Ar'Kendrithyst

“Would you say that Da’luwe is representative of the overall nature of the Wraithborne Tower?” Erick asked.

The city administrator, who was an ancient crone of a woman with long, white hair and one good eye, said, “No. Many places are far less kind. The slave ways, for instance, are among the worst locations for the individual among all of the ‘verses. People are chopped up and sent along the path to be resold as goods and services for others down the line who don’t want to do the chopping and mutating themselves.”

Her name was Vondria Irons, and her soul was barely there among her body. She had stitched herself together in a hundred small ways, keeping her existence going long after she should have perished. Erick counted at least five major ways in which she was falling apart.

Her brain was half technology, firing with sparks of some density that Erick didn’t know, but which he suspected was some sort of mind expanding magics or power that allowed her to hold onto distant memories. Blue light filled what might have been mana veins inside her body, but which looked a whole lot more like circuitry, with lines that were too straight to be wholly biological. She had something going on with the insides of her bones that may or may not have been some sort of nanomachine thing, but it was too small to see without proper imaging and it seemed to cloud Erick’s mana senses, as though it was inimical to mana. Her heart was doubled, the second heart pumping in time to the original, central heart, and her liver was some sort of symbiotic organism with a completely different soul than Vondria’s own.

Other than those internal things, Vondira was an old, heavily wrinkled woman, with a hardness to her eyes that well-matched her last name of ‘Irons’.

“You would count Da’luwe as kind?” Erick asked.

“Aye. I would. Eldawae doesn’t give a shit about this place as long as the numbers are meagerly positive and he can have his peaceful view of the Endless, and occasionally flex his magic to destroy great swaths of uppity tyrants. We got it pretty good here.”

“… When you say ‘meagerly positive’ and ‘destroy tyrants’ and ‘view of the Endless’... If this place were to improve to be highly profitable, all tyrants were to be eradicated, and the Endless turned into lush green land, what would happen?”

Vondria grinned, showing off teeth that were only in her gums because she had technology making sure her teeth remained in working order. “I don’t know! It’s never happened before. I’d like to see it happen. I’d like to see a land where people don’t fight over drops of water, and the cost to get to Layer 0 wasn’t so huge.”

“I gotta say, Vondria, I wasn’t expecting you to badmouth your boss so much.”

“If you give me the power to overthrow him, I will do it. But that won’t happen for a number of reasons. First, you’re not sticking around, which means: Second, we need Eldawae to keep us safe from the true forces out there because: Third, we’re a safe haven in Layer 1 for all who come by, and there are a lot of people who come by because the Tower represents safety. Honestly, if your gifts of power work in my favor, I’ll try to keep Eldawae happy however he wants to be happy as well as institute new measures to expand the bounty of this land. I fully expect with a changed attitude in life that I would want to actually help those evil fuckers out there, and with enough power I’ll actually be able to do that.” Vondria said, “But we get the most Evil sorts of people here, Ascended Flatt. We’re at the bottom of Layer 1. If someone fucks up bad enough to get sent deep enough, to here, then they’ll come in and fuck up everything you try to do, while the strongest of us hide and wait out the storm as Eldawae kills and enslaves those tyrants and makes them into ghosts, or sends them on their way.”

Erick thought.

He said, “I’d like to have the names of the worst offenders in the inmate population right now. Those would be the ones I remove from this land.”

“And you shall have it.” Vondria said, “The only thing I ask of you is for you to review the production logs and to attempt to keep our production positive.”

“I’ve seen the logs. You all make 750,000 resons per day, at a cost of 700,000 resons per day. I wonder if those are the true numbers, though, because with those Benevolence towers out there you should have been making a lot more than that.”

“Only those who are Contracted to the Tower produce any resources. The mana of the Darkness-wrought life you created out there does not pay any bills.”

Erick looked at her. She wasn’t lying. Not really—

“We do capture the mana they made, and the water created,” Vondria said, without the barest of breaks in her outflow of words. “But more water than mana. Your systems are rather solidly made, Ascended Flatt. The only real resources we’ve gotten from your systems would be the mana made by subsequent life outside of the towers, and the water created by the copy machines. The mana produced inside the towers seems to remain inside the towers, though. This does decrease our bottom line, but not much right now.”

She left it there.

Erick got the distinct impression that Vondria didn’t have to watch her words around Eldawae at all, which is why she had been so easily willing to speak a half-truth to Erick. She was simply unpracticed with courtly intrigue, which… well. Good for her? It spoke well of Eldawae that his people were so easy with their words. That meant that the intrigue that happened around here wasn’t that deep. There weren’t many courtiers here in Da’luwe as far as Erick could tell. Eldawae might have been the only one.

This was probably on purpose.

Erick stood up. “I’ll speak more later.”

- - - -

Erick was in the third interview with a third city guard, and aside from individual reasons and individual ideas of what needed to be done, he was just like the other two in every way that mattered. They were also similar to Vondria, in that they had little patience or virtue in the courtly arts.

Kylychbech shot his hands into the air, yelling, “I don’t know what to fucking tell you to get you to intervene! Those fuckers in fifth section are set to run over the defenses of the outer rim of that new city by the inmate tower and do exactly to that land that they did to three others!” He scowled, pacing, saying, “You have power! Go out and fucking USE IT! Or use me to enact your will! Eldawae said that if I got dragon’d that he’d let me go end that fucking threat— My mother is in that inmate tower town, sir! I’m about ready to commit treason to go out and save the bitch! She won’t even fucking care if I killed myself to save her fucking bitch ass, but I still gotta do it!”

Erick had heard more than enough. “I appreciate your candor. I got some more interviews to go, then I’m going to go solve that warfront problem. From what I saw the marauders still had hours to reach the inmate tower.”

Kylychbech looked stunned. He collapsed to his knees. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Erick left for the last set of interviews.

- - - -

Erick stood in an open courtyard beside the large wall of the inner city.

Four ghostly beings stood halfway out of the wall, their forms indistinct here and there, but they were intelligible enough to understand. One of them was a traditional dragon who had given his name as ‘Solid Sky’. The others hadn’t wanted to give names.

Solid Sky spoke with a whisper, “I was born in a land of green and blue in a time far from time. I was cast to this land by the cursed fae. The land grows and I want to see it grow more. That is all I need to tell you.”

The flaming bedsheet said, “The desecrators must be desecrated themselves.”

The amalgamation of arms and eyes, said, “Rip and tear those who would rip and tear, Ascended. Water the land with their blood! Let new death fuel new growth.”

A being of faint light, barely visible in the air, whispered, “The Endless consumes and we are forever on the precipice of falling deeper into the maw. Too deep to ever escape. Too far gone to ever come back. We struggle. We survive. I would have us thrive. You have given us a lifeline. Wings to soar out of the depths, and into the light! Secure your power through my soul, Ascended Flatt. Use me for the betterment of our lands!”

The dragon bowed. The ghost bowed. The amalgamation bowed. The person of light bowed, kneeling before Erick, showing themselves as a person-shaped sexless existence.

Erick said, “I’ll be back.”

And then he flew away, into the sky, headed toward the inmate tower.

The ghosts watched him go and then they spoke amongst themselves as they faded into the wall once again, asking each other if that went well, or not. Solid Sky spoke of how there was no way to truly tell. Erick was too chaotic to read.

- - - -

The warfront was getting ready for war and Erick hovered high above like invisible and intangible light.

The inmates of the Benevolence tower were to the west, while the marauders were to the east.

Or at least those were the directions that Erick was calling ‘west’ and ‘east’, since there was no real north, south, east, or west out here as far as Erick could see.

… And yet. Hmm. That thought prompted him to actually test that theory by making a little container of water, a floaty bit, and a magnetized bit of metal to sit on top of the floaty bit. The magnet pointed at him, for some weird reason. Erick dismissed the compass, opting to figure that mystery out some other day.

And he looked to the warfront.

The war looked to be fought with sticks and blades, for not a single person down there had spellwork going around them at all. That would be because of the manaminer of Da’luwe, for sure. Perhaps some of the people down there had been true persons of arcane might, but they had been laid low in the enactment of disastrous Contract spells, and now they either hid out in the back lines making dinner out of sand rats and grasses, or they learned to pick up a sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with allies-of-convenience.

The armies were only a few hundred strong on the Benevolence front, but they were the real warriors of the Benevolence town. They had the best equipment and the best weapons. Or at least they looked the part, with those shiny bits.

The marauders were 15,000 strong, but they carried their entire civilization on their backs, with almost everyone there being… Well. Strong-looking men, mostly using sticks fashioned from trees that had grown in the towers. So. Great job, Erick. Arming them for this war. Fun times. Anyway. The demographics of Da'luwe were pretty skewed. Most people here were elven or human or orc or generally bipedal-shaped men, but there were some outliers here and there.

One of those outliers was a woman with four white wings hovering behind her back. She flew forward, ahead of the marauders, carrying a flag of red on black. It was a black bolt of lightning. She was flying to speak to a man who was walking out of the lineup from the Benevolence tower.

That man walking forward wore a light purple outfit. It wasn’t Nilton, for Nilton was far behind the frontlines, watching this all happen from atop a watch tower with a pair of binoculars as he spoke into a walkie-talkie, or something like that. There was technology everywhere, apparently, which was really quite odd for Erick to see since he had been without tech for a long time. Some guys down there even had gun-like things.

The marauders looked like they had a whole contingent of riflemen, each of them holding onto homemade metal tubes with sparkly bits to them.

Erick wondered at their range.

And then he wondered what sort of technology he should import to Veird when he got back to Layer 0, and solved this Fae Enclave nonsense…

They wanted him to kill things to prove his power, right?

Erick looked down at some ‘armies’ that could be considered a ‘proof of power’? Maybe? Of course the Enclave would just say, ‘they were weaklings, go have another challenge’. So Erick would have to do something… special.

Erick hummed.

… He had a solution, there. But...

… Hmm.

Yeah.

It was a good solution.

Kinda extreme.

No better place to test it out than here, though. It would have a lot of moving parts. It would be a great solution to this whole Da’luwe issue. They’d keep their production… Hmm.

Anyway.

As Erick toyed with that solution in his mind, he listened to the representatives of both groups meet and speak to each other.

“Greetings,” said the mouthpiece for Nilton.

“Death to you and yours,” said the not-angel woman, in a way that was so easily given and without rancor that Erick imagined it was a common greeting for her, for whatever weird reason.

“As much of a witch as ever, Totte.”

“As much of a murderous bastard as always, Peten.” Totte said, “Give us access to this tower or we burn it down.”

“Try it and die, yet again.”

“I seem to recall chopping off your head before you blew the fail safes and destroyed the last four towers. I bet you’d die again this time.”

“This tower is rigged to blow this time, too.” Peten said, “Maybe you’ll believe us this time when we tell you that you cannot have it.”

“If I can’t, then you can’t either.” Totte said, “This time we’ll pursue your deaths until you’re so deep in debt that you get dusted, your soul forever bound to Wraithborne.”

“Yet another empty threat. That’s all you’re good for. Here’s a real one for you, crafted by your betters, so you might learn the difference: We’ve got half a million resons in reserve. We’ll pay to triple your debts and then live fine while you’re dusted. Or. You can go away and buy from us, like we offered. We’re the kings. You’re the slaves. So either be good slaves or get stomped from on high. We have the resources to fuck you over quite well and you have nothing.”

Totte raged at that answer, cursing at the man, her flag transforming from wood and cloth into a long glaive as she beheaded Peten right then and there.

Peten just smiled, even as his head fell to the ground. He looked truly happy as his body turned to dust and his soul flowed away into the sands, headed elsewhere.

A small part of Erick wondered if Peten was so secure in his victory-in-death because he had come back a few times already. The majority of Erick was somewhat furious at Totte for not playing along at Nilton’s conquest, for pursuing a path that was bound to end in nothing for anyone. And then Erick grew mad at Nilton on Totte’s behalf. Blowing up places he had lost? Terrible form.

Erick’s anger was a quiet anger. The calm before the storm.

The storm built as fast as war broke out all across two kilometers of space between the tower defenders, and the marauders. Rifles fired metal balls that cracked wooden shields and sprayed blood into the air. Swords flashed at limbs, cutting and severing. People roared. Some marauders flew to the sky, having powers of flight that were not mana or reson-based or able to be stolen by the manaminer of Da’luwe. One marauder fired bright red lasers from his eyes. A man in black on the tower defenders’s side opened up holes in the world that swallowed all flying objects with absolute precision. Totte screamed, disrupting everything around her as she flew forward, her glaive leading the way.

And now Erick was mad.

He stared down a Lightning Path. He saw many different ways to remake the world.

He could talk to them all / They weren’t willing to talk.

He could force a compromise / [Reincarnation] could only do so much without oversight to keep people from reverting.

He could build a tower for the marauders on the other side of Da’luwe / And thus begins a different sort of war.

He could separate this war right now / And put off the problem for another day.

In his flight over here, and after getting some dossiers on the major actors of this warfront, he had considered transforming some of those major actors into Benevolence dragons at best, or maybe trying to work out some Empathying magic again. Erick didn’t actually have his Empathy magic anymore, because he had used that up to make the Crystal Star, and then the Crystal Star had moved on, back into the hands of Koyabez’s Church, and Erick had been granted the [Blessing of Empathy] spell from Koyabez, renewed automatically every time he used it. But that spell was from Koyabez, and it didn’t transfer over with him when he left the Script.

He could have made his [Blessing of Empathy] again; he was absolutely sure.

And yet, leaving behind that soul twisting magic had been kinda nice. Once that particular weapon was out of Erick’s hands, it had been like laying down a bloody and effective knife; it had been cleansing.

And besides that, Erick still had lots of ways to make people more empathetic. Kinder ways. Fresher ways.

That’s what Erick focused on now.

He focused on his Lightning Path as it stretched out from him, down into the center of the battlefield and stretched out in every direction, touching everyone on the field and arcing all the way into the Benevolence Tower town, and beyond. At the same time, a spell in Erick’s core vibrated with need. With Erick’s own desire.

As warriors killed warriors, and souls vanished into the sands, the Lightning Path coalesced.

Not five minutes ago a barely-conceived solution to the problem of war among the inmates had presented itself to Erick. Now, that solution proved as easy to walk as the Path.

Erick’s Benevolence laced his words as he spoke with mana and resons,

“In thunderous words, these strifes I mend.

“With proven power, a path’s creation

“pierce hardened hearts to gently bend.

“To distant shores! To tranquil stations.

“These souls released, on love we send

“down life's grand cycles; a Grand Reincarnation.”

A lot of things happened all at once.

The spell did not take just from Erick’s Mana. It took from his Health and Psyche, too.

White Benevolence arced down from all of Erick’s Everything, into the center of the battlefield where it split and hit Totte and the man she had just killed, ripping both of their souls out of their bodies and ashing what was left. The ash rapidly turned to plants. The lightning did not stop. It continued right down both sides of the conflict, hitting people in the heart, or head, or leg, and then traveling out the other side, where it split again, and arced further.

That lightning then flowed into the sky, worming through cracks in reality here and there like it was struggling to escape, but escape it did.

Erick’s body automagically created the magic he had done, marking it down as a Benevolence crystal inside his soul, and words popped up. Erick had not consciously done that. He had been prepared to do that, but he had not actually done that.

Grand Reincarnation, instant, special range, 500/500/500/100 resources/resons per target

Bestow bountiful existences upon a set of targets.

May those so touched by your power forever find themselves on a Benevolent Path.

May their new forms fit them better than the ones that came before.

For some reason the ‘spell creation message’ wasn’t there, which was fine. That was marginally less concerning than the fact that the spell had made itself into a pressable ‘button’. At least the spell cost went down from 5,000 per person, to 500 Mana, Health, and Psyche. Probably because Erick had no control at all over any part of this spell. People were getting put into the multiverse left and right, zapping away to Fractal or Darkness knew where, being placed in bodies that Erick had no control over at all.

Hopefully the people had some control over the spell themselves.

That’s how it felt to Erick, at least, as Benevolent Lightning lashed out at soldier and warrior and scared mother and dying father and killer and genocider and tyrant and murderer and slave and master and—

Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation] continued far beyond the battlefield, his mana resources dropping disastrously fast while his resons went a fifth as quick. He had had nearly 500m each in Mana, Health, and Psyche, and 15m resons due to all the time he had spent flying through the Endless.

But 475,000 inmates of Da’luwe and 50,000 residents added up fast.

The first hundred million Mana, Health, and Psyche went faster than all the rest, and there also seemed to be a precipitous drop in resons that was a lot larger than the cost should have been in the beginning. That probably had to do with the power that was necessary to get out of Layer 1; it couldn’t be a trap layer if leaving it was a normal affair.

Lightning arced through the entire battlefield below and where it took people, it left plants in the aftermath.

Some people defended themselves and the spell went around them, only to strike from behind. The lightning ran up swords, into hands and then souls. The lightning pushed through small magics here and there as if they were nothing. Most everyone was defenseless. Most people had no idea they were moving on until Erick moved them on, forcibly.

Those that were taken were turned to Lightning themselves to vanish into Elsewhere.

The battlefield was no longer a place of war at all. It was a small forest.

And still, the Lightning sang through Erick, turning into a soft torrent of light when it had no one to hit right away. The light washed out into the surroundings. It gathered into bolts once again when it found a target, which were the 50 meter tall flesh golems who were guarding villages that no longer had people because the Lightning had already taken them away. Giant golems became moss-covered stone before the Lightning moved on.

Almost every resident of the inmate Benevolence Tower town vanished in a sweep of Benevolence.

That sweep continued outward to the walls where it danced through the spellwork of the Obsidian Knife Wall, striking out at the guardian flesh golems here and there and evaporating even more towns of inmates, leaving behind moss and grasses and flowers and trees.

The spellwork crashed into the center city of Da’luwe, trying to transcend every mortal and chained undead living under the lich into Lightning that vanished into the sky. Half of the central walls of the city were turned to nothing, but power rang out from the grand hall in the middle, Evil Death pulsing outward to rebuff the Benevolent Lightning, like a sudden shield of killing intent.

In a scant minute, maybe less, the spellwork fountaining out of Erick stopped flowing nearly as fast, or as deep. The flow cut. Erick sagged in the sky. He had never felt tired ever since his ascension. Not truly. But now he felt tired.

And people remained everywhere.

Not many. Maybe only 1%. One out of a hundred? No. Erick looked around. Less than that. A lot less. Of the 15,000-ish marauders and the 20,000-ish in the Benevolence Tower Town, there were maybe 30 people total. They all had ‘spellwork’ around them, too. Not real mana spellwork. The black disk guy had survived. Nilton and his guard, standing on top of an observation tower, had survived due to the guard having some sort of [Force Cube] magic. A marauder with a bunch of feathers in his hair had survived—

Well.

Not ‘survived’, but rather ‘refused to escape’. Even if what Erick had done had looked rather sinister, anyone listening to his words —which had been everyone there— would have known it had been a gift.

Erick smirked.

He had just committed a very large prison break. He felt kinda funny about that. Kinda nice—

Eldawae’s words boomed out of the sky.

“Please come speak with me, Ascended Flatt. I would have calm words.”

“Whoops!” Erick said to himself, feeling kinda giddy. Giddy giddy! Okay. Erick took a moment to calm, because he was way too happy about helping all these people all at once just like that— Erick breathed. He calmed. He shouted back with the entire sky, briefly filling the world with lightning, “Be right there soon!” Thunder rolled under a clear blue sky. Erick turned back to the battlefield down below, to the tower where Nilton and his guard looked terrified, saying, “You and I will be talking right now.”

Nilton told his guard to escape.

The guard did exactly that, rushing down the ladder of the tower and then picking his way through the growing forest as fast as he could. He tripped over a downed tree. The land here wasn’t very stable, after all. It was all sand and bare dirt. All this plant life would need to die and become part of the sand to even begin to be useful for growing more life.

Erick floated in front of Nilton’s tower, saying, “You should have accepted the reincarnation. You could already be on your way to realizing that sundering souls for personal wealth is a terrible business model.”

Nilton brushed past Erick’s concern, saying, “My man acted on instinct. I have already forgiven him. I’ll take a personal reincarnation, though.”

“Done.”

Nilton rapidly held out a mutative, corruptive treasure in his hand, trying to intercept the lightning, but he had not been fast enough, nor had the artifact been corruptive enough. A bolt of Benevolence came out of the clear blue sky, disintegrated the corruption, and entered—

- -

Erick stood with a nude Nilton on the shore of a beach near a gleaming silver city where cars flew in lanes in the sky. Nilton looked around and rapidly shifted from con artist planning on taking as much as he could get from Erick, to a man who had seen true hope for the first time in his life.

This was his home world. That much was easy to see.

A moment passed in calm silence. Some bugs chirped in trees. Gold fish flickered in the waters beyond the beach.

And Nilton stared at everything, whispering, “I never expected to make it back.”

“You’re not back yet and you know I won’t let a user-of-people back into the greater world.” Erick spoke, “Choose your fate, Nilton.”

With sudden tears flowing, he said, “I want to be loved.”

“You get what you give.”

- -

—before leaving in a flash of white, sailing back above, the white lightning taking away Nilton and then vanishing. As the lightning passed it looked like a crack in the sky healing over, to solid blue at the horizons, to the imagery of Margleknot high, high overhead.

Erick knew that Nilton would be a source of true power wherever he needed to be, but it wouldn’t be like before where he used everyone around him for his own gain. His personal Truth had been ‘all for me’ according to Vondria, the city administrator of Da’luwe. Erick knew he had shifted Nilton’s truth into something a lot more Benevolent. He’d still use people, of course, but he’d give them a lot in order to gain for himself. That would be how he would eventually Ascend, for sure.

If he managed to do that himself.

Erick wished him well, even if he probably shouldn’t. Nilton was a tyrant. He sundered people. He used people. Erick hadn’t Empathy’d him. Not wholly, anyway. Not directly.

The important thing was two things: that Nilton was out of Da’luwe, and thus not able to afflict this land with his presence anymore, and that he had a chance to start over with a better Truth that would help instead of harm.

Erick moved on.

He decided not to hunt down every single person who had failed to accept his [Grand Reincarnation].

He went toward the ruined Benevolence Towers instead. It wasn’t nearly as difficult to repair what had been broken as it had been to create what did not exist in the first place.

A mere 5 hours after starting that repair project, Erick had some [Terraforming]s, node networks, and [Undertow Star]s, all working together to create new life once again inside every tower. What had been burned and exploded became mulch for the next generation.

Life went on.

When Erick was finished with that, he made a billboard out of wood with some writing on it and some illustrative diagrams, and then he copied that billboard and stuck those copies into the ground near every large settlement within Da’luwe’s protected area. The billboard had an image of lightning-like arrows vanishing up and away from the desert, and the same message in 20 different languages, ‘Your fellow inmates have been sent into new bodies and new lives all across the multiverse. I doubt any of them ended up in the same spot at all. You defended yourself and thus the lightning did not take you. If you wish to go on to your next, hopefully happy lives, then come out of hiding and walk toward the center city. I will be removing all Wraithborn Contracts from people, too, if that is what you desire instead. Or, if you want a new body, I can do that, too. I will be checking for travelers in the next few days.’

And then Erick went to the central city.

- - - -

The center of Da’luwe was a ghost town more in the figurative sense than the literal sense. But maybe, Erick considered, in the literal, Earth-type sense, too.

There weren’t any people left in this land. Pools held no swimmers. Charcoal sizzled in the sun on grills that had no burger flippers. Pancakes dried in the open air, and books lay where their readers had dropped them. Those places, and much of the city, now sported new green growth, from moss to grasses to flowers and even a few trees here and there. Three nice palms now waved in the breeze high above the roofs in the main part of town. There were even a few tall oaks, or elms, or whatever other exotic name that people might have for a few of the more traditional trees, poking up between buildings here and there.

And then there was the destruction.

Ghost anchors, or whatever they were called, were a part of the city itself. A wall here. A pillar there. A piece of that road. The stone beside the capstone in that arch. Half of that house. Those pieces were gone and the city had fallen in their absence. It was half of a ruin, all black and broken and dead. Some of that could be repaired, of course, but not easily. Not by the people here, according to what Erick had seen of the power level of these people.

This may be a part of Margleknot, at the ‘center’ of the universe, but most people were mortals here, too, and the mortals of Veird would wipe the floor with many of the mortals of this land.

Erick decided he would offer to fix the structural damage to appease Eldawae—

Oh! Looked like some ghosts survived.

Erick spied the ghosts of the wall of the center of the city as they reached out of that wall to spy on him as he passed overhead. None of them tried anything… They looked at him a lot, though.

Erick paused his flight since Eldawae wasn’t in the courtyard right now. He was probably under the main dome, but those doors were shut. Erick could still see past them, though. Mostly. Mana sensing around here was a lot more difficult than the last time. Ethereal blind-spots crowded out much of the land.

Eldawae looked to be waiting for Erick upon the center stage under the center dome. He was in his original body; the one that looked like a 3-meter-tall sexless elf with black bones poking out of dried flesh, adorned in a black, see-through shawl.

But the main doors were shut.

So Erick turned toward the ghosts in the main wall. Solid Sky the dragon was there, along with the person of light. The bedsheet and the amalgamation were gone.

Erick set down on the black stone inside the wall, directly beside the ghost dragon and light-being. “Your friends have moved on in the [Grand Reincarnation]. Do you want to move on to another life? You’ll be able to retain your memories but none of your power, and your Truth will likely change to something more positive and creative… Unless you already had a positive and creative Truth. Truthfully, I’m not sure what happens after a reson-empowered [Reincarnation].”

Solid Sky and the light person both seemed one hard decision away from trying to harm Erick. The only thing holding them back was that they knew they could do nothing. They were still going to try, though.

The light person had streaks of grey running down where their eyes might have been if they were a physical person. With rage held in check, they tried to be calm as they asked, “Why did you do this? Take our people from us?”

“Which ones? The inmates who were only here due to a soul shackling system that caused them to be inmates in the first place? Or the residents of this town, born to inmates and thrust into a life of nothing? Or the amalgamation ghost and the bedsheet ghost?”

“Yes,” spoke Solid Sky, and the light person.

Then Solid Sky said, “We’re all prisoners, but we’re all still here and family.”

Light person said, “Where did you take them? Totte and Alowathoki and Bern and Loro and— And all of them?!”

“I don’t know. They likely went somewhere along the current flow of Benevolence out there in the universe and then they likely hopped off onto a world, transitioning themselves in a way they desired and gaining a new body free of all burdens except the burdens of memory. Want to try and follow one?”

A moment passed.

“Yes,” said the being of light.

“No,” said Solid Sky.

Erick looked to the being of light, and—

Thunder crashed. Lightning fell.

- -

The desert was not a desert.

Da'luwe was not a desolation at all.

A land of a billion people held refuge from the Endless under a bubble of power ringed by white knives, the city brilliant gold and white and tall, the knives and some of the buildings reaching almost a kilometer tall, all of it a work of art. There was no pillar of grey light above the city center. This was not the Wraithborne Tower’s Da'luwe. This was the city that came before.

Between the white buildings, people traveled on floating stone blocks. They ate food grown from ever-producing fields. This was a lush land of green and gold and white, and though some of the parts were dark and deadly, everyone lived at least partially in the light of hope and giving and community.

The being of light was an elven woman with eight white wings who wore a dress of radiance, her eyes pools of sunlight. She stood upon an artificial pond where lilies grew and fish swam in the shadows of those waters. She looked around, and then she looked to Erick.

Erick asked, “Is this how Da’luwe used to look? If so, I’m even more angry at Eldawae than before.”

The being of light smiled softly. “This is Da’luwe at its height, a mere 6,000 years ago. When we fell, we fell hard, and my brother Eldawae capitulated to the destroyers. It was through him that the Wraithborne Tower made this land into a prison, here at one of the deepest parts of Margleknot’s Other Side.” She grinned. “I have not been able to tell anyone that story in a very long time. I believe… I was cut up.” She looked away at Da’luwe, saying, “I want to see it again… But I cannot stay, can I? I will have to make my way back on my own.” She looked to Erick. “Won’t I?”

“Yes. You’re being reincarnated right now. The process cannot be stopped. Have any requests?”

The woman steeled herself, her 8 wings fluttering behind her, each of them disconnected from her body but they were still connected, anyway. “I want to go with all of them and I do not care if my memory is fragmented.”

“Your memory will be fragmented, except for this memory here.” Erick said, “Good luck.”

- -

Lightning blasted out in 108 directions of the Margleknot sky and then vanished into cracks in the air, worming out to the rest of the multiverse—

A great crack of thunder filled the air. The tallest tower at the center of Da’luwe cracked in half, the grey pillar that kept the city marked as a Wraithborne Tower settlement breaking in fast parts, and then disintegrating. It did not fall at all. It simply vanished into Elsewhere, magic turning back into directionless mana.

And Erick felt tired again. He still had plenty of resources, but this big magic was taking a toll.

Erick looked to the dragon Solid Sky. “You want to be a dragon again, here, in this moment and time?”

“… I do. I said as much earlier. I would have this boon before it is snatched from me by your inability to be politely disruptive.”

Erick smiled at that. “You do realize that your soul has been chopped up in order for you to say things like that, right? Most trapped ghosts, if given the chance, would have asked for what Eldawae’s sister asked for; to move on. That’s why there might be a few people out there still living but almost no undead. Just you and her remained. People can make active choices. You can only act on impetus. Elemental Death, in my experience, is all about making stuff stay just like it is. Once you disturb the lock that Death has on life, though, time flows and desires return and all sorts of wants happen all over again.” Erick asked, “Who were you before the Wraithborne Tower turned you into a puppet?”

Solid Sky gradually turned from pale ghost to full-red dragon as Erick spoke, the dead soul getting madder and madder. He did not like being told that he had no control over his life. Directly calling him a puppet was the last straw. He roared at Erick, a scouring, glass-laden wind blasting across Erick’s body, shredding his glowthread clothes and shredding his Health and superficial flesh, but nothing else. Erick’s clothes sought to hide behind his neck and back and there they remained, fine and outside of the blast.

Erick stepped forward and grabbed the ghost dragon’s maw shut with an aura that resembled his own dragon hands and claws, shutting Solid Sky’s maw and holding him there like a misbehaving child. He could not escape now, but as he shifted from red to white and then as ghostly as he could go, he was surely trying to escape. His eyes were full of fear that almost looked fully sapient.

Erick said, “Be Reborn as a dragon of Benevolence.”

Lightning coursed out of Erick, into the ghost of Solid Sky and then into all of the center wall of the city. Every single part of the wall that had remained either collapsed or simply evaporated.

And the snout of a pale blue living dragon squirmed underneath Erick’s grip as Solid Sky suddenly came into being and broke a few houses behind him in his transition to flesh. He was not like the dragons that Erick had known; either the long version like Rozeta or the big and winged versions like Erick and Melemizargo. He was something different. A sinuous body, thin and long at maybe 200 meters, but with giant wings a third of the way down. He was feathered, too. He almost looked like a couatl, but he was more rakish. Less ‘house pet’. More ‘thing you glimpse in the clouds and never fully see’.

And he was staring at Erick with bright blue eyes.

He looked at Erick's grip around his mouth.

He was going to run away the very second Erick let him go.

Hmm.

Erick asked him, “Are you going to run away?”

Solid sky paused.

He almost lied.

And then he told the truth. He whispered ‘no’, though it was almost unintelligible underneath Erick’s grip.

Erick let go.

And Solid Sky pulled back—

He stopped. He steeled himself. He stared at Erick, and said, “Thank you for freeing me. I almost gave into my own desire to… flee, as an undead thing would.”

“I noticed.”

“… Yes you did.”

“Got a name?”

“Solidisuoskai.”

“Ah. So… was that an insult, or something else, to call you ‘Solid Sky’?”

“… I was 750 years old when they captured me on a world far from here and stuffed me into this wall of Da'luwe. This was 5,000 years ago. I am beyond insults and… beyond my homeland a great deal. I had thought I was fond of captivity but… I am not. I wish to be done with this conversation and to escape while you and Eldawae are distracted with each other. May I go?”

“After you tell me what I should know about Eldawae.”

“… He is a hermit, at heart. He wants power, and to go unnoticed. The biggest advantage you have right now is that you have ended a war in his lands and set up these lands for a better future for all further inmates who should fall here.”

“I was going to go with ‘you’re only making 50k resons per day, anyway, so what’s the big deal’.”

“… He’s making a lot less than that right now…” Solidisuoskai looked beyond Erick, at the large dome tower, saying, “Uhh—”

Evil Death blasted out of the central dome, casting wide and far, shattering the double door of the dome off its hinges and then disintegrating the door into metal shavings that rusted and fell apart, to wash like red sand upon Erick. Solidisuoskai escaped that wash of black-grey power and then the red wave, hiding behind Erick until the worst of it passed, and then fleeing as fast as he could flee directly away from Eldawae and the sandification of the entire central square of the center city. Black and grey pillars turned to rubble and collapsed in every direction, except in one, over there, far beyond a low hill on the other side of this starting combat.

Erick assumed that the small buildings in that direction housed the people that Eldawae cared about, or at least the ones he cared enough to save from Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation]. If Vondria, the city administrator, and those guards had survived, then if this fight calmed down, Erick would ensure that they could rebuild.

Eldawae stepped across the black sands that he had created, into the rubble of the main city center, onto the crumbling courtyard where he and Erick had first met.

Erick stepped toward him, saying, “It’s going to take me more work to fix these buildings now, so thanks for that.”

Eldawae twisted the air at Erick’s ‘thanks’, trying to capture something from him with a brush of unseen power. It was Fae Magic. It was useless. He went, “Bah.” And then he looked at Erick with silver glowing eyes. “Why did you do it?”

Erick spread his arms wide. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Eldawae stared. “Where did my sister go?”

“Into 108 different lives. Her goal is to help those who she helped here, and then to come back with power to retake this land from the Tower, and maybe from you.”

Eldawae relaxed a fraction, even though outwardly nothing changed at all. Erick could tell, though. His Lightning Path was working well. A real fight had been avoided.

In a softer tone, Eldawae commanded, “You will rebuild my city.”

“Sure. Was gonna offer that anyway.”

“You will lift up Vondria to Benevolent dragon, and at least one of the guards. Kylychbech survives. You will raise him to power, too.”

“Sure. You need help to return this land to what it used to be, right?” Erick commanded, “Because you will return this land to the billion-plus metropolis in the Endless that it used to be, before Wraithborne came here.”

“Impossible. If we are productive, then we are targets.”

“Who do you have left to defend, Eldawae? Nothing.” Erick said, “So make your sister happy when she comes back. Take the inmates who fall to your land and make of them people who would wish to live here—”

“I tried! No one appreciates what is possible! The bottom line is the only thing that matters, and when that is satisfied too much then Wraithborne desires to take more and more and more.” Eldawae said, “No more.” Eldawae stared, his eyes pools of hateful silver light. “You are right in one thing, Wizard. I have nothing left to defend.”

Ah.

A fight, then.

The Lightning Path had been misled.

Eldawae opened with skeletal hands reaching out of the ground to grip Erick, his voice laced with power, “You come into my home and destroy my people. You have broken hospitality. I claim the Rite of Master and I name you my newest Slave.”

Erick easily dispersed the skeletal grips with a flash of light, responding with power of his own, “I have given the greatest gifts that anyone can give another; new beginnings, new lives, new hopes. And I have also given you the resources to begin again.”

Eldawae gathered black wind in the skies, flashing large, becoming both a black skeleton kilometers tall and the same elven lich standing ten meters from Erick. He pointed with his true self, which was both of him, saying, “Accept the pain you have caused.”

Erick tried to move to the side, to avoid the bolt of black aiming for his heart, but he couldn’t step out of the way at all. The very nature of reality itself held Erick there as Evil Death pierced his flesh, drilling deep, soaking into his core. It pained. Or at least it tried.

Erick disbelieved the pain.

The image in the sky vanished, the beam of Black Death splashed against Erick’s bare chest like a mirror scattering a laser, as Erick said, “I’ll accept my pain, if you accept yours.”

Great glowing draconic wings of Benevolence flashed out of Erick, rising high and breaking the Evil sky, dispersing the absolute-black clouds. Rain fell, bright white and destructive. That rain fell upon buildings that were not there. It fell upon history. And where it fell, it revealed towers and people moving on stone traveling blocks and rivers and libraries and Eldawae’s sister with her eight wings, standing beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

Ten pairs of feathered wings emerged where the rain fell behind Eldawae, as he saw the past.

Eldawae stared at his sister, his silver eyes unclouding, the grey of Elemental Death and the black of Elemental Evil fading from view, revealing a glowing brightness that was every color of every sun. He stared, his skin turning to supple, tanned flesh, his black bones vanishing from where they protruded.

Eldawae’s sister said something, her lips moving.

And Eldawae breathed, exactly like a lich did not need to breathe at all.

A bolt of static came for Erick and touched off across his skin, leaving tiny black marks that quickly healed.

A ten-meter thick column of Benevolent Lightning crashed out of the sky and obliterated Eldawae in an absolute radiance of power.

All the world was light.

And then the light began to fade.

Erick floated above a crater that had once been the courtyard of the center of Da’luwe. The crater extended a good twenty meters down and thirty-ish wide. Eldawae was nowhere to be seen and the clouds in the sky were already vanishing, the illusions of the old city vanishing, too, under the light of the Margleknot sky.

“So that’s probably not over,” Erick whispered to himself.

Erick went to the well-protected storage room behind the hill, far, far behind where Erick had confronted Eldawae. It was, as Erick had suspected, a protective safe house. Erick ripped the roof off of it, exposing a nearly-dead Vondria who looked catatonic for whatever reason, a very angry Kylychbech who had a whole bunch of words against Erick, and a few different people, from two elven children with little wings to a scattering of people who had powers swirling around their bodies, trying to make a formation around the winged kids.

Erick said, “I’m going to fix this first, and then we can talk.”

And then he took Vondria and first [Reincarnation]ed her into a younger version of herself, free of all her tech and ailments, then he turned her into a benevolence dragon and set her aside. When he was done with the city administrator Vondria was a rather pretty pale violet, quadrupedal, 2-winged dragon. She’d probably mostly be the same person. Probably. She’d be missing externally-held-in-tech memories and grafted power because Erick had removed all that, so…

Whatever the case, the transition was A Lot for her so she was sleeping now.

Erick let her sleep.

He tried to turn the soul that inhabited her liver into a person, too, but when he saw that fractal splash of possibility around that soul he recognized the soul as that of a rat. So he turned it back into a rat.

And then he went to Kylychbech who was organizing the ‘resistance’.

Erick sat on top of the wall of the now-roofless building, looking down at the people. He focused on the kids. “So Eldawae has a few different backups. Those kids are two of them and you’re all slaved to protect them as best you can. Do you see that?”

“They’re kids!” Kylychbech pointed his sword at Erick and shouted, “Why would you want to kill them?! I’ll kill you before I let you get to them!”

Erick frowned—

One woman suddenly held a knife to her own neck, saying, “Leave or I’ll kill myself!”

That seemed to be a much better idea to Eldawae’s defenders than Kylychbech’s idea. Within four seconds every person had a knife or a weapon held against their own necks. Erick didn’t bother telling them that that wouldn’t stop him from doing what he needed to do, because he could just heal them. He could bring them back to life, too. The only ones not threatening their own lives were, of course, the two little boys, who were not little boys at all.

The first clue was that they looked like Eldawae, but with small black wings. Only single pairs of wings, too.

The second was that Erick’s Lightning Path was pointed here.

The third was that Eldawae was a freakin’ lich. Of course he survived a little thing like a proper Wizard Duel.

Erick said to them, “Splitting your soul to hide from standard magics is a good one, but I know that trick. I know practically all of them, including Chaining Soul Destruction, which is a very good solution to this predicament. I’m sure you can survive that at least the first few times, but I can figure out something eventually. So! Would you like to drop the act and talk about the complete removal of Evil from this land? Because that’s my goal. I want all of Wraithborne to be ‘not Evil’. And that starts with you all as an example of a better way forward.”

One woman sliced her neck, followed by two others rapidly attempting the same. Erick simply healed them and then set them down in another building sleeping under some [Merciful Ether]. And then Erick did that to all the rest of them except for Kylychbech, who remained with the still silent Eldawae-phylacteries. The boys were staring pretty hard at Erick the whole time, too. They were very mad, but they couldn’t do much about it—

“Oh,” Erick said, as he realized something. “You have a lot of soul damage. You probably can’t talk.” As the two angry boys stared harder, Erick looked at their weird souls… he hummed, then guessed, “And one of you has to die to make the other one whole, too… if I’m reading that right. Not sure. There’s probably five more of you scattered out there in the Endless. Probably on another Layer, too… That’s a bit harder to deal with.”

More than five? Less than five? Who knew!

Kylychbech, tied down with stone and unable to move, threatened, “I’ll bite off my own tongue!”

Erick frowned at the man. “Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

And then Kylychbech did exactly as he threatened.

“Oh Koyabez fuck!” Erick said, disappointed that he didn’t see this exact thing coming. “Let’s put you back together and you can go to sleep, too, unless you’d like to talk openly?” The guard tried to bite his tongue off again. “Well okay then!” Erick put him to sleep and then did a bit of normal [Reincarnation] followed by draconic reincarnation on the man. When that was done and all of Kylychbech’s soul twistings were gone, Kylychbech’s everything replaced and enhanced with draconic might, Erick set the grey-colored dragon sleeping in a square down the way. He patted the guy on the nose, saying, “Wake up well, Kylychbech. Your name was already draconic, so this is all quite poetic, in my opinion.”

Erick returned to Eldawae’s phylacteries.

The two boys were in the middle of trying to kill each other and one of them had nearly succeeded, having stabbed the other boy with a length of broken rock on the side of the head. Erick cleaned up the mess and healed the wounds, and then he looked to the two silent boys.

“… I’m not sure how to handle this.” Erick admitted. “Neither of you are the whole Eldawae, and while my [Reincarnation] can restore a person to wholeness, the person that comes out of the parts of you that you have obviously partitioned might not be the whole ‘Eldawae’, and the other pieces are still out there. They’ll likely be coming here to rebuild once I’m gone. Likely as a single person and with the full power and the support of Wraithborne behind him.”

The twins didn’t offer any solutions. They just stared at Erick with hate in their eyes.

Erick couldn’t do much in the greater scheme of things. Not as a single person, anyway. That’s why he had built House Benevolence. But he was just a single person here, and Da’luwe needed defenders. Powerful defenders.

There were still inmates out there in the land… And the whole place was still under the effects of a manaminer, and there were probably a whole bunch of lich-secrets buried here and there, waiting to bite Erick in the ass the second he got complacent.

He knew what he needed to do. Theoretically. The biggest source of Good he could accomplish would be to go and free the Celestial Observatory from Wraithborne influence. And to do that, he needed to get back to Layer 0.

Hopefully reincarnating half a million souls into new bodies across the multiverse, and also killing the time worm, would be proof enough of his power to satisfy the fae of war at the Enclave; Lord Dakka. Probably not? Hard to say. Freeing the Celestial Observatory might, though, and Lady Aelorika and Lady Seraphaka wanted more ‘good’ in Margleknot, so supporting that growth of Good would be good for that.

Erick wasn’t giving up on manhandling Wraithborne into Good. If he could do that with the Shades of Ar’Kendrithyst, he could do that with some lichs and ancient evils of the Wraithborne Tower.

Probably.

“Wraithborne wanted a whole bunch of truly Evil lichs gone anyway, right?” Erick asked the twins. No answer came, so Erick said, “I need to lower my scope, anyway. Veird is still the main concern.”

Erick paused.

And then he made a decision that was not a decision at all. “I need to clean up this place anyway, and you both get to be city administrators once again.”

As Erick put both boys to sleep, and cast [Reincarnation] on the first one, he smiled a little as the fractal splash of possibilities opened up all around the boy, showing Erick all of mini-Eldawae’s possible futures. The same thing had happened for Vondria and Kylychbech, and it was just one reminder that all magic was connected, even if one didn’t fully understand it all at first. This stuff here was already Fractal Universe Wizardry long before Erick even knew that this universe was thought of that way by the Fractal Fairy, the Voice of this Cosmology. Phagar’s fractal splash was probably connected to this universe, too. Erick wondered a lot about all of that stuff as he searched boy #1’s Benevolent futures for a good one.

Most of the futures ended in death, either permanent or Elemental Death.

And yet, Erick saw a future that was the rebirth of the white city in the Endless.

Erick picked that one.

The boy transformed into man, all of his soul damage filled in with Benevolence, Renewing his very existence itself. Erick set aside the 6-winged man and looked to boy #2—

Who collapsed in a pile of dead flesh.

Erick paused.

“… Circumstantial proof that the bodies were all connected.” Erick wondered. “Will there even be an Eldawae hidden out there in the world, coming back to strike with Evil Death?” Erick wondered some more. And then he shrugged.

Erick [Reincarnation]ed every single person in the city, erasing all of their soul controls and putting them into younger bodies. He knew nothing of many of them, but he knew enough based on the reports and paperwork that he had overseen in Eldawae’s dinner in order to pick for people who fought him every step of the way due to the soul controls put in them.

Erick felt vindicated that he was doing the right thing because every single person he cleansed of influence came back thankful.

By the time he was done with the city his glowthread clothes had regrown enough to give him a loincloth, which was nice.

Erick flew over the city and began planning for his repairs. [Mend] did not work here at all, since that was based on a manasphere imprint of an item and returning that item to its previous manasphere imprint shape. But [Stoneshape] and other spells worked well enough. Erick almost wanted to do a [Cityshape], but that would be way too widespread and likely break stuff under the surface.

Erick hummed. This whole land had once had a much larger airspace, with white spires reaching high. Erick wasn’t sure, exactly, how it survived so long and so well here on Layer 1, where war seemed common. Heck! Erick glanced up in the Margleknot sky, past the horizon of blue, and saw people fighting giant kaijus and ripping up the land far, far away. Planet sized monsters? Maybe.

They looked like barely-moving pinpricks from this far away; like the smallest stars in the sky that a person without enhanced vision would need a good telescope to see. Erick saw them just fine.

Anyway.

Erick began demolishing all the black buildings with great swaths of power, ripping up black stone and setting it to the side of the main city. And then came eternal stonewood trees. Those trees grew massive and they were very alive, even if they didn’t look the part. A few Shapings later and the trees were still alive, but they were shaped into apartment buildings and courtyards and all sorts of city spaces that were similar to the ones Erick had seen in the vision of Da’luwe’s past.

But a bit shorter.

The pools and the waterways and the farming lots and all of that of the current city —before Erick and Eldawae trashed it— were all somewhat still there, but now they were done in white and black instead of black and grey. Those were the city’s colors now. White, for Benevolence, and Black, because Wraithborne was Black because Evil was Black. But in Erick’s mind this Black was simply Darkness. He grinned at that little trick. Melemizargo would have hated them using ‘black’ to mean Evil, and Erick was kinda mad at that too. Black was a great color that did not deserve to be lumped in with ‘Evil’ at all.

Erick added some small [Terraforming] storms and node networks here and there, and then he wrote down how to take care of it all upon a large, white obelisks. He described [Renew] magic with Elemental Benevolence, and [Terraforming] magics with all the accompanying physics and particle interactions. He spoke of harmonies and Mana Altering and Shaping, and a bunch of different Elements besides Benevolence. He wrote down how to create more nodes in the node network, with all that Draining spellwork and otherwise.

And then he copied that large white obelisk and scattered those copies all across the land, in the center of Da’luwe’s new town squares and fountains here and there, and inside every one of the 9 Benevolence Tower out there. During the course of that travel, he came across 34 people. 16 of them hid from him, even after he spoke aloud, telling them that they could move on from here if they wanted. Erick left them be. Most of the people he found wanted to move on, and so Erick bid them a Lightning farewell. One of them, an old witch woman with some sort of highly-protective personal magic and wearing white, wanted to stay here, but she wanted a safer life.

“I’m old as dirt and I usually live outside of the walls anyway. I want to stay here, especially if things are getting better.” The old woman said, “Can you do that? Make me young but let me stay here?”

Her skin was tan and wrinkled, but there was a mirage around her edges. She looked almost not-there at some angles.

Erick looked her over, and said, “Probably. Unless whatever you’ve got going on is… What is that, anyway?”

“Witchy witchy. Stops the bad stuff unless I’m nervous, then it stops everything.” She shrugged. “Try anyway?”

“It might go away after this change.”

“If you can break it and get me normal, I’d take that option.”

Erick hit her with a [Reincarnation].

Every single one of her futures had her as an invisible person walking through life, never knowing others and always being overlooked. She was a hole in the world, untouched by all. Except in a few spots. Erick saw an image of her as a mother in a nice house, serving a family dinner to her husband and their five children and their tens of grandchildren. Another image had her as the leader of a town and raising thousands of people to power, transforming sand into arable fields with coordination and then transforming that land into crops with Benevolent Rain. A third image was her killing a few people and then being sent to the executioner’s crush.

Erick picked the one with her as a leader.

The woman rose from the sands transformed to a young elven woman in her late teens. Erick set her down in a safe spot in the nearest Benevolence Tower, along with a blanket, some extra clothes, repaired versions of her own clothes, a knife, and some fresh fruit in a stone bowl.

By that time several hours had passed and the people in the central town had been awake for hours, except for the new Eldawae. Hopefully that had been long enough for them to get through most of their anger at each other and the situation.

But they were still quite mad at Erick.