Ar'Kendrithyst - Chapter 271, 1/2
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From the desk of Knowledge Mage #Charme-B-789
Topics: Angels, Demons, WoB, Avandrasolaro, Thoughts on the War, Time Shelter, Greensoil.
Dated: 15d/4m/1453y Year of Stillness, middle of the 4th month of the Unending Year (tentative name).
The Angels left on the seventeenth day of the second month of the Year of Stillness. Many humans went with them. Everyone who wanted to leave was encouraged to leave, and told that if they left, they could not come back, and also that Margleknot was not a wholly pleasant place. People escaped anyway, through mass relocation magics set up by Yggdrasil. The Sovereign Cities were desolated by the Flight of the Angels, but we remain strong. I have heard that Greensoil fared far worse, and that demons are partying in the capital of Greendale.
Odaali is the new capital for all who remained, and the WoB is helping to fix them up to be the new center of their fractured empire, and also ensuring that the desecration remains minimal. For all his power, though, there are still desecrations.
The Demons are still celebrating as I write this, and they will continue to celebrate for the foreseeable future. They have invited every single human land to join them for feasts and every other thing that they got up to. It was an attempt at reconciliation of some sort.
There had been an official peace treaty and ending of animosities, but this Knowledge Mage does not believe it could last forever. The Angels went to Margleknot to fight for Good, and the Old Demons there are all Evil. When we reconnect, there will be difficulty, I am sure.
The Time Shelter held strong the whole time.
When the Time Shelter goes down, the collective belief is that the War will begin in earnest.
Due to the way time works between here and Margleknot* there was absolutely no way the Angels could be back for the War, and this Knowledge Mage hopes that they never come back at all, and also that we win the war. According to this Knowledge Mage’s inquiries, Veird is filled with more power on an individual level than that which exists on Margleknot, and Veird is only getting stronger.
Avandrasolaro officially took up the Crown of Angelic Divinity on the Seventh Sphere on the last day of the third month of the Year of Stillness. He took his crown in a holy white city that was built brand new for him by the Wizard of Benevolence. The city was mostly empty, for only 750,000 angels remained, out of the original 2,109,000,000 that went to Margleknot.
This Knowledge Mage can only speculate on what is to come, and all my speculations are poorly received, for I am rather pessimistic.
*Time is relatively frozen on Margleknot, compared to how we move here on Veird.
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From the desk of Knowledge Mage #Charme-B-789
Dated: 29d/4m/1453y Year of Stillness, end of the 4th month of the Unending Year (tentative name).
Topics: WoB, Thoughts on the War, Sundering, To Sunder, Impossible Dreams
Due to recent events, this Knowledge Mage desires to put down for posterity what is happening now.
What is ‘sundering’?
Some would say it is taking something and breaking that thing down further than particles, and souls, and thought, and action. ‘To sunder a soul’, or a person, results in a massive release of energy, after all. You can only really sunder disembodied souls, too, so that could tell you a lot about a lot.
Doesn’t tell me much.
In fact, no one really knows what ‘sundering’ really is but it’s remarkably easy to do, and the effects of a sundering are easily seen during a sundering.
The Songli Highlands use a particularly easy-to-make sundering tool that is used to execute the highest of criminals. Their method is perhaps the most well documented way to sunder. You take a crystal, about the size of a fist, and you take a grand rad, also about the size of a fist, and you put them together. Literally just together. The grand rad is usually carved to have a flat spot on it, and so is the crystal, while the crystal has a purposeful point on it.
You put the flat spots together then you aim the crystal point at the disembodied soul to be sundered.
Grand rads naturally draw in ambient mana to keep themselves stable. The crystal focuses this action in a direction. The sucking-inward draws the soul into a ‘sundering area’ that exists in the joining of grand rad and crystal and in the cutting facets of the crystal, and when the soul falls into the sunderer, the soul is ripped apart, sundered, and thick air fills the area, as the soul is turned into mana. Some of that mana goes into the grand rad, but not much at all, according to what I have managed to discover.
There is no recovery from this action.
The soul is gone forever. [Reincarnation] can’t bring it back, because it is ‘sundered’. Even if you don’t sunder the full soul, and you target the remains of the victim of the sundering with a [Reincarnation], the person who comes out of the [Reincarnation] isn’t the original person, because the sundering also destroyed all the memories of the person it sundered.
This is known.
And now we come to the missives handed out by House Benevolence these past two days. I will include the text in its entirety; it is not overlong.
~
What do you know about Sundering? Report your collected findings to House Benevolence, and you might be rewarded by the Wizard of Benevolence himself. Normal information will be paid for in a normal manner.
~
And that’s it.
We all know of the generosity of the Wizard of Benevolence, and that when he sets his mind to something, that something is soon solved.
And yet, this Knowledge Mage has a hard time believing that the WoB could ever ‘solve’ sundering.
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From the desk of Knowledge Mage #Charme-B-789
Dated: 5d/5m/1453y Year of Stillness, beginning of the 5th month of the Unending Year.
Topics: Thoughts on the War, Time Shelter, Nothanganathor, Gods and Wizards, Terrorism in the Theater, Missus Bertha Berter
In previous missives, I have listed concerns over the nature of the Time Shelter as an imperfect solution to the problem of Nothanganathor and the War.
Allow me to elaborate those thoughts in full, due to a terrorist incident that occurred earlier today in the Theater District of Charme.
The incident began as a rather standard play of the news, done in a comedic fashion by Missus Bertha Berter, as she often does. She spoke of Demonic meetings happening between our rulers of Charme and some visiting demons of the 5th Sphere, speaking derisively of them, earning herself a great many laughs. The problem was that those demons were in the crowd.
This Knowledge Mage does not know exactly what happened, but I will endeavor to find out the full story as soon as I can, and amend that to this report. (Note: Full report on the incident done. See file ‘Terrorism in the Theater’.)
The results of that incident were three near-deaths, all the demons murdered and sent back to New Hell, and the beginning of a larger topic that swept the Sovereign City up in its intrigue.
1) The War is going to happen whenever the Shelter comes down.
+
2) Nothanganathor doesn’t seem able/willing to end the Shelter himself.
=
3) The only way the Shelter is coming down is if our Gods and Wizards take it down.
The Gods and Wizards wish to prepare enough to open the world and then fight.
Almost everyone else wishes the world to remain Sheltered, since that seems to be working right now.
This has, as you can imagine, caused some tension.
The full nature of this tension spans the entire world, and this Knowledge Mage can only guess at the full ramifications of it all.
I will make some educated guesses in the following addendums.
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Addendum 1 of 73
On the nature of Peace…
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From the desk of Knowledge Mage #Charme-B-789
Dated: 6d/8m/1453y Year of Stillness, beginning of the 8th month of the Unending Year.
Topics: [REDACTED UNTIL THE END OF THE WAR], Thoughts on the War, Time Shelter, Nothanganathor, Gods and Wizards, WoB, Solomon, [Silver Heart], Geodes, Stratagold, Sundering, ERASURE
Wizard Solomon of the Black Gate has requested more information on Sundering from several prominent Knowledge Mages, and one of them let slip that there is a large project underway to solve the Sundering problem.
This Knowledge Mage believes it is an attempt to solve the Erasure Problem, in steps.
That is all that I know at this time.
Personal Note: I feel drawn to this topic in a way I have rarely felt. This pull is of such a note that I feel compelled to write it down.
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From the desk of Knowledge Mage #Charme-B-789
Dated: 6d/8m/1453y Year of Stillness, beginning of the 8th month of the Unending Year.
Topics: [REDACTED UNTIL THE END OF THE WAR], Sundering, Erasure, Personal Files, water damaged, House Benevolence, experimental magic
I apologize ahead of time for the tears on this file, because I cannot stop them from coming. I was made aware today that I am being looked at to assist with a major magical breakthrough conducted by House Benevolence, King Solomon of Genesis, and the Wizard of Benevolence. It could mean the removal of the Enemy’s greatest weapon. It could mean… I don’t know what it means.
I am apparently the victim of an Erasure.
Through a great many confluences of events, which I am still trying to understand, I was a warrior in the army of Killtree and lovers with a woman who, if she was a man, we would have been married and had kids. I do not know her name. I had been 80 years old, alongside her. And then we got [Reincarnation]ed by the Wizard of Benevolence during his Benevolencing of the Sovereign Cities. She became a man, I became myself. I do not know his name.
That whole period of my life is strangely missing. I will attempt to reconcile… Whatever I can.
Since then, I have been living in Charme, having arrived in this land a decade ago, in a way that I thought was by myself.
But I had come here with a husband who I mourn most fiercely.
Even though I do not know his name, or face, or that he even existed before today, before my meeting with King Solomon and the Apparent King Erick Flatt, I had a husband. Both King Solomon and the WoB knew me; they remembered me from all those years ago. They saw how I held hands with the woman who became my husband, before they (Read: the WoB) [Reincarnation]d me into my current form. They knew he was gone, though the Apparent King obviously knew more than King Solomon… For some unknown reason. I had thought they were the same person, and Solomon was the WoB’s repro, but it is more complicated than that. I have included my new thoughts on this matter in ‘Addendum Solomon, Repros, and the Infinite’.
But as to the current topic:
I am preparing to participate in a study to bring my husband back to me.
I hear I am not the only one participating.
I have no hopes.
And yet, they tell me they have had some success with cats.
– – – –
– – – –
– – – –
Three months ago:
“Chaos is calling. Be back later.”
Solomon half-woke to words that lingered in the absent warmth on the left side of the bed. Destiny’s scent was still there, but Destiny was gone. For one brief, horrible moment, Solomon thought he saw Red in the air.
He panicked.
He recalled a thing that Erick had spoken of once, and done a few times, but which he had never had any luck with.
Solomon reacted anyway.
He held out a hand and put it on Destiny’s bare shoulder, right in front of his own face, where he usually kissed every morning as he got up for the day.
Silver flashed.
And then Destiny was there.
Between panicked thought and quiet action maybe a thousandth of a second had passed. No time at all, really.
Solomon breathed out against Destiny’s shoulder, relief filling him as he shuddered, pretending that Destiny had been there the whole time, and maybe if he pretended enough it would be true. “Oh gods, I think I had a bad dream.”
Destiny hummed.
And then she rolled over to look Solomon in the eyes. Her blue eyes stared into his platinum ones, and she leaned forward and gave him a peck on the lips. She pulled back, saying, “You seem to be the reason for my Chaos spiking today, lover. Do you know what you just did?”
Solomon paused.
He reviewed his memories.
His heart fluttered in his chest and his core vibrated with an unseen flow as he teetered on the edge of something deep.
“… I think I pulled you back here.”
“Like how Erick did to that Shackle guy, and then to those five demons who tried to escape after demolishing Greendale’s palace last week,” Destiny said, “I think you can go further with it than him, though. I think you can bring back anyone you wish.”
Solomon almost burst out laughing at the preposterousness of it all.
But Destiny’s words struck a chord, and Solomon felt something deep within call to him. Of memory, and Genesis, and Destiny here, with her hand on his face, and her eyes glittering platinum, just like his. She smiled.
And Solomon had a part of the answer.
He launched out of bed and rushed to his workrooms, saying, “It’s not [Teleport Other]. It’s completely different because it—”
Destiny laughed a chiming, wonderful sort of laugh, saying, “Drag me back to you, lover! Get it right in the moment; leave the written words for later!”
Solomon turned, and then he…
He…
He desperately wanted to kiss Destiny again, so, several meters away from her, Solomon put an arm out there and bent it, making a palming motion—
The world flickered with silver.
And then Destiny’s face was up against his, and they were kissing, their chests pressed against each other, and Solomon’s hand was on Destiny’s perfect ass, just like he had planned. Destiny giggled into Solomon’s mouth, and Solomon laughed against her neck as he held their bodies together—
A series of blue box creation messages interrupted him. He ignored the normal ones, but he did notice that he had gotten another 3 ability points.
His new spell was… different.
Summon 1, instant + special, super long range, 500 mana
Attempt to bring a well-known to you.
That spell is on the cusp of what the Script can do, for resons are not fully integrated into the Script yet. You will faint if you use that spell too much, or fall into a deep depression. I’m not sure which. I suggest you look into a way to expand that power a lot, and do it softer than the spell I helped you make.
It might be the Erasure Solution if you push it far enough, and if you’re careful enough.
Just gotta make a space for the person you want to bring back.
-Rozeta
Solomon’s heart was racing. Everything was…
Was a lot.
Destiny smiled, her eyes twinkling gold in the platinum of her irises. “Tell me the good news, Solomon.”
Solomon had ten thousand thoughts, and then he focused. “I need to do some experiments. A lot of experiments. Probably sundering experiments, too.”
Destiny patted his chest. “It’s pretty deplorable, but we can sunder some mice.”
– – – –
A month later:
Erick stepped down onto the entrance roof at Solomon’s Black Castle, where Poi stood waiting by the door, along with one other.
Tasar the Summoner stood beside Poi, with her little Spatial chipmunk [Familiar] upon her shoulders, Sengaralo. The green and black adamantium wrought smiled upon seeing Erick; her words were as solid her, as she said, “We have results.”
Erick’s heart beat hard.
For the last month Erick had been doing politics with practically everyone the world over, giving them assurances and demonstrations of his power here and there, but not too much. People got scared when there were 3 kilometer long dragons in the area.
Which was understandable.
They got even more scared when Erick wanted to practice war with them, to train with people. There was a lot of pushback, but Erick would get to that practice soon enough. He’d let that idea percolate for a while, before it was ready.
When he wasn’t running around the world, getting everyone war-ready as much as they could be, he was experimenting with the valkyries inside Veird’s Authority, to get them ready to work with all the other parts of the army he was gathering. Erick had a few plans for the upcoming war, but his strategy was mostly described as ‘leafs on the wind’, and played to the strengths of the fact that Nothanganathor was sun-sized and everyone else was mostly Erick-sized, or smaller.
While Erick had been doing that, Solomon had been working on the Erasure problem.
Honestly, Solomon’s contributions were likely going to be more important. He had recently invented a spell that Erick had shown him a few times over, but done in a way that the Script had been able to codify, for Erick certainly hadn’t tried to codify it at all. He hadn’t even thought to codify ‘[Summon]’; that was just something he did occasionally. It was not Spatial Magic for Erick, and it wasn’t even Spatial Magic for Solomon, or rather, it wasn’t Time Magic, for Spatial Magic was all really variations of Time Magic. [Summon] was Genesis Magic that did a very good job of looking like Time Magic and thus Spatial Magic.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Thus, Tasar, former Spatial Mage, had become involved. And also the whole wrought angle was important, too. Maybe even more important.
Erick contained himself for as much as decorum demanded, and then he asked, “What kind of results?”
Tasar smiled, and then she turned to Poi and bowed just her head, saying, “Tea was wonderful.”
“Anytime.” Poi said, “I’m headed back to the dungeon.” He turned to Erick, grinning. “Don’t get your hopes up so much.”
Erick laughed. “You have no idea where my hopes are right now!”
Poi smirked. “Don’t need to be able to read you to know you’re somewhere past the heliopause.”
Tasar tried to contain her excitement, too, but she also failed. She said, “[Gate] to the Project, Erick!”
Erick rapidly opened the [Gate] and went through with Tasar at his side.
– – – –
Erick stood upon a white crystal road that was minimally lined with gold, in a land known as Human Copper Neighborhood 97.
Spires of white crystal with gold striations rose up from 75 kilometers of depth and light and wind to plunge into the sky, traveling another 45 more kilometers up there before it reached the upper edge of the Stratagold Geode. Clouds flowed through everywhere, like mist carved up by the crystals, obscuring much of the further lands in soft white shadows. Those clouds mostly stayed in the divisions between neighborhoods, though, because the wrought living here needed space to be delineated, so that neighborhoods were clearly marked without actually being clearly marked. The spires themselves varied between tens or hundreds of meters wide, but all of them were white and gold crystal shot through with housing and green spaces and all sorts of normal, everyday mainstreet-like shops. Skyroads of crystal connected every spire to every other spire. And as it was above, so it was below; Like stacked civilizations, everyone lived above someone, and below someone else.
But this place was different for one good reason.
Off to the side, way over there, stood the open edge of Stratagold, where Claws had attacked and killed and ripped apart these neighborhoods in ruthless fashion. It was a cavern littered with light and air and nothing else; a great big void. A wound. The wounds of that attack were many.
The streets here used to hold so many people, all of them human-shaped copper wrought, mostly ancient and green with patina. Now, the space held people who were lost, and yet finding themselves once again, through the [Silver Heart]s floating among the survivors.
Wrought were people, just like anyone else, but wrought liked routine way more than most. It was a sacrosanct part of their culture. The ancient green-colored metallic ‘humans’ of this land were among the most dedicated to that routine. The slightest provocation to their daily routine was an unkind disturbance on as deep of a level as stabbing someone.
That was why, when the Red attacked, and carved open this wall of Stratagold and carved away at the people therein, the people of this land were hurt the most, though only a few of them realized their hurt.
And now…
Here was the experiment to heal this damage.
The idea was simple enough.
Genesis created things. With the [Silver Heart], Genesis was self-creating, too, and it also made the world around it better through its presence.
A person did the same thing.
Solomon had taken [Summon] and [Silver Heart] and a few tens of other ideas —a lot of ideas about lodestones in the manasphere, gradually bringing together what was Sundered, if possible— and combined them into a spell called [Summon My Heart]. He was on his tenth iteration of that magic, trying to get it right. As soon as he got it right, his hope was that the user of the spell could cast the spell, and then ritually help that Heart come back to real life. It was [Familiar] magic, but wholly different.
The hope was that Solomon could bring back the Erased.
It was basically [Reincarnation] magic on a level far beyond what Erick had ever touched, and it included all the learning of resons that Erick had brought back from Margleknot. But it had needed a testing ground with stable people, willing to put in the hard work to pretend that a floating, disembodied Heart was a person.
Thus, this particular testing ground.
Some signs held on the viewing walkway to Erick’s side.
DO NOT:
Interact with the area, scan the area, mana sense the area, or do anything else other than calmly observe from a distance. Do notdisparage what they’re trying to do here.
DO:
Try to understand what they’re doing. Acknowledge that it will work.
Prayers can go a long way when interacting with the ephemeral.
They were a hundred meters from the edge of the experiment, at the closest possible point to interact with the experiment. Every other space around this land was guarded well by the warriors of Stratagold and by many extensive magics. Better viewing areas were far, far behind Erick, at the viewing booth way back there. Those places had [Scry] eyes set up around the area. Viewing from this platform was viewing it for real, though.
Erick didn’t instantly see anything happening down there, but he was using his normal sight, and no Sight magics at all—
“Oh shit,” Erick said, as he saw it. He saw a Heart moving around on its own, doing something. “Is it actually working?”
Tasar whispered, “We believe so.” She asked, “You see the cat?”
The cat?
“… No,” Erick said, still looking at what he was actually looking at. “I see the [Summon My Heart] clipping leaves on the bridge down there, like a gardener.” Erick rapidly glanced around, trying to see— “Oh my gods. The cat.”
How could he have missed the cat?!
It wasn’t a Heart. That’s how he had missed it.
Back when this was a stable neighborhood, it had a population of 3,100 people, and one ‘cat’. This particular neighborhood was on a 1-week cycle routine, and it was very strict about its routine for many centuries. Then a ‘cat’ moved in.
That cat had been a stone elemental that had snuck into the place and rapidly decided it liked it there. It liked sitting on a particular bench on a particular sky road, most of all. Since it was an elemental, it did nothing else, and no one bothered it either, since the cat didn’t interact with anyone and no one interacted with the cat. This was rather abnormal for an elemental, but it did happen from time to time.
The particular bench the cat rested upon was just for looks, while the other two benches were used in the week-long routine of the neighborhood. The first bench was used by a pair of men who ate there every day and spoke of the weather, with a particular sandwich and particular conversation for each day of the week, while the third bench had a girl come by every week and throw away the rejection letter of her boyfriend over the railing.
Around the time the cat moved in, the general store owner got a weird addition to his usual shipment. The guy had a routine of selling several things to several people over every single day, but he got a stonefish paperweight in his deliveries one time and he didn’t correct the vendor, so he kept getting the same stonefish paperweight every single week.
Then around 560 years ago, about 50 years after the cat moved in, the paperweights were piling up.
The vendor decided to add something to his routine.
He decided to give the cat the stonefish paperweight.
And every single day, for the next 560 years, the general store owner set down that grey, stonefish paperweight on the other side of the bench where the stone elemental housecat lay. He set the paperweight down in the morning. In the afternoon, the housecat ate the paperweight. A few hours later, and the cat flicked his tail and sent a bit of extra stone off the side of the bridge.
The falling of that stone was a routine on another neighborhood way down below.
And now, as Erick looked…
The housecat was not there, but the Heart that floated where the housecat should have sat…
The Heart had a certain kinda glow around it, like the beginnings of an image surrounding and encasing the Heart. The altogether ephemeral image was that of a cat, loafing on the stone, his tail hanging off the edge of the bench, idly swishing back and forth, as the cat stared at the sky, and the clouds. The cat was kinda white and gold, but only in flashes, and Erick easily could have imagined it. He dare not actually mana sense or read the past to find out what he had actually seen, for mana sensing was to ‘become one with the mana’, and that sort of observation on the mana disrupted the effect of this Heart Ritual.
They had found out about mana sense’s problematic nature on this Heart Ritual rather rapidly, at the beginning of this whole thing, though it was anyone’s guess if ‘the observer effect’ was real. Solomon and Erick both thought it was, and the other people involved in the project were rapidly won over. Therefore, the only one allowed to mana sense anything at all down there were the people who lived down there, who mana sensed everything all the time, just because that’s how old wrought operated.
Solomon and Erick suspected that when personally-involved people mana sensed their Hearts then that sort of Observer Effect was good for the Heart, but when know-nothings tried it, that was bad.
The people down there were the ones doing the ritual; Solomon had just provided the parts—
Erick’s heart skipped a beat, because the image of the cat looked over to the little stonefish paperweight that sat on the other side of the bench.
It ignored the stonefish for now.
It would eat it later.
Erick had not imagined that. He had definitely seen that happen.
Meanwhile, Tasar was staring at the Heart that floated on a main bridge. The Heart of the gardener didn’t visibly do anything, but leaves fell down on a nearby bush, as if plucked off at their stems, and then those leaves gathered around the base of the bush, where they would decay and cycle back into the bush’s growth, eventually.
Sengaralo, sitting upon Tasar’s shoulders, chittered quietly as Tasar’s emotions rose.
She saw it.
Tasar whispered, “The gardener. Oh Rozeta. It might actually work.”
Erick gazed down into the land ahead, and watched, as he said, “It’ll be hard to transcribe this methodology to anyone else besides the wrought, for only Rozeta kept good records of what the Routine looks like in this land.”
Tasar pulled her head out of the clouds and came back to the moment, saying, “There are so many complications to this that I would struggle to name them all in a lecture smaller than ten hours.” She looked at Erick. “The primary problem is one of legitimacy. There is a clear and broken line between the life and Sundering/Erasure death for the people here. I didn’t even notice the gardener…” She looked back to the neighborhood. “… The cat might be just another elemental. Stone elementals can be quite common among these sorts of neighborhoods if they’re quiet and small and stay out of the way.”
She was leaving the question of the gardener to another day, which was fair. The Heart there didn’t even have an outline. The cat was much ‘further along’, if that’s how this worked at all.
Erick said, “If that cat gets up and moves around like a different elemental then we’ll know this didn’t work, but it might have worked. Solomon put a lot of worldline ideology into his magic; into gathering up the stray parts of mana that might make up what was originally there.” Erick said, “Sundering leaves that mana in the manasphere, so it is theoretically possible to gather all of that which remains.”
What ‘sundering’ did was to completely erase all the originality of the mana in the air, though, meaning that mana could then be moved on into new lives, for people to take up and become one with themselves. So the fact that they could ‘gather the old soul’ like this at all was amazing.
It was a major breakthrough…
If it worked.
“Theoretically this could work.” Tasar said, “I would stress that word more than you are stressing it.”
Erick nodded. “The only real issue is with Erasure. Where does that mana go? Yggdrasil says that Erasure is Sundering people for personal profit, but more so than that. Even he doesn’t know exactly what is going on there, because like all high-level combat and capabilities, it’s all kinda Wizardly.”
Tasar scrunched her face as she stared across the open air, down at a cat that was not a cat. “Do you think Solomon can actually do this? That these people are real people?”
“That’s the thing, Tasar,” Erick said, “Magic has a way of working better if you believe in it.”
A soft wind kicked up for a moment.
Tasar decided, “This will be easier to believe when we have real results.”
– – – –
A week later, the cat was fully stone, looking white with some gold spots on it, just like the stratagold upon which it sat. Just how the cat had originally looked. The grocery owner, who was the main interactor of the cat, left a tiny grey stonefish paperweight on the other side of the cat’s bench, like normal. Like he did every day. Later, the cat stood up for the first time, like normal, and it went over and ate the stone fish.
Without doing anything else the cat went back to its seat and sat.
Hours later, the white-and-gold cat’s tail had a little grey tip. The stonefish had been grey, and it had passed through the entire stone elemental without being altered, only to end up at the tip of the tail. With a lazy sort of swish, the cat flicked the very tip of its tail over the edge of the sky bridge, where the grey stone hit the ground seven kilometers down.
The ‘normal’ strike zone was one of a hundred usual locations.
It landed in a normal location, right in the middle of the standard distribution model of all the previous centuries of cat-poop-tossing that Rozeta had recorded, because the wrought had recorded it and Rozeta had recorded the wrought.
Copper Human Neighborhood 27’s gardener picked up the grey lump of stone like it was the most joyous day of his life. He held the grey stone for a long moment, in his pale green hands. And then tears of liquid copper, bright as burnished gold, formed and fell from his deeply green eyes, as he cast a tiny bit of Destruction Magic on the ‘offensive’ bit of garbage, eradicating it, turning the remains of the fish into bits of mana and nothing else.
That night there was a small celebration in the command center of the project.
A week after that, the stone elemental cat still didn’t move except to eat its once-a-day stonefish treat.
This was met with incredible enthusiasm, but not as much as the other things that people were seeing in the decimated wrought neighborhood.
The gardener for Neighborhood 97, which had been a simple floating Heart, had changed. Now he had a green sort of tint to the air around his heart, forming the general shape of himself. Five other instances of maybe-successes operated all throughout the rest of Human Copper Neighborhood 97, ranging from the boy who handed the girl a love rejection letter, to the old woman who knitted on her porch. The boy who wrote the rejection letter was a particularly prominent occurrence, almost looking like a full person, if made of illusions. The girl who threw the letter away was even able to take an illusion of the letter from the man, and then toss it over the bridge. Erick imagined that the tears that girl shed as she tossed the illusionary letter away were particularly strong that particular day.
And then Rozeta confirmed that the cat’s elemental soul was 98% the same as her records of the neighborhood showed.
It was good enough for the [Resurrection] laws to consider the two cats to be the same.
The party that night was a massive affair, and yet it was still subdued and hidden.
This was a big event, with many unforeseen happenings, and everyone wanted to keep it as quiet as they could.
It was still a big party.
– – – –
The day after the party, Erick got a request for a talk from Yggdrasil.
And so, on the shores of Yggdrasil’s Cavern at Stratagold, in that massive water-filled land littered with skyscraper-sized white crystals that were dwarfed by Yggdrasil himself, Erick stood with his son’s avatar. The water lapped at the stony beach and the air felt more brisk than cold, because everything was bright light and open and beautiful.
Yggdrasil had seen the beauty a lot, though, and he was focused on something else entirely.
“I need to stress to you, father,” Yggdrasil said, “We didn’t think it was possible to undo Sundering, or Erasure. Otherwise I would have helped you with this.”
Erick smiled softly, feeling great. “You could have helped me finish off that keg of Wizard Wine last night.”
Yggdrasil gave his father a Look.
Erick guffawed.
Yggdrasil said, “This is a big deal, father. Even if you’ve only brought people back in small ways through specific sunderings, it’s still a big deal.”
Erick reeled in his mirth, and got down to business. “Two things: Maybe Malevolence made us believe it was impossible. And also…” He guessed, “Someone from Margleknot wishes to join this winning side?”
Yggdrasil considered Erick’s first point, and then he said, “No, father, to the first point. This is a major change in the universe. In all universes.”
Erick simply smiled.
“And yes to the second point.” Yggdrasil said, “Your neighbor from the Old Dragon District wants to help. We’re going to call him Tom. I can support him for a while on my roots, but he can’t come out further than that, and he can’t come here during the war. We have to win, father, and then he can come and help to ensure that this anti-Sundering magic truly works well.”
Lionshard wanted to come out here?
The Fate Mage? The guy who ran all of Margleknot’s cleansing and universal anti-corruption programs?
Awesome!
“Fuck yeah!” Erick said, laughing. “Bring him on over— Wait? Can he come here? Like… Can his magic fit here? What about the Curse of Power?”
Yggdrasil paused, as though he didn’t understand the problem. And then he went, “Ah.” Yggdrasil elaborated, “We need to win, and then I’ll plant on Fenrir, and he can be there. He won’t actually come to Veird. I can protect him easier there.”
Erick said, “Then we need to win.” He asked, “Can ‘Tom’ help before that? With the time dilation going on, and all?”
“Yes. That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about.” Yggdrasil said, “You’re hard to track and prognosticate around, and the time dilation here is massive, but this conversation here was considered. He has created some preset assistance-packages for me to trigger. If you veer too far away from accepting his help or asking for something far outside of his idea of what you want and need, then he might need months of Veird time to come up with something else.”
For every minute that passed on Margleknot, a month passed here on Vierd. The angels who had left a few months ago had only just arrived at the Celestial Observatory…
Erick turned his attention back to the moment, and asked, “What are my options?”
“Aside from the direct murder of Nothanganathor, pretty much anything is possible.” Yggdrasil said, “You just have to ask for something specific— or even in general.”
Erick went over a few things in his mind.
Yggdrasil had already provided Veird with a dossier on Nothanganathor’s usual magics months ago, and those had helped out immensely with figuring out some plans, but all of those plans broke down next to the Big Lizard himself. All of Erick’s valkyries would be successful if they managed to simply stay alive and Siphon as much of Nothanganathor’s power as possible, making more and more of themselves, without getting splatted.
That was just a plan, though, and Erick expected that plan to fail at some point in the process.
The other plan was to make enough mana to eventually turn the tide in the entire Veird system from Red to anything else. That was the battle-of-attrition plan, and which was a much more workable strategy than relying wholly on the valkyries.
In order to realize that strategy, the [Silver Heart]s were already heavily deployed all across Veird, but mostly in the Core. This was giving Veird a bunch more mana generation, without causing hallucinations everywhere, like an unshielded/modified Heart was prone to do. From Erick’s understanding, Melemizargo had a Heart in every single dungeon, too. There were even some free-floating [Silver Heart]s out there, with most of them on the Silver Surface, under the silver-leaf canopies of the eternal stonewood trees. They survived rather well up there in that endless forest of kilometer-tall trees, where slimes and small monsters spread. The Hearts liked being observed and generative and Koyabez had taken a very large liking to them, so he kept them around and made them his.
All deployments inside cities and public places were met with people complaining about hallucinations that didn’t do anything for them, so city-deployments were nixed. The Hearts found forever-homes inside artist homes, though, and anywhere else where people wanted to make things. Some people had even taken to turning [Silver Heart] into [Heart Charm], making little charm spells that they carried around on their wrists, which did everything that the normal [Silver Heart]s did but individually, instead of atmospherically. Now those spells were seeing rather widespread deployment.
Point was, that Veird’s mana concerns were rapidly becoming non-concerns, and for the first time in forever Rozeta was counting out a massive surplus of mana in the manasphere.
Except for that mana which some people were eating.
Erick’s [Endless] aura was being used rather extensively among the Paradoxed dragons of Ar’Cosmos, but not in many other places. Instead of taking months or years to accrete a core, some of the dragons, like Redflame, were popping out a thousand cores a day, which were all getting enchanted in order to stabilize Fairy against Nothanganathor, in case people had to fall back from the real world.
[Silver Heart]s were also everywhere in Fairy, meaning that Fairy was no longer a bunch of disconnected continental-sized islands in the mist, made solid by Redflame’s and other dragons’ concentration of that Gate Space to solidity. Ar’Cosmos and the various cities of other dragons were already a second world, but [Silver Heart]s expanded that land many, many times over. It was like how Erick could [Duplicate] matter into planets, and now, Fairy was able to fully expand into the Shells above the Old Surface.
And thinking of expansion…
… Hmm.
More Spheres of Veird? More land? More dungeons? It could work?
And yet…
Erick pulled back a bit.
No need to go making new layers of Spheres. There were already 11 layers, and most of it was still barely inhabited by anything other than scattered monsters or weak dungeons… Which was true for all the rest of Veird, too, Erick supposed. More Spheres could come later, though, and they probably would need to, if the ‘Eat Nothanganathor Back’ plan was to work.
But what did Veird need besides more time to prepare?
That was pretty easy to answer, actually.
Veird had warriors, generals, military structure, and gods.
But there was only one True Wizard.
Erick said to Yggdrasil, “We put up the Shelter because we needed time to prepare, but all the prep we have isn’t enough. We need some more True Wizards; people who can actually fight against Nothanganathor and not be bowled over by Wizardry.”
Yggdrasil nodded. “Pick someone, and Tom will make a Fateful guide to help them to Ascend. He can only do one person at a time for Veird due to Script limitations, and probably not Solomon or Destiny. They’re already too far along on their own paths. You should pick someone who isn’t a Wizard at all.” Yggdrasil added, “He has guides ready to go for Jane, Evan, Kiri, Kromolok, Illustrious Moon, Sitnakov, Killzone, Burhendurur, Lynkari, Shivraa, and Ezekiel. He had a guide for Avandrasolaro, but that angel is now a god, so that path is clipped.”
Erick was a little stunned at those options.
He thought them through.
Jane and Evan were both right out of the running; Erick doubted either of them would even allow Erick to help them become Wizards.
Kiri was comfortable as Gatemaster, so she was a low option.
Kromolok? Well… Would Rozeta’s High Inquisitor want to be a Wizard? Probably not, actually. Though he had likely never had the chance to even think in that direction… Maybe Erick would ask him?
Illustrious Moon and many other dragons were already trying to become Wizards, ever since Solomon proved it was possible. Burhendurur, Erick’s Overseer of Enforcement for House Benevolence, was also trying for that, but in a much less active way. Honestly, Erick had not spent enough time with either of them to truly understand where their inclinations lay right now. Erick decided he should do that.
Killzone and Sitnakov. Now there was a duo of tangled webs. Sitnakov was rather solid in his current life path, though, and he was currently dating Jane, and good friends with Abigail, though both of Erick’s daughters liked to pretend that wasn’t happening when they were around Erick. Jane outright lied about dating Sitnakov, and they had both known she was lying about not dating him… Which was fine.
Killzone was aimless right now, as far as Erick knew. He was a participant in the Blue Corps, and his skills as a warrior were highly valued against the Red… Hmm.
Killzone was on the top of the list, then.
Lynkari, who had been Erick’s go-between to Demon King Dinnamoth for several years, was currently enjoying a month-long orgy that Erick had been invited to 3 separate times so far. All the demons were celebrating the ‘demise and rise’ of the Angels; the transition to Avandrasolaro being the Crown of the Host. Avandrasolaro had attended some of those parties, according to some of those invitations…
Lynkari was probably at the bottom of the list, and yet, she would be a good candidate for getting the Demons fully integrated with the Blue Corps.
Lynkari was second on the list, then.
Erick trusted Shivraa a lot, ever since he rescued her from Slaver’s Den and she proved herself as both a great secretary and as the captain of the Valkyrie Squadron. She also knew resonwork a lot better than others. Combining that with how in-tune she was with the valkyries, would mean that her Ascension to Wizard and then True Wizard would greatly strengthen the Valkyries…
And then there was her familiarity with so many different sources of power. Mana, resons, and other small powers out there, would make her Ascension easy… probably.
Shivraa went on the shortlist, too. Probably first, actually. With her as a Valkyrie Wizard, that would make the Valkyrie Squadron a lot stronger.
Honestly, the only reason not to pick Shivraa would be because Erick had only known her for a few months on Margleknot and a few months here on Veird, but she was fitting in really well with everyone…
Hmm.
And then there was Ezekiel.
Erick’s first repro was currently in Charme, in a house north of that Sovereign City, along with Gnowmi, the fae of gems and crafts. Erick had purposefully stayed away from him, but he knew that Ezekiel was working on a small empire of crafting and magics, and he was one of the first to widely craft [Silver Heart] into [Heart Charm]s. Those trinkets were proliferating in the theater districts of the Sovereign Cities most of all, because they were making people accomplished actors, if the rumors were to be believed.
… Ezekiel was walking his own Path already, right? No need to get him a premade Path from Lionshard.
… Right?
Erick asked Yggdrasil, “Do you know how Ezekiel is doing?”
“He’s on his own Path, as far as I know.” Yggdrasil added, “And he’s vehemently against being a bigger part of the war. He’s diverged rather far from you. If things go bad, he’s planning on escaping to Margleknot with Gnowmi. If he were to leave now then Tom wouldn’t need to do a Fateful plan with him; he could do the plan on Margleknot.”
Erick felt some relief at that. “Good. I’m glad he’s just living a life. He can do what he wants.” Erick decided, “The shortlist is Shivraa, Killzone, and then Lynkari. Got any thoughts?”
“Shivraa’s timeframe for Wizard ignition is a few years of hard work. Killzone could either be a month or two, or decades; hard to say. Lynkari is measured in centuries.”
“… Ah.” Erick asked, “Who has the shortest ascension to Wizardry?”
“Killzone, then Shivraa. No other person’s ascension is measured in time frames smaller than years. But if Killzone manages it, then Sitnakov is only months behind.” Yggdrasil added, “And that’s about as much as Tom was able to foresee.”
Erick thought for a moment.
… Killzone was on the level of a Shade —right there with Sitnakov— which was basically a Wizard but without the actual Authority-power of a Wizard. They were both archwarriors. Could they be Warrior Wizards? If Killzone was listless right now, and if Sitnakov would follow him to Wizardry…
“Say…” Erick glanced over to the far end of Yggdrasil’s cavern, where the Local Area Gate Network held by the tunnel entrance to Stratagold’s embassy. And then he looked back to Yggdrasil, asking, “Do you know why Killzone and the royal family of Stratagold completely avoid each other, all the time? They’re literally the only adamantium orcols that exist, and if Killzone and Sitnakov can rise together then I need to know if whatever happened there is going to be a problem, or a whetstone.”
“I’ve overheard some things involving the Second Prince Chernom who was murdered in an attack on the city by Melemizargo and the Shades something like 350 years ago. There’s a decade or three missing there, but Killzone showed up at Spur after that.” Yggdrasil said, “Other than that, the whole event was kept out of the records and no one talks about it, so your guess is as good as mine.”
Erick decided, “Well. Whatever. I don’t really need to know, but I do need two more True Wizards, and they both fit that bill, so that’s my decision. Make it happen for Killzone.”
Yggdrasil’s eyes glittered with unseen resons, and then he said, “Done. You should go say ‘hi’ to Killzone, and then step away.”
Erick went.
