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Erick blasted Oozy with another round of [Luminous Beam]s, filling the sky with nuclear fire.

Oozy didn’t return.

‘Why is Nothanganathor such an asshole?’ Erick thought to himself, as he watched the land of Fenrir below.

Red Sparks had covered everything down there. But now Oozy was gone, and Fenrir began to change. The Red peeled away from every surface, from every mountain and low-hanging cloud, from every person and time-frozen river and ocean. Erick briefly wondered at the mechanics of the land down there —was Fenrir planet-thickness now, all the way through? What about gravity? Were those floating lights in the sky enough to provide actual light? And what about, well, everything else physical down there? Why was the world a patchwork?— and then he focused on the upcoming war, whatever shape that might take.

Everyone had opinions about what the war was going to resemble. Erick had hoped for something he could do on his own, to save everyone else the danger and death, but that was never really an option; Nothanganathor had put a lot of shit between him and Erick. When the lands below appeared out of the Red two weeks ago and then truly took their current shape last week, everyone assumed it was going to be a massive interplanetary war.

Erick would send the valkyries down there and begin reaping lives, and taking in people to remove them from Nothanganathor’s influence. He’d do the reviving thing and the [Benevolent Cleanse]ing thing, and then he’d end up with a humanitarian crisis just like he had on Slaver’s Den, but different, because these people he’d be saving were all from the side realities of Veird.

And because they were not people Erick truly knew, but which he did, everything here was a trap.

A pitfall.

And Erick would walk right into it, because he had to.

Erick had talked a big game to Fallopolis when he spoke of only having concerns for the people of this Veird, but those people down there were a happenstance of Infinity away from being the people of this Veird. Of course he couldn’t actually hurt them… Though they were probably going to try and hurt him and everyone he loved, because of course they were influenced by Nothanganathor to be that way.

Oozy was clearly not the same Oozy that Erick had [Reincarnation]ed… probably. He had to be from some near-reality, or something like that.

But who really knew these things, anyway? Rozeta? … Probably not, actually. Whatever Knowledge that exists down there on Fenrir is probably corrupted, and so Rozeta would know not to touch it… Or something like that. Erick was working off of a lot of hypotheticals, here. He would need to talk to Rozeta and Phagar and get their opinions on all of that, and on all of those false gods down there, too.

Phagar had killed a god before, right? The God of Death of the Old Cosmology, like, 750,000 years ago.

Erick was probably going to have to fight some of those non-Mantle, mindless forces of Fractal-raised gods. How did you kill a god? Well, Erick already knew, sort of. You start with killing all of its believers. Maybe conversion would work, though? A bit of [Reincarnation] and [Benevolent Cleanse]ing and…

Erick would have to see what happened.

Surely there was something more concrete and less destructive than ‘kill the believers’.

There was one other way that Erick knew of. Witch Aragathara’s Goddeath Poison had killed Melemizargo and Nothanganathor’s mother, Ikaramaliana. That poison had taken a winding path to Ikaramaliana, though. To start with, that poison had been sprinkled among the believers of many different gods, and which did nothing to those believers because they had to keep believing, and thus supplying that poison to those gods. When those gods finally died to the poison, and their mantles returned to Ikaramaliana, that is how Ikaramaliana died; through a chain of poisoned divinity.

All of that was yet another hidden danger to this war.

Rozeta had shored up the Script to protect from a lateral attack against Veird through divinity, but Nothanganathor probably had a way around that. Eventually.

Maybe he could just throw Goddeath Poison at Veird, and Veird wouldn’t recognize it as deadly, so it would kill them all that way. Rozeta had prepared against that, of course, and thanks to Witch Aragathara helping in that way, but Erick bet that Ikaramaliana thought she was safe from the witch’s poisons, too.

That white bastard probably had ten thousand ways to kill all of Veird. The only reason he hadn’t used any of them was because he wanted to win everything. And to win everything, he had needed to convince the Fae Council of Margleknot of his agreeable intentions; he had needed to create his Opposite, so that Margleknot wouldn’t be losing Nothanganathor’s anti-corruption functionality when Nothanganathor Ascended to Godhood.

Margleknot would have killed Nothanaganthor as a Corruptor, if Nothanaganthor hadn’t displayed his willingness to work with them so very much.

… Erick was back to the original question.

‘Why is Nothanganathor such an asshole?’

There’s the obvious reasonings that he had given everyone. Melemizargo killed his wife, the Witch Ara, and sure, that was one thing, but to kill a universe over that?

Erick didn’t buy it… Maybe.

There was more to it, of course. There was a whole history of hatred stretching back way more than 10,000 years. Killing the wife was just the final straw?

‘Was it possible that things had just gotten so far out of hand, and the only response anyone ever had to trauma was to make more trauma? Highly likely. Nothanganathor deserves his trauma, though, since this is what he does when he gets power; he makes horror shows of morality and mortality.’

Back in that Non Combat Zone, in Margleknot, Nothanganathor had talked a big game and then Erased Blighter and Seabass right in front of Erick, just to prove that he could, to prove that he was an asshole of the highest order.

Erick recalled the bastard’s specific words.

“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.”

And then he had Erased Blighter with a Red knife through the heart.

… Honestly, Erick didn’t need to understand him any more than he already did, but his first instinct was to try and understand, and so that is what he attempted to do. And yet, what was there to understand about Malevolence? Nothing; that’s what—

Erick had another sudden string of thoughts that were loosely connected, important, and yet ephemeral.

1) Wizard fights usually devolved into Wizards adjusting the world and their enemy to their liking, and then winning in that way. Nothanganathor had already attempted as much through matching Veird’s timeframe and using Veird’s people to influence everything over on Veird.

2) Nothanganathor was responsible for the rise of Wraithborne’s ‘ring world’ and Evil Death Sun that powered the whole thing. So he was a capable ruler.

3) He was highly capable of causing real damage, far beyond his ascendancy-or-not would lead people to believe. At Erick’s first viewing of the Red Sparks, he had thought them all that Nothanganathor could do, but that was obviously wrong.

4) Nothanganathor’s Curse of Obscurity made it so that no one understood him, but maybe, what the curse actually did was make people think of the Erased One as a worthless person. That’s what everyone believed, after all.

5) And yet, the Erased One’s effects upon Margleknot were wide and deep, so he was an important person even with his Curse.

6) Nothanganathor probably doubled down on his Curse when he made Malevolence.

7) And he was prepared for this fight with every part of his being.

8) … Was there any real reason for Nothanganathor to Erase Blighter and Seabass, back there in that meeting? Sure, there was the effect of severing Erick from Wraithborne, from Erick’s attempts at a takeover, but that was the surface reason for Erasing Blighter and Seabass. Nothanganathor had been disinterested for the entire conversation up until then. And then he showed joy when he went and Erased Blighter and Seabass, because he knew that it would display who he was to Erick, in that moment.

There was no question that Nothanganathor enjoyed that.

But he had done that because 10) it heightened Nothanganathor’s threat level in Erick’s eyes.

Anyway. That was all just a complicated way to say that Nothanganathor thought he was going to win this war, one way or another. He probably had a thousand contingencies, all of them on the level of what he had done to Fenrir down there—

Erick suddenly saw the main contingency.

The real way Nothanganathor was going to ‘win’.

He was going to break his Curse of Obscurity.

What was the ‘Curse of Obscurity’? Erick had asked Melemizargo about it, once. He had said it was simply ‘a denial of existence’.

And how did Erick’s own Dark Mark grow? How did all Dark Marks grow?

From being acknowledged by others.

Maybe Melemizargo had cursed Nothanganathor’s Dark Mark to smallness... making him unable to grow?

Hmm.

Erick wasn’t 100% sold on the idea that Nothanganathor’s Dark Mark was cursed to smallness, because the Dark was not stingy in giving out power and it never took power back, as far as Erick knew. Melemizargo and Rozeta had had long and loud conversations about that difference in style, with Melemizargo hating the restrictions of the Script but Rozeta saying that sometimes restrictions were good, actually.

But it made sense that Melemizargo would break his own oaths to never restrict power in the beginning of his reign, before Melemizargo knew his own morals. Nothanganathor’s Curse of Obscurity was a 1-off thing, as far as Erick knew, so it made sense that Melemizargo might have done something weird and antithetical to the Dark as his first act as the God of Magic.

Melemizargo had set doom upon himself when he did that, thus tarnishing the entire purpose of the God of Magic, which was to give out magic and never restrict what was already given.

… Hmm.

Back to the war, though.

Nothanganathor had a bunch of ways to win.

Erick saw some of them.

… and then Erick turned his thoughts back around on themselves, looking for tricks in the mind itself. Nothanganathor’s first real killing trick against Erick had been a thought-tunnel of introspection, there in that mirage of an office worker that was really a killing room, right after Erick had Ascended. Nothanganathor played a bunch of mind-games to hide the truth of his power.

Even thinking of him as some ‘great big enemy’ was playing into his hands; that was setting the stage for him to actually be powerful. That’s how Wizard battles worked, after all.

… Erick was going to eradicate the guy.

As Erick continued to consider the major points of his multi-layered crisis of conscience and positioning for Wizardry-games, he continued to observe the Red ‘[Time Lock]’ of Fenrir. That magic was falling away rather fast, revealing the people and oceans and forests and otherwise of the outer, inhabited Surface. Everyone on Veird watched right alongside Erick, as copies of the continents of Glaquin and Nelboor and Nergal and Quintlan all revealed themselves in all their patchwork glory. Nothing was laid down as it was on Veird. Everything was mashed together, wherever it felt like existing.

Sometimes the continents were cut into pieces, with just some thick river/oceans separating the pieces of continents from each other. Sometimes there was no separating body of water, and stuff was mashed right up against each other. Over there were the Songli Highlands, right beside half of the nation of Greensoil, with Archipelago Nergal strung alongside those two lands like a mountain range, all of the islands bunched up together with ports and docks mashed onto dry land.

Erick used a bit of magic to lens the air, to truly enhance his sight, and he saw fishermen on boats on dry land, frozen in time, casting nets onto bare dirt. When the Red peeled back, those nets fell onto the dirt, and the guys fishing in those ‘waters’ were suddenly, incredibly confused.

“Right, then,” Erick said to himself, and then he organized his thoughts on Nothanganathor’s possible avenues of attack, and the meaning of the Curse of Obscurity, and he sent all of that along in a [Telepathy] message to Poi, and Rizala.

He might not be able to receive messages easily, but he could certainly send them out, and that was good enough to let the world know all the ways in which all of this was a trap of several different natures. They had probably figured out some of those traps already, but it never hurt to hand over information in these sorts of situations, even if some of those bits of information might be memetic threats; the Mind Mages could handle those threats. Erick’s job was easy.

He just needed to overpower whatever was coming his way.

Erick said to himself, “Time to go see what’s what.”

Rizala, Poi’s sister and the current embodiment of Ascendant Prime, based on the golden tendrils wafting off of her like she was a sea anemone, suddenly appeared in the sky beside Erick. She couldn’t talk to Erick normally, so she had decided to appear, instead. She calmly said, “If he has given us a week to see, then perhaps we should take it.”

Unsaid, was that Ascendant Prime was in a worry over all the little traps and big traps that Erick had sent in that latest information packet. If Prime was appearing like this, then Erick’s musings had set them all down thought tunnels of their own.

It had been a calculated risk to share that knowledge with them, but they could handle it, Erick was sure.

Erick nodded, showing that he respected Ascendant Prime’s ideas, and then he said, “If that is the determination of the Mind Mages, then I will take that under consideration, but we’re in a Wizard War now, Ascendant Prime. Setting the tone for the War is just as important as all the trappings of the War itself, and we’re going to win, but we can’t win by doing nothing.”

Unsaid, was the idea that the second you start thinking of those traps, then Nothanganthor might gain those traps. One couldn’t be giving enemies ideas; that was the surest way to failure…

And probably one of the reasons that Nothanganathor had allowed the New Stat of Intelligence to happen, and to make Erick paranoid in some ways. He had mostly gotten over that problem of paranoia, but… not really. Not when it came to big things like this.

… Erick kinda knew how he could circumvent that issue, though.

There was a reason that the True Wizards of the Grand Wizard’s Tower in the Core of Veird, and back in the real one in the Old Cosmology, played tricks on everyone. There was a reason that Fae were, by and large, nonsensical and fun-loving. Because by being that way, except when it really mattered, they laid the path for a life that was lived in pursuit of less war, and less horror. Being non-serious, and generally positive, was a way to insulate oneself from the disaster of life. The Shades were mostly like that, too, with Fallopolis speaking like a crazy grandma most of the time, and even Killzone was like that with his southern drawl accent.

Erick was only a little bit like that. Mostly, he wasn’t.

But he could do that more. He could be a bit happier, and playful, and uncounterable, and chaotic—

Oh.

Shit.

Nothanganathor had seeded Erick with a bunch of paranoia in order to get Erick to be predictable.

… Of course, there was the counter argument that Nothanganathor was trying to ‘win’ by making Erick think about becoming a fae, and thus… Erick wasn’t sure what would happen when he was a fae, which is why he hadn’t done it. Would he simply not care about Veird anymore? About anyone?

If he had ultimate power, then he could do anything he wanted, and that seemed corruptive.

… Erick slowly realized that he was way past the point where second-guessing himself was productive.

So he acted.

“Perhaps, I would have liked to take that week,” Erick said, and then he asked, “But how long was I standing here, thinking, while you all watched?”

“About 35 seconds before you sent that information packet.”

Not conclusively a thought trap, then.

Erick nodded, then turned back to fully face Fenrir. “Past a certain point you simply gotta hope you prepped enough, and then you power through all opposition.”

Ascendant Prime smiled a little with Rizala’s body, and then she pulled back, saying, “We will follow your lead.”

Erick smiled, showing everyone that everything was okay, and then he spoke to the world, “The only power Nothanganathor has is a plan many years in the making, for if he had the actual power to enact his will, he would have done so. He has a trick. We will encounter that trick, and then we will crush it, and him. He’s earned what is coming to him ten million times over.

“But we will not be taking that anger out on the people he has duped into following him, who he has stolen from their worlds and put into our paths. The Valkyries on the front line are not empowered to cut down those who attack them. The Valkyries will descend to Fenrir soon enough, and then they will scout and allow themselves to be killed, to return to here. They will allow all of what I am about to do to be unraveled by those people down there, if those people should unravel it. Their goal, for now, is to be seen and to Siphon up the Red.

“This is not a traditional War, for that is what Nothanganathor expects. That is what he has planned for. That is how he sees this happening.

“So we will deny him that path, because people need help.

“Everyone down there is experiencing a crisis. Everyone down there needs our help. Everyone down there might already be poised to hate and tear at us, for they have likely been brought forth through visions of Infinity where Nothanganathor was already their god, or some other such nonsense, but we’re going to be better than Nothanganathor, because what Nothanganathor doesn’t know is that every single person down there is not our enemy, but just a friend we haven’t made yet.

“We begin with Plan Takeover.”

- - - -

A while ago:

Erick walked out of the tactical room of the Blue Corps a little miffed. That meeting of smaller, newer powers had not gone well. Poi caught up with Erick, right as he opened a [Gate] back to the cloud castle house.

They walked through, and they were back home.

Poi waited until the portal was closed behind them to say, “Do you have an actual plan?”

Erick scoffed as he walked toward the main house. “Of course I have a plan.”

“But people want to see actual magic solutions. You know. The things that Archmages do. The old definition, that is; someone with tier 7 magics and able to make magics on the fly to solve any conceivable problem.” Poi said, “Usually I don’t have to tell you this, but everyone is worried that the solutions you have of ‘blast and blast some more’ are both truth, and also lies, and in both cases they’re not comforting.”

The meeting at the Blue Corps had been with a coalition of newly-risen smaller powers, coming into their own in the last few years, and only just now finding any solidity. The Angels leaving had thrown everything into political disarray, and when the majority of other humans went with them everyone was both lost and confused, and so the meeting had been a bunch of people yelling and vying for power and demanding answers, all at the same time. Erick had told them not to worry, and that he had plans, and that to air those plans to too many people would invite those plans to be nullified by Nothanganathor.

Erick probably should have been more of a politician back there, but he didn’t want to give out comforting lies. This war was going to be dangerous. People were going to die. And yet what was the alternative? To submit to the man who had Sundered one universe to gain power, and hope that he would change if he were allowed to gain even more power? That he would somehow have a different opinion of the values of others when he was in charge?

… Erick sighed as he entered his house. Yeah. He had fucked up. He should have hinted at the full weight of the problem; not outright stated it.

Erick headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?”

“Yes. I want some of that un-[Duplicate]able stuff from Margleknot, too, unless you’ve learned how to copy it, then it’s no longer special at all. Then I don’t care for it.”

Erick raised an eyebrow, and then he laughed. “I haven’t learned how to copy it, and I guess that makes it special.”

“For now.”

Erick smirked. “For now.”

Soon, the two of them were sharing a pot of really good coffee that tasted like being freshly clean and warm and dry in fluffy robes, watching the sunrise on a cold, winter’s porch, as breath and steam fogged the air. Of course, none of that was physically happening at all. The two of them were in the kitchen, by the bay window, looking over Candlepoint down below the clouds. It was reson-imbued coffee, and Erick could probably copy it if he wanted, but he had chosen not to.

He saw how Poi liked the special stuff.

Poi smiled as he sipped his coffee. “It’s something to do with reson-imbuing, so I can’t imagine why you haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Give me some time, and I’ll figure it out,” Erick said, grinning. And then he thought back to the meeting and sighed. “I suppose I could make a magic and hand it to the Script, to make people happier? I could probably do a lot of that, actually.”

Poi said, “Make a dungeon planter; a mana generating spike you can launch at Fenrir’s bare surface and generate livable space.”

Erick thought about that for a second, then he nodded. “Maybe you should look into Igniting to Wizardry.”

“No thanks.” Poi said, “I got a plan for life and it does not involve any of that power-tripping nonsense.”

Erick laughed. “How do you think such a spell should work?”

“Ya see? That’s the thing. I’m not the Apparent Wizard King.” Poi pointed at Erick, adding, “You’re the one that signed up to be Emperor of Veird, Commander of all our Armed Forces. You figure it out.”

“Bahhh!” Erick said, “I’ll just end up being, like, the tip of the spear. Jane and her siblings are the commanders.”

“Maybe your spellwork can be the spear,” Poi said, being serious, without trying to be too obviously very serious. “But you should hang back. We need you here on Veird more than down there, getting into Nothanganathor’s face. He’ll take a swipe at us when you’re gone, or he’ll find some way to trap you.”

Erick didn’t mention his plans to Ignite and then Ascend other people to True Wizards, and Poi didn’t ask.

“I have plans in place for if I fall, and I won’t fall. He can’t just kill me.” Erick said, “I won’t let anything happen to Veird.”

“Good!” Poi smiled. “Because I do quite like the place.” He added, “Don’t let anything bad happen to yourself, either.”

Erick grinned. “Solomon will probably be doing the major defenses; what with that cross-Infinity cultivation he’s going for. We’ll work it out. As for sending… well? Sending missiles of dungeons at Fenrir? Yeah. That’s a good starting point. I’m sure Nothanganathor will have a trick or ten to counter such a plan, but I can make some giant… missiles of some sort?” Erick looked away, thinking.

Poi sipped his tea, smirking—

“Ah ha!” Erick said, “I got it. Want to join me for the creation? Or the other Poi down in the Black Gate dungeon?”

“No no. I’m busy, too. If you’re going to work on that then I’m going to devote my full attention toward some Mind Mage stuff happening up in Cerebrum. We have a meeting with Demon King Dinnamoth in about 6 hours.” Poi said, “He’s a lot less of an asshole now that Avandrasolaro is the Crown. We might actually make progress on some sort of united war front today.”

Erick finished off his coffee then set down his empty mug, saying, “Then you have fun with that. I’ll be back later.”

- -

Erick stood upon a mountain in an empty part of the world, somewhere on the Sixth Sphere, where the Forever War had taken place for the two years that Erick had been absent. This part of Veird’s new Spheres still weirded Erick out, but it was kinda cool at the same time. Rozeta had forgone the normal sky illusions on this sphere, and had instead put another layer of world upside down, on the roof of this layer. The two surfaces were like two worlds facing each other from 50-ish kilometers away, with a layer in the middle where clouds and sunlight flowed, and gravity pulled in both directions.

Erick began weaving magics.

First came the hum of Benevolence, flowing out of Erick’s aura and into the air like a soft light that crinkled at the edges with white static. Next came a twisting and the tinkling chime of Genesis, which combined with the solid, illusionary sounds of eternal stonewood. Erick pulled out the creation of free floating life in the form of slimes from the sounds of [Conjure Force Elemental] and the barest touch of Soul Magic. Some light [Renew] and [Terraforming] spellwork was only another piece of the puzzle. Next came defensive, node-network-layers, in the form of [Ward] and [Undertow Star] and [Benevolent Cleanse].

With another twisting that was in reality a shaping that rivaled anything Erick had done in his first years on Veird, power blossomed both in the air, and inside Erick, as he harmonized many different spells into one.

And then he cast.

A kilometer-long, 300-meter-wide tower of white eternal stonewood sprouted into the air, created from nothing but mana and intent. Erick turned the casting into a button in his soul.

Words appeared that only he could see.

Tower of Mana Slimes, instant, super long range, 250,000 mana + Variable

Create a living eternal stonewood spike and launch the spike at a target. The spike plants itself where it lands and then unfurls into a tower that grows based on the slimes and life and conditions the tower finds itself within. Has a hard limit within the Script to only double in size. Has no limit outside of the Script.

It looked good, too!

The tower stretched up tall, with ridges every ten meters that encircled the whole thing. Those ridges were where the floors were on the insides, and the whole thing was mostly hollow, for Erick had constructed the tower like bamboo. Down here, at the bottom, nodules bubbled upon the white wood; the precursors to roots expanding outward. The tower needed some way to stabilize itself, after all.

The spell finished creating itself, and then it planted itself in the ground in front of Erick; like dynamite blasting away at a mountain, the spike buried itself in the ground.

The spike buried itself into the mountain a good 50 meters. Erick expected when it struck the solid surface of Fenrir it would simply stop there on that adamantium surface, but there was dirt here, and so the spike stuck into the dirt. It never reached the black metal ground a good five kilometers underneath.

The tower began to grow.

The nodules turned to roots which secured the bamboo into the ground, and then windows opened everywhere. The inside was filled with water, making the whole thing mostly incompressible and able to be fired like a metal slug without breaking where it landed, but now that water spilled outward. [Water Shape] [Ward]s caught that water and secured it to the tower, and the space where the water left suddenly lit up with spellwork. Slope stairs, like a double helix, were revealed on the insides, along with [Gravity Ward]s that gave the whole place a sense of gravity. Fenrir didn’t have great gravity right now, so of course Erick had to account for that. Those same gravity magics also helped to set up a water cycle. And then a [Terraforming] cloud sprang into being on the ceiling of every floor, and all throughout the place. Benevolence and Genesis spilled out of those clouds like lightning, filling the entire place with power. When the lightning passed, each 10-meter tall floorspace got maybe a meter-deep layer of good dirt, and greenery sprang up from loamy soil that had not been there before now.

The systems came online, and Erick watched.

Erick watched for about forty minutes, seeing where he had failed on his first attempt and where he had succeeded. Mostly, the repetition spellwork was failing hard. Here and there some of the floors had massive gaps in them, where the window-opening part of the magic had translated poorly and opened up holes in the floor instead of on the walls. Some of the helical staircases were upside down, where the magic had done some weird sort of inversion, putting wall where the walking area of the staircase should have been, and open space where the walkway should have been.

Erick had started off too big. Maybe he should just do four repeating floors, instead of going for a hundred repeating floors, all at once. The mana cost was too much, too. That needed to go down.

Yes.

Erick pulled apart the original spell in his soul, and then went about making Version 2.

Tower of Mana Slimes V2, instant, super long range, 2,500 mana + Variable

Create a living eternal stonewood pod and launch the pod at a target. The pod plants itself where it lands and then unfurls into a tower that grows based on the slimes and life and conditions the tower supports. Has a hard limit within the Script to only double in size. Has no limit outside of the Script.

This time what came out was a 45-ish meter tall disk, about 200 meters wide, and it had lots of staircases and support all throughout, and a whole lot more complicated infrastructure. When it planted, the roots expanded wide, locking it to the mountain underfoot.

Erick watched the ‘disk-tower’ work for 2 hours. The slimes came to being through pure creation and they began wandering around, like the slimes in the larger tower. Everything seemed to be working a lot better, too. But there was another problem. The node network of the disk tower was failing; there wasn’t enough life to sustain the growth of the smaller tower.

Erick had gone too small.

“Version 3 will be better,” Erick told himself—

Something tickled the inside of his nose and Erick sniffled.

… Why was he sniffling?

… Erick already saw why he was sniffling. He wiped the blood away from his nose, and then stared at the red on his fingers for a few seconds. His eyes flickered to his Status. Nothing was wrong there—

“Oh!” Erick said, cleaning himself up, because he knew what he had done. “The Script is pushing back because it’s almost Propagation Magic.”

A blue box appeared.

- -

The Propagation Ban is a Foundational Ban, Erick. Just gotta work through it. Sorry! Please clean up your magics when you are done, please. I don’t want another Crystal Mimic scenario.

~Rozeta

- -

“Sure thing— Ah. Hello, Atunir.”

Atunir, the Goddess of Field and Fertility, stepped onto the mountain beside Erick, looking a little happy and also professionally concerned. She also looked resplendent with her dark skin and commoner-esque clothes. She playfully intoned, “So it seems you’re trying to make a propagating bamboo tower plant.”

“I am. Want to help?”

Like someone being asked to do something they wanted to do, but they knew they shouldn’t, Atunir said, “I don’t normally like to get involved, because people have to live their own lives…” Atunir blurted out, “But Sumtir and Aloethag are getting big in the Valkyrie culture and so I want in on this growing culture.”

Erick grinned. “Your help is greatly appreciated.”

“I do wonder about Yggdrasil, though.” Atunir said, “I helped you make him last time. He doesn’t want to be present here? For this?”

“He’s already said he doesn’t want to be a part of any offensive magics, so I didn’t even think to ask him about this.” Erick said, “He’s defensive, as always.”

Atunir simply nodded, Erick’s confirmation of Yggdrasil’s nature neatly slotting into her worldview. “Then this working will be one of comfortable offense.” Perhaps too excitedly, she said, “Now, as for iterating on this process, I was thinking golden wheat towers that surrounded the land with light and air and gravity and made it all habitable for everyone nearby, as well as serving as bases from which to attack the enemy. Also, a plant that grows and spreads in the void.” She said, “A planet maker.”

Erick’s eyes went a bit wide. “… Oh.” And then he said, “That seems like it could become a Daydropper situation.”

Atunir smiled delightfully. “Which is why I’m here, at the beginning, to ensure that it is connected to security and not to corruption.” She added, “Also, we can save that version for after the war. Let’s just do the Fenrir-base-maker, for now.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Also: I hear you’re planning on having a child with Shadow.”

Erick balked, and then he laughed. “Yes. Eventually. We’re in a courting stage right now.”

“Congratulations on your future children, anyway!” Atunir smiled.

Erick chuckled. “Thanks.”

- - - -

Present day:

Atunir appeared in the sky beside Erick, so close to the Edge of the Script, the both of them looking down onto the newly inhabited dyson sphere that was Fenrir. This time Atunir was dressed in flowing, golden wheat, with twining green vines that replicated jewelry. Tiny, dew-drop-glittering apples hung from her ears like earrings, and her hair was done in thick braids that cascaded down her bare shoulders and her back.

She was absolutely gorgeous, and Erick was kinda ashamed he had never seen this part of her before. She had always been such a farm girl, and Erick did not think she would mind being thought of in that way.

Atunir smirked at him, and then said, “I thought Plan Takeover was scrapped when you said that we weren’t going to bother with caring for the enemy, and yet you changed your mind so swiftly.”

Erick said, “We can do both at the same time. I am a Paradox Wizard, after all. And I’m pretty sure us waging a normal war against people who are us would just empower Nothanganathor’s Malevolence. By that same token, I expect Benevolence’s helping hand to do even more once it reaches people who need it.” He held out a hand. “We will need to adjust some of the spell for landing on soil, and we’ll need to use the Weaver.”

“Easily handled,” Atunir said, as she took his hand.

With her other hand, she brought forth a sparkling orb of gold and held it in front of the both of them. It floated there, cascading gently, showing itself as the [Spellsurge Weave] basis for this next magic. The original version of this spell had Atunir directly overseeing the magic, not using a Weave at all, but now that Nothanganathor had covered the surface of Fenrir in the population of Veird, stolen from side realities, and thus launched a divinity and mana-based attack at Veird, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t open herself to that sort of violation. Thus, the circuit-breaker of the Weave system.

Erick suspected that even this level of closeness might be too much.

But then he wove his own Authority into the magic, denying all Malevolent actors, and Intoned, “[Seeds of Atunir].”

Seeds of Atunir, instant, super long range, 50,000 mana + Variable

Create at least one living eternal stonewood seed and launch the seed at a target. This spell has many effects. This spell is attuned to Atunir, and she has oversight authority upon the magic. When the spell lands, it unfurls into a protected space that grows as the goddess demands.

Protection, growth, life, and bounty.

The cascading dot of power in front of Erick and Atunir suddenly shot out a white seed at the speed of lightning. That seed jaggedly snapped through the sky, before it touched the Edge of the Script, and then blasted out of Veird’s space, directly into the void.

It was a streak of white.

And then Red Sparks gathered like so many gnats, attempting to feast on the white dot, but Erick and Atunir were both feeding power into the gold dot that remained in front of them, and the white dot cascaded with that power. [Benevolent Cleanse]s ripped out of the [Seeds of Atunir], breaking the Red in the void into so much different mana, and then shadowy tendrils reached out from that Seed, into the broken mana. The singular Seed Siphoned that mana into itself—

One seed became three.

The Red fought back.

Erick fed power into the [Spellsurge Weave] in front of him and Atunir, and the white Seeds split into 3 again, becoming 9 white dots that traveled through the void at the speed of lightning. Those 9 white dots traveled in the Red, breaking the Red into mana, drawing that mana into the spell.

9 became 27. 27 became 81. 81 became 243.

Erick and Autnir filled the void between Veird and Fenrir’s surface with white stars, eating away at the Red. The spell was almost unwieldy past a few more multiplications, and the Red won here and there, consuming some of the Seeds on the edge of the red and white sky. The golden spell in front of Erick bucked like a Veirdquake, but Atunir held it together, and Erick flickered Benevolence wherever the Red dared to backtrack upon the magic.

It was surprisingly easy to break and consume the Red through the Seeds they had sent out, and soon, the Red retreated, so that it didn’t repeat the experience of what had happened when it tried to stay on Veird during the Day of Clouds. With a sky full of white Seeds, and nothing else, Erick had to actually spend mana to create another tripling, but he decided not to, and Atunir, holding his hand the whole time, wordlessly agreed with him.

They floated there, just before the Edge of the Script, marshaling the small parts of the magic in front of them into a working whole, with Erick sweeping his perception and many senses through the spell to check for lingering Red influence, and Atunir manipulating her divinity through the magic to solidify it even further. The spell was already self-purgative of Red, so once Nothanganathor stopped actively fighting, the majorly-influenced Seeds out there self-detonated, while the minorly-influenced Seeds cleaned themselves up, and the whole swarm swam through the void, uninhibited.

It reminded Erick of Syllea Wyrmrest’s and the Wyrmrest family's signature spell; [Starfall].

The distance between Veird and Fenrir was still a planetary distance, though, and Erick hadn’t put any Time Magic into travel times, because that seemed like a recipe for future disasters on the scale of faster-than-light plant spawnings. So even though the spell was traveling at the speed of lightning, it would still take about an hour to reach the surface of Fenrir.

That flat expanse of patchwork continents was about a moon’s distance away.

Erick held Atunir’s hand and spoke to the people watching from Blue Corps, “The spell is going to take 50-ish minutes to touch down. Prepare for larger countermeasures in the meantime.”

Atunir held Erick’s hand firm, as she focused on the magic in front of them. The golden [Spellsurge Weave] was beginning to look more like a diffuse layer of stars, in a small mirror to the stars far afield, in the void between worlds. When they touched down they would have a map of the local area around every single Seed.

Minutes ticked by with people on standby and white stars falling through the void.

Half an hour passed.

45 minutes.

Erick split his attention between the surface of Fenrir and the spellwork in front of him. From what he could see the people down there were in a panic, but only a few of them cared about the stars in the sky. Erick and Atunir’s spell was comparable to Fenrir as an apple was comparable to the size of House Benevolence. Except for those directly under the stars, people had other problems.

Islanders were on boats in the middle of deserts. Foresters were on mountainsides erupting with lava. Demons crawled across the surface of what almost looked like the incani Wastelands, but even more poisoned with Decay magics, their swamps filled with hydras, and now demons. Old Demons, too, with bodies made of slugs or rot, or made of hands. Incani-based demons sort of looked like incani, with a general two-horned, two-armed-and-legged body, but these guys were clearly demons from ancient Veird. Some were giant, the size of castles, and they were pulling apart the castles in the Wasteland Kingdoms, to eat at the people inside.

Red Sparks crackled among the attackers, empowering them.

Red Sparks did a lot more than that, too.

Something strange was happening to the people. They shot out their hands, trying to cast offensive magics, but then nothing happened at all, and then they died to demonic claws and maws filled with fangs. Whatever was happening down there was a horror of Malevolence, locking down the magic it didn’t like.

Erick decided that when the Seeds landed, he would go out and save people. Which was probably the point of the display. This was a trap to get Erick to venture into Nothanganathor’s domain—

The Seeds began to break the airy surface of Fenrir like spears of white in a cloudy sky—

The foremost Seeds broke on some sort of shield, among the clouds, and in the open air where nothing seemed to be. Every single [Seed of Atunir] evaporated as it neared the surface of Fenrir.

The full spell took nearly 2 full minutes to fully break upon whatever barrier existed on the edge of Fenrir’s airspace. When it was finally over, the golden [Spellsurge Weave] floating in front of Erick and Atunir was reduced to a simple golden glow in the air; the main power of the spell simply gone.

Erick let go of Atunir’s hand, and she did the same to his grip.

Erick said, “So it appears something is down there. Some inviolable space.” Erick had some good ideas of what was happening down there, but he looked to Atunir and asked, “Ideas?”

“He has a Script,” Atunir said, simply. “An automated Authority-system probably at the size of all of Fenrir, though he could have just protected the closest possible area. A full Fenrir-Script would be too unwieldy for anyone to control.”

Erick nodded. “All good guesses; I was thinking the same.”

Rozeta appeared in the air beside them, trying not to be too serious as she said, “Elaborate.”

Atunir said, “The spell Erick and I made was instantly countered, as though Nothanganathor had his manaminer target the spell working specifically, which means he has knowledge of all the magic we make here on Veird. The physical Seeds still fell onto Fenrir, but they are no longer attached to me. They might yet grow, but they will not be the magic that Erick and I made. I doubt if they’ll grow to more than larger-than-average wheat fields.”

Into the uncertainty of the moment, Erick said, “Then we move on to the planet-maker Plant Magic, Atunir. We’ll have bases in space, instead of on Fenrir. We’ll do Plan Surround and Con—”

- - - -

“—sume… Uh.”

Erick paused, because he was no longer in the sky with Atunir. He was no longer anywhere he should be, because he was sitting at a desk that he had not sat at for years. Decades, even.

It was the County Health Department on Earth, in Michigan.

Home.

Earth.

Erick did not panic. He focused.

Erick’s mana senses still worked, but there was no mana anywhere except for inside his own body, so Erick let some of that out, rapidly attuning it to Illusion, so that the prominence was invisible. Mana flowed outward like an invisible wind. Power ruffled the papers in front of him and the calendar hanging on the wall of the small-ish space. The base of the building looked the same as it had looked in Erick’s memories of the place, though everything layered upon that base structure was different. The calendar on the wall read 2047, so it had been a long time since Erick had been gone.

But it smelled the same; a unique blend of humanity and mold and scented candles that one of Erick’s coworkers, Betty, loved. It was a zesty, beachy-vanilla.

Three desks sat in one office, this office, each of them with barely enough space to fit a pair of chairs in front of them, all at the same time. It was 2:47 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, according to the thin computer screen sitting in front of Erick. The screen was currently locked and a picture of an unfamiliar woman and her two kids smiled back at Erick. That was not his computer; it was too thin, and too new-looking, but only in a technology-sort of way. It was actually kind of an old computer, according to the dust on it and the scratches on the edges here and there. Some pixels were bad.

It was not his desk; not anymore. Based on the nameplate sitting in front of the desk, it belonged to a woman named Mary Karr. The other ones belonged to Kevin Bates and Betty Karr. Erick knew Betty. She was an outrageous flirt all the time, and great fun at the county parties at the end of the year. The pictures on her desk were her and some man Erick didn’t know, and Betty looked much older.

Erick had no idea who Kevin Bates was.

Erick expanded his senses outward, gripping the scant mana he flowed into the world and using it to sense everything around him as much as he could. The county office had gotten a few expansions on the edges since he had been here last time, years and years ago. A new police station over there. A few more offices for clerks.

The lovely little park across the street was gone. Erick had had a birthday party for Jane there when she was a teenager, and she had hated every minute of it, but Erick looked back on that memory with something like a sad joy. That park was replaced with a giant building that read ‘County Office’ out front, with a new parking lot in back. The city had grown and the real county offices had moved, and this old county office was where they put all the humanitarian efforts. It was even renamed the ‘Humanitarian Building’. Some of the offices in this place had been renovated into a big cafeteria, and everyone ate there, it seemed.

In the hallway outside of this building was a large wall of pictures of smiling, happy people. ‘SUCCESS!’ was posted in big, rainbow letters above that wall. Another wall showed homes that were now occupied by those successes. Another wall showed the social workers themselves.

And there was Erick’s picture, among those who had come and gone. He looked so much different in that old photo… Shit. That photo was almost 30 years old by now. And they still had it up? Well shit. Erick felt tears come to his eyes, and for multiple reasons.

Erick, still sitting at the desk, flexed his Authority to break all illusions.

The world shivered. It even broke in some places. But it remained exactly as it appeared to be.

People inside the rest of the building and even across the street all looked around as the minor earthquake passed. Some knicknacks fell off of desk edges and an old woman almost fell down, but a cop standing nearby saved her from falling all the way—

Holy shit. Erick recognized that cop. It was little Dan, whom Erick had helped with free cancer treatment programs in 2011. He was all grown up now and sporting a potbelly, but he was still the same happy guy he always seemed to be, as he helped the older woman to sit down, the both of them laughing about ‘what could that have been?’.

It wasn’t an illusion, and Erick wasn’t weakened at all.

He checked his Status and everything was still there, but one line was different. The first line.

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1489 (Veird, layer 789), [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 99,081, Earth]

Erick breathed out, a great tension threatening to ruin his life.

That breath ruffled the papers on the desk in front of him, revealing an invisible object. A letter. It hadn’t been there before, and yet now it was there. It had popped out of the shadows under the paper, and that boded horribly.

Erick read the letter without opening it.

. . .

Dear Erick Flatt,

Your attack provoked the use of a few artifacts of which I have several hundred. I will be using these artifacts upon the people who stand in my way. You have likely found yourself somewhere you care about; I do not know where, and I do not care. By the time you have read this letter, the battle for Veird is long over, and I have taken what I needed, and left Veird alone.

Melemizargo is dead and all your people survive, with the lone exception of Poi. He proved to be the largest of nuisances. His copy in that dungeon survived. Everyone else, including Yggdrasil, is fine. They have migrated to Fenrir’s surface after I destroyed Veird itself.

The gods have merged with their echoes on Fenrir, and become the guardians of the Darkness; they guard the gate into my new realm.

I have become Darkness, the God of Magic of the New Painted Cosmology.

You can no doubt make it back here, and you can attempt to undo what I have done, but I have saved up these artifacts for a long time, for all my years of assisting the Fae Council of Margleknot, and I can use them on anyone who enters Veird space at any point in Veird’s history.

In a more solid way, I have secured my history as God of Magic, and you cannot undo that. I have also abandoned Malevolence. I am above that tribulation.

I promised you that this was how this was going to end, and I have fulfilled that promise.

I do not wish to kill you, but if you come after me again, I will need to be more harsh with you.

House Benevolence thrives, even in your absence.

If you wish to participate in my new universal empire, then I will appoint you as Regent of my Eternal Empire of the Shadowed Sun, and you will enjoy the same power that Morbion Blackthorn enjoys as Emperor of Wraithborne, but on a much larger scale.

Shadow has been given a similar posting, but you can share.

-Nothanganathor, God of Magic and Darkness

. . .

Erick read the letter a few times before he went through the actual process of opening the letter. The paper involved in the letter’s construction was from eternal stonewood, which was… a thing. Erick wasn’t sure why Nothanganathor made the paper out of eternal stonewood, but he did. Even the envelope itself was made of eternal stonewood. The red seal was wax, imprinted with the image of a sun with an infinity symbol in it, or perhaps that symbol was actually Nothanganathor… which seemed more reasonable. There was no head or tail on that wax image, but the symbol was actually more like an S, but with the top and bottom curves almost touching the center; so perhaps one side or the other was meant to represent Nothanganathor’s head and tail.

Erick broke the seal, to little fanfare, read the letter with his own eyes, and then put the letter back into the envelope. With the scrape of a finger, Erick pulled away the red wax, rolled it into a ball, and then pressed it back down on the letter, to ‘seal’ it again; he simply didn’t want to see Nothanganathor’s symbol at all.

This was the first time Erick had seen that symbol, and he hated it already.

Erick incinerated the letter in a blast of absolute hatred that briefly charred the fabric of reality itself… And then Erick repaired that break.

And then Erick leaned back in Miss Mary Karr’s chair —who was likely the daughter of Betty— and had a think. Erick had been in the room for a grand total of 3 minutes by now, and he would probably be here longer than that.

Erick was having trouble believing any of this was real, but Rozeta had said that, aside from actual killing, the only real threat to Erick was trapping. And he had been trapped and then cast through time. He wasn’t even very far from the conflict; not really. Almost 100,000 Layers of separation? Not a big deal. That only cost 10,000,000 resons to navigate, and Erick had trillions.

For whatever reason, he was currently shaped like himself, but just a bit under 2 meters tall— maybe something like 6’7”. Erick had needed to dig around for half a second to remember the conversions to Imperial. His horns were pulled back, and his clothes were simple, though the style was different than Erick remembered. Whatever he was wearing seemed common enough for the time and place he had been dropped into, though, on this Earth he barely recognized.

People were wearing big lapels and button down shirts these days. It was weird to see even down-on-their-luck guys in shorts and shoes with holes in them wearing ratty old shirts that were both button down, and had big lapels. And yet they were graphic tees.

Erick thought for a while, not really about Earth, though some thoughts drifted that way, of course.

The letter was a lie in some ways, but not all ways. What was a lie, and what was a truth?

Erick also tested out the environment around him, stretching his senses as far as they could go, looking for other sources of mana on Earth, checking the place out for illusions and other such powers. Erick shot off tiny [Force Bolt]s into bushes outside and did some [Illusion Dispel]s and stressed his [True Sight] further than was comfortable, and all he ended up seeing was Earth, in the current year of 2047.

The place was pretty much as bad as Erick thought it would have been, but also not that bad at all. There were problems, but people were working to fix them—

Erick stood up, moved around the desk, and sat down on a chair meant for people meeting with the social workers. He used a bit of magic to cool down the seat he had been sitting in. He did this because Mary and Betty were coming back from a late lunch. With a final twist of magic, Erick reached over and unlocked the room.

Mary stuck her key in the lock and realized it wasn’t locked. “I didn’t lock it?” she said, but then she ignored that and walked in first, not even looking around, turning back toward Betty, saying, “Leon is too young for you, mother. You really shouldn’t egg him on— He’s— Oh?”

The mother and daughter stepped into the room.

Erick nodded to both of them. “Hello.” Erick’s voice was pretty deep right now, and he had set off warnings amongst the girls, so he cleared his throat, and said again, “Ah. Hello.”

… In a pleasant tone that Erick knew meant she was actually truly worried, Betty said to Mary, “I can’t believe you didn’t lock it, honey.” And then she came around and said to Erick, “Pardon me, young man, but how did you get in here?”

Erick stood, and he tried not to tower, but he weighed something like 275, all muscle, and he was 6’7”, while the girls were around 5’6”. He said, “I apologize. I broke in. I’m having some trouble, Miss Karr and Karr, and I heard through a guy connected to a guy from here, named Erick Flatt, that you were pretty great to talk to, and that you were an outrageous flirt, Betty Karr.”

Erick might have been trying to diffuse the situation with flirting, at least a little. It was surprisingly easy to be familiar with Betty in this way, even though it had been decades and neither of them was the same at all.

The women had a complicated set of emotions. Mary was kinda furious at Erick overstepping himself in many different ways, and she was ready to lay into him. Betty rapidly moved through anger, to acceptance, and then to joy.

Betty smiled, deep laugh lines creasing on her wrinkled, beautiful face, as she said, “Erick Flatt! That’s a name I haven’t heard in so long! Oh, a shame what happened to him; they never found him, or his daughter. We all thought it was some CIA nonsense, but they wouldn’t tell us anything. Sit, sit!” Betty moved to some sort of auto-coffee machine sitting to the side of the room, asking, “A cup of coffee? We have the finest blends that government workers can get! Which is to say it’s kinda shit, but it gets you good and awake.”

Erick smiled at the attempt to connect. “I would love a cup of coffee.”

Betty was obviously gearing up to ask some deep questions about Erick that she never got answered before, but Erick would try to cut those questions short.

Mary stepped into the conversation strongly, saying, “My mother might be forgiving of people breaking and entering and throwing around names, but I’m not. You should leave, whoever-you-are, and come back with an appointment, like everyone else. We’ve got people showing up in 10 minutes—”

“Oh, Mary!” Betty started making coffee, saying, “The Jules Twins aren’t sitting out there, so they’re probably going to miss your meeting today, Kevin is out sick so all his people are canceled, and today is a planning day for me. You don’t have another client for another whole hour. We can have an unexpected client.” She winked at Erick. “Which I’m sure is why you came here right now.”

“I assure you, my arrival right now was an event that has no bearing on anyone else… as far as I know. But who really knows about these things.”

“I’m sure,” Betty said. The coffee was made as fast as hot water poured through little capsules, with the capsules themselves dissolving in the action and becoming more coffee. Erick was impressed at the zero-waste. Betty had always been against the little disposable things of 30 years ago, but she had probably been won over by this new technology. She asked Erick, “Milk or sugar?”

“Both, please. It’s been a rough day.”

“I understand that.” Betty handed Erick a cup of coffee, and then sipped her own, saying, “Rough enough to have you coming in ‘off the books’?” She sat down at one of her client chairs.

Erick sat down in one of Mary’s client chairs, sipping his coffee, saying, “A guy fucked me over hard, killed a friend, and took everything I ever worked for. Should I forgive him and move on to this new world that he’s built, or proceed to fight for a past that doesn’t even exist anymore?” As both women stilled in their own ways —Betty preparing for a much bigger day than she thought she would ever have to face again, for Erick had known that she had dealt with difficult clients like him before, and Mary preparing to call the cops— Erick added, “I’m exaggerating, but not by much.”

Mary stood down. She went quiet, as she sat down behind her desk. She eyed Erick, but she said nothing.

“… Well,” Betty said, to buy herself some more time. “… There is something to be said for moving on. A lot to be said for that. What would you do if you chose to move on? What would that world look like?”

“I’ll get to work making the world a better place for everyone,” Erick said, “Which was part of the plan to begin with. And then this guy came along and ruined everything. Took it all and… Well. He killed a lot of people.” Erick said, “And I’m not exaggerating. What I said before was a lie to cover the impossibility of it all. The guy killed a lot of people to rise to power —an impossible amount of people— and I’m wondering if I should move on, or not, because now he thinks himself unassailable, and he’s wrong, but…”

But Erick wasn’t sure if he was lying to himself, right there. Was Nothanganathor unassailable, or not? Hard to say.

Mary was back to being concerned, though not really. She was more concerned that Erick was taking up her time and talking crazy. Erick was a big damned dude right now, too, so that was scary for them as well.

Betty simply smiled and didn’t believe Erick was telling the truth, or at least not the truth about the deaths. “We have therapists you can talk to. I can set you up with some right now, if you want.”

Erick laughed. “Yeah. I should do that. But the question remains. And I’m just gonna be real honest with you, Betty. I’m surprised to see you still kicking around.” Erick stood up and unceremoniously transformed into his old self. He shrunk and his muscles melted away. His belly sagged and his arms lost most of their definition. His eyes turned back to what they were before, instead of the bright white they had been for so long, and then his hair turned a little less full, a little more salt-and-pepper. “Hello again, Betty. I thought you would have retired by now.”

Betty sat there, staring. She hummed, and furrowed her brows.

Mary made most of the noise in the room, flailing backward and shoving against the wall behind her, screaming out, “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK!”

Erick had preemptively soundproofed the room, so Mary’s outburst wasn’t the disaster it could have been; there were cops outside, after all. When she went for her phone, sitting on her desk, Erick had to actually move to prevent whatever she was trying to do. With a flicker of white aura, Erick locked her phone to her table under a bit of Force.

Mary’s fingers slid across the invisible barrier over her phone— She paused. She tried to grab her phone again, but she touched the invisible barrier. A stream of, “What the fuck?!”s poured out of her mouth.

Betty told her daughter, “Please stop that.” Still seated, she said to Erick, “And you. You vanish off the face of the Earth for 30 years and you show up with… with whatever the fuck you just did— pardon my language. Sit back down, Erick.” She sipped her coffee, and then said, “Transform back, and make yourself more muscly. Tighter clothes, too. You know how I like them.”

“MOTHER?!” Mary exclaimed.

Erick did as requested, smiling a little as he sat down across from Betty. “This good enough?”

“Green eyes, red hair,” Betty said.

Erick obliged, turning himself into an Irish muscle mag coverboy. “How’s this?”

“Mother?!” Mary exclaimed, but softer.

Betty flicked a free hand at her daughter, saying, “Let an old woman have her fun.” She breathed deep as she looked at Erick all over. “You look good, Erick. So that story is true, then? How many people did he kill?”

Mary muttered, “What the fuck is going on.”

Betty was always quick on the uptake, but this was kinda weird for Erick, too.

So Erick said, “You’re taking this rather well, Betty.”

“Oh I’m rather sure I just died and had a heart attack somewhere during the day, and this is my introduction to heaven. It’s not a bad introduction. Could you put on a kilt, though?” She waggled her eyebrows.

Erick smirked, then said, “Pants are good, for now.”

Betty tsk’d. “Not dead and in heaven, then.”

“Nope. Not dead.” Erick said, “And the guy I’m talking about killed a universe. I can probably get it back, but it’ll be a solo mission. I had gone at the problem with a whole world and many allies at my back, but that was taken away from me through magic, and it would happen again if I went back to them. I can time travel back and do some things to solve that, but I’m wondering if the outcome, for now, is acceptable, and if I should make better plans. I had a lot of plans, Betty, but he broke all of them.”

Betty nodded. She sipped her coffee.

Mary stared. And then she blurted, “Whatever you do, you need to leave.”

Betty ignored her daughter and asked Erick, “How powerful are you?”

“Powerful enough to remake Earth in a better image. I can give you treatments for cancer, pollution, energy, and everything else you can think of, but I’ve been out of the loop on Earth for 30 years and I’m not sure if those needs are still relevant.”

Mary spoke up, “Maybe I’m the one that died and went to heaven.”

Both of them looked at her.

Mary was suddenly frightened. “… Did I say that out loud?”

Nods all around.

Mary fell silent.

“The guy you’re fighting? He’s a killer?” Betty asked, “Did you turn into a killer too, Erick?”

“Yes and yes.”

Betty nodded, still thinking, though she was rapidly coming out of shock and deciding that all of this might really be happening. Eventually, she said, “Normally, it would be wrong to give such direct advice, but I think I am having some sort of episode of something, and I really feel compelled to be truly honest… So you should go back and fight the guy with everything you have. He killed a universe, right? Did I get that part of your story right? Or did I imagine that?”

“He definitely killed a universe.”

Betty nodded slower this time. “Then that seems… unforgivable, to say the least of it— And he rose to power, right?”

“Yes.” Erick said, “Now he has the power of a god, and he could unmake… a lot. But he also might not want to, because he has everything he ever wanted. He won. I could simply be a king for his Empire, and he would be just another god that I worked with. Though I’m rather sure that particular job opening is yet another trap.”

Betty was rapidly losing her battle with understanding what was happening, but she managed to maintain professionalism. She said, “There’s a lot of good to be done by moving on. Perhaps your first stop should be seeking your coworkers who survived; seeing what they say about whatever happened.”

“I agree, but I’m a Wizard who can move through time. I don’t have to accept the past.”

Betty was a little short as she said, “Well maybe you should, because you already lost that fight.”

Erick was about to object, but then he realized—

When he had made Benevolence, he had empowered it to act on its own to prevent disasters.

When Nothanganathor had made Malevolence, he had empowered it to act on his personal behalf.

Nothanganathor was always going to win the first real fight, because that’s what his Malevolence had been geared toward, and he had prepared for thousands of years to win that fight. It was pure hubris to assume that Erick could win against an enemy 10,000 years in the planning. But now, if the letter was to be believed, Nothanganathor had abandoned Malevolence. Erick did not doubt that part of the letter because Malevolence was probably no longer useful to Nothanganathor; it had done what it had set out to do, to raise Nothanganathor to a god, and now it was a directionless mana. Maybe for personal users Malevolence had its uses, but nothing like what Nothanganathor had used it for.

… Maybe Erick could even experiment with it now that it was outside of Nothanganathor’s control.

Huh.

He should check on that. Go back to Margleknot and see what happened…

And yet, if he did that, he would be walking into a reality that he would be washing away as soon as he fixed this outcome. So...

No.

Erick would not be visiting Margleknot, or any other place like that. His friends and family awaited him back on Veird; not in whatever reality Nothanganathor had made of Layer 789.

Erick knew what he needed to do.

He stood, saying, “Thank you, Betty. It was nice to meet you again. I’ve got a world to save. Ask me for something, and I will attempt to grant it.”

Mary stared. “… Anything?”

Betty rapidly said, “I want our funding problems to vanish, so we can help a lot more people.”

“… Er. Yeah. I can do that.” Erick considered how to solve the problem. Could he make some more 1’s and 0’s appear in the center’s bank account? “Might take me a minute to figure out how to work magic on a computer— And that would set off too many alarms, because I know I am not capable enough to see through all the fancy checks and balances they got these days, I’m sure. Fixing the bank accounts would just set off alarms. Those phones of yours are way too thin and dense…” Just how far had tech advanced? Erick asked, “How do you feel about gold? Or platinum?”

Mary whispered, “Like a fucking fae.” She stared at Erick. She muttered, “Even looks irish.”

And that was another thing that Erick needed to do.

Turn fae.

No more chickening out with growing to power.

“Gold is good,” Betty said, well past believing that any of this was happening at all. “We can say you were a wealthy benefactor.”

Erick rapidly produced ten huge bars of shimmering gold from thin air. Each one was around 25 kilos. He laid them on the floor, in a stack, saying, “That’s 250 kilos of gold. What’s the price of gold today? I’m not sure. This is tens of millions of dollars either way. How bad has inflation gotten in the last 30 years?”

Mary stared at the gold.

Betty smiled as she laughed. “It’s gotten bad! They tried condensing the dollar by ten, ten years ago. The cost of a burger might be the same as it was 30 years ago, but not really at… all...” And then she breathed, and reached over to pick up a gold bar, and she couldn’t budge it at all. She stopped. “Oh. Fuck. That’s real gold.”

“Unmarked, too,” Erick said, “You might have problems with that. Just tell them that Erick Flatt says hello, and to keep doing what you’re doing. I’m not sticking around to talk to people. Also, here:” Erick threw a [Benevolent Cleanse] at both of them, which briefly knocked Betty out as he removed a few small cancers at the base of her spine and skull, and opened up wounds all across her body. A quick [Greater Treat Wounds] was enough to fix all that up, and a bit of [Greater Rejuvenation] probably made her feel 20 years younger. It also replaced her gallbladder, which had been taken out sometime in the last decade. She barely even moved, as Erick was done with the procedure so fast. And then he did the same thing for Mary, who was suffering from ulcers and a whole bunch of systemic problems…

In fact…

Erick simply knocked the both of them out and Mary got a [Reincarnation], because the healing magics Erick had cast on her were exacerbating a whole bunch of genetic issues. Five minutes later, Erick allowed both of them to wake up naturally and with a note scribbled on some spare paper, and stuck under a little glass paperweight on top of the gold pile. The note was a signed piece of paper that this gold was a gift to the Humanitarian Center, and to the offices of Betty Karr in particular.

Erick turned to light and lingered for a moment around the fluorescent light bulbs in the room, watching as Betty woke up first and then Mary followed.

Betty saw the gold and screamed, “GOLD?!”

And then mother and daughter were screaming together, in panic, and then rapidly in joy. The cops came running when they heard the noise, and then they saw the gold. And then they read the note.

Erick peered into the future a little bit, just to see if he could see how that all turned out if nothing else big happened.

There would be an investigation. Mary and Betty would both confirm that some guy came in, talking about weird things and claiming to be Erick Flatt, and then left them with a bunch of gold. Their story would make national headlines and then Mary would make headlines again as she didn’t need to take any of the medication she was taking for her auto-immune diseases, for she was healthy as could be, and no one could explain why she had healed completely. Betty would go on to live another 40 years, to the ripe old age of 120, which was way more than she wanted, but she was happy. Mary would live similarly long, but she was ready to go long before that.

And the office that Erick Flatt had worked in and then donated to would be renovated completely, the building renamed after him and the gold used to pay for a lot of new stuff in town. Of course some people would steal some of it, and the feds came in for their 40% cut, but a lot of good came from that gold. A lot of people lived better lives because of that gold.

‘Erick Flatt’s’ return to Earth was soon marked as an old, romanticized story of miraculous hope and ghosts of the past.

- - - -

Erick stood on the very top of Mount Everest, just because he wanted to see the world from the highest point. It was gorgeous; clouds and cold and the bright sun overhead. The air was thin, and wind whipped into Erick’s clothes and across all the little colorful flags strung over the mountain peak. Erick remained undisturbed by the cold, and the flapping of flags was almost zen-like.

Some coat-clad sherpas trekked up the mountain with their clients, reaching the top as Erick stood there. They saw Erick. They paused. All of them wore thick coats and had climbing gear on, and two of them were breathing in oxygen masks, but Erick was still shaped like a very buff Irish man in some tight clothes, and that was all.

One of the clients called out, “What the fu—”

The sherpas instantly told him to shut up and say nothing.

Erick just smiled, and with the freezing air tugging at his hair and at his voice, he said, “Don’t mind me. I just came to see the sights.”

And then Erick floated into the sky and vanished in a snapping pop of resons and Layer-stepping, leaving Mount Everest behind with another weird story for sherpas to tell each other, and some [Greater Regeneration]s active on every single person on the mountain. Erick truly could have stayed longer, but he had some scoping-out to do.

Erick didn’t go too far.

First, he popped over to Layer 99,082, just one Layer further from Margleknot’s direction as regards to Earth on Layer 99,081. And there was nothing in that solar system. Sure, Earth was still there, but it was a rocky nothing with thin layers of water and atmosphere, and no moon in the sky.

Layer 99,080 held no Earth at all, though the Solar System was still there.

Erick went back to Earth on Layer 99,081, and with a quick trip to the moon, Erick settled in on the dark side of the moon, because the moon was empty and so was Mars, and so was all the rest of the solar system. He could build anywhere he wanted out here, and no one could even see him do it, unless they moved around some satellites. Erick found himself actually quite mad that humanity was still stuck on Earth.

Maybe they needed an impetus to explore again.

And Erick kinda wanted to poke that hornet’s nest anyway.

So he decided. He was going to make a home here, and it would be permanent, and ostentatious. He wasn’t going to do anything to help Earth right now, but he would definitely be back later. Probably ‘sooner’, too, at least as much as this specific timeline was concerned. Mainly, though, Erick was here, and he saw people in pain, and he couldn’t stop himself from helping at least a little. Or at least that was the rationalization he gave himself as he made some plans.

With the tickling of static-filled moon dust in his nostrils, having gotten there just because of static forces and probably Erick’s influence on the world, Erick raised his hands, and cast a spell that he hadn’t gotten to use on Fenrir.

[Seeds of Atunir].

The dark side of the moon was currently half-facing the sun, and it had almost no atmosphere at all, so the light and dark was rather harsh. Craters were like black crescents upon the pale grey surface. But then light blossomed in the void. A white dot coalesced from nothing and then shot into the harsh shadows below, where it buried itself and then began to grow.

Golden light vibrated through the lunar surface, sending cracks across the chiaroscuro land. And then towers began to grow. They rose like spires, like bamboo, floor after floor popping into existence and then widening at the base as the tip of the spire grew and grew upward. The surface of the moon dropped away from Erick as it broke in the thrust of the spires, and Erick floated away from the growing magic, to give it more space.

As the first tower finished growing, the golden glow of it all turned to white, and the top ten floors of the tower sprouted short branches filled with giant [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]s, like the tower was holding a full head of grain, ready for harvesting. This grain shone down light, and along with all the similar lights throughout the entire structure, and all of the other magics therein, a river flowed from top to bottom and life spread out across the lunar surface. Gravity took hold, and permeable, shimmering barriers of mana held in the air far away, thanks to a little bit of Domain work that kept it all together. Tens of kilometers of space was suddenly made livable.

Slimes popped into existence everywhere, on every floor, and on the surrounding land, and soon, flickering systems of [Renew], [Undertow Star], and [Terraforming], began to take from the life that now existed, to solidify the system.

Absent any Malevolent actors, the whole thing worked without a hitch. As Erick watched the systems come online and then reinforce themselves ten times over, in ten redundant ways that would all repair each other if they were messed with, Erick was pretty sure that this really should have worked on Fenrir…

Nothanganathor had prepared too well. Erick wasn’t even sure what he had done to throw Erick here, to Earth. Had it been a ‘surround and consume’ strategy? Perhaps.

As little slimes walked around and they gained little Dark Marks in their souls, Erick wondered if ‘the God of Magic Nothanganathor’ would come for those Marks, or at least if he would sense them. Melemizargo certainly could… Maybe. Maybe Shadow could, too?

The magic of the tower only took 20 minutes to set up in such a way that only a Wizard could take it down, or a very concerted effort of poisoning the land and nuclear-bombs-every-hour-for-a-year.

Erick made another tower, and then he started adding some details.

Balconies like shelf-mushrooms. Visitor centers. Signage and low walls, just so people would know where they were, and so that rivers went where they were supposed to go. Gardens went up next, filled with all the vegetables and fruit that anyone could ever want, all of it edible. He even put up some meat-like plants, with sausage-like tubers that drooped from heavy branches. Those tubers grilled up wonderfully, if one were so inclined to do that, and they were filled with proteins; they were basically big beans, almost like the Erick Beans that Erick had made back on Veird. Erick had eaten these ‘meat beans’ on Margleknot when he went out to eat with Yggdrasil, and they had been delicious.

An hour after landing on the dusty, airless surface of the Moon, Erick now stood on the edge of a white city of towers that grew upward from water-soaked soil, their branches forming balconies, their insides forming floors that housed slimes that tumbled and played in the water slides. Fresh dirt grew strange plants that grew under rainbow radiances, or which glowed in the darker spaces, providing their own light into the void. Air and water poured out of platinum-raining clouds here and there.

It was good.

… Erick’s Lightning Path was telling him something. It had been flickering the whole time he had been building all of this. Erick’s skin prickled and a subtle rage held in his heart, because he knew what was coming, now that it was closer.

Erick turned, and said, “Hello, Nothanganathor. What the fuck do you want?”

Nothanganathor stood beside Erick’s Welcome Center, looking like an older elven man with white robes and white horns. Erick wondered why he was an elf, but then of course he was an elf; elves were both the big bad evil guys of the Old Cosmology, and also the main powers of the Old Cosmology. Erick had never seen Melemizargo’s human-sized form, but that guy had probably been elven-shaped, too.

After the Sundering, on a newly-created Veird, Nothanganathor had the elves killed first, because he hated them the most.

The Greatest Evil Erick Had Ever Known, said, “I want to make a deal.”

Erick scoffed. And then he laughed. And then he shot a [Luminous Beam] into Nothanganthor’s face. Erick had denied atomic magic in this space, so it didn’t do any big explosions. Light from a quasar went right at Nothanganathor, and the God of Magic ignored it, like Erick was shining a flashlight upon him. Nothanganathor allowed the attack to continue for a moment longer. He was about to wave his hand and stop Erick’s spellwork, but Erick did that instead.

Nothangaanthor said, “You are understandably upset.”

Erick composed himself, and said, “You would be, too.”

“Yes, I would be, and I have been. You have seen the results of my anger. This is why I am here to make a deal, because I don’t want you coming after me like I came after Melemizargo.” He began, “It is anathema for the Darkness to kill its Wizards, and to take away the power of those it has given power to, so I have no real lever to use against you aside from the general one of killing everyone you love and making your life a living hell. But I am above that, now. I have won, and you—”

“Get to the fucking point.”

Nothanganathor nodded. “Do whatever you want, Erick, and don’t come after me.”

Erick almost thought about it. He almost went down a thought hole. But then he realized that he would get more information out of Nothanganathor if he aired his thoughts, so he said, “The fact that you are here trying to make a deal at all, means that I can win against you.”

“Correct.” Nothanganathor said, “And that will incur me murdering everyone you know and love. I even stripped Malevolence from Earth right before you got there, but I can certainly put it back. Chances are, that if you win, you could even undo everything I have ever done to get to this point. But I have already won, Erick. Winning once is all I ever needed. I have secured my victory in ways you can never imagine. If you even get close to ‘winning’, then I’ll be back to having Malevolence, and thus on a trajectory to be right back to where we are now.

“The war would be a repeating cycle, because I won’t kill you, because I need you here to act on behalf of the Fractal, to take up the job of where I left off; to cleanse this universe of corruption.

“The only question is how much pain are you willing to endure to get to that point, and at which point in our future wars do you finally falter, either won over by my good stewardship of the Dark, or by how well I treat those who work with me. I will endure anything I have to endure to ensure this reality is the real one. Can you say the same?” Nothanganathor rhetorically asked, “You once called yourself the ultimate forgiving sort, so how long do we have until you eventually forgive even me? It’s not like you won’t have your daughter, and Earth, and all the rest of everything you want. The only thing you do not have is Melemizargo, and you didn’t even like him all that much. He deserved everything I gave him, Erick, and more.”

The sounds of rain in bamboo-like towers filled the bubble habitat. Water rushed down waterfalls and through nascent rivers. Lunar dirt collapsed into those rivers, as water expanded across the surface of the moon. The water froze when it got out of the protected space, piling up like a glacier.

Erick felt a rage settle into his mind, and body, and soul, like a cup that was overfull.

“Forgiveness is for those who desire it, or those who I can force into compliance. You are neither, and you will have NOTHING.”

Erick desired Nothanganathor GONE—

Suddenly Nothanganathor exploded into gore which then turned into white sparks that burned away everything that was left. The God of Magic and Darkness was gone, but he was obviously still alive. Erick had just forced his removal—

Erick fell onto his ass, his emotions too wild to understand right now, his body seemingly not working. But that was just a chemical reaction. Too much was happening and had happened, and it was all catching up with Erick and his too-fast heartbeat. Just a chemical reaction. Nothing serious. Nothing was wrong with his soul. Nothing was wrong with him…

Nothing was wrong with him.

Everything was wrong with everything else.

Nothanganathor’s very words were destabilizing. Dangerous. It was the same as the Shades, in Erick’s first year on Veird. To listen to Nothanganathor was to be dazzled by words while he stabbed you in the back and drowned you in power till you were mutated into something else and made to act even towards your own detriment. Listening to him was a terrible thing. Thinking how he wanted was even worse.

And now he was a fucking god, and everything was horror.

- - - -

Erick ended up sitting on his ass for a good hour and having a good cry half of that time.

Eventually, Erick was on his back on the surface of the moon, looking up at the void sky, at the stars, and Earth’s sun. Nothanganathor didn’t live on that sun at all —Erick had done tests while he was crying; a lot of tests, some of them reaching through time and all the way to the solar surface— and Erick was glad the bastard was gone.

As his tears fell away and turned to ice on his skin, Erick sighed out once more.

He needed to collect himself.

He also decided he was hungry as fuck, so he zipped back to earth and got himself to a nice restaurant —in Toyko Japan, because that side of the world faced the moon at the moment— and he walked into the entrance area, wearing nice black robes. There was a bar and some people were wearing white, and Erick almost transformed their robes for them, but he stopped himself at the last moment.

White was a terrible fucking color! Black was best!

Erick was 6’7” and massive compared to everyone else, seeing as he probably weighed a good 275, and all of it was muscle. That fact turned heads almost as much as his robes. Other people were wearing robes, because that’s what kind of restaurant this was, but those were formal robes. Erick had on mage robes. Many people wondered where the fuck he had come from. Some cosplay event? Or was that just a new style?

And now that Erick was here, his whims were faltering, and he was thinking straight again. He found himself calming, and he was glad for it. Why did he pick this place? It was too fancy. The bar in front was open to everyone, but the main restaurant in the back was special.

This place was the kind of restaurant that required long reservations and rarely had any openings at all, but Erick wanted to treat himself. That’s why he had come here, he decided—

He realized he was thinking like he was back on Veird for a moment, expecting to get prompt service and for people to know him, but…

This was fine.

Better than fine.

Erick could relax and be a nobody for a while. For a day or three.

He was still so unbalanced.

Why was he here?

Whatever.

Erick walked past the bar, down the garden path, spilling out invisible mana as he went, filling the world with his sight and senses, to check on the world as he walked. Nearby bamboo fountains filled with water, dumped themselves, and then clicked when they turned back up, only to fill with water again, as people in nearby buildings spoke of this and that, and the people in the restaurant up ahead talked about matters of family and one girl talked to a floating camera as she ate dinner. By the time Erick got to the front door, he knew enough of the language to be passable, though reading it all was a bit beyond him, for now. Reading Japanese would take at least another twenty minutes of seeing everything around him.

The host of the restaurant was a man dressed in fine Japanese robes, standing behind a thin podium with a touchscreen on top. A bunch of words and time slots were on that screen. The man smiled as he looked up at Erick, and, trying to be inoffensive, said, “Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation?”

He knew damned well that Erick didn’t have a reservation—

Erick calmed himself.

Erick pulled out a small gold bar about the size of his palm, and set it on the counter, speaking in broken Japanese, “It’s gold. I want a nice dinner with some of that good beef you have in the back. The aged stuff, or whatever that stuff is set aside in the big cooler. I have more gold, and I want a lot of food.”

The host paused as he listened to Erick’s broken words, his eyes focusing on Erick, but he looked at the gold four times, quickly. When Erick was done talking, the man said, “I am sorry sir, but we have a 6 month waiting list and cannot accommodate you—” Erick had been about to get mad, but the guy saw that and rapidly added, “But I can make a call to other people on the list, and ask if they would like their spot to be bought out. Buying out a slot is currently 1.5 million yen.”

… Erick realized that he shouldn’t get mad and that he appreciated these guys doing their jobs. People probably came in demanding slots all the time. What was 1.5 million yen? Like… $10,000? Maybe something like that. How much was that bar of gold? Erick didn’t bother to check up on current prices even when he had handed out 250 kilos to Betty and Mary. One kilo was more than the price of a buy-out, for sure… had to be, right?

Erick was probably too high strung right now.

Erick simply said, “Sure. That works.”

A woman in a kimono stepped out of the main dining room and walked up to the host. She had been looking in from behind a grate of carved wood shaped into phoenixes and dragons, and now she was here because she needed to talk about the gold that Erick had left out on the host desk. She pulled the host back behind a curtain and the two of them spoke in some hushed tones about accommodating Erick.

The host came back out, bowed, then said, “We apologize for the delay. We will have an appraiser come and verify this, uh, gold, while you take your seat.”

The woman in the kimono did a little curtsy, asking, “Will sir be alone today? Or will someone be joining you?”

“If someone joins me then I will be surprised. Just put me anywhere visible.”

Erick wanted to be around people and especially strangers, right now. He did not want to be alone.

The woman curtsied again, and then led the way beyond the carved phoenix and dragon archway, into a fancy room of black lacquered wood, gold accents, and paper sculptures serving the place of paintings on the walls. The area was open and quiet, and tables sat far apart from each other, with drapery hanging just off of the ceiling, just to denote one space from another. The woman took Erick to a low table beside a window overlooking the city, and a nice pillow would be Erick’s seat for the evening.

It was to the side of the main dining room, and Erick would be eating in the same room as what appeared to be a celebrity taking photos of her meal, with a tiny drone that floated around her, silently and cleanly, an older couple on a nice date, and some shady people with guns hidden in holsters hidden in their robe-jackets. Erick found himself glad for the humanity, just being there. Even the shady people were a great addition.

Today was a time of relaxation, and planning, and also seeing how Earth would react to small magics, so this was a good assortment of people to have in the area. Erick hadn’t really chosen this place, but now that he was here, he knew he had picked it because the food looked great, and the woman taking photos of her meal seemed famous. Her drone was the fanciest one Erick had seen, and it even had some sort of official news-like sigil on it, so it was ‘fine’ for her to have it out and about, or something like that? Erick wasn’t sure about what was going on with the culture of drones flying in the air and taking photos and whatever, but it seemed fine.

This was a better introduction of magic to the world than trying to appear on the news. Simpler. More cozy.

Warm sake was already sitting out at a table for five, waiting for Erick’s party of one.

Erick said to the woman seating him, “I am going to eat a lot today. All of the best stuff you have. Just a warning.” And then he held out another gold bar the size of his palm. “Here. A down payment. I am not paying in cash or credit and I don’t want change.”

The woman’s professionalism was cracking, but she took the gold bar —almost dropping it— and chuckled a little, saying, “I will alert the kitchen, good sir, though our dishes are prepared half in advance. If you wish for quantity, we can accommodate.”

But it wouldn’t be their best stuff, was left unsaid.

That was fine.

Erick sat down and began drinking his sake as the woman headed off with her gold bar. The rice wine was good stuff. Burned a little. Tasted like warmth. Erick allowed it to affect him, and then he pulled out some papers from the sleeve of his robes and set them down in front of him, to the side. Maybe he’d write on them, maybe not. He also spied on everyone’s phones and the other tech he saw everywhere. Cameras were stuffed into hidden nooks and crannies all over the place.

A hallway over, there was a room with video feeds, and the restaurant manager was arguing with the host as he waved hands at the video feeds. The gold bar Erick had given the host sat on the small table in front of the camera feeds. It was soon joined by a second gold bar, placed there by the woman in the kimono. And then all three of them were arguing, while a fourth guy was on the phone, asking an appraiser to come up from the street down the way. This was a nice place, in the upper districts of wherever he was right now, and there were jewelry shops down the way. They had a guy who could appraise weird stuff.

Mostly, they were worried about what it meant that someone was paying with bars of gold.

Soon, a guy on the other end of the phone was rushing out of his shop, letting his apprentices work the gold that they were working on to make fancy rings and otherwise. That place had two apprentices working on tiny mythical creatures; drawing out gold and hammering it and then putting diamonds and otherwise into the gold. Some big black boxes in the back of the jewelry shop caught Erick’s attention. They seemed to be gem-furnaces, or something like that. They made diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on demand. There seemed to be a space for a fourth machine, but it wasn’t there, and Erick saw signs on a bucket of sapphires that told the workers to use them sparingly.

Their sapphire machine was in the shop.

… Erick tried not to think about Poi—

An older woman in a very nice kimono came around and showed Erick the menu, which only had ten items on it.

Erick said, “All of it. Even the wine. And do the steaks five times over.” He handed the server another gold bar, taken from his empty sleeves, saying, “And I’m serious. Not joking. Serve it as the cook decides to cook it up; whatever way makes the best meal.”

The server did not seem too amused at whatever Erick was pulling, but she accepted the —again— surprisingly heavy bar of gold, and she professionally said, “We don’t have enough steaks prepared to do the steak course five times over, but we will ensure you have the best experience possible tonight, sir…?” She fished for a name.

Erick provided, “You can call me ‘Dragon’. ‘Black Dragon’ if you want. It’s weird; I know. It’s fine. Don’t worry about making it seem realistic.” Erick said, “I’ll take some more sake, too. Big bottle, please. The expensive stuff. Not those tacky gem-encrusted bottles you have; the one in the black box in the manager’s office. I want to know what it tastes like.”

The woman’s eyes briefly went wide, and then she did a professional curtsy, her kimono moving elegantly, as she ducked backward and walked away.

Erick [Duplicate]d all of the food in the back before she got there with his outrageous order.

When the older server arrived in the kitchen she quietly ranted about Erick, telling the cooks his demands. The cooks didn’t know what was happening yet, but they rapidly found out, and the server began telling everyone what was going on up front. No one believed her. She had to show off the gold several times. Soon, everyone had gathered. Everyone believed.

Soon, cooks in white chef outfits were poking their heads out from behind corners, wondering who was seated in their restaurant. Erick drank his sake, not looking their way, until other people in the restaurant started looking their wa—

“Ai yaaaah!”

It was half of a scream, half of a yelp of pure surprise.

One of the cooks had just checked on their freezers and prep rooms. That’s what Erick had heard. That’s what everyone had heard. The influencer and her floating drone turned toward the noise. She spoke to her flying camera about how strange that was. The gangsters looked concerned, but they were more concerned about whatever the fuck was going on with the foreigner in their restaurant, and was that gold he was handing out? Maybe if the gangsters wanted some, Erick would just give them some. They seemed to be commiserating over some bad thing, too, but they weren’t talking openly about it. The old couple were too enamored with each other and talk of the past to notice the happening; they were on a date, and all the rest of the world did not exist.

Soon, the stoic older server came out, and she was quietly, profusely cordial, as she carefully opened the very expensive sake bottle and poured Erick a drink. It was pretty good. Worth the price? Sure. And then the first course arrived. It was soup, rice and fish, and it was absolutely delicious. Erick ate it all within five minutes.

The servers watched from the hidden cameras.

The appraiser was there now, huffing from being out of breath, and also staring at the three bars of gold and at his portable tester device, which was like a pen, which he could press against something and get the purity of it all. He had confirmed it. That was real gold. 99.9999% gold. Erick was absolutely sure it was 100% gold, but the machine didn’t seem to go that high. That was when everything got to be too much for the manager and the servers. That was when they realized that yes, this really was happening.

The fact that Erick ate the first course in 5 minutes was when everything became too much for the head cook.

He was disgusted as he gestured at the cameras, saying, “What is this! This man comes in and buys us off and disrupts everything and we have more food everywhere and he gobbles it up like a fat American! How is this— This is some kind of prank, isn’t it!” He poked the chest of the manager, saying, “You are doing this to me for some reason—”

The manager shot back, “That man has given us millions tonight, and we have dealt with rich weirdos before! Every single one of us on shift tonight gets a percentage of this bonus, and I want that bonus. You will do everything he wants. EVERYTHING. Or you are fired! If he wants you to dance for him, you will dance. If he wants you to sing, you will sing. If he has spies putting food into our walk-ins, you will accept the bounty as it has been given to you. As long as it doesn’t ruin our reputation, you will do it.”

Everyone else in the office backed up the manager, and soon the Head Cook was back to overseeing a kitchen, cooking food for a guy that ‘obviously had spies running around the kitchen’. It wasn’t long till the Head Cook had another idea about why he hated this; that much gold needed to be reported to the government. The authorities would need to get involved. Everyone told him to shut the fuck up and cook when he said that, even his apprentice, which had caused the Head Cook to do a double take at the back talk. The Head Cook went back to cooking, though, muttering about ‘autonomous drones’ and other shit.

Erick suspected one of those ‘ADs’ was what the influencer had floating around her head, taking videos.

Erick was spying on everything, though, so the Head Cook wasn’t too far off about that. Would he call himself ‘a spy that put stuff in the kitchen’? Based on the definition of the word, he probably couldn’t be his own spy… Or could he? It was a fun little philosophical question and Erick smiled at that thought, because it was so far out of the wheelhouse of whatever the fuck he was going to do about Nothanganathor that it was a good distraction. Erick was still reeling from Nothanganathor’s shittery, but it was nice to be able to relax with good food and wine and think about smaller things.

Tonight, it was time to drink away his sorrows.

Tomorrow… Tomorrow he would do something more.

He did cast some [Greater Rejuvenation]s on everyone in the room, though, as well as some tiny [Cleanse]s to get rid of lingering health issues. Microplastics and cancer still hadn’t been solved by the year 2047. A shame, really.

They were going to have to deal with so much more than that, soon enough…

Maybe he should appear in Tokyo Bay, like Godzilla, but with ‘breath weapons’ that made [Greater Rejuvenation] and [Benevolent Cleanse] towers. That’d be a hoot. As Erick ate eel, grilled to perfection and sticky with sauce, he considered what to do next in so many different ways.

He’d have to put a gate space up on the Moon so he could access Benevolence Itself.

Maybe he should make a personal Benevolence space, too, inside his Status, so he could haul things around without needing to make them all the time. Sure, he could pull gold out of the air through Genesis, but runic structures needed to actually be made, and there wasn’t always time for that. Maybe his personal space could be one of those spatial bags that Jane always tried to make or find, years and years before she found out the Script denied that functionality. Maybe Jane and the girls and boy had those bags now, wherever they were—

Erick stopped thinking about the people he cared about because that way lay ruin. They were all fine, because they all existed in the past, and that’s where Erick would make his attack, and his rescue.

When the steak came out Erick was a little bit happier, because it smelled divine—

Did he have to worry about elevating to godhood now?

… He didn’t feel any different, and he saw no divinity in the air, and his Status was still able to ping his position in the universe through the yorddle he had made with Yggdrasil, so Margleknot knew where he was, now, so he was still connected in that way… Hmm.

But…

Hmm.

Something didn’t sit right with all of that.

Erick spread his senses wide, as he already had. So far, Earth was devoid of magic, except in the smallest of places. Some ‘Wizards’ did exist, but they were mostly ignorant of their power, and their power wasn’t Darkness-based anyway. They were Wizards of this universe, with resons flowing inside of them. Most of those people were simply heads of state, or artists with visions, or other such people. Resons gathered in them, unseen and unfelt, except for how they made the people who used them a bit more… Hmm... A bit more ‘conscious’ than everyone else? No. That wasn’t right. Hard to say.

The Dark Mark and mana had certainly existed on Earth, though. Erick had had one before he had even fallen to Veird. So what the fuck?

Nothanganathor had said he had cleaned up the world of Malevolence before Erick had come out of his trap. Maybe he killed everyone who could have held the Dark Mark? He had claimed that Jane’s mother, Margaret, had Malevolence inside of her, but… Hmm.

Erick got up out of his seat, his sudden move making every server cautious and freaking out the manager watching on the video feed, but then Erick went off toward the bathroom. There were no cameras in the bathroom. Inside the bathroom Erick took a Step back across the world, to check up on Margaret. He had always known where she lived just in case Jane ever wanted to see her, but Jane shot that idea to hell with all of her words of hate against her mother, and Margaret never wanted to see Jane anyway, so Erick just didn’t do anything with that information.

Erick found Margaret, but not how he wanted to.

Margaret's grave had her dead in 2041; 6 years ago.

Erick took a moment.

He put a flower on her grave.

And then Erick went back to the restaurant and sat back down, and soon another set of steaks came out; three of them all together this time. Halfway through eating his first one, the cooks in the back discovered that some of their prep, which Erick had copied, was an exact copy of another item, right down to the marbling pattern. Erick smiled at how they freaked out about that.

And then Erick spoke to a shadow, beside his chair, “Do you want to come to dinner, Shadow?”

His Calling vibrated the world like a minor earthquake —and Erick was kinda thrilled to be able to think in terms of ‘earth’quake again— causing a rumbling in the building and in the whole block. The patrons all stilled as the world finished rumbling. When the whole movement passed, everyone went back to talking—

A lightbulb flickered and died in the center of the ceiling of the restaurant and an unnatural shadow coiled outward. When the light came back on, Shadow stood there, wearing robes to match Erick.

Shadow said, “You’re not quitting.”

It was an accusation, a demand, and a want. A need.

Erick nodded, and said, “I’m not quitting at all, Shadow. I just need to figure out some magics I've never worked before.”

Shadow shuddered, and she took a seat with Erick, while all the restaurant watched. “Good.” She took one of his steaks, which was more like a pre-cubed, individually-seared setting of steaks, and picked up a piece with a chopstick. She ate the meat while Erick poured her some fancy sake, and then she drank the sake, downing the full cup all at once. She set the empty cup down, then softly said, “I’m glad to have you back, ‘Black Dragon’.”

“Sorry for going away. We don’t have to talk about what happened, though. It’s ‘not going to have happened’ soon enough.”

“Good. Write me a book about what you do so I can read it all when you’re done and this nightmare is over.”

People watched their conversation, but they went back to their own conversations… mostly.

Something was going on with the influencer girl’s drone, floating around her head, and her feed, scrolling down on her phone, sitting beside her plate.

Erick smiled and poured her another drink, saying, “I’m glad you gained oversight of Earth, Shadow. I’m glad that Call even worked. Were you in Margleknot?”

Shadow relaxed, saying, “Yes, I was. He was happy to feel you reconnect, by the way. He’s still furious at Nothanganathor, but not as much as he could have been. The white bastard gave Yggy back his memories from his Sign of Power, though he kept the Sign itself. Yggy is not happy about that.” She smiled devilishly, and said, “Nothanganathor might have captured the Mantle of the God of Magic, but the Dark is rejecting him. He’s begged for my help for decades now, and he’s no closer to making inroads into reestablishing the Painted Cosmology.”

Erick nodded, feeling relief. “He lied so much when he spoke to me, then.”

Shadow freaked out for a moment, and then she calmed. “He already spoke to you?”

“He said that he had made inroads to the Dark already, and that you had ‘been assigned a position similar to a regent’.”

Shadow scowled. “He ‘assigned me’ one, alright. I didn’t accept it, though.”

Erick nodded.

They ate in silence for a few moments, as Shadow thought about a lot, and Erick enjoyed the steak.

Erick asked, “So how does one become a fae, in truth?”

“So many different ways. Make an environment then consume it.” Shadow looked around, saying, “Earth would make a good basis for your rebirth. I assume you don’t want to eat Earth, though.”

Erick chuckled. “That would be correct.”

People were looking at them weird, and at Shadow weirder, while the girl eating alone and making a little video of it all with her drone was also interested. She was talking to her live stream about coming over and seeing what was going on at the table behind her, because her stream was popping off at her about ‘something is happening at that table behind you!’ and a bunch of other messages that scrolled down her phone. She was telling them that she was not going to disturb other people who were obviously cosplaying, but people were showing her clips they made of Shadow’s entrance —which was already racking up thousands of views— and demanding to know what was going on.

Apparently you weren’t allowed to show fake imagery on drone broadcasts, and some people were accusing her of doing that. You were, however, allowed to show stage magic stuff, and that’s how people got away with doing weird things online in a world where everything could be fake online.

The broadcaster was a special sort of influencer who participated in stuff like that, but she was currently out of her depths.

Or at least that’s what Erick picked up as he began reading her feed as it scrolled.

The woman quietly said to her drone, “No no, I’m not in an upcoming movie, though this would be a rather nice way to announce that, wouldn’t it!” She smiled, but it was strained.

She thought someone was doing something around her, trying to hone in on her popularity without reimbursing her.

Erick smiled as he saw the woman’s thoughts bare upon her face. He was using her, somewhat. She’d get reimbursed though, if she came over.

Shadow glanced over at the influencer because Erick had glanced her way… and then she turned back to Erick. She raised an eyebrow. “Since this timeline is going to vanish anyway, do you want some help testing out how you’re going to play around with introducing magic to Earth?”

“I’m already doing it, and I’m not going to do anything big. Just let rumors and small videos and images of the dark side of the moon do it for me. See how people react. I’m not getting hung up here on Earth, Shadow.” Erick said, “I’m getting back to the battle as soon as I can.”

Shadow enjoyed hearing that. “I’ll take that as a promise.” She gestured to a server who was watching them from a distance, and then she gestured to her empty plate of steak. “Another one!”

Erick set another gold bar onto the table, in view of everyone. The influencer’s camera feed went wild.

Shadow smiled at the gold bar. “One good thing about backwater worlds is that they really do make you feel rich.”

“I’ll try not to disrupt too many economies, but some small disturbances can be fun. Want to go to the theater in Paris? Or somewhere else? After dinner, of course.”

“Nope!” Shadow leaned in a little and clarified, “Yes, I do, but I’m barely going to remember this, so I’d rather go on a nice date or ten after we win.”

“That works, too.”

The rest of dinner was rather wonderful, and there was lots of it. Erick and Shadow spoke of nothing and everything, and it was wonderful.

Some investigators tried to show up because they were watching the influencer’s live stream, and Erick found out that every single camera in the world was under AI observation, and that AI had flagged their dinner as investigation-worthy. But Erick simply weaved some illusions from a few kilometers away and got those investigators turned around in hallways that never ended. This action raised the alert level of Erick and Shadow’s date to rather high levels—

Shadow giggled as she sipped her tenth glass of sake, saying, “So this is a date?”

“Of course it is,” Erick said, “But since this timeline is going away, we won’t be doing anything besides eating well and having a nice conversation.”

“And playing tricks on government employees.”

“They’ll be out of those hallways by the time we’re finished here.” Erick set aside some of their empty plates, and the servers came in and rapidly replaced them, as though waiting for that exact moment to move, which is what they had been doing. Erick dug into the new bowls of rice, saying, “We don’t have to finish for a while, though.”

Shadow smiled in a wonderful sort of way. And then she glanced over to the influencer, who was long done with her dinner but she was taking an hour to eat her dessert, because her stream had never been this popular before. Erick was rather certain he had seen some official notices come through on her phone, too, demanding that she remain there and let the drone observe.

The gangsters and the couple had moved on. It was just Erick, Shadow, and the influencer now.

Shadow asked Erick, “Is she a reporter? I can’t quite figure it out.”

“I think it’s some evolution of a cultural icon, co-opted by the government of Japan in an official capacity when needed.” Erick guessed, “Like an unintentional reporter.”

“Let’s invite her to dinner.”

“Sure.” Erick stood up and waved at the girl, who had to be, like, 25, and said, “Hello, miss! Want to join us for dinner? We’re going for course number 34 soon.”

The woman froze.

The feed on her phone, sitting next to her plate, absolutely exploded with people calling out ‘DANGER DANGER!!’ and ‘Go for it!’ and ‘Get a gold bar out of it!’. An official message in a separate orange popped up and said, ‘Do it.’

That orange message focused the world for the girl.

The woman thawed, put on her best face, and turned and stood, then she bowed to Erick and Shadow, and said, “I apologize if I have offended with my overlong stay for dessert. It was just too interesting— Ah— delicious, to not savor it. I graciously accept your invitation.” And then she walked over and sat down on her pillow.

Her drone fluttered around the back of her head, taking images of everything. Before, the drone had been moving kinda lazily, swishing this way and that, but now it moved methodically, quickly, and precisely. Erick raised an eyebrow at the drone, and the drone began moving less methodically, but that was a lie. Someone was controlling the drone with highly advanced flight algorithms, or something, whereas before it had just been autonomous. Erick let that deception stand.

… But it wasn’t really a deception, was it? Everyone knew that those cameras could be taken over at any time. Erick was the one who was just now catching up. To the girl, the fact that Erick was here, doing something and he had asked for her to join them, meant that he knew he was being watched, and that he wanted an audience.

The woman was a ball of sunshine as she spoke, “I just don’t understand how you two have put away all that food so far! It’s all so good, but I was struggling to finish that tiramisu. Phoenix Feather sure makes a wonderful dessert.”

Phoenix Feather was the name of the restaurant, and the woman was still deep in her part as an influencer, but she was tense beneath all of that social armor. She was also mad at being used for whatever ‘Black Dragon’ promotion was going on right now.

Shadow set a small shot glass in front of her that did not exist on the menu, for Shadow had just created it, and the shot swirled black with bits of white light every so often. It wasn’t the original recipe. It was tuned for mortal senses. “Try this. It’s called a Vivid Gloom.” Shadow looked to Erick, adding, “It’s gotten me through some tough times these last few decades.”

As the woman was torn between trying to say ‘no’ and graciously accepting, and wondering where the fuck the drink had come from, Erick made his own shot.

Erick set an absolutely black drink in front of the woman, saying, “This one is Darkness Enthroned.” And then he set two more on the table; one for Shadow, and one for himself, saying, “I tried making it once last year, and I was pleased with the result. I never got to share it with you before now, though.”

Shadow smiled at him, at that, and then she set down two more Vivid Glooms, one for each of them. “Bottoms up!”

Erick took his shots, and Shadow did the same.

Shadow winced a little, smiling wide. “That’s good stuff! You did that one well, Black Dragon.”

Erick smiled. “I liked what you did with Vivid Gloom, too.”

The influencer eventually took her shots, too, though she had to be peer pressured by her feed to do so. She had been prepared to be bowled over with strong drink, but the Vivid Gloom went down well, and the Darkness Enthroned left her looking quite perplexed. She asked, “Those were really good? Was there alcohol in them at all?”

Erick said, “Not a lot of alcohol, no.”

Shadow said, “They’re usually served in a tall glass, but shots are a good icebreaker.”

“What was in them?” she asked. “I didn’t see them on the menu?”

Erick smiled, and ignored the question.

Shadow did too, for she asked, “So what is it you do, girl? I’m not familiar with…” She indicated the floating drone. “All of this.”

The girl chuckled and said, “I’m just a drone girl. I’m sure you’re much more interesting. What do you do? Is your name really ‘Shadow’?”

“Everything I want to do, I try, though I don’t always succeed, and yes my name is Shadow,” Shadow said. “Black Dragon here is much more interesting, Cyan Charmer.”

The influencer, named Cyan Charmer, who had her name pasted everywhere in her stream and even on her drone, and which Erick didn’t really want to know, smiled a little and said, “I love that lifestyle and that name! You can call me Ceecee; everyone does.” Ceecee said to Erick, “And ‘Black Dragon’ is another interesting name.”

Erick chuckled. He asked, “I assume you’re up on popular culture, Ceecee? I’ve been out of the loop on Earth for a while now. What’s been happening here?”

Her feed popped up on her phone, another orange alert, telling her to start at the year 2000 and work her way up. Whoever was on the other end of that line was incredibly smart, narrowing down Erick’s areas of concern based on the rest of their conversation tonight, but they weren’t too honed in on what was happening right now. They wanted to be. They would be, eventually.

The servers came out with another plate of food.

Erick and Shadow ate.

And Ceecee happily began, “Oh, history is such a fun subject! How about we start with the end of the prosperous times of the 1980’s? My grandmother got her first job working as a secretary back then. She was my inspiration…”

The girl could talk, and it was rather entertaining to hear it all. The conversation mutated soon into a wonderful night of drinking and talking, with Erick and Shadow playing games with hinting at bigger things, and each of them pulling stuff out of their sleeve that should not be up their sleeves at all.

Shadow pulled out a rabbit at one point in time, then said, “Whoops!” holding it by the scruff of its neck. She put the rabbit back, laughing. The rabbit ended up popping out of the shadows in the garden out front, where it began munching on the flowers. Erick chuckled.

Ceecee stared at that display of… something. She was still on the fence about what was happening, but she was slightly drunk now and simply enjoying herself. Her feed on her phone was going absolutely wild. More than once, Ceecee stared at the millions watching her stream, and then she had another sip of sake.

- - - -

An investigator opened a door in a hallway and another hallway led to another street ahead. The guy brightened, saying, “Guys! I found the way out!”

A different investigator yelled at him, “It’s a lie! No you didn’t!”

A third investigator cried on the floor, mumbling about never getting out.

The first one yelled at the other two and forced them through the open doorway, down the hallway ahead and then to the open street beyond. The third investigator cried in absolute joy to see the sky again, the lights of the streets, and the cars, and all the buildings lit up in the dark. All at once, all of their phones chimed a good ten times, or more. Messages that they had missed piled up.

The first investigator read the latest one and saw the time on the clock. “Shit. We missed the entire event. We’re still going, but now we’re on detecting.”

The second investigator instantly said, “I’m not going.”

“What! You can’t disobey an—”

“I’m not going either!” The third investigator shouted, “I quit.”

“Oh come on...”

The first guy eventually talked the other two into keeping their jobs.

Erick felt bad about all of that, so he put some gold bars in their pockets.

That freaked them out more than anything the previous five hours had done, but when they were through panicking, they had some gold. There were tax forms and personal investigations in their future, but those would pass soon enough, and whatever had happened in Phoenix Feather just got more interesting to those watching the world.

It was fine.

- - - -

Erick walked with Shadow on the moon, under the stars, the city of towers glittering behind them, under a pale thickness of atmosphere. Out here there was nothing, though. Just staticky lunar dust, craters, and two people who would probably be called gods back on Earth if they were to show themselves, but neither of them wanted that.

Erick said, “Time travel isn’t going to actually erase this timeline. You were just saying that for effect.”

Shadow took a moment before she began saying, “In some ways, I was not exaggerating at all. You go to the past, and you do anything at all, and you change the present. Thus, this present no longer exists.” Shadow said, “Oh sure, it still exists, but everything has changed. It’s like you’ve just Established things, but more directly. The only things that truly remain are people like me, and you, and others of similar nature, who remember how it used to be. But you didn’t actually doubt my words. You were more scared of what it meant to do things like that.”

Erick smirked. “Seems crazy to worry about being scared of my own power right now.”

“Are you frightened of messing up, or how easy it would be to change the world through true power?”

“The second, more than the first, though I messed up with [Onward] once, though that was probably more Nothanganathor than me.” Erick said, “I’m rather certain that even if I get it wrong the first time, I can just try again… and that is what scares me. No one should have the power to arbitrarily decide things for others. Nothanganathor shouldn’t have been able to remove me from the fight like that… even though we were trying to End him…” Erick sighed. “And yet more and more I see myself needing more power so that I can make those decisions, so that people like Nothanganathor are not allowed to make those decisions. And yet, just as it was wrong of him to do that to me, and to everyone else, it’s unkind to be able to position myself to have that sort of power over people, and yet time and time again, I have been shown that if I don’t step up, then more unkindness will exist because I have not stepped up and taken that power away from those who shouldn’t have it.” Erick said, “The simple fact is that I shouldn’t have that kind of power, either. I know I make bad decisions sometimes, and I absolutely make the wrong decisions for certain people, some of the time, just by virtue of me not being them.”

Shadow grinned as Erick spoke, and when he was finished, she said, “The fact that you can say all that and mean it, means a lot, Erick. This problem of yours seems like a good internal battle for a ruler to wrestle with for all time.”

Erick stared out into the emptiness of space.

They walked in silence for a little while.

Erick broke the silence, “I was contemplating turning into a godzilla-like being and wading into Tokyo Bay and handing out gifts of magic and healing. Just sweep a several-kilometer-long wing over the entire city and heal every single person as well as solve whatever problems I saw, like trash or construction projects needing to be finished or broken roads that needed repair, or whatever. But now I see that impetus as a call to injure the entire world with destructive chaos. Looking back on that thought I cannot believe that I actually contemplated ruining the world in that way.” He added, “I mean— I wouldn’t even fit into Tokyo Bay without breaking something.”

Shadow giggled as Erick spoke of breaking the bay. “You could stand on the water.”

Erick tried to smile, and he sort of did.

Shadow took his arm around hers, saying, “Or you could accept that you have bad impulses sometimes, and then move past them. You could tell me what ‘godzilla’ is, and we can catch up on whatever goes for stories around here.”

Erick held onto Shadow’s arm, smiling a little, feeling bad that she was trying to make him feel better. She had been through a lot in the last few decades… or however long it had been. Time had gotten wonky, apparently. It would probably get more wonky, soon enough.

But for now…

“A movie marathon sounds wonderful— and… Thank you, Shadow. For being here.”

Shadow smiled softly and held Erick’s arm a little tighter. “It’s okay if you want to break down. It’s a fresh wound for you. I spent five years drinking myself to death and getting myself killed trying to personally murder Nothanganathor. Didn’t work much. Didn’t make father’s and mother’s…” She stopped talking. She put on a smile that was way too forced. “Thank you for reaching out.”

Something had happened to Fairy Moon and Gregarious, huh?

Probably a lot.

Nothanganathor had probably Erased a lot more than Poi. He had probably lied about how much he had done to secure his victory. He had lied before. He would lie again. Erick didn’t need to know the details. He knew… he knew enough.

Erick held it together for three more steps, then he fell to his knees and tears flowed. Shadow was right there with him the whole time.

- - - -

Erick sat on a pillow, atop a layer of stone in a garden on the moon, under the bright lights of the ‘baseball-field’ lights of the towers. Stars glittered in the void beyond. Shadow sat in front of him, on a similar pillow. Slimes tumbled across the lands outside of their slightly-raised platform, and water flowed in rivers, and waterfalls, and fell in small, localized rainstorms atop orchards and vegetable vines.

Shadow began, “First, we must confront the Self…”