Ar'Kendrithyst - Chapter 251, 2/2

Erick wore a loincloth, the Shield hovering at his back, and the Melemizargo-ish All-Seeing Eye around his neck, as he stood out under the Benevolent Sky, atop a bare hexagonal stone. Two meters away another hexagonal stone had been raised from the ground, to serve as the center of the ritual. Ophiel rested on that pillar right now, along with the core that Erick had made for his specific use which would form the core of his new self.

Several stones away in every direction from that center pillar stood other stone pillars, each of them topped with stone obelisks. Each of those obelisks were carved up and down with wishes for a happy life, good fortune, a joyful childhood, and a bunch of other good luck words and phrases, all of them carved with different Elemental imbuements. Mostly Air, Benevolence, and Healing imbuements, as Air was Ophiel’s base Element, Benevolence was where he was going and was what would have a heavy influence in his life, and Healing was simply a general option that one did for general well-wishes.

The obelisks were made of airstone, specifically, which was the stone that had the most resonance with Elemental Air. It wasn’t air steel, which would have made this ritual truly strong, but strength in this ritual was not something Erick wished to employ.

If a Mortal Umbilicus ritual was too strong, then it would cause deep damage to both the creator and the created when the umbilical was cut. A weaker ritual was necessary here in order to let magic fill in some gaps in the creation of the new person, allowing for much healthier growth afterward. A tattered soul was easier to heal from than a soul which had had something directly removed from it because souls were not like bodies; they were ephemeral things made of thoughts and perspective and dreams. A dream which was partially forgotten could be more easily remembered than a dream which had been completely removed from a person.

Erick said to Ophiel, “Bring in the rest of your bodies, Ophiel, wherever they might be.”

Ophiel chirped, “Okay, Dad!”

[Gate]s opened up in the air, like tiny portals into other parts of the world, which is exactly what they were. Ophiel tumbled out of the ocean in one spot, rapidly catching the deep water that followed him through and dispersing that water to the side of the ritual space. Other Ophiel tumbled out of the freezing skies high above the Surface, bringing that chilly sky with them. One Ophiel escaped a children’s park where he had been watching the kids play, wanting to go play himself. Ophiel came in from the throne room of House Benevolence, leaving behind Kiri and Sunny as they dealt with the goings-on of the day, while another Ophiel came in from a monster hunt, where he was saving people from some sort of hydra—

“Finish that one, Ophiel. We can wait.”

All of Ophiel that had tumbled out of the various [Gate]s launched rapidly and with hard edges to their feathers as they whipped back through the portal with the hydra and the adventurers. Erick suspected that was happening somewhere down in Nergal, maybe… A hundred kilometers south of Eidolon? Erick wasn’t sure what Ophiel was doing down there at all, but if he was helping people, then Erick didn’t mind Ophiel’s forays into the world.

He did that sometimes.

… Erick was going to end up with a teenager when today was over, wasn’t he. Not a precocious little 8-year-old boy, but a teenager, testing boundaries and… Well. Erick wouldn’t be able to truly enforce any boundaries anymore, but… This was fine. Erick smiled as he watched Ophiel clean up the hydra mess and heal up the adventurers, and then come right back through the portal into Benevolence.

Ophiel was a good kid.

All of Erick’s kids were good kids.

And now, all 10 of Ophiel crowded the pillar and Ophiel’s prospective core, like ten little angels… Which were already fighting with each other and pushing each other off the pillar. A few Ophiel ended up on the ground, which was… What it was.

Erick breathed deep—

And every Ophiel stood at attention, waiting for whatever might come.

Erick began, “I love you, Ophiel, and to ensure that you are born correctly, we will be severing you from my soul today. It will be profoundly painful for both of us, but in the end, you’ll be able to eat all the purpleberry pie you want, but you’ll also get a stomach ache if you do that. That’s one small thing you’ll get to learn soon enough. Bodies are not all fun, but they’re pretty great in many different ways. I wish for you to find satisfaction in your new life, for you might separate from me now, but you will always be a part of me, and I will always be here for you. I love you, Ophiel.”

Ophiel chirped in chorus, “I love you, Dad!”

Erick breathed deep, again, and did a very little Wizardry,

“In Benevolence, Ophiel arise,

“In lightning realm, claim mortal guise

“A Familiar soul now transformed

“A boy now born, magic adorned.”

Erick tensed as his insides did a tumble, his soul moving in odd ways as parts reorganized and then shifted again. The stone obelisks shimmered. Quilatalap stood outside of the circle, waiting for the proper moment, his scissors in one hand. Lightning crackled across Erick’s skin—

The Mortal Umbilicus ritual was an unclassed sort of magic of a type that read a lot like the process of a cell undergoing mitosis, in order to split into two new cells. During mitosis, there was a reorganization of DNA in the cell in order to bring that long chain of information into an orderly system, and then copies of the DNA split off into two new cells, made from the stuff of the old cell. This particular ritual did that same sort of thing, but with a pair of twin cores, and not at all like a cell dividing.

It was like a fast-forward pregnancy, but entirely soul-based, with biology coming along later.

A bolt of soft white lightning connected Erick’s core to the core surrounded by Ophiel and ten out of the ten Ophiel winced hard, trilling in sudden hateful flute sounds. Erick’s Benevolent lightning connected from Ophiel’s core, to all 10 Ophiel, like a branching path finding its purpose—

A grand fulmination of Benevolence reached down from the sky and up from the ground, to reach through Erick, striking at his entire body, entering every toe and finger and his eyes, completely ignoring the Lightning Shield on Erick’s back, because this was Erick doing this, and the Lightning Shield was streaming Lightning through Erick just as much as the rest of the realm.

The Lightning of the Shield tingled compared to Benevolence Itself.

Erick did not scream as power tore at his body, shredding his stomach, casting blood into the Lightning as power and soul streamed into Ophiel. But Ophiel did scream, as all of Erick’s gathered Lightning blasted Ophiel into the sky, killing nine Ophiel and lifting a single remaining Ophiel and his core heavenward.

Erick was pretty sure that Quilatalap shielded himself with a sudden flash of grey Death—

And then Quilatalap was in the middle of the ritual, flying in the sky, directly between Erick and Ophiel, his black, Death-forged scissors held forward, ritualistically cutting a soul that had been portioned and stretched between Erick and Ophiel.

Black Death cleaved life from life.

Lightning shattered.

Almost all of the power of the moment recoiled back into Erick, snapping back and wrapping around him, then flowing into him where it would eventually settle down if everything had gone right. A much smaller portion snapped into Ophiel like a bridge cable stressed too much. Ophiel’s portion did not settle at all.

Tiny drops of Erick’s blood mixed, taken from him by the lightning, splashed onto Ophiel’s core, fresh red mixing with the dried red blood that was already there, from when Erick took that secondary core out from his stomach.

Power wrapped around Ophiel and his core, cocooning him—

And suddenly the ritual slowed. The moment of power was done. Erick’s core and soul were in shambles, both of them rocked with cracks and ragged spaces, but Quilatalap rested his free hand on Erick’s shoulder and a quick [Greater Treat Wounds] began to help alleviate some of the pain. Erick worked on accreting his core to heal the rest, fractures and shards gathering under his power to heal his core under a deluge of fresh, directed mana.

Ophiel’s cocoon was still there, though it was about a meter closer to the ground now. It was falling slowly, like a soap bubble, drifting a little this way, then a little that way—

A cool breeze drifted across the land, catching Ophiel’s weightless, airy cocoon, and gently depositing it in front of Erick, where it hovered, not touching the ground. Erick was already mana sensing Ophiel inside so his worries were minimal. All he felt was a deep, exhausted joy.

Quilatalap handed him a small cube of soul balm palm tree sugar.

Erick popped it into his mouth and swallowed the candy. It wasn’t good to swallow soul-healing items that were meant to be sucked on, for the flavor of them made up about half of the healing of the little candy, but Erick had lots saved up; there was no need to be frugal—

Ophiel’s cocoon popped suddenly.

Erick was already there with a cradle of Benevolence and a summoned blanket, to keep his son from falling to the ground or getting cold, as he took him into his arms.

He mostly looked like a 14-ish year old Erick, except with black-feather wings and the skeleton to support those wings, so he overflowed Erick’s arms quite a lot. He had solid bones, so he’d need to use magic to fly, but wings made flying with Air Magic a lot easier in certain ways. Black hair, black eyes, kinda skinny, but he looked healthy in all the ways a kid should look healthy. His soul was strong, yet tattered; exactly like Erick’s. His core was nestled right next to his heart, and though it was big for his body and took up a lot of space right now, he would grow into it.

“And there’s only one of you,” Erick said softly, as he held his son, a few tears falling. “You gonna wake up now?”

Ophiel winced, frowning, briefly opening his eyes and then shutting them again, before curling up against Erick, saying, “I don’t like this. Too much feeling. Everything feels a lot more than it used to feel… But…” Ophiel pulled away from Erick’s chest. “My thoughts are clearer. Oh. This is weird.”

Erick smiled, asking, “You want that pie Quilatalap made for you?”

Ophiel looked up and over at Quilatalap. “… Yes.”

And then he realized he really wanted that purpleberry pie and he flung himself out of Erick’s arms and into the open, spreading his wings wide and then almost tumbling from the tossed weight and unbalanced air pressures. He righted himself soon enough, holding his hands and his arms outward for balance, and then he flexed a little this way and that, feeling himself out. As Ophiel stood tall on his own two feet a wing flicked out, causing him to almost topple again, but Erick was right there to catch him before he fell.

Grinning wildly, Ophiel patted Erick’s arms and then hugged him again, and Erick fell into that same hug, as Ophiel mumbled, “Oh yes. I see the appeal of a hug now. This is nice. Yes. I think I remember this now.” And then he pushed Erick away, saying, “But I want pie!”

Erick chuckled from the sudden emotional whiplash—

And Ophiel commanded, “I want that pie now, Quilatalap! You promised me a pie and I want it!”

Ophiel tried to take a step toward the much, much larger man, his wings flipping backward in an almost instinctive-looking threat display, and he didn’t falter at all. He stood firm, like he had been standing firm for years and not bare moments, almost saying something else about something else… But then he looked down at his hands, and then at the rest of himself. A hand roamed.

Erick laughed then wrapped the blanket around him, saying, “Don’t do that sort of thing in public, Ophiel.”

Ophiel threw off the blanket, proudly standing in the light, saying, “We’re not in public! We’re inside Benevolence! And biology is weird! I have never had biology before… I think … But. Yes. I want clothes! Pretty clothes! With all the sparkly bits that you always have! Yes. Clothes please— I CAN MAKE THEM MYSELF NOW! Let me try…” Ophiel looked to the side and clothes popped into the air. “Yes!”

It was a voluminous robe with bells and bobs and sparkly bits everywhere. Half of those sparkly bits fell off of the robe almost instantly and the robe itself was in tatters, breaking apart into bits of mana. Ophiel tsked, mumbling, “That is harder than I remember it being.”

Erick wiped away a tear from his eyes, smiling as he helpfully added, “Sparkly bits are difficult. Maybe try something smaller for now?”

Ophiel triumphantly nodded. “Maybe sparkly bits are not needed!”

And then he cast again, and this time he ended up with a tunic and brown pants.

Erick quietly inquired, “Want some help putting them on—”

“Nope! I can wear clothes! I have seen you put them on all the time!” Ophiel plucked his pants off of the ground and pulled them on, one leg at a time. They were backwards, though. Ophiel rapidly noticed this, and took them back off before putting them back on. “There! Pants!”

Erick had never been more proud of Ophiel than in that moment. “Pants are good. Do you want some help with your wings and your tunic?”

Ophiel’s black feathered wings shot out and up, and Ophiel jerked at the sudden counteracting motion of his wings pushing him forward a half a meter. He exclaimed, “What! Oh. Wings. Yes.”

Ophiel narrowed his eyes at his wings. In a rapid moment, Ophiel polymorphed his body, his wings vanishing into his back, and he rapidly put on his big tunic without the need for making wing-holes in the tunic or anything like that.

“Ah! Good job Ophiel.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

Erick asked, “You must have Perfected Body and Perfected Polymorph?”

“… I’m not sure?”

Quilatalap was already nodding a little bit in agreement with Erick.

“It doesn’t matter right now!” Ophiel waved off the concern… And then he looked at his hand, as he waved off the concern. Black eyes wide, he smiled, saying, “That’s what it feels like to be dismissive! Oh! That’s fun!”

Erick was about to say something—

But Ophiel rapidly said to Erick, “You and I have much to speak about, Dad, for I have been around for a very long time, watching everything, learning everything I could. And I have learned a lot. Primarily, and of great importance for what comes next, I have gained an immunity to the thing we’re not supposed to talk about. I imagine when Yggdrasil is instantiated he’ll gain the same immunity.”

Erick stared, his heart doing leaps in his chest as he almost told Ophiel to stop talking right now, but no Red Sparks crowded the moment. Even the Benevolent Sky seemed unchanged. Perhaps… Even clearer of Red Sparks than it had been before?

And that meant that they fell off the God Pact world—

Erick instinctively reached for his connection with Ophiel, to reach out into the world, but he felt a ragged hole in his soul instead. It was like punching a fist into an open wound. Erick mostly did not flinch as he rapidly reorganized his thoughts and his course of action.

He opened up a scattering of tiny [Gate]s to look out into the real world…

And everything was fine.

Erick breathed a sigh of relief. The world was there, and nothing was happening.

Ophiel watched him the whole time, saying nothing, waiting for him to be done. Quilatalap was suddenly concerned, too, but that concern passed when Erick’s own alert level dropped to nothing.

Erick could only guess why the Red Sparks hadn’t triggered—

“It’s because I’m not a vector for your infection anymore, Dad, and that makes you much, much harder for that other guy to see. You were already hard for him to see as Wizards often are, but now you’re practically lost in the aether of your own mana production,” Ophiel said, and then, as though the bomb he hadn’t dropped wasn’t already big enough, he dropped another, “And my memories are coming back even more. I’m rather sure I’m from the far future and you brought me back through some Establishment and Time Magics in order to…” Ophiel paused. “I’m not sure, actually. I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually! But that’s for later. We’re safe for now! Though Quilatalap probably can’t be told anything quite yet and he probably shouldn’t be allowed to leave Benevolence right now until we can make him immune, too. Now where is that pie! Is it at the house?

“I think I missed your cooking a lot, Quilatalap, which either means that you’re dead in the future, or we’re a family and this is like a homesickness-thing I am experiencing right now. At the very least, I have spent around 280 estimated years around you and Dad in [Hasted Shelter]s, so I still love you as a secondary father, even if you do not wish to be one— Oh! I need to see Solomon— Oh… He can’t come in yet. Maybe later… Anyway! I’m pretty sure that there was some backward-in-time propagation of my soul from the far future, [Return]-style, but I can’t quite remember everything… Eh! All that future-information will come to me eventually.

“Now where is that pie?!”

A moment passed.

“… Uh,” Erick said, rapidly coming to terms with the fact that his son was some sort of time-displaced person, and yet not quite that at all. But since the Sky was devoid of all Red Sparks, Erick rolled with it. They’d get to all that later. There were bigger problems to solve. Erick asked, “Where’s the pie, Quilatalap?”

Quilatalap looked from Erick to Ophiel, and then back to Erick, saying, “I believe the thing I love most about you is that I’m the ‘normal one’ in the relationship. It is a refreshing change.” And then he sternly looked at both of them, saying, “We’ll speak about this ‘immune’ thing later.”

Erick briefly panicked and then looked at the world through portals again.

They were safe… They were safe?

Erick closed the portals, asking Ophiel, “How?”

Ophiel shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s get that pie— Oh! I know where you hid the pie!” And then he opened up a [Gate] to Quilatalap’s library in House Benevolence. “There it is!”

It was a perfectly made purpleberry pie with a golden, flaky crust and syrupy-purple vents, the entire edge crinkled with the heavy imprint of orcol fingers, which made sense since the whole thing was sized for an orcol, meaning it was practically as large as all of Ophie’s entire new body. It sat on the kitchen counter of Quilatalap’s personal residence near the library, under a [Ward] of some sort.

Ophiel’s black wings shot out of his back and his eyebrows and a lot of the rest of him, shredding his shirt and his pants with what was either a high Strength, or the weakness of improperly-cast clothes, as he happily exclaimed, “PIE!”

He looked like how he used to look, but black, and with some pale human features under all those wings.

Ophiel reached through the [Gate] with a sudden ripping of magic, only to touch nothing at all. It was all an illusion. As the illusion dissolved it morphed into a sign that read, ‘No stealing, Ophiel.’

Ophiel was absolutely crushed.

He fell to the ground, a tumble of wings that turned back into a boy, bemoaning, “I have been betrayed.”

Quilatalap laughed loudly, saying, “The pie is past the first illusion.” To prove the point, he reached through the [Gate] with grey power, disrupting the illusion and bringing the real pie into [Benevolence]. “You’re going to wait until we can all sit down to have some together, though.”

Ophiel was right there for whatever Quilatalap wanted, saying, “Sir yes sir!”

Before Erick had the moment to think about Ophiel calling Quilatalap ‘sir’, Ophiel had already wrapped a hand around Erick’s arm, pulling him along with one hand as he grabbed Quilatalap’s other hand with his other hand, pulling them both along to the house several tens of meters away, saying, “In the house! Time for pie!”

Erick happily allowed himself to be dragged along, savoring the moment. And then he glanced up at Quilatalap and saw Quilatalap looking strangely, wonderfully happy. That made everything better by at least a factor of 10.

They got to the house, Quilatalap divided the pie, and Ophiel tried devouring his slice of pie like he usually did (but not before complaining about not getting the whole thing to himself), but when the first bit of warm purple filling touched his tongue, he froze. His eyes went wide and the waterworks started. Great big happy tears fell as Ophiel ate his pie slowly, like a normal person, and yet savoring it like it was the best thing he had ever had, ever. Erick was content to watch for a long while, feeling… Quite good.

Saving the world was great and he would continue doing that, but there were reasons to save the world, and Erick had gained one more very good reason—

Ophiel looked left and right at the same time, and suddenly he was two people; one still sitting in his chair, the other flopping on the ground, wings suddenly appearing in surprise and ripping up his shirt again.

Perhaps clinically, Erick observed that this second Ophiel was clothed, which meant [Duplicate] had happened instinctively.

It was something to watch out for later, perhaps.

The two of them looked at each other, one of them with a blue iridescent sheen to their black coloring, the other slightly purple iridescent, like they were two crows of slightly different genetic predispositions. And then they moved a little, with the one on the floor standing up and his coloring turned black-iridescent-blue, while the original sitting down turned black-iridescent-purple, reversing their coloring.

Well that was going to get confusing.

Their souls were exactly the same, too, even according to Erick’s All-Seeing Eye. Both Ophiel looked like rainbow-black feathered beings mostly contained to the core… Which was shared between both of them, now. Somehow they had both gained a core, and both of their souls were the same.

Did Erick have two new sons now? Or was there something weirder happen—

They echoed each other, “Oh. That’s how that works.”

… Oh. They were the same person. For a brief moment, Erick was both glad and sad, for it would have been a wonderful difficulty to raise two boys, or however many they would become.

Probably 10.

So far, the Mortal Umbilicus seemed to have worked perfectly.

Erick asked, “How many of there are you going to be?”

Both Ophiel looked at Erick, saying, “Ten?”

Not a definite answer, then. That same-time response was kinda worrying, though.

“… Are you two [Hive Mind] connected right now?”

“I don’t think so,” echoed both of them. “Probably just… Something. [Telepathy] basic? I don’t know—”

“But I know I want pie,” said the first Ophiel, while the second looked over at the pie, saying, “Pie now; knowing later.”

And then they looked at each other. It was a confrontation without words or anything except a sudden, knowing look. Ophiel #1 was closer to the remaining purpleberry pie, and Ophiel #2 was suddenly very concerned with that fact—

Erick rapidly [Duplicate]ed Ophiel’s slice of pie, saying, “There! No problem at all!”

Both Ophiel looked at him. Then they fought over the original slice of pie while Quilatalap was laughing and Erick told himself that this was fine. Ophiel threw punches at Ophiel, and pie went everywhere. Quilatalap protected the pie remaining in the tin, so the boys fought over their slice even more.

The boys healed fast, and Erick eventually stopped the fight, but then another Ophiel appeared when Erick told the first two to clean up their mess or they weren’t getting another slice. This third Ophiel looked greener in his black iridescence than purple or blue, but then all three of them gained that third color to their black plumage and eyes and hair.

The first two went running to get away from dad, whooping and hollering as they rushed outside of the house to play under the Benevolent Sky.

The third one stayed to clean up the mess they had made.

Erick kept an eye on all of them with his normal mana sense, but since his range was infinite inside Benevolence Itself that wasn’t too difficult. Erick practically always enjoyed this level of observation of his surroundings in the real world, thanks to Ophiel and his expansive mana sense, but in a melancholy sort of way, Erick realized that time was over. Now, he would only be able to experience this phenomenon inside of Benevolence.

Soon enough, even Yggdrasil would be separating, though Erick almost never looked at the world through Yggdrasil’s eyes anyway so that part wasn’t changing too much. It just didn’t feel right invading his privacy like that—

Oh.

The Ophiel by the central lake had lingered for a moment, debating how to go swimming, exactly, causing an orange-tinted Ophiel to leap into the waters, diving deep, splashing a lot. Orange spread throughout the collective and the swimming Ophiel purposefully ripped his clothes apart and transformed his butt to gain a dragon’s paddling tail. He swam fast under the waters, and then leapt up and out.

He called out, “Dad! Come swimming!”

And then a different Ophiel, currently investigating a grove of soul balm palm trees, called out, “No! I want to play with trees and berries! Come make some yellow berries, dad!” He mumbled, “There should be yellow berries, right? Have I seen yellow berries before? … do bananas count?”

Another Ophiel playing on the jungle gyms called out, “I want to play flying!”

The Ophiel on the shore of the lake said, “You all are too focused on fun. We should work some.”

A bright teal-black Ophiel stepped out of the one by the shore, yelling at the other one, “We can’t do anything until red gets here so let’s go swimming.” And then shoved the other one into the water, laughing loud as he followed, ripping off his clothes midair and doing a great big cannonball splash.

A cyan Ophiel swam away from the first swimming Ophiel with a paddle-tail of his own, all striped in cyan and black, saying, “I’m going exploring waters. Fall off into the world somewhere, yes yes.”

And that’s when Erick moved fast, calling out to the entirety of Benevolence, “No escaping this land for now, please!”

A choral response came from all of them, “Come play with us!”

Erick rapidly grabbed Quilatalap’s arm, saying, “We’re going to play. Pick an activity.”

Quilatalap laughed and allowed himself to be dragged away. He chose swimming, and soon, to Erick’s chagrin, as he lounged in the waters of Benevolence, Ophiel began trying to outdo each other to either see how high of an unassisted high dive they could do, or they tried to swim out to Yggdrasil and bother him quite a lot with cries of ‘Look at what I can do!’. They got hurt here and there, but then Erick healed them, or they just ran away saying it wasn’t a bad injury at all.

They liked bothering Yggdrasil a lot.

Yggdrasil splashed them away, his great big tree roots doing a wave, like the entire world moving underfoot, but all this did was cause Ophiel to say ‘Again! Again!’ and to renew their calls for him to join them for a small swim. Eventually Yggdrasil relented and an orcol dropped out of the sky, splashing the waters away much more than his three-meter-tall body should have allowed.

Erick considered the surfboard.

An hour later, Erick was happy to announce that surfing with his sons was a lot of fun, especially when Yggdrasil easily controlled the entire mini-ocean around his floating body. Erick was absolutely sure that Ophiel took a few too many dives and sputtered up too much water, but Yggdrasil just shrugged.

Yggdrasil stood tall on his own surfboard, surfing next to his father, while all 9 Ophiel continually caught the next wave, managed to make it a few tens of meters, before they all rapidly faltered into the water, becoming tangles of wings and colors. Yggdrasil smiled at that, saying, “He’s young. He’ll learn.”

To which every Ophiel tried to reply, “I’m older than you!”

A few Ophiel ended up sucking down water because they tried to say that while they were underwater.

Yggdrasil yelled back, “Should be using gills anyway!”

Erick raised his eyebrows at Yggdrasil, silently saying, ‘Really?’

Yggdrasil just smiled wider. “I’m being 100% completely honest here. I’m not hampering their progress.”

“Not helping, either!” said the Ophiel that were currently above the water.

Quilatalap laughed to the side where he lounged on a conjured beach chair on one of Yggdrasil’s roots, high above the water, soaking up the warmth. He had swum for a little while but stopped once it became apparent that this was less about relaxation and more about the boys having fun exerting themselves.

And then three Ophiel peeled off, saying this was stupid! They wanted to go exploring more. To which Yggdrasil teased them about not being able to surf at all, and all of them came back.

Erick considered skiing.

Not too long later, Erick was his draconic self, with all his Ophiel and even Yggdrasil yelling out ‘Dragon Dad!’ as he towed them behind on skis like he was some sort of jet boat, swimming fast around Yggdrasil’s waters. Ophiel seemed better at skiing than he had been at surfing.

He even managed to figure out some coordinated skiing.

When they went back to surfing Erick tried surfing as a dragon and made a grand fool of himself and also some mighty big splashes. The square-cube law or something like that was fucking up his ability to surf. Probably just needed a bigger board, but they were already making big splashes on the surface, and Yggdrasil’s fish were already huddled deep beneath his roots.

No need to go scaring the fish too much.

Eventually, Quilatalap got out a grill and started cooking burgers. Not long later he called them all in for dinner. Every Ophiel ate themselves half-sick, loving the taste of food and doctoring up their burgers with every different condiment they could possibly get their hands on, from normal things like mayo and ketchup, to odder things like purpleberry jam and sliced banana. Erick, in his larger, mostly-human but orcol-sized Apparent King self, smiled a lot, watching them enjoy their food. It was a fantastic meal, from a fantastic cook, and everything was fantastic. It was one of the best days Erick had ever had before…

The only thing it was missing was Jane, Solomon, Abigail, Beth, Candice, and Evan. So the day was missing a lot. But that was fine.

This was still great. Just some swimming with the boys.

Everything fractured after dinner, though, but in that way all good days ended. Some Ophiel wanted to sleep, and so they fell asleep on the ground or in Yggdrasil’s boughs or elsewhere, wherever they felt like sleeping. Only one made it back to the house. Others tried to stay awake for longer, but they failed and got grouchy in that failure. Others actually weren’t that tired at all, and they wanted to go exploring again.

Erick learned, in that moment, that when all the Ophiel were working together they could coordinate as a [Hive Mind] group, but once the object of their cooperation faded, they became as fractious as too many cooks in a kitchen. Four of them went to bed in the same bed, but then they fought and they refused to be in the same bed with each other, so Erick expanded the house as he had expected and planned for. Five of them recovered and went exploring through Benevolence, creeping out into the world through stone pathways through the glowing fog, or swimming down rivers connecting one gate space with another.

It was organized chaos, but Erick had made Ophiel promise not to leave Benevolence, and he had agreed, so there really was no stopping him from just having fun out there, and Erick didn’t want to stop him, either.

Yggdrasil had wanted to talk, anyway.

In the living room of the enlarged house, Yggdrasil was wearing fine House Benevolence clothes as he pulled Erick aside, looking professional and also worried, as he said, “When you get back to the real world I’d like you to meet someone— Not right now! Not until Ophiel is settled.”

Erick had been about to agree to visit Yggdrasil’s girlfriend right away, but Yggdrasil had cut that plan off at the legs. So Erick relegated himself to saying, “Okay, Yggdrasil. I’ll see her later. Maybe in a week or two?”

Yggdrasil was all nervous as he giggled a little bit, broke out in a small sweat, and nodded, saying, “Yeah! Sounds great—” In the distance, beyond the window of the house, Yggdrasil’s real body flickered a bit brighter, all of his moss-covered white bark shining bright for a moment, and then fading back to normal, his entire flaming green canopy also doing some odd discolorations. “See you later!”

And then he dispersed his avatar into so much broken mana.

Erick had helped him make that version of himself. He hoped that when he got his real [Avatar] spell, that he could make one as well as Erick had made. Yggdrasil probably could. He had probably been working on his own version for years, now; just waiting for the moment when it would truly be his spell to make and keep. Yggdrasil could barely wait for that day.

After seeing Ophiel’s protean self, Erick was now excited to see who Yggdrasil would become, instead of dreading every way in which things could go wrong.

Erick smiled.

Yggdrasil would be fine.

Ophiel was fine.

Erick crashed down on the couch in the living room, across from Quilatalap who was reading a book by the window. He smiled, saying, “Today was a good day. Thanks for being here, Quilatalap. Dinner was great, too.”

Quilatalap smiled softly. “Want to talk about that thing you’re not supposed to talk about? And your immunity? Perhaps about summoning him from the future?”

“… I suppose we have to get back to it sometime, right? But… How about tomorrow?”

Quilatalap nodded as he closed his book, asking, “Want to go to bed?”

Erick smiled and got off the couch, saying, “Yes.”

“Good. Keep the horns on, too.”

Erick chuckled. Soon enough they were in their main bedroom and Erick was snuggled up to Quilatalap, matching the orcol for size, but only because letting the dragon out a little did that. Erick was asleep within a minute.

– – – –

Erick woke to the smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen.

Quilatalap was out there, making breakfast, but there was only one Ophiel at the kitchen table. He looked the same as the others out there, but different. He had a little bit more of a red sheen to his iridescent-black hair than all the rest.

So that was number 10; the red one.

Erick would get to Ophiel-in-the kitchen soon enough. He checked on all the others out there inside Benevolence. One Ophiel hung out on Yggdrasil’s boughs talking to Yggdrasil’s orcol form about girlfriends and other topics. Two were in Kiri’s gate spaces far away from Erick’s, talking to Sunny who was really Kiri, and then rapidly talking to Kiri when Kiri showed up, wondering ‘Who the fuck are you— Oh! Ophiel!’. Erick smiled at that. Kiri would show up whenever she wanted in Benevolence… And speaking of which, there’s Teressa and Aisha talking with Ophiel on the edge of the platform, near the Benevolent Sky in the north. Poi stood a little bit away, but he was still part of the conversation. Looked like Poi was restraining his mental touch from Ophiel, too, which was good news about the Red Leviathan problem, but Erick didn’t see any Red Sparks anywhere anyways… Except for around the [Gate] that led to House Benevolence.

The Red tried to get in, but Red reality touched White reality almost like an uninvited person passing through a [Fairy House], or a disembodied soul trying to interact with the real world. The Red wasn’t successfully invading Benevolence at all, and those that almost looked to get inside were instead wrapped in white and allowed to go back into the real world.

Which was really quite nice to see. When did that start happening?

Erick got out of bed and put on some clothes while he checked on all of the rest of Benevolence, looking for all the other bodies of Ophiel. He was 95% sure that Ophiel was one person in multiple bodies, but that 5% was still uncertain, because Ophiel didn’t like being around himself unless he was focused on a singular problem. All the other Ophiels were far away; as far as they could get in Benevolence and still be inside this land. One was hanging out at the gate space of Nelboor, where Erick had planted Yggdrasil on the reality-side of things. Another Ophiel was deep down inside Veird, far to the south, at the gate space where Erick had planted Yggdrasil about 1500 kilometers below the south pole.

Ophiel was at the gate space in Benevolence where Yggdrasil sat in the real world at New Towry, at the far end of the Freelands, right before Archipelago Nergal.

Erick hummed as he checked the rest of Benevolence.

Mostly, there was nothing to see at all. Benevolence held a lot of small wildlife, most of it introduced here by Yggdrasil to take care of the flowers and the fruits and to form something of a peaceful ecosystem. There were bees, fishes, squirrels, birds, and not very many bugs at all. There were small spiders that mostly ate sap but that tried to eat every bug they could find when those bugs existed, which was pretty great. There were no people besides Kiri, Teressa, Aisha, and Poi, three of which were only here because Ophiel opened the way for them, and only because Kiri hadn’t gotten to that task first—

Erick watched as Ophiel opened a [Gate] somewhere far west of the gatespace at the Ar’Civ delta, at Quintlan, somewhere deep inside Death Throne and the undead Fractured Citadels. People rushed into that hole in the world, tumbling out of Elemental Death-filled streets, to fall, bleeding and heavily broken and practically dying, onto soft green grasses. Ophiel shut the [Gate] closed behind them, then stood over the dying adventurers and healed them a little, but not fully for some reason, happily announcing to them that they could stay as long as they wanted. If they wanted to leave all they had to do was jump off the edge of any surface and fall into the white of Benevolence.

Erick was fine with that action, actually, because those guys looked like they needed the help—

One of the freshly healed persons whipped a spell of Destruction and Fire at Ophiel and Ophiel exploded into body parts, scattering across the land.

Erick almost raged, but he calmed himself.

The adventurers were alone and panicking and Erick understood that but—

Erick calmed himself, because the Ophiel in the kitchen, with Quilatalap, suddenly split in two.

“Awww! Why’d they kill me?” The remade Ophiel complained, and then both of them asked Quilatalap at the same time, “Why’d they kill me!”

Quilatalap flipped a pancake, asking, “Who killed you?”

“Some adventurers he rescued from certain death in Death Throne,” Erick said, keeping his head cool as he walked into the conversation. He said to both Ophiel, “Please use your [Animadversion] when dealing with unknown people who freshly escaped death, and who were never sure of your intentions. You need to be more careful to take care of yourself… Though I am very glad to see you helping people, Ophiel. I am more glad that it appears you have suffered no lasting harm.” His soul looked the same as yesterday; ragged, like Erick’s. But he was healing. Erick was healing, too. Being inside Benevolence helped with that a lot. “Be sure to eat your soul balm palm, though. Okay?”

The remade Ophiel ran off, saying, “Okay, Dad!”

He had not summoned an [Animadversion] shield.

… Whatever.

The Ophiel eating breakfast stuffed a syrupy bite of pancake in his mouth, and spoke around his food, “hood ave use a hield; yef.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Ophiel.”

Erick watched as every single Ophiel across the entirety of Benevolence, all 10 of them, rolled their eyes.

This made Kiri, Poi, Teressa, and Aisha, all a little weirded out, and in Aisha’s case, offended, because she had been asking about some smaller tangle in the new Benevolent Sky and Ophiel had told her about how it wasn’t a big deal and how ‘dad was taking care of it’, and he had rolled his eyes right as he said that.

Erick narrowed his eyes at Ophiel, and said, “I saw that miscommunication between you and Aisha. You’re going to be working together if you want to work at House Benevolence, so you shouldn’t let her get to thinking that you maligned her worries. Apologize to her and make yourself properly understood.”

“Bah! Dad… Do I have to apologize to her?”

“Either directly, or you can explain how you’re focused more on me and not so much on her, but that would show a weakness in your ability to multitask, which might be a fine misunderstanding to propagate for it’s always nicer for people to underestimate you, but actual misunderstandings between people should be kept to a minimum.” Erick said, “And Aisha is good people. She would see past your faux pas, and she already has, but you’re currently trying to interact with her as some sort of authority on the Benevolent Sky, so you’re harming your credibility.”

“… Oh. I did harm my credibility with her. Oh.” Ophiel stared off into the distance.

Erick watched as nearly 40 kilometers away, and in all the rest of Benevolence, every Ophiel focused more on his interaction with Aisha and Teressa, and to a lesser extent Kiri, off on another platform far from this main one.

The adventurers from Death Throne had already figured out where they were in the meantime. They were now thoroughly panicking at fucking up an interaction with the Apparent King. Served them right.

With a quick whip of power, Erick opened up a [Gate] in front of himself, into the real world, directly west of Spur. The desert extended in every direction except for the one clearly visible city right ahead, under the evening sun. With another cast of power, Erick opened up a [Gate] into Benevolence beyond that [Gate] leading to Spur, and whipped that [Gate] across the adventurers, dumping them out halfway across the world, directly onto the sands where the Farms of Spur used to be.

Two men and two women fell onto sands that were only a little black.

Erick allowed them a moment to see Erick, panic again, and then he shut all those [Gate]s.

Quilatalap slid a plate for Erick onto the table, smiling a little as he did so, before he went back to get his own plate, saying, “Ophiel is an enthusiastic young man with a whole lot of power and not the knowledge to use it, but he’s learning.”

“I am re-learning, Quilatalap,” Ophiel said. “So you wanna talk about the stuff we shouldn’t talk about now? And about how all of your ‘now’ is kinda my past? … I think.”

Erick sat down at the table. “Yes.”

Quilatalap was already seated and almost ready to start on his own breakfast, but he paused. He put down his fork.

“Okay!” Announced Ophiel. “First thing to know is that Benevolence is now immune to Primal Lightning; that happened with my birth. Don’t let some simple immunity to a longstanding anti-memetic threat go to your head though, Dad, because Elemental Malevolence did not get created on accident; it was fully on purpose by a dragon named Nothanganathor, The Erased One, and he is still very much alive and hateful and still attacking Veird.

“Every day, Nothanganathor gorges on the death of Veird, over and over and over again. The God Pact escapes for… Reasons. I don’t know.

“Speak his name outside of this space and you will draw his attention, so don’t do that, but you will be speaking his name eventually, so prepare for that. Benevolence was not created just to sit around and do nothing, after all. It was created to prevent all Sunderings, the Actual Sundering most of all, and, if the simple information Benevolence gathered and entrusted to others did not do enough to combat the big problems, then you enabled Benevolence to support itself to prevent those Sunderings; to devote more power to the cause. I’ll give you three guesses as to where that allowed power went and the first two don’t count!

“That power went to me, in case you have somehow lost the Sight to See, which you have not…

“… And I SUPPOSE that the power also went to Yggdrasil but he’s a doo-doo head for various reasons and not really real yet, so that’s that on that!

“Anyway! Benevolence is finally waking up, becoming able to protect against the original Sundering Source; the Dragon Who Could Not Ascend.” Ophiel said, “Also! You should hand off the Lightning Shield to Quilatalap to protect him and allow this conversation to not kill him later. You’re fully immune now, Dad, but if you share information with others, they are not immune, so don’t do that.

“You only got ONE PERSON you can make immune because there is only one Shield, and I didn’t want you to give it to anyone but Quilatalap, because you would have given it to Jane and that would have started a rift in that girl-plus-one-boy band, and we can’t have that. Plus there’s the fact that Quilatalap is not, and will never be immune, and if you don’t protect him, he will die, and that would have been simply awful, too. The most Quilatalap can do is protect himself and run but you can actually fight… somehow. Not sure… how…” Ophiel’s voice trailed off. He shrugged. “I think I had more of a speech than that but I kinda lost it there at the end. I’m sure it’ll come to me when it becomes relevant again, but whatever!”

Moments passed in silence.

Quilatalap stared hard and worried. Erick tried to be soft in his own stare, as he waited for more.

Nothing more came.

Ophiel went back to eating his food.

“… So that was a lot, Ophiel,” Erick eventually said.

“Mmm hmm!” Ophiel said, around another bite of pancake.

Quilatalap hummed like he wasn’t panicking, but he absolutely was panicking. Quilatalap did quiet panic rather well. Few things got to him, and he almost never raised his voice. Meeting Melemizargo in the flesh, the thought of his Pantheon-granted amnesty being taken away, and the battles with the Wizards of Anarchy and Blue, were among the only times Erick had ever seen him this worried. Perhaps this time took the cake, though, for Quilatalap Looked to Erick.

And then Quilatalap glared at the Shield on Erick’s arm.

“May I have that Shield, please? Since you no longer need it?” Quilatalap asked, in a rather serious sort of way that Erick didn’t want to dissect at the moment, or perhaps ever.

Erick handed over the Shield, trying his best to completely ignore how utterly serious Quilatalap was in that moment. The Shield left his arm like a spider crawling away in sparking fits that kinda hurt here. The floating thing soon disengaged and then floated onto Quilatalap’s arm, where it tested its new connection with a few white sparks—

Quilatalap breathed deep in temporary pain as Lightning lodged into his flesh and into his soul. And that was it. The Shield was his now. Quiatalap mentally moved the Shield to hover at his back.

And then Erick and Quilatalap both watched as a few faint Red Sparks zapped away under the Lightning’s touch—

“He’s been infected for a very, very long time,” Ophiel said, also watching the cleansing. He said to Quilatalap, “You’re gonna want to recast your phylacteries, Quilatalap. They’re infected, too. You’re not alone in your infection, though. All the orcols are not infected, but they are affected because of the ease at which Elemental Malevolence can trigger the Rage; Elemental Carnage. The two Elements are not the same, but Malevolence has been using Carnage for a long time to get what it wants. I think either the Red Leviathan hates elves a lot, or he was an elf, or… Okay. I lost the memory again… Oh! There was something about Carnage dragons being… I’m not sure.” Ophiel furrowed his brow, thinking.

“… So it’s called Elemental Malevolence, then,” Erick said, not sure how he felt about that.

“Yup! It was named first but you’re discovering it backwards. If that makes sense.” Ophiel waved his fork around, wishy-washy, saying, “I just got small information. Yggdrasil has big information.”

Erick squinted. “How is this happening?”

“I dun know,” Ophiel mumbled, looking ashamed.

Erick suddenly realized he was being way too hard on Ophiel. Erick softened. “The bad guy isn’t here and he won’t ever be here, and we’re safe for now, and I love you Ophiel. Thank you for coming into my life. I love you.”

Ophiel’s shoulders relaxed as if he had been holding up a huge weight and he had finally been allowed to let it go. Waterworks came next, and Ophiel rushed out of his chair and into Erick’s arms. Erick held him tight, and Ophiel spoke of how he knew he should have remembered more, but he just couldn’t.

Erick patted him, holding him strongly, saying, “It’s okay, Ophiel. You’ve done great. Now the grown-ups get to deal with this and you can stay here in Benevolence, safe and helpful to others outside of this space. I know Yggdrasil sometimes rescues people like you did today, and he does that well. I’m glad you’re doing the same.”

Ophiel bawled his eyes out for a while but he soon cried himself out, as all children do, and Erick set him into his bed, covered him up, and kissed his forehead.

Erick went back into the kitchen and looked to Quilatalap. “Most of that was new to me, but I’ve been wanting to tell you about what I did know for the past week. I fell off of this God Pact world twice, Quilatalap. Both times I met Primal Lightning. It’s right there, on the other side of this world, beyond the veil of possibility, constantly trying to eat us all. It’s what killed Debby, my daughter of the repros from Jane that you don’t remember; the Red took her from us completely, but Melemizargo was able to leave us with our memories and her soulless body. I’ve seen the Red kill Stratagold all the way down to their Vaults. I’ve seen it strip the oceans and the mountains away, killing Veird to get to me, as Sininindi stood on a spit of land holding it back and failing completely because all the world was dead already.”

Erick wanted to keep going, to really talk about it.

But he couldn’t. He was frightened of the Red Sparks turning back the clock again, or trying to kill him again.

But No Red Sparks invaded the world. No rollback occurred.

Quilatalap shuddered at the mention of that great evil, and at all the subsequent evils Erick divulged. Erick watched as the man went through a flashback and came out the other side of the moment looking haggard. Erick felt a deeper connection to Quilatalap in that moment than ever before.

With tired eyes, Quilatalap said, “That does sound like Primal Lightning.” The Lightning Shield flickered at Quilatalap’s back and The Archlich centered himself, before saying, “Talk to me, Erick.”

And Erick did.

– – – –

The first half hour was a shower of information, told quickly and covering broad topics, and then Erick went back to the beginning, at Quilatalap’s request, to start from the very first moment that Erick suspected there was an ‘anti-meme’. This led to talk of when they were just throwing out questions and spitballing answers, back at the slime dungeon. ‘Why does no one know what caused the Sundering?’, went straight into ‘well, if no one knows, then there must be a reason for that’, which led to the Mind Mage artifacts of mental protection and security, and how Debby put on one and only looked back a few times. Recognizing that the anti-meme was real only really came when Debby came to Erick in his office in the House to tell him that she was dropping out of the Sundering Search in order to find out something that she couldn’t talk about.

This led to Erick needing to explain Debby.

Quilatalap withheld his shock at there being a daughter of Erick’s that he did not know about.

“Do you want to talk about repro society a little, Erick?” Quilatalap said, “Because I kinda want to, now. Just as an aside before we get back to the big topic.” When Erick nodded, easily showing how he wanted to deal with less serious stuff for a moment, Quilatalap continued, “Good. I’m very glad you are making your family bigger with the repros. I’ve tried to do that with mine. I love seeing that for you, not only as a power base increase but as a social network of people who will truly understand you in a way that subordinates never can. Quil at the House Benevolence dungeon has become my brother, but that was more of an active decision of ours that took a while. I’m glad to see that you have naturally and also actively decided to name Solomon as a brother. Vanya and Soltic are probably more like friends to me, but I could see them being family eventually. Most of the repros I have made have become simple friends; people I can trust more than all others.” He added, “So I want your help to save them from this anti-meme. I want us to work on providing immunity to others. I want to end the threat of Primal Lightning forever, and rip apart the soul of the Red Leviathan that took everything from all of us.

“Every single person on Veird would want the same, if they could be allowed to know.”

He was being serious again, or maybe he never stopped. This time it was more hopeful and comforting than scary.

Erick smiled a little. “Of course I want to extend this immunity to others. It’s not a simple thing to do, though. Apparently we’re able to discuss this stuff here in Benevolence Itself, but that was not always the case. I should tell you about Oozy again, and about how that Lightning Shield actually came out of the Dark, and what happened afterward…”

When Erick was finished with his story, Quilatalap told him a completely different one.

“I remember you talking about how someone was turning back time back at the Breaking, and then you got the Shield and we left. You dropped me off at the slime dungeon, though, while you went on to do the ceremony with Sininindi. I wasn’t there for any of the things you saw. I never met with Tiza and I certainly never [Disintegrate]d her, though I cannot say that I never thought about doing exactly that now and then.”

Erick telepathically sent Quilatalap a packet, showing him annihilating Tiza.

Quilatalap breathed deeply as the imagery hit him and then he chuckled. “Ohh. That’s how I would do it, too. Kill and then bring her back, with her clothes disheveled. Sometimes I put their underwear on backwards, too.”

Erick laughed, even though it was bad to laugh over wielding that kind of power over people. Sometimes Erick just wanted to let loose, too.

Quilatalap smiled a little, then added, “Sorry to see that it started the Prophesied Storm.”

“Good news on that front! That Storm isn’t on the horizon anymore.”

Quilatalap smiled. “I saw that, too.” He glanced up, then looked back to Erick, saying, “We’ve probably got half an hour before they finish investigating the new Sky. Want to go meet them?”

“Not yet. They can come here.” Erick washed the air with Benevolence, erasing the conversation for the last hour, and then he continued to flow mana through the air, continually erasing their manasphere imprint, as Erick said, “I’d like to talk about cores, infinity, mana crystals that paradoxically exist along multiple grains, and whatever this New Cosmology mana-force-particle is or might be. The ‘reson’.”

Ophiel woke up in bed, calling out, “Don’t talk about that yet!”

“… Or not?” Erick said, furrowing his brow.

A few moments later a very sleepy Ophiel came out of his bedroom and went, wings wide and iridescent black, and arms open. “Hi, Daddy.”

Erick smiled and hugged his son, saying, “Hi, son. You didn’t sleep very long. Did you sleep well?”

Ophiel wrapped Erick in his wings, too. “Sleep is nice. I wasn’t tired though. Just mana exhausted.”

“Youwere? How so?”

“You used my future mana to pay for all my spellwork for the past many, many years.” Ophiel hugged him tighter, saying, “The Script gives some mana but it’s slow and my soul hurts. Stats are high but level is low. I have 10 Statuses, too, but I share my mana somehow, and Rozeta gave me a note about that oddity. Says she will have to have a talk with you later about that.”

Erick sighed a little. That explained… A lot. Erick hadn’t seen Ophiel using any casual magic at all, except in the barest of ways. Some ratty clothes creation here. Some species-Familiar-Form Perfected Polymorph there. Short flights. Swimming instead of flying around. Running and flapping wings and achieving temporary lift through pure force of Strength-adjusted wing power. This explained why he was falling down all the time when they were surfing yesterday. His soul was still tattered, too, and Erick saw now that all of those rough edges were not just from being violently born less than a day ago. If Rozeta had already given him a note about all that, then Ophiel’s soul was surely damaged more than it truly appeared.

It would heal, but it would take time. Being inside Benevolence would help, but the only real cure for a mana debt was to pay off that debt.

Erick apologized. “I’m sorry, Ophiel. You’re suffering from soul strain. I figured I was using your future mana for the last long time, but I didn’t truly know… And I couldn’t stop.”

“I know, Daddy. It’s fine. But I can’t help you like I used to, and that’s icky. Yggdrasil won’t suffer from this, but… I think I will. And for a loooooooooong time.” Ophiel looked up while still hugging tight, smiling as he said, “But [Gate] is cheap and I’ma gatemaster!”

Erick chuckled a little. “That’s great, Ophiel.”

“Only got 20 in Intelligence, though,” Ophiel mumbled against Erick’s side. “Most everything still costs too much.”

Ah. He had all of the New Stats, too. Erick hadn’t been sure about that, but yeah. That made sense.

Erick said, “Don’t go increasing Intelligence too much too fast. Paranoia is hard to come back from. And lean on your brother for help, both here in Benevolence and in the real world. I’m sure Yggdrasil will cast whatever you want.”

Ophiel pouted. “But he’ll be a butthead about it.”

Erick smiled. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you, Dad.”

Quilatalap smiled softly, looking at the two of them, and then he stood up, saying, “I’m going to check on the prognosticators. Come along when you want? Later?”

Erick nodded as he continued to hold Ophiel.