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Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Body: 207

Mind: 304

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+376, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+128, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: ??? [???]

- - - -

Erick stood on the balcony of his house in Margleknot, under a sun-filled sky.

One more sun held in that sky today, as compared to yesterday. That was Erick’s Benevolence Sun… or at least that’s what he was calling it in his mind. Anyway.

Message stars continued to pile up by the gate to his house like explosions of fireworks.

He would get to the starscape of messages soon enough, and all the rest of all the tasks he had set for himself, but first he wanted to do a few things to make the rest of this time easier.

Resons were the uber-currency of Margleknot, as far as Erick knew, though he was rather certain that many places took many other currencies. For the average person, 1 reson was 1/1000th a resurrection, and that seemed way more important than buying bread for the day, especially if people only made 1 reson a day, or something like that. Erick honestly did not know. ‘How many resons does a person make per day?’ was among the many, many questions that he simply didn’t know, and hadn’t really thought to ask anyone when had been asking those questions. Whatever the case, resons could be ‘used up’, and ‘go dry’, like Erick had been back there at the final casts of [Reson Gathering] up there on that sun, which meant they were limited.

And therefore smaller currencies must exist, because bartering ‘this’ for ‘that’ simply wasn’t viable… as far as Erick knew. Maybe smaller economies in Margleknot did bartering? Large economies did not barter, for sure… right?

Erick truly didn’t know.

He needed some experience with the economy, but first he needed a ‘wallet’.

He already had a ‘wallet’, technically. Resons naturally existed inside people, where they naturally accrued based on personal drive and desire and ‘reasons for being’, sticking alongside everything else that made a person a person.

He also had a way to force production of resons, through [Reson Gathering], and throwing [Renew] at the gatherer.

Now, to make all the rest of this easier, Erick needed his mana-to-reson generator to be an internal system that slipped more resons into his very being and which allowed him to ‘open the tap’ and pour out crystallized resons on command from, like, his aura? Erick wasn’t sure about that. But. Yeah. That sounded good.

Okay! Basic logic solved for.

Now to make it happen…

“I think I know what sort of gift I want to give Lionshard for his help, too.”

Erick went inside of his house to sit on a pillow in his mage tower. The Malevolence Beast was still alive on the first floor down there, but it wasn’t doing anything. It remained locked down, and that was good enough for now. Maybe Erick would do something with it later? Maybe not.

Anyway.

Erick sat down on the third floor of his mage tower and peered inside of his soul.

The entirety of his Status, in Benevolence crystal form, floated before him. It was made with Book-shaped Benevolence and other Elemental crystals, and it was a lot more complicated than an Escher painting. Still understandable, though. [Reson Gathering], his new spell which he had made, floated right over there. It was a multidimensional button he could press which did many things, all at once, all of them completely unlike most of Erick’s other spells.

Ignoring the complexity of the spell itself, and frameshifting to make that vision so, Erick saw the spell shift into a simple Renew-symbol that was not simple at all. It became a web-like construction made of many filaments that coalesced into most-of-a-circle, with stretched-out tendrils going everywhere. All of that central construction was focused on the break between the ends of the symbol. The spellwork would take in mana from the space around it, and make resons in that crack.

All of that looked good.

Erick frameshifted again, looking inward to himself, and to the symbol, and he saw more filaments connecting the two. Erick had frameshifted to see how his body connected to the spellwork, to see how mana got from inside to outside, and into proper shapes. This, then, was some of the way in which Erick used his own resources to cast this spell.

[Reson Gathering] was not a spell that was cast using mana, though. Or at least not fully. It was a spell made of Benevolence, and Erick saw where his mana fit into the spell, but there were only 9 bits of Benevolence in there. [Reson Gathering] was primarily a spell cast using resons.

Tracing those reson lines...

Oh.

Erick saw a forgotten memory that he had heard about a long time ago, but which never really came up, for various reasons.

Inside of his soul, inside of his physical body, and inside of his mind, were shadowy lines of power that connected to the space that used to hold the core in his chest. Those shadowy lines were his mana channels, and yet, they were not.

In his ascension, Erick had become a fully crystallized being and also a person of flesh and mind. His original core was gone. The mana channels that his body used to have running alongside his veins and nerves, in a shadowy duplication of his circulatory and nerve system, were gone.

He had never used them anyway. The Script and basic physical biology did that better.

Quilatalap had spoken a few times about how mana channels in the Old Cosmology were useful for keeping the body intact, and for exploring one’s aura, but they were an obsolete system from the Old Cosmology. Those old channels were what one used to balance oneself and rid oneself of unwanted mana. Now there were blood and nerves and a digestive system that emptied out concentrated mana from the body in order to prevent monsterization. The Script did aura exploration a whole lot better, too.

The old mana channels still existed, though, because they were a very important part of how things used to be in the Old Cosmology. Inertia that large could not be denied.

Erick had completely ignored his mana channels when he ascended, though.

But since he had desired to keep the same sort of body, here were some mana channels that he never used, reappearing again in an unexpected way.

His actual body did not have mana channels. Erick checked himself out in the real world for a good four minutes to make sure of that. And yeah; he had no mana channels.

But his spellwork thought he had mana channels.

The reson ‘wallet’ of his body was all throughout his soul, mind, and body, but [Reson Gathering] seemed to be attached to the lines of his former mana channels just a little bit more than all the rest of his crystallization. Even as he watched the spell inside of him, as he gazed upon its connection to his resources, he watched those possible connection lines of his soul and his spell shift a little, like the moving of a target. Those movement lines flowed alongside the spaces that would have contained his mana channels just a little bit more than they flowed everywhere else.

Honestly, if Erick hadn’t checked out this whole reson-wallet problem, looking for a way to stuff more resons into himself, then he probably never would have noticed this about himself. Or at least he wouldn’t have noticed until some unknown time down the road.

… The memory of mana channels inside of his crystallized self were… something.

Erick wasn’t sure if they were a weakness or not.

They were a foible; a way of being and doing that didn’t need to be that way, but which simply was.

They were how his spells activated; where the resources for them came from, when Erick wasn’t directing that power himself, through his aura. When he had his aura out he could make magic happen anywhere inside his aura, because his aura was him. Otherwise his Mana, Health, and Psyche, remained inside of his body, growing denser and denser over time. His mana channels were…

“Not really important now, actually.”

Erick considered why he started this exploration of himself in the first place.

He wanted to make a system to hold extra resons in his body. Did he need to figure out his obsolete mana channels? No, he did not. Might be something fun to learn eventually, but he didn’t really care about them, and his Lightning Path was telling him that whatever he was observing right now wasn’t important at all.

So Erick ignored his ‘not-mana-channels’, and went back to his [Reson Gathering] spellwork.

He copied the spell inside of his body. That took some doing, but he got it done, and now he had two of the same spell.

The second one automatically hooked into his everything exactly as the other one had, sending filaments out into his Soul, Body, and Mind. The basic form of the spell was exactly the same as the other one, and would produce a reson-Renew outside of his body, wherever he wanted it to be.

Erick came back to himself, breathed for a moment, taking some time to let time pass, because if he fucked up this next part he wanted to be able to easily return to this time period, and a larger break meant easier targeting for [Return].

And then he delved back into his Status.

Taking the second [Reson Gathering] into his control, Erick plucked at the ‘logistical’ filaments that would have created an exterior gatherer, drawing all mana inside of the gatherer and making resons, clipping all of them off. Now he was left with a [Reson Gathering] that only took from his own body.

It only took in 9 Benevolence and a bunch of resons, though.

Erick restrung the spell, adding logistical filaments to the reson production, and then stringing those ‘exit points’ all throughout his entire body. Those exit points for resons weren’t really there, and Erick wasn’t really doing what he seemed to be doing. This was all conceptual, frameshifting soulwork, but it should work exactly as he intended it to work.

And now he had a spell that was inside of him, that took his resources and made resons and put those resons into his own Status.

Erick already had a part of his Status which could measure those resons, too, and which could keep track of some of those resons.

All the plumbing was there inside of him to let him just… hook up this new part and see what happened! But that seemed like a dangerous step.

So Erick came back to himself and took another break, giving himself another ‘save point’ to come back to if he messed up…

Erick considered.

His Status had Book Magic in order to allow him to classify stuff inside of himself. Did this mutation of [Reson Gathering] work right, in that classification, Book Magic sort of way? Erick called up his Status box for this new spell, to see if that part of his Status worked like he imagined it would.

Words appeared in the air.

Reson Wallet, permanent self-enchantment, ?????

Make a reson gatherer inside of your soul and turn on the money. 9 mana to 1 reson.

Unintended side effects? Probably.

Erick grinned at that, and then he laughed.

“It worked! … Probably.”

Erick had a think.

“… It’s fine? It’s fine.”

And then he went back inside his soul.

With careful touches, Erick made a ‘tube’ of resources from his Darkness, which went to his Status, and then he hooked up a connection from his Status to [Reson Wallet], and then back again. The tap was not turned on. This was just getting the starting stuff ready.

Erick wondered if he had created a New Stat. ‘Reson Wallet’. An odd name for a Stat, for sure.

Erick pulled out of himself and checked his Status.

- -

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Reson allocation rate: 0%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Body: 207

Mind: 304

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+376, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+128, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: ??? [+???]

- -

Erick smiled wide. “OKAY! Wow. That worked. Okay. Good.” And then he chuckled nervously. “Now to turn on the tap—” He paused.

He thought.

“… does this count as a New Stat anyway? Can I… quantify this? Find out how many resons I have baseline?”

… He thought.

“No. Resons are simply not quantifiable; not really. That little bottom readout isn’t ever going to be right, either, just like how the Darkness level is incorrect. I have no idea how to measure Darkness, and no clue at all how to measure resons. Darkness is only estimated based on the initial start I had when I ascended, and just to know how far I have come, or if anyone tries to steal my Darkness. Resons are similarly unknowable, but I can certainly count out how many I might create from here on out… Probably.”

… Probably.

Erick nodded.

And then he went back inside of himself and turned on the tap.

Just a little bit!

Erick watched as mana flowed from his Darkness, through his foundational Stats, forming the basis of his crystallized self, and then to his Status, forming the simultaneous layer of his entirety. That’s where it struck his [Reson Wallet], and changed. White became gold and then flowed back into Erick’s Status, and into his everything.

… It seemed to be working. Nothing was breaking.

His little reson-creation system system could be recognized, removed, and remade at a moment’s notice, though. This set up… seemed okay? It seemed okay; yes.

Erick watched the reson system for a little while, watching Benevolence flow out from his everything, into a part of his everything that made goldish-resons, and then flow back into his everything, the resons fitting in smoothly with everything else. The resons were slightly gold colored, but when they slipped into Erick’s soul, mind, and body, they became nothing once again. They were there, for sure, but they weren’t knowable.

Which was exactly what Erick had wanted.

Okay! Good.

Erick came back to himse—

Well this is not ideal.

Erick was crusted over with golden crystal. It was 5 centimeters thick in some places.

Erick checked parts of his status again.

- -

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%

Reson allocation rate: 5%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+361, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 1 [+19 = +2] Warning! Improper storage.

- -

Erick moved like an unstoppable force covered in ice. Resons broke to the ground like so much amber, shredding Erick’s already-mangled clothes even further. As he moved, gold crystals broke away from uncomfortable places, and fell in sheets from his thighs and chest and back. Resons continued to fall from his skin, pushed out of his body like manifested honey that rapidly hardened, even as he moved around, like a continual rain of golden sand.

Erick mentally flicked off all reson allocation and the gold dust stopped. He shook out his hair and rubbed the resons from his eyes and other places, and then he put his hands on his hips.

He though—

“Ah! Maybe the mana channels can have a use after all?”

Erick went back into his soul and mucked around for a while, first figuring out how to add mana channels back to his body, or at least something like mana channels, and then actually doing that. Surprisingly, as soon as he started moving intent around, forming paths within his body to create what had been uncreated, the filaments from his [Reson Wallet] began to shift to those mana channels. By the time Erick was 10% of the way done with his channels, having only really started on the cavity in his chest where his core used to be and a few main channels down his torso and to his extremities, the channels began to reappear on their own.

Mana flexed inside of Erick.

Darkness twisted, filling his body with shadows of power.

Resons trapped in his flesh like gold dust between cells spilled out of his everything, filtering into pathways that did not exist anymore, but which sprang into existence when they realized that’s what Erick wanted.

Erick’s mana channels regrew all the easier for it—

[Reson Wallet] snapped to his mana channels, directly placing its main generative body in the space of his body and soul where his core used to be, and Erick allowed it. It was all conceptual, anyway. His body, soul, and mind hadn’t changed at all.

But his paradoxically existent and non-existent mana channels did reappear, and when the channels to his brain truly regrew, that was when Erick let the whole thing take over on its own.

Erick watched as a forgotten part of himself regrew from Darkness and gold, and then the Darkness faded and the gold filed into place, vanishing from sight once again.

Erick checked himself out in the real world, and mentally turned on the tap.

White gold flowed into the shadows of his core space, rebuilding a part of himself that Erick had lost in the ascension. But also not. That white gold flickered and faded inward, becoming one with his Body, Mind, and Soul, turning invisible once again. His actual core never regrew. The process of reson creation was like a continual glittering that reflected within all of his new mana channels, like some sort of fiber optic light show.

- -

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%

Reson allocation rate: 5%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+361, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 9 [+19 = +2.1]

- -

So that seemed to be working now.

And now he had 9 resons! Or at least 9 that he knew about, plus however many he had innately, or whatever.

This was good.

… Erick turned the tap 100% to resons—

Golden crystals shattered out of his body, crashing out in every direction, breaking the third floor of his mage tower and a small part of his house.

Erick turned the flow back down to 5%.

The flow turned normal.

Erick spent the next several moments extracting himself from his crystal prison, scattering gold out and away from his house, and then he took a few minutes to rebuild the mage tower with his Authority. Nothing was truly damaged, either physically in the real world or metaphysically inside of Erick’s soul, which was great news.

Erick went outside of the castle, onto the open ground with the grasses and the moss on Yggdrasil’s root, to test out various percentages of reson conversion, going up slowly from 5%.

At 10%, Erick’s core and mana channels were filled with a continuous swirl of gold-white light, like a constant roil of lightning-fire, that escaped his mana channels and core and began to show up inside his flesh. He had millions of Health preventing actual damage to him, though, so that golden outpour only manifested when it actually escaped his skin. Or when it exited other, more easily exitable areas.

Erick didn’t think too much about that.

At 11%, the lightning-fire easily expanded past his skin, manifesting amber in sheets that fell from his chest and thighs and all the other parts of him.

Erick turned the flow down to 9%, and kept it there, because 9% seemed good. At 9% Erick’s core-space turned into an illusion of a gold-white core, and his mana channels appeared more ‘ephemeral’ than ‘firework’ or ‘lightning’. Maybe it was a slow strobe light? Yeah, that worked. No actual reson manifesting, though; all of that stuff went into his Status, exactly like it should.

He was now at 3.75 resons per second production, at a cost of 33.75 mana per second. He wasn’t sure what he could do with resons, aside from spend them and probably cast magics with them…

Hmm.

Erick waited till he had a thousand resons, which didn’t take very long at all, and then he controlled his aura to add… hmm. 6 resons? Yes. Erick added 6 resons to [Fireball] spellwork and flickered the flames upward—

A sun of fire replaced the entire sky overhead, burning, incinerating—

Erick rapidly threw dispels and siphon at the magic, drawing it back, pulling it inward, erasing the flames as best he could, and then when that didn’t fully work he slammed his Authority around the magic, condensing it from a contained nuclear fire down to Fire-aspected resons that rapidly decayed into nothing.

Erick had accidentally carved away the upper half of his mage tower. He had accidentally done a lot. He burned away a good several square kilometers of green away from Yggdrasil’s white root, and set the surface of the lake to boiling. Yggdrasil’s actual root was just a little blackened. Seemed fine? Sure. Seemed fine.

Erick looked around and said to himself, “Okay! That was a mistake. What the fuck did I just do?”

He thought.

He did it again, but this time he did a much more controlled creation of fire.

A tiny ball of pure white heat unfurled in front of Erick. It was like standing on the surface of a sun, or inside of a blast furnace. Yggdrasil’s root blackened. Erick’s Health took a huge, continuous hit, but he had millions of Health in the tank so this was nothing to be worried about. Even Yggdrasil’s damage was only surface deep. And so, Erick stared at the fire, and tried to understand it—

“Ah ha!”

It reminded Erick of something he hadn’t felt in a while.

It was the Red Dot.

This, then, was magnitude 9 Fire Magic; the instantiation of True Fire.

Erick sent his Mana Siphon-laced tendrils of Benevolence into the ball of fire and soaked the damage, pulling out the power of the thing he had created. Embarrassingly, or maybe worriedly, Erick took a while to break down his ‘White Dot’, which showed him the power of resons.

It seemed that resons were like ritual magic.

This was singing-at-the-mana levels of power.

So.

A lot of power.

And now Erick had...

- -

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 32.9m per day / 380 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.22x Ascension baseline]

Body: 208

Mind: 306

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+345, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+118, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+104, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+104, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 2,187 [+34 = +3.8]

- -

“… I have 2,187 of these, in addition to whatever I already had. Wow, those pile up fast,” Erick said... But then he looked at the rest of his Status. “And my Darkness went from 2.19 to 2.22, which means that I either significantly grew my Darkness by doing this act, or this was residual growth from the sun in the sky and all of Margleknot knowing me now... Really hard to know— But my Body and Mind went up, too? How did… They were at 207 and 304… How did they go up?”

Erick looked inside of his soul and saw resons soaking slowly into his Stats. All of his Stats. They weren’t just disappearing like they were into his Soul, Mind, and Body... And mostly Mind, actually. That’s where almost all of the resons were going. Resons liked being inside the mind? Sure. Nice thing to know. Kind of expected, too. Other than that, the resons were sticking around for a fraction of a moment longer inside all of his entire self. They were empowering his Base Stats.

For some reason.

Erick told them mentally. ‘No. Stop that’.

And that worked.

The resons began rapidly disappearing into Erick’s everything once again. They still mostly went into his Mind, though. Resons were reasons for being, after all; they were consciousness manifested, among other ways of calling them.

It was still surprising that telling them how to act got them acting properly once again, though.

Erick pulled out of his soul.

He checked his Status, and it looked good. The property was a right mess, though. Exposed roots. Burned moss and grass. Broken castle.

Erick washed the land with his Authority and fixed everything, taking care to make sure the land was stable and the castle was good and the waters were fine. There were still quite a lot of crystallized resons everywhere, but Erick tried waving his Authority at them, hinting with a bit of Intent that Yggdrasil could take that away for his own use—

Words appeared.

Thanks, Father.

The golden crystals sunk into the white root and then vanished from sight and sense as the power flowed away, off to wherever it was these things went. To all the rest of Margleknot and beyond, Erick expected.

Erick tested releasing resons next; not casting with them.

He held out his hand and willed open the mana veins that went to his palm, almost like he was channeling mana, but different. Gold-white crystals erupted up and out of his palm and halfway down his forearm, shredding his flesh. Blood spurted. It was rather uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. Erick shook out his hand and let the resons fall all around him, then he plucked out a few stubborn crystals from his palm. Flesh mended. Skin healed. No actual damage had been done, aside from a few hundred points of Health.

Not enough to worry about.

Erick tried using his aura to exude the resons, instead of channeling them through his veins.

With a white glow around his hand and a comfortable channel, Erick deposited a gold-white sphere of what might have been ‘1 reson’ into his palm. The white rapidly vanished from the gold, leaving behind a somewhat mundane-looking amber-like sphere about the size of a small egg.

Erick held it up to the light and witnessed unfiltered brilliance.

It was difficult to understand exactly what he was seeing, but he knew Possibility when he saw it. There was fire and lightning and healing and void all inside this little bit of reson, but there was also undiluted purpose. This little thing felt like it was a rock at the top of a hill. If it fell this way or that it would be the start of an avalanche that could change the world.

Or maybe it was simply a really good cup of coffee. A cup of brew that you remember having on vacation at some seaside cafe even ten years later; a memory that keeps you going when you least expected it to crop up.

With a small grin, Erick tried swallowing the reson with his aura, taking it back into himself—

The reson uncreated itself as it flowed into Erick’s body and settled down with his Self.

So that was that!

Erick wasn’t able to do that with Benevolence crystals… But then again he had never tried outside of the Script.

Huh.

Erick released Benevolence next, trying to make a simple crystal. That worked, and soon Erick held a meter-long length of glowing white Benevolence about as thick as his forearm that shimmered prismatically. He tried absorbing the crystal through his aura, as simply as he had absorbed the resons, and the crystal ended up in shards inside his hand and flesh. So yeah. That didn’t work.

When he used Mana Siphon on it, though, that worked. Of course Mana Siphon worked on mana, though.

Erick checked his soul and saw that [Reson Wallet] had hooked into his body a lot more than Mana Siphon had, which probably accounted for that oddness there…

Interesting.

Well.

Moving on.

Erick went around with his aura and sucked up the resons that had erupted from his flesh earlier.

Feeling really good about all of his new payment system options, Erick decided it was time to get back out there. First thing he needed was, again, clothes.

Erick plotted out a little garden space and then grew a cottonfruit plant with a bit of [Grow]. Soon, fibrous, long fruit pods dangled from branches, and Erick plucked them. Transforming wet cottonfruit into actual clothes was as easy as using his aura to press, dry, string, and then weave. He went rather fine with the cloth, going slow and probably with a bit too much perfectionism, because he was making clothes that he hoped he could wear more than once.

Once he was clothed again in white and black and bits of platinum, Erick made himself a whole lot of Benevolence-soaked platinum in order to create a proper gift for Lionshard, to thank him for his assistance with a bunch of stuff. Turning his right pointer fingernail into a dragonclaw, Erick began carving power into the platinum, turning mana-soaked metal into a ring of [Renew] about a meter across. A little while later, with the [Renew] systems working, Erick imbued the ring with [Reson Gathering].

The ‘Ring of Reson Gathering’ glowed a subtle white as it hovered there where Erick had put it, due to some stabilizing Force Magics.

Erick threw some basic Benevolence mana at his creation and shards of gold crystal spilled out of the empty space at the top of the circle. Good. It should work with all types of mana, too, but to be sure about that, Erick Altered his mana to a mishmash of Elements. The ring transformed a shower of random mana into gold resons, but the conversion rate… Seemed to be less than Erick’s Benevolence could do…

Oh.

This was actually a big deal. Conversion rates outside of Benevolence were not great.

“… This is fine? Lionshard just needs to Alter to Benevolence first, and it can’t be that hard, right?”

… Maybe it was really hard, actually. Erick had no frame of reference for that difficulty. This was still the gift Erick was going to give the platinum dragon, though.

Once Erick was done with that, he went to see some of his messages gathering by his front gate.

He plucked out the best messages according to his Lightning Path and rapidly gained another appreciation for the vastness of infinity. Problems abounded; the work was literally never ending.

Erick jotted down the top 103 problems, each of which might incur reson costs from ten thousand resons, to ten billion, or trillion. Erick had no idea. There were several ‘reconnect a lost world’, like Abarial. There was a major request to ‘Please contribute to the resurrection cost line’, which was 1000 resons per person, and which usually had a person waiting 10 years before a resurrection. There was ‘The Celestial Observatory wishes to speak with you!’, which was something that Erick would actually be following up with later.

But first, Erick went and knocked on Lionshard’s door.

- - - -

Lionshard looked at Erick’s gift.

The guy himself had left not an hour ago after a rather nothing-conversation regarding the new sun in the sky and his Reson Gathering spellwork, and after handing over a curated list of problems he wanted his new sun’s power directed toward. The list was great. Lionshard thought that Erick was way too soft of a touch, though. If a simple message and explanation of a plight was enough to get him to help then…

Well.

He would be drowning in work and burning out way too fast.

Lionshard had tried telling him that he was taking on way too much work for not enough self-benefit, informing him about mana costs and such, and how one sun was not enough to solve any of these problems, but Erick didn’t want to hear it. And so, Erick had left, and Lionshard had set up solutions to the problems that Erick had given him, setting the systems of Margleknot to direct resons in those directions…

And now he was here, looking at Erick’s gift.

It was a Renew symbol, but for reson generation. It was a LOT better than Lionshard’s current conversion rate of 50 Fate mana to 1 Reson, but only if he used Benevolence mana for it, of which he had none. The conversion of Fate to Benevolence was… adequate, as he had explained to Erick. This Reson Gathering did not change the universe at all, but it was certainly a boon for Erick’s goals, and Margleknot was certainly already using as much Benevolence as he could, just to get these same conversion rates.

Lionshard wondered if Margleknot would be changing his publicly available conversion rates anytime soon. Would his 10-to-1 rate become 9-to-1?

Probably not. Margleknot would simply be getting a bit more efficient, behind the scenes. The system would work marginally better. Margleknot’s overall, real conversion rate was 9.97-to-1, and only because certain non-mana powers of his allow him to do that. Maybe his real rate would go to 9.94?

Erick’s rate was firmly at 9-to-1, though. He could become a very successful banker, if he wanted.

Lionshard was both jealous and incredibly happy for Erick.

After extensive testing, and after some proper mana altering and frameshifting, Lionshard had managed to eke out an 11 Fate to 1 reson conversion using Erick’s machine.

Which was phenomenal, for him.

But Margleknot’s conversion rate was 10 to 1.

So this didn’t actually help him at all.

Lionshard would continue to use Margleknot’s banking system. He had explained that to Erick who seemed to have taken that news okay, and also some other, odder way. At the mention of Margleknot’s bank, Erick got too chaotic to read. Lionshard let that bit of weird chaos go in order to get back on topic. ‘No’, Lionshard had explained, ‘Thank Margleknot (‘Yggdrasil’, Lionshard supposed) you have not upset Margleknot (the city) as much as you think you have.’

It was a good thing that Erick hadn’t upset the Balance too much…

“But this is touching a fate too large, for sure. And yet, Benevolence is in response to Malevolence, so is this a Balance shift at all? … Yes, it is. Malevolence was never that strong, but Evil has been rather stronger than Good for a long time. So this was… a good thing?” Lionshard was having trouble reading that particular Fate. “… Whatever the case, people are going to be shifting toward Benevolence cultivation, for sure.” Lionshard hummed as he inspected his gift. After several minutes, he decided, “This is really too extravagant of a gift. I need to give him something better in return… What, though? What could possibly be better than this? This is… A lot of money, as soon as I deign to hire someone to make resons for me cheaper with this. I would need to raise someone to power, though that shouldn’t be too hard. As for this artifact itself… Well it’s archival grade, for sure. I’ll have to put it on a pedestal, I think. Where should it go?”

Lionshard hummed and thought.

He had been meaning to organize the Margleknot archive section anyway. This would be a good new centerpiece? Yes. That worked.

“But what gift to give Erick in return?”

Lionshard thought, and thought, and thought, and eventually Guided Fate toward a good decision for himself.

“Ah. Clothes and food— Or rather fabrics and directions of where to find food he would like. Yes. That’s a better idea.”

Lionshard opened his messaging book and found an old standby.

“Hello. I would like to place an order for moonglow, sunglow, darkglow, and lightglow base fabrics, and a wardrobe of suits and various other clothes to fit the new Father of Margleknot… Yes, this is a real order. Yes, this is actually Lionshard calling you— This is still Lighthold’s Weavery, yes? I know I called the right number— Sure. I’ll hold.”

Lionshard frowned a little. Was Lighthold’s going downhill? No, surely not. Lionshard would have called someone else if they were. Lighthold’s was still one of the best tailors in all of Margleknot, right? Right. When had he ordered clothes from them last, though? … Oh. 3,551 years ago. Ah.

That would explain why they didn’t know it was him.

… Maybe he was too much of a hermit—

“Ah! Hello, Lighthold— Oh. You’re his son? Oh he passed? Ah. I’m sorry to hear that. 1,500 years ago? Ah. I have been out of current events for a while. My condolences. Can you still do— Ah! You can? Wonderful.” Lionshard smiled. “I have a big order for you. Yes, for the new Father of Margleknot. He got me a gift and I need to get him one, and I thought of clothes, and I thought of you— Your father, but I look forward to your work, too. So that’ll be moonglow and...”

- - - -

Erick stood on the grass of the lands of his property and asked the air, “I have a bank account?”

Words appeared.

You have an account which is only accessible here, in Margleknot. Your current balance is: 0

Current income: 167b per day

Current expenditures: Max.

Time till finished: <∞

If you want to pay for anything at all, you can stop funneling resons into the projects you have lined up and then pay for something, but your personal reson wallet is more than sufficient for common needs. Paying off the resurrection costs for people is a never ending process. I’ve devoted 50% of your income to that, and the rest to the lineup of needs you’ve already handed over to Lionshard.

“… Huh. Okay.” Erick said, “Thanks, Yggdrasil!”

The words in front of him bobbed, and then vanished.

Erick turned around and went out the gate of his front property, stepping—

- - - -

— onto black crystal roads. English-looking black crystal buildings lined both sides of the wide, black road. Steep roofs and balconies were everywhere, with little signs in curled script hanging off of black crystal bars above doors. People walked to and fro, headed here or there. That place over there was a bar. That place over there was an apartment building. There was a messenger office, which Erick assumed was for sending out letters like the stars he had gathered by his front door. There was a grocery. A spice store. Clothing store. There was a lot, and all of it looked high-end.

Prices ranged from 1 reson to 3 resons to a few more esoteric currencies for the odder items. A piece of clothing in that store that looked like a cloak made of Illusion cost ‘1 favor’, which was both interesting and telling. There was a bit of a barter system going on, but most transactions were done in resons.

Erick was glad he had made his wallet, even if Margleknot already had an automagic banking system.

Erick widened his senses a little, extending his sight up through a little pseudopod of aura. The city stretched out before Erick, and behind him. He had stepped through a black archway on the side of the road, and into a land of powers and so very many different races of people. He saw winged people and orcs-but-blue and people made of rocks and people that looked human but who had long ears— Ah! Some sort of elf, Erick imagined. Maybe they were astraelif, the ‘cosmic people’, and whom most would consider the dominant race of this cosmology.

Some people looked at him like he was strange, and then went about their days.

Erick loved that.

He was just another guy— Ah. He had forgotten to put his horns away. Or shrink down some. Ah. This was fine? Sure. This was fine. The city seemed full of horned people, or people with oddities and whatnot. He was pretty much average-sized right now, it seemed… Except for when it came to those really short people over there, moving in a group. They looked like goblins but with seafoam green skin and bodies like tiny supermodels. Kinda weird.

Erick went to find the Black Crystal Tavern, just to see what Shadow was up to. She might be mad, which was fine. In his defense, he had been busy getting his house in order. His house was still very much not in order at all, but that was fine, for now.

Erick stepped onto the road and walked down the way, only now realizing that he didn’t have shoes.

… Eh, the centaur guy over there didn’t have shoes, either, and neither did the lizard people buying bread in that bakery over there. Some of the astral elfs didn’t have shoes either… but those people looked like bums in dirty clothes and with dirty faces— Actually, the dirt on their faces was applied artfully, and their clothes only looked ripped and with shredded edges. That was on purpose.

Erick probably looked more like a bum than those guys...

Oh. Shit. He did look like a bum.

Erick smiled.

He loved this even more. He was just a bum going on a walk on the town! This was great.

Erick strode down the side of the street, walking with traffic to a place outlined in Yggdrasil’s Guidebook. The edge of the Old Dragon district was rather only a few kilometers wide, at the widest, but it was incredibly long. How long? Tens of thousands of kilometers long. And yet it only looked 4 kilometers long.

To the left of this black crystal land stood mirages of houses beyond ephemeral gates. To the right were gates leading to mortal lands. Here in the middle, in this infinity of length that looked 4 kilometers long, were repeats of businesses, but no repeats of houses or apartment buildings. People lived wherever they wanted, and they could visit the same bakery every day if they wanted, but the bakery over there was repeated in this same ‘4 kilometer length’ of the black crystal district over and over and over. Did they really visit the same bakery every day if they chose the one right next to their house? If they chose the one right next to their house, then yes. If they picked a different one, on one of the other iterations of the Black Crystal District, then that question was not so easily answered.

‘The Bakery’ —which was named exactly that, simply ‘the Bakery’— only looked like a normal bakery in a single building in a normal location with a footprint several tens of square meters large. In truth, the Bakery was actually a multi-dimensional bakery that existed alongside the entire length of the black crystal part of the Dragon District. It had a few thousand employees, and every repeat of the edge of this Dragon District was just another expression of the same building.

If Erick walked down the far edge of the place, he would end up behind himself and in a different sub-layer of infinity, and find slightly different people living in a slightly different ‘same district’.

The only way in which it was not a simple 10,000 kilometer long repeating place, was that if you wanted to meet a specific person, and if they wanted to meet you, then you just agreed to meet ‘at the bakery’ or ‘at the Black Crystal Tavern’, and you would be able to do exactly that. If you walked with the intent of finding a bakery that wasn’t crowded, you would end up there in 4 short kilometers, at the longest. If you wanted to see a big crowd somewhere, you could do that, too.

It was all about walking with intent.

And so, Erick walked with intent, down the road, ignoring the first Black Crystal Tavern he came to, looping around to the next sub-layer, to walk by the bakery once again.

And then he found the Black Crystal Tavern.

Shadow peeked out over the railing overhead, spotted him, and yelled out, “Took you long enough! Get up here! I’ll buy you a beer.”

Erick chuckled. “Sure, sure.”

The Black Crystal Tavern was a place of ‘adventurer ambiance’, as they would have called it back on Veird. Or ‘delver ambiance’, these days, with the dungeons and all. That first phrase was still hard-indoctrinated into the lexicon of many different people back home, though. This place would have suited them all well.

Wooden structure. Cozy, inviting lighting. A bard playing soft music on a fiddle on stage. People in coats and nicer clothes sitting in booths, drinking beer or wine and talking in low voices, or cheering with each other and eating food and spilling beer… Except no beer got spilled.

It was the little things that let Erick know this place might look lower class, but it was very, very high class. Beer never spilled; it flowed all the way out of the cup, but then flowed right back in. Sawdust, ostensibly meant to make it easier/safer to clean up and walk around drunk upon, had no beer spills, or blood, or even vomit. It was perfectly clean, and kept that way, because no one vomited, or maybe those messes were simply cleansed away when they happened. The stuff behind the bar was all boomingly magical; it was like looking at artifact level enchanted stuff, and worse… Or maybe just like looking at resons, now that Erick realized how he was thinking, and what this place actually was. There were multiple floors to the place, and as Erick looked up through the open-air center of the bar, to the upper floors, he saw the floors extend up to infinity, or maybe just 10,000 or so. Hard to say—

“Hello! Is this your first time here?” asked a pleasant looking young woman wearing simple barmaid’s clothes, but a barmaid from some other world. She had a weird, ‘art fashion show’ sort of look to her, but only in small ways, from the cut of her collar to the white tunic which held up her ample chest like a corset. “I’m going to assume it’s your first time.”

Erick smiled, and said, “Yes. Sorry if I was staring. Everyone is very different from back home.”

The young woman smiled kindly, then said, “How about a first drink on the house, then. Come on over here.”

Erick easily followed the woman to the bar.

She went behind the bar and grabbed a cold mug, asking Erick, “We’ve got all sorts of flavors. Name it and we got it, and if we don’t have it, we can get it. Your free beer is gonna be one of the cheaper options, though.”

Erick chuckled, then said, “I’d like 5% alcohol on something even-bodied. Not dark, not light. Something that you’d drink with a nice sandwich. I’d also like to know what they actually cost, because I’m a bit lost on that and none of your prices are labeled.”

The woman nodded as she smiled, then she turned to the seven beer taps behind the bar. She gripped one of them that was a dark beer, but she didn’t pull that one. She moved it to the right, and, like the wall wasn’t a solid wall at all, she spun the entire beer tap selection like a frictionless treadmill toward the side. Beer taps appeared and then disappeared as that part of the wall, and that part of the wall only, slipped on by—

She grabbed a handle, stopping the treadmill and pouring the beer in the same motion. She had picked out something called ‘Simple As’, and it looked and smelled exactly like the kind of beer Erick wanted. It took a lot longer to fill the cup than Erick expected it would, though.

She said, “This one is called Simple As, and it’s about that complicated. Currency here is a bit different than where you’re from, no doubt. You don’t seem to have any money on you, unless buttons can be traded for money?”

“Ah? No.” Erick looked at his platinum buttons. “… Well. They could be, I suppose. I wasn’t planning on it. I assumed metal wasn’t useful here at all.”

“Ehhhh… That’s a bit reductive. It’s useful. Just not in this particular land. We price things in resons here.” She finished pouring the beer and handed it to Erick. “Let me know if you like it!”

Erick was sure he would. He took a sip, and it was just about the best beer he had ever tasted. It reminded him of simpler times, before he was the Wizard of Benevolence, back when he was simply the Particle Archmage. That time of drinking beer with Al at the bars of Spur certainly didn’t last nearly as long as Erick wished it could have.

Erick smiled, and held the beer in his hands, saying, “It’s fantastic.”

“I can usually pick out a proper option, so I’m glad to see I haven’t lost that touch.” The woman said, “As for prices: a small cup of Simple As is 1 reson, which is just the size of the cup. Simple As is a middle-of-the-road beer, but as for where it lands among our total options, it’s on the very low end. That’s a deep cup in your hands right now, which is 10 resons for Simple As, because it’s 10 cups of beer. Endless cups are 5 resons for the cup itself, and then whatever you drink from it is added on. Drinks are paid for when-served. Endless cups need to be prepaid. Food and such is paid for when-done.

“You’re very good about keeping your power to yourself, which is appreciated. Some patrons are not that together, so please be mindful of others.

“Fighting in the bar is forbidden.

“This is my absolute domain, and I reserve the right to deny service to anyone I wish.” The woman said, “I’m Lyra Vonaldar; the owner of the Black Crystal Tavern. Nice to meet you.”

Erick nodded. “Ah! Nice to meet the owner so soon. I’m incognito right now and very much enjoying it, if that’s okay.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. And then she flicked the air.

The space around them became impenetrable. The rest of the bar vanished. It was just Lyra and Erick, hanging out in the middle of a violet black void.

The owner of the establishment said, “It’s fine to be incognito, but I don’t allow anyone into my business if I don’t know who they are. If you agree to that and tell me your name, then you can stay. I certainly won’t go blabbing your name all over the place; that you can trust, just like you can trust me to keep this place organized and peaceful.”

“Erick Flatt,” Erick said, without reservation.

Lyra’s eyes went wide. And then she calmed. “… Huh. Okay. I knew you were a big deal, but not that big. In that case.” She reached up behind the bar, to the shelves of special drinks, and she pulled down the shelves like she was moving a different treadmill downward. The lower options vanished into wherever they went, and more and more high-class options appeared as upper shelves manifested. She went all the way to the top, where a staggeringly gold bottle of something very large and expensive sat on the top shelf, but she didn’t go for that one. She went for the second-to-the-top shelf, grabbing a violet bottle of brew. She popped the cork on that one and the impenetrable air of the protected bar space filled with a soft call toward great times and good memories. It was like the entire atmosphere of the entire bar crammed into a liquid form. She poured herself a small shot glass of violet swirls, and then poured one for Erick, too. “A taste of Homey Heavens. A welcome to the neighborhood.”

Erick took the small shot glass, wondering at—

Lyra said, “To good times.” And then she downed hers.

Erick downed his—

For a moment, Erick was sitting down with everyone he ever loved for a nice meal and a good vacation, but from several different times in his life. There was Jane, trying her spicy wings down at Enduring Forge. There was Teressa, serving a whole roast cow at Festival that one year. There was Poi, with his fish dishes he made for a different Festival. There was Ophiel, with his purpleberry pie inside Benevolence, and right beside him was Quilatalap, also with his purpleberry pie. There was Yggdrasil, sitting at the bar with him, nodding.

The memory faded.

Erick breathed deep the faint smell of Elsewhere.

Erick chuckled, wiping away a small tear, saying, “To good times.”

“It’s nice to meet you, True Wizard of Benevolence,” Lyra said. “Got a name you’d like to be called on your tab?”

“Erick is fine, I suppose. I’m not one for lying very well at all.” Erick gestured at the violet brew. “How much does that one cost?”

“Not for sale. Only to be used for special occasions. Other than that, a billion resons a sip.” Lyra said, “We have thousands of ‘Erick’s, so no one will really know who you are until you use your full name. Most won’t even know then, but I like to keep apprised of gigantic local matters.”

Erick chuckled. “It’s only one new sun out of however many there are up there. 14? 15?”

“14 visible ones. The rumor is that 7 or 8 exist outside of Margleknot’s Sky, but sometimes that number is as high as 11. That red/blue one here in this sky only looks like two suns sometimes.”

“Every time I learn more, I have to reevaluate my idea of how big this place is.”

Lyra smiled. “That’ll never stop. As an example: I heard your inclusion into the resurrection line has already dropped the average wait time from 10.05 years to 9.87 years. Or at least that’s how the maths are mathing right now. The various warlords will likely increase their attempted captures of new lands, though, so that number will go back up to 10 years soon enough. They like to plan their campaigns around how long their people may or may not be dead, and 10 years is the accepted rate of how long they’re fine with people staying dead.”

Erick sat stunned. “… Fucking hells. In one breath I hear a good thing and in the other breath it’s open season for warlords to warlord more.”

Lyra grinned wide, saying, “That’s the kind of reaction I expect from a truly good man. It was very nice to meet you, Erick Flatt. I know all the best gossip around the Black Crystal District, so come around and share a drink with me sometime if you want to know some esoteric shit, or if you have any good stories of your own to tell. I can help you make connections based on what you choose to share.”

Erick paused. He asked, “I’m looking to permanently kill the dragon that has current Fae Enclave control over my world. How do I go about doing that?”

“A thousand resons.”

Erick held out his aura and dropped a thousand resons into a single amber sphere. It glowed like a sun, there upon the wooden counter.

Lyra gathered up the trinket, disappearing it into the palm of her hand. “You’re going to have an easier time finding capable people to help you if you look outside of Margleknot. Everyone inside the Grand City has an agenda, while most people outside of the city only want to get here for the power that this place might bring them out there, and those outsider agendas are much easier to work with than the complicated things of this land.

“You’re already spilling out Benevolence to the multiverse, so see about shifting that Benevolence with some Fate magic and other sources of controlling futures in order to find people to help you build your case against Nothanganathor out there in the rest of the universe. Gather them. Raise them. Use them here in Margleknot and then send them back home better for the exchange, or bring them with you to Veird when you go back.

“Whatever happens with the Fae Enclave, you’re going to need warriors to truly extol the virtues of your case against Nothanganathor.

“As for looking for help inside Margleknot, you might seek out the Wraithborne Tower and ask them for help finding good lawyers— I know this option disgusts you, for the Good of you is written in the very suns of Margleknot, and your disgust at this option is there upon your face, but the best lawyers truly do work for them.

“Or you could trust your Benevolence to try to pick people from the Waiting Room for you. Resurrections-on-the-cheap is always a good way to get help. The standard agreement for that is that you hire them for the years they would have needed to wait in line, and after that they’re free to go. You can offer better rates than the standard contract, but only the desperate would take you up on that because you would look suspicious. You don’t want desperate people working for you.

“Make sure whoever you hire is soul shackled, otherwise they would simply skip out on their debts— And yes. I can see that disgusts you, but that’s how it’s done. If you have a better way to make people pay their debts in an infinite world, then you can go ahead and invent that and change everything.

“The Celestial Observatory is a place you must go, but don’t expect much from them. Shadow already went to them long ago and they absolutely refuse to work with her on anything at all. They might work with you, but probably not, because of Shadow.

“Shadow is the main proponent trying to save Veird from Nothanganathor’s clutches, but while she can help you in some ways she is wild magic and she has burned many gates trying to control and rescue the remnants of her previous universe. Use her or not. It’s up to you. She’s waiting upstairs.

“And finally: Don’t make enemies before you make friends. As I said earlier, everyone in Margleknot has agendas with everyone else, and we’re all near enough to true immortals that pissing anyone off has a way of backfiring on you a long way into the future. Countless immortals have come here and been ostracized for their actions, and thus they have no influence at all. Shadow is touching that line right now.

“Nothanganathor made many, many friends before he became the Arbiter of Veird. That’s how he got there.” Lyra finished, then said, “That’s about what 1,000 resons will buy you. I hope it was helpful.”

It had been very helpful, actually.

Erick said, “You confirmed a lot of the plans I already made and added some nuance that I needed to know. Thank you. You must have some sort of fateful decision making power?”

Lyra smiled. “I do; just like all the other Old Dragons of this land. To answer your next question is another thousand resons.”

Erick deposited another thousand-reson crystal on the table.

Lyra swiped it up, saying, “My agenda is to have a bar that my friends can eventually find without error, as long as they ascend high enough. They’ve all died ten thousand times and been reincarnated ten thousand different ways, but they’re all still out there in the universe. They’re still existent, and thus hope remains. I know this because they’re all still tied to me, and I to them. I try to nudge things to make it easier for them sometimes, but sometimes they go up against too large of odds, or they’re too far away, and so they die and are reborn again in some other time and place.” She shrugged, putting the violet bottle back up on the top shelf, saying, “And so, I wait for them to join me.”

Erick felt his Lightning Path open wide.

He held out a hand and a conjured reson crystal that was not exactly gold. He set it on the counter, saying, “Good luck to your family.”

Lyra paused. And then she reached out to the resons. It was not a normal golden color. It was slightly white. She hesitated. And then she swiped it up. It vanished. “… Thank you.” She asked, “What does it do?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Lyra chuckled, then she dropped the barrier between here and everywhere else, saying, “Good luck, good sir.”

Erick picked up his beer and nodded. “Thanks for the welcoming beer.”

Erick walked away—

Shadow was up there on the second floor, peering down at him from the edge of the balcony.

Shadow called out, “Finally!”

No one seemed to care that Shadow was yelling. Some people seemed disgusted by her actions. Erick just grinned and walked up the stairs to the right, to land on the second floor.

“Hello, Shadow.”

“Let’s sit in a privacy booth.”

- - - -

“Congrats on the sun. How much did you learn about Nothanganathor?”

They hadn’t been in the booth for more than a second. As soon as the privacy magics went up Shadow got right to business. She was moving fast.

Erick was right there with her. “I learned he’s on the list of approved evils of Margleknot, and that he was sent to the Painted Cosmology in order to find out what happened to Margleknot’s Painted Cosmology extension of himself, and then the Sundering happened, and now he’s Arbiter of Veird. That timeline is measured in thousands of years, I am sure.

“I’m around 90% sure that the people here do not know that Nothanganathor caused the Sundering, and I have no idea if they know that Nothanganathor is corralling Veird in order to take Melemizargo’s Mantle of the God of Magic for some reason. I’m not sure how you people don’t know that, but that’s the impression I get.” Erick added, “There’s a lot more, but it’s rather nuanced. I got a Margleknot-created report on my own life, which should highlight a lot of what went down on Veird, which I am rather sure that a lot of people got, too, but it’s missing all of the specifics of Nothanganathor. I’m rather certain that that is because Margleknot still has a dedicated agreement with Nothanganathor for the knowledge he was supposed to find, which he never did, so he cannot work against Nothanganthor directly.”

Shadow listened, the gloom around her deepening as Erick spoke, and then turning absolutely Dark when he mentioned the Sundering. When Erick finished, she was composed again, as she said, “The shape of Nothanganathor’s general story is fully known in these lands, though no one believes he caused the Sundering. That I was never able to fully prove to the Enclave. I doubt you will be able to prove it either. I doubt they will even accept your testimony since you are not originally from Veird.”

Erick asked, “What’s up with that, anyway?”

Shadow controlled her anger, and said, “Until a True Wizard naturally arises from a quarantined land, then those lands remain quarantined. Veird is quarantined because it is the survivor of a True Sundering, and Nothanganathor is the Arbiter because…” She frowned. She said, “Because he’s my great, great, hundred-great grandson, and I never cared for Margleknot or this universe or the Fae Enclave here, and so I failed to care enough about the bureaucracy of this land. When the Sundering happened, Nothanganathor was already there, gathering all the parts of the Painted Cosmology that fell into this universe in order to contain whatever problem it was that caused the Sundering. ‘Containing universal destructions’ are an extension of the original duties he took for himself, to discover the cause of the loss of the ‘Margleknot’s world tree’ —Pah!. He shouldn’t have had that duty. We had had many surviving True Wizards. They should have been allowed to take over Veird, but Nothanganathor killed them all… though I was never able to prove that, either.”

Erick sat back in his chair. Fury swirled in his heart, mind, and soul, but it was a distant sort of fury.

He had a think.

He figured out his first question rather fast.

Erick looked at Shadow, saying, “You know what caused the loss of Margleknot’s link to the Painted Cosmology, don’t you.”

“No. Actually. I do not.” Shadow sniped, “Because there never was a Margleknot connection to my Painted Universe! It was a separate freaking universe, Erick. It had no connection at all to this one!”

Yggdrasil slipped into the booth with them, already looking furious, saying, “Untrue! Planars existed as they always have, and I had a part of me in there—”

Shadow sniped at him, “No natural connection! People crossed over all the time, and you slipped a person into my universe, you fucker. That’s common as shit, though! Happens to every universe out there! And you have a part of you everywhere, you damned Old Roots! You didn’t have a powerful version of yourself in my universe at all! I didn’t let you!”

“And maybe! If you would have! The Sundering never would have happened!” Margleknot said, “I stabilize universes!”

“You control universes! You’re an extension of the Old Fae bastards who we got away from!”

“I help your kind, fairy, and all others—” Margleknot suddenly restrained his anger. He sighed, as though this was an old argument that he never wanted to have. “I have always helped everyone I could.”

Shadow wiped away an unruly tear, marring her face with black as she controlled her voice, asking, “Is Erick’s testimony that Nothanganathor caused the Sundering enough to remove him from Arbiter?”

“… No. He’s not from Veird; he only grew there. Erick has no proof. No one has any proof. All the information we have is circumstantial evidence of Nothanganathor rolling back time when people got close to the Sundering Source, and he’s going to claim that he was simply preventing the apocalypse of your Painted Cosmology from spreading.” Yggdrasil explained to Erick, “He is Malevolence, and Malevolence is pointed toward bad ends, so all he has to do is avoid those bad ends in order to keep contained whatever caused the Sundering. He also uses Malevolence to keep himself in power, because the ‘bad ends’ it causes is ‘bad for everyone, in a way that benefits him’.” Yggdrasil looked to Shadow, adding, “The creation of Malevolence is why this one is probably completely at fault for the destruction of her own universe, though that’s never been proven either.”

Shadow’s eyes went from normal, grey-ish eyes, to absolute pools of Darkness as she slammed her fists on the table, shadows spilling out from everywhere around her. Her voice was an abyss as she said, “I did not destroy my universe.”

“Take it down a notch,” Yggdrasil spoke, with even more authority.

The air cleared.

Lyra briefly appeared around the corner of a pillar on the otherwise-empty floor of the tavern. She looked ready to give someone a talking-to; probably Erick, Shadow, and Yggdrasil. And then she saw who was sitting at her table, making the fuss, and she turned right back around.

Erick returned to the conversation, saying, “I’m not going to be taken seriously by the Fae Enclave with regard to their decision to empower Nothanganathor.”

“No,” said Shadow. “You’re a planar. You’re already far down on the list of respected people.”

“… What?” Erick asked, completely unsure what the heck Shadow even meant.

“You didn’t come up from a single location,” Shadow explained. “It makes your achievement less of an achievement.”

“You need to see them and be denied, and then you might have more options,” Yggdrasil said.

“Okay. Sure? How did I end up on Veird, anyway? Planars happen. How? Exactly?”

Shadow waved a hand, saying, “They happen! It’s magiphysics.”

Yggdrasil said, “Maybe focus on the current problem.”

Erick… allowed that digression. “Sure.” He asked, “So what’s the story of Malevolence?”

Yggdrasil looked to Shadow, as though waiting for her to lie.

Shadow narrowed her eyes at Yggdrasil, then said to Erick, “When Melemizargo’s mother, Ikaramaliana, chose to become One With The Dark and pass on the Mantle of Magic to a successor, there was a contest of strength. This is always how it is. Melemizargo prevailed. Nothanganathor did not, and he was an ass the entire tournament, and now we’re here.”

Yggdrasil gave her a ‘really?’ sort of look, then said, “And when Nothanganathor lost that contest for godhood Melemizargo cursed him, stripping him of his mana signature and his ability to ascend. So Nothanganathor grew wider rather than denser, becoming the sun-spanning never-god that envelops Veird’s sun. He is cursed to never ascend in any way, but he has as much strength as any world tree or proper ascended, which is a lot.”

“… Ah. So that’s a lot of theories confirmed.” And reasons for those theories. Erick said, “This whole time, this has been personal. This Sundering had always been a trap for Melemizargo, specifically. But Melemizargo needs some people in order to survive and for his godhood to remain intact, so Nothanganathor controls Veird to allow that, and to make people try and overthrow Melemizargo all the time. If Melemizargo ever let go of his mantle, for any reason, then Veird would instantly die, because Nothanganathor would surely intercept that exchange, and thus he would no longer have a need for the planet.”

Erick was furious all over again.

Shadow nodded. “I’ve never been able to prove it. He always lies so well in court.”

“What makes Melemizargo’s godhood special?”

“Nothing at all,” Shadow said, lying.

Yggdrasil lied too, shrugging as he said, “Not much.”

… Okay fine.

Erick went ahead and laid out the gist of his entire next train of thought, “When did your world tree person vanish, Yggdrasil? And did Nothanganathor eat it, taking that power for his own, in order to grow so large?”

Shadow widened her eyes at Yggdrasil in a very ‘Yeah! Tell us, asshole!’ sort of way.

And then she said, “Yeah! Tell us, asshole!”

Yggdrasil frowned at Shadow, then said, “About 9,000 years pre-sundering, so 10,450-ish Veird-time, is when a piece of myself died in the Painted Cosmology.”

“So about a thousand years after Melemizargo cursed Nothanganathor to obscurity?” Erick asked, to be sure. “Since Melemizargo was God of Magic for 10,000 years before the Sundering.”

“Like 9,900, but yes,” Shadow said.

“Yes,” Yggdrasil said. “That’s the correct-ish timeline.”

Erick looked to them both, saying, “I’m going to try for an injunction against Nothanganathor to take Arbiter of Veird from him, and if that fails, then I’m going to try something else. Yggdrasil. Could you please… I don’t know...” Erick felt his Lightning Path flicker and focus. “Direct the Benevolence to finding people who might make good lawyers among the rescued populace?”

Yggdrasil said, “I can’t do much in that direction, but I can give you some messages if anyone pops up. I don’t do directed control of anything like that; that would be interfering. You should hire some prognosticators to do that for you. There are some at the Celestial Observatory. And with that said: Can you leave Shadow and I to discuss something in private?”

“… Ah?” Erick paused.

Shadow stared at Yggdrasil, then frowned, and said, “I suppose we’re done for the moment, Erick, and Margleknot never speaks to me. I would like to accept his offer, and meet with you at your house later.”

Erick nodded. “Then I suppose I know enough for now.” Erick took one last gulp of his very nice beer, then hugged Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil smiled, hugging him back. “Thank you, Father.”

Erick said, “I don’t really know anything, and the more I learn the more I realize I know nothing, but I do know I want peace and prosperity for Veird and to open them up to the greater universe. I also know I want to help as many other people as I can, but Veird comes first.” He pulled away from his son. “And I know you’re keeping so very many things away from me, guiding me toward them on my own time. I know that one of those hidden truths is massive. The Big One. When the greater danger is done, we’ll talk about this propensity of yours toward machinations and plotting of family, instead of just talking. I’m fine with not knowing the Big Truth for now, but I want to know it eventually.”

Yggdrasil’s face fell slightly. “I’m a lot more experienced than you are right now, Father. I know what I’m doing.”

“And I trust you. I’m also telling you that I am seeing things that concern me. I love you, Yggdrasil… and Margleknot.”

Yggdrasil smiled softly, then said, “It’s so easy for you to love weirdness and people you don’t quite trust or know, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Love is easy for me. I love you, my son.”

“I love you, too, father.”

Erick smiled. And then he gave his beer to Yggdrasil. “I only drank some of it. It’s pretty good! I’d like a portal to the Celestial Observatory, please.”

Yggdrasil happily took the beer and a portal opened to the side. Shadow, meanwhile, stared at the whole little conversation like a fish gasping for air.

Erick left behind a very flustered Shadow who rapidly reoriented on Margleknot, her entire demeanor changing into something more Dark, as Margleknot became something more Fractal. Erick imagined, for some reason, they were both representing Others in that moment. Or at least that’s what his intuition was telling him.

And then the portal—

- - - -

— closed behind him.

Erick did a few things rapidly. He looked around himself, he checked his reson wallet, and then he tried to reconcile what he knew with what he had just heard.

The land around him was clouds and distant crystal mountains and stars up above. Those distant mountains were sort of like Ar’Kendrithyst, actually, the entire crystal mountain made of white and blue spires. Here and there in those crystal cities, were domes. Those domes had crystal columns poking out of them. Those had to be the observatories of this land, this Celestial Observatory. Each individual mountain was connected by wide, solid sky bridges, too.

Erick stood upon one of those middle-of-the-sky bridges, far away from two different crystal-spire mountains.

Other than that, the land was rather understandable as disconnected mountain cities above the clouds, and lots of green valley lands below the sparse clouds, filled with even more cities that seemed much more rustic and normal. Roads. Rivers. Stone walls. People walking around at markets. Etcetera.

This land was a lot bigger than just one place. It was an entire world.

What Erick noticed most of all, was that the mountains and the clouds seemed never ending in the distance, but the general shape was an outward, downward flow, like Erick was on top of a very large sphere. No sun above this sphere, though; just stars in a night-blue sky.

The entire land sort of glowed white and blue. The bottoms of the clouds out there glowed sunshine-white, bathing that green land in sunlight, for sure. It was a land without a sun, and it was truly beautiful.

It felt like a sort of heaven.

Erick took in his local area. He was atop a kilometers-wide sky bridge between two mountains, just above the clouds. The mountain of crystal spires in front of him was massive. The mountain behind him less so. No one was on this bridge at all, so Erick kinda wondered why Yggdrasil had put him down here, but he figured it was for a good reason… And then he thought back to how Yggdrasil was obviously hiding stuff and purposefully guiding Erick in certain ways.

And like, yeah. You do that for your parents. You help them out when they don’t know better. ‘Oh son, I can’t figure out the remote control or how to connect to the internet. Can you help?’ ‘Sure, dad. Let me do it for you.’

… Erick should be less mad about that. Maybe he should even apologize to Yggdrasil.

He should probably apologize.

Erick started walking toward the bigger mountain. It was a good walk, because it gave him more time to think, and more time to let time make some more resons for his wallet. He had only had his wallet for maybe 2 hours so far, and it had helped him a lot already. Were other people able to requisition resons from Margleknot’s bank? Erick assumed so. But Erick’s wallet was usable in all parts of this universe and others, so he was glad he had made it.

He was currently sitting pretty at 3.8 resons per second; self-created.

Resons: 22,973 [+34 = +3.8]

Minus the few thousand he spent with Lyra —which seemed like a really good investment, now that Erick was thinking about it more and more— he was sitting pretty.

Lyra was obviously a ‘Knowledge Mage’ sort of person. A good person to know, and to be friendly with, even if her entry in Yggdrasil’s book labeled her as an elven thief. She obviously sold information to other people, and that was probably a knock against her, but maybe she would find some good contacts for Erick to use to combat Nothanganathor? Seemed a high possibility. He’d have to go back and ask her about that.

Erick hoped whatever that special reson-crystal he gave her would help her how she needed. Erick still wasn’t sure what he did there, exactly. Probably something that would fully help one person out? Maybe imbue them with Benevolent Luck? … That might be exactly it.

Anyway.

Nothanganathor had tried to win the Mantle of the God of Magic back when he and Melemizargo were in the running for the same thing. Melemizargo won, while Nothanganathor lost, and in that losing, Melemizargo cursed him to never be able to ascend… For some reason. So that made sense. Nothanganathor was a total asshole who needed to kill Melemizargo, but not really, because the Mantle of the God of Magic could only be given away, and so Nothanganathor had needed to kill the entire Old Cosmology first…

“Oh shit.”

Erick paused there on the crystal skyroad, his eyes going wide as he realized something big.

In order to kill a god, you first needed to kill all that god’s people. But Nothanganathor did not want to kill Melemizargo. He wanted Melemizargo’s mantle. So first, he Sundered the Painted Cosmology.

That’s what people tried to suggest to Erick, way back when he first fell to Veird; that if he ever wanted to ‘solve the problem of the Shades’ he needed to kill Melemizargo, which meant killing all of his believers, first.

Erick frowned. “I find it very fucking unusual that no one here believes Nothanganathor Sundered the Painted Cosmology… But all I have is circumstantial evidence that he did that. To hear people talk about it, Nothanganathor already has defenses against those circumstantial evidences. He was ‘just in the neighborhood’ and ‘invested with the universe already’, so of course he ‘moved to contain the only remaining part of the Painted Cosmology’, to ‘keep that apocalypse from spreading’.” Erick’s voice was filled with hateful sarcasm, both because Erick was rather furious, but also so that the people out there listening to him could know what he was about. “I suppose, if I hadn’t come up from Veird myself, then I might have believed whatever lies Nothanganathor was spinning.”

… No one responded. Well that was fine.

Erick kept walking.

Someone would come out to talk to him soon enough. They were there in the air near Erick. He felt them watching. Or maybe it was just [Scry] spellwork from a long distance away. This was the Celestial Observatory, after all. Even if Erick couldn’t see the [Scry] spellwork, it was out there. Watching.

Soon, people did start to appear, but not beside Erick.

Up ahead stood a massive gatehouse that was dwarfed by the crystal mountain behind it. Behind, at the other side of the large, crystal bridge, stood a similarly massive gatehouse that was much larger than the mountain behind that one. Erick had been walking toward the bigger gatehouse.

The gates at both mountains were closed. The side entrances opened, though, and people moved out from those to stand and present arms, if Erick was reading that right. Maybe-paladins in shining armor stood with maybe-archmages in voluminous white and blue robes. They had floating shields, or floating staves. The whole arrangement of people looked rather polished and practiced, but also done in a large hurry. They didn’t seem angry.

They were getting prepared, though.

It’d be several minutes before Erick got to the gate by the big mountain. He took his time. People were still moving around by the time he got close enough to not need to yell to speak to them.

And then he got a bit closer.

Aside from the scattered archmages and paladins in lines to the side, three main people stood directly in front of the closed gate.

There was an elven woman with long ears, with three pairs of disconnected white wings floating behind her back.

There was a man who was wreathed in black.

And an entity made of blue-white crystal with a bunch of organs hanging out in his crystal body—

“Oh shit! I know you.” Erick stared at the crystal person from 15 meters away. “From a vision of a Grand Wizard Tower of the Painted Cosmology in the Dark. You were walking with some sort of sun god. You look… exactly the same.”

The winged elf, the dark mage, and everyone else were a little surprised by… Well probably a lot. Erick wasn’t sure what surprised them more. Perhaps his expletive?

The cyan crystal seemed to sigh. “Ah. You could have heard that from Shadow, but I don’t believe she knows I’m here, so I guess you’re the real deal.”

“Apologies,” Erick said, “I don’t know your name. I assume this is Moonarcher and Darkcaller?”

“Yes yes. I’m Crystalmaster. Moonarcher and Darkcaller are good friends of mine. They’re not going to help you. None of us are.”

“… Okay. I got a letter from you asking for me to appear, though. So… Why?”

Crystalmaster said, “The Wraithborne Tower has issued a preemptive edict against us assisting you in any way, threatening destructive action if we should entertain your anything. They are demanding you speak with them if you wish to pursue any actions against Nothanganathor. That is why we sent the letter to you.”

Erick had some anger, yes, but it was a distant sort of emotion. “And what if I wanted to free all of Margleknot from slavery of all sorts, and destroy a few different evil institutions along the way? The Wraithborne Tower may or may not be on that list because I heard it’s the biggest one, but I haven’t decided. The Slaver’s Den is for sure on that list.”

Contrary to any sort of eagerness at Erick’s brash declaration of… whatever that was, he wasn’t even sure himself, Erick only saw defeat in the eyes of every single person there.

Good had been defeated.

Erick had already assumed that, anyway, at the start of this whole mess, when he saw Yggdrasil’s Guidebook and knew that there was only one Good place on Margleknot, and several Evil ones. But to actually see that resignation in the eyes of the people here… it was both sad and infuriating.

Erick held his tongue.

Crystalmaster said, “It’s a non-war between us and them. A stalemate. We flourish, and they flourish, and we don’t fight each other directly. Individuals are allowed to fight individuals, but the Celestial Observatory cannot fight the Wraithborne Tower, or any of the splinter lands of Evil. It’s a balance in homage to the Balance. If we moved against it, we would surely perish in mutually assured destruction. And worse than that—” He moved his aura around, saying, “Every single person here except for Moonarcher, Darkcaller, and I, have soul shackles upon them. If we let you into these gates, these people die directly; soul sundered. If we tamper with their shackles, they die; soul sundered. Others are then triggered to die, for every person like this is paired with another person which changes daily. You get the painting. It’s standard Wraithborne Tower anti-war protocols.”

“… Okay.” Erick took a moment, then said, “I’ll be back.” He asked the sky, “Yggdrasil? Portal to the Wraithborne Tower, please.”

A portal opened up behind Erick.

He stepped through.

- - - -

The portal closed behind him.

He stood in a business district.

Tall, sleek buildings. Stone roads. Normal-looking trees growing in cut-out sections of the road. Enchanted parts of the road that were clearly for walking fast upon, as evident by the glowing arrows that colored those lanes of the road, and how people were walking upon them but also zooming—

A spirit floated up from the floor in front of Erick. It was a man dressed as a butler, and partially transparent, except around the eyes and fingers. Those parts of him were a lot more solid. He spoke draconic with a funny accent, “Wraithborne Tower greets the True Wizard of Benevolence, Erick Flatt, planar of Earth and Veird. Welcome, please. We hope whichever message of ours you found was one of the more agreeable ones. I’m the Tower Ghost, a conglomerate entity created to help the people of our land with normal tasks, and to assist all guests who should journey here, to help them achieve whatever cooperative goals that the Tower and our guests might decide to cooperate upon.”

Erick rapidly got over the fact that they knew who he was. ‘Incognito’ simply didn’t matter with some powers. Erick briefly wondered if Lyra truly hadn’t known who he was, or if she had been pretending.

“I got your message at the Celestial Observatory. The one where you threatened to kill soul shackled people should they speak to me without me coming here first.” Erick’s voice had an edge to it that he couldn’t quite erase, even with all of his experience with dealing with untoward elements like evil necromancers. He was fine with that edge. He purposely tried to be more personable, though, as he said, “I understand that things are done here in Margleknot through slavery and other terrible ways, so I cannot fault you for doing what you have to do to survive. I would hope that you would understand that things do not have to continue to be done the same way, though. In that sort of spirit, I would like to discuss the complete, peaceful transition of all of the Wraithborne Tower to a more good-aligned conglomeration of people, if your people are open to such a thing.”

Without missing a beat, or having any sort of reaction at all to Erick’s larger words, the ghost simply said, “My superiors would love to discuss that with you. Would you like an air wagon to pick you up? Or we could walk to Center, and I could show you some of Tower City along the way? This is the main city of Wraithborne Tower, after all. It is quite impressive, if you ask me. We’re home to 3.2 trillion souls here, and over half of them are alive!”

He said the last part like some sort of inside joke.

Erick wasn’t very jolly right now.

The ghost did not seem to mind that his joke fell flat.

Erick said, “Let’s walk, Tower Ghost.” Erick started walking forward. “I would like to know more about this land, from your perspective. What I read about you is that you’re all about different types of slavery, and I do not approve.”

Tower Ghost floated alongside Erick and a subtle path lit up on the ground, like a white carpet glowing just above the stone underneath, stretching out several meters in a straight line. As Erick walked forward the path in front of him vanished, while further ahead the path materialized. It was a navigation system, obviously, but the end point of the navigation system wasn’t there yet; only the next several meters.

With his senses looking out from all of his body, and not just his eyes, Erick spotted other people using the same sort of navigation system on a street one over from this one, and far, far behind Erick, following this same road that Erick walked.

Tower Ghost said, “I would start from the beginning, if you do not mind. We have a bit of a walk ahead of us, but the fast path will get us there in a decent amount of time.”

Erick nodded.

Tower Ghost continued, “Wraithborne Tower started off as a truly Evil organization, in the classical sense. Elemental Evil was at its core, and we still have that core to this day, in the center of the tower. That is where we have our armies and our defenses and our most malevolent magics. Those malevolent magics include some Malevolent gifts from Nothanganathor, given to us when he was in this land, before he set forth on his plots to erase the Painted Cosmology from existence. His trinkets are the least of our powers, but they are still capable of great, propagating destruction.”

Erick got the sudden, very distinct feeling that he would have to cooperate with these assholes, if only because they surely knew everything that Erick needed to prove in court. He said, “So you believe that he succeeded in destroying the Painted Cosmology.”

“Oh yes. He succeeded. He came in here, looking for help. He received help in exchange for services rendered, primarily with propagation-type magic. And then he went out and killed a universe. Technically, that’s all circumstantial. The Fae Enclave does not accept circumstantial evidence and neither do we. But we understand that circumstantial evidence does exist, and may hide true evidence one way or the other.”

… Yeah.

Erick moved on, “You were saying about the start of the Tower?”

“The tower retains its Evil nature because Good is… Well. We have a saying here. Evil wins because Good is stupid. Or weak. Or soft. There are a thousand variations of this saying, and all of them are true in certain ways. But this is not a true statement at all. We learned this the hard way over many setbacks and full-scale destructions. Once you get too Evil, Good arises to smite you down, so in this way, unchecked Evil, while great for the individual, is not something you can build societies upon. Evil is just as idiotic as good.

“And yet, Evil will always exist, because to be Evil is to be selfish and smart.

“And so: we learned that a proper evil is one that does not seem evil, but one which wears its label with pride and shows how prosperous it can truly be when it is allowed to be prosperous. Those are the evils which stick around. And yet, small evils lead to Big Evils, if evil is allowed to exist without checks.

“And so, to make a long history short, we retain our Evil nature, but we have grown softer in the spread of our power, and ruthlessly crush greater Evils in order to keep our power spreading and growing.

“We don’t kill anyone that we can turn.

“We speak with words instead of actions here on layer 0. Layer 1 is fair game for war and ultimate ends of all kinds, but even there our representatives represent hope for a great many people.

“We rescue people from true death all the time, and only ask that they give back the resources that were used to resurrect them, with interest of course. If they don’t pay their tab then we keep them soul shackled until they do, making many people technically slaves, but not really. If there were a better way to ensure that people don’t just run off into infinity when their bill comes due, then we would love to hear it.

“And we help everyone who comes to our land, as long as they help us, first.

“As for this Nothanganathor issue: we would be your lawyers in this fight if you can pay us more for your prosecution against him than he can pay us for his defense against whatever case you might bring against him. If you do hire us, then everything that he has done under our powers will be revealed to the courts, as his actions would no longer be protected by the Seal of the Tower, because someone else bought him out; namely you.

“Because we are an evil organization, True Wizard Flatt, trying very hard not to be True Evil.

“We support ourselves, and if one of our contractors runs enough afoul of the good powers out there then we give them up for the greater Balance of us all. Nothanganathor seems like he has finally tripped that line.” Tower Ghost added, “We warned him he might fall this way, and it seems he finally has. His Malevolence is a form of mana that is inherently tuned to subterfuge and twisting outcomes to bad ends that favor him. Your counter, Benevolence, is inherently tuned to be powerful, first, and then helping others with the power that you gain yourself. Quite honestly, the Tower believes you are poised to spread far and wide. Nothanganathor has yet to seize the power he has so long wished for, and is likely at a dead end.

“With that sort of understanding, us remaining with Nothanganathor is a losing bet.” The Tower Ghost finished with, “And yet! The Tower always cleaves with those who would deal with us, versus those who would tear us down.”

As the Tower Ghost spoke, Erick followed the path.

He ended up at a wide road that was more ‘entryway to a big business’ than a road. Stone sculptures of men and women and otherwise lined the road, all of them wearing something different, from robes to armor to furs to skins. Little plaques underneath them told how they were to be woken up in case of emergency assault against the tower, and what they would do if woken. There was a guy who would animate the bones inside the bodies of all non-tower residents, causing them to kill their friends and make those people watch from their own eyes as their own hands killed their friends. There was a woman who simply turned people into blood amalgamations, also with the characteristic ‘you get to experience this as you do horrible things’. Another one would simply cause people to turn into voids that would then turn other assailants into voids.

Erick fully believed those plaques, because each stone statue held fascinatingly strong souls within. Each one shone like a beacon in the dark. Even to common eyes, the stone appeared asleep instead of simple stone.

Erick sighed a little, as Tower Ghost’s words ended right as they entered the Stone Parade, as a plaque in the middle named the entryway road. He said, “An impressive collection of evils, Tower Ghost.”

“One cannot be a power without being powerful, so yes, we try to collect everything that could give us an edge in any confrontation.” Tower Ghost said, “As for our Great Evils... We would prefer it if the big threats could remain behind an air of mystery for now, though some threats do need to be openly stated for them to be understood. In that spirit, I must clearly say this: We would go to war against you and Veird, if you cross us. We would drown you in unending misery.”

The air was cold. It smelled like stone.

Erick easily said, “I’m not looking to make permanent enemies right now, nor will I be looking to make permanent enemies in the future. I accept your offer of your complete separation from Nothanganathor and one of your lawyers to assist me against him in an Enclave court, but only if you would consider a complete eventual dismantling of the Evil core of this Tower, and the replacement of a different powerful source at your center, like perhaps Benevolence.” Erick said, “I’m sure you're able to resurrect people right now, but I can do that, too, and make them effectively immortal through Reincarnation, resetting their age and species to whatever I desire. You asked for how to make debts last forever without soul shackles? Then how about simple Reincarnation into less-good forms, without soul control at all. If someone wants their original body back, then you can reincarnate them into that sort of body.” He finished with, “Unless, of course, you already have that knowledge.”

Erick’s Lightning Path was telling him that they didn’t have that knowledge at all, or at least that Erick’s offer was tantalizing in some way.

It was the same problem as the Necromancers on Veird experienced. Surely these people had more resources than simple Elemental Death, but every single one of those Veird Necromancers, including Quilatalap, had been very impressed with how well Benevolence took to soul work, and Benevolence made a lot of established spellwork simply irrelevant.

Tower Ghost betrayed none of the thoughts that Erick knew he was thinking, as he said, “Your counter proposal is taken, and will be deliberated upon. Would you like to speak to someone in charge, instead of the Tower itself?”

Erick looked around and asked, “I see lots of individual towers, but I’m not sure where you are, exactly? I expected to see the base of the Tower when I came through. Not a cityscape.”

“You’re located in city 1-87; one of the many business areas of this land, which many would consider the main one. This is a space about a thousand kilometers wide and with an atmosphere several tens of kilometers tall. Each one of our lands is set next to each other, and then more rings of our main lands extend below this one, forming a multi-layered ring-like system that spins around the base of the tower, up there by the Evil Death Sun.”

The white sun flickered and, like an illusion fading, grey seeped into the world. Color and brightness faded from everyone and everything. The populace all around Erick almost panicked, but then the sky came right back, the grey sun turning white, the sky around it turning blue once again. There were fluffy clouds. Color returned.

Some people on the streets moved faster, opting not to linger around anywhere at all.

Tower Ghost said, “This is the business district upon the first floor. The second floor, below us, is residential. One floor below that is for monsters. All of the true monsters are in our bases around our Evil Death Sun. The actual Wraithborne Tower is more of a private residence now. We can go visit that, if you like, but I would strongly suggest against such an unannounced visit. The Death Emperor does not appreciate uninvited guests.”

“Morbion Blackthorn is the current Death Emperor, yes?”

Tower Ghost said, “As the current Death Emperor, Morbion Blackthorn is the undisputed ruler of the Wraithborne Tower, sitting upon his throne of bones and souls at the Apex of the Tower. We, his lowly servants, pray that we are enough to deal with all of your needs, and that we shall never draw his ire.”

“Sure sure.” Erick asked, “So which evils around Margleknot do you feel should be destroyed?”

“… Uh.”

“Yeah yeah. That’s probably too forward of a relationship right now.” Erick said, “But the Slaver’s Den is much smaller than you guys, right? Only a continent of people? Most of them slaves? How much to buy some propagation spellwork from you guys? I’m thinking of eliminating slavery as a concept. Elemental Vile and Contract? How about Elemental Nope! Eh. I’m playing with you. But not really.”

Tower Ghost looked at Erick, and then softly said, “I. Uh. Must inform you that the Wraithborne Tower has contracts with the Slaver’s Den, the Slaver’s Union, the Slaver’s Pit, and the Slaver’s Ransom.”

“Lotta those places, I think. Too many, by far.” Erick said, “You’re going to have to cut down on most of those evil sorts of contracts if you want to tie your fate to the new universe order.”

“… I feel this conversation has gotten away from me in a way I did not foresee. Could I please take your words to others to make decisions? And get back to you at a later date?”

“Of course, of course.” Erick said, “I hope for good news! I’ve been checking myself and our surroundings all this time, and haven’t noticed anything too untoward. At the beginning you tried to subtly press a Contract-ish ‘walk and talk with me’ magic, but then you noticed it wouldn’t work, and you stopped. I suppose it’s in your nature to attempt to soul shackle everyone though.” Erick added, “You gotta try, right? How many people here have shackles on them? All of them? All 3.2 trillion people? Or just the living ones? I bet all of them, actually.”

Erick’s true hatred probably came out too much.

Wide-eyed and not able to contain his worry anymore, Tower Ghost vanished—

With a flick of his hand, Erick ripped dragon-sized claws of softly-glowing Benevolence through the air, grabbing Tower Ghost back into this space. Erick held the ghost for a moment, setting him down on the ground, and then he let him go. Tower Ghost rapidly abandoned his horror at being brought back so easily. He simply stood, looking like a proper butler waiting for his execution with aplomb.

Erick ignored the statues of Stone Parade turning to face him.

Erick said, “Just because someone tries shit, doesn’t mean that I automatically resort to violence. I don’t like being run away from, though. And now, to make sure I am perfectly clear: I have forgiven lots of people for lots of wrongs, and am very much about second chances, even for the worst evils in any universe. I have certain lines that result in the extermination of my enemies, though. Nothanganathor has crossed all of those. He will not be forgiven. Please do not test my lines yourself, and please accept the Benevolence that has been offered to you in the manner in which it has been gifted, because everything can be made better, even evil.

“And now, I hope I have delivered my own message.” Erick said, “I look forward to having productive conversations with someone in charge, at some later date—”

One of the statues came to life and threw a beam of some sort of Void power at Erick. The spellwork was black at the center and wide as three people, and ringed with Golden, reson-empowered Death.

Erick stood there and took it.

He split some of his attention to watch his Status, to see tens of thousands of Mana, Health, and Psyche flake away from his body. It wasn’t a large drain. The Golden Death Void also obliterated the ground and everything beyond Erick, though, carving a hole through the floor and then to the next floor and the next. Erick was in no danger. He wasn’t even activating Mana Siphon yet.

So that’s what he did.

The spell beam broke upon Erick’s glowing white sunform, soaking into his body, attempting to claw its way through his Mana Siphon and into his very core. It didn’t even get past his surface protections. The Gold Death Void was like ink trying to flow up a river of lightning.

Erick consumed that spellwork through Renew turning mana into more power, and even his [Reson Wallet] started to flicker upward, increasing that particular number of his Status by several points per second, as he absorbed the resons inside the Golden Death Void.

Erick made a show of ignoring the Golden Death Void. He turned and gazed down the hole that the black beam had created. “That goes down pretty far. I hope you’re not open to space down there? Seems you might be, though. Well I certainly didn’t kill your own people. That’s on you.”

The Golden Death Void mage continued to thrum power at Erick, snarling and roaring, his stone flesh turning to real flesh with every passing moment, his black beam turning thicker and denser with emptiness. Void was usually a very difficult attack to do anything against. That’s why Quilatalap used Void in his most dangerous spells. This particular magic didn’t appear that difficult for Erick right now. The guy was either furious that Erick was able to stand inside the beam —and sure, that was happening— but it seemed like he might just be insane. A sacrificial pawn, then? All he was doing was spilling out power, unable to do anything else.

Welp!

No one better to test this next magic against than him.

Erick flashed, lightning stepping to the stone statue’s side, surrounding him with his sunform and shutting down his spellwork.

And then he hit the Golden Death Void mage with a reson-empowered [Reincarnation]—

- - - -

Erick stood on a field of desiccated bodies. The sky was red with two dark suns. The air was dry enough to kill, and the mountainous horizon crumbled in that dryness.

A man stood four meters away. He looked like the man who had been a statue, who had become a snarling madman, who was now transitioning to someone else.

Erick asked, “I assume you’re Derock Caver, from the statue. That was the name on the plaque below your stone prison.”

The man stared at the sky. He looked at his hands. “… I think I was Derock for a long time, long ago, before the Contracts and the ensorcellments, and the duty.” The man flexed his hands and dried blood flaked away. “I haven’t been Derock in a long time. I don’t want to be him anymore. I feel… free of the constant hate.”

“Got any requests?”

“… A loving family and hardly any death— Water. Nice, clean, deep water. Big enough to swim in.” Derock smiled. “I want to teach my sons and daughters how to swim.”

“And so you shall.”

Lightning flashed out of the red sky and struck Derock.

The man who had been Derock was gone.

- - - -

Erick came back to himself.

Lightning finished striking a pedestal that held a man who had become a weapon, and who was not that anymore. Mosses and flowers grew from the pedestal.

Erick flashed with Benevolence, crafting himself some fake clothes for now. And then he turned back to the conglomerate mass of souls that was the Wraithborne Tower. The ghost stared hard, accepting whatever was going to happen to him.

But nothing was going to happen right now.

Erick said. “I’m not sure where Derock is anymore. He’s certainly not under your control. I assume this was enough proof of power for your needs?”

Tower Ghost said, “It was more than sufficient.”

Erick nodded. “Yggdrasil. Portal somewhere else, please.” A swirling portal opened up on to black crystal streets, and Erick said to Tower Ghost, “I look forward to a peaceful changeover of power, or at least something indicative of smaller, productive changes, for now.”

And then he walked away.

- - - -

Morbion Blackthorn, Emperor of The Wraithborne Tower, stood behind a window in the public offices of the Tower Itself, at the top of the building at the end of the Stone Parade. He watched as the Wizard of Benevolence walked through a Margleknot portal. The portal closed behind him.

Morbion had… concerns.

A few of his primes, sitting behind him at the war table, also had concerns. From the Skeleton Prime, to the Soul Prime, to the Officer of Paper and the Prime of Future Projects, not a single person in the room looked sure of themselves. Every one of them had been secure in their place in the Tower and in Margleknot last year. Morbion had been guiding the Tower towards true prosperity, anchoring the Evil side of the Balance, suborning all others who dared to encroach upon his people or his power.

For the last 7,500 years, the Wraithborne Tower had been gaining strength and influence through accepting that they could not have everything, though Morbion still wanted everything. Every world, every nexus, every Power, all under his black fist, or at least allowing him to put a pinky on any scale he wished to weigh upon. It was the softer way, and it was working well. Even the Celestial Observatory, their largest foe, had fallen to them, to their softer powers. Or at least they pretended. That was enough for now.

And then here comes the new Father of Margleknot, a man who could erase the shackles upon their strongest tools and rip those tools from the Tower in a miracle instant.

Tower Ghost appeared out of the floor, already kneeling. He waited for acknowledgement.

Morbion said, “Speak your assessment, Tower.”

“Apologies, Emperor. He saw through everything.”

“Well of course he did.” Morbion asked, “Have we tracked down wherever Derock went?”

Tower Ghost said, “No. The man who had been Derock vanished through a slip of Benevolence, entering into the Margleknot tangle, whereupon he vanished from all tracking. That’s as far as our systems have been able to detect. The shackles upon his soul were completely removed. Even the reson-empowered ones that should have remained through everything. The Witches At The Board are attempting to prognosticate Derock’s destination but they have already expressed doubts that such a thing is possible. They will, of course, continue to attempt to divine his fall, should you desire it.”

Morbion sighed at that. “It takes a special sort of person to make a Reincarnation that good. None of us have managed it, and the Good-aligned places don’t touch soul magic that well at all. It appears Ascended Flatt’s Truth is the real deal, and that he is open to true cooperation.”

Tower Ghost said nothing.

Morbion turned to his people and declared, “Ignore the Reincarnation fall. Set Pernicious and the Witches on discovering the viability of realigning the Tower with Benevolence; what needs to go, what can we keep, what can we gain. Draw up tentative plans for conquering all of Margleknot through Benevolence; I want a full battleplan. Set the Magic Finders on the Reincarnation we witnessed; I want to understand why his Reincarnation was able to do what it did. Was it simple reson magic? Or was it something more explainable? Get the Culture Bureau on propaganda proposals for adjusting our culture to Benevolence, while the Mindfulness Bureau determines how our people would react to this change-of-base, and who we would need to eliminate or adjust to make it smooth. Ask the Old Liches if they would support this action. Erick would probably give them Reincarnations if we asked him for that as a part of any sort of agreement. Kakalakot and Odarimisu would be willing for a Reincarnation, unless things changed for them. Ask their opinions.”

Tower Ghost vanished.

The Primes and Officers began debating everything.

Morbion sat down at the head of the table as he thought over Erick’s words and listened to his people debate a ‘new universal order’. Gradually, inexorably, the conversation turned confused and solid and angry.

And then Witch Agatha gave word to what everyone was thinking. “Emperor Morbion. I am able to shift paths as much as any witch, but the fact is that we are built upon Evil and we cannot adjust certain inalienable facts of our nation, like the Susurrus of Souls, the Grand Bindings, and the Call of Death. Breaking any of those would open us up to complete anarchy. Our entire empire would come crashing down on every front where we hold power through shackles, or softer powers.”

Morbion said, “I agree. And I also doubt that Ascended Flatt would be willing to give us his Reincarnation magic and then spread that power in corruptive ways for our own gain. I still want the battle plans drawn up in case this thing should somehow turn out viable.” He said, “It is quite possible that we could be both Evil and Benevolent at the same time, and in doing do, find a form of Benevolence that solidifies everything we’ve already done while allowing us to ally with Ascended Flatt in a solid, undeniable sort of way. That is something that I might consider replacing as our core. The Fire World and the Ice Tundra do very well as Balanced powers. We could, theoretically, be Balanced, and step out of this Balance War.”

The gathering turned less confused at that.

Witch Agatha thoughtfully said, “I will get the Witches working on Evil Benevolence… though I must say right now that I doubt such a thing is possible under normal circumstances. We would have to implement Fate magic upon worlds and hope that such a being would naturally arise… And yet, if such a thing were to happen, then the same thing might happen to us that is going to happen to Nothanganathor.”

“Ah!” Morbion pretended to remember that issue. “Yes.” He lifted his chin. “Someone send some lawyer to Erick for that matter. Help him clear away Nothanganathor to his satisfaction. Perhaps Blighter? Unless he’s busy.”

Lawyer Prime, Hadrago, said, “Blighter is currently trying a case in the Enclave. He’s drawing it out for a better conclusion. He would want to be on this case, though, and could easily end that case in our client’s favor at any moment. If he decides not then I can send his understudy. I would want Blighter and his understudy to be involved in this case, if Flatt would agree to such a thing, but he did say ‘one person’. I felt he meant that.”

“Push that line; send both Blighter and the other person,” Morbion commanded.

Hadrago bowed in his seat, and then he started typing away at his tablet.

As his people spoke, Morbion imagined a few different ways to assassinate Erick… That would probably not work out too well. They couldn’t simply kill him, first of all. That would break the Balance too much and cause a universal backlash against the Wraithborne Tower. Such a backlash would instantly go to Total War and likely end in the decoupling of the Tower from Margleknot…

Decoupling from Margleknot wouldn’t be that bad of an outcome, at first, except that it would open them up to being Outside the Balance, on Layer 1, and thus free game for anyone who wished to go to war for any reason at all. Such an outcome would completely ruin Morbion’s goal of total control of Margleknot and thus the universe, so that would be reason enough to avoid that outcome.

Morbion listened to his people debate and talk, while he made plans for the future of them all.

Some of them brought up rather good points and Morbion added those points to his own thoughts.

- - - -

Erick had spent a moment in the Black Crystal District, but then he moved on. He stepped through a portal onto the grasses outside of his house—

Resons started to generate from his skin, crystallizing like sweat, and then crusting outward like amber diamonds. He discarded his clothes and then used his aura to control where the resons fell from him. Instead of piling against his skin, resons sloughed off the air around him in continuous sheets of sparkling gold crystal. He checked his Status.

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 47.3m per day / 547.45 per second , [Darkness Level = 3.19x Ascension baseline]

Body: 212

Mind: 317

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+498, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.5m/∞, ↑ [+167, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.5m/∞, ↑ [+164, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.5m/∞, ↑ [+164, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 37,017 [+49.23 = +5.47]

Erick watched resons fall in sheets out of the air, as he said, “So my Darkness went up… a lot. Thus the reson expulsion... and it appears my Stats are going up, too.”

… Maybe they would stabilize at a new, higher level?

Erick watched gold fall from the air around him for a while, just to see what would happen.

He had a lot to think about regarding that confrontation back there.

Erick decided he would forgive the assassination attempt. Any real attacks against him were unforgivable, but a simple ‘see if he can back up his claims of power’ sort of attack? Sure. Reasonable, even. He had probably put too much pressure on them, so of course they were going to test him…

Honestly, he should lower his scope.

He wasn’t going to change the universe. He wanted to save Veird. Margleknot and all of this stuff? This could be a long term goal. The more important goal would be saving Veird.

And besides that, if Erick pushed too hard with any of the forces around here they would push back hard. If the Wraithborne Tower actually decided to try and kill him it wouldn’t be with some half-crazed stone-locked killer…

Erick laid back on the grass

Erick looked to the sun-filled sky and wondered at Derock’s new life.

“Hopefully it’s somewhere nice, with lots of water.”

… Erick went for a swim in his own lake. It was delightfully refreshing.