Ar'Kendrithyst - Chapter 273, 2/2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick didn’t go too far.

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

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

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

Maybe they needed an impetus to explore again.

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

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

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

[Seeds of Atunir].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothangaanthor said, “You are understandably upset.”

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

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

“Get to the fucking point.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick desired Nothanganathor GONE—

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

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

Nothing was wrong with him.

Everything was wrong with everything else.

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

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

– – – –

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

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

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

He needed to collect himself.

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

White was a terrible fucking color! Black was best!

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

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

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

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

This was fine.

Better than fine.

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

He was still so unbalanced.

Why was he here?

Whatever.

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

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

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

Erick calmed himself.

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

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

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

Erick was probably too high strung right now.

Erick simply said, “Sure. That works.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was fine.

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

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

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

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

Their sapphire machine was in the shop.

… Erick tried not to think about Poi—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“Ai yaaaah!”

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

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

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

The servers watched from the hidden cameras.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tonight, it was time to drink away his sorrows.

Tomorrow… Tomorrow he would do something more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did he have to worry about elevating to godhood now?

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

But…

Hmm.

Something didn’t sit right with all of that.

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

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

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

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

Erick found Margaret, but not how he wanted to.

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

Erick took a moment.

He put a flower on her grave.

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

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

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

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

Shadow said, “You’re not quitting.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick nodded.

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

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

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

Erick chuckled. “That would be correct.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That works, too.”

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

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

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

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

“And playing tricks on government employees.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s invite her to dinner.”

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

The woman froze.

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

That orange message focused the world for the girl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick took his shots, and Shadow did the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick smiled, and ignored the question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The servers came out with another plate of food.

Erick and Shadow ate.

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

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

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

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

– – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What! You can’t disobey an—”

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

“Oh come on…”

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

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

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

It was fine.

– – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erick stared out into the emptiness of space.

They walked in silence for a little while.

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

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

Erick tried to smile, and he sort of did.

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

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

But for now…

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

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

Something had happened to Fairy Moon and Gregarious, huh?

Probably a lot.

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

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

– – – –

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

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