Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick stepped out of swirling gold and green, onto a land that looked rather Veird-normal or maybe Earth-normal, but different. The buildings were made of stone, or maybe even concrete, and the windows were glass. The road was paved with bricks of varying grey colors that formed a nice pattern leading up to grand and semi-grand cathedrals in the distance. People were everywhere, and Erick stood upon a ‘Teleport Square’ of sorts.

Portals opened and shut all around Erick, disgorging people out of this crossroads or letting people leave.

“Please move along!” flapped some large red goo-like person, sitting upon a pedestal situated to the side of the portal square. And then it pointed toward Erick and his companion, “Please move along. This means you.”

Shadow moved forward, saying, “We really have a lot to be doing besides this.”

“Yes,” Erick said, already walking forward, enjoying the fact that no one recognized him. He wasn’t wearing his horns right now and he was simply a 2 meters tall human-person, and his soul was hidden. He still expected someone to instantly say something; to spot him, to out him. That didn’t instantly happen, though! Erick stepped onto the road to the churches, alongside Shadow, saying, “But this is on the list, and while I want to be your ally, you are not empowered in the necessary ways right now, and I want to build my House, and so we’re here.”

“… When you answered my message I assumed we’d be having a long talk. Not that I’d get asked about my current inadequacy and then get an invite to go talk to some piddling little gods.”

Shadow was a former goddess of creation. She was the one who first forged a link between the Darkness and Something Else, thus making the Painted Cosmology. She was also a former Goddess of Magic, the great-great-a-lot grandmother of both Melemizargo and Nothanganathor, a person whom Erick hoped would be a fantastic ally, and a whole lot more besides. She was also Just Shadow, and right now that meant she could not help Erick how he needed to be helped, for he needed a god, and Shadow was, quite firmly, a former god. She even looked rather mortal right now. Gone were the deep shadows around her body, and the light in her eyes was merely the light around her; that much was a show, though. She was pretty good at blending in, physically, but not so much mentally. At least right now.

Erick couldn’t really blame her for that. He had kinda swept her up in his own designs.

“I’m skipping all that talk and moving on,” Erick said, “Because I’m rather certain that you and I would have a more productive time actually being productive in a goal, rather than sitting around talking to each other. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m working to make the unkillables approve of me in order for them to withdraw their approval of that guy, collapsing his support structure and making it so I don’t have armies of your kind working against me, rather than for me… Or whatever vague sorts of threats they’d do if I went back and fought that guy directly.”

“A continual stream of 10 to 100 of ‘my kind’ constantly trying to kill you is correct,” Shadow said. And then she mocked, “Look at that! I’m being helpful already, and would do more if you would talk to me.”

Erick eyed her a little, saying, “Your method hasn’t gotten you far. I would like to try my methods and I would like your help, since you cannot access the Waiting Room like you used to. In doing such help, we learn to work together to achieve good ends, and maybe you can get some goodwill back among your kind. The goal is to establish a wing of my House here, and thus have people working for the good of our shared home even when we’re not here. I would have you as a part of that House.”

He had already explained this before, though admittedly it had only been a 5 minute ‘hey I’m doing this, want to come along?’ sort of conversation.

Shadow had already heard this before.

Erick hoped that this time the message would actually stick.

Shadow rolled her eyes. “Fine fine fine, Apparently you’re the King. So we do this your way.”

They were speaking in slight code so they could go incognito for a little while. Or at least Shadow had picked up on that, and she was following Erick’s lead well enough that he couldn’t tell her off.

“Appreciated,” Erick said, looking around.

Priests and proselytizers stood on short stone risers outside the front of every church and other sort of structure dotting the road ahead, while the sky overhead was pale blue with a single sun. ‘The Mortal Lands’ was similar to the Celestial Observatory on the outside of the ‘dyson sphere’ that was Margleknot, in that it was on the interior of the main shell, while the Observatory was on the outside. There was no Margleknot sky here. All of that spatially-altered place was located on a different slice of Layer 0.

These Mortal Lands were perhaps how Erick would have thought to continue building FENRIR, if Nothanganathor weren’t ‘locked’ inside.

Erick couldn’t see the land on the other side of the sphere, unfortunately, but he could fly up, theoretically, and look at the nearest thousand kilometers. This land even had a day/night cycle, unlike the Endless desert. That was achieved through some sort of translucent bubble around the sun that turned opaque in a 15 hour cycle, with 15 hours of light and then 15 hours of dark. Erick wasn’t sure about what was going on up there or how it worked, but the small description of all of that in Yggdrasil’s Guidebook suggested that opaqueness was some sort of energy-gathering thing, perhaps technologically-based.

The sun right now looked bright, yet it was getting darker. It was afternoon according to a clocktower at the end of the street where the street split into two more streets, so that made sense. When that clock struck an hour to dark, then the sun overhead would rapidly begin to turn dark in hexagonal markers in a moving crescent, the whole thing vanishing over the course of an hour like a moon rapidly turning phases. It was already doing that, actually. The sun looked kinda like a squashed circle. It would get more squished as the day went on.

Erick wanted to watch that transition happen. It was an impressive feat of engineering and magic and technology, for sure.

When the sky turned dark, he might be able to see some of the lands on the other side, bathed in light. Unless clouds rolled in. It never really got dark in the Mortal Lands because the sun was always still there in some capacity, unless clouds rolled in.

Erick felt a deep pang of homesickness as he thought of Jane, and maybe Beth. They’d love to explore this place. Maybe not the Mortal Lands, for this place was filled with people in the way that America or any first world nation back on Earth was filled with people; violence happened, but it was rare. War here was like war back on Earth. But in the rest of Margleknot? On Layer 1 Mortal Lands? Now that place was a disaster zone. People always tried to win more lands there, and the war never ended. Layer 1 anywhere was filled with danger.

Layer 1 was more Jane’s style.

Or maybe Jane and Beth would go to the Celestial Observatory, and spend eternities diving into other worlds to help Good people with whatever disasters they were experiencing—

“What ya thinking about?” Shadow asked.

“My daughters. Home. The future...” Erick asked, “And now I’m wondering about what makes the Mantle of Darkness so special. I was warned against accidental divinity a few times. Seems like That Guy could have ascended that way if he wanted to.”

Shadow raised an eyebrow, then smirked, and said, “I believe I will let you find that out through the actions here today.” She gestured to the road ahead, at the priests on their pulpits and the parishioners on the path. “Pick a poison!”

“Sun gods.” Erick said, “I was told about one of them, but if you have a better idea then I’ll hear it.”

Shadow made a face. “I never was one for those kinds, but… I suppose you are.” She frowned a little. She thought. She looked around, and focused on a few different places. “Ikarothis is a decent sort. He’s a god of Undeath and Protection. He regularly deals in Waiting Room evacuations. Not a sun god, though. But he should fulfill the needs of the Waiting Room quest rather well.”

“… Hmm.”

Ikarothis’s temple was an austere cathedral of grey stone that looked like flowing fabrics layered upon pillars, and upon each other. The whole place looked sort of like a four-poster bed crossed with a normal cathedral, and it wasn’t very big, either. None of the places here were big, and that was by regulation. Ikarothis’s place didn’t take up its full lot, though, which Erick kinda respected.

Some of these places were like grand apartment buildings and places of worship all in one, their lands fully occupied as much as they could be with either ostentation, or priests living together. Erick kinda respected the apartment buildings more than he respected the giant places of worship… But then again, the people here were the ones who built these places, not the gods.

Erick glanced at his Lightning Path, as he often did, and decided that while Ikarothis would work for his desires, he wanted someone that he could maybe import to Veird. He didn’t want to step on Phagar’s toes, and Ikarothis seemed like he would be stepping on Phagar’s toes—

Erick had a sudden question.

“Are the gods of different cosmologies different? Can they work together?”

Shadow hummed, then said, “Big question, there. Gods are born in specific universes in a way that that universe designs them able to be born. In this universe, gods arise from individuals, and in that rising they gain the powers that their worshipers desire them to have while losing themselves in the process. In my… In my old universe, gods arose from common thought, divorced from any individual, though an individual might become crowned with the mantle of a god, and thus speak with that god’s might. I didn’t like people losing themselves, so I made it so that they didn’t lose themselves. Here, though, people lose themselves all the time. It’s the Curse of Power.”

Erick realized… “Ah. That’s why the Mantle of Magic is special. That guy could keep himself through that transformation.”

Shadow smirked. “Didn’t take your actions long to divine that answer.” She continued, “Anyway! It’s a lot more complicated than that, with gods in this universe being rather weak, seeing as they’re what people believe they are, and the gods of my universe being strong, because they’re often individuals with godly might at their call. But to move on and answer your other half of the question: Yes, gods can move and interact with other gods as their people move and interact with other people, and worship spreads. The minute you end the quarantine of V— our home, then people and powers will start moving back and forth. Unless you do a lot of controlling of thoughts, then whoever shows up will show up.”

Speaking of controlling thoughts…

Hmm.

Erick would leave the discussion of the Mark of the Fractal Universe inside [Telepathy] to another day.

He asked, “You read the dossier on me that went out, right?”

Shadow looked a little miffed. “Yes. I had to beg for one of those, though. V— Our home seems pretty… Unstable. But getting better.” She looked at him, put a hand on his shoulder, and stopped walking. She said, “Thank you. I did not know things were that bad down there.”

Erick smiled a little. “It’s getting better.”

Shadow let go, then nodded. She looked forward with renewed vigor in her sight, resuming their walk as she said, “Our home could use some specific gods, though. Otherwise the ones that show up will be whichever ones are feeling more expansionist than others.”

Erick grinned as he walked alongside an ancient fairy goddess, saying, “That was part of my reasoning today, too. What are your thoughts on Cascadio?”

Shadow made a little frown. Then she dropped the frown. “… He’s probably a good choice. Your son put you up to him, didn’t he?”

“He was one of the few mentioned, yes. The only one, actually.” Erick inclined his head toward a large sign with a bunch of god’s names and distances and directions to get those temples. “And he’s not listed here.”

“He wouldn’t be listed here. Cascadio is bigger than this place.” Shadow said, “Let’s go visit him.”

“He’s only part of the reason for visiting here, though. There are also gods of Trickery and Deceit that I would rather have on my side as opposed to that guy’s side.” Erick said, “Those gods are included alongside a bunch of other people on a list of known allies of that guy. Lots of little things I have to check off, here.” Erick asked her, “What would be the better pursuit right now? Investigating the allies of that guy, or going to Cascadio and trying to build the House?”

The question was a little test. Not a big one. It was just to see who Shadow was. There were no wrong answers here.

Shadow said, “I tried to do this all alone last time. That didn’t work. So yeah. Let’s go talk to Cascadio and get you some worker bees for your House expansion.”

Erick paused. He nodded. “Well okay.” He looked around. “He’s really not here? I kinda expected to see an office of his around here.” Erick gestured to the side, saying, “That place is a Sun God temple. Rona, the Goddess of the Healing Suns.”

“She’s a love goddess all about sex in the open sun and rather small besides.” Shadow said, “Atunir would not like her.”

“… There’s probably a whole bunch of portfolio overlap, eh?”

“Oh yeah.” Shadow turned around and began walking back. Erick walked with her, as she said, “Our home is pretty solid with divine influences as it is. I can only think of a few fragments of civilization that aren’t already represented.” She looked at him briefly. “The Sun is about the only one we should consider filling in right now.”

“I wasn’t going to invite Trickery and Deceit home. I did want to remove their backup of that guy up here, though.”

Shadow hummed a little, then said, “Later.”

They walked back to the ‘Teleport Square’.

- - - -

The crystal-like icicle of the Fae Enclave and its crossways silver beam of a Quantum Nexus Hub lay up there in the sky, in the center of it all, surrounded by a whole bunch of invisible suns.

And down here lay the Nexus Gardens.

Down here, the land was green and blue with colorful flowers and a brilliance to the air that reminded Erick a lot of Ar’Cosmos, or fae gatherings, except this brilliance was gold and the ambiance was one of mortal powers and godly oversight. If there were fae here, then they were just a part of the gatherings, joining in the revelry with mortals, while gods of all sorts held parties and jubilation.

It was an eternal garden/jungle/mansion/high-class/low-class party.

Erick and Shadow popped into existence outside of a specific gathering taking place on hundreds of small islands that were only technically islands, but each one was only a meter from each other one, and the waters separating those islands was only a meter deep. Each individual island had people talking and laughing or listening to music or reading with each other, or sleeping in beds or doing any thousand of other activities. Erick imagined that the sleeping areas were the only quiet places, because otherwise there was a soft music in the air that was kinda lively, but not too lively. Erick looked across the large area from this taller, entrance island, and saw places where people were partying down. Other islands had orgies, because of course there were orgies.

There were always orgies when it came to gods.

And in the center of it all lay a grand golden island, raised higher than the rest. A muscular-dad sort of man with dark skin and wearing a toga of gold, reclined on a couch on the top center of that island, and though he did not shine like a sun, he certainly had that sort of aura about him. He laughed with what looked to be friends, as they all drank from golden goblets and ate food off of golden plates, as they spoke of this or that in obvious mirth.

That man was Cascadio, for sure, and Erick already liked the guy.

Shadow did not approve of him, scowling a little, saying, “He’s too bubbly.”

“What are his domains?”

“ ‘Portfolios’, when it comes to gods,” Shadow said, stepping down the stairs, onto the lush grasses of the entrance island of Cascadio’s cavalcade. Erick followed, and Shadow continued, “Gods have influence depending on how their worshipers recognize that influence here in this cosmology, so there is a lot of room for overlap of all types of gods, but we call those influences ‘portfolios’. In my cosmology there were major portfolios, of which there was only ever one of each specific kind. There was always more room for countless minor sparks of those major portfolios, though, and that system created avatars of the major gods. Sometimes those personal manifestations of the major gods were individuals granted power by the major gods, who then went on to become major gods in their own right, and other times they were attempted usurpers of the throne of the major god.” She waved a hand all over the place, saying, “All of this is so much different, though. Gods here are so much weaker… In an absolute sense.”

Erick stepped across a small river, only a meter wide, and set foot on a different rising island closer to the center of the Cavalcade. The entrance island was filled with the soft music of the Cavalcade, but this island was a raucous party and the music was loud and booming. Erick kinda liked it. Shadow kept up.

Neither of them said anything as they kept to the side of the large dance floor and what looked to be choreographed musical numbers… But Erick kinda wanted to join in. He even saw a spot for him, and one for Shadow, right between the main dancer there and those backups over there. The lead dancer winked at Erick, and Erick smiled back, while he also checked his Status. The magic of this place was ‘attacking’ him, but not really. The ‘attack’ was only 1 extra Health and Psyche per second, so Erick easily ignored it. A lot of people outside of the main musical number were ignoring the call to fill that void, too, drinking shots and eating food to the side.

Not a real mind bender. Just a call to party.

Erick stepped off of that island and looked down into the waters as he stepped onto the next island.

He saw flippers down there, below the deepest parts of the water. For a brief moment his mana senses fully worked and he saw Cascadio’s Cavalcade as a whole bunch of turtle islands, all swirling in sync around the main golden-shell island, with more turtles underneath the main flow, all swirling around the power that was Cascadio in the center. Those underwater turtle islands still had parties happening, too. It was kinda beautiful.

And then the simple riverlands and grass islands returned, and Erick was on the next island in the chain, listening to someone speak on a podium about the nature of Good and Evil.

… Erick wanted to listen to that, too.

Shadow moved right on along, easily walking across the edge of the lecture-hall-island, ignoring the talk up above.

Erick followed, softly asking, “So every island is a temptation?”

Shadow shook her head, saying, “No. That’s simplistic. Every island is a stepping stone. Once you have experienced what you want to experience you move forward to the next one, and in that moving you examine yourself and your goals and your whole nature as a living individual.” Shadow stepped onto the next island.

Erick followed.

This island was another party, and a lot more disorganized. Some guy handed Erick a drink and Erick smiled because it was a ‘Vivid Gloom’. The swirling black drink was filled with white flashes, looking exactly as Erick remembered. The first time he had one of these was from Mephistopheles at his Garrison in Candlepoint, back before Erick took that place over. Erick had his second Vivid Gloom courtesy of the Shade Professor Farix, at Last Shadow’s Feast, while the professor was mixing drinks and wearing a cock sock. Cascadio’s Vivid Gloom tasted pretty good, and Erick nodded at the man who had given it to him. That man just smiled and went back to dancing.

Shadow got her own drink which was absolute black. She sipped it, then said, “Cascadio’s Cavalcade is less of a trial and more of a cleansing. People are free to spend as long as they want wherever they want, and then moving in or out as they desire.”

“Cascadio seems like a pretty great god,” Erick said, “So why do you have a low opinion of him?”

Shadow hummed, shrugged, then stepped onto the next island.

Erick joined her on an island of people playing board games that were entire worlds. Little armies moved on little maps, but Erick looked too closely at one of them and he felt the map expand and his consciousness zoom in toward ground level, to a battlefield taking place in a wintry land under a distant sun, where people fought and died to unchained necromancy. Erick pulled back, away from the battlefield, to stand with Shadow.

Shadow glanced at him, then continued on. “I have a low opinion of him because I’ve been through all these stepping stones before, and yet we still have to go this way to reach him because he doesn’t allow people to simply speak to him unless they’ve gone through this path.” She sipped her drink of Darkness. “It’s all very elitist.”

Erick wondered about that. “… It has to be protective, too, right?” They stepped onto an island that was a lagoon with sandy beaches and people sunning themselves and playing in the surf and having sex under palm trees. The only sound was the sound of the waves and soft love-making, and it was wonderful. Erick moved on. “The people who get closer get to have actual talks with an important person, but those who get closer are also changed themselves in how they see Cascadio, and thus Cascadio gets to keep his interpretation of himself, himself.”

“True,” Shadow said, stepping onto the next island.

It was a land of silence and gentle prayer. There was no music, but the wind in the trees and in the tall grasses around the central pavilions certainly sounded like a kind of music.

Erick did not speak, and Shadow did not interrupt the meditation either.

The next island was a land of soft talking and coffee and hot drinks and morning foods under the rise of a new day after a night of love and connection.

Shadow said, “This is how all the bigger gods of this cosmology are. The small ones look to make rituals like this all the time, hoping that the good rituals catch on and that they stabilize themselves into the configuration they designed in their rituals. But this does not always work. The truly big gods always have different cultural interpretations of themselves, forcing them to split into new forms. Some gods try to force this split in a way they like when it seems they’re close to a cultural shift. Some gods just let it happen however it will happen. Some gods like splitting into new forms. For instance, it is thought that all gods of Trickery here are the same, but with different faces. If you talk to them they’d tell you that same story, too, unless they felt like lying to you.”

“Where does Cascadio lie on the small-versus-big scale?”

Shadow thought. She finished off her Darkness drink and tossed it in a bin. Erick finished off his Vivid Gloom and did the same. Shadow continued, “Cascadio is a… A proper god of this cosmology, I guess. He’s infinite, and yet not. I’d rate most gods a 1 to 3 on a power scale going up to 10, with the Darkness as a 10. Cascadio is a 2.”

Talk of Darkness as a god got Erick thinking about the Fractal Fairy. Thinking about them got Erick thinking about the glitter crystal that made up the Fairy and the Fae Enclave. Those thoughts led Erick to consider the Mark of the Fractal Universe sitting inside his [Telepathy]. Was now the time to talk of that?

Erick opened his mouth—

Softly, Shadow said, “No. Not here. Later.” They stepped onto the next turtle-not-turtle grass island, where people learned magics and secrets under the sun, all knowledge shared freely. Shadow tsk’d when she saw the island. “Well damn. Didn’t mean to step on this one.”

The island had moved without either of them seeing. It had been a place of people training with swords and spears and all sorts of other weapons, all of them wearing full golden armor. But now it was a library with personal tutors speaking softly inside sound-containment bubbles to students learning the mystic arts.

There was an empty desk with a teacher waiting, and on that desk was a book with fractal edges.

Shadow sighed.

Erick really, really wanted to sit down at that desk. His Status only showed a single extra point of damage on all of his Mana, Health, and Psyche, too. The enchantment here was rather weak. Erick could avoid this draw… And yet.

Shadow said, “I promise we’ll talk at length about that, Erick. Later.”

Erick forced himself to lose interest in the teacher with the fractal book. The teacher recognized this fact and did a slight, courteous bow. Erick bowed back, and then he went with Shadow onto the next island where music was happening, saying, “I’ll hold you to that.” And then he added, “And I’ll hold you to answering the question I asked in the beginning: What are Cascadio’s portfolios?”

Shadow rolled her eyes at him, then spoke over the music, “He’s ‘everything under the sun’. Life, is a big one. Light, is another big one, with a smaller focus on Fire. Revelry, which covers a lot of small things. Civilization. Truth. He shares ‘Truth’ with almost every other god, though, so that’s nothing special. His specific Truth is ‘True Teachings and Communication’. Cascadio’s an alright god, but he and I have some creative differences stemming from our histories.”

They stepped onto a more serene island where an old man spoke to a bunch of kids about life.

Shadow continued, “I feel that all of this sort of stuff is best made and found in the Dark. He feels that only through Light can anything good happen. He’s also decidedly Good. I’m rather neutral.”

Erick asked, “That’s just a variation on universes, though? The Dark is dangerous, but the mana ocean created by sapients was highly conducive to all life… From my understanding, anyway. Your universe is not at all like this universe, where life can only exist near sources of light and energy, and even then everything is highly dangerous outside of those spaces. The light here is itself rather destructive, too. Everything is violent here.”

Shadow shrugged. “Yeah. Like I said: We’re not enemies. We’re not really on the same side, though.”

The next island was a rehash of a previous island.

Erick was pretty sure that the tests were over with. His Status had stopped getting pinged for extra single points of ‘damage’.

As they walked closer to Cascadio, Erick asked, “Was your Painted Cosmology infinite at all?”

“Hmm… Well. It wasn’t really mine. I was just the creator. We’ll save that conversation for later, but as for infinity?” Shadow paused. “… Sort of. Yes. Less so than this cosmology. In my universe, infinity existed in the hearts of every person…. Which kinda touches upon that which I asked you to wait to discuss with me some other time.”

“Fair enough. I suppose that’s enough of an answer anyway to get to this next point: I’m pretty sure Nothanganathor sent his Sundering through infinity, and if there was any limit at all to the infinity of the Painted Cosmology then it wasn’t as infinite as this universe, so it was possible to Sunder yours through his propagative attack, but not this one... Or at least not using the same methodology.” Erick said, “I was wondering why the God Pact world survived at all, though. I assumed, before all of this, that the God Pact world survived because the gods kept it ahead of Nothanganathor’s [Infinite Malevolence], or whatever you want to call it. But it’s more like Nothanganathor was still farming Veird.”

Shadow thought on Erick’s words for a moment, then said, “He’s not allowed to kill that land until we know what caused the Sundering, so he’s going to be guarding it forever, or else he’s going to try to evade that executioner’s axe of him causing the Sundering by painting someone else as the Sunderer. That’s probably what he’s going to try to do to you.” She glanced at him, studying him as she said, “The Primal Lightning of the Sundering was white, according to all known first-hand accounts.”

“Yeah. I figured he’d try as much. He’s a white dragon, though. His magical signature has to be naturally white, right?” Erick said, “Perhaps Malevolence is just red because that’s what he Altered his Malevolence to be. Or it’s the other way around, and he made the Sundering white to throw off tracks.”

Shadow let out a tiny, relieved breath, smiling a little as she said, “All possible.”

Erick scoffed. “Don’t tell me people actually believe that I caused the Sundering? I wasn’t even there.”

“The nature of legality in this world and all others is mostly a matter of power and usefulness,” Shadow said, trying not to be too hateful. “The shape of Nothanganathor’s counter-suit is pretty easy to see, though. Or at least the part before the actual fight begins.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that, because now they were two islands away from Cascadio and his personal gathering.

Shadow stepped onto the island right before Cascadio’s golden grasslands—

And in that step, the land ahead, which had been a tea ceremony, became an open-air temple with some clear glass walls and clear glass pillars holding up a nonexistent roof. An older male priest in gold drapery stood on a platform inside the glass temple, beneath a stained glass window made of all sorts of yellow crystal.

Erick followed Shadow onto that land.

The priest was a kindly-looking older man who looked right at Erick, asking, “Could I be of service, or at least delay you for a time while My God speaks with people who have come a very long way, and done a great deal in My God’s name?”

Erick easily said, “Yes. I accept.”

Shadow had been about to say something, both to Erick and to the priest, but she closed her mouth and said nothing.

The priest smiled and gestured to the glass floor ahead of him. Two grand, glass thrones popped up, and the priest sat down on a simple glass stool of his own, saying, “Your willingness to delay is appreciated. Please, come sit with me, and allow me the honor of helping you before Cascadio Himself sees you.”

Erick moved and sat down, saying, “Hello. I’m Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence, here to see Cascadio about helping me to rescue Good people from the Waiting Room who are under Contract from Wraithborn, but in doing so, I’ll be turning them specifically not-Good, instead Benevolent. This is both to erase their Contracts and also to remain out of the Good/Evil war.”

Shadow had sat down while Erick was speaking. Now she reclined on her throne, her legs crossed, her arms easily taking her armrests, making her look like some sort of Dark Queen… Which was probably the exact effect she was going for.

The priest glanced at her, but focused on Erick. At Erick’s words, the priest took in a little breath harder than before, and then he smiled softly. When Erick finished, he said, “I’m Brother Smalls. Cascadio is very interested in this. Acts of good done outside of Good are acceptable. Do you have a list of names?”

Erick conjured a list from memory, taking mana and making a fake thing to then hand over. “I’d prefer if that list didn’t get around right now, which is why I haven’t handed over something real. Most of those names are taken from an anonymous source but the dossiers I got with those names all paint good pictures. I’ve also included a few tens of names down below the 87 that I’m rather sure about wanting to reincarnate, but those are a lot less certain.”

Erick left it there. His Lightning Path said all 87 of those names from the black book were all good names, but the 41 names beyond those 87 were all taken from various messages sitting in star-form around his gate at his house. Those messages had all stood out to his Lightning Path as ones to seek, and each one had included Erick’s Benevolence phrase, ‘For the good of all and every individual’. So there was a trick there, for sure. Probably a trick similar to the one from the black book.

And yet.

Even if all of this was some sort of trick, then the trick wouldn’t really last past [Reincarnation], for Erick was fine with resurrecting great evils and making them good people.

Four of the names on that list were great Evils. Specifically Evils which had sided with Good for one reason or another, and thus become liabilities in the eyes of Wraithborne, and thus a whole bunch of other shit happened that locked them into the Waiting Room for nigh-on centuries or millennia.

Shadow raised her eyebrows at the list. While Brother Smalls kept reading, his eyebrows and mouth doing dances of approval or worry or surprise, Shadow said to Erick, “You want to restart a Grand War with Wraithborne? Because that’s how you start a Grand Good and Evil War.”

“I hope,” Erick said, “That with enough restraint and altering of Good into Benevolence that a Grand War can be avoided completely. There’s more than enough Good to be done without trying to destroy all the Evils out there. And besides that, I’m trying to win Wraithborne over to Benevolence, too.”

Smalls listened, and then he held up the list, asking, “Where did you get the 87 original people?”

“I’d rather not say because then I’m pretty sure some people would get auto-Sundered. I’m almost positive that the person I received them from didn’t even know what they were doing, either, except in the vaguest of senses.”

“Ah.” Smalls frowned a little as he looked at the list again. “Yes. I could see that as a problem. I’m vaguely aware of everyone on this list due to my connection to My God, but I only know of a few people specifically, and Wraithborne would not want them back at all. Will this hurt your attempt to get them to switch from Evil?”

Erick said, “I’m honestly never expecting them to switch away from Evil until I get a lot more powerful or they find some tricky way to be Benevolent. Hopefully all of these people I plan to resurrect will sign on for expansions of House Benevolence and allow Benevolence to have a greater hand in Margleknot and the rest of this universe. In that way, Wraithborne might falter some. But maybe not. I don’t know what is going to happen there.”

Smalls nodded. Then he looked at the list, asking, “Are you aware that Yasmi Bloodgood and Aryear Zumgwyn are eternal enemies? Among the others on the list, of course.”

“Yes.” Erick said, “Yasmi on the side of Paradise Falls and Aryear on the side of Wraithborne, both of them gone 6,500 years and 6,300 years respectively. Of the history I learned, Yasmi fell to a Contract to allow her family to go free and Aryear created that Contract to be punitive, and then Witch Yasmi reflected that punitive action onto Aryear. The history before that is told in songs in bars, as far as I know.”

Smalls nodded as he listened. “You’re digging up rather old history and trying to make it work for you.”

“Correct.”

“Any plans on where to open offices?”

“Either the Mortal Lands or the Celestial Observatory. I’m not sure which, yet. The Celestial Observatory has the benefit of always being able to send out people on missions outside of Margleknot to help others, but then that’s the focus of everything. On the other hand, the Mortal Lands already has locations which connect rather well to Layer 1, which is always in need of help, and which keeps the focus here in Margleknot.”

“Not in some new location?” Smalls asked, “As a Father of Margleknot you might have already made a Sun, but surely you can create a secondary location for personal power?”

Erick smiled softly. “Yeah. I could. I even asked Yggdra— Margleknot as much, and he said sure. But the goal is to be with people, not to be a land apart, even if I could make that land apart really well. I fully expect the majority of our missions to help Veird and the remains of the Painted Cosmology and to fight Nothanganathor before we get to Margleknot stuff, though.”

Smalls nodded. He asked, “Do you have any larger desires for Cascadio, by coming here? Or is it just the Waiting Room assistance?”

“For now, it’s Waiting Room assistance.” Erick said, “But Veird does need a sun god after I kill the not-god currently inhabiting our sun. It would be a sun inside a sphere, like Margleknot’s sphere. I don’t know how that resonates with a sun god, but I assume that such a god would desire the sun to have some view of the actual cosmology around them. Not sure how such a thing would work out, actually at all. I’ve never spoken to a sun god before.”

Smalls contained his absolutely radiant excitement to as low of levels as he could, which was to say not much at all. He didn’t jump for joy, but it was a close thing. Shadow smirked as she saw Smalls react to Erick’s words. She also smirked as she saw Cascadio up there on the central island cough on his wine and then make a joke out of it to his parishioners. He was surely listening in.

Erick added, “But for now, we’re just looking for help with the Waiting Room.”

“Right right!” Smalls glanced over to Cascadio— He rapidly turned back, saying, “Um.” He gestured to the area encompassing them, saying, “This is all very important and Cascadio wishes to partake in this conversation right now, but his people come first, as always, and… Not to put too much of a needle in the eye of your plan, but while all of this is lovely and wonderful and even maybe possible, the probability of it happening as you wish is still rather low. As of right now.”

Erick nodded. “I agree.”

Smalls breathed easily… And then he said, “Uh. I need to entertain you for about another few minutes at least— Maybe just one!” He glanced back at Cascadio. He turned back to Erick and Shadow. “These things take time.”

Shadow inclined her head toward the central island, saying, “Yeah. That’s not finishing soon.”

One of the women speaking with Cascadio started on a story about her child, and all of them looked happy to hear it.

Erick said to Smalls, “I’d love another one of those Vivid Glooms if you got it.”

Smalls smiled, saying, “Excellent choice!” And then he picked the dark drink out of the air and handed it to Erick, the liquid sparkling with white light here and there as the drink moved around. Erick took the drink as Smalls asked Shadow, “Would you care for another Darkness Enthroned?”

Shadow glanced at Erick’s drink, then asked him, “Does it taste like it should?” She asked Smalls, “Is it made with shadow essence, or actual Darkness?”

“Tastes the same as I remember,” Erick said.

Smalls handed Shadow her own Vivid Gloom, saying, “Shadow essence that’s had almost all of its Light extracted. As per the original recipe.”

Shadow smiled and took the drink. She sipped it, paused, then sipped some more. “Pretty good.” She asked Erick, “Have you done much actual Dark Magic yet?”

“Accidentally, I think. Tried working with Shadows long ago, when I wasn’t nearly as educated or experienced, and I think I did some Dark work. Completely unsure, though.”

Shadow nodded and let that thread of conversation go.

Erick asked Smalls, “How would a sun god feel about being inside a big sphere, anyway?”

Smalls happily said, “That’s actually a very large philosophical topic! Suns are ‘suns’ because they are stars that support life. The more life a sun supports, the happier it is. Some stars are jealous, though, and would prefer their life to be completely their own, and those stars would be very happy inside a big sphere. Cascadio is not a jealous god, though he does see great benefit in being the only star that people see.”

“Ah!” Erick said, “I never thought of it that way.”

Shadow said, “A lot of people assume that suns care about other stars, but really it’s half and half, or some other divisor.”

“Quite right!” Smalls said, “Some stars like to view life from a great, great distance. Some like to actually support life. All stars, if they are able, go through a time in their billions of years of existence when they try to support life at some time. Sun gods are almost always… Well. Sun gods appear during a time when a sun is supporting life, and everyone worships them, so they’re almost universally narcissistic.”

Erick laughed.

Smalls smiled, saying, “Cascadio survived and passed from his original world so he’s mostly over that narcissism stage in a sun’s life. He would like to have a singular world to call his own again, though.”

Erick smiled. He asked, “Are stars actually sentient in this cosmology? Or are you speaking of something philosophical there?”

“They’re sleeping when life is not there to worship them and wake them,” Smalls said, “I would consider every star out there to be alive, but for the majority of those who would be asked this question the general answer would likely be ‘no, stars are not alive’.”

Shadow added, “Sunstars were categorically alive in the Painted Cosmology. So were moonstars.”

“Everything was alive in the Painted Cosmology, yes?” Erick asked.

The conversation lasted for more than a few minutes, and actually took a good 27, but Erick was only vaguely counting the time. The conversation itself was rather enlightening about a whole slew of small things that he never really thought about until then.

Eventually, though, the people talking to Cascadio moved on, bowing to their god, who anointed them with a fingerprint of light upon their foreheads. And then those people sighed out, turning to gold fire, to rise into the sky and join with a sun that briefly appeared overhead, like the most brilliant thing that Erick had ever seen. That sun was layered over with brilliant orange turtles made of fire swimming in the nuclear furnace surface. Every sort of lovely part of life happening all around Cascadio’s Cavalcade in these Nexus Gardens also happened up there, upon the backs of world-sized turtles that dove in and out of the sun’s surface, looking like a calm roil of solar fire.

“Huh,” Erick said, as the sun in the sky vanished.

He glanced around. Some of the people on the other islands were bowing toward the ascension, but not everyone, because not everyone on those islands out there was real… or at least not alive, in the usual sense. As the sun appeared, the truth of the Cavalcade had appeared. Many of the dancers and librarians and otherwise were beings of light and flame, only showing their true flaming nature under the brilliance of Cascadio’s true form overhead. Cascadio himself had become a being of golden light, as well. But as the sun vanished, everyone had returned to their mortal guises. Smalls had remained mortal the entire time all of that happened, though.

In that way, Erick had briefly seen that only 5% of the people in the Cavalcade were really here. The rest were likely returned from the greater party, to partake of this smaller, mortal-filled one for a while.

Erick had seen people meet with Cascadio and then move off of the golden island at the center, but this was the first time he had seen someone ascend to the invisible sun in the sky. Erick realized a few things at that moment.

“Not everyone wants to ascend to Cascadio’s afterlife?” Erick asked Smalls. “What about you?”

Smalls smiled gently. “Maybe someday I’ll eventually join those who came before me in the True Cavalcade upon Cascadio, but for now, I am here, helping to guide those to His Glory in a way that they can understand. When I do ascend, though, and when I come back, I will probably be among the Mortal Cavalcade, perhaps serving drinks at the bars, or teaching scripture in the churches. That will hopefully be a long time from now. For now...” Smalls gestured toward the golden island and the glass cathedral around them vanished, opening the way to Cascadio’s central island and the sun god himself. “We thank you for your patience. Cascadio will see you.”

Erick walked forward and Shadow walked beside him. Together they crossed the small bit of water separating the church island of green grass from the golden grasses island at the center of the Cavalcade.

Cascadio stood upon a golden carpet, next to a golden recliner. Two persons of flame and light stood to the side, almost like servants, but they were more like fellow party-goers, happily moving some glass-and-gold-cushion thrones into existence and taking away the more simple chairs, while also setting out some more drinks and refilling Cascadio’s golden goblet with pure sunlight. The man himself was easily three meters tall, and Erick almost bloomed out to his usual height to match him, but that seemed petty, somehow.

Cascadio himself looked like a jolly sort of guy, with dark skin and wearing a gold toga and an easy smile on his face. He was muscular and fat, and he wore it well, moving with strong grace as he gestured to the chairs, saying, “Sit, new friends, and let us talk of possibilities and plans.”

Erick said, “Nice to meet you, Cascadio. I accept your invitation.”

Shadow nodded, saying, “Hello again.”

Cascadio nodded deeper than Shadow did, saying, “Hello again, Daughter of Darkness.”

They sat.

Cascadio opened with, “To get it out of the way: I will gladly help with your designs up the Waiting Room of Margleknot. I’ll act as your Guide, Shield, and Translator all, and not interfere in any of your personal lists of people you wish to reincarnate. I only ask that you bring back 100 more Good people of my choosing, that you consider expanding your soul-rescue-plan many, many times over, and that you consider building your expansion of House Benevolence in the Slaver’s Den. Of course, the Slaver’s Den would need to be fully eradicated for that to happen, but their land would give you plenty of space to make a new land of not-exactly-Good.” Cascadio added, “Or ‘Good-in-all-but-Name’, if you would prefer.”

Erick took a moment. He answered, “I see no immediate problems with that idea.”

Shadow said, “I’m good with wholesale slaver slaughter.”

“I would try to reincarnate them, Shadow,” Erick said.

Shadow shrugged. “Works for me.”

Cascadio smiled. “Excellent!” He reclined on his seat and drinks of liquid sunlight appeared as he said, “Then let us discuss many other topics of great import, from overall plans, to how I can help, and to ultimate goals.” He lifted his drink, saying, “To Infinity!”

Erick guessed that was the toast, then? He raised his glass alongside Shadow, and both of them repeated, “To Infinity.”

The liquid gold light tasted like nuclear fire, but nicer.

They got to talking.