peeled open tens of more pages, digging deeper into this Element and the place where it came from, this ‘Veird’, but also a different world called ‘Earth’.

There was a whole biography here.

“Ohh… He’s going to hate that everyone knows about him.”

Lionshard decided to rip out the entry and put it in a separate book, creating a Tome of Benevolence ten thousand pages long. He started reading from the very beginning. Lionshard skipped the first few volumes of the man’s known life—

“Ah. So he was practically god emperor of Veird already. Maybe he’s used to people knowing him. Well that’s good for him, then.”

An hour later, Lionshard had read about Erick’s escape from Nothanganathor, and his arrival in Margleknot.

He slammed the book shut and called out, “Ygg—Margleknot! I need to talk to you about Benevolence!”

A green person with black hair and lower jaw fangs appeared in Lionshard’s library. This was ‘Yggdrasil’, as described in the book.

Margleknot— Or rather, Yggdrasil, said, “I’d like to discuss Benevolence, too.”

- - - -

Shadow scowled from her darkened corner of the Black Crystal Tavern. She had been brooding with purpose for the last hour, and Erick still hadn’t shown up. He should have shown up by now!

“Did someone merc him? Who did he piss off?” Shadow mumbled, into her drink—

A guy burst in the front door, zeroed in on whoever it was he was meeting, and started rushing through the bar to get to them, his noise and fear palpable to every single person in the room. His words were even more concerning.

“Gods and monsters!” he softly exclaimed, long before he reached his destination. “Margleknot is changing colors!”

The bar erupted in words and actions. People leapt out of their chairs, rushing toward the door or the windows, tightly-controlled auras from newer powers flowing into the air. One guy got incinerated accidentally and revived in the very next second by a man made of wind, who argued with the man made of fire about control, but only half heartedly; there were bigger concerns than a simple death. People tried to abandon the Black Crystal Tavern, but the owner, Lyra, shouted out how people weren’t allowed to leave without paying. Half of the people in the bar instantly shot back to their chairs.

The powers ignored her and went outside.

Shadow stood among a population of Powers Unto Themselves, on the black crystal roads that surrounded the Dragon District, gazing out at Margleknot in the distance. The Great World Tree had been green and gold. Slowly, inexorably, smooth white bark began to spread, glowing. Leaves switched from eternal green to flaming springtime green. A rainbow crown appeared.

Many powers started talking, some asking frantic questions, some delivering terrible answers or speculation.

Shadow grinned.