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Erick said, “I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to be there, Shadow. I don’t want to be there.”

It was the day of the hearing between the Fae Council and Nothanganathor. It promised to be short and private. Something more public may happen later, but today it was just the Council, Yggdrasil, and Nothanganathor. Certain other people had been invited, but they had been told they were not allowed to speak unless asked to speak, with the various consequences for breaking such a rule left unspecified.

Erick had been invited by Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil had not wanted to invite Erick, but he had done it anyway, and now Erick stood in a prep room in House Benevolence, in City #1 in Tir Gael, looking over papers of facts, organizing his final thoughts. He was also preparing to have those thoughts torn asunder by whatever Nothanganathor said in the Council chambers.

Shadow had wanted to go, too, to be invited by Erick. She did not like being told ‘no’ in this instance least of all. With a dark, calm glare, she said, “I should be there.”

“Yeah. You should be there. Do you think you could honestly not speak up?”

Shadow glared a bit harder. “I could maintain decorum.”

“ ‘Could’ maintain. That’s not a ‘would’.” Erick said, “I am rather sure that he’s going to get under my skin rather well. All he has to do is bring up how he brutalized…” Erick didn’t want to say it, but he said it anyway, “How he brutalized Debbie, or… or any of them. And besides that, he knows everything there is to know about me. He doesn’t know much about you. You could be in reserve for when the actual decisions are getting made. This is going to go beyond a hearing, Shadow.”

Shadow relaxed her glare. “There is logic to that, and yet, I am currently beyond logic… which means I should remain in reserve.” She took a moment, looking away, pacing for a few steps, her fancy black dress shoes clipping on the hard white floor, her court-date dress swishing as she moved. She stopped and said to Erick, “You’re not allowed to harm our chances either, and when it is over, you will report everything to me.”

“I will.”

Shadow breathed and then she stepped away, vanishing from sight as though stepping through veils made of half-invisible shadows.

Erick stepped away from the papers on his desk, to stare out the window. He looked without seeing, his thoughts not on the pastel roofs of the many apartments and buildings, but on the upcoming trial that was not a trial. It was just a hearing. Nothanganathor still had great standing within Margleknot, and of course he did. His magic was everywhere, in all of the Evil societies of this land. Slaver’s Den had had a lot of that shit; Malevolence. Malevolence was responsible for a good several percent of Margleknot’s preeminent killers of corruption out there in the greater universe.

Nothanganathor was probably going to claim that he had made Benevolence through his Malevolent actions, like a researcher prodding growth among its research subjects...

Erick frowned.

What did a good outcome of today look like? Realistically.

They certainly weren’t going to dismantle anything that Nothanganathor himself had built. Maybe they might censure him in some… not at all adequate way.

… What Erick wanted was Nothanganathor expelled from Veird and forbidden from interacting against Veird. Would that happen?

Probably not…

But if they believed he was the cause of the Sundering? Would they expel him then?

… No.

They wouldn’t act against him without proof of his malfeasance, and there was no proof, because the Painted Cosmology no longer existed. Would they act against him if he came right out and said that he had caused the Sundering?

… Erick wanted to say ‘yes’, but the answer was likely ‘no’.

Erick sighed. In truth, he had no idea what today would bring. He probably shouldn’t go to the hearing. Nothing good would come of it at all, except, perhaps, that Erick would get a heads up regarding further interaction with Nothanganathor.

“Yup,” Erick said to himself, as he finally looked out the window and saw his newest city. “The only good outcome of today is knowing what comes next.” Erick sighed. And then he prepared himself. With a flick of his aura, he poked at a pad near his desk, and then said, “Ring up Blighter of Wraithborne, please. I need to know if he’s still my lawyer, and if Wraithborne is still non-aggressive.”

Erick's secretary was the valkyrie known as Shivraa. Erick had transformed her into a dragon the other week, though, after ending the Quarantine. She was taking well to being a dragon of Benevolent Ice and something similar to Valkyrie, and if she needed to she could return to inhabit the Valkyrie magic, and then be reincarnated back into a dragon. She was still working on all of her particular powers, and that would take a while, but she had been a secretary for many years before she was captured by slavers, so she was taking very well to being Erick’s secretary.

Shivraa spoke up from the speaker, “One moment.”

Twenty seconds of silence and thinking later—

Shivraa said, “Lawyer Blighter on the line, sir.”

“Ascended Flatt!” Blighter said, “I am glad to be taking your call.”

“Are you still my lawyer? Is Wraithborne still non-aggressive?”

“Yes, and yes.” Blighter said, “Wraithborne has been invited to today’s hearing by Nothaganathor. If you were to invite us as well, then we would be on your side as well.”

“That’s not a violation of interests?”

“I’m still the top lawyer at the firm who is not a Prime. Nothanganathor is represented by Prime Hadrago; my boss.”

“… That’s not a violation of interests?”

“No. It is not. Wraithborne plays very well with itself when it comes to bountiful outcomes for all. If both of us are there, for both sides, then we will fight till a conclusion is reached that is beneficial for both sides. If only Prime Hadrago is there, then he will fight for Nothanganathor’s exclusive rights to power.”

“… Ah.” Erick said, “My goal is Nothanganathor’s complete annihilation. That’s not on the table if you’re there, is it.”

“That honestly depends on the outcome of the hearing and the possible trial to come. It could very well be that Wraithborne wishes to abandon Nothanganathor, depending on his depravity.”

“But if he has some miracle plan for a whole new Painted Cosmology, with him as lead God of Magic, then what is Wraithborne’s position?”

“That we will try to keep Benevolence around and also argue against Nothanganathor being allowed that sort of power, considering he killed a universe to get there.” Blighter said, “Someone like that does not deserve the reins over any sort of Creation at all.”

Erick let surprise show in his voice. “That’s unexpected.”

“Ascended Flatt,” Blighter said, “I say with the full weight of Wraithborne behind me: you’re correct about the fact that Benevolence is better than Malevolence for the growth of nations. Malevolence steals and hides, all for the primacy of Nothanganathor. Benevolence is out in the open, and you’re the main user but other people are eagerly taking up the power for themselves. Your rise to power is so much faster than Nothanganathor’s ever was. If you wanted, you could take over all of Margleknot in a millennium. If you do not, then someone will, and it will be a person wielding Benevolence.”

Erick considered that. “I’ll have a different sphere to colonize and grow, Blighter, with Yggdrasil being there as well. You can tell Morbion that, if he’s not already listening in on this call.”

“I’m here, Ascended Flatt,” said a different voice. A deeper voice. It was Morbion. “Wraithborne wishes you luck with your worlds and purposes. Witch Agatha hopes that Witch Aragathara serves you well in the coming trials, and for you to know that Agatha also desires to see Nothanganathor ripped from his throne, if he deserves to be ripped from his throne.”

Erick said, “Aragathara is fitting in well, here at House Benevolence. If her sister wishes to visit, and provided she acts like a proper guest, she is welcome.”

Morbion’s voice seemed almost amused. “I’ll let her know.”

There was a click.

Blighter spoke, “Shall we meet you at the entrance?”

Erick said, “See you there.”

- - - -

Erick stepped through a swirling vortex of gold and green, onto a grand road of glitter crystal, kilometers wide, leading toward a wall of glitter crystal that was that half of the world. The Fae Enclave was massive, like a delineation in reality. At the very end of the road lay a large entrance, left open, leading into a place of trees and greenery and the land of the fae of this cosmology. It was smaller than the nail of his pinky from this distance, looking like little more than a glint of brighter light upon the wall ahead, but Erick knew it was pretty big.

Erick stepped forward—

—and moved hundreds of kilometers in that move, to stand in front of the entrance to the Fae Enclave. The entrance dominated half the world, and a land of cultivated forest lay beyond.

Blighter and Seabass, the two vampire lawyers from Wraithborne, stood there to the side, waiting for him. They bowed toward Erick.

Erick nodded, then turned to the insect-like fae woman sitting behind a glitter crystal podium, before the entrance into the Enclave. “Hello.”

“Aye. Erick Flatt. You are expected. You will remain in this lesser form and observe the proceedings. Your lawyers will abide by this as well. Do you have questions?”

“Can my lawyers and I speak to each other and not have our private conversations interrupt the proceedings?”

“Granted. You’re in the audience. You have to find your own way there. I’ll move your lawyers now.”

And then the fae clicked her fingers.

Blighter and Seabass vanished.

The insect fae gestured to the grand entrance to the Enclave beyond her podium. “You may proceed.”

Erick stepped into the air and flickered through the entrance, into the grand thoroughfare of green grass between kilometer-sized trees the size of Arbors, like at Treehome, with the orcols. This land was filled with fae, though; in houses in those trees, and on walkways, and hovering in the air here and there, going about their days without care for Erick at all. Some of them noticed Erick but he wasn’t a giant black dragon this time so they didn’t really care.

Flickering forward, Erick felt the fae-trap of the endless forest treadmill try to latch on, but he passed through that trap with a burst of his own disagreement.

Within moments, he once again stood before a much-more-reasonably-sized tower of glitter crystal that hovered above an empty crater.

The glitter crystal opened up; a door appearing, to make an entrance into the Fae Council Court.

Erick floated forward—

- - - -

Erick found himself seated on the right hand side of the audience, like he was at a football game or attending the theater. Blighter and Seabass were further right, the vampires both looking a little dazed, but then they were suddenly here, in the moment, as Erick looked to them. They nodded.

The Council room was the same as before; all dense glitter crystal.

The litigants were different.

Margleknot, as his orcol, Yggdrasil-self, stood to the right, behind a podium. On the judging side of the room, the Lords and Ladies of the Enclave sat in their chairs behind the arc of the glitter crystal judges’ table. From left to right, it was Lord Eldraki, Lady Aelorika, The Fractal Fairy, Lady Seraphaka, and Lord Dakka.

And to the left, beside the defendant’s podium, was a man.

Erick felt he should have recognized Nothanganathor, or at least his avatar. Erick had never met the man, of course. Still, Erick felt he should have recognized Nothanganathor.

Short white hair. White horns that curled up and back but which were clearly not dragon horns for they were almost slick; made for cutting through water. A leviathan’s horns. White eyes almost as white as a Shade’s, which was odd. His skin was deeply tanned. The guy was physically attractive, because once you reached a certain level of power you could decide those things about yourself. But he was also kinda tired-looking. Sleepy, almost. He didn’t look bored to be here, but he looked tired.

In any other setting Erick would have been predisposed to want to hand the guy a cup of coffee, to ask him what was bothering him, and if he needed help.

The meeting had not started yet.

Everything was still, in most ways. Sure, Lord Eldraki was messing with some illusions on the Council table, Lady Seraphaka was on a phone, Lady Aelorika was typing away at a tablet, and Lord Dakka was staring at Erick in a… Oh. Uh? A lustful, sort of way? Uh?

Lord Dakka twinkled his fingers at Erick and then made a kissy face, all silent-like.

So that was weird—

Yggdrasil was saying something to Nothanganathor, under his breath, and Nothanganathor was saying other small things under his breath, their lips barely moving. Erick probably could have understood what they were saying if he knew the language and if there wasn’t a heavily magical barrier between the stands and the court proper. That barrier read in tiny words, ‘Talking is permitted among the audience. Do not interrupt the proceedings upon pain of pain’

There were a few other people in the audience.

Over there, in the seats behind Nothanganathor, was a man who looked human, but grey, who had a Wraithborne briefcase sitting on the bench beside him. The man saw Erick looking at him, and he nodded deeply, softly whispering, “Ascended Flatt.” He introduced himself, “Hadrago. Lawyer Prime of Wraithborne.”

Erick decided to be cordial and nodded back, and that was enough for both of them.

A few swirls of some sort of censoring magics occluded the remaining few people in the audience. One of those magics was gold and silver swirls. Another was a spherical mirror. The final one was a pixelated static cube. None of them sat near Erick at all. He was pretty sure that the gold and silver person was Lionshard; that power had that feeling to it—

Lady Aelorika put down her tablet and it disappeared. She cleared her throat, and the room came to order. “And that’s all the guests.” She intoned, “We are here today in a preliminary way to see if Nothanganathor deserves to be divested of much or all of his power here in Margleknot, or if nothing needs to happen at all. Nothanganathor. You stand accused of Sundering the Painted Cosmology through a series of networked power stations that propagated a dangerous killing magic throughout that entire universe, ripping it to pieces, and then harvesting those pieces for your own gains. What do you say to this accusation? Keep it short.”

Nothanganathor nodded, then spoke as though he was reporting on the weather, “The Darkness still exists. That universe is still there. The magics I did were incapable of killing that universe, but the pieces that people inhabited no longer exist, and yes, I did that.”

He just…

He just… came out and said it.

Erick breathed deep, feeling some unfeeling, unknowing sort of way. It was halfway to giddy, and yet halfway to a rage as well. Vindication swirled around somewhere in his soul, and his heart beat hard. He breathed out.

He knew it wasn’t over at all.

The Council fae all looked unsurprised. Yggdrasil looked… sad? Yeah. Sad.

Lady Aelorika nodded. “Glad you didn’t try to lie to us. How did you kill the inhabited part of the Painted Cosmology?”

“Planted Malevolence seeds all across the land. Took a few thousand years to propagate far enough. It was a magic that was unique to the Painted Cosmology that allowed such a thing to happen at all. It couldn’t happen here due to the multi-magic nature of this uber-universe. It only worked at all because every time Melemizargo found that magic he enjoyed finding it, because he used it to draw me back to the Painted Cosmology and torment me, instead of actually erasing that magic.”

Lady Aelorika asked, “Did you deserve that torment?”

“We are enemies.”

“How did you escape that torment?”

“I had previously stolen a Sign of the Fractal from Margleknot’s avatar that he would send to the Painted Cosmology. Melemizargo only got an avatar of mine each time he drew me there.”

Yggdrasil was quietly furious.

Lady Aelorika asked, “Why couldn’t that magic be used here, in this cosmology, to Sunder this universe’s inhabited places?”

“It was a thieving sort of magic that worked on mana-made souls. Even if you sucked all the mana out of a large portion of this universe, you would still have resons and particles and all the rest. The infinite nature of this universe is truly infinite, unlike how it was in the Painted Cosmology.”

“Could this magic be transposed to work on atoms, or slices, or Infinity itself?”

“Doubtful. The Fractal takes notice of that sort of thing rather heavily.”

Erick whispered to himself, but maybe also to Blighter and anyone else nearby, “Nothanganathor already eats all the slices of infinity around Veird that aren’t the God Pact world, so that’s a fucking lie. He could eat this universe if he plotted well enough.”

Lady Aelorika frowned a little at Nothanganathor. “But you eat the slices of infinity all around Veird’s God Pact world all the time. Plus, there’s Elemental Destruction and various other forms of consuming spellwork, like that [Cleanse] magic. We’ve had quite a few demonstrations of such possibilities rather recently, with your Element’s new Opposite. I doubt that Wizard Flatt, Ascended from Veird, is better at magic than you are, so explain to the court, how, exactly, your Sundering spellwork would not do the same thing to this universe that you did to the Painted Cosmology?”

Nothanganathor easily said, “Because I have given you my Opposite. I have culled Veird in so very many different ways to prepare for this day, so you finally have something that directly opposes my Malevolence, so that you will allow me to consume Veird entirely, and remake the Painted Cosmology how it should be. You have both my weapon of Malevolence and the way to kill my weapons in your hands, with Benevolence. I even gave Margleknot another instance of himself, and a Father. I have also given Margleknot a heavy return of the Balance.” He said to Yggdrasil, “I know you can never forgive me for betraying your trust, but I know I have given back more than I have taken.” He said to the council, “And I know I will make the Painted Cosmology better than it ever was, provided I am allowed now to finally consume that world, instead of watch over it.”

Erick was stunned as Nothanganathor took credit for his own work, for his own Benevolence, as though he hadn’t been fighting Nothanganathor every step of the way, as though That Asshole wasn’t killing him every chance he got, as though—

Erick was spiraling in fury.

Everyone had told him that Nothanganathor was going to take credit. Erick hadn’t believed it until now, until here. But yeah. The guy was shameless. Taking credit for someone finally standing up against him, from successfully hiding from him all this time, from someone among millions finally making an Element to directly oppose him! Of course opposing elements happen now and then! Nothanganathor should not get credit for that!

And then to speak of consuming Veird!

“Ohhhh,” Erick whispered, raging, “I’m going to murder him so much.”

Lady Aelorika frowned at Nothanganathor’s little speech. She hummed. She sat back in her chair.

Lord Eldraki put away his tiny illusions and asked Nothanganathor, “How did you make Erick come to be?”

“I couldn’t do a direct approach, of course, because if I did that then my Opposite would not be accepted as a True Opposite. And so I prodded. I waited. Primarily, I infected their Goddess of Knowledge, eating away at her capability to do anything, and then mutating what was left. I did spawn a few avatars over the centuries, there at the beginning, but Melemizargo saw all of those and killed them or attempted to mutate them back at me. From what they call the ‘Old Demons’ to the Rage of the Orcols to even individual bad actors meant to tear them down how I needed them torn down, my various efforts at working sideways were killed here and there.

“One of my largest shaping successes and also failures was Idyrvamikor.

“In the Death of all Halves, Melemizargo’s wizard grandson was poisoned by me to do my bidding and he almost succeeded in simplifying everything when he made the orcols. If the orcols would have happened as I wanted them to, then that singular race of sapients on Veird would have simply disbelieved in Melemizargo, but he couldn’t have that simple end, so Melemizargo interfered. I managed to instead poison Elemental Dragon with a Curse that worked through his bloodline, attaching that one to his other grandson, twisting all dragons to a leviathan form, like he did to me. Quite proud of that one, really.

“From there, Kirginatharp has done a lot of my bidding over the years, but I kept a very light touch. Barely anything at all, because that seemed to work better.

“From around 75 years onward, Post Sundering, I did very little but nibble here and there, only consuming the slices of realities that got too far away from the main world of Veird; the ones that would fall to self-destruction, anyway. The main world that they call the God Pact world was carefully pruned.

“I had set up everything for success by that time, from Fate magic not being inside the Script so well, to triggering Planar visits, to easing the way forward for everyone who was remotely able to resist my Malevolence at all. It’s that last one that truly got Erick up here, at Margleknot. If I wanted to I could have killed him at any point in time, and I was about to at one of those yearly parties to Melemizargo, but then he made Yggdrasil, and from there I stepped out of the way.” Nothanganathor said, “I knew Erick would become my True Opposite by then.

“And so I went investigating him more.

“Apparently, my Malevolence gave rise to the woman Erick met in college by the name of Margaret, which gave rise to Jane, who was born with a bit of Malevolence inside of her. Erick’s almost allergic reaction to that, as a Natural Wizard, is what precipitated his entire adult life.

“Therefore, as it was my aim to cause my True Opposite all this time, I claim right of cause of the resultant Benevolence, and all the assorted benefits thereof, as well as forgiveness for the temporary loss of the Fractal’s ingress into the Darkness.” Nothanganathor said, “I’ll be setting that to rights as soon as I’m allowed.”

Erick heard a ringing in his ears, threatening to block out all the impossible things that he was hearing. He still listened, though. All of this shit he was hearing might be possible, but Erick would never take credit for something good that someone else did with Benevolence. How could Nothanganathor even begin to take credit for Malevolence in that way? It didn’t make sense—

Lady Seraphaka scoffed. “You can’t take credit for something that happened outside of your direct control on a backwater world that happened to be influenced by your Element. There are billions of Malevolence users these days and all this universe has your taint upon it.” And then, realizing she hadn’t asked a question, she said, “Give us examples of your interference that specifically drew Erick forth to Veird, Nothanganathor.”

“I set up the Fate Magics in the Script to draw forth someone to solve three Ultimate Quests.” Nothanganathor said, “Find a way back to the Old Cosmology, which is through me. Find a way to cure Melemizargo’s insanity, which I caused. And expand civilization out into this New Cosmology, with me as the direct impediment to such expansion. All of these Ultimate Quests are ones that would require a direct counter to Malevolence. I set up the field. Erick wandered into the field, and succeeded against me, every time he went up against me, until he was finally able to come here, to Margleknot.”

Lady Seraphaka frowned. She said nothing.

Lord Dakka giggled as he looked around. “My turn? My turn!” He shot up to his feet, and stared at Erick. “Give me your Valkyrie magic and agree to get Melemizargo to give his Mantle to Nothanganathor, or however you want to do it, and I’ll make you in charge of Veird and all of those lands which Nothanganathor calls his own!”

Erick heard what Lord Dakka had said, but—

Lady Aelorika said, “Erick isn’t allowed to speak right now. Ask something else please, Lord Dakka.”

Dakka rolled his eyes and said to Erick, “You think about it!” Then he asked Nothanganathor, “What does a fight between you and Erick look like? Completely one-sided, yeah?”

Nothanganathor said, “Erick is nowhere near my level of power and he won’t be for a very long time. I only let him go last time. There would be no point in having me fight him, nor would I want to, now that he has proven himself as a valued participant in this universe.”

“Yeah,” Dakka said, “That’s boring. I’ll think of... something…” He paused. He frowned a little, and then he said, “Nothanganathor Sundered his own starting universe, stole from the Fractal, betrayed Margleknot, and now pretends to be some ultimate power instead of a fuckup responsible for his own downfall. I don’t believe a shitting thing he says. He’s always been way too fucking shifty, always in on Eldraki’s tricks. Erick sided with me, though, and I trust war more than I trust tricks… You and Eldraki; you both speak too tricky. You might not be lying but you ain’t truthing!” He said, “That’s all I have to say on this crap. Who’s talking next?”

Yggdrasil demanded of Nothanganathor, “I want my piece of myself back.”

“I can give you the memories. I can’t give you the Sign. It still contains many people of the Painted Cosmology and I want to bring them back.”

Yggdrasil frowned. “What percentage of the Painted Cosmology have you saved?”

“I have 780 billion souls of the Painted Cosmology in your Sign right now. I can’t give you a percentage of the whole.”

Yggdrasil seemed to have expected much of that. He said to the Council, “I officially request the Council to judge Nothanganathor harshly in all ways in this matter, and to favorably view all other involved parties in the Painted Cosmology issue. I request the Council rescind the overall Quarantine of Veird and the surrounding lands, and to restrict Nothanganathor’s ability to regulate those lands, as well as strip him of his status as Arbiter of Veird. I request the Council officially invite the gods of Veird to Margleknot, so that they can give larger testimonies on this matter.”

Silence.

Lady Aelorika glared at Nothanganathor. “You have sundered trillions, and only saved billions. You have ended a universe’s capability to speak and to grow and to change, all for the opportunity to take over that speaking-growing-changing yourself. Do you believe yourself capable of being the creator of a universe?”

Nathanganathor solidly said, “I know I can be the creator of a universe.”

“A universe you could rescind at a moment’s notice,” Lady Aelorika countered. “After all, Malevolence is all about getting yours and damning all the rest.”

Nothanganathor said, “I will abandon Malevolence to your care as soon as I no longer need it, once I am empowered in my original power as I was before Melemizargo and his ilk cursed away my true self, once I am God of Magic of the Dark Universe.”

Silence.

Eyes wandered.

Thoughts happened behind closed minds.

The trickster Lord Eldraki paid full attention to the hearing, his eyes shining dark.

And then Lady Aelorika commanded, “State your final words of defense, if you have any against the indefensible.”

Nothanganathor asked, “Do you wish to have lands and influence in the Painted Cosmology? Or do you wish to be ignored by that land once again, if Shadow and her ilk are allowed to reclaim it? Margleknot. Do you wish to be planted and to grow within the Painted Cosmology, and not be ousted and killed every other century every time you go visiting that universe? Does the Fractal want more communication with the Darkness? Or a return to small conversations?

“I have used my Sign of Power to grab and contain as much of the Painted Cosmology as I could. It’s just disembodied souls right now and a few trinkets here and there, but it can easily become something more than that, once I can actually communicate with the Darkness at the level I know I can communicate.

“And then all will be right with reality.

“The outcome of my deception was always going to end in this way. Nothing is out of order. Everything is within acceptable parameters. All of this was planned for, and now we are here. Nothing is corruptive about my actions, and the Darkness still exists.” Nothanganathor said, “And now you have Benevolence, in addition to Malevolence. All of this is because of me, and my actions. None of your trust has ever been misplaced, though I have certainly stomped on it overly harshly. It was necessary. I would do it again.

“It takes a harsh hand to deal the death that is necessary to make civilizations flourish properly. I am that harsh hand.

“Because of my pruning, whatever comes next will be wondrous.”

Erick was glad that he had come here.

He also wished he could have stayed in Tir Geal.

Shadow would probably be apoplectic right now. She would have every reason to be furious, too. Erick was furious. Showing that fury in a court of law wasn’t going to serve him well at all.

He wanted to show that fury.

He desperately wanted to.

To speak of the Sundered. To give voice to the lost. To say… so much. There was too much to say. Too much to condense down into anything small like some stupid courtroom drama.

Erick found himself skipping all of that and asking, “Why would the Darkness listen to his call to create? The Dark is chaos incarnate, and the Dark is mindless until it recognizes that it desires a mind. Shadow stuck a painting of an astronaut into a painting of the Dark, and somehow that worked. SOMEHOW, that worked. There is no guarantee that anything Nothanganathor would do with the Dark would work to create anything close to what had come before. No. What he would create would be an empire in the Dark, and then he would grow that empire as far as it could grow.”

… Erick found himself standing in the center of the courtroom, off to the side with Yggdrasil, speaking without stopping until he had arrived at his full counterpoint to Nothanganathor’s position. He had spoken out of turn, it seemed.

Erick doubled down. He puffed out his chest a little, and stood his ground.

The Fae Council was looking at him. Yggdrasil was looking at him. The Fractal Fairy might have been looking at him, or maybe not; hard to know.

Nothanganathor looked at Erick with sleepy, white eyes, and then he disregarded Erick.

Lady Aelorika turned her attentions back to Nothanganathor, asking, “Have anything to say to that?”

“The Darkness isn’t going anywhere and I have a connection to it, and all the souls I saved were from there, so it will take one or two or hundreds of tries, but it will happen,” Nothanganathor said. “I can try for a while. As long as it takes. I imagine it will take a few hundred years to get something generative going. Less time, if I have help. Once I am empowered, ascended, and godly, it would be easy. I would have Margleknot’s help in this, if he would give it. Such help would ensure a good outcome.”

Yggdrasil said, “I would rather help Erick do the same, and never see you again, Nothanganathor.” With a deep hurt in his heart and eyes, Yggdrasil said, “You betrayed me deeply. You don’t understand how deeply.”

“I do understand, Margleknot,” Nothanganathor said. “I have your Sign of the Fractal. I understand fully how much I betrayed you.”

Margleknot raged.

The glitter crystal of the courtroom fractured with gold and green that curled and exploded under Yggdrasil’s feet, expanding under the firmament of the world, reaching all corners of the space, as Margleknot declared,

“THEN GIVE ME BACK MY LIVES.”

The Fractal Fairy waved a hand, and all was silent. The glitter crystal healed. Gold and green pulled back.

Margleknot’s skin was gold, a crown of horns upon his otherwise-orcol countenance. He sighed, and looked tired, as he pulled back, and green returned to his skin, his horns retreated back to his black hair, but his eyes remained gold. Erick stepped to his side, closer, and put a hand on Margleknot’s hand. Margleknot went still, and Yggdrasil held Erick’s hand briefly, before letting go.

Yggdrasil said to Nothanganathor, “I can’t forgive you for stealing my selves. I can’t forgive you for sundering thousands of trillions of lives. Or more.” He looked truly tired now, as he said, “But I also know you have saved so very many with your Malevolence, by killing corruption out there in the greater universe. At the low estimates for the population of the Dark, when compared to the places you have saved, you’ve rescued more than you have damned. At the high estimates of the population of the Painted Cosmology, you would be labeled a Corrupter, and it doesn’t matter that you are prepared to put the Painted Cosmology back because you would be making it in your image, and Corrupters cannot be allowed images of their own.”

Yggdrasil looked like he could keep going, but he stopped there.

Lady Aelorika spoke, “Naming Nothanganthor as Corrupter seems adequate for his Sundering of a universe, no matter what outcome he was hoping to achieve with his schemes.”

Lady Seraphaka said, “I would agree to this Naming, or at least to a removal of Nothanganathor from the list of Approved Evils.”

Lord Dakka said, “I want to see them fight for dominance, but it would be one-sided and boring.”

Lord Eldraki simply gave a Cheshire grin.

… Erick truly did not like that expression on that trickster.

Lady Aelorika said, “You’ve really planned this whole thing out, eh, Nothanganathor? Did you ever imagine that we would ever name you Corrupter?”

Nothanganathor said, “Unless I am mistaken, this is a hearing and not a trial, and yes, being named Corrupter was within acceptable parameters because I have assurances that I won’t be named Corrupter. They’re not violent assurances, of course. I have been planning this for a long time and have many ways to ensure that this works out how I want it to work.”

The room was silent at those proclamations.

And then Lord Eldraki laughed. As though he already knew the answer, he asked, “How do you see this whole thing working out, Nothanganathor?”

“Best case, I win completely, with Margleknot regaining everything it lost in my subterfuge and then gaining True Communication with the Dark. Erick continues uninterrupted, and is free to pursue whatever he wishes to pursue. Having taken my Mantle from Melemizargo, I’ll undo my various curses and remake the Painted Cosmology. Do you have a name you’d like for the new universe I create in the Dark? I would hear it.” Nothanganathor said, “Worst case is the exact same thing happens, but Benevolence loses its current creator and Margleknot loses his Yggdrasil-personality. Veird is erased. The battle probably erases that well-made orb around Veird’s sun. That man who created it, Solomon, is no more, or perhaps I capture him or his Elemental Genesis and grant that power to Margleknot to make more spheres with. Perhaps the worst case would be best for all, but that is not my judgment to make. That is this Council’s judgment to make.”

Erick was there on the courtroom floor, but he wasn’t a part of the conversation at the moment.

That was probably a good thing.

Erick would have exploded like Yggdrasil had exploded, if he were allowed to speak. But from the body languages and faces of Lady Aelorika and Lady Seraphaka, Erick didn’t need to speak; they were already against Nothanganathor’s ploy, though not nearly as much as Erick would have liked. Yggdrasil still seemed hateful of Nothanganathor, so that was good.

Lord Dakka was done with this whole thing.

And then Lord Eldraki smiled devilishly, saying, “I vote for war between Malevolence and Benevolence, and we let chance and power determine the victor.”

Lord Dakka came back to the conversation, scoffing, saying, “Erick has too many weak points on Veird. Nothanganathor would decisively win any real fight between the two of them the second he allowed himself to win. He probably killed all the various Ericks who could have actually fought against him while those guys were still fiddling with basic mana! Nothanganathor doesn’t do war; he does murder.”

Lady Aelorika and Lady Seraphaka looked to each other.

Lady Aelorika said, “Then such a war simply cannot be allowed to happen on Veird—”

“Or on Veird’s sun, since that would be Nothanganathor’s base.” Lord Eldraki said, still smiling. “How convenient they have an intermediary zone, isn’t it! I think Erick named it Fenrir.”

The Ladies glared at Eldraki.

And then Lady Seraphaka said, “This is not a judgment. This is a hearing. We have heard everything we needed to hear. I move that we reconvene at a later date.”

Lord Eldraki said, “And I move that we let Nothanganathor and Erick speak to each other right here and now, and that we all get to watch to make some decisions about who to back!” He smiled at everyone. “It’s just talk!”

The Fractal Fairy waved a hand at Erick and Nothanganathor.

It was a ‘get on with it’ gesture.

The room vanished.

- -

Erick stood on one side of an oval-shaped floor made of glitter crystal. Everywhere else was lightless. It was not dark, or Dark, and it was certainly not filled with shadows. Not even sort of dim. Just a void.

Nothanganathor stood on the other side of the oval, looking tired, and yet relieved. “Help me get the Mantle and you get everything else.”

Infinity shattered the lightless void into an endless fractal, filled with images that took but moments to collect. They were consequences illuminated upon those shards of reality, like an ever-shifting stained-glass masterpiece. Each fragment held a possibility of the future.

In certain places, Erick said something devastating and won this contest, and the Enclave censured Nothanganathor. After that event, Nothanganathor ascended to godhood anyway, in a much more direct path. A path made out of the rubble and bodies of everyone on Veird.

Upon seeing that pathway the shifting Infinity transformed, for Erick was scared to confront Nothanganathor with the best possible words and cut right to apocalypse. Less paths forward won this contest for Erick. More paths showed the other way. Where the Enclave sided with Nothanganathor.

The white dragon’s countenance dominated the FENRIR system, erupting from that black surface, his face the size of the silver sphere of Veird’s outer shell. Nothanganathor took a bite out of Veird, consuming all of Melemizargo in that space, ripping the black dragon out of his prison and devouring him utterly, without disrupting anything else. And then the solar-sized leviathan went off into space, vanishing forever. Somewhere out there a portal to the Dark opened up, and Nothanganathor became a creator god. Life went on on Veird. Without the Shades. Without Melemizargo.

And Nothanganathor got away with everything evil he had ever done in pursuit of power.

He was now untouchable, a God of Darkness in a universe of his own making, there in the embrace of the Actual Darkness. The actual Darkness once again spoke with the Fractal in the ways that universes do; in the actions of people moving back and forth. All of the Painted Cosmology had become the Empire of Nothanganathor’s Shadowed Sun.

And still, Malevolence would spill forth from the New Dark, for Nothanganathor would never give up the power he had gained in his Obscurity—

Something blocked the way forward, to See more, to Know more of that Path.

Erick knew what it was.

Erick countered Nothanganathor’s hiding attempt by saying, “Would you give up pursuit of your own agendas and be a proper god to all? Or would you consume and never stop consuming? Would you never give up your mantle of power to anyone else? Or would everything always have to be your way or no way at all? Do we really want a Cosmology of the Empire of the Shadowed Sun? Empires spread.”

The block on the Fractal Future broke, revealing what Nothanganathor did not want revealed. Nothanganathor sighed in annoyance as the fractals showed a white dragon entering other universes made of mana and violently dominating all of them. Nothanganathor was going to consume every universe made of mana and remake them all in his desired image…

And then paying off Lord Eldraki with a universe of his own to add to his collection.

The other fae of the Council would get their own universes, as soon as they got over their anger at Nothanganathor’s overreach—

Nothanganathor rhetorically asked, “Do you know how many universes out there only have one or two worlds, Erick? Too many to ever count. With me at the helm of those failed, tiny places, those places would expand exponentially, and the Fractal will gain conversation partners untold. Do you know of the true natures of gods and fae? Most are ambivalent tyrants. If I were in charge, I would simply not allow those sorts of entities to exist, to lord their power over the masses, for I would hide in the shadows and eat them when they got out of line. They wouldn’t even know I existed except when I chose to make myself present, to solve this or that crisis. And so! YES. I would dominate every universe that is less than acceptably made.”

Erick glared. “Why?”

Nothanganathor glared right back, declaring, “Because every world is always falling apart because tyrants and the small-minded destroy everything, all the time, therefore they deserve nothing less than obliteration and their worlds deserve strict guidance, and I am the only one who can do that! Only through taking power away from those who cannot wield it properly can any of us ever hope to make anything better.”

“So you say a proper universe only exists with you at the head.” Erick said, “Not surprisingly, I cannot abide that. I cannot abide you. There are some things that one should not do in pursuit of power, and you have done all of them. Whoever you are when you gain more power is just going to be more of the same. You speak of tyrants? You are a tyrant, Nothanganathor.”

“I am the best possible tyrant.”

“And I must kill you.”

The fractal world reorganized along different lines.

All of them showed war, and it wasn’t a one-sided war, either.

Erick could win. That’s what the stained-glass imagery near him showed.

Nothanganathor might win. That’s what showed over on his half of this space.

Erick said, “You killed your mother to force a passing of the Mantle of Magic because you thought you could do better. You were found out then and cursed to be a leviathan. And now you have Sundered a universe and you have been found out again. You had a chance. You squandered it. You should be Sundered yourself, named Corrupter posthumously, and all your works of Malevolence broken.”

Nothanganathor raised a white eyebrow, then said, “Of course you would say that as my True Opposite.” He spoke to the world, “We’re done, here.”

The Fractal Void fell away—

- -

And Erick stood beside Yggdrasil in the courtroom once again—

Lady Aelorika said, “And that was the hearing. Everyone learned a few things. Erick. Do you wish to give your Valkyrie Spell to Lord Dakka, as well as assist Nothanganathor with the capture of that Mantle he wants?”

Erick wasn’t sure which part he was objecting to more when he instantly said, “No.”

Dakka sighed dramatically.

Lady Aelorika nodded, as though this was expected. She moved on. “Nothanganathor. Do you wish to abandon your quest for a smaller, less tumultuous existence? Or to give up your Sign of Power back to Margleknot?”

Nothanganathor said, “No.”

Lady Aelorika said, “Then we’ll reconvene in 3 days.” She looked to Erick. “Your contributions to this hearing were valuable, and thus we will be overlooking your transgressions for a fine of a billion resons. And we’re done!”

The Fractal Fairy snapped their fingers—

- -

Erick found himself in his offices of the king at House Benevolence in Tir Geal, in one of the big meeting rooms that was currently empty of everything, for Erick hadn’t had a need to fill it with anything yet.

Shadow appeared near-instantly, trying not to be too demanding as she asked, “What happened?!”

Erick took a moment, then he said to the air, “I’ll pay the fine with my Sun resons.”

Words appeared.

Done.

Father. I wish to speak to you later, away from Shadow. Please let me know when you can talk.

“Sure thing, Yggdrasil.” Erick turned to Shadow. “The first thing to know is that Nothanganathor’s avatar was strong, and yet not as strong as the actual leviathan, and that he was lying a lot in there without actually lying. All throughout the hearing there were sentiments about how I’m not strong enough to take him, and not a single person disbelieved that sentiment. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t take him in a multiversal way, and yet, I am strong enough to take him in at least one slice of infinity.” Erick asked, “Have you fought him since the Sundering?”

“I wasn’t able to; the Council stopped me.” Shadow waved a dismissive hand. “Get on with the hearing.”

“I will. I just…” Erick breathed. “I just need a moment.”

Shadow understood. She waited.

And then Erick released his aura into the empty meeting room and began crafting a lightshow. “I started in the gallery, near my lawyers and a few other people, who were veiled in some way. Over there was Hadrago, the Lawyer Prime of Wraithborne…”

- - - -

Twenty minutes and a few interruptions of Shadow’s fury later, Erick dismissed the light show.

Shadow paced the room, clearing up a few lingering motes of all consuming Darkness she had left in the shadows here and there, and then wiping away the holes in the floor and walls and other places. She was silent. Thinking.

Erick had a lot of his own thoughts. He kept them to himself right now.

Shadow stopped pacing. She turned to Erick, and said, “It is for the best that I did not attend the hearing.”

Erick said nothing.

Shadow continued, “It is good that you did attend.” She paused in more thought. She said, “I will be able to contain myself when the lawyers get together, for that is the next move. We will gain a measure of where Wraithborne truly stands in such a meeting as well. It won’t accomplish anything of true worth, but Nothanganathor’s avatar will be present, so perhaps we will get a better idea of the person he is and who we have to kill.”

Erick nodded. “Returning back to the hearing: What do you say in regards to Nothanganathor’s idea that he is responsible for my self-creation through both the instigation of…” Erick’s temper flared almost out of control but he kept it in check, as he finished, “—in the instigation of Jane, and the emplacement of the Ultimate Quests which similarly drew me forward to Veird through Fate Magics? On the whole idea that this whole Sundering and the fallout of me being his True Opposite is a result of him playing up his competence for the Fae Enclave, to show them that he is in complete control?”

Shadow almost said something harsh and derogatory against Nothanganathor, but then she looked at Erick, and paused. She stated, “In this arena of cause-and-effect the wyrm only has as much Authority as you give him, so don’t give him any. You are a product of your environment but you are also your own creator, and that goes many times over as a Paradox Wizard. It would not surprise me at all if you went back in time and did something crazy to make your self yourself. Almost all truly powerful Paradoxes do that eventually.” She said, “It’s just a matter of Time.”

“… Ah.”

Silence.

Shadow moved on, “Regarding your rise to Margleknot, though… Nothanganathor is ascribing his actions to your outcomes and that’s not how responsibility works, and especially not for people like him. He could bluster all day every day about how he made you who you are, but it would only be truth for those who decide to listen to him.”

Erick made some decisions in that moment. He breathed out, then asked, “So the Fae Enclave isn’t going to accept that Nothanganathor is some ultimate mastermind?”

Shadow saw that Erick was past his moment of weakness, nodding firmly to note its passing. And then she went back to being quietly wrathful, saying, “That wyrm might get away with it because the Fractal wants to see the Dark again and it doesn’t care about who is at the helm of that visitation. If it was just a matter of getting back into the Dark then Nothanganathor would have already won, because you and your Benevolence are here to counter Nothanganathor’s excesses and Benevolence can easily track destructive influences of all sorts; especially when it comes to Malevolence. And yet, Nothanganathor has proven that he will kill universes to enact his will, and that he will not stop.

“The fact that you uncovered his greater desires to enact his will upon the Small Universes, to make them grow under his Shadowed Sun Empire, is probably going to be the tipping point where Nothanganathor does not win.

“We have likely gained countless allies and also enemies in that uncovering of desire. The Powers That Be of those Small Universes are not on this stage yet at all, but Nothanganathor is dragging them this way, and they could go either way regarding a tyrant leviathan coming in and consuming and replacing all of the tyrants they already have. Oddly enough, those Small Tyrants of those Small Universes will likely side with Benevolence a great deal, for they don’t wish to be deposed, while the Good Gods and Heroes might side with Malevolence and Nothanganathor, for the Acceptable Evil of Margleknot might be a better evil than the evils they already have.

“That truly depends on the universes.

“And yet, with any Acceptable Fate this whole event never reaches that far and we arrive at a good outcome here, in the next 3 days.

“What we need to do is present a plan for something that would outweigh Nothanganathor’s goals of growing outward into the Small Universes and remaking the Painted Cosmology in his image.” Shadow ended with, “I propose we make a plan out of the nebulous thing you have spoken of a few times in that dossier that Margleknot handed out. We make a real plan for expanding from Veird into this Fractal Cosmology.”

Erick scrunched his eyebrows. “What do we need besides a nebulous plan? It should be rather simple, right?”

“Is it, really?” Shadow asked, “If we succeed in making the Painted Cosmology again, would you come with me to the Dark? Or would you want to stay here in this universe? I haven’t met the girl, but I’m almost 100% sure that your daughter would want to go to the Painted Cosmology.”

Ah!

Sudden mirth filled Erick many times over as he imagined Jane loosed upon the universe. Erick said, “I don’t think worrying about that is necessary. She’s going to go absolutely everywhere, multiple times over, as soon as she can. I’m a little sad that I might only ever get to see her and her sisters and Evan every other century once this whole thing works out well, but I’m pretty sure I can work out how to visit her with a step of power whenever I want.”

Shadow’s mood seemed to improve as Erick’s did. She nodded. “That’s one way to do it, yes.” She sighed out, and it was a happy sort of sound. And then her eyes glittered with Darkness, and she said, “A workable plan might help the Council see us as valued, so let us plan how to make a universe, Erick, both in the Fractal, and in the Dark.”

“I have about a hundred questions about the Painted Cosmology,” Erick said, as he began moving his aura around the entirety of House Benevolence, copying some treats here and there in the various offices of the House and bringing them to this room. Big fluffy chairs and some tables and working chairs and a whole drinking cart came next. Erick poured a copy of some fresh tea that some people were drinking down in the Command Center, as they fiddled with the [Infinite Imaging] and searched all of Tir Geal for threats of many different kinds. There weren’t many threats, though. So Erick simply said to Shadow, “Primarily, what does a connection between universes even look like? Is there a reason that the galaxy containing Veird seems to be a giant [Renew] ring, with Veird in the gap?”

Shadow readily took her tea, seeming to relax even more as she said, “That’s where Nothanganathor killed several thousand lightyears’ worth of the Fractal Cosmology when he Sundered the Painted Cosmology. The destruction went far and deep, threatening to spread far in this universe as well. Margleknot contained the problem along with Nothanganathor, who was there within moments of the event. From this angle, I am told the destruction was a corruptive event. I made it through just fine, though those first days were horrific and I was furious.” She sipped her tea as she sat down in a big fluffy chair. Erick sat down across from her. Shadow continued, “The corruption of that event was a way to shield all actual Viewing into the heart of the event itself, so the question of ‘what happened’ has always been a big question. I remember the next few years vividly, but I do not wish to go over them for they paint me in a rather terrible light.”

Erick nodded.

Shadow continued, “As for what a connection between universes looks like? That is a varied topic. Sometimes it’s a single divot in the Fractal Cosmology that leads to other places… I believe you’d call it a ‘False Vacuum hole’? Anyway, I see you understand the words, even if we don’t share the same language in that way. Anywhere that is collapsed in the Fractal Cosmology can give rise to a hole into another place, or serve as a place where another universe can grow.

“Black holes can often serve as ways into other Universes. Most galaxies have one at the center that serves this function.

“Did you know that gravity is just an expression of slices of reality that are nearby each other? Oh yes. Extreme gravity, like that inside a black hole, is a result of Small Universes existing within a space. Usually the actual entrance to that Small Universe is only on one or maybe a few slices of a Layer, with all the other slices merely experiencing heavy gravity.

“Moving on: Oftentimes, the distance between Here and There is a Veil-like structure that exists strongly in certain areas. This is that Dark Matter that you’ve sometimes referenced in your dossier. So again: gravity.

“The Dark connected to the Fractal by way of Veil, most prominently existent within that Renew Galaxy, as you call it, in Layer 789. We kept the number of actual entrances down to a handful; 5 of them. We mostly had annihilating Dark in those entrances; a defensive measure. We’re probably going to have to have cities instead, when we remake it all. Gotta show how friendly we are, after all.”

Erick was having a moment.

He leaned forward a little bit. “Can you talk more about gravity as a function of slices of reality?”

“Oh sure. It’s all space time here in the Fractal Cosmology; that’s where we have to start this conversation. From there the rest of it is easy to understand. The multiverse is stuck to itself in a way which makes gravity happen due to the nearness of side-realities. Like you know that gravity strength is a function of distance from matter? That’s because the ability to draw forth side realities using resons —to pull a grain of rice out of nothing— is more easily achieved when you’re closer to side realities in which it would be physically easy to pull forth a grain of rice out of nothing, and it’s harder to do that when you’re further away from planets with rice.” Shadow said, “Everything in this universe is a function of nearness to each other in time and space, and gravity is a natural function of that nearness, but if you go too deep with gravity, you punch forth into completely new possibility, which gives rise to new universes, or at least completely new possibilities, which then gives rise to new universes.”

Erick sat thinking for a moment.

Shadow smirked, sipping her tea.

Erick said, “I’ll try to reconcile that with what I already know, but it seems… almost intuitive when you put it that way?”

Shadow smiled. “All universes are rather intuitive when you get right down to it. Here, gravity and time are a function of nearness of other matters in side realities, but in the Painted Cosmology, collective mana belief did all that, while Elemental Stone helped a lot with a foundational base. From there...”

Erick and Shadow spoke for a while, and Erick got to experience a part of Shadow he did not realize existed. Shadow knew a lot about a lot. He had known this, of course, but he hadn’t really known this. Now he knew.

When the conversation moved on to universal building plans, Erick suggested Benevolence dungeons on suitable worlds of the Renew Galaxy, with giant bubbles of [Renewing] [Hasted Shelter]s and [Terraforming]s around them to speed up development by a lot. Shadow had more nuanced ideas that showed a level of building and care that Erick was simply not willing to extend beyond ‘put some good people in charge and let them run free’. Shadow wanted tourism and garden worlds and grand societies to anchor and support the rebirth of the Painted Cosmology, which she wanted to accomplish on the Other Side of the Renew Galaxy. Erick couldn’t say that her ideas were better or worse, they were just different, and therefore easy enough to accept.

“Melemizargo wants to put dungeons everywhere and then bring people back on this side of the universe.” Erick asked, “Do you think he would want to adjust his plans toward remaking the Painted Cosmology instead, if he knew you were still around and we were doing this sort of planning here?”

“Hard to say what he would do exactly, but he will likely wish to go back to the Dark,” Shadow said. “Whatever the case, you’re not going to ask him to sacrifice himself to Nothanganathor, are you?”

“Ha! Absolutely not. Melemizargo is a friend.”

Shadow smiled softly. “Is it time to talk to some lawyers?”

Erick gazed across the decimation of a grand feast that both of them had shared while they spoke. From ‘chicken’ bones on plates to empty casserole dishes to many other empty plates and a few empty barrels of good drink, they had eaten well. Erick was ready to move on. And yet…

“Yes, but I need to talk to Yggdrasil first.”

Shadow nodded, then stood up. “I’ll be there for the lawyer meeting. Let me know when.” And then she stepped away.

Erick cleared away the dregs of their feast with a [Benevolent Cleanse]. The detritus of life misted into a white fog that rolled away, disappearing into reality. Erick stood up.

“Yggdrasil?” Erick asked, “Want to talk?”

Yggdrasil stepped into the room. The room flashed over with golden hexagons, labeled with QUARANTINE. Yggdrasil instantly said, “There is no trial. The decision has been made. We wish to purge Nothanganathor from Margleknot, but steps must be taken to ensure this happens in a positive way. Malevolence and Benevolence are both useful, so we will keep both, but their primary users must leave to avoid what we call a Grand Trial here in Margleknot, which would likely result in the deaths of trillions. That means you, too. You gotta leave. You can come back here, but when this war is over, Nothanganathor is purged.

“And so, the Grand Trial will take place on Veird.

“After visiting with your lawyers in a final attempt to amicably avoid a fight, which we doubt is possible, you will be moving back to Veird.

“From there, you will have the task of removing Nothanganathor yourself.

“We believe —that with assistance— you can defend one reality from him. If you wish to win you will have to work to defend multiple realities, and then you will have to erase the Erased One. It will not be easy. I will be helping you in my capacity as Margleknot. Nothanganathor will be drawing on his resources here in Margleknot and elsewhere, as well. The fight will be contained to Veird and the surrounding space. Anyone who is forced to flee is an automatic loser, and we will be working to ensure no one flees.

“The outcome will be something we will all have to live with.”

Erick took a moment.

Then he said, “Yup. Expected that.”

Yggdrasil waited.

Erick asked, “So why the Quarantine?”

“Because everyone and their grandmother is spying on you and Shadow right now,” Yggdrasil said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Aside from all this world-ending Nothanganathor shit— Why are you moving so fast with her? She’s going to betray you in 500 years!”

“… What?” Erick felt some whiplash right now. “Don’t people have better things to do than worry about… whatever this is?” He grinned. “It’s kinda quaint.”

Yggdrasil shook his head. He focused. “Father. Erick. Shadow will betray you.”

“Probably not, actually.” Erick said, “She seems okay.”

Yggdrasil paused. He looked at Erick. “… You’re happy right now?”

Erick smiled. “I’m going home and Nothanganathor isn’t automatically winning. I have a lot to be happy about.”

Yggdrasil frowned a little, his golden eyes sparkling with concern. “… He has some big trick. I don’t know the trick, but he’s going to try and win everything with his tricks.”

“Yup. So be ready. I suggest you dismantle the Malevolence stuff you have here in Margleknot while you can.” Erick asked, “Want me to try hooking up [Benevolent Cleanse] to an [Infinite Imaging] and simply erasing all of the Malevolence here in Margleknot?”

Yggdrasil blinked. And then he laughed. “No. That would be… a disaster.”

Erick nodded.

Yggdrasil said, “The danger isn’t coming from those Malevolence formations, anyway. We’ve prognosticated in ways you don’t even know are possible. We’re very sure that the danger is not coming from Malevolence. Or Benevolence, for that matter, just so you know.”

Erick thought for a moment… “What about the absence of Malevolence, then? Could he take back his power and fuck things up? If a [Cleanse] could fuck up everything, surely he could do the same?”

“We’ve checked that, too. We’re not sure what the trick is, but he has one, and nothing we do can find it. Just be careful, father.” Yggdrasil said, “And don’t tell anyone about this conversation until stuff happens.”

“Sure.”

Yggdrasil looked at Erick for a while longer.

… And then Yggdrasil stepped away, clearing the air and the mana history as the golden Quarantine hexagons vanished—

Shadow stepped right back into the room. “What the fuck was that?”

Erick chuckled. “Good news and bad news and I can’t tell you about any of it. I’m going to send off a message to Wraithborne about the lawyers. You ready to meet them?”

… Shadow stared for a moment. “I await the meeting with the lawyers!”

And then huffed and stepped away through a wave of Dark veils to vanish from sight, to go wherever it was she was going— Ah. Back to her castle, it appeared. She was busy in her Observation Room now, rapidly getting Witch Aragathara and Great Mother Caa back into the room to go over a whole bunch of prognostication things.

Erick spoke to the air, down by Shivraa, his secretary, “Shivraa.”

“Yes, sir?” Shivraa said, suddenly looking up from her computer terminal.

“Set up a meeting with the lawyers and Wraithborne. They’ll probably be expecting your call.”

“At once, sir.”

- - - -

The Non-Combat Zone was the only place that Erick was willing to meet Nothanganathor, so that was where he was going to suggest they meet, but then Nothanganathor suggested it first.

The room was the same as when he met with Shackle and his Underlings; a basic grey stone box of a room inside a grey void. In theory, violence of any sort was not allowed. If violence was detected through any hundreds of different ways, the location would break and both sides of the meeting would return to their chosen starter locations; wherever they came into the Zone in the first place.

And so, Erick stood with Shadow on one side of the grey room.

And Nothanganathor stood on the other.

To Erick’s right side stood Blighter and Seabass, while Lawyer Prime Hadrago stood to Nothanganathor’s right side; Erick’s left. The lawyers were in the center-ish space in the grey room and they already had papers out, sitting on a relatively small, shared table.

And then there was the unexpected person on Nothanganathor’s side. He was tall, dark haired and with dark eyes. He looked rather human, but slightly more refined, with an air of easy power around him that few could match.

Morbion Blackthorn, Emperor of Wraithborne, spoke first, “Greetings, Erick. It is a shame that we have had to meet like this, for I truly do wish to work with you in the future, in ways that will become apparent once I lay out the universe thusly:

“Nothanganathor is willing to take all of the universes beyond the Fractal, starting with the Dark.

“You can have the Fractal with your Benevolence.

“In the short term, to enforce this sort of shift, and only if necessary, Nothanganathor will declare himself as Evil, and I’ll be ripping the Evil out of Wraithborne and replacing it with Benevolence. This will cause the Balance here in Margleknot to radically shift toward Good and Nothanganathor will be radically empowered to do anything he needs to do to repair the Balance. This ‘anything’ means rolling over Margleknot here, Yggdrasil on Veird, and taking what he wants, before escaping to the New Painted Cosmology and discarding his Evil, to become a God of Magic. I’ll have my hands full and some sort of New Evil will rise to fill the void of power left by Wraithborne, and that new power could be anything. This would be what we here in Margleknot call a ‘Grand Trial’, an Upheaval, or any number of other words for it.

“Or,” Morbion said, “You can accept your place as a large power here in the Fractal, Wraithborne converts to Benevolence slowly and safely, and Nothanganathor gets to make the New Painted Cosmology and eventually take over the Small Universes at his leisure.

“We win either way. The only question is the amount of collateral damage.”

Nothanganathor watched Erick.

Erick watched him right back.

Shadow asked Erick, “Shall we entertain this more? Or are we done here?”

Erick said, “Just a bit more entertainment.” He asked, “Will we keep the battle confined to the Veird System?”

Nothanganathor tiredly said, “Powers and people may enter, but none may take this war outside of the Veird System.”

“I agree,” Erick said.

Nothanganathor said, “I want you to know that when I win, these terms will not change. They’ll work to strip Malevolence from this universe after this war. Therefore, this universe needs something anti-corruptive, and your Benevolence is that measure. I always intended to build a True Opposite who can truly ascend to great heights of power and civilization, and keep out the corruption. I will not be stepping in your way beyond this war, and I will attempt not to harm you overmuch. I will still do everything I need to do to win.”

Erick said, “And for the crime of the Sundering, you will be Sundered in turn, Nothanganathor.”

Nothanganathor’s ever-present exhaustion faded a fraction. “I always wondered if someone like you could come out of my plans for a True Opposite without losing someone dear to them through a Sundering event. You almost made it, but then I took your false daughter of Debbie, but only because I had to, and only to hit you obliquely, through that false Erick from the dungeons. I tried to strike as soft as I could. Melemizargo and Shadow did not go soft on me at all, when they took my wife, my Ara.”

“People choose who they are all the time, Nothanganathor.” Erick said, “I chose to accept Debbie as my real daughter, because she is. You chose to be like this, instead of giving up on your vendetta.”

Nothanganathor frowned. And then he made a decision. He began, “Just as it’s impossible to forgive them for sundering my wife, it is impossible to forgive them for cursing me to Obscurity. Even now, the only one truly Seeing me is you. I am glad for that, Erick. You can see who I really am. That is such a rare thing. So watch this.” Nothanganathor took a knife out from his robes, and even though he was several meters from the man, he stabbed Blighter through the heart. Nothanganathor had moved without moving, reaching without reaching, and Erick’s lawyer exploded into Red Static that faded into nothing. “Blighter no longer exists. I could have taken him into my Sign of Power, but I have not. He is gone, just like Debbie. Just like Ara.” Nothanganathor held up the knife, showing it was plain and boring… Except it had a red glint to the edge that betrayed Red Depths far beyond the simple metal. “If I need to, my opening move will be distributing enchantments like this across all of Veird. Butter knives, forks, paper that has been cut too sharp. Anything with an edge can take this enchantment. And I can do worse.”

Erick was worse than appalled, and in too many ways to count. No one else seemed to notice the absence in the room. No one else seemed to notice how the Red wiped away some of the papers on the small table; the ones that Blighter had brought. Seabass was still there, and his clothes looked finer, which probably meant a change of history… An Establishment? Yes. That’s what had happened.

To be sure, Erick asked, “No one saw him Sunder Blighter, did they?”

Lawyer Hadrago and understudy Seabass both tensed at Erick mentioning someone they didn’t know.

Shadow just watched.

Shadow had noticed Nothanganathor’s knife strike. She didn’t do anything to stop it.

To be fair, Erick didn’t do anything either. He didn’t think…

He didn’t think that Nothanganathor could do that here in the Non-Combat Zone.

He already knew he couldn’t reverse time here… And that wouldn’t bring Blighter back, anyway. When Nothanganathor Sundered people, he truly erased them from existence. Just like he had done to Debbie.

Morbion looked only a little perturbed as he said, “Nothanganathor. Please. We’re close to winning this, and you go and Erase one of Seabass’s understudies?”

Nothanganathor huffed out a tiny, hateful laugh, saying, “I actually Erased your top lawyer, Morbion. Seabass was the understudy. He’s gotten a promotion! I am sure he is happy. Aren’t you, Seabass?”

Seabass said, “I live to serve, Nothanganathor.”

“Quite right!” Nothanganathor added, “You didn’t have to add the comma between my name and your actions, though. It’s almost like you don’t serve me. Which is true enough. You’re Erick’s lawyer. Quite a violation of interests, there.”

Nothanganathor whipped the knife into Seabass’s heart, exploding the man into Red Static. Red Sparks touched across the table again, eating away at all the papers that Seabass had set forth. Now, only the papers from Prime Hadrago remained, and his papers took up the entire small table.

It was as though Erick had never had lawyers from Wraithborne at all.

Nothanganathor’s knife retreated to the inside of his robes.

Morbion looked to Erick, and said, “You really should have taken me up on my offers of lawyers. We could have settled this amicably.”

Erick had watched all of that casual display of power, and had a think. Nothanganathor could undermine everything here in Margleknot, couldn’t he. According to Querkooda and other people Erick had spoken with, this Non-Combat Zone was breakable by Ascended, but not by anyone below that. And yet here was Nothanganathor breaking rules like they didn’t matter.

Fair enough.

What was an Ascended, anyway? A person who was unassailable; that was the typical answer. Perhaps Nothanganathor wasn’t technically Ascended, because there were so many ways to attack him, but he had enough individual powers to make himself a Power-in-effect, if not in-truth.

Erick asked Nothanganathor, “Doesn’t Erasing the lawyers I got from Wraithborne ruin your plot to have Wraithborne turn not-Evil, and thus empower yourself to Evil? Now here’s Morbion, thinking that I don’t want to work with him at all.”

Morbion tensed this time, frowning heavily as he looked to Nothanganathor.

“Erick, Erick, Erick,” Nothanganathor said, “I have also Erased all your talking contact with the Enclave. That is worth more than Wraithborne knowing what is going on, because I can fix Wraithborne easily enough. Now watch this:” Nothanganathor turned toward Morbion. “You’ll be turning Wraithborne to Benevolence and helping Erick take over this Fractal Universe with you probably at the head of that power. I will be turning Evil, officially. Figure out the rest.”

Morbion frowned slightly, but he controlled that expression away. “Yes, Nothanganathor.”

Nothanganathor smiled. He didn’t look tired at all. “See, Erick? This is what you have to contend against. I suggest you accept my offers.”

So it was like that, eh?

Erick countered, “The simple fact is that if you do this too much then I have nothing left to lose, Nothanganathor.”

Nothanganathor chuckled once. “Just like me in so many ways! The only difference is that I have everything to gain when I win.” His eyes glinted Red amongst the white, as he said, “I’ve calculated the most damage I can do to you, and it’s that mayor Silverite, that mentor Al, that inquisitor Kromolok, and of course, Poi. If I Erase those pillars, then all of that God Pact world falls around you like a tunnel caving in. You think you’re the first Wizard I’ve had to undermine completely? No, you are not. You’re just the first one to make it up here to Margleknot, to prove that they’re actually capable of following my own plans.”

Erick was practically beside himself, outside looking in, for the threats were too real, the pain was too close, and the war was almost here.

And then he focused.

Erick said, “You’re already turning Evil. On purpose.”

“Ah ha!” Nothanganathor said, “I wondered about that Intelligence Stat; where it would lead. Most of you delved into paranoia, but some turned out like you. Yes. I am already turning Evil right here and now. Understand that I do not want to, but I must come at this from every angle possible, and that includes exploiting the Balance for my purposes.” He asked, with a deadly tone, “Are you turning Good? You should! It might help!”

“It might help you, you mean.”

For when Wraithborne turned not-Evil, it would create a vast Need for the Balance to reassert itself, to fill the hole left by Evil, thus empowering all Evil people and diminishing all Good people until the Balance returned. It was Fate Magic on a grand, horrible scale.

“Ha!” Nothanganathor grinned, and it reminded Erick of Lord Eldraki’s grin, all Cheshire and deep-knowing. “If you turned Good, it would be even easier to fight you. You should turn Good.”

Would Nothanganathor’s plan even work if they kicked him out of Margleknot? Put him ‘Outside of the Balance’?

Surely he would have accounted for that.

He probably accounted for that.

Erick said to Morbion, “You should take your Prime and leave before your malevolent ally decides to Erase you, too. Good luck with your transformation to Benevolence.”

Morbion said nothing. He simply walked backward. Lawyer Prime Hadrago followed rapidly, leaving the papers on the table between Erick and Nothanganathor. They were soon gone.

Shadow spoke for the first time, “The Dark will never accept you.”

“Sure it will.” Nothanganathor said, “It’s mindless until it has a mind and soon it will have my mind guiding it to a new Creation.”

Shadow looked down her nose at Nothanganathor, and then she turned around and left.

When they were alone, Erick asked Nothanganathor, “So what’s the second twist?”

Nothanganathor turned tired again. Was the show over? It probably was. Why was he putting on a show for Shadow? No. Not just Shadow, but also for Erick.

Nothanganathor said, “I’ll give you a week once they throw you back to Veird. See your loved ones. Make your plans. Try to overcome my magics, for you’ll have lots of opportunities to try. And then make the smart decision and help me kill Melemizargo. If, however, you think of taking his Mantle of Magic for yourself, then I will have to do things I do not wish to do. If you make the smart decisions then you get this Fractal Infinity, and I get all the rest.”

Erick stared at Nothanganathor for a long moment.

Nothanganathor breathed in and stood a bit taller, as though waiting for something to happen and preparing to counter it.

Erick said, “There’s no way to get your Ara back, is there? Not even through side realities?”

Nothanganathor sighed out, his eyes clouding. “No. There isn’t. I’ve tried. She’s gone, Erick, completely. When Melemizargo tortured her for information against me… His destruction of her was Complete. All I have of her is a fragmented corpse that is more made of imagery than anything substantive.

“Erick. Please understand this: I was not wrong to kill my mother, or to fight Melemizargo, or to plot to take the Painted Cosmology. Dragons like them are all horrible people. Too proud by half. Too consuming by all. But if I could do it over again, I would not. I lost too much going up against good odds. I would not make such a gamble a second time. Don’t make the same mistakes I made. Take the win, help me get Melemizargo’s Mantle, and live a good life.”

Nothanganathor walked away.

Erick was alone in the Non-Combat Zone.

He took several moments.

And then he left.

- - - -

Erick stepped into his offices again.

Shadow was there. She looked angry. Yggdrasil stood to the side. He also looked quietly furious.

Lady Seraphaka stood to a different side of the room, wearing her usual black and white and gold, but with tiny earrings made of Erick’s black scales he had lost in his first bloody encounter with the Fae Council, with hearing the voice of The Fractal Fairy. She was sad.

Lady Aelorika was closer to the center of the room. She wore flowers and vines and soft green fabrics. She was angry.

Lord Dakka was there, casually rusting on a couch, looking hopeful.

Lord Eldraki stepped away from a white wall, his outfit turning from the white of the wall back to the dark colors of high-court fashion. He happily said, “Nothanganathor has won! Are you going to fight the inevitable?”

Erick scowled. “What do you want, Eldraki?”

Eldraki smirked. “Dropping honorifics?”

“Probably. You’re the cause of this. You, specifically. The rest of you three, in part. I am starting to see less and less worth in courting this Fae Court.” Erick asked them all, “You are aware that Nothanganathor Erased two people in your Non-Combat Zone, yes? My lawyers from Wraithborne, Blighter and Seabass. The ones who spoke to you all in the Council Chambers all those times, and—”

Erick stopped.

Erick had seen a lot of people die over the years. Seeing Blighter and Seabass Erased like that still got to him. Deeply. From the expression of the fae and of Yggdrasil they were all aware of what had happened. The fact that the Non-Combat Zone had been violated was only really bothering Yggdrasil and Seraphaka, though. Aelorika was having some trouble but not a lot. Eldraki looked positively enthusiastic.

Erick said, “I’m sure Blighter and Seabass were not good people. That doesn’t matter. They did not deserve to be Erased. No one does.”

Silence.

Erick began with, “Can we discuss what you said earlier, Yggdrasil?”

Yggdrasil nodded.

Erick tried not to explode as he asked, “So that purge of Nothanganathor from Margleknot needs to happen before the war, so that he cannot get resources from here and be empowered by the Balance.”

Aelorika said, “If we did that he would be outside of our Authority. It would prevent the upcoming Grand Trial of Margleknot, but it would harm everything else to come, no matter the outcome of this war. We’re not banishing him Outside of the Balance.” She said, “Take heart, instead, that Wraithborne is changing to Benevolence, Erick.”

Aelorika tried to contain her joy at the swing toward Good. Seraphaka joined her in that emotion, while Eldraki and Dakka both quietly ignored those positive emotions. Yggdrasil was pensive. All of them were thinking most about Margleknot.

Shadow was judgmental and hateful.

Erick identified most with Shadow right now.

Aelorika asked, “Will you fight?”

“Yes,” Erick said.

“It will be difficult, and mostly impossible if you go up against him in a straight fight,” Aelorika said.

“Yeah. That sounds about as expected.” Erick sarcastically asked, “You want to help against Nothanganathor?”

“Yes,” Aelorika said.

“Yes,” Seraphaka said.

“Yes,” Dakka said.

“Nope!” Eldraki said. “I quite like Nothanganathor’s plan to take the Dark while you get the Fractal. You could do that, too, you know. Take over the universe with Benevolence. Close all holes to corruption. Erase slavery. End the Balance of Good versus Evil and send us all into chaos. Make Benevolence fracture into a trillion variations, and cause untold expansions and destructions into this Infinity. Bring about more suffering, alongside more of everything else.” He smirked as he listed off horrors alongside good things, like all of it was a great enjoyment to him.

Erick looked at Eldraki.

And then he punched him, his fist meeting fae flesh like a column of iron meeting meat jelly.

Eldraki went spinning, flying into the wall of the room whereupon he slapped into the white wall like a sack of meat. Bones snapped. Blood spilled. Eldraki slipped down to the ground, groaning softly.

Dakka laughed loudly and happily while Seraphaka grinned.

Aelorika said, “He deserved that. I hope it made you feel better.”

“It did, actually,” Erick said, feeling calmer. “I still feel terrible about everything, and right now that feeling is focused on Blighter and Seabass because they always dealt fairly with me, as far as I know… Why was an un-Ascended person able to do that?”

With a quiet dread, Yggdrasil said, “He has a lot of different abilities, stolen from a lot of different lands.”

Erick almost asked what kinds of powers Nothanganathor had, but it didn’t really matter. Nothanganathor was a Wizard at the height of his power, and that told everyone more than enough.

And then Eldraki’s right hand moved brokenly, lifting up above the guy and then acting like a puppetmaster’s hand, twitching fingers over the body and then moving upward, picking up Eldraki on invisible strings and setting him back on his broken legs. Eldraki’s right hand twitched, and Eldraki’s body healed fast. When the healing was done, Eldraki’s eyes lit up once again and his mouth smiled as he held his right hand above his head, like a dancer. He took a bow.

Eldraki stood back up, still smiling, saying, “Great punch! Didn’t know you had it in you!” He dropped the pretense of being happy. “Everyone gets one. I will allow you a second one at some undefined point in the future because we are being overly harsh on you— I recognize that— and yet you are rising to the challenges set forth by Nothanganathor and all others.”

Erick said, “Fine. Get on with your proposal, please.”

Eldraki instantly said, “Give your Valkyries to Dakka for use against corruption and we’ll put the full weight of Margleknot against Nothanganathor.”

Erick looked to Dakka. “You want the valkyries?”

“I’ll take a copy, if that’s all you want to give!”

Erick looked at them all, asking, “What kind of ‘full weight of Margleknot’ actually exists?” He added, “Or, more importantly, why are you all still treating this as though it’s not a big deal? That you shouldn’t throw your full weight behind preventing Nothanganathor’s rise to power in the multiverse?”

Eldraki chuckled. “Because there’s nothing wrong with Nothanganathor’s rise to ultimate power!”

Aelorika said, “We cannot condone his actions and yet we cannot go fully against him, for he has threatened us without threatening us regarding corruption events out in the rest of the universe, and ultimately, if he were released from his Curse of Obscurity, he would be a force of stability.” She said, “And so, he remains In the Balance for now. He remains in our power, and in our power, we grant him power in return, just as we would do for you.”

Erick frowned.

“If you want to fight him and absolutely win, Erick, there are other ways to fight,” Eldraki said, grinning. “The best way I can think of is for you to become Evil in Truth, perhaps focusing on civilization expanding as a means for debauchery and pain and hate? Throw some Benevolent Slavery in there, too! It would ruin Nothanganathor’s plan to take advantage of the Evil Swing coming up the line,” Eldraki grinned wider as Erick glared at him. Eldraki added, “Or you could learn Time Magics in ways other than Establishment! Actually visiting times previous! Of course, you would have to learn how to hide your mana and power, which would likely be impossible due to everyone being able to see you, but doing that sort of magic would be a way in which Nothanganathor does not operate. He’s all about Establishment, just like you.”

“He’s such a fucking mirror, isn’t he.” Erick had a thought. “Let me guess. Nothanganathor works with you and Dakka, primarily, but Aelorika is his antagonist here because she’s all about the plants and I love plants, while Seraphaka is mostly ambivalent toward him. He really is some sort of True Opposite shit.”

Eldaraki’s grin went wider, past his face.

Aelorika frowned a little.

Dakka laughed.

Seraphaka raised an eyebrow, asking, “And?”

Erick said, “And that means none of you are taking this seriously.”

Which was apparently the wrong thing to say.

Without anything changing at all, the room suddenly felt like a violent jungle as Aelorika declared, “We are taking this more seriously than you could ever know.”

And then Aelorika pulled herself back.

It took Eldraki a moment to pull his grin back to his face, to stop appearing like a True Monster. Dakka had been scratching at the arm of a lounge chair, causing the chair to bleed, but that stopped, too. Seraphaka pulled away from the desk she was seated against, and the desk, which had been solid gold, turned back into normal wood.

Yggdrasil looked tired.

Shadow looked happy, oddly enough. Why? Oh. The Council had revealed some of themselves. Erick had knocked them off of their pedestal slightly.

Erick reevaluated.

Erick began, “I want to foster a good relationship with Margleknot and the Painted Cosmology…” Erick had so many things he could say, but he chose to cut to the chase. “But you’re making it awfully hard. Nothanganathor unBalanced Margleknot. I brought it back. Nothanganathor has poisoned your systems with Contracts and Slavery, and I’m getting rid of that. Once Nothanganathor is gone, Shadow and I will be bringing the Painted Cosmology back, and we won’t have to do experiments to get it back. Shadow can just do that as soon as she can reconnect with the remnants of the Painted Cosmology and we have some time to set up some magics and a whole bunch of stuff. I plan on expanding out from Veird’s system with great bounty and civilization, making new spheres around new stars and all sorts of stuff like that. And yet you wish to go along with the guy who has Sundered a universe only to bring it back in his image, and then go on and kill and capture other universes.

“Now I’ve heard a lot about you all, all across Margleknot. You’re the enforcers of civilization and everyone is scared of you.

“And yet you’re scared of Nothanganathor.

“Why?” Erick asked, “Is it, perhaps, because he is a boring old man until someone gives him a reason to be cruel, and he relishes inflicting terrible pains on people? The only time I saw him be something other than a ‘tired old man’ today was when he was taking joy in killing Blighter and Seabass, to show me what he could do if he needed.”

Dakka laughed. “He’s a bastard, that one! Doesn’t do proper war; that’s his only failing. He slaughters his enemies dispassionately. You use your enemies to do the slaughter. Much more fun that way.”

… So that was Dakka’s non-answer. Erick wasn’t impressed.

The other three Old Fae of the Fractal Cosmology were similarly non-impressed with Erick’s words, and probably for reasons far beyond what Erick could suss out on his own—

Erick realized something.

They were never going to admit that they were scared. That this whole thing terrified them something deep. Fairy Moon was scared of Soul Magics because they were the one thing that could kill her permanently… or at least change who she was permanently. Sundering probably didn’t work on her.

Would Nothanganathor’s ‘Erasure’ work on her? On any fae?

Maybe not completely, but well enough to scare them?

Yeah.

Duh.

… Okay. That was fine.

Erick could work with that.

He didn’t need to change the universe. He just needed to save Veird and end Nothanganathor’s threat.

Okay!

Focus achieved.

Erick said to Dakka, “I’m not giving anyone a copy of the magic that I am going to be using against Nothanganathor, and especially not a neutral party that is working both of us against each other.”

Dakka smirked. “Give me a copy of the spell and I will ensure the resulting soldiers are only used against corruption events, to organize populations away from problem centers and to strike back at corruption. Those conscripted warriors will always know of Tir Gael and the Apparent King as their creators. You can still use it yourself however you wish.”

Aelorika spoke up, “It would only be used with Council approval.”

Seraphaka said, “We would not use it lightly, but we will use it extensively.”

Eldraki said, “And in return, you’ll get what you came for; assistance against Nothanganathor.”

Aelorikia said, “We’re losing a big weapon against corruption either way this turns out, Erick. We need another one. You get to be that weapon. Your valkyries are just a small part of the weaponry we expect to get from you.”

Erick just stared for a moment.

Shadow and Yggdrasil both watched. Shadow seemed to think it was a good deal. Yggdrasil looked hopeful that Erick would take the win.

Erick decided to take the win.

He briefly dove into his soul, copied the [Blood of the Valkyrie] Benevolence crystal, and then came back to the moment, to hold out his hand and express that copy into the air. The Benevolence crystal was a spherical white gem with inner fire that shimmered red-grey-gold-black.

Dakka breathed deep, the fae of rust and war steadying himself, as he reached forward and held up a hand.

Erick placed the copy of the spell into Dakka’s grip—

- -

Erick stood with the Fractal Fairy in a world of different paths that hung in the air like stained glass.

They were all paths for the Valkyrie. Some paths held valkyries that were scared and alone and lost; those were closed off. Some paths had corrupted valkyries going to war for corruption instead of fighting against it; those paths faded from possibility. Some paths existed where valkyries were born in places that they needed to be, their powers growing in the face of looming corruption threats; those paths solidified. All paths collected and then led to Tir Gael, or to Veird, or directly to Erick, with the person inside the valkyrie war machine being reborn along the way, and making their way toward better lives than those that had come before.

It was a Path being written and enforced, like the Path Erick had taken to make [Gate]. A Fae Path through reality, being written by the greatest fae of this Fractal Universe.

The Fractal Fairy nodded.

- -

Erick let go of the crystal.

Dakka eagerly took the crystal, his eyes glinting with rusted-iron depths. He grinned, and Erick heard war on the wind. And then Dakka breathed out, relaxing, sighing, as he twisted his hand and the crystal vanished. He smiled softly. Dakka said, “Welcome to Margleknot, Erick Flatt. Let us discuss how we can assist each other in our war efforts. For starters, how about we help you learn how to reinforce the Script, to make it so that Erasure cannot happen within that space? That should remove Nothanganathor’s main threat. He could still, of course, simply kill people, but shouldn’t be about tricks.”

“Bah! Tricks are great!” Eldraki said, scoffing.

“It shouldn’t be that hard for you to learn how to prevent Erasure,” Seraphaka said, “It’s basically Establishment to counter Establishment. That Rozeta-person of Veird should be able to put it inside the Script as soon as you learn how to do it. Margleknot has the details.”

Aelorika said, “Erasure has been legal here in Margleknot for a while but only because we can’t really catch it, because we don’t do that sort of grand oversight here like they have on Veird. We will be removing the possibility of it happening here from now on, though.”

Eldraki scoffed. “It’s not true Sundering. It’s a very narrow Sundering. I think it should stay legal—”

Aelorika scowled at the man, almost saying something—

But Eldraki continued, “— and yet, I see that I will be losing this battle, so I digress. Let’s classify Erasure as a Violation of the Sundering Laws here on Layer 0.”

“Done.” “Aye.” “Accepted.”

A Fractal touch passed through the room, and then was gone.

Erick wasn’t sure what that Fractal wave was about—

They all looked to Erick, to see what he had to say.

And Erick suddenly felt as though on solid ground once again.

His search for allies had been a complicated thing, revealing a great many truths and histories and sizes of the universe that Erick had never thought to touch upon. But he had touched upon those truths. And now he was here. Out with Malevolence, in with Benevolence.

Erick said, “I look forward to a prosperous relationship with the people of this land.”

- - - -

Three days later there was an announcement, taking place after a short trial which Erick did not attend, but which he did view in recording. The trial had been a public spectacle, with everyone wearing their absolute best and Nothanganathor looking not-tired at all. All of the participants had spoken a lot nicer than they had during the hearing and inside the Non-Combat Zone. It was most of what had already been said, but in flowery terms and then solid outcomes, as though they had all been following a script. They probably had been. The recording had probably been edited, too.

The announcement was simple.

Erick and Nothanganathor would be locked in combat in the Veird System, with the outcome of that combat determined by the winner in that space. They would retain connections to Margleknot, but it would be a one-way connection for Erick and Nothanganathor. Others could leave, but Erick, Nothanganathor, and Melemizargo would remain.

And that was it.

Erick slept in on the fourth day, waking slowly and then all the way. The light of Margleknot’s Sky illuminated the white eternal stonewood balcony. Jasmine flowed on the air, into the room, smelling great. Erick got up out of bed, stood for a while at that balcony, just looking across the land, and then he began with final preparations.

With a short walk of lightning, Erick stepped down to the white Core underneath House Benevolence of Tir Geal. The manaminer hovered in front of him like a diamond the size of a tournament space, over a hundred meters wide. Its surface whorled with white that sunk inward and then raised outward like the flowing of solar fuel on a sun, but trapped underneath diamond that was not diamond.

Veird’s ‘sun’ was not a manaminer, or at least the one pointed at Veird was not. There probably were some Nothanganathor-manaminers in that space, though. Somewhere.

Erick put his thoughts on what he wanted to do next.

“House Benevolence Miner.” Erick added, “Stackz.”

The air flickered with power. A blue-cube entity pulled itself together from the manaminer, and then appeared outside of the Core. When Erick had installed this thing, and to cement a relationship with Powerminer Incorporated, he had needed a castellan of the House to hold and deal with the miner. He had asked Powerminer’s resident AI, Stackz, if he wanted the job.

Stackz had jumped at the chance.

And now House Benevolence had a separated-fragment of Stackz running this manaminer and pretty strong Reincarnation-tourism sector. It was pretty great.

The blue cube spoke, “Hello, Erick Flatt. Is it time for you to head to Veird?”

“Yes.” Erick said, “I need to give you some more magics, and I want to enable the leveling system we spoke about.”

“Understood. Awaiting input.”

Erick conjured forth several crystals of Benevolence, all tuned toward granting flavors of power to their users. The miner here couldn’t install magics into people’s souls, but it could Awaken those people in specific ways and enhance them in ways that only magic could do. Soon, Erick had conjured crystals for every major Elemental Aura type, of all the ones he approved of. Purity and Destruction and things like that were not present, but Fire, Stone, Air, and the like, were readily able to be imbued into people.

Erick handed those crystals off to Stackz, saying, “Basic enhancements of Mind, Body, and Psyche, accretion help, and still all the Awakening stuff.”

The crystals flowed into the miner and Stackz opened up a blue box in the air, asking, “Like we talked about, like this?”

- -

<Name> , age

Inclination: <Elemental Description, % of accretion>

<Possible Variants go here>

<Once full accretion is achieved, the rest of this opens up>

Progress to next point: < % of overabundance of accretion goes here>

Points:

Mind: <Starter Position><Points go here to increase this number><natural limit detected goes here>

Body: <Starter Position><Points go here to increase this number><natural limit detected goes here>

Soul: <Starter Position><Points go here to increase this number><natural limit detected goes here>

- -

Erick said, “Yup. You can reorganize that to make it all easier to read, but yeah. That’s it.”

Stackz said, “Being able to increase the Darkness in a person is taking up almost all of our capability, and there will be hard limits to that which we cannot increase with a manaminer. Mind and Body are much easier, comparably. There will still be natural limits that people have that they will have to figure out how to break themselves. We might be able to improve our ability to empower people if we get access to the Script, and if we learn about how Rozeta broke those limits. The infinite-depths of your own situation is impossible for us to replicate. Moving along: We might be able to have a collective shared-mana situation like you have on Veird, but this is doubtful. The organization we have now is a sort of power that is transferable everywhere, though. I truly do feel this is the best option.”

Erick nodded. “It’s more than enough.”

“We wish you luck on Veird, sir.”

Erick smiled a little. “Good luck here, too.”

- - - -

Erick’s next stop took him to the staging area, near the Valkyrie Command Center.

A wide white area stood open to the sky. Thousands upon thousands of people milled around, getting things ready. There was Shivraa, Erick’s secretary and head valkyrie heading to Veird with him. She was talking with Reena and Xai, who were staying here as a firm part of Tir Gael’s valkyries, under Querkooda.

The Overseer of Enforcement of Tir Gael, Querkooda, was over there, talking with Shadow about war preparations. Querkooda was not going to Veird. He and the other Overseers were staying here, for this was their home and they wanted to defend it. Erick wished them the best of luck.

Shadow stood with Witch Aragathara. Great Mother Caa stood with them as well, but she was staying. Caa was occupying Shadow’s Queenliness while Shadow was away.

The Overseer of Magic, Ta’Kamoil, and Engineer Tris were over there, talking about some Awakening Machines that Erick was bringing to Veird, along with some undeployed Manaminers, which were currently just 10-meter-sized dull spheres in very special crates meant to protect them from all influences. Erick had 9 manaminers in those special crates. Rozeta should like them.

The Valkyrie Squadron coming with Erick were all around, either helping to move the thousands of boxes into place upon the field, or sitting to the sides and doing what soldiers usually did; hurry up and wait. They were all packed. Some were sharing final words with loved ones standing to the sides, who were not going.

Lanzoil, the Overseer of Governance, was right beside Erick, overlooking the whole thing.

Erick said to the man, “Looks good.”

Lanzoil said, “Hopefully it’s enough. The Valkyrie Squadron you tagged are all ready and have been for 5 hours. Some of them are taking naps, but it looks like they’ve noticed you now, so they’re moving fast now.” Lanzoil turned to Erick. “I know you have to do this. I wish there were other ways. I wish you luck. When you win, you will come back and check on us now and then.”

Erick smiled wide, and then he took the man into a hug, patted him on the back, and let go. Lanzoil was not prepared for that, but he looked happier for the gesture. Erick said, “I’ll be back to help and do everything that is needed to be done, for I’m kinda replacing Nothanganathor some. Shadow will be back too, now and then. She’s arguably more able to move back and forth for a little while, during this war. Afterward? I have no idea.”

Lanzoil smiled a little, looking relaxed. “I was afraid of working with her at first, but she’s… She’s pretty good at this, when she wants to be.”

Erick laughed. “Yeah. She is.”

Shadow stepped to their sides. “You talking about me?”

Erick smiled. “Only good things.”

“Then that’s fine.” Shadow smirked as she turned to the display of wealth and power and people, saying, “It’s finally happening, Erick. I’m finally going to get justice.”

“He probably has specific counters for you,” Erick said, “So be wary of that.”

“Oh yes he does. I’ll tell you about what to watch out for when we’re on Veird and that sort of information isn’t considered disastrous to talk about. Fae don’t like to talk about how to kill fae.”

“Okay.” Another lesson added to the pile, then. Erick looked around. Someone very important was missing. “Yggdrasil?”

Yggdrasil stepped out of the air to stand next to Erick, saying, “I need an estimated time.”

Erick nodded, then he began to project his voice far and wide, casting his sound to every part of Tir Geal, “Attention, everyone. I’m departing for Veird. It was great to meet you all. We’ll meet again.”

As the soft thunder of his voice passed, Erick’s Lightning Path coalesced.

With softer thunder, Erick spoke to everyone on the field, “Three minute warning.”

Soldiers started to move fast, to get into position. People not going to Veird got off the field, some of them racing to leave fast. The valkyries lined up in squads; all 25,000 of them, all of them wearing all that they wanted to take with them. Some had giant backpacks and luggage near them. Others had just small bags on their shoulders. In 2 minutes everything was ready, and Erick had done his final checks on various sealed crates and specialty products.

The Nothor Beast that had come out of Erick’s [Cleanse] was safe and sound in one of those sealed crates. After finding out that it would be the best possible magic focus to enact an Anti-Erasure ritual, Erick knew he hadn’t killed it for some reason; he just didn’t know what that reason was until Aelorika had explained how to do the Anti-Erasure ritual. The Red Lightning Nothor Beast was coming along with Erick, back to Veird.

A lot of fun stuff was coming back to Veird, too, like reson-cultivation manuals and glowthread spiders all packed on hibernation ice — Jane was going to love that— and some ‘How to Make a Computer With Sticks and Stones’ books. Erick wasn’t bringing actual computers to the masses, but he was bringing some computers for personal use and, more importantly, the information on how to make your own.

Erick finished looking at everything, and then said to Yggdrasil, “It was really nice to be here, Yggdrasil, to see your over-self.”

Yggdrasil smiled softly, sadly. “I’m keeping the mask on, Father.”

Erick chuckled. “Your eyes are gold.”

Yggdrasil’s eyes flickered to green… and then he let them relax back to gold. “I’ll see you again. Soon. When you come back here.”

Erick hugged Margleknot once more, and then let go. “I want a stockpile of resons for my own bank account here, but you can have more of the Benevolent Sun. 90%? Make sure House Benevolence gets some, but they have their dungeons.”

Margleknot nodded. “Of course, Father.”

Erick nodded once more, and then he stepped down onto the wide, white field.

Shadow stepped to his side.

The Overseers of House Benevolence and a whole bunch of other people stood on the podium or to the sides with Margleknot, but everyone here on the field was going. There were 26,000 people going. A good 3,300 people stood off of the field, waving, saying their final goodbyes, or their see-you-laters.

Voices rose in farewells and well-wishes and other, more personal words to people on the field. Some people panicked. Some people held in their panic.

“Ready!” Erick said.

And then Erick cast a white sphere into the air that gradually began to turn red, to cycle through the rainbow to blue. Soon, it would hit black, and then it was go-time. The light sphere was the Reincarnation Timer, used for a different purpose.

There was sobbing on and off the field. Fervor, too. Wishes to kill Nothangaanthor and return victorious. Wishes for so very many things. Some people in the crowd on both sides raced to the dividing line, to change their mind and hop across, destinies denied or seized in that moment.

And then the timer sphere turned black, and vanished.

Margleknot waved a hand—

- - - -

Everything was green and gold.

And then it was blue skies and soft clouds and a land made of white roots that was mostly flat, and a whole lot of water beyond those roots. Yggdrasil grew over there on a watery, real horizon, instead of the vague sort of horizons that existed in Margleknot. Erick felt his heart beat hard as he knew where he was, once again. That blue sky up above was an illusion, for there was another layer of Veird up there, and this land here was no longer ‘the Surface’, but it was still Veird.

Far, far overhead, Erick looked more, and saw the illusions that had been put up there, at the former Edge of the Script. They were pretty good illusion matrices; dense and variable with the hours of the day. The sun was pretty soft, though; they couldn’t quite replicate the strength of the sun, so they had opted instead to just make the whole sky glow some.

It looked great, really.

Erick looked around himself. This was Candlepoint Lake, and over that way was the north, where the Gate District of Candlepoint glittered with a node network in the air, and those tiny bumps of white were House Benevolence—

Something connected to him, in a way that Erick had dearly missed. He felt out that connection, gauging how it worked and then allowing it to touch him barely. Just enough to work somewhat. Not enough to work for real. Erick might allow the Script to connect more fully at some later date, to be able to see what his Veird-given Status looked like, but not today. People just needed to know he was back.

A blue box appeared.

Erick smiled. Some of the blue box was like the time he had left Ar’Cosmos and reintegrated. The rest was different. Other people all around Erick began getting boxes, too, no doubt, because a lot of them were exclaiming about this or that.

Erick read his blue box, too.

- -

Possible known entity detected!

Initializing mana reintegration…

Partial connection reestablished.

Hello, <Erick Flatt, protean>.

Commencing full reconnection…

True Wizard detected.

Full reconnection disallowed!

Upgrading threat assessment!

Special exceptions found.

Reorienting scan…

Scanning for unapproved influences…

Scan disallowed by integrating entity.

Scan finalized.

Finalizing reintegration <as much as can be finalized>...

- -

- -

Welcome back to Veird, <Erick Flatt>!

- -

Erick chuckled at all that—

And then Rozeta appeared, shifting into the space on Yggdrasil’s roots right ahead of him. She was exactly as Erick remembered; a white human wrought wearing a professional pantsuit and an expression of annoyed awe. That expression rapidly lost all annoyance as she looked around the space, and with the senses of a god, figured out pretty much everything.

Erick had included about a thousand history books and a bunch of other stuff like that in the very first case, right behind him, just for that reason. That was only part of the treasure trove, though.

Also Shadow was here.

Shadow’s presence garnered a weird sort of reaction from Rozeta, like Rozeta was trying to figure out a miracle oddity. Shadow was enjoying the moment. She was also subtly gathering shadows all around herself, as though she was finally home and letting her hair down, which she did, in truth, her black hair cascading down her shoulders she sighed, and seemed to gain a whole new sort of agelessness to her.

Erick was glad to see that the Fae Bands of the Script wouldn’t impede Shadow; he had wondered about that. Shadow had told him not to worry, and she had been right.

Rozeta’s eyes went a little wide as she finally figured out what was going on.

Shadow smiled brighter.

“Hello, Rozeta.” Erick said, “I brought reinforcements and power and a whole lot of explanations.”

“I see that,” Rozeta said, her face turning from Shadow, toward Erick, and then softening. She smiled beautifully. “Welcome back, Erick.”

And then Aloethag, Goddess of Beauty and Brutality appeared, all white and red and happily exclaiming, “You brought elves!”

Fairy Moon appeared next, shouting, “You’re betrothed?!” She looked to Erick, her voice going high, “To Erick?!”

The waters darkened as Melemizargo lifted his head up out of the waters, eyeing everyone. He took one look around, and then ducked back into the waters, saying, “We’ll talk later.”

Erick put on his best kingly impression and began, “Melemizargo! We have information for everyone including you."

Erick reached for the trunk of books and information and rapidly multiplied them as Melemizargo rose from Candlepoint Lake again. More gods appeared, with Phagar and Koyabez showing up fast, and then came more, including Sumtir, God of Righteous battle, who was very interested in the valkyries. Erick handed out information by the trunk-full.

All while he did that, Erick started opening up [Gate]s to get a lay of the land, feeling wonderful that he could actually [Gate] again. His [Telepathy] wasn’t working very well right now —or at all— and he talked to Rozeta about that as one of a hundred different rapid-fire topics, including the manaminers he had brought to Veird. Erick shuffled his valkyries through a portal to a land he built from scratch out in the former Crystal Forest at a wave of his intent, all the while talking with Rozeta and the other gods and goddesses.

All that took the first 20 minutes.

Once the powers of Veird were vaguely alone, Erick handed them all some copies of the reports on Veird that Nothanganathor had submitted over the years. The Old Fae of Margleknot had required reports, after all, and now those reports were in the hands of the powers of Veird.

“They’re all highly doctored and full of twisted truths, but they’re all there.” Erick said, “Nothanganathor was responsible for Idyrvamikor’s twisting and the Dragon Curse, as well as a thousand smaller injuries. And the Sundering, of course. We’re pretty sure we know how he did that, but we’re only 90% there. I’m pretty sure that Veird survived because of all of you working to make it survive, just as I’m sure that I exist out of my own actions and probably my own Establishment. Nothanganathor is pretty fucking horrible, and he is a grandmaster plotter, but he also takes advantage of other people’s work and claims it as his own.” Erick gestured to Witch Aragathara. “Witch Aragathara is a former companion of his from well over 13,500 years ago, or something like that. She’s Shadow’s Second right now, here in this space. She’s compiled her own reports for you all.”

There were attempts at questions from every single god and power present, with Fairy Moon suddenly gasping at the mention of Idyrvamikor and Rozeta going hard, while Melemizargo hummed.

Erick said, “Okay! A lot of stuff here! More meetings later! It’s going to be a full-world press against his incursions, and I need to do some rituals to ensure that he can’t just Erase us all. Please depart! Rozeta, Melemizargo, Fairy Moon or Shadow or both. Please help.”

Yggdrasil appeared, stepping into the group for the first time. He went to Erick and hugged him first, and Erick smiled wide and hugged his son. Yggdrasil softly said, “It was so much better seeing you from here, father. It was weird seeing you through Margleknot.” He pulled back, “Also, I need to help with that ritual, and we need to do it fast.” He said to everyone, “Me in the south, Melemizargo and Rozeta to the north, Fairy Moon and Shadow to the west, and Erick to the East. We can do it right here, as soon as everything is cleared away.” And then Yggdrasil swallowed everything that Erick had not already portal-ed away with white-rimmed Gates of Benevolence, moving all the stuff to the House, except for the Red Beast’s cage. He said to everyone, “We need to move fast, please!”

Reorganization happened quickly, with Erick telling everyone that he would see them later.

He’d probably be seeing Aloethag first, though, because Erick was pretty sure that she was headed toward the Valkyries. The elf valkyries. The elf valkyries that have a whole lot of experience with blood magic, some of which is innate. That was going to be a whole thing, Erick could tell.

Meanwhile, Yggdrasil handed out slips of paper containing words and the intent of the ritual to everyone.

Erick read the ritual and smiled as he took his spot on the east—

Benevolence mushrooms suddenly sprouted from the white ground. Moss spread. The glowing mushrooms began to glint in every color of the rainbow as they grew most strongly in a wide circle of power, tens of meters away from the Nothor Beast’s cage.

In the east, Erick stood within a ring of mushrooms sized for him, which was only about 4 meters in diameter. The southern and northern circles, of which Yggdrasil grew a good several kilometers away and Melemizargo was still a big black dragon, had their edges go off the edges of the platform. Fairy Moon and Shadow stood hand in hand on the west, in a circle more Erick’s size—

Benevolence lightning glinted from mushroom top to mushroom top, like tesla coils, and soon a sparkle of power raised into the air from the ritual circle, like magic breaking upward, spreading fast. Mushroom spores, perhaps? But also the breaking of a magic. The breaking of Nothanganthor’s magic.

Yggdrasil softly spoke, “This is a Grand Wizardry that will alter the Script. Keep that in mind.”

Melemizargo softly said, “Easily doable. This isn’t even that hard.”

Rozeta nodded, though it appeared she was still wary of her father, standing behind her like a looming Darkness.

Fairy Moon and Shadow held hands.

Erick focused, his gaze upon the Nothor Beast that had come from the [Cleanse] in his own soul.

The air stilled.

And then the air roared as the cage broke, temporarily waking the Nothor Beast—

The gathering intoned,

“A boon granted to Script;

“this indelible marking.

“Malevolence gripped

“to keep it from sparking.”

The Nothor Beast dissolved into pink ribbons that then turned to white lightning and then faded on the breeze, caught upon the rising glitter-sparks lifting off of the entire ritual circle. Yggdrasil in the south began to glitter, too, and power spread, into the wind, rising from every part of Veird.

Erick cast his gaze wide and saw the water effervesce, and the city in the distance, and through tiny portals, all the rest of the world began to shimmer with white. And then the white settled. It vanished. There and gone, the magic had changed the Script.

Nothanganathor’s Erasure Magic should no longer be possible, because everyone here was now Established to Exist.

Rozeta sighed, and then chuckled once in relief. “Oh! That’s good. That’s… That’s useful.” She paused, her relief rapidly turning into concern. “I need to fix some things. It’s all good, but that wave of magic just— I’ll talk to you later! Thanks for the manaminers and all the rest!”

Rozeta vanished.

Yggdrasil was a lot more calm as he said, “We have some time before the war truly starts, but not much. There’s a lot to do. I suggest we fight a defensive war; gird the ways in, and protect what is here. This will not be fast, until it is. Hopefully we can wear him down and strip him of all his power before going in for the kill. He will not do the same. He will come at us at 75% strength and then ramp up to 100% when Erick doesn’t give in. We need to be able to survive that. If we survive, we can fight back.”

Erick said to Melemizargo, “I’ll talk to you later?”

Melemizargo nodded, and then he vanished from sight.

Shadow said, “I’m going to visit Ar’Cosmos with Father. See the family.”

Erick nodded. “See you later.”

Fairy Moon eyed Erick, saying, “We’re going to talk of this betrothal later.”

Erick smiled. “Sure.”

The fae departed.

And then it was just Yggdrasil and Erick.

Erick went over and hugged Yggdrasil again, saying, “You look good with green or gold eyes, but here the gold is in the background instead of the forefront.”

Yggdrasil held his father, saying, “Gods, it’s so much better to be just me. I was honest up there, father; I am Margleknot. But the universe is too big up there. I have too many responsibilities up there. Sorry I couldn’t help more. But here? Here I can do everything I need to do. I can be present.”

Erick let go, still smiling. “We’ll talk about defenses soon.”

Yggdrasil hugged Erick again, then let go. “See you soon.”

Erick opened a lightning-ringed portal, feeling great that he could do that again, and then he stepped through into Benevolence itself.

Ophiel squealed and tackled him, five of him coming in for sudden hugs, a whole bunch of voices happening all at once. In the background, Quilatalap stood, looking tense, yet relieved. Jane, Abigail, Bethany, Candice, and Evan, were there too, looking like warriors or captains or leaders of industry, and like they had all rushed in from elsewhere. Jane still had some blood on her pants. She also seemed to have a few new adamantium swords. Solomon stood to the side with Destiny at his side, holding hands with each other. Now those two were certainly King and Queen of something, but Erick hadn’t gotten the full details on that yet. Poi and Teressa waited to the side, waiting for Erick to show.

A little orcol girl in a basket on Teressa’s back jumped in that basket, holding on to her mother, saying, “He’s here! He’s here!”

Erick was home again.