Ar'Kendrithyst

“You destroyed everything!” said a woman.

“Yup,” Erick said, “And then I rebuilt most of it.”

“You took away my family!”

“Yup,” Erick said. “Want to try and follow them?”

“Who are you to decide what happens to us!”

Erick raised an eyebrow at that, asking, “Like the Wraithborne Tower ever gave you more choice over your life?” When that was an unsatisfactory answer, Erick decided, “Okay fine. Hold on. It’s time to wake up Eldawae, because he needs to hear this, too.”

The resurrected people and the two dragons, Kylychbech and Vondria, watched as Erick pulled back the spellwork containing the sleeping body of Eldawae. With a bit of [Cleanse] to splash out white mist from the sleeping winged-elf, Eldawae woke up in parts, and then all at once. He did not rise, yet. But he did open his eyes and lean up to look at Erick.

Eldawae sat up and flexed his bone-white wings. He stared at Erick. “It appears you have won.”

“A battle. Not the war. Not by far. Anyway. Welcome back to the world of the living. Take a look around.” Erick said, “I was just about to talk about why I get to decide what happens to you.”

Eldawae was already looking around at the tall white buildings and at the waterways and at the obelisk in the center of this town square, here at the top of the city. A fountain burbled all around the obelisk, clear waters splashing down onto white eternal stonewood. He was having a moment he did not want to have. He was terrified. He was hopeful.

He was terrified of that hope.

Erick began, “Look. All 27 of you here, the four spying with magics, and all the people further out there looking down at us. Also, hello Morbion. Anyway. You all know that most of the people here, just like all of the people enslaved by the Tower, were all put through cultures that produced these Evils in the first place in order to make people who were both Evil and willing to put themselves into situations where they could ruthlessly be exploited by the bigger Evils out there.

“None of the evils that the people here committed out there in the rest of the universe were really their fault, and most of the prisoners of this land were put here under false pretenses anyway. Everyone who fell here was made worse by the prison itself. This was by design.

“Everyone here was being used, including Eldawae.

“And so yes. I ruined it. I would commit such ruin again.

“I do not care that I ‘ruined what you had going here’. It needed to be ruined. You deserved to be ruined. Now, you get to live in your ruin, and you don’t have any inmates to torture, and you’d probably feel bad about doing that torture anymore anyway if I [Reincarnation]ed you back correctly, which I feel that I did. So now, you get to build better.

“I’m sure that you’ll try to reconnect with the Tower once I am gone, which is fine. If the system that sends prisoners down here isn’t a connection to Wraithborne, then perhaps you can not reconnect with the Tower? Just a thought.

“If you do get more prisoners down here then perhaps you can do something else. Try for rehabilitation this time instead of cycling people through your slavery-prison-complex so you can turn more bucks or live in privilege while slaves support your lives. You now have near-endless resources and now you can accrete better power than the average person, because Benevolence can do everything.” Erick handed out copied books about accreting Benevolence, holding them in front of every single person with his aura. Some people did not take them. Some people swatted them out of the air. Eldawae looked at the book, and took it. So did the dragons, though they had trouble with that because of giant talons. Good enough for now. Erick continued, “You’re all Benevolence-aligned now. These books will help you learn some magic and grow your Darkness and then how to accrete well. You can even try altering the manaminer of this land to help. Remember, everyone’s mana is different. You can only accrete your own. The book goes over all of that.

“You can do everything with Benevolence.” Erick asked, “So? More questions?”

Eldawae half-asked, half-threatened, “What did you do to me, exactly?”

Erick looked to the winged-elf. He was shorter than Erick right now. That would likely change with time and with him reaching for lichdom again. His 6 wings were bone-white now; no longer black. Erick asked, “Where do you want to begin, and do you want all of that said out here?”

Eldawae frowned… But he did not rage. He controlled himself away from that emotion. And then he considered that he could experience such emotion at all was a good sign; Erick hadn’t soul controlled him that much. He looked to Erick, saying, “I would return to the grand dome. Vondria, Kylychbech. With me—” He stopped. He looked up at the two dragons. The two dragons were completely surprised, but intrigued and kinda delighted on Vondria’s part. Kylychbech seemed weirded out. Eldawae was weirded out, too. He asked Erick, “Why did I want to involve them?”

Erick smiled. “Because you want to ask others for help now. Everyone here does. Who you picked was not up to me, though. I didn’t actually put any controls on your soul at all. I just made you more personable and vulnerable and cooperative. You picked Vondria and Kylychbech yourself, and probably because they’re the two most powerful people here, aside from me and you. They’re also naturally immortal now, which you will be soon enough, as soon as you get your lichdom back. So yeah. There’s your new Da'luwe council.”

Vondria and Kylychbech wisely remained silent, which was pretty normal for both of them. Which was good. Eldawae was not pleased.

Eldawae fumed as he strode toward the rebuilt grand dome. He glared at Erick, saying, “You’ve reburdened me with more than my elfinity.”

Erick walked with the man into the grand dome of Da'luwe, saying, “Yes, I have.”

Vondria and Kylychbech followed.

In the courtyard, people started talking and arguing again.

- - - -

Behind closed doors, Erick stood on one side of a rebuilt platform, while Eldawae stood on the other side with his dragons flanking him.

Erick began, “To start, I changed—”

“I know what you changed.” Eldawae said, “I can already tell everything you did. I said that in order to get you away from spying eyes. Every single grey pillar out there can’t see directly down at us, but those that are on the other side of Margleknot space can look down at us from the other side of the sky. And they do. That’s how Morbion took over the Evil forces of Margleknot; through extensive, open spying and being just shy of bad enough to demand to be overthrown.

“Everything you’ve done is already known, and known well. And what’s worse is that you didn’t kill the time worm as well as you should have. If you would have killed it properly then we might have had a different sort of conversation when you came back to Da'luwe—” Eldawae paused as he frowned, then he calmed himself and said, “Most of what I do is an act, but it was a whole lot easier to be ambivalent when I had some Evil in my soul. You erased that… But you also erased a great deal of the problems of this land while giving us a whole lot more.

“I digress.

“The time worm is still the main weapon of Da'luwe. That’s where the majority of my original soul is located. That’s where I keep my main phylactery, which is also tied down with all the Contracts from Wraithborne. Did you go digging deep into the ground, to pull the whole thing up? No. You stopped after a mere ten-or-whatever kilometers below the surface.”

Erick rapidly realized a few things. He let Eldawae say them all, though, as he simply answered the man, “I dug up the worm far enough to know that there was no end to him. The body was sand and dirt past a certain length and depth.”

“Following the track of that beast is not easy. I would have thought you would have tried, anyway.” Eldawae said, “The time worm’s heart was located at the bottom of Da'luwe. When you killed me, that heart was shifted out into the Endless about five days low-spireward— You don’t know— That’s the direction the Fae Enclave points down.” He pointed. “That way.”

Erick shrugged. “I would have said ‘southeast’, but that doesn’t matter here, I guess.”

Eldawae scrunched his eyebrows together, as if debating if Erick was an idiot or not. “… The heart is that way. My most precious memories are that way. Those would be my conquering and city-building soul fragments. You seem to have restored some of that to me, here, but not my entirety. That Eldawae will crash into this city like the wrath of the Wraithborne Tower itself, with the time worm at his command, unless you go kill him and the time worm directly. Any other talk beyond the death of that executioner’s axe does not matter.”

Erick waved a hand, saying, “I’m not going away that easily. How about we discuss changing the manaminer of this land into something better for everyone? We could also discuss your future plans for this land. How about you put up a giant white pillar?” Erick smiled. “Do the Benevolence-thing full force?”

Okay.

Why was Erick smiling?

He was happy. Honestly, though. Erick was probably being a bit too mirthful about this, but everything happening here was good, even if it wasn’t Good. Everyone here would be fine, even if there was an adjustment period full of hard emotions and anger.

Eldawae noticed Erick’s mirth, too. He scowled, “And what is so delightful?”

“First off: Anyone who wants to ascend can probably make it back here in a century or even just a decade. You all need to stop thinking that I killed everyone. Your sister is still alive out there, Eldawae, and there’s a lot of her, too. She went out to a lot of people to try and help them ascend. Secondly: You have an overabundance of resources and a bunch of high-powered people to use them. Build a good foundation for whatever sorts of life you want to come next. Thirdly: I don’t think Wraithborne is coming after you. I spoke with some of them before I got dropped here, and they said that the cost of doing business with me was probably going to be the eradication of a few towns. You got what appears, to you, to be the short end of the stick, but there are depths here for you to use, if you should grasp them. I’m not even telling you to fight against Wraithborne.” Erick said, “So! How would one kill the time worm, for real?”

Eldawae sighed.

Violet Vondria and grey Kylychbech both looked down at Eldawae.

Eldawae said nothing. He just stared at Erick. Thinking.

So Vondria asked Erick, “How do I turn orc again?”

“Honestly, you will figure it out. It’s pretty instinctual.” Erick said, “But in a more directed-help sort of way: Polymorph is about changing who you are on the inside to become who you want to be on the outside. Most of the time I’m human-shaped because I like connecting to others as human. You’re still a dragon shape because you now consider ‘dragon’ to be your baseline; ‘dragon’ is comfortable. Hang out with enough small people and you’ll simply want to be able to fit through doors, so you’ll turn small in order to do that.”

Vondria frowned a little bit as she thought—

Kylychbech suddenly changed into a 4-meter tall elven man with 10 brilliantly-grey wings floating behind him. He stood there, looking at his hands. Erick mostly wondered how the hell he had wings floating behind him, unattached, but that was some quirk of magic and power, no doubt. Perhaps they were aura-based physical manifestations of power, too. That seemed pretty reasonable to Erick as an explanation… And yet… Hmm.

Eldawae looked at Kylychbech too. “… How are you supporting 10 wings? That’s a supernatural power of our kind, and you are not us.”

“Ah! Good! I was wondering that, too,” Erick said. “But dragons are inherently magical. That’s likely most of the explanation. What is your species called, anyway?”

Eldawae said, “Winged Astraelif. Void-fliers, in common parlance.”

Kylychbech looked at his wings, fluffing them out and controlling them as part of himself. He rotated the order of pairs, and then pushed them out far and then drew them in. “This is… not who I was— Ah.” And then he transformed back into the man he had been, but with grey horns. He touched his head. “Horns?”

Eldawae frowned. “Also a lack of concern for nudity and an overabundance of desire for hedonism.”

Erick laughed. And then he said, “Let’s talk about killing your time-worm-self, and then I can leave and do that and come back later, after you’ve all had time to adjust somewhat, and probably to speak to Wraithborne. You were only making 50k resons per day, anyway, right? So just go low power for a while.”

Vondria said to Eldawae, “We’re likely not in that much trouble, sir.”

“… Perhaps this time will be different from the five other times I have tried to rebel from Wraithborne.” Eldawae said, disbelieving his own words.

Vondria and Kylychbech stared openly, disbelieving the entire implication.

Eldawae noticed. “Oh yes. We’ve tried rebelling before. Didn’t work, for several specific reasons, all of which thoroughly enjoy putting down rebellions. Their names are Jeron the Folder, Wright the Hallow, and Ravaughn the Black. All three are still active, and all three… That’s not even counting his Primes, or his Witches. Those are just the walking disasters; Morbion’s Adjusters.” Eldawae looked to Erick, and said, “We used to have connections to the Good lands out there, most specifically Paradise Rises. We lost that connection when Morbion shattered that part of Margleknot. Eventually, Wraithborne and Emperor Morbion came for us, just like he came for all the smaller places like ours out there. Honestly, we’ll go back to Wraithborne if they will let us. There are no Good lands out there to support us anymore, and the Celestial Observatory is overrun with Wraithborne anyway.”

Erick nodded. “Heard and understood. So about that time worm…”

- - - -

Erick held a tiny glowstone in his claws that had recently started pulsing light.

Four days of flying low-spireward at maybe 80% of the speed of light had gotten Erick here, to this otherwise uninteresting stretch of the Endless. Tan sands stretched as far as Erick’s dragon eyes could see, for while the atmosphere in the sky overhead was nonexistent, and thus able to be seen through, the atmosphere here at the surface of the Endless was dense enough to occlude vision. Erick guesstimated that he could only see about 450 kilometers out because of that. That was also why the grey light at Da'luwe had been visible, even though the actual city had been way, way too far to see; the light had risen above the atmosphere.

That light was gone now, but Erick knew the way back easily enough.

Kinda funny that he was still following a light source from Da’luwe.

The trinket in his claws pulsed a bit faster. Erick was getting to the time worm’s heart, and also a copy of Eldawae; the ‘Evil Eldawae’. ‘Not-so-Evil Eldawae’ had given him this bauble because it was tuned to the resonance of its creator, and that resonance transferred over all copies of the man. If Erick needed to he could find his way back to Da’luwe using this thing.

And as he flew, he thought of Good and Evil.

Erick hated the entire idea of Good and Evil as mana Elements. He was glad that Veird did not have these hated things.

Could evil be redeemed? Sure. Could Evil be redeemed? Not so sure. Was a good person good? Yes, absolutely. Was a Good person good, or were they following instincts, and did that matter that they were following basic instincts to be good and that they had no real control over their own actions? Erick wasn’t sure.

Apparently there was Elemental Justice out there, too, and whoa boy did Erick have a problem with that.

Erick wasn’t so sure about a lot of things when it came to Good and Evil. Were Evil people actually evil? Or were they just selfish assholes in the extreme? Well… The Wraithborne Tower’s overall example of Evil was more the ‘softly selfish’ type.

Erick was absolutely sure that the ‘absolute selfish’ type of Evil present in the slavery-parts of Wraithborne and the various Slaver-locations in Margleknot were the worst types of evil. Erick was glad he had not seen much of that yet. Just casual sapient cruelty and smaller Contract evils, so far. He still wasn’t quite sure what he would do if he saw some kings or whatever, like, cut off a person’s fingers and toes and then work their way inward. He had only seen that four times, but even once was too much. He had stopped every single one of those instances that he could, but—

The world ahead was different. The ground had rocks.

And then Erick flew past the rocks, and it was just more sand.

His thoughts turned back to the nature of Good and Evil.

- -

A month or so ago, Lionshard had spoken on the Elements of Good and Evil while he had been at Erick’s house.

“Good and Evil are what they’re called, but those are perhaps misnomers,” Lionshard had said. “I only say ‘perhaps’ because there is very real power in using them as they were intended. A Good person empowers themselves when they are good in whichever way they desire. An Evil person is the same. And what is perhaps worse, is that the battle between Good and Evil is a source of fantastic power on both sides… But I can see you dislike this topic, so let us move on.”

Erick had chuckled, saying, “You can tell that much, eh?”

Lionshard had grinned. “I can tell a lot about a lot!”

- -

Erick was still mulling over the topic of Good and Evil and how they were situated against each other and how they were ‘sources of fantastic power’ when they went to war with each other. It reminded him of the time that Rozeta had told him to think about ending the Forever War between the demons and the angels of Veird by Establishing some Big Important Casus Belli, and then finding out a way to work that Casus Belli into something that could be ‘fixed’ through friendly competition, or something, instead of the Forever War.

Erick wondered if Rozeta had known about Good and Evil back then. Had she been asking Erick to Establish the angels or demons as Good and Evil, or the other way around? Maybe she had been addled to forget Good and Evil in the Painted Cosmology and this Fractured Cosmology, and she was merely dredging up thoughts from a whole universe ago that weren’t fully formed. Erick wanted to believe the second possibility. He did not believe that Rozeta would want to bring Good and Evil to Veird. If that was true, then she could have done that herself through the Script…

Or maybe her hands were tied in that way, because of the God Pact.

Erick thought, and he flew.

- - - -

The world ahead was different. Rocks, yes, but soon after that Erick’s glowstone bauble started to strobe and Erick saw the lip of a smoking crater kilometers wide. He dropped the bauble in the sand next to an arrangement of rocks so he could find it easily later, and then he proceeded forward, flying over the crater, shrinking down into a person once again as he zeroed in on Eldawae down below.

Or at least the being he assumed was Eldawae.

A great core of golden crystal lay at the bottom of the crater. The light of Margleknot’s unseen suns beat down relentlessly upon that stone, and the stone beat in turn. Gold light pulsed outward, and Eldawae stood atop the stone like a dark spot standing on an entire grand hoard of treasure, pulling in that golden light in streamers, turning gold to black before it reached his black wings and his skin. Gold crystals grew from his joints, but it didn’t remain gold. That crystal flashed to black now and then, only to be overwhelmed with gold, to ebb and flow between the two extremes as Eldawae pulled in more and more power.

His eyes were closed, and he was focused.

He was converting the power of the crystal into Evil within himself. He was cultivating.

… Or maybe accreting. Probably both and then a few other things besides.

Erick lowered down into the crater to float 25-ish meters away from Eldawae. And then he waited.

Eldawae cracked open an eye. And then he closed his eye again. “… You cannot win this war. You are aware of this, and yet you persist. It is vexing.”

“I do persist; correct.” Erick asked, “What makes you so sure I can’t win this war?”

“Because Evil is larger than you, and we’ve had bigger enemies than you for our entire existence. The War is Neverending.”

“Ah. You think I’m going to war with Evil. This is incorrect thinking. You are correlating causations instead of seeing it how it is. Redemption is a core tenet of Benevolence, and everyone is in need of redemption sometimes, including Good people. After I’m done with you and Da’luwe I hope to go back to the Celestial Observatory and knock some heads around to clean them up, too.”

Without opening his eyes, Eldawae said, “Your plans sound Good in their effect and thus you sound deluded in multiple ways. You are Good, and you won’t admit that.”

“I’m perfectly fine with you being a selfish asshole, Eldawae. You want to have an empire of degeneracy and good times, while people fight for your amusement out there on the field? Do that. But you will see that everyone consents of their own free will and that they have the absolute best health care that magic can make, and that those sorts of things are only small parts of the overall society you control. What I’m not fine with is you letting your charges and those below you know pain because of your negligence.” Erick said, “And so, you need to die, since we’ve already got the semi-decent version of you back there and we don’t need this evil version of you, here.” Erick continued, “But, if I kill you here and now, I assume that your soul will fly to the Eldawae in the city and connect with him to make yourself whole, and this one here will overtake that one there.” Erick said, “It’s really quite ingenious of yourself, to make that one back there the ‘good’ one and this one the Evil one. The good one is very good at getting people into a working system. He has probably gotten Da'luwe back in working order a few times in the past, only to have you come in and kill him and take over completely.” Erick Looked at him. “I didn’t see it back there, but I definitely see the shape of it all right now.”

Eldawae frowned, and then he stopped cultivating/accreting. He opened his eyes and flared his 6 wings before dropping his wings back behind him, and saying, “It is also rather vexing that you have such a well-crafted insight into others and their internal magics. I suppose I should have expected nothing less from a Father of Margleknot. So what are you going to do now?”

“Do you want to be redeemed?”

“No thank you.”

“Would you fight your forced redemption?”

“Yes.”

Erick breathed in, then out, and spoke, “You will lose.”

His voice vibrated the sands, echoing out in a wave of power that crashed into a golden/black shield surrounding Eldawae and the heart of the time worm, passing them by without touching them at all. They were already deep in the philosophical Wizard War of the moment, but that had been Erick’s first real attack.

Eldawae responded by blackening the sky and turning the entire crater into the insides of the time worm, massive white teeth layering down the dark insides of the monster all around. They were like tusks undulating backward, downward, turning the world below into a continual tunnel of swallowing death, and the sky into the death of hope. The sky was a dot of white, and then the sky closed off as the time worm’s mouth shut. The only light was the gold from Eldawae’s now-floating crystal. That light glinted on the teeth overhead as those teeth crashed closed as the beast swallowed, a wave of teeth coming for Erick as the walls closed in.

Erick lit up the darkness with his [Lodestar] form, and then lit up the time worm with a reson-empowered [Reincarnation].

A lightning bolt came crashing—

- - - -

Erick sat on the ledge of a sandbox with red wood walls and dunes the size of mountains out there in the dirt, and yet, they weren’t the size of mountains at all. They were just small dunes, no larger than Erick’s ankles.

The sand moved a little.

Erick picked up the worm under the dunes and held it up to the light. “Hello, little time worm.”

The time worm looked at Erick with its maw-like face, its million eyes blinking around its body as it looked down at Erick’s palm. And then it seemed to frown—

The moment flickered.

Suddenly the time worm was ten meters long and staring down at Erick, its maw open a meter wide, power flowing out of the beast like desiccating desert wind as it boomed, “I’m bigger than you.”

Erick easily asked, “Do you want to be? It’s easier to be full if you’re smaller. Lots more food for small things than for large things.”

“Small things prey. I not prey. Bad bargain.”

The spell flickered again.

The time worm was a kilometer long and staring down at Erick with a maw 10 meters wide.

… Erick seemed to be losing control of the spell.

Not the first time that this had ever happened. That time he [Reincarnation]ed Oozy was the first instance Erick had ever experienced a [Reincarnation] differently than expected, but then again, using resons to empower this magic was already a different experience altogether, with this weird sort of talking space. The time worm was throwing everything off, though. It was making this here a Wizard fight.

Probably because the time worm was a small god.

Erick asked, “What do you want in your next life?”

The worm said, “I reject your call for a next life. I am the god of these sands. This is my land and no others shall have it.” The worm grew to be as Endless as the desert in which it lived. Its maw could consume mountains. It stared down at Erick with contempt, saying, “There is no winning against me. There are only those who I allow to live until they get big enough to eat, and those who manage to run faster than the slowest of them.”

“Ah. So you’ve been corrupted to eat mindlessly.”

The time worm looked down at Erick.

And then it shrunk a fraction.

Erick said, “I’ve seen how you eat. I killed you once by drowning you, and you liked it. You have been broken in some way, and I am here to fix you, because you haven’t allowed anyone to escape you at all. Not in a long time. You have eaten and eaten and eaten, without care for the habitat you have created. All you produce is death without hope for life. An end, without any restart of any new beginnings.”

The worm shrunk some more. It was merely a kilometer long now, and its maw was merely 10 meters wide.

“I’ve already put up some weather out there that will run permanently, unless someone disrupts it. That weather will create new life in these Endless sands. Do you want to be the guardian of that weather? I put a bunch of little frogs out there that serve smaller, similar functions of recreating that grand storm of life if it should fail. But if you want to have the power to bring life as well as death to all, I can give that to you. Wouldn’t that be a better balance for your gluttonous needs?”

The worm listened.

The worm shrunk back down to Erick’s hand.

With a voice that filled the world, the time worm asked, “And what do you want in return?”

“Allow for intruders to steal from you. Not all of them. I would never ask that of you. But some of them. The respectful ones. Leave alone the hearts of their civilizations, that live beyond the absolute bounty of your absolute territory. Leave the respectful ones to grow and thrive, and to bring more bounty into your lands for you to feast upon.”

The time worm seemed to smile in Erick’s hand.

Golden light crackled all around.

“I accept this bargain.”

- - - -

—a lightning bolt tore through the flesh of the time worm to strike Eldawae off of the golden crystal core of the monster. That bolt of Benevolence aimed for Erick, and Erick was ready. Golden power flowed through him like the desert wind and Erick sent off spell impressions in that passage. The gold crystal began to fragment and flow in the lightning and then suddenly it was gone, taken by the lightning.

All of the swallowing throat of the time worm simply vanished. The sky returned. Light returned.

The crystal was gone. The lightning vanished, too, headed toward the storm lands.

And Eldawae’s groaning body lay on the sands of the crater to the side.

Erick hit him with a normal [Reincarnation] while he was down, transforming him into himself, but without any Evil to him. It was a challenge to find a version of the old lich that had anything approaching a good future; much more challenging than the other Eldawae inside the city. This new version of Eldawae was geared toward accounting, and maybe possibly fatherhood. In a pure power sort of sense it was technically a step down from the many, many, many versions of him that were conquering kings and slave masters and Evil incarnate, but accounting was nice and safe and Erick approved. He also had some subtly-gold wings, but more off-white than anything. Not really gold at all. All the better to tell them apart.

Carrying this Eldawae back to Da’luwe in his claws made the Eldawae-search beacon useless, but Erick knew his way forward well enough.

- - - -

When Eldawae regained consciousness after an hour of flight he said nothing. A few hours later he asked for some nice seating, or something, because claws were terrible for a ride. Erick conjured up a nice bird-cage like palanquin for the man that Erick held in his front claws easily enough.

And then Eldawae went silent in thought.

On day 2 of the flight, Eldawae asked, “I… Need some water.”

“Ah! Right!” Erick said, “Let me just…” He did some fast spellwork. “Here.”

He handed a glass bottle to the man.

“… That was no reson-empowered spellwork at all. You really can create water from nothing.”

“Technically, no. That was actually a complicated act of magic. Pure water is bad for biology… or at least I assume as much, since everyone in this universe seems to have the same-ish kind of biology for whatever reason, but that’s where I started. That’s some moisture from my breath and then copied a bunch and purified with [Cleanse]. The glass comes from sand dust in the air, similarly copied and then molded. But pure water is bad, so I took some salts, calcium, and magnesium from various sources and added them in. It should taste like normal water.”

“It does,” Eldawae said, already halfway through his first bottle.

Erick set down four extra bottles of water into the carriage.

Eldawae sighed as he leaned back. He looked up at Erick, at his wings, at his neck, at his claws, and then he sighed, and asked, “What did you do to my city while I was gone?”

“A lot.” Erick added, “And you’re still there, you know.”

Eldawae frowned. “I wish you would have taken my offer of simply leaving Da’luwe. I hinted at it enough.”

“Why would I ever leave behind a disaster and possible enemies? I’m trying to make friends here.” Erick gazed out at the stretched desert all around, the landscape blurring due to how fast they were moving in this bubble of Benevolence. “I think I made a friend out of the time worm. Or at least something better than what came before. It might not bother anyone who is respectful toward it, and it’ll probably expand the stormlands. Not sure about that, though. Whatever the case, you’ll get a lot more water, now.”

“… Is that what you did to it?”

“I’m not sure what I did to it, exactly. It was more of a bargaining. I gave it the power to make life where before all it could do was eat, and in exchange it will allow respectful people to steal from it.”

Eldawae sighed, “I suppose that’s as good as my solution… For now.” He asked, “Do you know why the price tag for 1 person to escape this land is 1,000,000 resons?”

“Not really. I assume this land is the furthest away from Margleknot that one can get, which is why I was dropped here. ‘Furthest’, in this context, means at the ‘bottom of possible return’.”

“Adequate enough.” Eldawae said, “Conscious life generates resons. The overall lack of conscious life in this land is what makes it difficult to return to Margleknot from here. Planting a wide swath of ever-giving-storms onto this land won’t change much right now, but when Da’luwe’s population expands, and when people start simply living out here, many things will happen. It’ll probably take 10,000 years, but we’ll rise closer to the Layer 0, and if the time worm’s new existence proves truly amenable to life, then we might crest high enough to get a natural portal to Layer 0 in our lands.”

Eldawae said all that in a disappointed sort of way.

He would miss his desert.

Erick said, “That sounds like a positive thing, though.”

“… And I am weirdly agreeing with you.” Eldawae said, “Benevolence is truly accomplished at Soul Magic, isn’t it. Usually I would be hating you for trying to disrupt my Endless. I like the desert… But I do not find the idea of green land unappealing… Somewhat.”

Erick smiled. “Unless they’ve destroyed Da'luwe while I was gone you might like what that place looks like now, too.”

- - - -

It took 3 more days with Erick speaking to Eldawae about this and that, before Erick found Da’luwe.

The obsidian spires that formed a knife wall were no more. They had been capped in white stone and had doubled in height. The illusions of the city were completely down, too.

Eldawae gasped. “He put it back!?”

Erick smiled to himself and continued to fly past the white-knife wall, but slower. Slow enough to let Eldawae see this blast from the past, and also to see the land himself. Erick looked down at one of his Benevolence towers and saw people living beside it. Eldawae saw it, too. Someone had built ditches to divert the extra water into fields. Orchards and grains were already growing in those fields.

Erick smiled. “Not bad for only 10 days of being gone.”

And then the main city started to come into view. White spires, wide roads. Green trees growing by cultivated rivers. Sparkling white domes dotted the lands. It looked like a ghost town but it held no ghosts except for old memories.

Eldawae gripped the side of his palanquin, half his body out of the carrying case, his off-white wings flexing out from his body, filling the space behind him as he whispered, “It’s impossible. I would never have put it back… Not even the smallest bit.”

Erick said, “And that is correct. I told you I sent your sister away. I saw this in her memories. I did this, but only about half. Looks like they’ve been busy since I’ve been away. Maybe all it took was someone giving you some real hope for the future for you to go and do the rest yourself?”

Eldawae was speechless.

Erick smiled and transformed into a person. He held aloft Eldawae’s carriage with some aura work, saying, “Care to see it from ground level?”

Eldawae rolled out of the carriage to fall down, wings spreading wide. Erick held the carriage behind him and followed the man forward. He set the thing down behind him once he got close enough to the ground.

Vondria and Kylychbech and the other Eldawae stood there in the fountain-courtyard of the central city, waiting. The Eldawae Erick had brought landed in front of them. Erick smiled, listening, as the four new leaders of Da’luwe rapidly spoke of large and small events, the city-Eldawae flexing his bone-white wings, while the war-Eldawae flexed his off-white wings. Vondria and Kylychbech were reluctant to talk with the new Eldawae, but then the first Eldawae introduced them, and they started talking like a town council. They were also avoiding the main topic, in Erick’s mind.

So Erick asked them of the manaminer of the city, and if they were positive flow yet, and if Wraithborne was coming to call.

Vondria frowned.

Kylychbech declared, “Damn Wraithborne! We’re free now. I don’t want to go back.”

“It’s not that simple,” First Eldawae said—

As Second Eldawae said, “We have to go back.”

Vondria spoke more openly, with actionable words, “We’re tentatively establishing payment contracts with Wraithborne and trying to get terms that don’t put us under actual Contracts, but Wraithborne wants actual Contracts, as always. They’re holding off on legal action for now—”

“Legal! Bah!” Kylychbech said. “The only legality they have is one of power!”

“— but they want us to resume production as soon as possible in order to avoid delinquency.” Vondria stressed, “We want to avoid delinquency. They’ll send Adjusters if we fall into delinquency.”

“How much?” Erick asked.

“45,000 resons per day from now until eternity,” First Eldawae said.

“And how much are you making through mana production gathered from the manaminer?” Erick said, “Literally all life makes mana, and there’s a lot more life out there than before, even with the loss of people.”

The three residents of Da’luwe looked a little ashamed.

The new Eldawae said, “They don’t have the codes to work the manaminer, which is why I was amazed that you got the white-capped wall up and active again.”

First Eldawae said, “I have some of the codes.”

Second Eldawae said, “Let’s go fix the miner; open it up to more sources.” And then he looked to Erick, saying, “And then I would appreciate you gone.”

The other three people were less solid about any desire to get Erick gone, but they didn’t say anything. Second Eldawae noticed this, too, but all he did was arch an eyebrow at them. They’d be talking in private later, for sure.

Erick smiled. “I’ll move on shortly enough. There are people who want reincarnations, though, and I’m going to give those to them.” Erick stepped into the air, saying, “See you soon.”

- - - -

Erick felt the change in the air about an hour into his reincarnations. He was currently at the highspireward side of Da’luwe, transforming a rough-looking bull man into a much better looking man, because he asked for that, when the air flickered. It didn’t interrupt his magic, but Erick’s attention was split for a moment. Erick got back on track, finished up, and inspected the air.

It felt…

Nicer, somehow

He felt something try to connect to him. He denied it, but it kept trying to connect, so Erick kept denying it. He knew what it was, but the bull-man’s wife, who wanted to be right there with her husband, got a notification that surprised her. She shared that notification. It was just simple words in the air; no blue box at all.

Welcome to Da’luwe

Power tithe is active

And that was it.

Erick let the husband wake, the two of them looked at each other in amazement and wonder, and then Erick fixed up the wife. Two new bull-people now lived in Da’luwe, and they were thrilled about that. They were not ‘minotaurs’, though. They didn’t know that word and Erick got the impression that they were lying, but also that what they called themselves was something cultural that he didn’t need to step into. So he let it go.

Other people got reson-[Reincarnation]ed and sent off far, far away from Da’luwe.

Eventually, Erick made it back to the main city.

As soon as they saw the new numbers on power production and reson conversion they had all been worried in different ways. They weren’t anywhere near making the daily payment.

The 45k reson bill per day from Wraithborne was due, and if they didn’t pay then they went to collections. Erick’s little Benevolence Towers were doing work, but not enough. Slimes were already spawning out there, but the estimated 15,000 slimes only made 10,000 mana per day, and that was 1,000 resons per day at Margleknot 10-to-1 conversion rates.

Erick tried to give them a [Reson Gathering], but Eldawae and Eldawae both demanded he dissolve that spellwork and never use it in their presence ever again. Such a thing would make them a target. So instead, Erick spent the next several days making some basic Benevolence slime dungeons. It was a much cleaner solution than the [Reson Gathering].

Erick ended up spending another week there in Da’luwe before he decided that this was more than enough help to get them settled. The 4 council members of the city were more than capable of doing everything on their own.

And then an Adjuster showed up.

Jeron the Folder was a person made of paper, and he had dropped out of the sky directly over Da’luwe and come down to land in the central courtyard. Erick had noticed him right away, since he had been eating an apple and sitting beside the fountain when the man had shown up. Erick hadn’t known who he was at first; all he had known was that the best thing for him to do for that particular hour of the day had been to sit by the fountain. And so, Erick followed his Lightning Path because he was running out of things to do anyway. All the paper-guy did was look around and send out pulses of magic. Erick did wave at him, though. The paper guy nodded to Erick, and then continued to work his book magic.

45-ish minutes later, the council of Da’luwe showed up to prostrate themselves before Jeron the Folder.

Jeron declared, “Do not bother me. I am seeking truth.”

Erick bothered him, speaking up, “What kinda truth?”

With a much nicer tone, Jeron said, “Just some paperwork, Ascended Flatt. Everything looked in good order the first time I checked, but I am quintuple checking.”

Erick nodded.

And then Jeron the Folder handed out some decrees of non-Contract contracts, a re-establishing of inmate dumping, and some trade agreements, and then he pulled himself inside-out and vanished.

The party that night was as grand as the 17 residents of the main city could make it. They told Erick to do nothing, for they wanted to treat him. Erick appreciated the thought, and he got some more of those wonderful little tri-berry tarts.

Erick stayed for 3 more days.

They asked him to stay longer.

But Erick could not.

Tomorrow he would use 1,000,000 resons to get back to Layer 0.

But there was a delay.

One final voice appeared to say something.

- - - -

Erick flew out from Da’luwe knowing he would not be back. He had already said his goodbyes. The city was intact and well-functioning. The light in the sky was back, and perhaps it was a lighter shade of grey than before, but only the most well-trained eye could tell such a thing. Da’luwe was still tied to Wraithborne, and that was the smart move for them. For now.

With wings spread wide, Erick flew to a storm on the horizon.

The time worm floated in the air and in the ground. It was shorter than before, but its eyes that ringed its maw were clearer, and gold. The minor god of the Endless was a lot more than what it had been before, and it looked good on them.

Erick hovered before the non-monster’s maw, saying, “Greetings. What brings you out here?”

“THANKS.”

And then the time worm turned away and traveled through the raining sky and the green-growing ground like it was all ground. It passed over lakes it had created, it jumped down into the ground, and when the final trail of its body passed, that which lay above the ground turned to storm and that which lay below the ground turned to rock. Great big glowing mushrooms grew upon that rock.

Gradually, the time worm passed into the far, far distance, taking its storms with it, and the sun came back out. The mushrooms dried in the sun and sent spores into the air. The grasses dried and turned to dust, to eventually become soil. The little lakes dried out, but they left behind silt laden with the possibility of life.

The passing of the worm brought terrible devastation and bounty, and left behind something that would one day hold the seeds to flourish in the next storm.

Erick watched it all for a while.

And then he turned inward, concentrating on a gathering of a million resons, which was only an estimate of how much it would take, feeling something ephemeral and solid begin to encase him. In accordance with how Eldawae had explained it, Erick concentrated, and all too soon Erick felt it. The rut of Layer 1. The deep hole that he existed within right now.

He also looked around himself and saw something that reminded him of his meetings with Phagar.

Erick was in a very dark part of a fractal splash. Here he was, at the bottom of a well, looking up at the Margleknot sky high, high overhead, where so very many different slices of Layer 0 existed all next to each other. Down here in Layer 1 is where people fought and died and thrived. Up there is where people fought and lived and grew. Only one thing really separated Layer 1 from Layer 0, the possibility of real violence. That was a large division. It took a lot to overcome that, and here, at the bottom of the well, was where the most violence was to be had.

Erick reached upward, toward lands that were too far away, climbing nonetheless. He flew, he moved, he ran up a hill that was steeper than physically possible, vibrating until he climbed up the walls of the very fabric of the universe, reaching the lip overhead—

- - - -

And Erick popped into a deep-blue sort of darkness, high, high above green lands that sat in valleys between crystal-spire mountains, under a star-filled sky. There was no sun here. Instead, illuminated clouds lay in collected banks here and there, bringing light to the green land and to the crystal spaces above.

Erick was back on Layer 0, in the Celestial Observatory.

He checked his Status, looking at how much his Darkness had grown in those various acts in Da’luwe, and how high his resources had grown in the break.

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 80.82m per day / 935.51 per second , [Darkness Level = 5.51x Ascension baseline]

Body: 479

Mind: 571

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+851, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 761.21m/∞, ↑ [+290, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 744.81m/∞, ↑ [+280, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 743.27m/∞, ↑ [+280, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 23.79m [+84.19 = +9.35]

He would probably need a lot more than what he had in his tank if he ended up using [Grand Reincarnation] in such a large way again. But Veird wasn’t in any trouble right now, as far as Erick knew, so he could take it a bit slow. That’s why he had spent so much time helping out at Da’luwe, aside from the fact he needed the break, too.

Erick spread his black wings wide and went exploring this tarnished land of Good.

Someone around here probably had news about Veird, and if not, then Yggdrasil was here, so—

A message appeared.

Welcome back, Father.

Erick smiled. “Hello, Yggdrasil. I was just thinking about you.”

Want a portal home?

“Not yet. I believe I have business here. Thanks, though.”

Good luck! Love you.

Erick smiled, saying, “Love you, too.”

And then he flew on.