Erick stood with Solomon on the beach-like white cliffs that surrounded the slime dungeon, where the slimes were meters behind and below, and the white stone ahead led straight into shadows, gloom, and the Dark Itself. That Darkness hovered vertically like a mist-covered ocean, the deeper parts of it swirling as things moved in the Dark, just beyond sight.
Solomon spoke, “A Sighting in the Dark.”
His voice rippled out and touched the gloom, rapidly precipitating mist and wavy black into a solid vertical surface that spread outward like the settling of a gong. Vibrations slowed. Possibility condensed. And then like the final step in accretion, when countless facets on a core turned to a smooth infinity, the Darkness rang out with a black pulse, leaving behind an utterly smooth plane at least 20 meters wide that hovered just beyond the white stone ground, revealing the softly-crumbling edge of the dungeon floor.
Erick and Solomon stood 10 meters away from the Black Mirror, and in a rather mundane sort of way, the mirror acted like a normal mirror. There lay Erick and Solomon’s reflections upon the Black, and there was the white stone ground underfoot, and Ophiel fluttering on Erick’s shoulder. Somehow, Erick expected something else.
Erick glanced at Solomon, and Solomon reciprocated the look. Erick nodded.
Solomon picked the chosen target that they had already discussed, and said, “Show me Poi at House Benevolence.”
The mirror flickered and wavered. And then nothing happened. Kinda expected. Poi at House Benevolence wasn’t in the Dark, but also, Poi wasn’t at House Benevolence right now.
Erick tried this time. “Show me Poi at the cloud castle above House Benevolence.”
The mirror rippled and did nothing.
Solomon instantly tried, “Show me Poi at the cloud castle above House Benevolence on the continent of Glaquin.”
Nothing but a ripple.
Erick said, “Show me House Benevolence.”
The mirror rippled.
… Nothing.
Solomon said, “Show me Poi in the slime dungeon.”
The mirror flashed to perfect imagery, the surface of the mirror seeming to vanish completely. Beyond the mirror lay Poi in the kitchen, a few kilometers behind Erick and Solomon, where he was making cinnamon rolls.
Erick said, “So it can only show things in the Dark.”
Solomon nodded. Then he spoke to the mirror, “Show me a person who knows a lot of actual Wizardry.”
Erick raised an eyebrow, surprised that Solomon was going after that target so fast—
And then he looked at the mirror, and laughed.
The mirror laughed with him—
Ha ha!
Ha ha!
Ha ha~
Solomon chuckled, too. And then he ran a hand through his own hair, and the guy in the mirror did the same. “So that was kinda a bust.”
“So that was kinda a bust.”
“So that was kinda a bust.”
“So that was kinda a bust.”
Erick did not like that feedback system.
And if they were going after the big targets, might as well go after the biggest ones.
Erick said, “Show me a True Wizard.”
The mirror expanded.
Eyes opened up in the Dark like ten thousand distant suns.
And then glowing white fangs appeared, each of them larger than a skyscraper. Melemizargo’s voice filled the dungeon like a soft avalanche, “Oh! It pinged on me? Well I guess I am, but we’ve already discussed True Wizardry. What are you searching for now?” Melemizargo stepped through half of the world, shrinking all the while, gloom and Darkness forming into his draconic body as he sat down on the slime dungeon floor. He came to rest with his arms upon the ledge of the edge, like he was sitting in a pool, his serpentine neck angled down toward Erick and Solomon, his tail flicking at one of the deeper water parks of the slimes. Just like how his body had shrunken to something less world-sized, his voice transformed to fit the size of the venue, “Like I said last time, I have given you all the tools to become a True Wizard but I cannot help you take those final steps. I believe Rozeta gave you the same information.”
The slimes shied away from the Dark Dragon.
Erick and Solomon did not.
“We have some specific questions,” Solomon said.
Melemizargo nodded.
Erick asked, “Is there an interaction between particles and mana that make it literally impossible to become a True Wizard in this New Cosmology?”
“Though the particulars have changed, extra influences are poison to a True Wizard. This is a fact that is as true in the Old Cosmology as it is in this New Cosmology. There is a reason that finding out about Particles helped me to come back to myself, for once you know the influences, you can work around them, or with them, as desired.
“That you ask such a question indicates that you have finally come to realize something that I have already told people; Particle Magic has brought me back to my senses. Of course, I don’t exactly blame people for not believing me, but that’s all in the past.”
Erick frowned a little, realizing that his question was a bit redundant now that he was here, and asking it. And yet…
Solomon asked, “It’s always bothered me... Why wasn’t Particle Magic invented before we got here? Even basic people playing around with the physical world would have noticed that Particles exist and could be manipulated in specific ways. Alchemy should have evolved into chemistry, for example.”
Melemizargo smiled a little, then said, “I’m rather sure the Sundering Source is still existent, or perhaps the collective trauma from the Sundering Source is all that remains, and that is what held us back from new magic for so long.
“Perhaps a memetic curse was made long ago in the killing of Knowledge, ensuring that Particles remained undiscovered. I don’t believe this, but I don’t know what caused the Sundering, either, so what I believe hardly matters when compared to the truth.
“But there have been certain advances in Particle-like Magic, once upon a time.
“There was that Atomic Cult that existed for a short while, long ago. They were Forgotten Campaign’d rather thoroughly, and their magic Banned most heavily. Perhaps the wrought have been actively suppressing progress for forever, and they’ve been better at their jobs than anyone realized?
“That is merely postulation, though. You will find out more when you go delving into the Dark, viewing the Source Of All Magic for yourself, searching for the cause of the Sundering.” He added, “But! Perhaps you will not discover anything. This outcome is likely preferable to all parties, for if the Sundering is truly over, then maybe we can begin to move past the Sundering and out into this New Cosmology. I highly doubt that will happen without a few major upsets along the way, but dreams are wonderful sometimes.”
A soft wind blew across the dungeon. Water rushed down small slides, where slimes played in the waves.
“The Old Cosmology and the New Cosmology were linked before the Sundering.” Erick asked, “Are there Wizards from the Old Cosmology which still exist in this New Cosmology? Maybe someone is still alive out there, somewhere?”
“Planars never stopped falling to Veird and the mana of the Old Cosmology is still out there, in a lot of places. I just cannot feel it. There are connections between Here and Other Places that I cannot sense, like holes in the ground that reach into True Voids, where Other Things live. If there are Wizards out there, perhaps they would be a boon to find, but they could also have been heralds of Destruction and death, for maybe the Sundering Source was from this New Cosmology, and not from the Old Cosmology at all.
“My ultimate goal is to expand the universe, so if malevolent entities came to Veird I know not of what I might have done to them while I was crazed.” Melemizargo said, “Perhaps some of them did try coming here… But I have no knowledge of that, either due to self-imposed forgetting, or whatnot. Perhaps you can make such knowledge appear for me, through some Wizardry in the Dark.”
He could make himself forget things?
… Didn’t that change everything about this Sundering search?
Erick wasn’t sure how to think about that right now.
Solomon asked, “What do you wish to come back from the Old Cosmology?”
Melemizargo grinned. “Everything.”
Solomon's question and Melemizargo’s answer had almost derailed Erick’s current thoughts, because they were almost too big of questions to hold. A lot of little things were adding up for Erick, and yet the direction his thoughts were going was really quite nonsensical.
Erick asked the question anyway.
“Circling way back a moment.
“Mana makes magic when exposed to intent.
“Particles make electricity and chemistry and otherwise when exposed to biological-based entities who know what they’re doing with those particles, but it is strictly a physical process.” Erick asked, “Do these two things seem comparable to each other as different forms of ‘magic’? Or am I way off base here?”
Melemizargo frowned a little in thought.
Solomon was silent as he considered Erick’s words.
“A strange question. Do you have a reasoning for this postulation that Particles are the base ‘mana’ of this New Cosmology?”
“No, not really.” Erick said, “But going back to the idea that people have been transporting from the Old Cosmology to the New Cosmology and other Cosmologies before the Sundering since there have always been planars… did the Goddess of Knowledge go comatose from an ‘inundation of new knowledge’? I have a hard time believing that right now, for if she knew everything about everything, then shouldn’t there have been planars from this New Cosmology inside the Old Cosmology anyway? And shouldn’t the Old Cosmology have known of Particles before I came along?
“Obviously this thought experiment only works if the Goddess of Knowledge truly was knowledgeable about everything.
“But she had to be, right? Everything everyone has ever said has been ‘yes, the Goddess of Knowledge knew everything’. That fact is even provable, if sacrificing her to obtain the Grand Translation is really what happened, which everyone agrees is how the Grand Translation happened.
“So then… Some other sort of divine magic must have been what caused her to go comatose. She did not go comatose from an overload of Knowledge about this universe. She had to have gone comatose from either a loss of Knowledge, or through malevolent entities causing her to go comatose.”
Melemizargo stared. Solomon watched, wide-eyed and curious, trying to line up everything he knew with the words coming out of Erick’s mouth.
Erick was on a roll.
He continued, “And other realities have mana, right? Or is it just the Old Cosmology that makes mana?
“I doubt the Old Cosmology is the only Cosmology that made mana.
“So does this New Cosmology actually have its own form of ‘mana’? Are particles that mana? Or is there something else?” Erick asked, “Is it possible that whatever caused the Sundering was something… That exists here? Eh…” Erick frowned. “Ah. Sorry. Lost my train of thought. Still trying to put it all together right now—” Erick rapidly added, “And then there’s Apogee in Spur! He comes from a world of dragons that oversee everything and everyone; it’s why he hates dragons. Or at least he did the last time I talked to him which was years ago. And then there was that elf who came in from outer space on a ship, and that ship is down inside Stratagold’s vaults. Never got to see that ship, though.
“I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this…
“I just think that the Dark has a lot of boons that we can extract from it, but I am not sure if the Dark actually has the answers to the Sundering, because it is very possible that the Sundering did not originate inside the Old Cosmology. Maybe it came from this New Cosmology.”
Solomon cocked his head a little bit as he listened to Erick, mulling over the facts and postulations stated.
Melemizargo had stopped staring at Erick a while ago, instead opting to narrow his eyes upon the middle distance, his thoughts far from here.
Erick had a lot more he could have said on the subject, but that was more than enough for now. And so, he waited.
“An interesting theory of which we have no way to explore, for now.
“As for ‘mana’, as an overarching designation of ‘ephemeral power’ and not as the mana produced by the souls of living things here on Veird...
“Mana exists out there in the New Cosmology, same as it existed back in the Old Cosmology, and in roughly the same sort of ‘mana is possibility’ way that mana exists here. The possibilities out there, though, are vastly smaller than the possibilities here. It’s like this: Veird is a great big bowl, capable of holding all the different manas in rather equal form, and other places cannot do that. Just like how we didn’t have Particle Magic until you came along and added that to the soup, a lot of places out there are not capable of holding mana at all, or in any great quantity.
“Mana is much more ephemeral than particles.
“The production of mana is something that happens within the Darkness of a person, beside that thing which many would call the ‘soul’.
“Did souls exist where you came from? Sure. Is your soul stronger now, here on Veird? Very yes.
“So whatever mana production is out there, is much less than it is here on Veird, among the Darkness. Perhaps the veils between realities are weaker here on Veird, or they’re stronger out there, or whatnot. Hard to say; I’m stuck here on Veird just like you are.
“On a slight tangent...
“The Old Cosmology was riddled with passageways to new Cosmologies, some large and some small. This New Cosmology is possibly even older than the Old Cosmology, but not by much. The timescales upon which the Killing Sun seems to operate are rather intriguing to think about, especially when distant stars could have existed for much longer, or shorter, and then there’s the whole ‘light travels slow’ thing that seems to be a hard-ish limit in this existence…
“Benevolence didn’t exist until you made it, so it is possible that some other sort of invisible, intangible ‘mana’ exists that caused the Sundering.” Melemizargo shrugged. “I do not know.” He waved a wing toward the dungeon, and fluttered the other in the gloom of the Dark, near the Mirror. “Thus, this search.
“But! One part of what you say does hold a grain of maybe-truth.
“Maybe the answer is not here, in the Dark.
“Perhaps after you grab whatever you wish from the Dark, you can journey to Stratagold and plunder their vaults, too, and grab yourself a spaceship.” Melemizargo smiled. “I had posted a Quest for such a thing on the Quest Board of the Garrison of Candlepoint before you took over that land. Mephistopheles has that Quest Board in storage, gathering dust, but the Quest that is still on that board is still a Quest that I offer. Like the Quests at the Core of Veird, my own Quests to expand into the New Cosmology are evergreen.”
Erick instantly said, “And Yggdrasil will get us there in 90-ish years. You can wait alongside everyone else.”
Melemizargo laughed at Erick’s rapid answer. Then said, “As you desire.” He asked, “Do you desire more True Wizard answers?”
“A few quick questions. First question: Do you believe that mana in the Old Cosmology is more or less complicated than DNA and biological life in this universe?”
“They’re different. Mana is clearly better, but particles function decently enough as a baseline anchor for mana to grow upon.”
“What about from a Healing Magic perspective?” Erick said, “Healing magic is incredibly complicated here on Veird, because biology is very nuanced. Was Healing in the Old Cosmology just as difficult?”
“Healing Magic in the Old Cosmology was about as complicated as it is now, with all aspects except the most basic of supportive healing requiring fantastic amounts of assistance or skill in order to not mangle a body into horror.”
“… I honestly did not expect that sort of answer.” Erick said, “I expected realities made of mana to be easier to influence than ones made of particles.”
Melemizargo grinned. “It’s all easy to influence, Erick, for people like us. Would you like a small demonstration?”
For one incredibly deep moment, Erick paused.
And then he said, “Yes.”
- - - -
Melemizargo was a human angel of ten thousand wings floating atop a white beach.
Erick was a centaur. Solomon was a satyr. Ophiel was a flugehaper, sitting on Erick’s saddle-position.
They watched an ocean filled with fishmen play under the waves, hopping atop corals and swimming between eddies of whitewater. Erick was filled with awe as he watched the water-people play in the water. Just… All that water. All over the place! Water! Amazing. Much better than the Dryness everywhere else. Oases truly are amazing.
Melemizargo said, “In this place, dungeons are oases and you don’t know what a dungeon is, but you do know what a desert is, for the entire world is a desert.”
Melemizargo waved five thousand wings—
- - - -
Melemizargo was a human.
Erick was a Benevolence Fairy. Solomon was a Benevolence sprite, and Ophiel was a wisp.
They watched a forest filled with monkeys climb up ropes and swing down vines, and make little homes under big green ferns. They were all so fragile, those monkeys. A fire could come through any minute now, or a plague, or any sort of cataclysm, and they’d all die. Just like the Old Ones died. The Fae didn’t die; they were above that. But also, there was a beauty in death, in finality, that Erick rarely ever saw.
Melemizargo said, “In this fragment of reality, we’re cultivating semi-sapient people, to try and bring back the Old Ones. We’re having little success.”
Something clicked in Erick’s mind.
Melemizargo waved his ha—
“Wait!” Erick demanded, “Back to normal! Not here! This is wr—”
- - - -
Melemizargo was a tome ten books tall, floating above the Library of the Endless, where corridors of stacks delineated the world.
Erick was a traveler’s book standing in the center of the forbidden floor, where no books should walk, lest they be destroyed by librarians. Solomon was an imperfect copy, laying on the ground, too tired to open his covers and look at the world. Ophiel was a post-it note clinging to Erick’s binding.
They were in the Printing Room, and—
NOTHING WAS RIGHT.
Melemizargo started to say something—
Erick demanded, “Bring us back!”
The edges of Melemizargo’s pages glinted in the light, like fangs, like a smile.
He snapped shut.
- - - -
Erick was Erick, standing tall, a dragon Wizard in a human form. Solomon was Solomon, laying sprawled on the ground.
Ophiel whined a little on Erick’s shoulder, complaining, “I’m tired, dad.”
Erick put a hand on Ophiel, and the little guy slumped down into Erick’s arms, softly snoring in tiny flutes. Solomon was already knocked out and laying on the ground. Erick had no idea how he had remained awake. His eyes were heavy—
Erick endured, remaining upright. He glared at Melemizargo, the big black dragon staring at him from only five meters away. He was grinning. Erick was not grinning.
Erick demanded, “What the FUCK?”
Melemizargo leaned back, smiling wider, looking vindicated as he said, “That’s what I mean when I say that all realities, be they mana or particle, are easy to influence.”
“What was that? Why did you do—”
“You’re a lot further along in your Wizardly journey, so you managed to maintain consciousness. Solomon will take some more time before he can claim the same power. But all reality is easy to change, Erick. The big changes, like what you just experienced, were easy for you to notice. That’s why we went through those few realities. I knew you could maintain yourself in the brush of an infinity.
“And so, with your consent, we went.
“That’s what it really means to be a Wizard; it means you can maintain in the face of everything else that comes your way.” Melemizargo said, “You’re pretty close to getting there.”
Erick had a few rapid thoughts as Ophiel stirred to wakefulness in his arms.
The first thought was that he should never have consented to a ‘small demonstration’.
Like really, Erick, that was almost as bad as thanking Fairy Moon on the beach near Stratagold.
Next came the idea of ‘Oh. That’s what Establishment is; the cementing of other realities here, in this reality.’
And then his thoughts rapidly circled through what ‘different realities’ meant.
Next came ‘Gods make realities all the time; they’re called afterlives’.
Erick thought about the nature of gods. In the Old Cosmology, gods ‘solidified’ the space where their worshipers lived, actively determining things like the flow of time, to the cycle of days, afterlives, and otherwise.
Like a lightbulb going off, Erick said, “Gods determine the overarching setting of the universe.”
“Yes.”
“And Wizards determine their personal settings.”
“Also yes!”
To make sure he was on the same page as Melemizargo, Erick asked, “What does the term ‘multi-verse’ mean to you?”
Melemizargo considered, then he said, “Just another term for ‘Cosmology’.”
“Oh.”
Oh. That was big. Okay. Oh.
Erick had a lot of thoughts forming on that, but Solomon was waking up, and Erick helped him to his feet, as he looked upon Melemizargo again, and asked, “What do you want to come back from the Old Cosmology, specifically?”
And holy shit does the term ‘Old Cosmology’ mean something so much more different to me, now.
As does ‘New Cosmology’.
‘Old Multiverse’. ‘New Multiverse’.
Solomon chuckled in Erick’s arms as he got all the way to his feet. Had he heard the latest series of questions and answers, before he woke up? Or was he reviewing the recent past in the manasphere, to see what he missed out on? Was he going mad? Erick hoped he wasn’t going mad.
Or maybe Solomon was just happy that Erick was backing him up on his question of Melemizargo’s ultimate goals in the Sundering Search. ‘Everything’ was not a productive answer, and Melemizargo definitely wanted something specific out of this Sundering search.
Melemizargo mused, “Conflict is a thing upon which the entire system grows and multiplies, but right now a major conflict would be bad for everyone. So I don’t want to start a conflict. I do truly want everything to come back, though I doubt such an event is truly possible.” He looked down at Erick, saying, “I’m sure whatever you find will be good for us all, but I have other events to attend to today so I cannot remain. Good day, Erick. Good luck with understanding the New Cosmology.”
Without another word, Melemizargo vanished into the Dark surrounding the dungeon, moving like a slippery dragon, but also like tentacles suddenly vanishing below the surface of the vertical ocean.
… He had avoided that last question, hadn’t he.
“Hmm,” Solomon grunted, rubbing his eyes, still a bit out of it.
“Hmm,” Erick agreed.
Ophiel twittered in low drum sounds.
Solomon said, “So I checked the manasphere for what I missed… And I’m not sure what happened. We were… somewhere else? I got that you were a centaur for a moment?”
Erick sent Solomon an information packet—
Solomon froze for a long moment, as the gravity of what had happened unfurled within his mind.
Erick waited.
Solomon whisper-shouted, “ ‘Cosmology’ means ‘multiverse’?!” He instantly added, “No. That can’t be right… It doesn’t jive with everything we’ve learned so far… Well… Maybe it does?” He paused. “Wait. This makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it.”
“Maybe from a certain perspective, it’s true,” Erick said, “We already figured that mana was a multiverse, what with Benevolence and Fae and Dark all existing and reachable from Veird, I just never considered that ‘Cosmologies’ were singular multiverses unto themselves.”
Solomon said, “The Old Cosmology and New Cosmology were not just different dimensions, but they were entirely separate multiverses.”
A moment passed.
Clarity came.
“Gods determine the over-reality,” Solomon said.
“And Wizards determine their own personal-reality,” Erick said, “Extending their Reality onto the over-reality; extending their personal Element and self-created dimensional plane, like Benevolence, into this over-reality.”
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“Wizards are the gods of themselves,” Solomon said, “Crystallized and set in stone, unwavering in the face of the over-reality, ever-producing their own version of reality within themselves.”
The moment of clarity passed by.
“And Wizards can pull from other versions of themselves?” Erick said, suddenly not too sure about his words or where he was going with them. He continued anyway, because talking out problems sometimes helped to solve those problems. “That could explain certain types of Establishment; you’re taking a piece of a different personal Reality and setting it into the shared over-reality?”
Solomon seemed to lose some forward enthusiasm too, as he said, “But are you interacting with your multiversal-self in order to do that? Like, consider that centaur version of yourself. If you were to transform into that person, are you actually instantiating that Reality into this reality, and… leaving the other Reality without that version of yourself?”
Erick thought for a second, but he had nothing positive to say about Solomon’s conjecture.
Solomon changed tactics. “Okay maybe the centaur-thing isn’t a good example. How about [Teleport], then. Taking into account what we know now, we know that [Teleport] worked off of alternate Realities being instantiated into this reality. The whole ‘macro quantum wavelength’ state was just our way of first visualizing what was clearly Establishment magic, as per Phagar; as in ‘Establishing’ your position in reality where you want it to be. Establishment magic is taking things from other realities and making them happen here.” He asked, “So what happens to the realities left behind? Do they just cease to exist, because you ‘killed yourself’ in that previous timeline?”
Erick hummed in thought, then said, “I highly doubt that Wizards are moving through countless realities and leaving behind the old ones to perish. Even in the Deep Paradox that Other Erick complained about how I was the real one and he was the fake. That means that there is one over-reality, and that over-reality is this one. I am willing to bet that the other realities did not exist until looked upon.”
“Maybe so,” Solomon said, “But is this reality the only real one because we have gods here, determining which reality is real? If you did Wizardry outside of their influence, would you go crashing through into Paradox unknown? Phagar once said that Establishment could lead to weird things, like waking up and finding yourself being a woman all your life, or other such oddities.”
Erick found his footing again, saying, “Well then that neatly explains why gods and Wizards always worked together, right? Gods cemented the over-reality, and Wizards pulled in things from side-realities whenever they needed or wanted those things.”
Solomon paused. “Well. That… Yeah. That is a nice framework. Interesting.”
Erick nodded. A moment passed in silent thought.
Solomon turned back to the Dark Mirror, gazing upon his and Erick’s reflections in the black.
Erick got back on track. “The girls will be coming soon.”
“Absolutely,” Solomon said. “You know… All of this recontextualizes this whole Sundering Search. The Relevant Entities all understood what we were doing here before we did; that we’re searching side-realities made possible through our very presences in order to create miracles that are not found on this world anymore, to prepare us all for the coming shifts. That’s why only a few people, like us, or like Jane, could do this.”
Erick nodded. “It certainly simplified everything for me, too.”
“The gods set the over-reality,” Solomon began.
“And we Wizards set the local-reality,” Erick finished.
Ophiel chirped, “And I help!”
Erick smirked at that, and Solomon chuckled. They told him that yes, he did help a lot.
Soon, Erick and Solomon were back to playing around with the Dark Mirrors to better try and understand how they work. They didn’t search for anything dangerous at all, but they did learn how to search for known things in the Dark rather well.
“Ah!” Solomon said, opening his aura and flowing it toward the Dark Mirror. White glows flowed into the black, and Solomon said nothing.
A pink slime with sparkles appeared, playing in the waves of a lazy river with a bunch of other slimes.
Erick turned around, and matched the Mirror’s vision with the slime dungeon. He found the pink sparkle slime. “So the Mirror can search non-verbally, too; you just gotta connect with it through your aura.”
“It seems more responsive when I do it this way, too,” Solomon said, “For instance…”
- - - -
Knowing what they now knew, Erick and Solomon looked down at the Mind Mage artifacts with a newfound sense of clarity.
The Crown of Self, which isolated a person from the world.
The Lidless Eyes, which prevented hostile Mind Magic and other changes in Reality from happening to the wearer, at the cost of things possibly affecting the wearer if it ran out of eyes to soak the spellwork.
The Shackle of Memory, which prevented the wearer from forgetting anything.
Solomon said, “Neither of us can wear the Crown, because you’re tied to Ophiel and Yggdrasil and other outside magics, and I’m tied to this dungeon. I can probably wear it if I disconnect from the dungeon, but I’m not doing that.”
Poi said, “Not yet, anyway.”
Solomon was less sure about Poi’s ‘suggestion’, but he said nothing against it.
“I’ll take the Eyes, you take the Shackle?” Erick asked.
“How about no one wears the Bracelet right now,” Poi said. “Neither of you have been to a dungeon core breaking, and you don’t need to see more than you’re already capable of seeing. In fact, Erick. You should take off the All-Seeing Eye. And you should separate from the dungeon now, Solomon.”
“… Well that’s a bit more cautious than it needs to be,” Erick said.
“Eh. Poi is right,” Solomon said. “You take the Lidless Eyes. I’ll take the All-Seeing Eye. And then we switch next time.”
“We’re looking at the breaking through the Mirror,” Erick said, not feeling the same level of cautiousness that everyone else was feeling. “We’re not actually going to the breaking.”
Poi leveled a glare at Erick.
“Fine, fine!” Erick said, as he began taking off the All-Seeing Eye. “No need to see anything more than what I can already see.”
And Poi told Solomon, “You can disconnect from the dungeon, now.”
Solomon didn’t want to leave Poi alone, but after a few back and forths, Solomon relented. Soon, Erick was wearing the Lidless eyes, and a dungeon-disconnected Solomon was wearing the All-Seeing Eye. It would be easy enough for Solomon to reconnect to the dungeon after the day’s dungeon breaking was over, anyway.
- - - -
Ophiel hovered in the sky above the Mondariska Mountains, located west of Greensoil. Nothing really lived in this part of the world, except for the target. The Mind Mages had quarantined this area months ago, and then kept it that way, until today.
Down below, nestled into a green crack in the mountain, lay a black portal into the Dark. Normally the mountains around here had a lot of green, but this place had green of a different color. Instead of a green forest, there was a toxic swamp of bright green Decay. Vines and mist and slugs, all green and subtly glowing, spilled out onto the mountains. Nothing was actually radioactive —no Extreme Light here— but it certainly looked that way, while the unseen danger here was much more toxic than simple radiation.
One mountain over, Jane spoke to the assembled squad, “Final words time. I’ll keep it short. We’ve all done this before, but technically five of us are new. Not a big deal. This is just another routine dungeon kill, and our father and uncle will be watching us from the Dark Mirror. If the worst should happen, then they’ll rewind time and get a message to us through Ophiel, who will be stationed near the entrance of the decay dungeon.
“We won’t be searching the Dark for anything. We won’t be lingering.
“We get in there, kill the threats, look around for a moment, then we come back out, and come back here.”
Abigail, Beth, Candice, Debby, and Emily, all nodded professionally. Jane nodded in return. Jane was the team leader today, though every single one of them was capable of being the leader of the group, but a structure had to be established, and so they had established a structure.
In the next few moments, all six of them transformed into enormous tarantulas, five meters across and two meters in height, each of them a color of the rainbow with Jane as blue, and the rest as green, yellow, orange, red, and purple. Ephemeral [Conjure Armor] draped across their bodies, hugging them tight. The dungeon had Script access, but in a very specific way; that armor would likely not last for long, but precautions were precautions, and the Arachno Squad took precautions when they could.
Most of their real defenses were internal, though.
They made their bodies physically sealed against crawling slugs and toxins in the air, vines and all sorts of liquids and otherwise. Though they couldn’t spin webs in that controlled form, it was necessary for the upcoming dungeon. They all even had bones and exoskeletons, along with re-oxygenating organs and redundancies everywhere, and were more than capable of doing everything they needed to do, even if they had to go without their webs. Not having access to those multipurpose threads was a hindrance, for sure, but it was a hindrance Jane, and all of the others, were used to.
Decay dungeons were a sort of dungeon that went ‘bad’ all the time. This one was a particularly terrible variant that produced putrescent slugs, that Mind Magic monster that erased its presence from the minds of all it infested. It had been responsible for an outbreak of the anti-memetic monsters across four different villages of the Greensoil Republic. The dungeon had been scheduled for destruction for a while now, but since it was so remote and so dangerous, it was low priority.
It was just the sort of dungeon that Jane and her sisters could handle, though, so they were here.
- - - -
Erick stood upon white stone, watching the dungeon from the inside, from the Mirror.
The dungeon was a horrible space, filled with Elemental Swamp and Decay, and matching those two Elements rather well. Murky, deadly water stretched out in every direction, like floating rivers in the black. Dying trees formed the barely-living ‘bones’ of the dungeon, whereupon streams of rivers flowed through the air, like splashed and whirling airy waters, filled with muck and death and crawling vines. Inside that Escher-like space, slugs grew inside every living thing. Those slugs infested decay slimes that barely moved in the algae-choked water, making them seem like worm-filled eyes here and there. Slugs slimed upon the vine monsters that attempted to grow on the ever-dying trees.
The worst parts were the zombies, floating in the water and flopping on the trees.
They weren’t zombies. They were former dungeon masters, turned into living feasts for the putrescent slugs; copies of the few adventurers that had made it into the dungeon and then escaped… Theoretically.
Solomon had questions, because he was rather disconnected from the world without Ophiel or Yggdrasil. “You said that the adventurers that showed up at Greensoil were all infected… and that they were all copies of each other, yes? Is it possible that the original people are still in the dungeon? Somewhere?”
Erick stared at the flowing twists of Swamp water, and at the infested everything. “That’s what I found out with Ophiel. But… yeah. What you’re thinking is highly possible.”
Poi spoke up, “We have no way of knowing if the ones who showed up at Greensoil were originals, or copies. They were too far gone; minds and souls shattered by this experience. It’s highly likely that the originals are still here in the dungeon, but if they are, then they’re too far gone to save.” Poi pointed at a fungus that grew upon the back of one of the zombies. “That’s a control fungus. It only grows on dead things, or things that it has made dead. Those zombies aren’t even proper zombies; they have no animating soul; just that fungus. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything in there is dead.”
Erick frowned. “This dungeon is a horror show.”
Solomon nodded.
Erick gazed through the Mirror, toward the entrance, flicking his aura across the surface of the Mirror, and the Mirror moved with his sight.
Solomon asked, “Not going to look for the core?”
“You’ve gone out on dungeon hunts with them, but I have not, and I want to see them from the beginning.” The dungeon was scaring him, because it was a very dangerous place for anyone to be. And yet, Erick tried to be calm and even a little bit joyful; this was his chance to see his daughter at ‘work’. “Maybe we should get some popcorn—”
Jane crashed through the front portal of the dungeon, directly into the waterways, and then through the air to the lower levels, which seemed endless. Her sisters followed right behind her, the five of them fanning out as they descended upon short bursts of prismatic power. Water splashed. Trees shattered.
And then the bodies floating in the waters all popped, spores and slugs and blood and bone getting everywhere.
Poi corrected himself, “Detonating controller fungus.”
“Or just ripe,” Erick said.
Poi nodded a little.
The Jane Squad rapidly descended through the main waterways, their armors disintegrating, leaving behind completely smooth tarantula bodies in every color, but without mouths or anything organic looking at all. They reminded Erick of the idea of robots; sleek and deadly.
Half-decayed alligators and clumps of blood magic and fungus tried to counter attack, as the rivers swirled, filled with toxic slugs, trying to drown the Janes.
The Arachno Squad ripped the enemies to shreds, but they were still under slug-infested waters, and that was not goo—
The Janes adapted.
It started with the Red Jane; Debby. She flickered red lightning into the waters, frying everything that she touched. Water exploded away from her, and once again she was out of the river, to stand on top of the poison. Within a second all the rest of them began shimmering with Lightning Magic, in all the other colors—
Like hundreds of popcorn kernels popping in rapid sequence, the green slugs in the water burst and boiled. The water became a soup of dead things that fell back down into the airway-waterways, still faintly glowing due to the Decay magics of the slugs.
Erick amended his earlier statement, “Maybe not popcorn.”
Poi joked, “We got those chewy star-candies at the house. I bet they have a better slug-like consistency to go with the ambiance of the dungeon.”
Solomon burst a laugh. Erick chuckled.
Erick retrieved the star candies and copied them for everyone.
Solomon grabbed a handful of his own supply, saying, “Is this a bigger dungeon than normal?”
The girls were doing well; going fast and sure, without any seeming need to slow down. So Erick turned the ‘camera’ of the Black Mirror downward, down, down, through the floating waterways of the dungeon, past some truly massive slug-cocoons that looked woven from glowing slime, down into the part where the Elemental Swamp of the dungeon changed into Elemental Abyss, and the monsters got bigger, and meaner.
Mostly bigger.
Some of the monsters were true horrors. A wyvern that was sluggified, with green slugs spilling out of every orifice, and out of the mouth, like a weak dragon’s breath. A wyrm, too; probably from some hidden cache of eggs from some stupid dragon who wanted to do things ‘the old way’ and set their eggs out in the mountains. That thing was 100 meters of decaying, fungus-covered zombie, that gorged itself on everything it could find. ‘Everything it could find’ seemed to only mean massive pools of slugs that went into the scooping mouth of the wyrm, and then slipped out of holes in the zombie-dragon’s body—
Solomon suddenly said, “Oh my gods. I see the controlling fungus, but… Is that wyrm actually still alive? It still has a hunger response. Maybe it could be saved. Turned over to Inferno Maw and his wyrm-reincarnation tanks.”
Erick paused the camera with a flick of his aura. He studied the wyrm for a moment, watching it eat slugs. “… Oh. Shit. I think it is.” Erick’s attention was drawn to a different part of the Mirror. “And those humans look a lot less zombie than they do… I’m not sure.”
“None of the other bodies were alive, but...” Poi asked, “Do those repros have a soul, or are they just controller fungus’d?”
The wyrm ate from pools of slugs, but nearby stood a stone ‘village’, filled with repros. They walked around on a layer of stone, near cave-like rock piles, all of them nude and spilling slugs everywhere. Small fungi grew from their shoulders, but they certainly didn’t look fully dead and controlled. They were still completely defenseless and completely out of it—
Poi said, “I need to know if they can be saved, Erick.”
“I know. I’m already trying to see if— Shit.” Erick moved his aura across the Mirror, and yet it wasn’t changing Sights. “I can’t change it to soul-view. What am I doing wrong here?”
Erick knew that what he was doing wrong was that he wasn’t wearing his All-Seeing Eye, and thus the Dark and this Mirror both looked a whole lot more opaque to him. Once again, Erick had thought that his senses were top-notch, but having useful tools like the All-Seeing Eye helped a lot.
Solomon took over, his aura flowing into the Mirror as Erick pulled away. “It’s like this.”
The Mirror shifted.
The Sight of the Dark Mirror changed to [Soul Sight].
And the bodies of the people were completely empty, save for a ‘net’ of fungus that acted like muscles and skin, along with hundreds of brighter souls everywhere inside of them; the life-glows of slugs. Poi relaxed a fraction, and then sadness came. Erick and Solomon had similar reactions. There was no saving these people, either.
Solomon said, “They’re just husks.”
Erick said, “These ones will probably also explode if anyone gets near them.”
“I didn’t expect to find any survivors, but we didn’t explore much of it before we called in a quarantine.” Poi frowned. “Jane’s on scene, so she probably already sees all of this.”
Erick asked, “Maybe there are real people beside the core? Check out that wyrm again, too, Solomon.”
The wyrm was very dead, as most wyrms were. Erick or Inferno Maw of House Death could bring those sorts of people back to life, and they often did when anyone found a wyrm, or a wyrm’s grand rad, but this one was… Not possible. Solomon shifted the view to [Soul Sight], and revealed the true damage of the slugs. No grand rad inside of that body at all.
Solomon said, “The cores are gone.”
“Looks like an animating slug at the center of it all,” Erick said, frowning. “Okay. On to the dungeon core? Let’s make sure there aren’t any surprises awaiting them.”
Solomon shifted the Mirror downward, even further, into the putrescent depths. The Mirror flashed by house-sized birthing cocoons that glowed in the murky water, like green poison in a floating river. Those rivers spiraled down into the dark, past more wyrms that were copies of the first wyrm, all of them animated through controller fungus.
The dungeon core glowed green in the middle of a mansion-sized cocoon, where millions of slugs swam around the radiant white core, and three larger slugs hugged the core itself.
It was a trio of queen slugs. They were a semi-sentient hive mind, which explained the oddities of the slug attacks against the Janes, but they weren’t much of a danger at all. The main danger of these slugs was that as soon as a person was infected, the slugs turned invisible to that person, and then hosts spilled slugs everywhere they walked. Those slugs then tried to get into whatever other organic structures they could find and corrupt into breeding grounds. The original host wouldn’t die from the infection for a very long time. For all of that time, the host would live out their lives completely unaware that they were spreading these anti-memetic monsters everywhere they walked.
But the Janes were completely sealed, and they had faced memetic threats like these slugs before. They were safe.
“I expected to find some living people,” Solomon said. “A wyrm core stored near the dungeon core. People wrapped in stasis pods, or whatever. But there’s nothing?”
Erick asked, “The only reason these repros and wyrms are actually dead is because the area is too filled with slugs, so the slugs have no reason to keep their hosts alive?”
Poi said, “Correct. Putrescent slugs are one of the few monsters which are incredibly more dangerous inside a dungeon. You’re going to have to scour the land outside the dungeon for any stray slugs, Erick, as planned.”
“Already? Sure.” Erick set Ophiel above the dungeon to do just that, then he said to Solomon, “Back to the Janes?”
Solomon nodded, not adding anything, as he threw the camera upward, to where the Janes were killing slug/slime-aggregates now.
Lightning did very well against the oozes made of slugs, so the girls were making good time. Debby seemed to have been put on softening duty for now, focusing mainly on long range red [Chaining Lightning Beam]s. She triggered exploding bodies and otherwise long before the team reached those threats. The others focused on much more cost efficient, close-range lightning, wrapping that spellwork upon their forelegs and feet, allowing them to be cost efficient with their mana, as they took down threats like insanely fast double-orcol-sized nightmare tarantulas. Made of lightning.
Erick shivered as he saw the pure speed of his daughters.
Nightmare fuel.
He tried to say something positive, “They certainly work well together.”
Solomon smiled a little. “They do, don’t they.”
“Jane used to be all into horses when she was younger!” Erick suddenly complained. “Why did she have to go with spiders?”
Solomon laughed loud. Poi smiled.
“She even has that unicorn form,” Erick said.
“Well, from a practical standpoint, spiders are much more dangerous than horses. Much more versatile,” Solomon said, “And she uses the [Aura of Freedom] she got from the unicorn all the time.” He gestured at the Mirror. “Right there. Emily went right through that cocoon to kill the queen at the center—”
Poi spoke up, “The dungeon is disgorging. All Mind Mage personnel have departed.”
Erick looked to the right, his senses rapidly demanded elsewhere. “That’s my cue.”
High overhead of the dungeon, Ophiel watched as the green glows of the infected valley began to slither outward, into the surrounding dead lands. A [Cascade Imaging] high in the sky revealed the true escape. Under a bright, cascading star, a 3D white map of the world populated with blue markers that appeared and then swarmed outward in distant areas, kilometers from the initial infection. The dungeon was opening escape tunnels for its monsters.
Ophiels unleashed [Physical Domain]s as they began to descend into the surrounding lands. First came warnings to people, indicating the Mind Magic threat in the area, but there were no people around; his words were just precautions.
In a coordinated assault starting ten kilometers out from the main dungeon entrance, Ophiels linked power and began beating the world like a grandma beating a dirty rug.
Mountains cracked and broke. Rocks spewed up, turning to dust.
Erick churned the surface world into a desert, killing everything on that surface, except for the original dungeon entrance; that, he left alone. Every extra dungeon entrance winked out as Erick’s power killed whatever appeared, ripping it to shreds through [Amplify]d [Harmony]. His power briefly passed into the dungeon itself, here and there, rapidly disintegrating everything in the top layer of the dungeon into death, before those dungeon exits closed, to get away from his power. His power didn’t go too far into the dungeon itself, because as soon as he touched those entrances, those entrances closed.
Jane would be fine even if she were exposed to this for any length of time. She had a Domain, and she was a rather big creature; the wavelengths of Erick’s Domain were small, tuned to killing small things before they killed big things. Even now, as Erick turned the world around the putrescent slug dungeon into sand and dust, there were monkeys and birds and other such creatures that were easily able to escape the destruction, which Erick focused upon the ground, and upon the slugs.
A lot of things were still going to die, but Erick had extra Ophiels grab what he could and take them out of the destruction zone. The wildlife around the area had learned to stay away from the slugs over the last half a year that the dungeon existed, or rather, they had been made to learn.
Erick asked Poi, “How often do you guys have to quarantine dungeons like this?”
“Not too often,” Poi said, “This one was particularly bad, but it was contained; we even sealed off the underworld so it couldn’t open up down there. We would have gotten to it eventually. Maybe next month.”
“I’m glad I’m able to help with this, even if it wasn’t a strict priority,” Erick said.
Poi nodded.
Ophiels continued to disintegrate the land around the dungeon, like kilometers-wide subtly-purple spheres of detonation, swirling around the area in a clockwise direction. The Janes continued to delve into the dungeon. Over the next 20 minutes Erick reduced the land around the offending valley into a proper desert. Dark holes in reality continued to pop open here and there within that space, but quick spreads of [Physical Domain] rapidly vibrated those entrances and the spilling slugs into nothing.
The valley remained, like a cracked plateau rising up half a kilometer from the surrounding land, its top caked in green slugs that slipped past that valley, like radioactive rivers, to fall into the destructive desert. Erick kept the pressure going outside.
And eventually, Jane, Abigail, Beth, Candice, Debby, and Emily, all reached the core cocoon.
The stronghold of the slugs floated in the Dark, a radiant green sphere the size of a mansion, with several floating rivers connecting it to the rest of the dungeon. In even more defiance of normal reality, the Arachno Squad stood upon those rivers like water striders, each of them crackling with subtle lightning, electrocuting everything that tried to swim out of that water and attack.
Like two horror shows meeting, the girls leapt at the cocoon and began burrowing, slime and slugs going everywhere as tarantula legs and claws proved more than up for the fight. Lightning flickered, killing and killing.
The Dark Mirror showed everything. The sounds were almost worse than the visuals.
And then an ethereal voice called out from the center of the dungeon, “Hark! And advance no further, Beautiful Spiders! We would grant you boons for letting us live!”
Erick flinched; he always flinched when things that seemed sapient and sentient asked for leniency.
Solomon flinched, too.
The Janes did not. In a sudden coordination, the Janes zapped everything, rainbow lightning linking with each other, and then rapidly turning red as Debby’s power expanded over everything, for she had been saving up for this moment. When everything was dead, Jane, Abigail, Debby, and Emily tore at the core itself.
The world screamed.
Beyond the Mirror, the world fractured and broke, cracks reaching past the surface of the—
- - - -
The world was a ruin of everything and nothing, of fractal trees and impossible geometry. Erick could see everything all at once, and also nothing at all.
Erick stood divorced from himself.
Another Erick stood beside him; a Different Mirror of himself. The Other Erick was not Solomon, he was someone else, shaped in the same sort of way that Erick had been originally shaped, with a sagging belly and a few wrinkles and a bit of grey in his hair. He was a Nothing At All, for his fraction of the multiverse did not exist until Erick gazed upon it, and yet, here he was, in the flesh, the only part of the fractal mess that made any sense at all.
Other Erick looked at Erick, his eyes filled with light, his voice strangely calm, “It’s all about communication. That’s the reason for everything happening in your life. And yet, you are nothing. We’re all just motes of our reality, shoved outward in hopes of understanding the Great Other.”
- - - -
Erick came back to himself.
The Janes floated through the Darkness beyond the Mirror, swimming in clouds of black that ate and crushed everything they touched, like continents colliding. Glowing green remnants of the dungeon burst like whale bodies left out on beaches for too long, popping and exploding and sending slugs to their tiny deaths among the encroaching Black.
The Dark brushed against Red Debby, and Debby became the Dark on that leg briefly, before swimming faster and faster, to get away from the crush. Blue Jane and Green Abigail grabbed for their sisters and pulled them up faster and faster. Orange Candice and Yellow Beth ripped apart a wyrm that had survived, spilling gore and slugs everywhere, further clearing the path on the way out. Purple Emily, having saved her power as much as she could for the trip, expanded that power now, either shoving aside the Dark, or blending with it in order to push it away, Erick wasn’t sure.
The six of them rocketed out of the cleft in the slug-filled valley, the world behind them disintegrating back into the Dark, the portal geysering with one last radioactive-green explosion, before slamming shut on everything that hadn’t managed to escape. Rapidly, the girls set to evaporating the remaining Mind Magic threats upon the surface, Debby’s red lightning flashing hard once again.
Erick helped with Ophiel.
Soon, the threats were gone, and all of Erick’s daughters were getting run through a standard Mind Mage decontamination protocol, which they were easily passing, but precautions were precautions. They’d be back here at Ascendant Mountain in an hour.
Erick began to relax.
And for now, Erick turned to Solomon and Poi, and started with, “So what happened to you all when the dungeon core broke? I got told some cryptic shit by an Other Erick while we floated in a fractal kaleidoscope of reality.”
Poi went first, saying, “I got nothing. I’ve either been second-hand exposed to enough of these events to not affect me, which is a consensus among the Mind Mages, or, as a dungeon master still attached to his core, I was simply insulated from the effects.”
Erick nodded.
Solomon breathed in, and then he said, “I was about ten million different slimes, experiencing around that many different lives. Most of them ended when I was eaten by something else.”
Erick frowned a little. “Well that fucking sucks.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Erick realized that the problem was larger than his small, instinctive comment.
Solomon winced.
Poi said, “We don’t have many records of repros experiencing dungeon core breaks… Like, we have 2 of them. Most repros want nothing to do with dungeons as soon as they separate, but those that do still touch upon dungeon spaces will almost always refuse to take part in a core breaking. Those 2 reports of dungeon core destructions by repros are not helpful here; both of them were forgotten memories, with both people unable to recall what happened.”
Solomon said, “It’s already fading for me… I’m rather sure that Intelligence and having this All-Seeing Eye on my neck is the only thing that allowed me to understand what I was seeing at all. But I was still a slime, and slimes have terrible vision; it’s basically all shadows. Past 5 or 10 meters it’s nothing at all.”
Seeing himself as a slime was obviously the beginning of an existential crisis.
Erick said, “The others will likely have experienced something similar. So how about we stop here for the day. Cut out all experiments and whatnot, and go see a play, or something like that. Or I could make a nice dinner— Oh! Better yet. Let’s all go get wasted at some bars in Aniduun; they’re supposed to be really fun!”
Solomon smiled a little, in a broken sort of way. And then he banished all untoward thoughts, standing straight as he said, “It’s standard to take a week off after a dungeon core breaking, right?”
“Something like that, yes,” Erick said.
Poi said, “You’re taking a week off, and from what I’m hearing already the girls are experiencing some of their own existential crises, so they’re on mandatory leave, too.”
Erick put on a happy face as he smiled wide, announcing, “Then it’s settled! We’re going to do some good old fashioned partying! Or something.” He admitted, “I think I’ve forgotten how to party properly, though.”
Solomon smirked, then demurred, “I’m going to reconnect to the core here, and then we can maybe see what Ascendant City has to offer in the way of nightlife. Maybe Poi can come along, too—”
Poi instantly said, “I am not a hermit, Solomon. I’m here, but I’m also at Candlepoint, overseeing ten simultaneous and normal day-to-day events and one 1-star crisis, in the form of this putrescent slug dungeon breaking, to ensure that the infection is fully cleared. And Erick already did almost that entire job for us, anyway.” He said, “I appreciate the worry, but you do not have to worry about my mental state. Go and have fun.”
“I’m still going to connect to the core,” Solomon said, brooking no argument.
- - - -
“I was a slime,” Abigail said, seated at the dinner table, opening a discussion that they had all briefly touched upon, and then put away as fast as they could.
Once the girls had come back to Ascendant Mountain, they had rapidly shot down Erick’s suggestion of ‘partying’. Everyone except Jane had a hollow look in their eyes, and they had wanted to simply eat and relax, and so Erick had decided to whip up the best dinner he could make. They ate in the large dining room that rarely got used, even back at the original house, instead of at the kitchen table, since there were 10 of them. That had been two hours ago. Now the dinner had been cleared away and dessert was served. It was huge slices of chocolate cake, thick with frosting and moist as a 9-Star Cook could make. Erick was a decent cook when he wanted to be, but the cake was not his; he had bought it from ‘And Dessert!’, his flagship chocolate store he had begun with the ladies from ‘Meat! Bread! Cheese!’ a decade ago. They churned out some fantastic chocolate cakes, as always, though they weren’t the only Cooks on staff by a long shot anymore.
It was almost a good enough cake to lift some spirits.
But Abigail’s words reopened an existential wound.
Beth said, “I was a slime, too. It was really fucking weird, and kinda hit home that we’re not really Jane, and that’s painful, but it’s fine. Right? Not a big deal.”
“Not in the grand scheme of things, no,” Candice said. “We’re all just different people, and that’s fine. This really solidifies that fact. We’re expen—”
“You are NOT expendable,” Erick harshly said, interrupting what he knew was coming. “Even if you suddenly hate yourself, know that I still love you. You are loved. And I don’t like you talking like that about people I love.”
Emily suddenly spat, “You don’t get it—”
“I don’t have to get it,” Erick said, “And you’re all a lot more stable than this mental upset.” He looked to every girl in turn, and then to Solomon. “You are some of the strongest people on this world, and we will be facing something that has killed a whole lot more people than we could ever envision. So if we have to take our time, that is fine. We can get through all of this.
“Or, you could just stop.
“None of you are expendable. All of you are necessary.
“But if you don’t want to go searching for the Sundering, then you can stay here with Solomon, Poi, and I, as we watch from the Mirror. We all had breaking experiences, too.”
The room was silent.
Jane said, “I’m still going out there to explore the Dark.”
More silence.
Debby said, “I was… I was a slime in that vision, but I was also… Erick.” She winced. “I think I was the slime encased in the asteroid belt just ten centimeters away from the one that became Solomon. It was… A really weird experience. I barely remember anything about it, but… Everything is too different for me to continue like I was. I’m taking a week off, as per industry standard guidelines. You know, the ones that we helped to write.”
Everyone except Poi was surprised by Debby’s announcement.
Debby added, “Maybe I’ll be ready to go back in a week. All I really know is that I’ll be delving for base mana production, and not doing much more than that. We had to ration mana way too much in there.”
There were some small agreements at the ‘too much rationing’ part.
And then Emily dropped a bomb, “I was a slime, but I was also a man, raised by our mother and not here on Veird at all.” Angry, and trying to hide it, Emily said, “I truly think that if we would have been born with a penis our mother wouldn’t have given us to dad.”
Erick was stunned.
The girls were not.
“Oh my god—” “That BITCH!” “Somehow completely expected—” “—And yet not.” “I know, right!”
Beth said, “Well thank the gods we ended up with our dad!”
Erick suddenly laughed, because he had no idea what else to do at the moment. “I’m glad you ended up with me!”
The Janes were a bit too embarrassed to say anything more about that. They’d probably talk about it all when they were away from him, though, and that’d be fine.
Erick changed the subject, “When Melemizargo showed us some alternate realities today, I was a centaur in one of them. Imagine if you could have been an actual horse girl! No spiders at all.”
“Now what’s wrong with spiders,” Jane demanded to know.
The others instantly joined in on that topic.
Debby said, “Centaurs are cool, but spiders are cooler.”
“Even in pure utility!” Abigail said, as she stuck her fork into her chocolate cake. “You got the webs, the full-vision eyes—”
“And horses are fragile as shit,” Solomon said, joining in on the conversation, smiling wide. “Spiders are much cooler.”
Erick mocked offense, “You’re turning on me, now?!”
Jane said, “Solomon is now ‘Cool Dad’.”
Solomon instantly conjured sunglasses on his face, saying, “It is Law!”
Laughter, mixed with groans.
Jane said, “I rescind my recommendation.”
“What! No!” Solomon said, “No backsies!”