Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick stared up at Young Erick Flatt from 1997 for a moment longer.

A lot of things were wrong in that moment.

Erick’s mana was sluggish, and if he was being honest with himself, not moving at all. His insides felt dead, but not dead at all—

And then Young Erick Flatt was about to say something more about a gay crisis again, because Erick had been staring for longer than a single moment. Time was moving fast, and Erick’s thoughts were just as sluggish as his mana.

No time for words.

Erick saw an exit, laying on the floor in a pile; some clothes. His clothes, probably. Over there was the door. Erick launched out of the bed and started grabbing whatever was on the ground—

Or at least that’s what he tried to do. He caught himself in the mirror on the wall instead. Blonde. Blue eyes. White. Gym guy. Erick didn’t know this guy at all. Not really.

And then Young Erick looked at Erick from behind, catching both of them in the mirror, saying, “Are you freaking out on me, dude? You really shouldn’t be too freaked—”

“Fucking—!” The girl in the bed thrashed angrily, briefly, but she had been building up her anger for a while, now that she was completely exposed to the air. And then she sat up and glared pure hate at Young Erick. “It’s too cold to rip off covers, Erick.”

She spat the last words at Young Erick, and Erick recognized her. She was Alice, one of his usual fucks that he just now remembered.

“Well you’re awake now, so it worked!” Young Erick ignored Alice and gestured to the boxers in Erick’s hands that he had yet to put on, “If you wanna wear my underwear, go right ahead.” Young Erick reached over and grabbed Erick’s ass. “But I expect it back.”

Erick launched away from Young Erick, but in a normal sort of way, and not in the visceral, magic-empowered way that he probably could have, if he wasn’t still waking up.

“Stop teasing the poor guy,” Alice said, before groaning as she sat on the side of the bed, holding her head. “He’s obviously new at this.” She tried to sneer through the pain of a hangover as she looked up at Erick, but all she managed to do was look tired. Her voice was tired, too, as she said, “A practical virgin.”

Erick grabbed the clothes he thought were his —and not Young Erick’s— and then he put them on as fast as he could—

Erick recalled this moment in time.

It had been buried, but he recalled this day… Somewhat. He actually recalled a lot of moments like this, now that he was here, thinking about it. He looked at Young Erick, and picked out some words that were probably correct, but Erick’s memory was kinda weird right now. He said, “This is never going to happen again.”

Young Erick faked a pout, using a hand to rub the air beside his face, like he was rubbing out tears. “Poor closet case doesn’t know what he likes.” And then he spoke seriously, “We had fun, whatever-your-name-was. Come by the quad again next weekend.” He shrugged. “Or don’t!”

“He’s a fucking worthless townie,” Alice said, as she looked at Erick. “I thought the whole point of you sneaking onto campus was to get fucked. Well, now you did! And now you can get lost.”

Erick suddenly remembered that Alice had always been like that. There was a very large reason that Alice was not Jane’s mother, and that vitriol was part of it.

Young Erick even winced to the side as he saw that vitriol, and then he noticed Erick looking at him, and he said, “Don’t worry. Next time it can be just you and me.”

Alice laughed loudly. Harshly.

Erick said some words that were probably correct, “There won’t be a next time.”

Guys had said that a lot to Erick, back then.

It was some date in 1997, after all.

Young Erick chuckled and said something about something and Alice responded with her own words, but Erick was out of there, with his pants on and his shirt on —backwards and inside out, apparently— and his shoes in his hand. Erick rushed out into the apartment hallway, trying not to panic, because he knew that even the slightest change to his past would fuck everything up down the line...

But then Erick walked a bit slower.

Would his presence fuck up anything at all?

The morning had already happened. Erick was now walking through ‘campus housing’ that wasn’t really campus housing or dorm rooms at all, because this wasn’t really a dorm, and the college wasn’t really a ‘college’. It was a community college, and this was an apartment building right next to the college, and the whole of the city beyond was kinda mashed in with the college to begin with. Only some nominal ‘walls’ contained and separated the college from the city, and only 90% of the people who lived here were students at the community college.

All around Erick, in the early morning hours, were people moving around and getting ready to leave for the first classes of the day. Or, in the case of Old Man Hutch over there, he was getting ready to go fishing. It might have been a Monday, then?

A pair of bros spotted Erick doing his walk of shame and called him on it, yelling those words loud and happy. A woman in a room across the hall came out of her room and roared hatred at the guys yelling about walks of shame, calling them too loud and almost starting a fight, but then the woman’s friend pulled her back.

Erick had already fucked up the timeline just by existing; just by walking through here.

Butterfly flaps, eh?

And yet… Hmm.

Erick wasn’t sure if he had messed up his timeline yet. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things. He did know his way around the place, though, but it had been half a century since Erick had been here, so Erick had needed to walk slowly to remember everything.

The place looked the same, and Erick found himself staring a bit too hard at the wallpaper. It was a bright green floral print that Erick was pretty sure… he recalled a story about the college, years and years after he attended, when he was thinking about going back and finishing his degree. Some wannabe historians had claimed that this apartment building had arsenic in the wallpaper, but that was an 1800’s Victorian London thing. And yet, the people who called this place on its radioactive-green ivy/vine/floral wallpaper were insistent that the government needed to take a look.

The government officers found nothing wrong with the wallpaper, but they did find asbestos in a whole bunch of places. The apartment ended up getting torn down because of that.

… Should he send them a ‘concerned citizens’ letter about the walls, and their arsenic content? Replay that set of history? Or should he circumvent that concern, and send a letter about the asbestos itself?

Erick left that concern for another day.

He had too many concerns right now.

With a practiced walk, Erick skedaddled out of the apartment building—

And then he remembered that the apartment building was located on the forest side of the college, and all the city was in the other direction, across the college campus. Townies, like Erick, had needed to walk across the college campus to get back to most of the rest of town. Most of the time, this was not a problem for the townies, but Erick already saw cops walking around out there, eager to bust townies who ‘weren’t supposed to be on campus’. It was a complete power-trip thing for them, too. Not actually something that they could enforce at all.

Young Erick had found that out later in life, and that drove him to kinda hate the cops just a bit more than he already had.

Erick still wasn’t able to control his mana, to see anything beyond his own eyes, and he certainly wasn’t casting any spells right now, so it looked like he had a walk across a campus full of power-tripping cops who had nothing better to do.

Erick made it to a public washroom instead of walking across campus. It was before the classroom buildings started. He ducked inside. No one was there. It was only 7 am on a… On a day. Maybe Monday? Sunday? Probably Monday. A clock he had passed on the way here told the time, and some students were already up and about, but what was the actual date?

Erick didn’t know the actual date—

He decided the date didn’t matter.

Erick was here, in the past, and that Young Erick was him.

Erick hung out in the bathroom for a while. Mostly, he felt out his soul, and began to wake up his mana. It was there. He hadn’t lost it. He poked. He massaged. But nothing happened. The world was the world, and there was nothing he could do about it except for that which could be done with his hands. Erick stared at his hands, at the unfamiliarity of them. They looked like construction worker hands, with calluses and small cuts that had healed a while ago.

He rubbed his hands together—

“Don’t panic,” Erick said to himself. “No need to panic.”

He calmed himself, breathing easily, and then he rubbed his hands together, trying to wake up whatever weakness had settled into his—

The solidity of the world began to wane. Mana flowed out of Erick’s hands, where he had massaged them, like he had broken up some ice and the river below had been exposed. All at once, all of the ice cap of Erick’s entire body eroded, and Erick was back to being himself, magically. Physically he was still whoever this was.

Erick cackled once, maniacally, and then softer, easier. He had almost emotionally lost it, but now he was back, and that yo-yo of emotion had broken him a little. Also, he was probably fae now, or something like that. Or maybe he was still transitioning?

Well.

Whatever!

Okay!

He had mana.

Good.

With practiced ease that came out more stilted than he wished —he was still waking up, apparently— Erick breathed out mana into the empty men’s bathroom, like he had breathed out a minor cloud of smoke. The mana spread, through the walls, through the floor, through the ceiling and the windows, and Erick was right there with it to see everything it saw. Soon, Erick shifted the mana to invisible Mystical mana, and then Benevolence easily flowed into the world on strong pulses of invisible, intangible power.

Normally, with mana flowing around, other people could sense it if they had the capability. If someone had been looking, they might have seen Erick’s first expulsion of white Benevolence into this world, but even now that first bit of Benevolence was disguising itself with Wizard’s Clarity. People would still see mana if they were out there and looking, but no one was out there and looking. Erick’s Benevolence wasn’t a memetic hazard like with Nothanganathor’s Malevolence; Erick’s Benevolence had become something quieter. In fact, if people wanted to accrete or cultivate with that mana he let loose, they could, and it would work rather perfectly for their established power sets.

… Erick wondered if people could cultivate Malevolence so easily. He hadn’t touched the stuff yet, and he hadn’t had much experience with actual users of the stuff…

Eh.

Later.

Erick cycled his mana for a while, pushing out power, and then letting it come back, and the mana went unnoticed as it gradually flowed back to its source, letting Erick sense the world as though he was simply mana sensing through the ambient mana, like anyone else.

The world looked somewhat like it should…

But there was a difference. A really big difference compared to what Erick had seen in 2047, but he’d get to that later; his plate was already too full of problems.

Young Erick and Alice were walking with each other to class, and Young Erick asked Alice, “Who was that this morning?”

Alice laughed loudly. “I thought you knew him!”

“I thought you knew him.” Young Erick said, “I don’t think I even got to touch him, except in sleep. Do you remember last night?”

“Fuck, dude. I don’t remember shit. That party was rad.” Alice said, “He’s a fucking worthless townie, anyway. He was probably shit in bed.”

Young Erick ignored Alice’s acerbic words. “It was a great party, wasn’t it.” He smiled. “Did you see Margaret dancing?”

Alice sneered at Erick. “You like that bitch?”

Young Erick laughed to stop himself from lashing out, and Alice didn’t notice that at all. Young Erick probably didn’t even notice that about himself; he wouldn’t realize he did that for years to come. Young Erick did try to get Alice to be nicer, though, by playfully saying, “Don’t call her that!”

Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping you with her. Remember to wrap it when you get her. I heard she’s a total slut.”

Young Erick was about to say something about them being sluts, too, but he decided not to press that button. Erick, watching them from half a mile away, recalled guarding his words with Alice all the time, though Young Erick didn’t seem to realize that he was actively doing that yet. He would, eventually.

Young Erick changed the topic to English homework, and to how he had failed to do anything, and did Alice think that he could bullshit his way through the presentation today? Young Erick bet he could. Alice was nicer when it came to schoolwork, and she would end up helping Young Erick with his English presentation on Shakespeare for about 10 minutes. It’d be enough for a C, which was fine.

Erick returned to himself.

Erick was feeling some kinda way. Embarrassment? Subtle loss of opportunity for cheating himself out of a proper education? Happy that the whole arc of his life turned out like it did, anyway? Anger at Alice’s angry nature that Erick hadn’t felt in 50 years? There was a lot there.

… Erick would think about all that later, too. Or probably not at all.

He focused inward on his Status, which he had finally gotten online.

It was not the same as before.

Erick Flatt, [70-ish], [Current Year Earth, Layer 99,081: 1997]

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

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 1b per day / 11,574 per second , [Mark of Benevolence Level = 1]

Body: 1500

Mind: 2500

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+10,532, -15] Basic upkeep

Mp: 121.5t/∞, ↑ [+3,587.9, -5] Basic upkeep

Hp: 121.5t/∞, ↑ [+3,472.2, -5] Basic upkeep

Pp: 109.3t/∞, ↑ [+3,472.2, -5] Basic upkeep

Resons: 19.7t [+1,041.6 = +115.74]

So that was different, but all the numbers were more or less the same as the last time Erick had looked at those numbers. Stuff was a bit rounder than he last remembered, but… Erick liked round things? Sure. Why not.

Erick had other, more important questions.

What the fuck was a Mark of Benevolence?

Erick found out as soon as he looked into his soul.

Everything was the same, yet vastly different, like a childhood home that had been renovated by new owners. The Benevolence crystals that were his Spells and Abilities were still there, and so was the ocean of iridescent white mana, but the Dark headwaters of the ocean had changed, and now there were no Dark headwaters at all. Everything burbled up Benevolence, everywhere. Erick was a self-generating depth of mana that churned and made more of himself with every passing second. As that ocean churned, and as Erick’s Wizard’s Clarity cycled his mana out into the world and then back inside, it brought with it tiny bits of power that it had sampled out there.

Because yeah.

There was magic on Earth.

And yes, Erick’s cycling Benevolence was allowing him to sample all the power out there that he touched, and take it into himself, just as he had done with Genesis so long ago.

Erick would get back to that and all those little magical powers out there later.

For now, he looked at his soul, trying to find the Dark Mark. It was not that easy. Before Erick had eaten his own heart out, the Dark was a vast sky that rained down Benevolence waters into Erick’s everything, supplying him with mana. Now, Erick generated his own mana, and the Dark Mark was…

Where was the damned thing?

It usually wasn’t this hard to—

Ah!

There it was.

The Dark Mark. It was a spot of black inside the white ocean, like a rock to hold onto. From the headwaters of Erick’s everything, to a tiny rock, the Dark Mark looked almost inactive right now. What to make of that? Erick wasn’t sure. He metaphysically poked at it, and it tumbled in his Benevolence ocean like a tiny island, before it settled back down to being simply stable, inside his soul.

Was it stable? It was stable.

Erick went looking for the Fractal Mark next. He found it inside the rim of the ocean that was his soul, near where he had put it to go along with his Wizard’s Clarity. It had taken up the entire rim of his ocean, but now his ocean was a reson-spliced fractal, generated by his Benevolence Itself, and the actual Mark was a tiny crystal floating in the ocean. It was lessened. It wasn’t necessary anymore. Erick’s Benevolence Itself took care of all of the hiding and cycling aspects of his Wizard’s Clarity, automatically. It even trapped the powers Erick’s mana sampled out there in the world, inside of individual fractals in that rim of his soul, keeping them inactive until Erick looked at them and wanted to try them out… Maybe? Is that what was happening there?

Hmm.

Erick picked up the Fractal Mark and set it next to the Dark Mark, setting the ocean to still around them, to keep them in place, and held. The two universal marks soon began to gently orbit within the depths of his soul.

The rest of Erick’s Benevolence-crystal-locked Status was the same as before.

Erick came out of himself and stood there in the bathroom.

He stood there for a while, just thinking.

And then he tested himself. Erick shaped some of his mana in his aura, and without using any special powers at all to keep his magic together, here in the manaless atmosphere of this Earth. He released that shaped mana as [Force Bolt]s that struck the bathroom tile, chipping the off-white glaze.

The Bolts worked exactly as they should have. Before Erick’s creation of Wizard’s Clarity, Erick had to string together some Domain work and other magics to keep his mana together inside a manaless atmosphere, but here, the power just worked fine. Wizard’s Clarity was doing exactly as it should have been doing.

The Bolts still disintegrated, as broken magic normally did, and then the mana that made up those Bolts drifted in the air, making its way to Erick’s body, where it joined with him. There was no magical trace upon the chipped tile; just the new damage.

So his powers were working as expected.

And this was his own past.

He could see that this was his own past. Erick expanded his senses wide and saw everything. This was the community college that Erick had attended for two or three years —depending on how you counted it— and Young Erick’s apartment room had the same posters of the Simpsons and Nirvana and Pulp Fiction that Erick had had. There were even the same sports posters hanging on the walls, of basketball guys and football guys that Erick didn’t really know, but his hookups certainly did. Of course this was 1997 and it was pretty fucking weird to talk openly about gay stuff with strangers that were probably into it, but which you weren’t quite sure, but the posters were a good part of the softer way to ask guys what they thought about other guys. And then there were the Jenifer Anniston posters; those were much more socially acceptable.

That Young Erick was him, at 26. Not 20, like Erick had imagined back there waking up in that room, all disoriented. He still looked 20, though. Erick had gone from high school to the job scene, and then he had gone to college because he wanted something more out of life. Young Erick had already spent several years at this point in time working shit jobs.

First there was the pizza place, and then the retail, and then he got passed up for manager because he didn’t have a proper education…

Erick left that past in the past, and considered Infinity.

Could this have been a side slice of Infinity? A variation-reality of Layer 99,081, Earth? Not his history?

Erick closed his eyes in thought, and then he opened them again, focusing on his Lightning Path, which was working just fine, too. The thing about the Path, when used in a certain way, was that it allowed Erick to view the fates of certain people, if he focused on those people well enough. It wasn’t a clear picture. Personal choices could change a lot.

Erick focused on Young Erick, and to him, the world fractured into futures.

Young Erick was in for some hard times ahead, followed by all the ones that Erick would look back on and cherish for how fleeting and good they were. There was Margaret, and then she vanished, and then came Jane, and everything fell apart before it came back together later, though things only truly got better when Jane was 12, and able to be on her own for a while.

And then, years after that...

Veird.

If nothing else happened, then Erick was 99% sure that this was his personal Earth, circa Young Erick Flatt, the one that would become the Apparent King.

There was a problem.

Multiple problems, actually, because Earth had magic...

But that was a part of the Malevolence problem, which was here on Earth, for sure, and so Erick would get back to that later, too.

Erick focused on himself, on following his own Lightning Path, his current Path, and choosing all the best choices for himself and for others...

The Path of best choices headed in whatever direction he wanted.

Those Paths called to him to do good here, though, which could have a whole bunch of Butterfly Effects if he followed that Path. But right now, his Path was calling strongly for Erick to step outside of the bathroom and take a glance at a girl who was walking by, who was feeling terrible because her hair dye had come out the wrong shade of blue, and now she hated the whole idea of dying her hair. The best thing for him to do would be to see the girl and then stare awestruck at that girl, and then when she asked him what the fuck he was looking at, he could honestly say that he liked that color. That small action would set that girl’s entire life onto a good path… Or at least she’d be good for another week.

… Erick decided that he wanted to help, and to see what happened to the future if he changed the present.

Erick stepped out of the bathroom, right as the crying girl with the blue hair stepped into view. Erick stared, marveling at the blue of her hair. It was all sorts of shimmery and with green undertones. Whoever had done that had done it very well. It was easy to appreciate the beauty of it all. And yet, the girl was headed toward the woman’s bathroom, carrying a shopping bag with some bleach and dye. She saw Erick staring at her.

She scowled and yelled, “What THE FUCK are you looking at?! Creep?!”

Erick honestly said, “Your hair is amazing. It’s beautiful.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open. She stared. Her tears dried for a moment. And then she remembered she was mad. “Fuck off, creep!” She rushed into the woman’s bathroom and shut the door. She took her time to go to the sink, trying to understand what had just happened. She almost turned around and came back outside, trying to make herself mad again, but then she stopped herself. She muttered, “Hot creep.”

She went to the bench at the back of the woman’s bathroom and sat down, to stare into her shopping bag with its bleach and a simple brown hair dye. The girl would be on that bench for a while, trying to figure out what had just happened. Eventually, she’d dye her hair back to brown, but she would remember being called beautiful for the rest of her life, and eventually she’d go back to dying her hair, and telling everyone who told her they didn’t like her colored hair to fuck right off. She’d get into the punk scene, and go on to become a minor musician celebrity. She would always remember Erick’s simple compliment, and it would warm her for the rest of her life.

The future had changed, irrevocably, and for the good... As long as nothing else happened.

Other stuff was going to happen, for sure.

The Infinity of every Layer was always generating new worlds from every possible action happening all across all of them, all at the same time. Living inside the Fractal Universe, once you knew how it worked, was less like living in an individual part of a multiverse, and realizing that you lived on an ever-multiplying cascading river, and everyone you ever knew was there with you, but they were also going down their own paths in life, which would diverge from your own path in an irreconcilable sort of way. And yet, they were still there, with you, on your own path.

And then magic got involved, and made things like Margleknot’s society, where everyone lived on the same Layer and multiverse, an amazing sort of thing. The same situation happened with Veird’s Godpact world. Nexus events in worlds also spilled out into other versions of those worlds in undeniable sorts of ways, too.

Infinity was both amazing and horrific to think about, so it was usually best not to think about it, and to cherish what you had.

Erick walked away from the bathroom, thinking about stuff as he headed into campus, to get to the town on the other side. He could have gone through the woods in the other direction, but he went forward, instead.

He had a lot of thoughts as he hid behind bushes and low walls to evade the campus police. There had been a big rager last night on a Sunday and the townies had come onto campus in force, and the cops were still angrily clearing out townies. Erick, of course, didn’t evade the early-morning college students. The students all saw him hiding. They knew what was going on, and they laughed about it. One pair of girls even covered for him, to help him make his escape by distracting a donut-eating cop that was stationed at the gate on Erick’s preferred exit.

He could have turned to light and walked away, but he didn’t want to do that.

He was checking on Young Erick’s future all the time as he set off butterfly effects everywhere, and yeah, there was some alteration, but he was still on the same slice of infinity as Young Erick, and Young Erick was still headed toward Veird… So what was happening here? Erick needed to find out.

Also, Erick wasn’t evading the police just because he shouldn’t be here.

He had no identification at all.

This person that Erick had woken up as was not a person at all until recently… Maybe. Maybe this guy died in his sleep and Erick slipped into the body? Maybe Erick created the guy whole cloth? He couldn't check the manasphere for the history of it all because there was no manasphere here on Earth. Erick assumed that he had created the person whole cloth, but without any IDs for whatever reason…

Or maybe something weirder was going on.

Whatever the case, Erick needed to avoid the police. ‘Oh, you don’t got no ID? We’re calling the real cops on you, kid.’ Erick didn’t need some sort of ‘Fractal Sight’ to see that things would spiral bad from there. Really bad. Like, governmental-agency bad.

It was weird to pick up those clothes in Young Erick’s room and not have a wallet, or anything at all. Of course he had no cellphone, but even in 1997 people had wallets. Great big ones, too, filled with all bunches of cards and photos and even a condom or two for those calmer sort of weekends. Young Erick had a box of condoms back in his room, and he went through a box a month.

Well.

Whatever?

Sure.

Whatever.

Erick passed a large window on a bakery outside the college. In the light of the morning it was more like a mirror, and this person was young, hot, and with short blonde hair and blue eyes. He looked like he was more at home in the gym than on a treadmill, and he was a bit older than the usual college student; maybe 25. Young Erick was older than the usual college student too, though, so… yeah?

… Well! Erick certainly existed. This person he was, was here, and Erick remembered… people like him, anyway, back when he was in college.

Also, Earth had magic.

Not a lot of magic, but it had magic.

That had been the thing that Erick had avoided thinking about until he was here, away from his younger self and finally not in danger of getting found by the cops. Sure, he could have turned to magical light and stepped away from the college completely, but he did not want to take such an overt magical action. Not now that he looked around Earth and saw all these little bits of magic everywhere. People could be spying on the magic out there. There might even be magical societies, and Erick didn’t want to get involved with them.

There were always magical societies on worlds like this; Erick had seen a lot of them in his universal travels. Earth was literally nothing special compared to all the other worlds Erick had seen in his work against corruption; it was exactly the same as many other worlds, in fact. That meant certain things were to be expected. Like magical societies.

Erick didn’t know it at the time, but Earth had been odd in 2047 in that it had no magic happening anywhere.

Not even reson-based stuff.

This, then, looked like a much more normal world.

Erick guessed that maybe 1 out of 100 people had something going on with them, though his sample size was currently just a few miles around himself, and he didn’t want to poke at anything too hard at all; Butterfly wings, etc.

Erick passed a paint store on the street outside of the community college and the girl behind the counter had some sort of reson-thing going on with her eyes, as she painted a window display. Down the road, Erick saw a cook in a breakfast joint have something going on with his hands as he flipped breakfast sausage patties. A woman at a public payphone held her pager in her hand as she spoke to the person on the other end of the line, talking about where to find things in a warehouse, her mind crackling with some sort of memory magic.

Erick walked all the way across town, through nice neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods, and he saw a lot of magic everywhere, but… Maybe Erick should re-examine his idea that Earth might have a magical society or three. Not a single person out there knew what they were doing with that magic at all. It was all natural magic. It all just happened. No one actually tried for magic at all.

Erick had one big thought about that.

In the year 2047, there was no magic on Earth at all. Nothanganthor had claimed that he had removed all of his Malevolence from Earth —which he had said was here, and the ‘cause’ of Erick’s own Benevolence— and left Earth to Erick. And yeah, Erick saw some Malevolence here, so at least that part of Nothanganathor’s story was true. Red Sparks glittered in the heart of a father over there, as he roared at his teenage son that the son needed to do better in school, or else he would be disowned. Gods. Seeing the father yell at his own son almost sent Erick into a rage, but then the Malevolence connected to the son and the son gained his own spark of Red. Erick opened his Fractal Sight.

That son would go on to bully kids in his school, and thus ‘do better in school’ by way of stealing the homework of others.

It was a cycle of violence.

Erick wanted to intervene, and yet… If he did that, then… He wasn’t sure what would happen. There was no easy solution to that sort of problem, anyway. Maybe he could reincarnate the father as a better person? But the father was probably getting shit on in his own life, causing that shit to roll downhill...

All of Earth had problems.

Magic, however… didn’t seem to be a problem?

It was there. Nothanganathor claimed to rid the world of it in a few decades. So yeah, it made sense that it had been here. Erick had assumed that Nothanganathor had spoken of getting rid of Malevolence as what he had done to the magic of Earth, and since there was no magic, that meant that the only things here had been Malevolence. But that was obviously not the full story at all. The full story was that Nothanganathor killed all the magic users on Earth in like, 30 years, or something like that.

Erick closed his eyes to those problems, and focused on his own. As Erick turned his gaze back to the college, back to Young Erick, Erick noticed something that he had not noticed before.

Young Erick wasn’t magical at all.

He had no Dark Mark. He had no power at all. His soul was a thin thing, rather weaker than all the other souls around him, actually. He was just a dude, coasting through life…

So what the fuck did that mean?

Was Erick not born a Wizard at all?

… Erick paused on the sidewalk, beside a park where kids played and moms gossiped with each other as they watched their kids. A thought had hit him. Did he make himself a Wizard? Well, sure. That’s what people had said before, but it was always a metaphorical sort of thing. ‘You made yourself who you are’ and ‘You certainly didn’t start off throwing lightning bolts’ and all that sort of stuff had happened, but Rozeta had also said that Erick was a Wizard before he hit Veird… Or rather, that Erick had been a Wizard when he entered the Script for the first time.

Hmm.

That Young Erick back in that room was Erick, but also not. Young Erick wasn’t a Wizard. Young Erick was stuck here, in this life, in whatever he made of it. Young Erick had choices ahead of him, and all of his life could change based on any one of them.

… But Jane didn’t have any choices, because she did not exist. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if things didn’t go how they had gone before.

Erick saw a Path open up before him.

He could sever himself from his own history, sending Young Erick down a path of something else, and thus Nothanganathor would have nothing to ever use against him. It wouldn’t take much to do that. Erick could go back home to his parents —oh, shit, his dad was still alive! Mom had already passed on from blood cancer, but Dad was sitting at home, not going to the doctors, and not getting diagnosed while he was still able to be healed… for a given definition of ‘healed’. Medicine in 1997 wasn’t great. Dad was only gonna get tested when the problems actually started to hurt him, and then insurance was going to drop him and he was going to die.

But Erick could fix all that, and then he could fix up Young Erick’s life, and Jane would never happen and everything would change. Young Erick would take another 10 years to grow up properly and when he did he would have a family in his 30’s. He would never go to Veird. Veird would remain as it was before Erick got there.

The war with Nothanganathor would never get as bad as it did, and then Erick could just go to Veird and blindside Nothanganathor, fighting him then and there, while he was still the Arbiter of Veird. He probably had some safeguards against that because he did win once, to Ascend to the God of Magic, and exist outside of time, like Erick did now, sort of, but it would be an easier fight…

Maybe. Who knew.

That was Option One.

Option One also had concerns regarding multiversal shenanigans, but Erick would rip through those, too.

Option Two was to reinforce his history. Young Erick would go through some very big trials, and then Erick could have his family again exactly as it was, and this time… This time, things would turn out how he wanted. Not how Nothanganthor wanted them.

The second way was much tougher, of course. Erick would need to thread a whole bunch of needles, all at once, and he would have to stay here for the next 23 years…

Or maybe just step back? Let stuff happen? Maybe everything would happen as it needed to happen as soon as he wasn’t here interfering…

Well. No. He’d need to step in and help make Young Erick a Wizard; the guy had no Dark Mark at all. Maybe he gained one later? Somehow?

Option Two was Erick’s choice, obviously.

It was selfish beyond belief in some ways, for Erick would be orchestrating everything for his own benefit… But also, the Veird Erick and many others had worked hard to make, had been prepared to face Nothanganathor (as much as they could have been) and now, as soon as Fae Erick rejoined them, they would be more prepared. They could actually win.

… Erick was going to be a little selfish. He was fine with that.

Anyway.

If Nothanganathor was to be believed, Erick became a Wizard in an almost ‘immune response’ scenario against Malevolence. Erick didn’t believe that for one fucking second… And yet, it kinda made sense? Maybe it was the truth in the way that someone can say ‘the sky is blue’, but which doesn’t take into account sunset, night, sunrise, storms, and all that.

… Erick decided: he certainly wasn’t going to spend the next 23-ish years on Earth, watching shit happen.

He could bounce around some.

Maybe he could go live a quiet life down in, like, Australia, or something, as he waited for the big events in Young Erick’s life to happen? That might be fun.

Erick smiled at nothing in particular and he started walking again, having only briefly stopped by the park with the kids and the moms. All his thoughts had taken but a half second to work out, so that was all working back as it should. Erick chuckled a little, and then he practiced, “G’day mate. Crikey it’s a bonzer week. I need to get me thongs on and go walkabout outback.”

… Was any of that correct? Some of it sounded correct. Sort of.

A pair of moms had stopped their gossip to look at him, wondering what he was doing out here. They should have been looking more at their kids, but gods knew that Erick had trouble keeping up with Jane all the time; he didn’t blame them for wanting to talk with each other instead of stare at their kids.

But one of their kids was about to poke the other one in the eye with a stick, and it wasn’t going to be an accidental poke, either. Those kids fucking hated each other, but both the moms thought since they were good friends, that their kids were also good friends, but those two kids had been out for blood for, like, maybe a month? Erick guessed a month. They were only 6 and 7, though. They were both too young to understand their own feelings, or how much damage they could do with those sticks.

Erick had a thought.

The Dark would probably let the kids hurt themselves. That’d be the usual go-to lesson plan on Veird. But Veird had good healing. Earth had no capability to replace eyeballs.

Erick pointed at the kids as he kept walking, saying, “They’re gonna poke an eye out with that.”

Both moms stopped gossiping with each other and both of them got furious, real fast. One mom was almost ready to light into Erick and the other mom was going to help, but the other mom looked at her kid. Her eyes went wide and then her mouth opened wide as she yelled her child’s full name, launching off of her seat. The first mom had a moment of uncertainty, and then she saw what was happening with her kid. She shot off of the bench, too, both of them yelling at their kids not to play with sticks like that.

Erick smiled at the scene. A thread of lightning untwisted within his vision, a tiny problem removing itself from the timeline that would have become a massive event in every one of their lives—

Something twitched within Erick, as a Path diverged.

Erick kept walking, but his smile dropped as his Sight extended off into the future. He had just flapped a very large butterfly’s wings and Jane no longer existed, and thus this Young Erick Flatt never went to Veird.

Ah.

Shit.

So.

Uh…

Where did he go wrong? Was it the kid back there—

Something twitched again, and Young Erick Flatt’s Path was leading him back to Veird.

A mirror had shattered, and then it came back together.

… Uh?

What just happened?

Erick had no idea.

He needed to sit down and think.

Erick got to walking under the bright morning sunshine, all the way until he reached a fast food joint. He went inside and ordered some food while he copied some money inside the cash register in order to pay. He changed the serial numbers on the cash, of course. With greasy breakfast sandwiches in hand, Erick sat down at a table beside the kid’s play area, which took up a good half of the seating space—

Nostalgia hit Erick like a truck.

Some kids played in the ballpit inside the kid area, while another pair of kids played on some arcade machine. Jane never got to experience a kid area like this, and yet they used to be so common across America. Erick remembered playing in one when he was a kid, and his parents took him to a place like this every so often. Veird didn’t have anything like this at all, or at least not outside of playgrounds.

Erick watched the kids play for a little while, feeling somber.

And he thought.

As he ate, he turned his senses inward, to see his Lightning Path, and to view the fractal splash of reality all around him, as he had so very many times when he was cleaning up the universe of those few spots of corruption. He also looked in the past, to see whatever that ‘blip’ was that had happened after he stopped that kid from losing his eye.

He was no closer to understanding how the world had ‘torn’ and then ‘come back together’ after a half hour of magical thought experiments, but he had a few guesses. Perhaps Benevolence was working outside of his direct control? To fix things how he wanted? And yet… That felt like a weak answer right now.

Perhaps Erick’s very presence on this plane of existence was like a weight, ensuring that this history remained strong? That seemed closer to the truth, but not the whole truth. Erick was practically a walking Nexus Event right now.

Breakfast was great. It was exactly as delicious as he remembered, back when he was a kid. Of course the sausage and bacon and egg and the single squirt of ketchup was a pretty abysmal meal, but it tasted great when your taste buds were new, or when you didn’t have to worry about heartburn. As Erick had gotten older, this meal had started to taste less and less good, and his body started telling him that the grease was bad. But Erick was young again, and the food was great.

He went and got another one, and then he sat back down.

Soon, he left the place and went for another walk.

He walked for a few days, not bothering to sleep or do anything else but walk down the road, wherever it took him. He cleaned himself up when he got dirty. He ate when he felt like it. He copied some clothes and wore them. And he did little good things for people as he walked.

A very old woman was about to have a heart attack, as she struggled to get out of her car to go into the grocery store, but Erick healed her and helped her get her walker out. He also copied some of the money in her purse and gave her some more of what she already had, though he did change the serial numbers. He didn’t want her to be suspected of counterfeiting. Later, the woman was so surprised at the register when she saw she had two extra 20s, which was more than enough to get everything she wanted. She told the boy scanning her groceries that she was going to have the best possible birthday party for her grandson this week. The boy scanning the groceries didn’t care, but he pretended to.

The grandmother’s grandson would go on to have a lot more birthdays with his grandmother because of Erick, and those two people would grow closer because of that. It was a fantastic outcome.

Erick saw a homeless guy sleeping under a bridge. The guy had some sort of plaque and tumor problem in his brain. Erick cleared that up, ridding the guy of his cause of early-onset dementia and cancer, and then Erick cleaned up the guy himself and gave him $20 in his pocket. Four days from now the guy would finally start to realize that the voices were gone, and that he could go back to living a normal life. He would go on to get help at the local shelter, and this time that help would allow him to help himself.

A little boy was running away from home because he was scared his father was going to beat him. The boy was completely unprepared to run away, because he was 9 years old and his backpack only had 1 sandwich in it, and the kid was on the edge of the forest, unsure where to go from there. He had managed to get a full ten miles from home, though. Erick saw the kid, crying beside a tree, so he walked over while opening his own backpack. With a sandwich and soda can in hand, Erick sat down with the kid, and the kid instantly latched onto him once he showed off the food. And then the kid started talking. Soon, as the kid cried and ate his food, the story came out. He was running away because he had broken a window by playing with the baseball inside the house, and he didn’t want to be beaten. He was terrified of his father, and his father was going to be home in an hour.

“You know what’s more scary?” Erick asked the kid.

“Noo-ah?” the kid said, his mouth full of sandwich.

Erick said, “Getting a job. Making decisions for yourself. Taxes. Solving problems yourself but you don’t know how. Being alone.” He looked to the kid. “Being alone is terrifying. You should go back home and accept your punishment. Just imagine what your father is going to experience when he gets home. He’ll see a broken window and he won’t see you at all. He’ll be terrified. Don’t do that to him. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“He’ll beat me! That’s what the television says!”

“Television lies. Real life is so much more complicated, and you won’t make it home in any short length of time. Your father will be there before you get back, and your father will be worried sick. He will be crying. He will be furious. He will be happy to see you again.” Erick shrugged. “And if he’s not, then you don’t have to worry about his feelings ever again.”

The kid had a complicated set of emotions.

Erick handed him another soda, saying, “For the walk back.”

And then Erick left.

He was pretty sure he knew exactly what was going to happen when the kid got home, which was why Erick had spoken to the kid in that way.

The kid stayed there, just on the edge of the forest, off the edge of the road, for a little while. Eventually he got up and started walking home. When he finally made it back it was dark but police cruisers sat in the front yard, red and blue lights spinning. The father was there, sobbing and terrified that something had happened. He was an absolute wreck, and then he saw his boy walking up to him. The father broke down, and then the son did, too. There was a hug, soft words, harsh words, questions, and anger, but there was no hitting. There was only hugging.

The father and the boy’s relationship became stronger, because the father cut back on work and the boy actually asked his father to play catch again, like he used to ask. And this time, the father actually played with the son. Soon, the father started to attend the boy’s little league games, and the son eventually got into the pros in his 20s.

Now that was a big butterfly flap.

Young Erick’s timeline diverged, like the rumbling of a quake far, far out of sight. And then the timeline rumbled back into position, aiming back toward Veird. That future seemed even stronger after the rumbling, too, which was kinda weird. Kinda nice, but kinda weird, too.

Erick would figure it out, eventually.

“Maybe it has something to do with my Ascent to True Wizard, and solidifying my own timeline...”