Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick unfurled his wings over a battlefield he had seen in passing, days ago. Or maybe a year ago.

The first time he had seen it was when he was so deep underground that he was on the other side of Fenrir, standing under a true sunny sky. And then he had seen it from ten thousand other perspectives here and there.

Now, he was here, where he had seen himself, wings unfurled wide. He could probably hit 30 kilometers long if he wanted, but he was building a Present here, not shredding this land into countless smaller pieces of infinity, all separate from each other. He was merely 15 kilometers long.

As Erick stood here, knowing that he was watching himself from so many different angles, Erick kinda imagined himself as the needle pulling a thread through countless different Presents. If he had been a different sort of person, perhaps like Lionshard in Margleknot, with his brand of fateweaving magic, then maybe that would have actually been the form this unstructured Wizardry would have taken. But he wasn’t like Lionshard. Erick was just playing it by ear, moving where he needed to move to stand in step with the Pantheon and the fae in order to help the gods do what gods have always done; Decide which reality is the main one.

That decision was being done with violence right now.

The land was Greensoil, but different.

The city was Greendale, the capital, but not really Greendale at all.

This was a Nexus Point upon which most of the counterattack against Plan Surround and Consume was focused, for this was where a major twist in time had taken place, splitting this version of reality from the Godpact.

In this land, Atunir had erupted from the Glimmering Depths from the north of Greendale, Red towers spreading like wheat that had become calcified red/white tumor-spires all across the land. The castles of Greendale were rife with spikes of the stuff, all of them weirdly angled and filled with breathing holes and funnels, while all the land between those spikes was patrolled by demons. The spikes were not natural at all. They were part of a vast ritual. The demons were not Old Demons, but rather incani-based demons.

Those demons had grabbed people and then shoved them against the red/white spikes, and then the spikes had grown around them, trapping them.

The spikes were all deathsoul shrooms, taken in a weird, demonic direction, and instead of trapping just souls, they trapped the entire person and forced them to sing, amplifying their voices through the funnels in their throats. Or rather, what could be considered their throats. The person under that spike, stacked up against other people, did not look like people anymore. In addition to the body twisting, Erick suspected there was also some sort of soul mutation effect going on to make it pleasurable for the people to sing, and with each other, because instead of being some horrific sound…

It was a rather hauntingly beautiful symphony. Organized. Deep and powerful. It called people to join the song, and that is what happened to this land. The people joined the song willingly, unless they were incani, and then they became demons here on Veird.

Erick suspected that the Breach Demon responsible was one of the bigger spikes, but it was hard to tell.

The entire human capital of Greendale and every other major city of Greensoil, from Riski to Kendry to Tower Town and beyond, had become a coordinated song to a Demonic, Red Atunir. There weren’t many song spikes out in the countryside, where entire villages only numbered in the 10s, or 50s. From those places smaller song spikes rose into the sky, singing hymns to a Red Atunir.

In Greendale, the spikes were the size of skyscrapers.

Champion Yetta from Godpact Veird stood opposed to the demonic version of her childhood friend, Allan Trow, who was the Champion for Red Atunir in this version of this world.

On Godpact Veird, Allan had taken on the Curse of the Shadeling back during the Daydropper incident, because Fallopolis wasn’t about to let a Shade be murdered without having a replacement lined up, and that was their ‘tax’ for entry into Ar’Kendrithyst to begin their divine Quest. Allan had died in that fight with Planter in the Godpact world.

He had not died in this world, and it seemed he had become a demon. Perhaps he had become the Breach Demon? He certainly seemed to be in a position of power that he could be mistaken for one, and it would be just like the Shades to do such a thing to Greensoil… or at least it used to be that way.

Champion Yetta was here because Godpact Atunir was focused here, to combat the horrors of this land that most threatened to twist her into Red.

Red Champion Allan was here because this is where he had been, working his world, even after it had been taken by Nothanganathor and dropped here on Fenrir.

It had been 13 minutes since Erick and the Pantheon and the fae of Veird had called the sun/moons into full being, and then quelled the Whirlpool and crushed Fenrir’s Scheme. It had been 10 minutes since Erick and Solomon and others had restored general gravity and air containment to Fenrir, along with a host of other things necessary for life.

It had probably been 18 or so seconds since Yetta had found herself drawn here, to combat the Red Breach Demon of Atunir, in the grand gardens of the palace of Greendale.

The largest songspike of them all twisted up from the ruins of the palace. It was a skyscraper of red and white that tapered to a point. Pulsing red veins led into sound funnels that dotted the entire structure. It sort of looked like a unicorn horn, but with enough holes in it to make a trypophobia sufferer convulse from the horror of it all.

And then there were the holes at the bottom of the spire that spawned eggs that then hatched into baby demons. That would be the Fertility aspect of this Red Atunir, holding onto the shoulders of Allan like a red/gold aura.

Red Champion Allan was a demon with digitigrade legs and wings made of grappling veins. He wore nothing, and his legs and arms were red with blood, or with Malevolence. Probably both. He clung to the side of the large songspike sticking up from the palace. A second ago, Yetta had appeared and thrown a beam of golden light at him, piercing through his heart and the songspike behind him, but he was doing fine. The hole in his chest was healing.

Yetta had been surprised at herself for attacking that fast.

Allan had been too surprised at Yetta’s appearance to do anything but gape at her.

Yetta stood upon the ground, a few hundred meters from Allan. She was resplendent in golden armor, her dark skin shining with golden radiance. Shield in one hand, sword in the other, her face was a mixture of hate, surprise, homesickness, sickness, revulsion, and complete need to annihilate the horror she saw grasping onto the side of the large song spikes.

Erick saw her almost want to apologize to Allan for striking him, in some sort of shock-based impetus, but she pulled that emotion back and let all the other ones happen instead.

There was some sort of divine clash happening in the air, here in Red Atunir’s stronghold. It was important for both of them to resolve this themselves. But when necessary, Erick would step in on the side of Godpact Atunir.

Erick watched.

Yetta had been dragged here without warning at all. She had reoriented as fast as she could, and now she screamed, “ALLAN! WHAT THE FUCK!”

Her voice was a wash of gold across the land. Veins withered in the garden and fruits made of meat popped like so many blood balloons. Golden wheat spread where Yetta stood, and the mockery-garden decayed into a field of gold.

The Red Song faltered.

Allan’s voice was a mumble in the sudden silence, “But you died. Everyone di— oh.” He calmed. He realized something. He said, “Ah. Another test. Of course.” He regained composure. He said, “I do wish Atunir would tell me about these things before she sends Quests my way.” He detached from the side of the songspike and fell to the tumbled bricks of the ruin below, landing like a crash of metal, his body much stronger than it appeared to be. He broke rubble as he walked down the rubble, toward Yetta. “You even brought the Evil Dark with you, huh? I suppose there was no time to warn me, but I’m getting lots of warnings right now.” He pointed at Erick in the sky. “Is Melemizargo going to interfere?”

“That’s not the Dark, you… you.” Yetta had had some harsh words in her mind, and almost on her tongue, but then she calmed, and said, “You’re a puppet who knows nothing, and I need to put you down.”

“Ha! ‘That’s not the Dark’ she says. Yetta. I know what the Dark looks like, and I was a Shade for a while. You know what the Dark looks like, and you fought them with me. Everyone knows what the Dark looks like. And that’s the Dark.”

“You know nothing at all. That’s Erick.”

Allan laughed, not stopping his walk down to level ground at all. “That bubbling archmage? What kinda nightmare did you crawl out of!”

Yetta’s dark eyes turned to brilliant gold. Her voice doubled upon itself. “Godpact.”

Allan froze for a moment. And then he kept walking. “… Ah.” His voice turned harder. “This was the one I have been prepared for.” He doubled in size and grew an extra pair of arms. The veins in his back wrapped around his body, forming hard red armor, and then a sword in each arm. “I will end my Goddess’s nightmares and the Dark in which she drowns.”

“And I’m telling you, that’s not Melemizargo.” Yetta’s voice doubled. “I am not drowning in the Dark.”

Ah, Erick thought, as Yetta clashed with Allan, swords severing, feet and stances treating the world as a suggestion and not as actually necessary for footing. I know what is happening here.

One sword blocked four at the same time in a way that made no realistic sense at all. One slash cut through a shield and the arm holding it, but the broken shield and the arm holding it flowed back onto Yetta, and she blocked another two sword strikes and one kick at the same time.

Atunir had been stuck in that small existence for so long. During that time she had been the only one who ever almost ‘went Dark’.

People still talked about that time she almost fell; about the Fall of Quintlan a full thousand years later, as though it were current events. It appeared Atunir still harbored doubts that anything was real. She even thought that Erick might be some incarnation of Melemizargo.

Erick’s draconic form certainly didn’t help.

There had only ever been one black, winged dragon on Veird before Erick showed up and got a dragon form that also had wings, and was black. Dragon horns were rather solidly unique to every individual, too. Melemizargo had 6 horns, like a crown, and Erick had the same.

Back when Erick had first revealed his dragon form, a lot of people had directly asked him if he was Melemizargo. The conspiracy theorists of Veird had mostly calmed down since then, but they were right back at it in the last several days, now that Erick had displayed true time travel magics. ‘If he is jumping through time, he might actually be Melemizargo! We’ve never seen his humanoid form, right? It might be true!’

Erick wasn’t Melemizargo, though, anymore than he was Phagar.

Allan cut off Yetta’s head with a flashing Red sword, rending through golden armor with a horrible screech, but Yetta’s head and body went spinning away to land back together and her armor repaired.

Allan pulled back, bleeding from the massive separation of flesh that Yetta had delivered into his chest in turn for taking that neck wound. He laughed darkly, clutching his chest with one hand while his other three switched up weapons, two swords becoming two shields and his final swords simply vanishing. The veins of his armor held his wound together as his body healed under Red glows.

Yetta taunted, “You finally going to get serious, old friend?”

Allan chuckled horribly, coughing twice. “Damned Dark Regenerator. I had soul-poison on my swords but you just don’t give a fuck about that, do you. All the world is poisoned. All the world is dying. Even the Script is shit these days. Not a single damned blue box at all. How are you able to still heal that well?”

“The world isn’t poisoned at all, Allan. You’re the one that died in the real world. You’re the one drowning in evil, here in this mockery made to pit friend against friend and inflict pain upon us both.” Yetta asked, “What color is the divine light of Atunir, Allan?”

“Gold,” Allan said, with a disbelieving smirk, as though he didn’t see his own Red aura, as if he didn’t see the Red in the spires all around him, and in the blood on the ground. What did he see everywhere? Gold? Perhaps. Allan sneered, “What color is your light, Nightmare?”

“The color of wheat, ripe and ready for harvest. The color of prosperity, building upon generations and generations. The color of Gold,” Yetta said, and it was the most true thing in the universe at that moment.

Allan stared at Yetta.

And then his vision went Red as he screamed, “DIE DIE DIE!” and he began using his real strength, throwing around disks of black/red force that carved through the air like sawblades, ripping up the world around them. Allan had never been a swordsman. He had always been a Battle Mage, specializing in ‘Sawblade Magic’.

“That’s more like it, Allan,” Yetta whispered to herself.

The blades came for her, carving through her body, but her body reformed from those wounds like gelatin splashing away and then reforming from that splash. She only raised her sword to stop the worst of the blades, her sword sparking with White Benevolence, shattering the Red out of this and that sawblade, and then shattering the sawblade itself. Everywhere she stepped, wheat poured out of the ground, golden and radiant.

Allan retreated, blood pouring from his eyes, the Red flowing out. He almost stumbled on the ruins behind him, but two more legs slashed out of his digitigrade legs, allowing him to spider climb backward. He retreated up the songspike. He never stopped throwing sawblades. Left and right they flew, curving hard and in some cases boomeranging back for a followup attack.

Yetta stepped into the air, upon golden platforms that only existed where she walked, and every sawblade that touched her did less and less.

She advanced, and Allan retreated.

Red Sparks flashed in the ruins of the palace, and in the city. Several songspires broke apart into bone and flesh and flowing Red blood, mangled bodies forming demonic constructs that aimed toward the battle between Champions.

That was when Erick chose to get involved.

Erick blasted the larger ‘demons’ apart with beams of Benevolence. Smaller demons tried to get to the fight, but Erick rained [Benevolence Bolts] upon all of them, popping those demons like overripe zits.

Yetta said to Allan, “See? That is not Melemizargo.”

“It’s a trick! Melemizargo is the God of Magic! He could do Light Magic if he wanted!”

“You still don’t See.” Yetta shook her head. She stood ten meters from Allan, her in the air upon golden radiance, and him clutching to a tower of bone and song made of people. “That’s not Light Magic, old friend. It was magic which you never got to see in your world. It was magic from the Wizard of Benevolence, cast by the Wizard of Benevolence, by Erick Flatt. He has gifted that magic to many others, and I am one of those people. Allow me to end your nightmare, Allan, and through you, the Red Goddess you champion will know that the nightmare is over.”

Allan breathed hard. He held his shields between him and Yetta, while his two extra hands held spinning black/red disks. He stared, and his eyes flickered Red, his lips snarl—

A gold and white flash passed through reality, forming a plane of separation where Yetta had swung her sword. Allan’s magic failed. His Red armor crumbled. His blackened legs calcified along with his body, as he clutched onto the songspire at his back.

The song died.

The spire began to slide apart, broken and dead, behind Allan’s stiffening body. Red sparks gathered where she had cut Allan in two, from the right side of his head all the way through his left hip. As the spire crashed to the ground behind Allan, Allan backed up, onto the harshly-angled surface of the spire, Red Sparks still trying to hold him together.

The monster hiding inside the main song spire was already dead. It was not a Breach Demon. Allan was the Breach Demon, but that time was coming to a close.

Yetta stood tall as she stepped closer, to stand above him. “We won in Ar’Kendrithyst, and later, against the Daydropper. Erick helped. Crashed an iceberg into the Daydropper Queen. Tenebrae was there for levels, just as we plotted with him. You never saw that. You died fighting Planter, giving it your all so that we would live.”

Allan’s breath hitched. “I… I gave it everything?”

“You did.”

Tears flowed. “And you all lived?”

“No. But we won. You died. Dorthy and Basil, too. Cyril and I lived. We were rescued.”

Allan chuckled, his voice breaking hard. “I would have called you a liar if you would have said you had all lived.”

“I ended up marrying Cyril Odaali. Have some kids now. They would have loved you, as you were, before whatever happened here.”

“Ha.” Allan said, and the Red began to clear from him, replaced with gold. His extra limbs broke, and he held on as color returned to his body. He looked almost human, though he was not human at all. “I had the chance to use the big spells on Planter… the ones I wasn’t sure would kill me or not. And I didn’t. I didn’t take that shot. We lost. The Shades captured us and killed Planter for us. They did this big ritual… I ended up twisted into an incani by Melemizargo and then let go… And then stuff happened. Breach Demon.” He looked across the city. “… These weren’t incani, were they.”

“Some of them. I’m not sure what they were, really. A nightmare, whatever it was.”

Allan breathed out, “Probably some nightmare.”

Allan began to fade into a golden light and the world pulsed. A Red tint in the air began to fade away, pushed away by gold and white, leaving the brightness of white moons overhead, shining down on a Greendale that was still demonic.

Allan vanished.

Yetta looked up at Erick. Golden tears streamed down her face. “I can’t… I can’t do it anymore. Can I get a portal back to a quarantine space?” She looked away, rubbing her face, muttering, “Wherever that is—” She paused and muttered, “Oh. It’s there.”

She was in communication with Atunir right now, so yeah, she was getting information from outside sources. Erick opened a portal right beside her and she stepped through, back to a moon about 3 moons from Veird. It was a quarantine space that Past Erick was still setting up, but it was good enough for Yetta.

Yetta had arrived here to do battle with Red Atunir’s Champion with nothing but a mission and no time for any of it, and yet she had done well.

Erick had been prepared to burn all of this version of Greensoil to burning white-hot ground, to eradicate the demon and trapped-soul problem, but the ego-death of the Red Atunir had done the necessary killing for him. The song that had filled the air was now gone, and the people trapped in those spires had died when Yetta had swung her sword.

This abomination of Greensoil had been culled.

Some of the details had been different from the last time Erick had seen it, but now that he was here, and now that Godpact Atunir was in full power, the world got a little bit more stable. This was the good outcome.

Erick moved on.

- - - -

Fenrir didn’t have any specific nodes of control. The encirclement of the sun/moons around Fenrir didn’t have any specific nodes of control, either. That room with the blue sphere at the Northern Spellsurge Mountains of Veird was more like a general overview of the encirclement now that it had done its job. Every planet out there, stacked upon Fenrir’s surface like distant pearls reaching into the sky, was its own secured location.

It was the same general idea that Solomon had used when creating Fenrir, but updated. Version 2.

Fenrir was the original version, and apparently it had some exploitable parts that had allowed parts of the dyson sphere to be turned into control nodes. Erick was rather sure that Nothanganathor had imported some side-slice, multiversal-derived parts of Fenrir in order to pull out one section and replace it with a section that could be exploited, but he had no way to know that for sure. Not right now.

Erick floated inside Fenrir, in the part that faced the sun.

Everything was blasted wasteland and dead ocean full of horrors, and the sky was a Red wash, the sun turned Malevolent. Nothanganathor was not there, but he had left behind lots of toys that had turned the sun into a Malevolence-generator.

The Malevolence from the sun twisted into 6 offshoots, like beams of Red Lightning, each Jupiter in thickness, traveling faster than the speed of light and softer than a feather’s touch to siphon into massive collections of collectors on the inside surface of Fenrir. Those collecting areas were like a forest of black Christmas trees that sparked with Red, taking that Red into itself and then flooding that Red out into Fenrir, to overload and take over the systems that Solomon had created when he had made Fenrir.

Nothanganathor had replaced a vast number of 100-kilometer-wide hexagon-shaped worldplates with the same worldplates, but with those christmas-tree collectors.

Looking at the whole collector array from the side…

It kinda looked like glowing red rain falling on a black forest.

The five other collector stations equidistant around Fenrir’s interior were all sorts of fucked up, with the sun/moons of the [Seeds of Atunir] having plunged through those spaces and destroyed those collectors. The sun still spilled Malevolence out into Fenrir, though, so there were 5 spots on Fenrir that were more like holes in the world, with Red fountaining outward. Erick had already fixed (or more like his past selves would in the future fix up) those spaces so that they would heal themselves in due course. Solomon helped (or more like he would help) a lot with that.

But this collector space had defenders. Automatic defenders, but still defenders.

The other spaces probably had the same system this one had, but the Crushing Ritual had broken those other lands. Erick suspected, based on a certain kind of absence in the space above this collector zone, and based on how half the collector zone was underwater and that which was above water had giant gouges in the adamantium…

The black christmas forest had gaps in it that looked like giant tendrils had been there, and then removed. Those tendrils had grown into Fenrir itself, but then they had been pulled away, and a little violently, too—

Ah.

That’s what Erick was looking for. White wood. A broken root.

Everbless had been here.

He was gone now, of course. What remained was a land of horrors that hurt to look at. Literal horrors, that literally hurt to look at, too. Erick tilted his head a little, and allowed the horrors in the space to appear to him, and what he saw was several worlds of Janes and everyone he ever knew and loved, from Quilatalap to Poi to Teressa and Teressa’s daughter, crucified and spiked upon black needles and caught between crushing, growing, black branches. It was a cacophony of horror.

It was real, too. In a multiversal, infinite sense, it was real. It was a manufactured horror, meant to keep away anyone who dared approach. It was effective, because in this space, Erick saw that they all died no matter what he did, because their very lives had been tied into the collector array. When Erick backed away, the screams stopped. When Erick advanced, the screams were enough to fill several worlds.

Erick tilted his perceptions backward, flying away, and the cries of everyone he ever knew faded as the pain stopped for them, and they themselves faded away, to Elsewhere. They were still there, though, just beyond a veil of Wizardry and Malevolence, tuned to keeping that collector array active against all odds.

A gold haze hung in the air around the collector zone, like the protective embrace of the entire Pantheon. Erick held in that protected space, deciding how he wanted to proceed. He had seen this space before now, and he knew what he had done before…

He had tried to rescue the people down there, and that Erick had been drawn into a killing field where even more horrors assaulted him.

Erick quelled his heart and took aim.

A million Janes appeared out of Elsewhere, asking not to be killed.

Erick wondered what the gods saw when they looked upon this space.

Perhaps it was better not to know.

Erick obliterated the collector array in a wash of dragonfire filled with [Metalshape] and Benevolence that scoured Fenrir’s black forest clean, killing every multiversal person to exist in that space. They screamed at him. They hated him. He obliterated them all anyway. The fire spread and spread and consumed every black tree, boiling oceans and erasing the dead.

A dome of Godpact gold divinity swept into the space, further obliterating it from even the memory of this land, carving a Jupiter-sized hole in the surface of Fenrir. Briefly, the soft Red Lightning/light from the sun had an exit, into the lands beyond Fenrir, but then a sun-moon appeared in that hole, sliding in from outside, glowing radiant white, full of Benevolence. Similar moons appeared at every other hole in Fenrir where a collector array had been. They blocked the Red fountaining into Fenrir from the sun… And that was it?

The last time Erick had looked here, Erick had watched himself die. He had pushed that problem away when it turned out to be the wrong course of action, and then he saw this battle end in the Godpact’s favor somehow. He had just secured that win…

But he had kinda expected the sun-moons blocking the Jupiter-sized holes in Fenrir to shine some light upon the sun and erase the Malevolence inside of it. That’s what had happened last time, after all.

But the moons were just floating there, blocking the way out. When were they going to—

“Ah. I’m the one that turns the sun. Right.”

Erick got going.

- - - -

Erick hovered in front of the Red sun.

It had been yellow/white the last time Erick had been here, a slice of Infinity away, when Nothanganathor had been curled around the whole thing like a dragon guarding its hoard. He had been here on this sun, too, of course, but he was gone and that long bastard had done something to this sun and now it generated Malevolence.

Welp!

Erick could break that production.

Probably.

First test.

“I knew I would eventually use this thing,” Erick said, bringing out a shiny golden disk from his personal space.

Cascadio, a sun god that Erick had met in Margleknot, had given Erick the golden disk to help Erick project into the Waiting Room and pull people out of that space. The disk was barely a mote of light compared to the radiance of the Malevolent Sun, but it shined ever more brightly as Erick shrunk down to person-sized, and held the token in front of him, in front of the sun. Cascadio was a god with trillions of followers all across the Fractal Cosmology, so there was no chance that whatever was happening here would affect him at all…

Well. If this led to something bad, then Erick would simply deal with it. Honestly though, he wasn’t sure how to clean an entire sun of Malevolence, or clear out whatever bad things Nothanganathor had left planted for Erick to find. That’s why Erick hadn’t even tried to blast the sun or anything like that.

Cascadio was a great guy, and there was no way that a god wouldn’t jump at the chance to be installed inside a space where trillions of more people would soon be living. All of the Pantheon-gods were already super excited about that very same prospect.

Erick spoke through the token of the sun god, to the god himself, “Cascadio, the Radiant Sun! I invite you to this land to see if you would get along with the current Pantheon, here in this space without a sun god.”

Cascadio was suddenly there, and not there at all. “Nothanganathor just spent a great deal of favors on my behalf in Margleknot, and I am taking them. I ask you now, Erick, to meet with Nothanganathor as a person, and there will be no violence. There will be a small conversation. He will escape to a side slice of infinity, and you will let him. You can pursue afterward.” Cascadio added, “Or you can ignore this deal and proceed on your own. I hope, if you do proceed on your own, that you invite me back in less dire times.”

Erick sighed.

Typical. All around typical, too. At least Cascadio had offered Erick the option of not doing this sort of deal at all, and ignoring this whole plan he had set up with him. So maybe not that typical at all.

Erick asked, “How many favors did he spend?”

“Hundreds. He threatened to spend them on behalf of my enemies if I did not try to get you to have some words with him.”

“Your enemies? … And yet you still suggest that I ignore this deal?”

Very much not typical. Gods thought of their followers most of all… But Erick suspected that by inviting Cascadio into this space where the risk and reward were both enormous, more of the gods were present in this dealing. He was able to make actual choices. He was able to allow mortals to have a say.

“Nothanganathor is desperate and a desperate Nothanganathor is not something I wish to unleash on anyone. Word is getting around that he Sundered the Painted Cosmology. I am unsure how long his various favors will remain useful, and he feels the same, but his favors still carry weight, for now. He is spending them like a dying man spends prayers.”

Erick stared at the sun, at the boiling, Red surface. It was like watching colored, illuminated water boil. Crackling solar flares brushed against Erick, against his aura of Benevolence, and vanished like steam in a blizzard.

Erick made a decision. “I’ll go talk to him for a moment of ceasefire.”

He expected the sun itself to be a trap, but the second Erick started floating toward it, a hole opened up in the Red. Erick turned back into a dragon.

… Another trap? Certainly not an obvious one, if it was a trap. Erick floated into the hole and flicked his tail at the liquid nuclear surface of the sun. Nuclear fire spilled outward and then fell back down to the surface. Nothing else happened.

Erick kept expecting a trap, but he floated down the hole and the absolute inferno of the sun turned cooler. Calmer. Erick slipped into an open space underneath the mantle of the sun that held a small moon that was solid white, and a little iridescent.

It was a pearl of Benevolence the size of a small moon.

Erick had no idea what was going on with it, but there was no more tunnel beyond the pearl. Erick imagined that the whole thing was some sort of bomb disguised as Benevolence, but it sported a little house on the other side of it, away from the tunnel leading out of the sun. A Red tree the size of a normal tree grew to the side of the house, overlooking a 1-story flat that would not have been out of place anywhere on Veird, or even on Earth.

A picnic table sat out front, and Nothanganathor sat at the picnic table. Or at least an avatar of him did.

He had a tea set and some chocolate chip cookies set out.

Erick turned human-shaped and stepped down to the pearl and to the other side of the table. “A ceasefire meeting.”

“You have accepted my offer, and I accept the temporary meeting we are having here. Let no one disturb us, and let neither of us be taken from our bases of power by the words or actions committed in this place.”

Erick frowned a little. “There wasn’t any Wizardry in that.”

“Of course not. To solidify the statement would be taken as an act of aggression against you, and so I chose to leave the statement open, which is also a sort of aggression, but an unavoidable one.” Nothanganathor said, “Want any tea or cookies?”

Gods, he pissed Erick off.

“Absolutely not. Say what you want to say, and then we will get back to war.”

Make a single threat, and I will stop this farce right now.

Make a threat.

Just do it.

Erick wanted the man to say something vicious. Anything at all, and then he could give up this farce.

Nothanganathor said, “I have realized a few things in the last few days since you returned from your trip across the universe, since you became a fae. Mainly, that I am going to win, and there’s nothing you can do to stop that. So I’m not fighting anymore. Witness my benevolence.”

Nothanganathor knew of his win.

Shit.

He waved a hand, and some mechanisms somewhere clicked.

The Red of the surrounding sun dissipated under nuclear fire, and the red light of this under-mantle place became white and yellow. The Benevolence pearl they stood upon flickered. White lightning flashed from the edge of the pearl, heading into the sun, impacting the solar wall and then traveling further, further, further, into the core. Reality clicked and the pearl underfoot became something like a manaminer, or maybe it was a controller of some sort. Either way the white lightning that struck through the mantle of the sun had continued onward, into the very core of the sun, which was a manaminer.

A screen popped up next to Erick.

Welcome, Master Erick Flatt.

Current settings are being switched to producing all mana in equal measure.

Switchover from Malevolent Fenrir estimated to take: 9m;21s

Ostensibly, Erick had control over the sun of the system now.

This had to be a trick.

“I give you the sun of Veird, Erick, as I am sure you can already tell. I will give you the battles from now until I win the war.” Nothanganathor said, “For I have won, just like I said I would. I have won, and left you and yours as alone as much as I could. Now that I am where I am, I am sorry that we were on opposite sides of this war. We never should have been opposite each other, but thus has my Curse of Obscurity always brought me back to Zero, through levers which you do not know.” He went silent.

Erick glared. He did not give the man the satisfaction of asking him about whatever it was he was about.

Nothanganathor smiled. “You’re not curious? I want to tell you, but you won’t believe me, which is the usual state of affairs for this particular Curse of Obscurity. It took you a long, long time to get to the point that you won’t listen to me, which is why I never spoke to you in the first place, and why I culled all the other ones to come before you. Melemizargo was uniquely smart when he fucked me over all those thousands of years ago, but I suppose he had the Dark to tell him how best to act when it comes to this particular poison that the Dark himself created all those ages ago.”

Erick ignored that. “Nothanganathor. I offer you forgiveness for your crimes if you repent and make efforts to repent more. When you gain the Mantle of Magic of the Dark, you will resurrect Melemizargo with your second-to-last act of godhood, and then give the Mantle back to him in your actual last act of godhood. In return, I will stand on your side, and as long as you voluntarily never wield power enough to ever threaten the Sundering of any universe ever again, or inflict unjust pain on anyone ever again, I will protect you. Melemizargo will do the same.”

Nothanganathor listened. He nodded in understanding of the offer even before Erick was done, but when Erick got to ‘unjust pain’, Nothanganathor went dead-eyed and hateful.

Silence stretched.

Nothanganathor pulled back from whatever words he wanted to say, and simply said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Dark has been served by draconic tyrants for too long, but I will be a better sort of tyrant—”

“Are you even fucking listening to yourself?!” Erick said, “Holy fuck, man! ‘A better sort of tyrant’! Fucking hell!”

Nothanganathor shot to his feet, yelling, “It was made from my body! It’s my universe by rights! I will have it, and no others, nevermore!”

Erick was dumbfounded. “What the fuck you talking about?”

Nothanganathor continued, “I never believed it at first, just like you. But people called me it every time I saved a world, while Mother’s Shades only stood and watched and in some cases even worked with the evils that killed those worlds I saved. Melemizargo would often come in and steal all my glory, too. I was just any other Wizard. He was the Second. I was a savior of light for all my life and he—”

“You’re talking without saying anything.”

“On purpose! On purpose. You’ll figure it out soon enough. Every time I tell one of us they always break… But you’d do fine, wouldn’t you.” Nothanganathor looked at Erick. He stood taller. “It would be an attack to tell you this. I will not break hospitality first.”

… He was inviting Erick to allow an attack.

Stepping into the sun had not been the trap, for Erick could escape just fine. Perhaps there had been a real attack in this sort of cease-fire dealing, but Erick had avoided it, or Nothanganathor had decided not to pull that trigger. But then Nothanganathor dangled something that he deemed to be an attack, asking for Erick to let him hit him.

He was trying to use the idea of hospitality against Erick.

Fae hospitality was sort of a trick. Mainly, it didn’t really exist. The act and the idea of hospitality and the rules around it was a way to gain or lose advantage over a person and thus gain a Wizard-like leverage to use upon them. That is what Nothanganathor was constructing at this moment.

“Are you attacking me again, Nothanganathor?” Erick asked, punting the opening to attack back to Nothanganathor.

“We are in a truce right now.”

“A cease-fire is not a truce.”

“Close enough to count in all the ways that do.”

“I can maneuver resources in the background, too.”

“Surely you do not begrudge a man the desire to not die before he becomes a god.”

“I promised you that you will have nothing and I will uphold that promise, unless you change.”

“You can’t promise anything. You are the same as me, and they will do to you what was done to me a thousandfold. Melemizargo is not your friend. He is your user.”

“What a strange way to put it. He imposed upon me my draconic shape, just as he did to you, and that somehow makes him my user?”

That was a wrong step. Erick had stepped into Nothanganagthor’s argument.

Nothanganathor’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. He pulled back, not taking the direct shot, angling for the verbal win first, saying, “The gods are all users, Erick. They take and make and break. Surely you have heard the Shades singing. They speak of breaking all the time, from the First Telling to the current tellings, and all the ones between.”

Erick countered, “You have some secret that you value above all others. You have allowed yourself to be twisted; to commit death and malevolence. You think you are the only broken person to ever exist? You are not. You have chosen the path of the wrong-doer in all courses in life. That is why you must fail, for the alternative is another Sundering.”

Nothanganathor stepped into Erick’s argument, saying, “My secret is the greatest secret of the Painted Cosmology. I would like to make a guess about the future you saw, when you came out of that Time Out crystal. Do you invite me to make a guess?”

Once upon a time, Erick had been tricked by a fae and sucked into Ar’Cosmos.

This time, Erick did the trick.

“Display who you are, Nothanganthor, and let the judgment commence.”

Nothanganathor’s eyes went wide, and then he grinned and laughed, a horrible sound, even as the solar light all around turned brightest white. Nothanganathor twisted, his avatar coming apart at the seams, blood bursting, flesh ballooning— He flickered, and then his body stilled, half-transformed. Half of his face was human and sized to a house, the other half was smoothly draconic; the face of a leviathan. Half his body had twisted and elongated, his clothes shredded as he became a leviathan several kilometers long.

Erick was a dragon once again.

Hovering in some liminal space between Benevolence and Not, Nothanganathor’s voice came out like a rumbling tide, “Once upon a time, they built a universe upon a corpse. My corpse.”

And that had done it.

Like a door had opened, Erick realized several things that he had not.

Nothanganathor said, “You see, now. That was enough. Now you are cursed as well, and in a much worse way than my Curse of Obscurity. You are cursed with the Truth.”

“You’re not Xoat and neither am I.”

“Not directly, but we are him! And yet, that’s not even the whole Truth! You have barely scratched the surface of that Truth! You know how fae are born and survive, don’t you? They cast parts of themselves into all the universes and when one part dies another awakens. You have already become that sort of existence already, with your Benevolence, but there was another like you, long, long before you came along.

“Xoat, the First Wizard.

“He has become us, in all the ways he is capable of becoming, because they broke him to make a universe, and they keep breaking him all the time.” Nothanganathor’s broken, [Polymorph]-accident-looking body shifted, the human-shaped parts flowing away and the leviathan coming into full strength. He was still a physical match for Erick, now, which was ten million times smaller than his true self, but he was whole and strong. He explained, “Bodies and souls continually churn through the stuff of life and existence. Parts discarded. Parts picked up. One of those parts came to me when I needed to save my adopted family in my first century of life from the predations of an enemy that had been beyond me before then. Another piece of Xoat came to you, at another Dark moment in your life, when you were staring at a weapon and a baby cried in the other room, and you had no idea how to do what you needed to do, but you fought anyway.

“Ignition to Wizardry is different for everyone, but it all begins in the same place.

“A desire. A Calling to the Dark, where Xoat resides and is continually shredded at the pleasure of the Tyrant Gods. Those shreds are cast everywhere, far and wide, and anyone can pick one up. Becoming a Wizard is as easy as discarding a part of oneself and the taking up of a power far beyond oneself. Some of us take that power further than others, like you, like me. None of us are the original Xoat. All of us are still him. All of us are Wizards because all of us have a piece of him.

“Of Xoat.

“Of The Prince.”

Erick almost told him to shut up, but he could not. The Dark Mark within him resonated. It needed to hear the words being said.

“All of us are the Eldest Brother of Shadow, Son of Fairy Moon and Gregarious. All of us created untold universes through our art and our gifts of life to all. You wonder why all Wizards start off good? Your friend Poi wondered that sometimes, and you did too. That is why.

“We are the Prince Reborn. All Wizards are.

“You wonder why all dragons are basically evil? Why they are tyrants? Why gods of the Dark are tyrants? Why dragons are the Gods of Magic, and not Wizards? It is because the dragons are made of the Dark in order to keep Xoat from coming back! All of us are the victim of the Dark, and of Shadow, of she who took her Brother, murdered him, and stuffed him into the Dark to ensure his continual, ripping death, and through that death the creation of so much more life, for she hated his success and she wanted it for herself.”

The light was too bright.

Erick felt weird.

Erick said, “I reject your narrative.”

Nothanganathor ignored that. “I once tried to resurrect Xoat. You think that Solomon was the first to create an un-Sundering magic? I was the first, but I followed in the footsteps of countless other cults. Every time a cult got too close to the truth they were killed by the God of Magic. That is why I was damned to never win against Melemizargo in that tournament. That is why our mother sent my brother against me. I could not be allowed to bring him back. That would have Sundered the entire universe.” He smiled wide, and it was full of Red. “I Sundered that universe without even touching that magic.”

Erick said, “You’re insane.”

“I’m furious for ten thousand reasons. Not insane.” Nothanganathor said, “I can understand how you would not be able to tell the difference.”

A moment passed.

“Anger is no reason to kill so many,” Erick said. It had taken him a moment to realize where he stood after those ‘revelations’ that felt so true, that vibrated the Dark Mark inside of his soul with a resonant Truth, shaking what had once been his foundation. Erick had arrived at a new position as fast as he could, floating black among the white. “Being wronged is no reason to bring more wrongness into any world.”

“ ‘Wrongness’? Ha! The deciders of right and wrong are those who are the strongest, as it is in every reality, in every universe.”

“Might does not make right.”

“Strength is the only foundation worth building upon at all.”

Erick was almost ready to call it there. But he tried, “You don’t have to do this. You could choose forgiveness for the wrongs they have done to you, and you would gain forgiveness in turn.”

“Do you have the strength to ensure that outcome?”

“What is this, Nothanganathor? What is this thing you are trying to achieve? Why the pain? Why the suffering?”

“When I become God of Magic of the Dark, I will right every wrong that has ever been committed against me or any other by the Dark and those who infested the Dark in the beginning. I will Erase the gibbering mind of the Dark and use the carcasses of the Dark and Fairy Moon and Gregarious to build a universe worth living in. I will make Shadow into a slave. I will be the best possible tyrant, for there is never any other way for any true ruler to be.” He said, “And you, I will have as my eternal foe, thus ensuring that I know where my eventual End will come from, and which I will always win against. The Wizards will be in charge in my universe, and the Dragons will be cast down for all eternity to live as their own kin, or perhaps lizards. I have not yet decided. But you can remain. You can retain this hated form. I will allow that much.”

Erick pulled back, black body spread wide, the light of the land coloring him white. “You cannot be allowed to become a god.”

Nothanganathor coiled, his bright white body backlit enough to make him look black. “I have already won. You should work on damage control.”

“You have won nothing yet.”

“My Curse of Obscurity broke 19 hours ago, while you were still setting up your encirclement. I became True Wizard and then Fae Ascendant before you walked into this cease fire. I am brimming with so much strength that I wonder who will win when we actually fight. Will you and your forgiveness win? Or will me and my fury win? I’m almost tempted to fight you now, just to find out.” Nothanganathor said, “But I have won everything already, and I desire fewer fae games in my life, so run home now, True Brother of mine, and see how they treat you now that you know who you really are, and who I really am.” He glared with eyes of deepest Red, “If you pursue me then we shall fight as universes do; through actions, and no more words at all.”

The white world vanished all around them—

Erick floated in front of the sun, a black dot in the sun-lit void, hovering at a Venus-distance.

Some time passed.

And then Erick connected back to the moment. The sun loomed in front of him, full-white, flickering with iridescence. It was not Benevolence white. It was simply True Prismatic.

There was no field of stars beyond. There was just the inside of Fenrir, solid as could be except for in 6 spots, equidistant around the interior surface, where moonlights the size of planets glittered among the black. The sun swirled light and power outward, and while all of it soaked into the black out there just fine, it mostly swirled into those moonlights.

Grand terraforming storms swept across the interior surface of Fenrir like great cloud banks, but at this distance they looked like gossamer spiderwebs floating on a fractal breeze.

And then there were the spots of war out there.

It was about 2 hours post-Crush of Fenrir’s defense systems, and the gods and Erick were all still busy putting Fenrir’s systems back together.

Erick cleared his mind.

He ignored everything that Nothanganathor had said.

Erick counted at least 19 major issues out there right now, from that weird patch of the Inner Fenrir, where something white was spreading in a mold-like pattern, to that other part over there, where something like a zombie-propagation event was doing… a lot. It was as though tiny grey dots were washing out from an original part of the patchwork surface. Those tiny grey dots had already expanded past at least 5 different patchworks.

Erick turned back to the white sun.

… He took another minute to just think.

- - - -

Erick held out Cascadio’s trinket to the white sun, and intoned, “Cascadio. A temporary granting of this sun is now yours, if you want it. Full granting of this sun will come from the Pantheon of Veird, depending on how this all works out. Please help us burn out the unwanted problems littering this land and help us help ourselves.”

The strong, brown-skinned avatar of Cascadio appeared before Erick, in a halo of light and gold. “I accept this honor on a temporary basis. You and your progeny Valkyries will be empowered while under any sun that I inhabit during this time, and for all always, should this cooperation work. I will begin talks with your Pantheon now.”

Erick hadn’t expected that, but… Erick smiled. “Good to hear, Cascadio.”

Cascadio grinned. “We’ll share drinks when you’ve truly wrangled this land to something closer to peace.”

Cascadio faded away—

A boom of white light flickered from the sun, spreading outward and dissipating as it got far enough from the source. Erick felt warm air fill the void, like whispers of substance that tickled his wings and body as it flowed past him. Ah? Cascadio was creating an atmosphere? That was—

A planet the size of a small nation appeared under Erick. It was good brown dirt at first, but then the dirt sprouted golden grass and golden trees, and then came a glittering, glass cathedral. It wasn’t anything overly special, but its position was special. Erick shrunk down and stood before glass perfection that acted like prisms. The iridescent white sun shone behind it, sending rainbows across the planetoid.

A kindly-looking older man in soft brown robes stepped out of the front of the cathedral. He was Brother Smalls, from Margleknot, from Cascadio’s Cavalcade. The guy had been Erick’s introduction to how Cascadio operated, before Erick had gotten to speak with Cascadio himself, on that golden hill in the center of that land of islands.

Brother Smalls bowed a little. “Fae Flatt. Welcome.”

Erick was as personable as he could be, considering the situation. “Brother Smalls! Are you okay to be here?”

“I am forever in the embrace of My God, but I’m not getting closer to the actual battlefield. I’m okay here. I appreciate your concern, though.” Brother Smalls said, “To cut an epic to a few lines of text: Cascadio is going all-in on this as much as he can. It will take years to form a proper atmosphere up here, but we wish to make it possible for people to go anywhere they want, just like in Margleknot. Further details of spatial-expansion properties to follow, if that’s okay with you—” Brother Smalls looked to the side. Then he turned back to Erick. “My God has made contact with your Pantheon here. There are issues. They can wait.”

Erick said, “I’ll be adding this place to the [Gate] Network soon enough… Eventually. Are you okay here on your own?”

Brother Smalls plucked a Vivid Gloom drink out of the air, grinning as he held the big glass of cold, glimmering blackness. “I’m happy. Good fortune taming these wilds.”

Erick nodded a fraction, and then he departed.

Somewhere between hours 4 and 6 of solving more problems on Fenrir, Erick decided that he didn’t need to confront Melemizargo or Shadow about the Xoat thing. That was probably what Nothanganathor would have wanted, and Erick wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.

- - - -

Erick appeared in the skies over the Valkyrie staging area on Veird, unfurling his wings. He was larger than the entire staging field 5 times over. Squadrons of Valkyries were ready to go, though they had been in rather lax formation until that moment, until Erick darkened the skies with his presence. Within a flashing second, people got into formation and Erick handed out small paperworks to the Mind Mages and Book Mages among the Valkyries, detailing what Erick had seen out there, giving them general instructions on where to start. They hadn’t been doing nothing, though, so they knew some of what Erick would want them for.

Shivraa stood at the head of the army, her body vibrant white and subtly violet, the air tensing around her like the freezing of a lake’s surface. She scanned the papers that Erick had deposited next to her. She already knew everything they had said.

Erick flashed down to person-sized to stand level with Shivraa, who instantly bowed.

The entire army of 60,000 people bowed.

People from House Benevolence stood to the side, listening and preparing for everything else that was to come. Burhendurur and Mox were there. Sitnakov and Killzone showed. Solomon stepped through a silver portal, along with Destiny. Ophiel peered out through a hole in the air, and Evan stepped out of a nearby building, to see, and to hear.

“My Valkyries,” Erick spoke, his voice flowing over the staging area. “It has been 6 hours and 30 minutes since the start of this theater of war. Nothanganathor has fled the battle. We will confront him on another slice of infinity another time. As for now, you are commanded to take Fenrir completely. From the smallest child lost in the woods with no way to survive on their own, to the lich holding hostage 10,000 souls or more, to the people behind grand fortifications and holding out against the onslaught, you will test them all and bring all who you can into the horde. You will especially leave no vulnerable persons untaken, for ten thousands are dying every minute out there to poisons spreading wide and soul attacks killing without anything to stop them at all. Even if someone looks safe, they are not safe at all.

“The only ones you will leave alone are those who have Personal Scripts and who are defending their parts of reality adequately. You will still test them, though, with your swords and your blackgold flame, and if those tests are failed, then so be it, but if those tests are passed, then you move on. You and those with Personal Scripts are the only ones capable of truly surviving down there, as there is no Script down there to even the playing field at all between person and person and everything else.

“Reap all who you can.

“Burn everything that seems like it needs burning. A lot of the infections down there are plant and monster-based, so there will be a lot of burning necessary. Rearrange the squads for proper firepower.

“When we are done here we move onto Nothanganathor.

“Every squad will be starting in the thick of the largest problems out there. World-sized problems. Every squad will be linked to here, but not directly; to the quarantine worlds outside of Veird. You all know what to do, or at least you will.” Erick opened 60 portals for each 1000-man group, each of which led to 60 different staging areas in 60 different worlds far above Fenrir. From there, Erick would open more portals later. The distance involved in some of those portals meant that they couldn’t be traversed instantly, but instead had a delay of minutes to half an hour. Fenrir was large, after all. Still, magic made the trip faster than physics should have allowed. When the gods fully took over the land, determining how time worked, then the trips would be instant. But for now, there were delays. “Connect to your grouping in the Script, in your Classes given to you by Rozeta, and let us [Cleanse] away the problems of Fenrir.”

The Valkyries roared, and it was the sound of war.

They raced into portals and the reaping began.

Minutes later, Erick was flitting around the Valkyrie staging area, answering questions for Valkyrie squadron representatives about what they were seeing out there.

Without warning, Kromolok appeared through a golden portal. He waited at the front of the army, while Erick answered a question about what they were dubbing Section 899, the Fungal Infection. It was one of the more dangerous areas, because what looked like a white fungus spreading far was actually ten million different fungal infections, almost all of them derived from the Deathsoul Shroom. Erick had eliminated that soul-stealing mushroom on Veird, but the multiverse was the multiverse, and some shroom variants were a lot tougher in those other worlds.

“Burn burn burn it all,” Erick said, “Even those who are only half-infected, those who live with it. Burn it all and reap every soul into the collective. No one likes living with fungus spilling out of one eye socket; they are lying to themselves, and thus also to you. They’ll get their bodies back later, anyway.”

That Valkyrie, just by hearing that information, transmitted all of that to all of their entire wargroup. The Valkyrie bowed and then stepped back. Erick glanced around the place, and saw many other questions waiting on the lips of many other Valkyries.

Erick went to Kromolok next.

“We need to speak,” Rozeta’s Head Inquisitor said, without preamble.

“Do we have to, Kromolok? Really. I mean that. Is it actually necessary, at this moment? Or at any moment. This topic does not need to be broached.”

Kromolok held his tongue. And then he sighed, and did what he had to do, asking, “Do you have designs upon taking the Painted Cosmology for yourself?”

Erick couldn’t believe what he was hearing—

But Erick’s backers needed to be reassured of his intentions. Kromolok’s question wasn’t from a friend; it was from a concerned party. Probably many concerned parties. Erick wanted to ignore the guy and walk away, but he couldn’t do that. Erick turned to the man and said, “The gods aren’t absorbing Red remnants, are they? Surely it happened, at least a little, but every god I know could throw off that yoke as soon as they were aware of it. The only one I was actually worried about was Cascadio, but he has trillions of worshipers across the universe.”

“You invited a foreign god, Erick. People worry.” Kromolok said, “We could have had our own sun god.”

“I’m not getting into this topic right now, Kromolok.”

Erick stepped away to answer more Valkyrie questions.

Kromolok stared at Erick for a moment longer, and then he stepped back through a golden portal.