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“Would you say that Da’luwe is representative of the overall nature of the Wraithborne Tower?” Erick asked.

The city administrator, who was an ancient crone of a woman with long, white hair and one good eye, said, “No. Many places are far less kind. The slave ways, for instance, are among the worst locations for the individual among all of the ‘verses. People are chopped up and sent along the path to be resold as goods and services for others down the line who don’t want to do the chopping and mutating themselves.”

Her name was Vondria Irons, and her soul was barely there among her body. She had stitched herself together in a hundred small ways, keeping her existence going long after she should have perished. Erick counted at least five major ways in which she was falling apart.

Her brain was half technology, firing with sparks of some density that Erick didn’t know, but which he suspected was some sort of mind expanding magics or power that allowed her to hold onto distant memories. Blue light filled what might have been mana veins inside her body, but which looked a whole lot more like circuitry, with lines that were too straight to be wholly biological. She had something going on with the insides of her bones that may or may not have been some sort of nanomachine thing, but it was too small to see without proper imaging and it seemed to cloud Erick’s mana senses, as though it was inimical to mana. Her heart was doubled, the second heart pumping in time to the original, central heart, and her liver was some sort of symbiotic organism with a completely different soul than Vondria’s own.

Other than those internal things, Vondira was an old, heavily wrinkled woman, with a hardness to her eyes that well-matched her last name of ‘Irons’.

“You would count Da’luwe as kind?” Erick asked.

“Aye. I would. Eldawae doesn’t give a shit about this place as long as the numbers are meagerly positive and he can have his peaceful view of the Endless, and occasionally flex his magic to destroy great swaths of uppity tyrants. We got it pretty good here.”

“… When you say ‘meagerly positive’ and ‘destroy tyrants’ and ‘view of the Endless’... If this place were to improve to be highly profitable, all tyrants were to be eradicated, and the Endless turned into lush green land, what would happen?”

Vondria grinned, showing off teeth that were only in her gums because she had technology making sure her teeth remained in working order. “I don’t know! It’s never happened before. I’d like to see it happen. I’d like to see a land where people don’t fight over drops of water, and the cost to get to Layer 0 wasn’t so huge.”

“I gotta say, Vondria, I wasn’t expecting you to badmouth your boss so much.”

“If you give me the power to overthrow him, I will do it. But that won’t happen for a number of reasons. First, you’re not sticking around, which means: Second, we need Eldawae to keep us safe from the true forces out there because: Third, we’re a safe haven in Layer 1 for all who come by, and there are a lot of people who come by because the Tower represents safety. Honestly, if your gifts of power work in my favor, I’ll try to keep Eldawae happy however he wants to be happy as well as institute new measures to expand the bounty of this land. I fully expect with a changed attitude in life that I would want to actually help those evil fuckers out there, and with enough power I’ll actually be able to do that.” Vondria said, “But we get the most Evil sorts of people here, Ascended Flatt. We’re at the bottom of Layer 1. If someone fucks up bad enough to get sent deep enough, to here, then they’ll come in and fuck up everything you try to do, while the strongest of us hide and wait out the storm as Eldawae kills and enslaves those tyrants and makes them into ghosts, or sends them on their way.”

Erick thought.

He said, “I’d like to have the names of the worst offenders in the inmate population right now. Those would be the ones I remove from this land.”

“And you shall have it.” Vondria said, “The only thing I ask of you is for you to review the production logs and to attempt to keep our production positive.”

“I’ve seen the logs. You all make 750,000 resons per day, at a cost of 700,000 resons per day. I wonder if those are the true numbers, though, because with those Benevolence towers out there you should have been making a lot more than that.”

“Only those who are Contracted to the Tower produce any resources. The mana of the Darkness-wrought life you created out there does not pay any bills.”

Erick looked at her. She wasn’t lying. Not really—

“We do capture the mana they made, and the water created,” Vondria said, without the barest of breaks in her outflow of words. “But more water than mana. Your systems are rather solidly made, Ascended Flatt. The only real resources we’ve gotten from your systems would be the mana made by subsequent life outside of the towers, and the water created by the copy machines. The mana produced inside the towers seems to remain inside the towers, though. This does decrease our bottom line, but not much right now.”

She left it there.

Erick got the distinct impression that Vondria didn’t have to watch her words around Eldawae at all, which is why she had been so easily willing to speak a half-truth to Erick. She was simply unpracticed with courtly intrigue, which… well. Good for her? It spoke well of Eldawae that his people were so easy with their words. That meant that the intrigue that happened around here wasn’t that deep. There weren’t many courtiers here in Da’luwe as far as Erick could tell. Eldawae might have been the only one.

This was probably on purpose.

Erick stood up. “I’ll speak more later.”

- - - -

Erick was in the third interview with a third city guard, and aside from individual reasons and individual ideas of what needed to be done, he was just like the other two in every way that mattered. They were also similar to Vondria, in that they had little patience or virtue in the courtly arts.

Kylychbech shot his hands into the air, yelling, “I don’t know what to fucking tell you to get you to intervene! Those fuckers in fifth section are set to run over the defenses of the outer rim of that new city by the inmate tower and do exactly to that land that they did to three others!” He scowled, pacing, saying, “You have power! Go out and fucking USE IT! Or use me to enact your will! Eldawae said that if I got dragon’d that he’d let me go end that fucking threat— My mother is in that inmate tower town, sir! I’m about ready to commit treason to go out and save the bitch! She won’t even fucking care if I killed myself to save her fucking bitch ass, but I still gotta do it!”

Erick had heard more than enough. “I appreciate your candor. I got some more interviews to go, then I’m going to go solve that warfront problem. From what I saw the marauders still had hours to reach the inmate tower.”

Kylychbech looked stunned. He collapsed to his knees. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Erick left for the last set of interviews.

- - - -

Erick stood in an open courtyard beside the large wall of the inner city.

Four ghostly beings stood halfway out of the wall, their forms indistinct here and there, but they were intelligible enough to understand. One of them was a traditional dragon who had given his name as ‘Solid Sky’. The others hadn’t wanted to give names.

Solid Sky spoke with a whisper, “I was born in a land of green and blue in a time far from time. I was cast to this land by the cursed fae. The land grows and I want to see it grow more. That is all I need to tell you.”

The flaming bedsheet said, “The desecrators must be desecrated themselves.”

The amalgamation of arms and eyes, said, “Rip and tear those who would rip and tear, Ascended. Water the land with their blood! Let new death fuel new growth.”

A being of faint light, barely visible in the air, whispered, “The Endless consumes and we are forever on the precipice of falling deeper into the maw. Too deep to ever escape. Too far gone to ever come back. We struggle. We survive. I would have us thrive. You have given us a lifeline. Wings to soar out of the depths, and into the light! Secure your power through my soul, Ascended Flatt. Use me for the betterment of our lands!”

The dragon bowed. The ghost bowed. The amalgamation bowed. The person of light bowed, kneeling before Erick, showing themselves as a person-shaped sexless existence.

Erick said, “I’ll be back.”

And then he flew away, into the sky, headed toward the inmate tower.

The ghosts watched him go and then they spoke amongst themselves as they faded into the wall once again, asking each other if that went well, or not. Solid Sky spoke of how there was no way to truly tell. Erick was too chaotic to read.

- - - -

The warfront was getting ready for war and Erick hovered high above like invisible and intangible light.

The inmates of the Benevolence tower were to the west, while the marauders were to the east.

Or at least those were the directions that Erick was calling ‘west’ and ‘east’, since there was no real north, south, east, or west out here as far as Erick could see.

… And yet. Hmm. That thought prompted him to actually test that theory by making a little container of water, a floaty bit, and a magnetized bit of metal to sit on top of the floaty bit. The magnet pointed at him, for some weird reason. Erick dismissed the compass, opting to figure that mystery out some other day.

And he looked to the warfront.

The war looked to be fought with sticks and blades, for not a single person down there had spellwork going around them at all. That would be because of the manaminer of Da’luwe, for sure. Perhaps some of the people down there had been true persons of arcane might, but they had been laid low in the enactment of disastrous Contract spells, and now they either hid out in the back lines making dinner out of sand rats and grasses, or they learned to pick up a sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with allies-of-convenience.

The armies were only a few hundred strong on the Benevolence front, but they were the real warriors of the Benevolence town. They had the best equipment and the best weapons. Or at least they looked the part, with those shiny bits.

The marauders were 15,000 strong, but they carried their entire civilization on their backs, with almost everyone there being… Well. Strong-looking men, mostly using sticks fashioned from trees that had grown in the towers. So. Great job, Erick. Arming them for this war. Fun times. Anyway. The demographics of Da'luwe were pretty skewed. Most people here were elven or human or orc or generally bipedal-shaped men, but there were some outliers here and there.

One of those outliers was a woman with four white wings hovering behind her back. She flew forward, ahead of the marauders, carrying a flag of red on black. It was a black bolt of lightning. She was flying to speak to a man who was walking out of the lineup from the Benevolence tower.

That man walking forward wore a light purple outfit. It wasn’t Nilton, for Nilton was far behind the frontlines, watching this all happen from atop a watch tower with a pair of binoculars as he spoke into a walkie-talkie, or something like that. There was technology everywhere, apparently, which was really quite odd for Erick to see since he had been without tech for a long time. Some guys down there even had gun-like things.

The marauders looked like they had a whole contingent of riflemen, each of them holding onto homemade metal tubes with sparkly bits to them.

Erick wondered at their range.

And then he wondered what sort of technology he should import to Veird when he got back to Layer 0, and solved this Fae Enclave nonsense…

They wanted him to kill things to prove his power, right?

Erick looked down at some ‘armies’ that could be considered a ‘proof of power’? Maybe? Of course the Enclave would just say, ‘they were weaklings, go have another challenge’. So Erick would have to do something… special.

Erick hummed.

… He had a solution, there. But...

… Hmm.

Yeah.

It was a good solution.

Kinda extreme.

No better place to test it out than here, though. It would have a lot of moving parts. It would be a great solution to this whole Da’luwe issue. They’d keep their production… Hmm.

Anyway.

As Erick toyed with that solution in his mind, he listened to the representatives of both groups meet and speak to each other.

“Greetings,” said the mouthpiece for Nilton.

“Death to you and yours,” said the not-angel woman, in a way that was so easily given and without rancor that Erick imagined it was a common greeting for her, for whatever weird reason.

“As much of a witch as ever, Totte.”

“As much of a murderous bastard as always, Peten.” Totte said, “Give us access to this tower or we burn it down.”

“Try it and die, yet again.”

“I seem to recall chopping off your head before you blew the fail safes and destroyed the last four towers. I bet you’d die again this time.”

“This tower is rigged to blow this time, too.” Peten said, “Maybe you’ll believe us this time when we tell you that you cannot have it.”

“If I can’t, then you can’t either.” Totte said, “This time we’ll pursue your deaths until you’re so deep in debt that you get dusted, your soul forever bound to Wraithborne.”

“Yet another empty threat. That’s all you’re good for. Here’s a real one for you, crafted by your betters, so you might learn the difference: We’ve got half a million resons in reserve. We’ll pay to triple your debts and then live fine while you’re dusted. Or. You can go away and buy from us, like we offered. We’re the kings. You’re the slaves. So either be good slaves or get stomped from on high. We have the resources to fuck you over quite well and you have nothing.”

Totte raged at that answer, cursing at the man, her flag transforming from wood and cloth into a long glaive as she beheaded Peten right then and there.

Peten just smiled, even as his head fell to the ground. He looked truly happy as his body turned to dust and his soul flowed away into the sands, headed elsewhere.

A small part of Erick wondered if Peten was so secure in his victory-in-death because he had come back a few times already. The majority of Erick was somewhat furious at Totte for not playing along at Nilton’s conquest, for pursuing a path that was bound to end in nothing for anyone. And then Erick grew mad at Nilton on Totte’s behalf. Blowing up places he had lost? Terrible form.

Erick’s anger was a quiet anger. The calm before the storm.

The storm built as fast as war broke out all across two kilometers of space between the tower defenders, and the marauders. Rifles fired metal balls that cracked wooden shields and sprayed blood into the air. Swords flashed at limbs, cutting and severing. People roared. Some marauders flew to the sky, having powers of flight that were not mana or reson-based or able to be stolen by the manaminer of Da’luwe. One marauder fired bright red lasers from his eyes. A man in black on the tower defenders’s side opened up holes in the world that swallowed all flying objects with absolute precision. Totte screamed, disrupting everything around her as she flew forward, her glaive leading the way.

And now Erick was mad.

He stared down a Lightning Path. He saw many different ways to remake the world.

He could talk to them all / They weren’t willing to talk.

He could force a compromise / [Reincarnation] could only do so much without oversight to keep people from reverting.

He could build a tower for the marauders on the other side of Da’luwe / And thus begins a different sort of war.

He could separate this war right now / And put off the problem for another day.

In his flight over here, and after getting some dossiers on the major actors of this warfront, he had considered transforming some of those major actors into Benevolence dragons at best, or maybe trying to work out some Empathying magic again. Erick didn’t actually have his Empathy magic anymore, because he had used that up to make the Crystal Star, and then the Crystal Star had moved on, back into the hands of Koyabez’s Church, and Erick had been granted the [Blessing of Empathy] spell from Koyabez, renewed automatically every time he used it. But that spell was from Koyabez, and it didn’t transfer over with him when he left the Script.

He could have made his [Blessing of Empathy] again; he was absolutely sure.

And yet, leaving behind that soul twisting magic had been kinda nice. Once that particular weapon was out of Erick’s hands, it had been like laying down a bloody and effective knife; it had been cleansing.

And besides that, Erick still had lots of ways to make people more empathetic. Kinder ways. Fresher ways.

That’s what Erick focused on now.

He focused on his Lightning Path as it stretched out from him, down into the center of the battlefield and stretched out in every direction, touching everyone on the field and arcing all the way into the Benevolence Tower town, and beyond. At the same time, a spell in Erick’s core vibrated with need. With Erick’s own desire.

As warriors killed warriors, and souls vanished into the sands, the Lightning Path coalesced.

Not five minutes ago a barely-conceived solution to the problem of war among the inmates had presented itself to Erick. Now, that solution proved as easy to walk as the Path.

Erick’s Benevolence laced his words as he spoke with mana and resons,

“In thunderous words, these strifes I mend.

“With proven power, a path’s creation

“pierce hardened hearts to gently bend.

“To distant shores! To tranquil stations.

“These souls released, on love we send

“down life's grand cycles; a Grand Reincarnation.”

A lot of things happened all at once.

The spell did not take just from Erick’s Mana. It took from his Health and Psyche, too.

White Benevolence arced down from all of Erick’s Everything, into the center of the battlefield where it split and hit Totte and the man she had just killed, ripping both of their souls out of their bodies and ashing what was left. The ash rapidly turned to plants. The lightning did not stop. It continued right down both sides of the conflict, hitting people in the heart, or head, or leg, and then traveling out the other side, where it split again, and arced further.

That lightning then flowed into the sky, worming through cracks in reality here and there like it was struggling to escape, but escape it did.

Erick’s body automagically created the magic he had done, marking it down as a Benevolence crystal inside his soul, and words popped up. Erick had not consciously done that. He had been prepared to do that, but he had not actually done that.

Grand Reincarnation, instant, special range, 500/500/500/100 resources/resons per target

Bestow bountiful existences upon a set of targets.

May those so touched by your power forever find themselves on a Benevolent Path.

May their new forms fit them better than the ones that came before.

For some reason the ‘spell creation message’ wasn’t there, which was fine. That was marginally less concerning than the fact that the spell had made itself into a pressable ‘button’. At least the spell cost went down from 5,000 per person, to 500 Mana, Health, and Psyche. Probably because Erick had no control at all over any part of this spell. People were getting put into the multiverse left and right, zapping away to Fractal or Darkness knew where, being placed in bodies that Erick had no control over at all.

Hopefully the people had some control over the spell themselves.

That’s how it felt to Erick, at least, as Benevolent Lightning lashed out at soldier and warrior and scared mother and dying father and killer and genocider and tyrant and murderer and slave and master and—

Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation] continued far beyond the battlefield, his mana resources dropping disastrously fast while his resons went a fifth as quick. He had had nearly 500m each in Mana, Health, and Psyche, and 15m resons due to all the time he had spent flying through the Endless.

But 475,000 inmates of Da’luwe and 50,000 residents added up fast.

The first hundred million Mana, Health, and Psyche went faster than all the rest, and there also seemed to be a precipitous drop in resons that was a lot larger than the cost should have been in the beginning. That probably had to do with the power that was necessary to get out of Layer 1; it couldn’t be a trap layer if leaving it was a normal affair.

Lightning arced through the entire battlefield below and where it took people, it left plants in the aftermath.

Some people defended themselves and the spell went around them, only to strike from behind. The lightning ran up swords, into hands and then souls. The lightning pushed through small magics here and there as if they were nothing. Most everyone was defenseless. Most people had no idea they were moving on until Erick moved them on, forcibly.

Those that were taken were turned to Lightning themselves to vanish into Elsewhere.

The battlefield was no longer a place of war at all. It was a small forest.

And still, the Lightning sang through Erick, turning into a soft torrent of light when it had no one to hit right away. The light washed out into the surroundings. It gathered into bolts once again when it found a target, which were the 50 meter tall flesh golems who were guarding villages that no longer had people because the Lightning had already taken them away. Giant golems became moss-covered stone before the Lightning moved on.

Almost every resident of the inmate Benevolence Tower town vanished in a sweep of Benevolence.

That sweep continued outward to the walls where it danced through the spellwork of the Obsidian Knife Wall, striking out at the guardian flesh golems here and there and evaporating even more towns of inmates, leaving behind moss and grasses and flowers and trees.

The spellwork crashed into the center city of Da’luwe, trying to transcend every mortal and chained undead living under the lich into Lightning that vanished into the sky. Half of the central walls of the city were turned to nothing, but power rang out from the grand hall in the middle, Evil Death pulsing outward to rebuff the Benevolent Lightning, like a sudden shield of killing intent.

In a scant minute, maybe less, the spellwork fountaining out of Erick stopped flowing nearly as fast, or as deep. The flow cut. Erick sagged in the sky. He had never felt tired ever since his ascension. Not truly. But now he felt tired.

And people remained everywhere.

Not many. Maybe only 1%. One out of a hundred? No. Erick looked around. Less than that. A lot less. Of the 15,000-ish marauders and the 20,000-ish in the Benevolence Tower Town, there were maybe 30 people total. They all had ‘spellwork’ around them, too. Not real mana spellwork. The black disk guy had survived. Nilton and his guard, standing on top of an observation tower, had survived due to the guard having some sort of [Force Cube] magic. A marauder with a bunch of feathers in his hair had survived—

Well.

Not ‘survived’, but rather ‘refused to escape’. Even if what Erick had done had looked rather sinister, anyone listening to his words —which had been everyone there— would have known it had been a gift.

Erick smirked.

He had just committed a very large prison break. He felt kinda funny about that. Kinda nice—

Eldawae’s words boomed out of the sky.

“Please come speak with me, Ascended Flatt. I would have calm words.”

“Whoops!” Erick said to himself, feeling kinda giddy. Giddy giddy! Okay. Erick took a moment to calm, because he was way too happy about helping all these people all at once just like that— Erick breathed. He calmed. He shouted back with the entire sky, briefly filling the world with lightning, “Be right there soon!” Thunder rolled under a clear blue sky. Erick turned back to the battlefield down below, to the tower where Nilton and his guard looked terrified, saying, “You and I will be talking right now.”

Nilton told his guard to escape.

The guard did exactly that, rushing down the ladder of the tower and then picking his way through the growing forest as fast as he could. He tripped over a downed tree. The land here wasn’t very stable, after all. It was all sand and bare dirt. All this plant life would need to die and become part of the sand to even begin to be useful for growing more life.

Erick floated in front of Nilton’s tower, saying, “You should have accepted the reincarnation. You could already be on your way to realizing that sundering souls for personal wealth is a terrible business model.”

Nilton brushed past Erick’s concern, saying, “My man acted on instinct. I have already forgiven him. I’ll take a personal reincarnation, though.”

“Done.”

Nilton rapidly held out a mutative, corruptive treasure in his hand, trying to intercept the lightning, but he had not been fast enough, nor had the artifact been corruptive enough. A bolt of Benevolence came out of the clear blue sky, disintegrated the corruption, and entered—

- - - -

Erick stood with a nude Nilton on the shore of a beach near a gleaming silver city where cars flew in lanes in the sky. Nilton looked around and rapidly shifted from con artist planning on taking as much as he could get from Erick, to a man who had seen true hope for the first time in his life.

This was his home world. That much was easy to see.

A moment passed in calm silence. Some bugs chirped in trees. Gold fish flickered in the waters beyond the beach.

And Nilton stared at everything, whispering, “I never expected to make it back.”

“You’re not back yet and you know I won’t let a user-of-people back into the greater world.” Erick spoke, “Choose your fate, Nilton.”

With sudden tears flowing, he said, “I want to be loved.”

“You get what you give.”

- - - -

—before leaving in a flash of white, sailing back above, the white lightning taking away Nilton and then vanishing. As the lightning passed it looked like a crack in the sky healing over, to solid blue at the horizons, to the imagery of Margleknot high, high overhead.

Erick knew that Nilton would be a source of true power wherever he needed to be, but it wouldn’t be like before where he used everyone around him for his own gain. His personal Truth had been ‘all for me’ according to Vondria, the city administrator of Da’luwe. Erick knew he had shifted Nilton’s truth into something a lot more Benevolent. He’d still use people, of course, but he’d give them a lot in order to gain for himself. That would be how he would eventually Ascend, for sure.

If he managed to do that himself.

Erick wished him well, even if he probably shouldn’t. Nilton was a tyrant. He sundered people. He used people. Erick hadn’t Empathy’d him. Not wholly, anyway. Not directly.

The important thing was two things: that Nilton was out of Da’luwe, and thus not able to afflict this land with his presence anymore, and that he had a chance to start over with a better Truth that would help instead of harm.

Erick moved on.

He decided not to hunt down every single person who had failed to accept his [Grand Reincarnation].

He went toward the ruined Benevolence Towers instead. It wasn’t nearly as difficult to repair what had been broken as it had been to create what did not exist in the first place.

A mere 5 hours after starting that repair project, Erick had some [Terraforming]s, node networks, and [Undertow Star]s, all working together to create new life once again inside every tower. What had been burned and exploded became mulch for the next generation.

Life went on.

When Erick was finished with that, he made a billboard out of wood with some writing on it and some illustrative diagrams, and then he copied that billboard and stuck those copies into the ground near every large settlement within Da’luwe’s protected area. The billboard had an image of lightning-like arrows vanishing up and away from the desert, and the same message in 20 different languages, ‘Your fellow inmates have been sent into new bodies and new lives all across the multiverse. I doubt any of them ended up in the same spot at all. You defended yourself and thus the lightning did not take you. If you wish to go on to your next, hopefully happy lives, then come out of hiding and walk toward the center city. I will be removing all Wraithborn Contracts from people, too, if that is what you desire instead. Or, if you want a new body, I can do that, too. I will be checking for travelers in the next few days.’

And then Erick went to the central city.

- - - -

The center of Da’luwe was a ghost town more in the figurative sense than the literal sense. But maybe, Erick considered, in the literal, Earth-type sense, too.

There weren’t any people left in this land. Pools held no swimmers. Charcoal sizzled in the sun on grills that had no burger flippers. Pancakes dried in the open air, and books lay where their readers had dropped them. Those readers, and much of the city, now sported new green growth, from moss to grasses to flowers and even a few trees here and there. Three nice palms now waved in the breeze high above the roofs in the main part of town. There were even a few tall oaks, or elms, or whatever other exotic name that people might have for a few of the more traditional trees, poking up between buildings here and there.

And then there was the destruction.

Ghost anchors, or whatever they were called, were a part of the city itself. A wall here. A pillar there. A piece of that road. The stone beside the capstone in that arch. Half of that house. Those pieces were gone and the city had fallen in their absence. It was half of a ruin, all black and broken and dead. Some of that could be repaired, of course, but not easily. Not by the people here, according to what Erick had seen of the power level of these people.

This may be a part of Margleknot, at the ‘center’ of the universe, but most people were mortals here, too, and the mortals of Veird would wipe the floor with many of the mortals of this land.

Erick decided he would offer to fix the structural damage to appease Eldawae—

Oh! Looked like some ghosts survived.

Erick spied the ghosts of the wall of the center of the city as they reached out of that wall to spy on him as he passed overhead. None of them tried anything… They looked at him a lot, though.

Erick paused his flight since Eldawae wasn’t in the courtyard right now. He was probably under the main dome, but those doors were shut. Erick could still see past them, though. Mostly. Mana sensing around here was a lot more difficult than the last time. Ethereal blind-spots crowded out much of the land.

Eldawae looked to be waiting for Erick upon the center stage under the center dome. He was in his original body; the one that looked like a 3-meter-tall sexless elf with black bones poking out of dried flesh, adorned in a black, see-through shawl.

But the main doors were shut.

So Erick turned toward the ghosts in the main wall. Solid Sky the dragon was there, along with the person of light. The bedsheet and the amalgamation were gone.

Erick set down on the black stone inside the wall, directly beside the ghost dragon and light-being. “Your friends have moved on in the [Grand Reincarnation]. Do you want to move on to another life? You’ll be able to retain your memories but none of your power, and your Truth will likely change to something more positive and creative… Unless you already had a positive and creative Truth. Truthfully, I’m not sure what happens after a reson-empowered [Reincarnation].”

Solid Sky and the light person both seemed one hard decision away from trying to harm Erick. The only thing holding them back was that they knew they could do nothing. They were still going to try, though.

The light person had streaks of grey running down where their eyes might have been if they were a physical person. With rage held in check, they tried to be calm as they asked, “Why did you do this? Take our people from us?”

“Which ones? The inmates who were only here due to a soul shackling system that caused them to be inmates in the first place? Or the residents of this town, born to inmates and thrust into a life of nothing? Or the amalgamation ghost and the bedsheet ghost?”

“Yes,” spoke Solid Sky, and the light person.

Then Solid Sky said, “We’re all prisoners, but we’re all still here and family.”

Light person said, “Where did you take them? Totte and Alowathoki and Bern and Loro and— And all of them?!”

“I don’t know. They likely went somewhere along the current flow of Benevolence out there in the universe and then they likely hopped off onto a world, transitioning themselves in a way they desired and gaining a new body free of all burdens except the burdens of memory. Want to try and follow one?”

A moment passed.

“Yes,” said the being of light.

“No,” said Solid Sky.

Erick looked to the being of light, and—

Thunder crashed. Lightning fell.

- - - -

The desert was not a desert.

Da'luwe was not a desolation at all.

A land of a billion people held refuge from the Endless under a bubble of power ringed by white knives, the city brilliant gold and white and tall, the knives and some of the buildings reaching almost a kilometer tall, all of it a work of art. There was no pillar of grey light above the city center. This was not the Wraithborne Tower’s Da'luwe. This was the city that came before.

Between the white buildings, people traveled on floating stone blocks. They ate food grown from ever-producing fields. This was a lush land of green and gold and white, and though some of the parts were dark and deadly, everyone lived at least partially in the light of hope and giving and community.

The being of light was an elven woman with eight white wings who wore a dress of radiance, her eyes pools of sunlight. She stood upon an artificial pond where lilies grew and fish swam in the shadows of those waters. She looked around, and then she looked to Erick.

Erick asked, “Is this how Da’luwe used to look? If so, I’m even more angry at Eldawae than before.”

The being of light smiled softly. “This is Da’luwe at its height, a mere 6,000 years ago. When we fell, we fell hard, and my brother Eldawae capitulated to the destroyers. It was through him that the Wraithborne Tower made this land into a prison, here at one of the deepest parts of Margleknot’s Other Side.” She grinned. “I have not been able to tell anyone that story in a very long time. I believe… I was cut up.” She looked away at Da’luwe, saying, “I want to see it again… But I cannot stay, can I? I will have to make my way back on my own.” She looked to Erick. “Won’t I?”

“Yes. You’re being reincarnated right now. The process cannot be stopped. Have any requests?”

The woman steeled herself, her 8 wings fluttering behind her, each of them disconnected from her body but they were still connected, anyway. “I want to go with all of them and I do not care if my memory is fragmented.”

“Your memory will be fragmented, except for this memory here.” Erick said, “Good luck.”

- - - -

Lightning blasted out in 108 directions of the Margleknot sky and then vanished into cracks in the air, worming on to the rest of the multiverse—

A great crack of thunder filled the air. The tallest tower at the center of Da’luwe cracked in half, the grey pillar that kept the city marked as a Wraithborne Tower settlement breaking in fast parts, and then disintegrating. It did not fall at all. It simply vanished into Elsewhere, magic turning back into directionless mana.

And Erick felt tired again. He still had plenty of resources, but this big magic was taking a toll.

Erick looked to the dragon Solid Sky. “You want to be a dragon again, here, in this moment and time?”

“… I do. I said as much earlier. I would have this boon before it is snatched from me by your inability to be politely disruptive.”

Erick smiled at that. “You do realize that your soul has been chopped up in order for you to say things like that, right? Most trapped ghosts, if given the chance, would have asked for what Eldawae’s sister asked for; to move on. That’s why there might be a few people out there still living but almost no undead. Just you and her remained. People can make active choices. You can only act on impetus. Elemental Death, in my experience, is all about making stuff stay just like it is. Once you disturb the lock that Death has on life, though, time flows and desires return and all sorts of wants happen all over again.” Erick asked, “Who were you before the Wraithborne Tower turned you into a puppet?”

Solid Sky gradually turned from pale ghost to full-red dragon as Erick spoke, the dead soul getting madder and madder. He did not like being told that he had no control over his life. Directly calling him a puppet was the last straw. He roared at Erick, a scouring, glass-laden wind blasting across Erick’s body, shredding his glowthread clothes and shredding his Health and superficial flesh, but nothing else. Erick’s clothes sought to hide behind his neck and back and there they remained, fine and outside of the blast.

Erick stepped forward and grabbed the ghost dragon’s maw shut with an aura that resembled his own dragon hands and claws, shutting Solid Sky’s maw and holding him there like a misbehaving child. He could not escape now, but as he shifted from red to white and then as ghostly as he could go, he was surely trying to escape. His eyes were full of fear that almost looked fully sapient.

Erick said, “Be Reborn as a dragon of Benevolence.”

Lightning coursed out of Erick, into the ghost of Solid Sky and then into all of the center wall of the city. Every single part of the wall that had remained either collapsed or simply evaporated.

And the snout of a pale blue living dragon squirmed underneath Erick’s grip as Solid Sky suddenly came into being and broke a few houses behind him in his transition to flesh. He was not like the dragons that Erick had known; either the long version like Rozeta or the big and winged versions like Erick and Melemizargo. He was something different. A sinuous body, thin and long at maybe 200 meters, but with giant wings a third of the way down. He was feathered, too. He almost looked like a couatl, but he was more rakish. Less ‘house pet’. More ‘thing you glimpse in the clouds and never fully see’.

And he was staring at Erick with bright blue eyes.

He looked at Erick's grip around his mouth.

He was going to run away the very second Erick let him go.

Hmm.

Erick asked him, “Are you going to run away?”

Solid sky paused.

He almost lied.

And then he told the truth. He whispered ‘no’, though it was almost unintelligible underneath Erick’s grip.

Erick let go.

And Solid Sky pulled back—

He stopped. He steeled himself. He stared at Erick, and said, “Thank you for freeing me. I almost gave into my own desire to… flee, as an undead thing would.”

“I noticed.”

“… Yes you did.”

“Got a name?”

“Solidisuoskai.”

“Ah. So… was that an insult, or something else, to call you ‘Solid Sky’?”

“… I was 750 years old when they captured me on a world far from here and stuffed me into this wall of Da'luwe. This was 5,000 years ago. I am beyond insults and… beyond my homeland a great deal. I had thought I was fond of captivity but… I am not. I wish to be done with this conversation and to escape while you and Eldawae are distracted with each other. May I go?”

“After you tell me what I should know about Eldawae.”

“… He is a hermit, at heart. He wants power, and to go unnoticed. The biggest advantage you have right now is that you have ended a war in his lands and set up these lands for a better future for all further inmates who should fall here.”

“I was going to go with ‘you’re only making 50k resons per day, anyway, so what’s the big deal’.”

“… He’s making a lot less than that right now…” Solidisuoskai looked beyond Erick, at the large dome tower, saying, “Uhh—”

Evil Death blasted out of the central dome, casting wide and far, shattering the double door of the dome off its hinges and then disintegrating the door into metal shavings that rusted and fell apart, to wash like red sand upon Erick. Solidisuoskai escaped that wash of black-grey power and then the red wave, hiding behind Erick until the worst of it passed, and then fleeing as fast as he could flee directly away from Eldawae and the sandification of the entire central square of the center city. Black and grey pillars turned to rubble and collapsed in every direction, except in one, over there, far beyond a low hill on the other side of this starting combat.

Erick assumed that the small buildings in that direction housed the people that Eldawae cared about, or at least the ones he cared enough to save from Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation]. If Vondria, the city administrator, and those guards had survived, then if this fight calmed down, Erick would ensure that they could rebuild.

Eldawae stepped across the black sands that he had created, into the rubble of the main city center, onto the crumbling courtyard where he and Erick had first met.

Erick stepped toward him, saying, “It’s going to take me more work to fix these buildings now, so thanks for that.”

Eldawae twisted the air at Erick’s ‘thanks’, trying to capture something from him with a brush of unseen power. It was Fae Magic. It was useless. He went, “Bah.” And then he looked at Erick with silver glowing eyes. “Why did you do it?”

Erick spread his arms wide. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Eldawae stared. “Where did my sister go?”

“Into 108 different lives. Her goal is to help those who she helped here, and then to come back with power to retake this land from the Tower, and maybe from you.”

Eldawae relaxed a fraction, even though outwardly nothing changed at all. Erick could tell, though. His Lightning Path was working well. A real fight had been avoided.

In a softer tone, Eldawae commanded, “You will rebuild my city.”

“Sure. Was gonna offer that anyway.”

“You will lift up Vondria to Benevolent dragon, and at least one of the guards. Kylychbech survives. You will raise him to power, too.”

“Sure. You need help to return this land to what it used to be, right?” Erick commanded, “Because you will return this land to the billion-plus metropolis in the Endless that it used to be, before Wraithborne came here.”

“Impossible. If we are productive, then we are targets.”

“Who do you have left to defend, Eldawae? Nothing.” Erick said, “So make your sister happy when she comes back. Take the inmates who fall to your land and make of them people who would wish to live here—”

“I tried! No one appreciates what is possible! The bottom line is the only thing that matters, and when that is satisfied too much then Wraithborne desires to take more and more and more.” Eldawae said, “No more.” Eldawae stared, his eyes pools of hateful silver light. “You are right in one thing, Wizard. I have nothing left to defend.”

Ah.

A fight, then.

The Lightning Path had been misled.

Eldawae opened with skeletal hands reaching out of the ground to grip Erick, his voice laced with power, “You come into my home and destroy my people. You have broken hospitality. I claim the Rite of Master and I name you my newest Slave.”

Erick easily dispersed the skeletal grips with a flash of light, responding with power of his own, “I have given the greatest gifts that anyone can give another; new beginnings, new lives, new hopes. And I have also given you the resources to begin again.”

Eldawae gathered black wind in the skies, flashing large, becoming both a black skeleton kilometers tall and the same elven lich standing ten meters from Erick. He pointed with his true self, which was both of him, saying, “Accept the pain you have caused.”

Erick tried to move to the side, to avoid the bolt of black aiming for his heart, but he couldn’t step out of the way at all. The very nature of reality itself held Erick there as Evil Death pierced his flesh, drilling deep, soaking into his core. It pained. Or at least it tried.

Erick disbelieved the pain.

The image in the sky vanished, the beam of Black Death splashed against Erick’s bare chest like a mirror scattering a laser, as Erick said, “I’ll accept my pain, if you accept yours.”

Great glowing draconic wings of Benevolence flashed out of Erick, rising high and breaking the Evil sky, dispersing the absolute-black clouds. Rain fell, bright white and destructive. That rain fell upon buildings that were not there. It fell upon history. And where it fell, it revealed towers and people moving on stone traveling blocks and rivers and libraries and Eldawae’s sister with her eight wings, standing beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

Ten pairs of feathered wings emerged where the rain fell behind Eldawae, as he saw the past.

Eldawae stared at his sister, his silver eyes unclouding, the grey of Elemental Death and the black of Elemental Evil fading from view, revealing a glowing brightness that was every color of every sun. He stared, his skin turning to supple, tanned flesh, his black bones vanishing from where they protruded.

Eldawae’s sister said something, her lips moving

And Eldawae breathed, exactly like a lich did not need to breathe at all.

A bolt of static came for Erick and touched off across his skin, leaving tiny black marks that quickly healed.

A ten-meter thick column of Benevolent Lightning crashed out of the sky and obliterated Eldawae in an absolute radiance of power.

All the world was light.

And then the light began to fade.

Erick floated above a crater that had once been the courtyard of the center of Da’luwe. The crater extended a good twenty meters down and thirty-ish wide. Eldawae was nowhere to be seen and the clouds in the sky were already vanishing, the illusions of the old city vanishing, too, under the light of the Margleknot sky.

“So that’s probably not over,” Erick whispered to himself.

Erick went to the well-protected storage room behind the hill, far, far behind where Erick had confronted Eldawae. It was, as Erick had suspected, a protective safe house. Erick ripped the roof off of it, exposing a nearly-dead Vondria who looked catatonic for whatever reason, a very angry Kylychbech who had a whole bunch of words against Erick, and a few different people, from two elven children with little wings to a scattering of people who had powers swirling around their bodies, trying to make a formation around the winged kids.

Erick said, “I’m going to fix this first, and then we can talk.”

And then he took Vondria and first [Reincarnation]ed her into a younger version of herself, free of all her tech and ailments, then he turned her into a benevolence dragon and set her aside. When he was done with the city administrator Vondria was a rather pretty pale violet, quadrupedal, 2-winged dragon. She’d probably mostly be the same person. Probably. She’d be missing externally-held-in-tech memories and grafted power because Erick had removed all that, so…

Whatever the case, the transition was A Lot for her so she was sleeping now.

Erick let her sleep.

He tried to turn the soul that inhabited her liver into a person, too, but when he saw that fractal splash of possibility around that soul he recognized the soul as that of a rat. So he turned it back into a rat.

And then he went to Kylychbech who was organizing the ‘resistance’.

Erick sat on top of the wall of the now-roofless building, looking down at the people. He focused on the kids. “So Eldawae has a few different backups. Those kids are two of them and you’re all slaved to protect them as best you can. Do you see that?”

“They’re kids!” Kylychbech pointed his sword at Erick and shouted, “Why would you want to kill them?! I’ll kill you before I let you get to them!”

Erick frowned—

One woman suddenly held a knife to her own neck, saying, “Leave or I’ll kill myself!”

That seemed to be a much better idea to Eldawae’s defenders than Kylychbech’s idea. Within four seconds every person had a knife or a weapon held against their own necks. Erick didn’t bother telling them that that wouldn’t stop him from doing what he needed to do, because he could just heal them. He could bring them back to life, too. The only ones not threatening their own lives were, of course, the two little boys, who were not little boys at all.

The first clue was that they looked like Eldawae, but with small black wings. Only single pairs of wings, too.

The second was that Erick’s Lightning Path was pointed here.

The third was that Eldawae was a freakin’ lich. Of course he survived a little thing like a proper Wizard Duel.

Erick said to them, “Splitting your soul to hide from standard magics is a good one, but I know that trick. I know practically all of them, including Chaining Soul Destruction, which is a very good solution to this predicament. I’m sure you can survive that at least the first few times, but I can figure out something eventually. So! Would you like to drop the act and talk about the complete removal of Evil from this land? Because that’s my goal. I want all of Wraithborne to be ‘not Evil’. And that starts with you all as an example of a better way forward.”

One woman sliced her neck, followed by two others rapidly attempting the same. Erick simply healed them and then set them down in another building sleeping under some [Merciful Ether]. And then Erick did that to all the rest of them except for Kylychbech, who remained with the still silent Eldawae-phylacteries. The boys were staring pretty hard at Erick the whole time, too. They were very mad, but they couldn’t do much about it—

“Oh,” Erick said, as he realized something. “You have a lot of soul damage. You probably can’t talk.” As the two angry boys stared harder, Erick looked at their weird souls… he hummed, then guessed, “And one of you has to die to make the other one whole, too… if I’m reading that right. Not sure. There’s probably five more of you scattered out there in the Endless. Probably on another Layer, too… That’s a bit harder to deal with.”

More than five? Less than five? Who knew!

Kylychbech, tied down with stone and unable to move, threatened, “I’ll bite off my own tongue!”

Erick frowned at the man. “Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

And then Kylychbech did exactly as he threatened.

“Oh Koyabez fuck!” Erick said, disappointed that he didn’t see this exact thing coming. “Let’s put you back together and you can go to sleep, too, unless you’d like to talk openly?” The guard tried to bite his tongue off again. “Well okay then!” Erick put him to sleep and then did a bit of normal [Reincarnation] followed by draconic reincarnation on the man. When that was done and all of Kylychbech’s soul twistings were gone, Kylychbech's everything replaced and enhanced with draconic might, Erick set the grey-colored dragon sleeping in a square down the way. He patted the guy on the nose, saying, “Wake up well, Kylychbech. Your name was already draconic, so this is all quite poetic, in my opinion.”

Erick returned to Eldawae’s phylacteries.

The two boys were in the middle of trying to kill each other and one of them had nearly succeeded, having stabbed the other boy with a length of broken rock on the side of the head. Erick cleaned up the mess and healed the wounds, and then he looked to the two silent boys.

“… I’m not sure how to handle this.” Erick admitted. “Neither of you are the whole Eldawae, and while my [Reincarnation] can restore a person to wholeness, the person that comes out of the parts of you that you have obviously partitioned might not be the whole ‘Eldawae’, and the other pieces are still out there. They’ll likely be coming here to rebuild once I’m gone. Likely as a single person and with the full power and the support of Wraithborne behind him.”

The twins didn’t offer any solutions. They just stared at Erick with hate in their eyes.

Erick couldn’t do much in the greater scheme of things. Not as a single person, anyway. That’s why he had built House Benevolence. But he was just a single person here, and Da’luwe needed defenders. Powerful defenders.

There were still inmates out there in the land… And the whole place was still under the effects of a manaminer, and there were probably a whole bunch of lich-secrets buried here and there, waiting to bite Erick in the ass the second he got complacent.

He knew what he needed to do. Theoretically. The biggest source of Good he could accomplish would be to go and free the Celestial Observatory from Wraithborne influence. And to do that, he needed to get back to Layer 0.

Hopefully reincarnating half a million souls into new bodies across the multiverse, and also killing the time worm, would be proof enough of his power to satisfy the fae of war at the Enclave; Lord Dakka. Probably not? Hard to say. Freeing the Celestial Observatory might, though, and Lady Aelorika and Lady Seraphaka wanted more ‘good’ in Margleknot, so supporting that growth of Good would be good for that.

Erick wasn’t giving up on manhandling Wraithborne into Good. If he could do that with the Shades of Ar’Kendrithyst, he could do that with some lichs and ancient evils of the Wraithborne Tower.

Probably.

“Wraithborne wanted a whole bunch of truly Evil lichs gone anyway, right?” Erick asked the twins. No answer came, so Erick said, “I need to lower my scope, anyway. Veird is still the main concern.”

Erick paused.

And then he made a decision that was not a decision at all. “I need to clean up this place anyway, and you both get to be city administrators once again.”

As Erick put both boys to sleep, and cast [Reincarnation] on the first one, he smiled a little as the fractal splash of possibilities opened up all around the boy, showing Erick all of mini-Eldawae’s possible futures. The same thing had happened for Vondria and Kylychbech, and it was just one reminder that all magic was connected, even if one didn’t fully understand it all at first. This stuff here was already Fractal Universe Wizardry long before Erick even knew that this universe was thought of that way by the Fractal Fairy, the Voice of this Cosmology. Phagar’s fractal splash was probably connected to this universe, too. Erick wondered a lot about all of that stuff as he searched boy #1’s Benevolent futures for a good one.

Most of the futures ended in death, either permanent or Elemental Death.

And yet, Erick saw a future that was the rebirth of the white city in the Endless.

Erick picked that one.

The boy transformed into man, all of his soul damage filled in with Benevolence, Renewing his very existence itself. Erick set aside the 6-winged man and looked to boy #2—

Who collapsed in a pile of dead flesh.

Erick paused.

“… Circumstantial proof that the bodies were all connected.” Erick wondered. “Will there even be an Eldawae hidden out there in the world, coming back to strike with Evil Death?” Erick wondered some more. And then he shrugged.

Erick [Reincarnation]ed every single person in the city, erasing all of their soul controls and putting them into younger bodies. He knew nothing of many of them, but he knew enough based on the reports and paperwork that he had overseen in Eldawae’s dinner in order to pick for people who fought him every step of the way due to the soul controls put in them.

Erick felt vindicated that he was doing the right thing because every single person he cleansed of influence came back thankful.

By the time he was done with the city his glowthread clothes had regrown enough to give him a loincloth, which was nice.

Erick flew over the city and began planning for his repairs. [Mend] did not work here at all, since that was based on a manasphere imprint of an item and returning that item to its previous manasphere imprint shape. But [Stoneshape] and other spells worked well enough. Erick almost wanted to do a [Cityshape], but that would be way too widespread and likely break stuff under the surface.

Erick hummed. This whole land had once had a much larger airspace, with white spires reaching high. Erick wasn’t sure, exactly, how it survived so long and so well here on Layer 1, where war seemed common. Heck! Erick glanced up in the Margleknot sky, past the horizon of blue, and saw people fighting giant kaijus and ripping up the land far, far away. Planet sized monsters? Maybe.

They looked like barely-moving pinpricks from this far away; like the smallest stars in the sky that a person without enhanced vision would need a good telescope to see. Erick saw them just fine.

Anyway.

Erick began demolishing all the black buildings with great swaths of power, ripping up black stone and setting it to the side of the main city. And then came eternal stonewood trees. Those trees grew massive and they were very alive, even if they didn’t look the part. A few Shapings later and the trees were still alive, but they were shaped into apartment buildings and courtyards and all sorts of city spaces that were similar to the ones Erick had seen in the vision of Da’luwe’s past.

But a bit shorter.

The pools and the waterways and the farming lots and all of that of the current city —before Erick and Eldawae trashed it— were all somewhat still there, but now they were done in white and black instead of black and grey. Those were the city’s colors now. White, for Benevolence, and Black, because Wraithborne was Black because Evil was Black. But in Erick’s mind this Black was simply Darkness. He grinned at that little trick. Melemizargo would have hated them using ‘black’ to mean Evil, and Erick was kinda mad at that too. Black was a great color that did not deserve to be lumped in with ‘Evil’ at all.

Erick added some small [Terraforming] storms and node networks here and there, and then he wrote down how to take care of it all upon a large, white obelisks. He described [Renew] magic with Elemental Benevolence, and [Terraforming] magics with all the accompanying physics and particle interactions. He spoke of harmonies and Mana Altering and Shaping, and a bunch of different Elements besides Benevolence. He wrote down how to create more nodes in the node network, with all that Draining spellwork and otherwise.

And then he copied that large white obelisk and scattered those copies all across the land, in the center of Da’luwe’s new town squares and fountains here and there, and inside every one of the 9 Benevolence Tower out there. During the course of that travel, he came across 34 people. 16 of them hid from him, even after he spoke aloud, telling them that they could move on from here if they wanted. Erick left them be. Most of the people he found wanted to move on, and so Erick bid them a Lightning farewell. One of them, an old witch woman with some sort of highly-protective personal magic and wearing white, wanted to stay here, but she wanted a safer life.

“I’m old as dirt and I usually live outside of the walls anyway. I want to stay here, especially if things are getting better.” The old woman said, “Can you do that? Make me young but let me stay here?”

Her skin was tan and wrinkled, but there was a mirage around her edges. She looked almost not-there at some angles.

Erick looked her over, and said, “Probably. Unless whatever you’ve got going on is… What is that, anyway?”

“Witchy witchy. Stops the bad stuff unless I’m nervous, then it stops everything.” She shrugged. “Try anyway?”

“It might go away after this change.”

“If you can break it and get me normal, I’d take that option.”

Erick hit her with a [Reincarnation].

Every single one of her futures had her as an invisible person walking through life, never knowing others and always being overlooked. She was a hole in the world, untouched by all. Except in a few spots. Erick saw an image of her as a mother in a nice house, serving a family dinner to her husband and their five children and their tens of grandchildren. Another image had her as the leader of a town and raising thousands of people to power, transforming sand into arable fields with coordination and then transforming that land into crops with Benevolent Rain. A third image was her killing a few people and then being sent to the executioner’s crush.

Erick picked the one with her as a leader.

The woman rose from the sands transformed to a young elven woman in her late teens. Erick set her down in a safe spot in the nearest Benevolence Tower, along with a blanket, some extra clothes, repaired versions of her own clothes, a knife, and some fresh fruit in a stone bowl.

By that time several hours had passed and the people in the central town had been awake for hours, except for the new Eldawae. Hopefully that had been long enough for them to get through most of their anger at each other and the situation.

But they were still quite mad at Erick.

- - - -

“You destroyed everything!” said a woman.

“Yup,” Erick said, “And then I rebuilt most of it.”

“You took away my family!”

“Yup,” Erick said. “Want to try and follow them?”

“Who are you to decide what happens to us!”

Erick raised an eyebrow at that, asking, “Like the Wraithborne Tower ever gave you more choice over your life?” When that was an unsatisfactory answer, Erick decided, “Okay fine. Hold on. It’s time to wake up Eldawae, because he needs to hear this, too.”

The resurrected people and the two dragons, Kylychbech and Vondria, watched as Erick pulled back the spellwork containing the sleeping body of Eldawae. With a bit of [Cleanse] to splash out white mist from the sleeping winged-elf, Eldawae woke up in parts, and then all at once. He did not rise, yet. But he did open his eyes and lean up to look at Erick.

Eldawae sat up and flexed his bone-white wings. He stared at Erick. “It appears you have won.”

“A battle. Not the war. Not by far. Anyway. Welcome back to the world of the living. Take a look around.” Erick said, “I was just about to talk about why I get to decide what happens to you.”

Eldawae was already looking around at the tall white buildings and at the waterways and at the obelisk in the center of this town square, here at the top of the city. A fountain burbled all around the obelisk, clear waters splashing down onto white eternal stonewood. He was having a moment he did not want to have. He was terrified. He was hopeful.

He was terrified of that hope.

Erick began, “Look. All 27 of you here, the four spying with magics, and all the people further out there looking down at us. Also, hello Morbion. Anyway. You all know that most of the people here, just like all of the people enslaved by the Tower, were all put through cultures that produced these Evils in the first place in order to make people who were both Evil and willing to put themselves into situations where they could ruthlessly be exploited by the bigger Evils out there.

“None of the evils that the people here committed out there in the rest of the universe were really their fault, and most of the prisoners of this land were put here under false pretenses anyway. Everyone who fell here was made worse by the prison itself. This was by design.

“Everyone here was being used, including Eldawae.

“And so yes. I ruined it. I would commit such ruin again.

“I do not care that I ‘ruined what you had going here’. It needed to be ruined. You deserved to be ruined. Now, you get to live in your ruin, and you don’t have any inmates to torture, and you’d probably feel bad about doing that torture anymore anyway if I [Reincarnation]ed you back correctly, which I feel that I did. So now, you get to build better.

“I’m sure that you’ll try to reconnect with the Tower once I am gone, which is fine. If the system that sends prisoners down here isn’t a connection to Wraithborne, then perhaps you can not reconnect with the Tower? Just a thought.

“If you do get more prisoners down here then perhaps you can do something else. Try for rehabilitation this time instead of cycling people through your slavery-prison-complex so you can turn more bucks or live in privilege while slaves support your lives. You now have near-endless resources and now you can accrete better power than the average person, because Benevolence can do everything.” Erick handed out copied books about accreting Benevolence, holding them in front of every single person with his aura. Some people did not take them. Some people swatted them out of the air. Eldawae looked at the book, and took it. So did the dragons, though they had trouble with that because of giant talons. Good enough for now. Erick continued, “You’re all Benevolence-aligned now. These books will help you learn some magic and grow your Darkness and then how to accrete well. You can even try altering the manaminer of this land to help. Remember, everyone’s mana is different. You can only accrete your own. The book goes over all of that.

“You can do everything with Benevolence.” Erick asked, “So? More questions?”

Eldawae half-asked, half-threatened, “What did you do to me, exactly?”

Erick looked to the winged-elf. He was shorter than Erick right now. That would likely change with time and with him reaching for lichdom again. His 6 wings were bone-white now; no longer black. Erick asked, “Where do you want to begin, and do you want all of that said out here?”

Eldawae frowned… But he did not rage. He controlled himself away from that emotion. And then he considered that he could experience such emotion at all was a good sign; Erick hadn’t soul controlled him that much. He looked to Erick, saying, “I would return to the grand dome. Vondria, Kylychbech. With me—” He stopped. He looked up at the two dragons. The two dragons were completely surprised, but intrigued and kinda delighted on Vondria’s part. Kylychbech seemed weirded out. Eldawae was weirded out, too. He asked Erick, “Why did I want to involve them?”

Erick smiled. “Because you want to ask others for help now. Everyone here does. Who you picked was not up to me, though. I didn’t actually put any controls on your soul at all. I just made you more personable and vulnerable and cooperative. You picked Vondria and Kylychbech yourself, and probably because they’re the two most powerful people here, aside from me and you. They’re also naturally immortal now, which you will be soon enough, as soon as you get your lichdom back. So yeah. There’s your new Da'luwe council.”

Vondria and Kylychbech wisely remained silent, which was pretty normal for both of them. Which was good. Eldawae was not pleased.

Eldawae fumed as he strode toward the rebuilt grand dome. He glared at Erick, saying, “You’ve reburdened me with more than my elfinity.”

Erick walked with the man into the grand dome of Da'luwe, saying, “Yes, I have.”

Vondria and Kylychbech followed.

In the courtyard, people started talking and arguing again.

- - - -

Behind closed doors, Erick stood on one side of a rebuilt platform, while Eldawae stood on the other side with his dragons flanking him.

Erick began, “To start, I changed—”

“I know what you changed.” Eldawae said, “I can already tell everything you did. I said that in order to get you away from spying eyes. Every single grey pillar out there can’t see directly down at us, but those that are on the other side of Margleknot space can look down at us from the other side of the sky. And they do. That’s how Morbion took over the Evil forces of Margleknot; though extensive, open spying and being just shy of bad enough to demand to be overthrown.

“Everything you’ve done is already known, and known well. And what’s worse is that you didn’t kill the time worm as well as you should have. If you would have killed it properly then we might have had a different sort of conversation when you came back to Da'luwe—” Eldawae paused as he frowned, then he calmed himself and said, “Most of what I do is an act, but it was a whole lot easier to be ambivalent when I had some Evil in my soul. You erased that… But you also erased a great deal of the problems of this land while giving us a whole lot more.

“I digress.

“The time worm is still the main weapon of Da'luwe. That’s where the majority of my original soul is located. That’s where I keep my main phylactery, which is also tied down with all the Contracts from Wraithborne. Did you go digging deep into the ground, to pull the whole thing up? No. You stopped after a mere ten-or-whatever kilometers below the surface.”

Erick rapidly realized a few things. He let Eldawae say them all, though, as he simply answered the man, “I dug up the worm far enough to know that there was no end to him. The body was sand and dirt past a certain length and depth.”

“Following the track of that beast is not easy. I would have thought you would have tried, anyway.” Eldawae said, “The time worm’s heart was located at the bottom of Da'luwe. When you killed me, that heart was shifted out into the Endless about five days low-spireward— You don’t know— That’s the direction the Fae Enclave points down.” He pointed. “That way.”

Erick shrugged. “I would have said ‘southeast’, but that doesn’t matter here, I guess.”

Eldawae scrunched his eyebrows together, as if debating if Erick was an idiot or not. “… The heart is that way. My most precious memories are that way. Those would be my conquering and city-building soul fragments. You seem to have restored some of that to me, here, but not my entirety. That Eldawae will crash into this city like the wrath of the Wraithborne Tower itself, with the time worm at his command, unless you go kill him and the time worm directly. Any other talk beyond the death of that executioner’s axe does not matter.”

Erick waved a hand, saying, “I’m not going away that easily. How about we discuss changing the manaminer of this land into something better for everyone? We could also discuss your future plans for this land. How about you put up a giant white pillar?” Erick smiled. “Do the Benevolence-thing full force?”

Okay.

Why was Erick smiling?

He was happy. Honestly, though. Erick was probably being a bit too mirthful about this, but everything happening here was good, even if it wasn’t Good. Everyone here would be fine, even if there was an adjustment period full of hard emotions and anger.

Eldawae noticed Erick’s mirth, too. He scowled, “And what is so delightful?”

“First off: Anyone who wants to ascend can probably make it back here in a century or even just a decade. You all need to stop thinking that I killed everyone. Your sister is still alive out there, Eldawae, and there’s a lot of her, too. She went out to a lot of people to try and help them ascend. Secondly: You have an overabundance of resources and a bunch of high-powered people to use them. Build a good foundation for whatever sorts of life you want to come next. Thirdly: I don’t think Wraithborne is coming after you. I spoke with some of them before I got dropped here, and they said that the cost of doing business with me was probably going to be the eradication of a few towns. You got what appears, to you, to be the short end of the stick, but there are depths here for you to use, if you should grasp them. I’m not even telling you to fight against Wraithborne.” Erick said, “So! How would one kill the time worm, for real?”

Eldawae sighed.

Violet Vondria and grey Kylychbech both looked down at Eldawae.

Eldawae said nothing. He just stared at Erick. Thinking.

So Vondria asked Erick, “How do I turn orc again?”

“Honestly, you will figure it out. It’s pretty instinctual.” Erick said, “But in a more directed-help sort of way: Polymorph is about changing who you are on the inside to become who you want to be on the outside. Most of the time I’m human-shaped because I like connecting to others as human. You’re still a dragon shape because you now consider ‘dragon’ to be your baseline; ‘dragon’ is comfortable. Hang out with enough small people and you’ll simply want to be able to fit through doors, so you’ll turn small in order to do that.”

Vondria frowned a little bit as she thought—

Kylychbech suddenly changed into a 4-meter tall elven man with 10 brilliantly-grey wings floating behind him. He stood there, looking at his hands. Erick mostly wondered how the hell he had wings floating behind him, unattached, but that was some quirk of magic and power, no doubt. Perhaps they were aura-based physical manifestations of power, too. That seemed pretty reasonable to Erick as an explanation… And yet… Hmm.

Eldawae looked at Kylychbech too. “… How are you supporting 10 wings? That’s a supernatural power of our kind, and you are not us.”

“Ah! Good! I was wondering that, too,” Erick said. “But dragons are inherently magical. That’s likely most of the explanation. What is your species called, anyway?”

Eldawae said, “Winged Astraelif. Void-fliers, in common parlance.”

Kylychbech looked at his wings, fluffing them out and controlling them as part of himself. He rotated the order of pairs, and then pushed them out far and then drew them in. “This is… not who I was— Ah.” And then he transformed back into the man he had been, but with grey horns. He touched his head. “Horns?”

Eldawae frowned. “Also a lack of concern for nudity and an overabundance of desire for hedonism.”

Erick laughed. And then he said, “Let’s talk about killing your time-worm-self, and then I can leave and do that and come back later, after you’ve all had time to adjust somewhat, and probably to speak to Wraithborne. You were only making 50k resons per day, anyway, right? So just go low power for a while.”

Vondria said to Eldawae, “We’re likely not in that much trouble, sir.”

“… Perhaps this time will be different from the five other times I have tried to rebel from Wraithborne.” Eldawae said, disbelieving his own words.

Vondria and Kylychbech stared openly, disbelieving the entire implication.

Eldawae noticed. “Oh yes. We’ve tried rebelling before. Didn’t work, for several specific reasons, all of which thoroughly enjoy putting down rebellions. Their names are Jeron the Folder, Wright the Hallow, and Ravaughn the Black. All three are still active, and all three… That’s not even counting his Primes, or his Witches. Those are just the walking disasters; Morbion’s Adjusters.” Eldawae looked to Erick, and said, “We used to have connections to the Good lands out there, most specifically Paradise Rises. We lost that connection when Morbion shattered that part of Margleknot. Eventually, Wraithborne and Emperor Morbion came for us, just like he came for all the smaller places like ours out there. Honestly, we’ll go back to Wraithborne if they will let us. There are no Good lands out there to support us anymore, and the Celestial Observatory is overrun with Wraithborne anyway.”

Erick nodded. “Heard and understood. So about that time worm…”

- - - -

Erick held a tiny glowstone in his claws that had recently started pulsing light.

Four days of flying low-spireward at maybe 80% of the speed of light had gotten Erick here, to this otherwise uninteresting stretch of the Endless. Tan sands stretched as far as Erick’s dragon eyes could see, for while the atmosphere in the sky overhead was nonexistent, and thus able to be seen through, the atmosphere here at the surface of the Endless was dense enough to occlude vision. Erick guesstimated that he could only see about 450 kilometers out because of that. That was also why the grey light at Da'luwe had been visible, even though the actual city had been way, way too far to see; the light had risen above the atmosphere.

That light was gone now, but Erick knew the way back easily enough.

Kinda funny that he was still following a light source from Da’luwe.

The trinket in his claws pulsed a bit faster. Erick was getting to the time worm’s heart, and also a copy of Eldawae; the ‘Evil Eldawae’. ‘Not-so-Evil Eldawae’ had given him this bauble because it was tuned to the resonance of its creator, and that resonance transferred over all copies of the man. If Erick needed to he could find his way back to Da’luwe using this thing.

And as he flew, he thought of Good and Evil.

Erick hated the entire idea of Good and Evil as mana Elements. He was glad that Veird did not have these hated things.

Could evil be redeemed? Sure. Could Evil be redeemed? Not so sure. Was a good person good? Yes, absolutely. Was a Good person good, or were they following instincts, and did that matter that they were following basic instincts to be good and that they had no real control over their own actions? Erick wasn’t sure.

Apparently there was Elemental Justice out there, too, and whoa boy did Erick have a problem with that.

Erick wasn’t so sure about a lot of things when it came to Good and Evil. Were Evil people actually evil? Or were they just selfish assholes in the extreme? Well… The Wraithborne Tower’s overall example of Evil was more the ‘softly selfish’ type.

Erick was absolutely sure that the ‘absolute selfish’ type of Evil present in the slavery-parts of Wraithborne and the various Slaver-locations in Margleknot were the worst types of evil. Erick was glad he had not seen much of that yet. Just casual sapient cruelty and smaller Contract evils, so far. He still wasn’t quite sure what he would do if he saw some kings or whatever, like, cut off a person’s fingers and toes and then work their way inward. He had only seen that four times, but even once was too much. He had stopped every single one of those instances that he could, but—

The world ahead was different. The ground had rocks.

And then Erick flew past the rocks, and it was just more sand.

His thoughts turned back to the nature of Good and Evil.

- -

A month or so ago, Lionshard had spoken on the Elements of Good and Evil while he had been at Erick’s house.

“Good and Evil are what they’re called, but those are perhaps misnomers,” Lionshard had said. “I only say ‘perhaps’ because there is very real power in using them as they were intended. A Good person empowers themselves when they are good in whichever way they desire. An Evil person is the same. And what is perhaps worse, is that the battle between Good and Evil is a source of fantastic power on both sides… But I can see you dislike this topic, so let us move on.”

Erick had chuckled, saying, “You can tell that much, eh?”

Lionshard had grinned. “I can tell a lot about a lot!”

- -

Erick was still mulling over the topic of Good and Evil and how they were situated against each other and how they were ‘sources of fantastic power’ when they went to war with each other. It reminded him of the time that Rozeta had told him to think about ending the Forever War between the demons and the angels of Veird by Establishing some Big Important Casus Belli, and then finding out a way to work that Casus Belli into something that could be ‘fixed’ through friendly competition, or something, instead of the Forever War.

Erick wondered if Rozeta had known about Good and Evil back then. Had she been asking Erick to Establish the angels or demons as Good and Evil, or the other way around? Maybe she had been addled to forget Good and Evil in the Painted Cosmology and this Fractured Cosmology, and she was merely dredging up thoughts from a whole universe ago that weren’t fully formed. Erick wanted to believe the second possibility. He did not believe that Rozeta would want to bring Good and Evil to Veird. If that was true, then she could have done that herself through the Script…

Or maybe her hands were tied in that way, because of the God Pact.

Erick thought, and he flew.

- - - -

The world ahead was different. Rocks, yes, but soon after that Erick’s glowstone bauble started to strobe and Erick saw the lip of a smoking crater kilometers wide. He dropped the bauble in the sand next to an arrangement of rocks so he could find it easily later, and then he proceeded forward, flying over the crater, shrinking down into a person once again as he zeroed in on Eldawae down below.

Or at least the being he assumed was Eldawae.

A great core of golden crystal lay at the bottom of the crater. The light of Margleknot’s unseen suns beat down relentlessly upon that stone, and the stone beat in turn. Gold light pulsed outward, and Eldawae stood atop the stone like a dark spot standing on an entire grand hoard of treasure, pulling in that golden light in streamers, turning gold to black before it reached his black wings and his skin. Gold crystals grew from his joints, but it didn’t remain gold. That crystal flashed to black now and then, only to be overwhelmed with gold, to ebb and flow between the two extremes as Eldawae pulled in more and more power.

His eyes were closed, and he was focused.

He was converting the power of the crystal into Evil within himself. He was cultivating.

… Or maybe accreting. Probably both and then a few other things besides.

Erick lowered down into the crater to float 25-ish meters away from Eldawae. And then he waited.

Eldawae cracked open an eye. And then he closed his eye again. “… You cannot win this war. You are aware of this, and yet you persist. It is vexing.”

“I do persist; correct.” Erick asked, “What makes you so sure I can’t win this war?”

“Because Evil is larger than you, and we’ve had bigger enemies than you for our entire existence. The War is Neverending.”

“Ah. You think I’m going to war with Evil. This is incorrect thinking. You are correlating causations instead of seeing it how it is. Redemption is a core tenet of Benevolence, and everyone is in need of redemption sometimes, including Good people. After I’m done with you and Da’luwe I hope to go back to the Celestial Observatory and knock some heads around to clean them up, too.”

Without opening his eyes, Eldawae said, “Your plans sound Good in their effect and thus you sound deluded in multiple ways. You are Good, and you won’t admit that.”

“I’m perfectly fine with you being a selfish asshole, Eldawae. You want to have an empire of degeneracy and good times, while people fight for your amusement out there on the field? Do that. But you will see that everyone consents of their own free will and that they have the absolute best health care that magic can make, and that those sorts of things are only small parts of the overall society you control. What I’m not fine with is you letting your charges and those below you know pain because of your negligence.” Erick said, “And so, you need to die, since we’ve already got the semi-decent version of you back there and we don’t need this evil version of you, here.” Erick continued, “But, if I kill you here and now, I assume that your soul will fly to the Eldawae in the city and connect with him to make yourself whole, and this one here will overtake that one there.” Erick said, “It’s really quite ingenious of yourself, to make that one back there the ‘good’ one and this one the Evil one. The good one is very good at getting people into a working system. He has probably gotten Da'luwe back in working order a few times in the past, only to have you come in and kill him and take over completely.” Erick Looked at him. “I didn’t see it back there, but I definitely see the shape of it all right now.”

Eldawae frowned, and then he stopped cultivating/accreting. He opened his eyes and flared his 6 wings before dropping his wings back behind him, and saying, “It is also rather vexing that you have such a well-crafted insight into others and their internal magics. I suppose I should have expected nothing less from a Father of Margleknot. So what are you going to do now?”

“Do you want to be redeemed?”

“No thank you.”

“Would you fight your forced redemption?”

“Yes.”

Erick breathed in, then out, and spoke, “You will lose.”

His voice vibrated the sands, echoing out in a wave of power that crashed into a golden/black shield surrounding Eldawae and the heart of the time worm, passing them by without touching them at all. They were already deep in the philosophical Wizard War of the moment, but that had been Erick’s first real attack.

Eldawae responded by blackening the sky and turning the entire crater into the insides of the time worm, massive white teeth layering down the dark insides of the monster all around. They were like tusks undulating backward, downward, turning the world below into a continual tunnel of swallowing death, and the sky into the death of hope. The sky was a dot of white, and then the sky closed off as the time worm’s mouth shut. The only light was the gold from Eldawae’s now-floating crystal. That light glinted on the teeth overhead as those teeth crashed closed as the beast swallowed, a wave of teeth coming for Erick as the walls closed in.

Erick lit up the darkness with his [Lodestar] form, and then lit up the time worm with a reson-empowered [Reincarnation].

A lightning bolt came crashing—

- - - -

Erick sat on the ledge of a sandbox with red wood walls and dunes the size of mountains out there in the dirt, and yet, they weren’t the size of mountains at all. They were just small dunes, no larger than Erick’s ankles.

The sand moved a little.

Erick picked up the worm under the dunes and held it up to the light. “Hello, little time worm.”

The time worm looked at Erick with its maw-like face, its million eyes blinking around its body as it looked down at Erick’s palm. And then it seemed to frown—

The moment flickered.

Suddenly the time worm was ten meters long and staring down at Erick, its maw open a meter wide, power flowing out of the beast like desiccating desert wind as it boomed, “I’m bigger than you.”

Erick easily asked, “Do you want to be? It’s easier to be full if you’re smaller. Lots more food for small things than for large things.”

“Small things prey. I not prey. Bad bargain.”

The spell flickered again.

The time worm was a kilometer long and staring down at Erick with a maw 10 meters wide.

… Erick seemed to be losing control of the spell.

Not the first time that this had ever happened. That time he [Reincarnation]ed Oozy was the first instance Erick had ever experienced a [Reincarnation] differently than expected, but then again, using resons to empower this magic was already a different experience altogether, with this weird sort of talking space. The time worm was throwing everything off, though. It was making this here a Wizard fight.

Probably because the time worm was a small god.

Erick asked, “What do you want in your next life?”

The worm said, “I reject your call for a next life. I am the god of these sands. This is my land and no others shall have it.” The worm grew to be as Endless as the desert in which it lived. Its maw could consume mountains. It stared down at Erick with contempt, saying, “There is no winning against me. There are only those who I allow to live until they get big enough to eat, and those who manage to run faster than the slowest of them.”

“Ah. So you’ve been corrupted to eat mindlessly.”

The time worm looked down at Erick.

And then it shrunk a fraction.

Erick said, “I’ve seen how you eat. I killed you once by drowning you, and you liked it. You have been broken in some way, and I am here to fix you, because you haven’t allowed anyone to escape you at all. Not in a long time. You have eaten and eaten and eaten, without care for the habitat you have created. All you produce is death without hope for life. An end, without any restart of any new beginnings.”

The worm shrunk some more. It was merely a kilometer long now, and its maw was merely 10 meters wide.

“I’ve already put up some weather out there that will run permanently, unless someone disrupts it. That weather will create new life in these Endless sands. Do you want to be the guardian of that weather? I put a bunch of little frogs out there that serve smaller, similar functions of recreating that grand storm of life if it should fail. But if you want to have the power to bring life as well as death to all, I can give that to you. Wouldn’t that be a better balance for your gluttonous needs?”

The worm listened.

The worm shrunk back down to Erick’s hand.

With a voice that filled the world, the time worm asked, “And what do you want in return?”

“Allow for intruders to steal from you. Not all of them. I would never ask that of you. But some of them. The respectful ones. Leave alone the hearts of their civilizations, that live beyond the absolute bounty of your absolute territory. Leave the respectful ones to grow and thrive, and to bring more bounty into your lands for you to feast upon.”

The time worm seemed to smile in Erick’s hand.

Golden light crackled all around.

“I accept this bargain.”

- - - -

—a lightning bolt tore through the flesh of the time worm to strike Eldawae off of the golden crystal core of the monster. That bolt of Benevolence aimed for Erick, and Erick was ready. Golden power flowed through him like the desert wind and Erick sent off spell impressions in that passage. The gold crystal began to fragment and flow in the lightning and then suddenly it was gone, taken by the lightning.

All of the swallowing throat of the time worm simply vanished. The sky returned. Light returned.

The crystal was gone. The lightning vanished, too, headed toward the storm lands.

And Eldawae’s groaning body lay on the sands of the crater to the side.

Erick hit him with a normal [Reincarnation] while he was down, transforming him into himself, but without any Evil to him. It was a challenge to find a version of the old lich that had anything approaching a good future; much more challenging than the other Eldawae inside the city. This new version of Eldawae was geared toward accounting, and maybe possibly fatherhood. In a pure power sort of sense it was technically a step down from the many, many, many versions of him that were conquering kings and slave masters and Evil incarnate, but accounting was nice and safe and Erick approved. He also had some subtly-gold wings, but more off-white than anything. Not really gold at all. All the better to tell them apart.

Carrying this Eldawae back to Da’luwe in his claws made the Eldawae-search beacon useless, but Erick knew his way forward well enough.

- - - -

When Eldawae regained consciousness after an hour of flight he said nothing. A few hours later he asked for some nice seating, or something, because claws were terrible for a ride. Erick conjured up a nice bird-cage like palanquin for the man that Erick held in his front claws easily enough.

And then Eldawae went silent in thought.

On day 2 of the flight, Eldawae asked, “I… Need some water.”

“Ah! Right!” Erick said, “Let me just…” He did some fast spellwork. “Here.”

He handed a glass bottle to the man.

“… That was no reson-empowered spellwork at all. You really can create water from nothing.”

“Technically, no. That was actually a complicated act of magic. Pure water is bad for biology… or at least I assume as much, since everyone in this universe seems to have the same-ish kind of biology for whatever reason, but that’s where I started. That’s some moisture from my breath and then copied a bunch and purified with [Cleanse]. The glass comes from sand dust in the air, similarly copied and then molded. But pure water is bad, so I took some salts, calcium, and magnesium from various sources and added them in. It should taste like normal water.”

“It does,” Eldawae said, already halfway through his first bottle.

Erick set down four extra bottles of water into the carriage.

Eldawae sighed as he leaned back. He looked up at Erick, at his wings, at his neck, at his claws, and then he sighed, and asked, “What did you do to my city while I was gone?”

“A lot.” Erick added, “And you’re still there, you know.”

Eldawae frowned. “I wish you would have taken my offer of simply leaving Da’luwe. I hinted at it enough.”

“Why would I ever leave behind a disaster and possible enemies? I’m trying to make friends here.” Erick gazed out at the stretched desert all around, the landscape blurring due to how fast they were moving in this bubble of Benevolence. “I think I made a friend out of the time worm. Or at least something better than what came before. It might not bother anyone who is respectful toward it, and it’ll probably expand the stormlands. Not sure about that, though. Whatever the case, you’ll get a lot more water, now.”

“… Is that what you did to it?”

“I’m not sure what I did to it, exactly. It was more of a bargaining. I gave it the power to make life where before all it could do was eat, and in exchange it will allow respectful people to steal from it.”

Eldawae sighed, “I suppose that’s as good as my solution… For now.” He asked, “Do you know why the price tag for 1 person to escape this land is 1,000,000 resons?”

“Not really. I assume this land is the furthest away from Margleknot that one can get, which is why I was dropped here. ‘Furthest’, in this context, means at the ‘bottom of possible return’.”

“Adequate enough.” Eldawae said, “Conscious life generates resons. The overall lack of conscious life in this land is what makes it difficult to return to Margleknot from here. Planting a wide swath of ever-giving-storms onto this land won’t change much right now, but when Da’luwe’s population expands, and when people start simply living out here, many things will happen. It’ll probably take 10,000 years, but we’ll rise closer to the Layer 0, and if the time worm’s new existence proves truly amenable to life, then we might crest high enough to get a natural portal to Layer 0 in our lands.”

Eldawae said all that in a disappointed sort of way.

He would miss his desert.

Erick said, “That sounds like a positive thing, though.”

“… And I am weirdly agreeing with you.” Eldawae said, “Benevolence is truly accomplished at Soul Magic, isn’t it. Usually I would be hating you for trying to disrupt my Endless. I like the desert… But I do not find the idea of green land unappealing… Somewhat.”

Erick smiled. “Unless they’ve destroyed Da'luwe while I was gone you might like what that place looks like now, too.”

- - - -

It took 3 more days with Erick speaking to Eldawae about this and that, before Erick found Da’luwe.

The obsidian spires that formed a knife wall were no more. They had been capped in white stone and had doubled in height. The illusions of the city were completely down, too.

Eldawae gasped. “He put it back!?”

Erick smiled to himself and continued to fly past the white-knife wall, but slower. Slow enough to see Eldawae see this blast from the past, and also to see the land himself. Erick looked down at one of his Benevolence towers and saw people living beside it. Eldawae saw it, too. Someone had built ditches to divert the extra water into fields. Orchards and grains were already growing in those fields.

Erick smiled. “Not bad for only 10 days of being gone.”

And then the main city started to come into view. White spires, wide roads. Green trees growing by cultivated rivers. Sparkling white domes dotted the lands. It looked like a ghost town but it held no ghosts except for old memories.

Eldawae gripped the side of his palanquin, half his body out of the carrying case, his off-white wings flexing out from his body, filling the space behind him as he whispered, “It’s impossible. I would never have put it back… Not even the smallest bit.”

Erick said, “And that is correct. I told you I sent your sister away. I saw this in her memories. I did this, but only about half. Looks like they’ve been busy since I’ve been away. Maybe all it took was someone giving you some real hope for the future for you to go and do the rest yourself?”

Eldawae was speechless.

Erick smiled and transformed into a person. He held aloft Eldawae’s carriage with some aura work, saying, “Care to see it from ground level?”

Eldawae rolled out of the carriage to fall down, wings spreading wide. Erick held the carriage behind him and followed the man forward. He set the thing down behind him once he got close enough to the ground.

Vondria and Kylychbech and the other Eldawae stood there in the fountain-courtyard of the central city, waiting. The Eldawae Erick had brought landed in front of them. Erick smiled, listening, as the four new leaders of Da’luwe rapidly spoke of large and small events, the city-Eldawae flexing his bone-white wings, while the war-Eldawae flexed his off-white wings. Vondria and Kylychbech were reluctant to talk with the new Eldawae, but then the first Eldawae introduced them, and they started talking like a town council. They were also avoiding the main topic, in Erick’s mind.

So Erick asked them of the manaminer of the city, and if they were positive flow yet, and if Wraithborne was coming to call.

Vondria frowned.

Kylychbech declared, “Damn Wraithborne! We’re free now. I don’t want to go back.”

“It’s not that simple,” First Eldawae said—

As Second Eldawae said, “We have to go back.”

Vondria spoke more openly, with actionable words, “We’re tentatively establishing payment contracts with Wraithborne and trying to get terms that don’t put us under actual Contracts, but Wraithborne wants actual Contracts, as always. They’re holding off on legal action for now—”

“Legal! Bah!” Kylychbech said. “The only legality they have is one of power!”

“— but they want us to resume production as soon as possible in order to avoid delinquency.” Vondria stressed, “We want to avoid delinquency. They’ll send Adjusters if we fall into delinquency.”

“How much?” Erick asked.

“45,000 resons per day from now until eternity,” First Eldawae said.

“And how much are you making through mana production gathered from the manaminer?” Erick said, “Literally all life makes mana, and there’s a lot more life out there than before, even with the loss of people.”

The three residents of Da’luwe looked a little ashamed.

The new Eldawae said, “They don’t have the codes to work the manaminer, which is why I was amazed that you got the white-capped wall up and active again.”

First Eldawae said, “I have some of the codes.”

Second Eldawae said, “Let’s go fix the miner; open it up to more sources.” And then he looked to Erick, saying, “And then I would appreciate you gone.”

The other three people were less solid about any desire to get Erick gone, but they didn’t say anything. Second Eldawae noticed this, too, but all he did was arch an eyebrow at them. They’d be talking in private later, for sure.

Erick smiled. “I’ll move on shortly enough. There are people who want reincarnations, though, and I’m going to give those to them.” Erick stepped into the air, saying, “See you soon.”

- - - -

Erick felt the change in the air about an hour into his reincarnations. He was currently at the highspireward side of Da’luwe, transforming a rough-looking bull man into a much better looking man, because he asked for that, when the air flickered. It didn’t interrupt his magic, but Erick’s attention was split for a moment. Erick got back on track, finished up, and inspected the air.

It felt…

Nicer, somehow

He felt something try to connect to him. He denied it, but it kept trying to connect, so Erick kept denying it. He knew what it was, but the bull-man’s wife, who wanted to be right there with her husband, got a notification that surprised her. She shared that notification. It was just simple words in the air; no blue box at all.

Welcome to Da’luwe

Power tithe is active

And that was it.

Erick let the husband wake, the two of them looked at each other in amazement and wonder, and then Erick fixed up the wife. Two new bull-people now lived in Da’luwe, and they were thrilled about that. They were not ‘minotaurs’, though. They didn’t know that word and Erick got the impression that they were lying, but also that what they called themselves was something cultural that he didn’t need to step into. So he let it go.

Other people got reson-[Reincarnation]ed and sent off far, far away from Da’luwe.

Eventually, Erick made it back to the main city.

As soon as they saw the new numbers on power production and reson conversion they had all been worried in different ways. They weren’t anywhere near making the daily payment.

The 45k reson bill per day from Wraithborne was due, and if they didn’t pay then they went to collections. Erick’s little Benevolence Towers were doing work, but not enough. Slimes were already spawning out there, but the estimated 15,000 slimes only made 10,000 mana per day, and that was 1,000 resons per day at Margleknot 10-to-1 conversion rates.

Erick tried to give them a [Reson Gathering], but Eldawae and Eldawae both demanded he dissolve that spellwork and never use in their presence ever again. Such a thing would make them a target. So instead, Erick spent the next several days making some basic Benevolence slime dungeons. It was a much cleaner solution than the [Reson Gathering].

Erick ended up spending another week there in Da’luwe before he decided that this was more than enough help to get them settled. The 4 council members of the city were more than capable of doing everything on their own.

And then an Adjuster showed up.

Jeron the Folder was a person made of paper, and he had dropped out of the sky directly over Da’luwe and come down to land in the central courtyard. Erick had noticed him right away, since he had been eating an apple and sitting beside the fountain when the man had shown up. Erick hadn’t known who he was at first; all he had known was that the best thing for him to do for that particular hour of the day had been to sit by the fountain. And so, Erick followed his Lightning Path because he was running out of things to do anyway. All the paper-guy did was look around and send out pulses of magic. Erick did wave at him, though. The paper guy nodded to Erick, and then continued to work his book magic.

45-ish minutes later, the council of Da’luwe showed up to prostrate themselves before Jeron the Folder.

Jeron declared, “Do not bother me. I am seeking truth.”

Erick bothered him, speaking up, “What kinda truth?”

With a much nicer tone, Jeron said, “Just some paperwork, Ascended Flatt. Everything looked in good order the first time I checked, but I am quintuple checking.”

Erick nodded.

And then Jeron the Folder handed out some decrees of non-Contract contracts, a re-establishing of inmate dumping, and some trade agreements, and then he pulled himself inside-out and vanished.

The party that night was as grand as the 17 residents of the main city could make it. They told Erick to do nothing, for they wanted to treat him. Erick appreciated the thought, and he got some more of those wonderful little tri-berry tarts.

Erick stayed for 3 more days.

They asked him to stay longer.

But Erick could not.

Tomorrow he would use 1,000,000 resons to get back to Layer 0.

But there was a delay.

One final voice appeared to say something.

- - - -

Erick flew out from Da’luwe knowing he would not be back. He had already said his goodbyes. The city was intact and well-functioning. The light in the sky was back, and perhaps it was a lighter shade of grey than before, but only the most well-trained eye could tell such a thing. Da’luwe was still tied to Wraithborne, and that was the smart move for them. For now.

With wings spread wide, Erick flew to a storm on the horizon.

The time worm floated in the air and in the ground. It was shorter than before, but its eyes that ringed its maw were clearer, and gold. The minor god of the Endless was a lot more than what it had been before, and it looked good on them.

Erick hovered before the non-monster’s maw, saying, “Greetings. What brings you out here?”

“THANKS.”

And then the time worm turned away and traveled through the raining sky and the green-growing ground like it was all ground. It passed over lakes it had created, it jumped down into the ground, and when the final trail of its body passed, that which lay above the ground turned to storm and that which lay below the ground turned to rock. Great big glowing mushrooms grew upon that rock.

Gradually, the time worm passed into the far, far distance, taking its storms with it, and the sun came back out. The mushrooms dried in the sun and sent spores into the air. The grasses dried and turned to dust, to eventually become soil. The little lakes dried out, but they left behind silt laden with the possibility of life.

The passing of the worm brought terrible devastation and bounty, and left behind something that would one day hold the seeds to flourish in the next storm.

Erick watched it all for a while.

And then he turned inward, concentrating on a gathering of a million resons, which was only an estimate of how much it would take, feeling something ephemeral and solid begin to encase him. In accordance with how Eldawae had explained it, Erick concentrated, and all too soon Erick felt it. The rut of Layer 1. The deep hole that he existed within right now.

He also looked around himself and saw something that reminded him of his meetings with Phagar.

Erick was in a very dark part of a fractal splash. Here he was, at the bottom of a well, looking up at the Margleknot sky high, high overhead, where so very many different slices of Layer 0 existed all next to each other. Down here in Layer 1 is where people fought and died and thrived. Up there is where people fought and lived and grew. Only one thing really separated Layer 1 from Layer 0, the possibility of real violence. That was a large division. It took a lot to overcome that, and here, at the bottom of the well, was where the most violence was to be had.

Erick reached upward, toward lands that were too far away, climbing nonetheless. He flew, he moved, he ran up a hill that was steeper than physically possible, vibrating until he climbed up the walls of the very fabric of the universe, reaching the lip overhead—

- - - -

And Erick popped into a deep-blue sort of darkness, high, high above green lands that sat in valleys between crystal-spire mountains, under a star-filled sky. There was no sun here. Instead, illuminated clouds lay in collected banks here and there, bringing light to the green land and to the crystal spaces above.

Erick was back on Layer 0, in the Celestial Observatory.

He checked his Status, looking at how much his Darkness had grown in those various acts in Da’luwe, and how high his resources had grown in the break.

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: 80.82m per day / 935.51 per second , [Darkness Level = 5.51x Ascension baseline]

Body: 479

Mind: 571

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+851, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 761.21m/∞, ↑ [+290, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 744.81m/∞, ↑ [+280, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 743.27m/∞, ↑ [+280, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 23.79m [+84.19 = +9.35]

He would probably need a lot more than what he had in his tank if he ended up using [Grand Reincarnation] in such a large way again. But Veird wasn’t in any trouble right now, as far as Erick knew, so he could take it a bit slow. That’s why he had spent so much time helping out at Da’luwe, aside from the fact he needed the break, too.

Erick spread his black wings wide and went exploring this tarnished land of Good.

Someone around here probably had news about Veird, and if not, then Yggdrasil was here, so—

A message appeared.

Welcome back, Father.

Erick smiled. “Hello, Yggdrasil. I was just thinking about you.”

Want a portal home?

“Not yet. I believe I have business here. Thanks, though.”

Good luck! Love you.

Erick smiled, saying, “Love you, too.”

And then he flew on.