“Hello, Fairy Moon,” Erick said, as though greeting an old frenemy, because he kinda was.
The friend-enemy spectrum usually landed on ‘friend’ more often than not these days, but more than once Erick had needed to [Fairy Banishing] her to remove her from whatever it was she was doing wrong at the time. She was the whole reason Erick went about making that spell in the first place, both for his own use, and for Quilatalap, who needed a little bit of Wizardry to be able to make a proper version of that spell himself. Erick usually waited till Fairy Moon made a nuisance of herself before Banishing her, but Quilatalap Banished her on sight. He had even included automatic Banishing in many of the dungeons he made.
Erick added, “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
Fairy Moon looked about the same as always. Short, pale, with one eye blazing pink and the other emerald green, and wearing clothes that Jane once described as ‘pastel goth’. She also wore a concerned expression. “I heard my name overmuch and have come calling on this gathering of old ghosts.” She looked to Guile, wrapped around Solomon’s right arm, like a bracer. “You’re looking poor, dear Guile.”
In complete contrast to the last two hours of talking with Guile and explaining the world, and Guile sometimes-vehemently disbelieving Erick, Solomon, and Poi, this time Guile’s voice was completely deferential, “I apologize my glorious Queen EverStar, King of all Fae, Perfect Ruler and Magnanimous Life After Death For All Who Believe, Mladfawb. Please excuse my form. I appear to be affected by a manaminer that is beyond my capabilities.”
Erick had never heard those names before, and he might never hear them again considering he already heard a soft whine in the air, which had to be the Script trying one of its Silences. Erick had never heard of Fairy Moon formally referred to as anything besides ‘Fairy Moon’, until now, but he certainly remembered Melemizargo trying to call out Fairy Moon’s Other Names, that one time near Stratagold, and getting nothing from that naming but unheard static and bleeding orifices. Apparently this dungeon was beyond that, thankfully; that’s what they had made the anti-Silencing rules for, and those rules had worked.
Erick looked to Fairy Moon. “Mladfawb?”
“An ancient trifle of a name. What of it?” Fairy Moon asked, not even looking at him.
Erick almost wanted to try to be personable to Fairy Moon, to ask small questions, like ‘what’s in a Name?’ and ‘are more of your Silenced Names acronyms?’ and ‘were the names I gave the others bad, or good?’. But Fairy Moon seemed unusually peeved.
Did she not like Guile?
“Never mind the names.” Erick asked, “Was the artifact meeting I granted House Carnage not enough? Do you wish for something pulled out of the Dark, too?”
… Fairy Moon looked to Erick. And then she looked back to Guile. “I am here for Guile. I felt a fae fall into this dark dungeon, into this languished land, and I needed to nose around anyway since all of you were avoiding naming my names.” She said to the golden bracelet, “You need to request a requisition of allowances of existence from Rozeta’s strangling Script. Erick can cause that happening to happen… Probably pretty promptly.” She looked to Erick. “You and I need to talk about New Cosmology fae.”
“I’ve heard about them, yes. Rozeta spoke about them to me, and about your talk with her and Kromolok about the warning for otherworldly fae to appear on Veird.” Erick said, “I trust that Rozeta hasn’t seen any other fae. Do you not trust her in this particular way?”
Fairy Moon distrusted Rozeta in many different ways, but not when it came to big things, and this seemed like a big deal to her. Honestly, the idea of New Cosmology Fae was a big deal to Erick, too, but he had never seen any of them, either. They seemed to be a problem beyond current problems, and therefore they were nothing.
Fairy Moon frowned a little. And then she intoned, “Hear me now, my Wonderful Wizard of Benevolence: The Old Fae are out there always. I fear you are not feeling the fullness of my complete candidness.”
“… Your warnings are heard loud and clear, Fairy Moon, but there’s not much I can do about your warnings or to prepare against Other Fae.” Erick asked, “Unless there is something in the Dark we should be looking for as defense against them?”
“… No, there is nothing in the Deeper Dark that can conceal or create a ward of perfect protection against Those Other Outsiders.” Fairy Moon frowned a little more, and then she sighed, and said, “I hope the Sundering Search does not uncover those uncouth Other Outsiders. That would be a disaster of deadly proportions.”
Everyone paused at that.
Erick asked, “Could these Other Fae be the true cause of the Sundering?”
Fairy Moon tilted her head a little. “… Doubtful, but definitely possible. Many possibilities are possible.”
Erick stopped being concerned about Outsider Fae, for he mentally ticked off ‘not going to search in that possible-Sundering direction until we’re ready for it’. Poi and Solomon seemed to have the same thought process.
Fairy Moon turned and looked at Guile again, and then at Solomon. “You’re on the Worldly Path once again. How weird. Well. Whatever. Your Wizardry is yours to wrestle with this time. Guile! Guide him well to grandness for all Good Gains.”
Guile instantly said, “I will do this decree, my Kind King!”
Fairy Moon nodded, then stepped away, vanishing from the kitchen dining room, in the house in the dungeon.
Solomon looked at Guile. “Want to try and get your body back?”
“There’s no time for that nonsense now. I am not leaving you until you ascend to Wizardry to rival all that has come before. We are making a powerhouse of you one way or ten thousand others!” Guile said, “It is good that you have already stolen enough Darkness from others to bump up your mana production as high as it is; it will make the next steps a lot easier.”
Erick had a lot to say about that, from Guile’s implication that it would take long to get Rozeta to add another Fairy Band… Well. Actually. It might. Anyway! Stealing Darkness, eh? That old taboo subject that was made unimportant because of the dungeons?
Solomon paused in a lot of questions, too. “You mean the Darkness that makes me produce mana?”
Guile’s tone turned full of implied frowns. “Yes, I mean that! A good bit of ruthlessness is always nice to see in an aspiring Wizard; makes all the rest of it easier.”
Erick asked, “What makes you think he stole Darkness?”
Solomon had the same question, but he left it unvoiced.
“… Did…” Guile asked, “Did people give you their Darkness?” He rapidly added, “I suppose you are a grand power in this place so that sort of makes sense— Do the people here not know what they were giving up when they gave you their Darkness?”
Erick said, “That’s not what happened, either.”
Solomon said, “Dungeons, like the one we’re in right now, can make big monsters or official Trials of the Dark, and when you kill one of those or complete one of those, you get base mana production. It’s a whole thing, and it’s rather new, as far as we know. Before, in the Old Cosmology, this simply did not happen. I’ll take you on a dungeon run later with the girls and you can see what all that’s about.”
“… Ah? Well…” Guile’s voice fizzled out. “Well… I’m not sure how to actually approach this increasingly complicated and dangerous dimension. I keep increasing my expectations of what you might have available to you, for your use, while simultaneously striving to come to terms with how little you have here on this planet. You have no Radiant Depths to which you can reach, to align your soul and system in a Great Cleansing. You have no Grand Wizard’s Tower to visit, where people might help you prepare your power —which is filled with these ‘particles’ which make very little sense to me, but which I think I know of, a little— There is no Goddess of Knowledge! I should have been able to point you at her parishioners at least so that we could learn all of these missing pieces of this universe, and how it fits together with mana!
“And yet!
“And yet! We have all of an entire world’s resources at our disposal, and you won’t have to fight for any of it. You know the gods. You have clearance to ascend to Wizardry within the sphere of this ‘planet’ —which is another new concept for me. And perhaps the most important thing is that you are on the Worldly Path, which will smooth out and bring to us untold ultimatums for advancement, and since you already have all this power within you, Solomon, since you come from another Wizard and have all those memories, I have little doubt that you can ignite your core into something brilliant! All it will take is a little bit of time, and talking to the right people! We’ll have to search out some non-manaminer spaces, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
“And, most of the Elements that existed in the Old Cosmology but which do not exist here, which I would have pointed you at for inspiration, means that you can choose who you want to be! You have complete choice! You don’t have to compromise on anything at all, as you would have to do if you chose something unimaginative yet easily trod, like Peace or Security.
“We are on a paradise island made of natural treasures.
“This is the best possible start I have EVER HAD for any of my servants… And yet… And yet… It might be the most difficult.”
Guile fell to silence.
Erick and Solomon and Poi joined him in that silence. Moments passed as Erick considered both the full breadth of how Guile used to live his life, and how much had been lost. If Erick had fallen to the Old Cosmology with Jane, then Jane would have for sure left her starting planet already, to try and seek her fortune in the great beyond. Erick probably would have been found by some higher power of some sort and used for their own ends. Or perhaps a kind Wizard would have found him first. Either way, there would have been no way to hide his natural mana generation outside of Veird…
But Erick had never noticed his natural mana generation on Earth?
… Did Earth have a manaminer? Because Erick was still a Wizard back on Earth, right? Wizards and every other sapient person generally developed their mana generation at the end of puberty.
… Earth did not have a manaminer. No way. That’d be crazy.
Erick held that crazy thought inside, strangling his laughter to ensure nothing escaped and ruined the deep moment that Guile was having right now. He distracted himself, and considered that maybe, in a natural manasphere, he wouldn’t be spewing mana crystals everywhere, like he did whenever he entered the no-Script space inside this dungeon. Maybe he would have naturally learned to control his power in a normal, no-Script space. That’s probably how it worked in the Old Cosmology.
No way to really know, though, because they weren’t in the Old Cosmology at all—
Solomon broke the silence, asking, “Where would you start with training me to become a True Wizard, Guile?”
Erick added, “We could probably get your fae body back, if you want.”
Guile glinted on Solomon’s bracer for a moment, then he easily said, “I’d start with getting me a body of my own so that I could show you what to do, directly. If I am understanding everything correctly, this means a talk with Rozeta? Even if bureaucracy takes a while, bureaucracy should still be done as soon as possible.”
Erick stood from his seat, saying, “Let’s do that, then.”
- - - -
Surprisingly, Rozeta had been okay with increasing the bands of acceptable Elemental Fae by 1.
In the glade outside of the slime dungeon, Rozeta stood atop the grass, saying, “Of course, Erick. I was waiting for you to ask.” And then she looked to Guile, wrapped around Solomon’s right wrist. “You will have to be quick and dense with regard to taking that extra slot, Guile.”
Trying to keep his surprise out of his voice, and failing, Guile said, “Understood, Goddess of Veird.”
Rozeta grinned a little. “In 4, 3, 2, 1—”
The air changed, ripples flowing out from the bracer upon Solomon’s arm, filling the manasphere before fading into nothing among the trees and the sky. Guile’s bracer form slipped off of Solomon’s arm, plopping onto the ground and instantly taking on his small, golden fox form once again, his ten tails spreading out behind him like prehensile feather boas. His head only reached Solomon’s knee, but his tails were longer—
And then the world seemed to relax, and breathe.
Guile transformed from golden fox, to a fox with blonde hair and bright amber eyes. From unnatural, to natural. He shook himself out, and breathed a little.
Rozeta sighed in contentment. “Glad to see that it worked how I wanted it to work. Welcome back, Guile.”
Erick caught up quickly, and so did Solomon. Poi was back in the dungeon, but he’d find out what happened as soon as they got back in.
When fae died, they returned to Elemental Fae, only to be born again in a new form, with a fraction of the memories of their old selves, like shadelings coming back from the Dark. For the longest time only Fairy Moon had been reborn, over and over again, alone each time. When Rozeta relaxed the Fae bands of intent to 10 a while ago, it allowed 10 more fairies to be reborn. Those bands had been quickly filled, and now when any of those 10 fae’s corporeal bodies met its untimely end, they were reborn inside Fairy, like normal. They’d carry memories of their old lives which would inform their new lives, but most times any death at all was rather traumatic, forcing a personality reset. Fairy Moon was the only one immune to this sort of change.
Now that Guile was connected to Fairy once again, he had regained something in that rebirth. Some of his old memories, no doubt.
Guile breathed deep and padded forward two small steps before he dropped to his butt. He craned his neck up toward Rozeta. “I perished in the Sundering. It was not a joyful time. I believe I was trying to prevent the Sundering as it happened… I was on the other side of the universe from Veird at the time. One day, I and my servant at the time saw a bolt of Lightning pass across the sky, far, far in the mana ocean. It left ripples of death and sparks of annihilation as it passed. One of those sparks touched down on that world… I think I died then.” Guile frowned at himself, as much as a fox could frown, and then he narrowed his eyes upon the ground. He looked at his paws. “These particles are strange. I feel as though I should know of them. They are certainly clouding my… memory. My everything. Hmm. The mana of this universe is well… organized, but... simple? Yes. Simple— Oh.” He startled. And then he looked back up at Rozeta. “I apologize for my lapse of decorum, Goddess of Veird.” He bowed.
He had a lot more to say, but all of that would come later.
Rozeta moved on, too, saying, “I’m glad your story continues here on this small life raft we call Veird.” She gently turned her gaze from Guile, to Solomon. “I believe I will mirror Koyabez’s words, Solomon, and say I am taking a half-step toward you, to respect you as your own person. I look forward to working with as many Erick-Wizards as you all feel like making, but each one will be their own person, without connection to any who come before.”
Erick chuckled at the idea of ‘Erick-Wizards’ as a category of being.
Solomon merely grinned. “Thanks, Rozeta.”
Rozeta nodded, then she looked to Erick, and said, “I would speak with you for a moment.”
Solomon and Guile both knew that meant without them.
Guile instantly said to Solomon, “It is time to train accretion, servant. From the foundation!”
Guile did not wait for Solomon to agree to anything. He just walked over to the dungeon once again.
Solomon grinned as he followed.
After the two of them vanished into the dungeon, Erick turned to Rozeta. “I understand why Atunir suggested Guile, now.”
“The little fox has more stories about him than could fit in most personal libraries. I’m glad to have him back.” Rozeta said, “Though he is a fae.”
“I noticed that.”
Rozeta shrugged. “He’s a good one, as far as I know. He tries to stay out of the spotlight as much as he can, but his goals always further the spread of life… Partially because he likes to eat that life, but he produces more than he eats, so… You know.”
Erick nodded. “Fairy Moon visited earlier.”
Both of them waited a beat for the Fairy in question to show.
She did not.
“She spoke to you about New Cosmology fae, I assume.”
“She did. How valid are her concerns?”
“Adding Guile to the list of approved fae right now helped me to check the Script and the systems we have in place. I am now 99% sure that New Cosmology Fae either don’t know of Veird, or have never been here before.”
“… That’s different from what you said the last time,” Erick said, worriedly.
“It is, isn’t it!” Fairy Moon said, standing in the glade with them. “You told me you never managed to meet one at all!”
Rozeta quickly said, “Now look here, Fairy Moon. That was —and is— still a true statement. This New Cosmology is huge. I don’t feel that you quite understand that. And no one is ever fully sure of anything; don’t blame me for hedging my bets.”
Erick understood all of that. When he first fell to Veird, he was amazed that there was another source of life in the universe at all. Later, had even met a few old planars over the years, and each of them were also amazed that other life existed. Or at least that emotion had been expressed in their writings that they had left behind.
Fairy Moon wasn’t getting it, though. Perhaps her scale of stuff was way different from Rozeta’s and Erick’s?
Fairy Moon shouted, “They should be seen and be here! I harbor no naysaying against your arguments of size, but seriously. Where the fuck are the other fae?”
Rozeta had no words.
Erick asked, “I want to check if we have the same sensibilities with regard to size.” Erick held up a hand, and conjured a small spiral galaxy out of light, while he also darkened all the space around them, plunging the grove into a semblance of night. Some of that Darkness out there moved, but that was fine; Melemizargo could watch if he wanted. Erick lifted his hand up, carrying the spiral galaxy with it. “This could be representative of my home galaxy. It’s not a real representation, because I don’t feel like putting down a hundred billion stars into my hand… or more. Not sure about that number.”
Fairy Moon lifted her head a little, in a questioning sort of look, directly at Erick. Then she lowered her face again, and looked at the galaxy. She turned back toward Erick. “What are you wishing at, Wizard?”
Rozeta watched Erick, but she also watched the Dark all around.
“I’m trying to understand our senses of scale, and if we’re both way off, or not, because Rozeta is correct and this universe is huge.” Erick said, “Assuming we are in my universe, and not in some completely different Cosmology, then…”
Erick enlarged the galaxy in his hands, and stars spread outward in a jumbled, 4-armed swirl, filling the darkened glade along a single plane. Points of light illuminated the Shadow of Melemizargo, hiding in the edges of the black, his form swirling in Darkness. Erick ignored that for now, as he was focused on adding stars and shifting around the ones he had made, to better resemble the night sky he had seen for the first 48 years of his previous life. It took him a moment, and then several more moments after that. Now that Erick was thinking about it this deeply, and actually constructing this display, he realized there there were only maybe 5,000 stars on one side of the glade, and 5,000 on the other, all of them altogether representing the whole sky that one would see throughout the whole year; Only 10,000 stars out of 100,000 visible stars.
Most stars in the sky were invisible from Earth, by the naked eye.
“This is what the night sky looks like from my home planet. Mostly,” Erick said, “Pretty sure I got it mostly right. There’s Polaris up there, and over there are the Seven Sisters. And down below us are some of the brightest stars, including Alpha Centauri, a triple-star system and the closest other stars to Earth, at around 4.5 light years away. That’s the distance light travels in a year, by the way, so when we’re looking at those stars, we’re seeing them as they were 4.5 years ago.”
Rozeta was deeply interested in the night sky. So was Melemizargo.
… Erick had never shown them this before, had he? No, he had not. Well they certainly wouldn’t know of Earth, now would they? They were both gods, and Melemizargo was the Dark, but both of them were something like 5,000 years old for Rozeta and 25,000 for Melemizargo.
But Fairy Moon was different.
Erick realized, or maybe hoped, that as he showed this land to Fairy Moon, in particular, that maybe she might know this night sky.
But.
No.
Rozeta and Melemizargo merely cataloged what they were seeing.
And Fairy Moon squinted her heterochromatic eyes at the darkened glade, with points of light everywhere, and said, “… I know not this lost land.” She looked to Erick, “You sure you secured the stars truly?”
Erick tried not to sigh. He had never been hopeful of returning to Earth, and he certainly never tried to head that way, or even think about it too much, but for one shining moment, Erick had thought that maybe Fairy Moon would know of Earth. Erick said, “I have set them in the sky as best I could.” He held up his hand, and placed a tiny blue and green marble in the center of the glade. “That’s the point of view of the starfield. That is the angle to properly view the stars.”
Fairy Moon stared at the replica of Earth. Then she moved to stand beside it, and cast her gaze outward. “… Nope. This is new land to me.” She stepped away from the replica, saying, “I never needed nor envisioned a vacation outside our Old Cosmology anyway. I will let my people know of this knowledge, and if one of my people perhaps knows of this land, then maybe they’ll mention that miracle to you later.” She waved a hand, saying, “But what of this scale you seek to secure?”
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Erick moved on, saying, “For our purposes, Earth is practically the same size as Veird, though Veird is actually about 8-ish times Earth’s size, or something like that. It really doesn’t matter.” And then Erick pulled all the stars in the sky to that singular point that was Earth, adding countless points of light at the edge of the field as he pulled inward. “What we’re seeing as I’m zooming us outward is my home galaxy, the Milky Way.” Soon, the Milky Way filled the glade, like a gently swirling whirlpool. Erick pointed to where Earth lay, saying, “Every single star in Earth’s night sky has already collapsed down into this small area. The Milky Way itself is over 100,000 light years across, and we don’t see most of the stars in the Milky Way at night, because most of them are too small and weak to see.
“Keep in mind that this is just an approximation past this point.”
The starfield crushed downward, once again becoming a glob of pinpricks that was the Milky Way.
“And this is that galaxy, back to being small. It takes light 100,000 years to travel from one end of this galaxy to the other… Or was it 104,000? Might have been 104,000. Anyway. The speed of light is the speed at which the universe is able to act on itself… or something like that. I don’t know exactly.”
Erick added a bunch of tiny clusters around the Milky Way. “These are satellite galaxies. There are a lot of them, and they’re all kinda small.”
At about 7 Milky Ways away, he added another galaxy and a bunch of smaller ones, saying, “This is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way and its satellite systems. This is Andromeda. This whole small collection of galaxies, contained inside this glade, is about 10 million light years across at this point, meaning it takes 10 million years for light to travel this distance. This is the local cluster.”
Fairy Moon’s eyes were a little wide at this point. She seemed to be getting it for the first time.
Rozeta looked reserved. She was getting it, too, and it was worse than she feared.
Melemizargo’s shadow, though, seemed to be positively brimming with excitement, as Erick continued to fill the glade with stars upon stars. The God of Magic’s shadow darted from galaxy to galaxy, from major swirl of light to minor whirlpool of dust-like stars.
Erick zoomed out some more, adding a whole lot more points of light, all across the glade, while the Milky Way shrunk down to the size of a single dot in the center. “This point of light here is the local cluster; I kept it in the middle. All of these other lights have all of what was in the local cluster. Every single point of light out there is billions of points of light.”
Melemizargo was giggling as he darted around.
Rozeta’s look changed from ‘reserved’ to ‘resigned’.
Fairy Moon huffed, “Well that’s wishful wishes. No way is this real.”
Erick said, “I’m not done yet. This is only 500 million light years across.” And then he zoomed out more. The glade was filled with light, like illuminated dust hanging in the dark, clustering around itself, forming universal strings of dust, like dust devils made of light and frozen in time—
And it became easier to add more and more illuminated dust.
This simple illumination was not a spell; it was not magic. Erick had put no real intent into any of this, as he simply carved light and shadow from mana.
And yet, it became a spell. It became magic.
Erick felt a magic pulse from his very soul, unbidden and uncalled upon, but presenting itself nonetheless, as the entire glade turned into a light-strewn emptiness. Rozeta seemed to vanish, as Fairy Moon’s pink and green eyes faded into the black, to become part of the universal dust, and Melemizargo crawled in the depths between everything like a fish taking to water.
Erick’s body had vanished into the depths of everything, but his voice remained, “We’re at 3 billion light years across right now, and you can see how ephemeral forces like gravity and time have guided everything into clustered shapes. It’s been about 14 billion years since the start of this universe, and it might be 100 trillion years till it ends, though those are just guesses.”
Erick zoomed out even more.
And magic, ancient and wanting, filled all the gaps which Erick could never hope to even visualize.
It was a field of light and dark, like static.
“At this distance it is impossible to make anything out. We’re at almost 100 billion light years across. This is the observable universe.”
Erick zoomed out 250 more times, faster and deeper than he could ever hope to contain within his own mind, even as bolstered with Intelligence and Perception as it was. Static became simple grayscale, which became nothing but a sea of perfectly even grey. And yet, there were nuances to it. Nuances which Erick did not put there, but which existed anyway.
Tendrils in the grey.
“This is the theorized size of the actual universe,” Erick said, ignoring the tendrils. Melemizargo must have been doing that. “Though I’ll never know, because I lack the time and the power to see any of it. Or at least that was true before magic came along into my life. Now, who knows what wonders and powers you or I might see, or how magic might get us there.
“And now, we return.”
Erick began zooming back in, falling forward fast. Static turning to more static turning to more static, in a never ending flow, because the size of it all was truly that vast.
Going inward was easier than going outward.
Going inward… Everything was more nuanced. Everything was more solid. There were parts of the lightshow that Erick had not put down there which now appeared out of chaos, like he had always put them there, and not like he had made it all up on the spot. Spiraling clouds of various density, but only seeming that way because the human mind sought to make images out of anything it could, to find patterns in the chaos; that’s what it all reminded Erick of.
And then he got further inward, zooming all the way down, going fast as he could, but all he saw was more and more static. One minute, two minutes. Five minutes of inward diving. Zooming inward, time passed on, as more and more of the universe came into view.
He was not zooming in on a magic he had made.
He was merely at the controls, pressing a switch on a system that had been made for him, which he had had no part in its creation—
Suddenly, the clouds revealed themselves once again as twisted streamers of dust, of light, infinitesimal in their size, intricate in their arrangement. Like nerves in a brain they all connected to each other, and yet they were not connected to each other at all.
Erick found himself standing on the edge of the glade, in the East, like the sun. Fairy Moon stood on the West, like the moon. Rozeta was to the South, grounded as all ever, though she had been on the North side until now, while Melemizargo had moved to firmly stand on the North side of the glade, in his dragon form, but only ten meters tall. He had absolutely crushed the trees that way, like the force of absolute change that he was. A breeze flowed from his direction, rustling the trees.
The Ritual of it all reminded Erick of the time he had bargained for a ceasefire among all those involved, to open them all to the possibility that more could happen, if only they all cooperated.
This was the first time they had gathered like this since then, wasn’t it?
No time for those sorts of thoughts.
That Ritual demanded Erick continue, and so he did.
Erick zoomed inward, into the nerve-like universal strings of this New Cosmology, trillions upon trillions of stars, as dust, passing out of the glade, brushing against Erick, Rozeta, Fairy Moon, and Melemizargo, like the passing of countless tiny lights. A minute passed as Erick went forward, reaching for the end of this journey—
The universe suddenly focused as individual super clusters appeared out of the dust, and those gave way to clusters, and then individual galaxies.
Erick zoomed in on a galaxy that was not the Milky Way.
It was a disk of light most firm around the edge, except in one spot to the north of the circular-like galaxy. That spot held a break in the circle, but not a full break. It almost looked like a natural lessening of the density of the circle. Perhaps someone had caused some ancient, awful magic to sunder that space? Hard to know what had happened there.
All Erick knew is that it looked like the rune of [Renew].
Erick’s breath hitched, but the magic was not over. He zoomed in on that split, because that’s where the magic took them. And right there, in that space that looked empty but which was not empty at all, between the open ends of the rune of [Renew], were countless other stars…
And one star in particular.
There was the sun, up above, and also in the lightward display between them. There were the planets of this system, and Veird, the fourth planet from this sun.
Erick zoomed in more, and the map expanded until it showed the Dungeon Island southwest of Quintlan, and then Ascendant Mountain, and then this very glade itself, with Erick on the East, Fairy Moon on the West, Rozeta to the South, and Melemizargo to the North.
The spell overlapped all four of them, and then it broke, a brilliant whine of light and power washing outward, like a beacon lit.
The magic ended.
For a moment, no one said a word.
And then Rozeta softly said, “I knew I shouldn’t have said I was comfortable with Wizards.”
Arguing started.
Fairy Moon proclaimed, “They’ll never find us! We must find them and tithe to them puzzles and power and purpose and people! They must surely be more secure in their truest trues than us! They will extinct our existences if we are not wily winsome!”
Melemizargo just chuckled, mumbling about gathering worlds of his own, and how much bigger this hoard was going to be than the last one. To which Fairy Moon said stuff about how they mustn't overstep, and Rozeta mumbled about Wizards again.
And then Rozeta said to her father, “We require mana, father. None of those worlds have mana. None I can see, anyway.”
“A problem to fix, Rozeta,” Melemizargo said. “Nothing more than a problem to fix.”
“Not one you could fix, though,” Rozeta asked, “Unless you could?”
“Oh no no. I cannot…” Melemizargo turned his white-eyed gaze outward, and considered. “I don’t know of anything in my vaults that could help us, either… Maybe… I will have to think on this.” And then he looked down at Rozeta, saying, “It’s just a matter of time, though, and we were already planning on expanding from this world, anyway. This gives us a map, of sorts. A plan. A purpose.”
Erick interrupted, “Is no one going to comment on the rune of [Renew].”
Fairy Moon dismissively said, “You were influenced by incarnations outside of ourselves to reach this [Renew] that you did, no doubt. This is all a plan of the planners who we have not yet witnessed!”
Melemizargo nodded. “A Wizard still on a Path.”
“Always on a Path, it seems,” Rozeta said, resigning herself again. “I must go and check on Fate’s box now.” And then she vanished.
Melemizargo grinned, chuckling. “I have plans as well.” And then he vanished, becoming a shadow that briefly seemed full of stars and giggling, and then he was gone.
Fairy Moon exclaimed, “The Other Outsiders must have seen the spectacle! I must make merry in case they come calling!”
She vanished in a splash of springtime.
… Erick stood there for a moment.
And then he moved on, too, walking back into the dungeon to see what Solomon was up to with Guile, and to ask them what they thought of… All that had just happened, and which they had conveniently missed.
“Fate’s out of its box, for sure,” Erick mumbled, as he stepped into darkness.
A minute later he approached Solomon, Poi, and fox-form Guile. All three of them stood upon a white stone platform raised up from the dungeon floor, where Guile was speaking with Solomon and drawing diagrams of human bodies in the air. A lot of the diagrams had colored parts swirling inside of them. They were Old Cosmology techniques to accrete, and the discussion had been about their validity.
Poi noticed Erick last, though he was the only one with a visible reaction. He paled as much as a blue dragonkin could pale, his eyes going wide. Solomon instantly noticed Poi’s reaction, though he remained confused. Guile fared no better.
Erick, meanwhile, had a little bit of schadenfreude at Poi’s mind reading, and finding everything out without needing to be told. Erick smiled, and exaggerated, “Oh come on, Poi! How bad could it be?”
Poi cursed.
- - - -
Erick, Solomon, and Guile, stood upon a large white stone platform, well out of reach of the slimes below, on the main dungeon floor. A no-Script space held on the other side of the platform. Darkness loomed in the distance all around, except in the north, where Dreams stood revealed as much as they could be, looking like an ever-riotous flow of color and memory and black clouds.
There had been a discussion about what had happened out there in the glade in front of the dungeon. The girls had shown up for all of that, and Poi had had a bunch of specific questions. It had taken a good half hour for all of that happenstance to calm and it ended a lot sooner than Erick assumed it would, for Fallopolis had shown up, looking concerned. A short conversation later, the girls rushed out to do a bunch of their own investigations at the Well of Darkness. Fallopolis had her own concerns to follow, too. Poi was currently holed up at the house in the dungeon, talking with a bunch of other people, including Teressa and Aisha at House Benevolence, to see if they could see anything in the Benevolent Sky.
Erick had checked that; there had been nothing.
Everyone seemed a lot more worried than they needed to be, in Erick’s opinion. If something happened, they would solve it. In actuality, Erick knew he should probably be panicking more than he was…
But…
Everything seemed to be falling into place.
Erick had no idea why he felt that way, but he did. Perhaps because he was going to learn about True Wizardry alongside Solomon, from some sort of fae-hybrid kinda person, whom everyone trusted, and who had a list of good deeds following them across the entire Old Cosmology. Erick had never heard any of those stories before, but Rozeta and Atunir and others seemed to know those stories, and that was good enough for Erick… The ‘eating people’ was a bit much for him, to be fair. But that was fine… Probably.
Guile pawed forward on the platform, toward the no-Script space, saying, “We have gone over the basics, and now it is time for proper accretion. I am likely going to die many, many times in this process, so it is a good thing that this dungeon and you possess [True Resurrection]. There might be an issue with my natural mana generation, but if it remains how it was at the time of the Sundering, then this should be fine. If it is not, then we will go kill some monsters inside other dungeons. But, for now, I will accrete a core, and then try to crystallize. This might take weeks.”
The golden fox stepped into the no-Script bubble, face first, and already streamers of yellow light were flowing away from his body. It was the color of a daffodil, and completely different from his normal golden hue. The little fox winced as he pressed onward, and soon his entire body was misting with sunshine-yellow light.
Guile breathed in the yellow air, eddies forming as he moved, turning around to sit down on his haunches. He looked to Solomon, his tails waving like ten very large streamers of power. “I can already tell that I have lost a great deal of power. I cannot accrete to True Wizardry like this, so we will have to go into the dungeons. I can, however, show you a few things.” With a twist of power the yellow flow calmed, sticking to Guile’s body like a controlled aura, and then soaking into his core, near his heart. A dollop of sunshine collected beside his tiny fox heart; the beginnings of a core. Soon, that core began to grow. Guile said to Solomon, “I will be forming a core in the next few hours. While I am doing that first step, please join me in this space. I would see how you handle your body, and then send you on your way to come back later.”
Solomon stepped forward. A soft, white mist spiraled off of his body even before he breached the edge of the space with his core, tiny streamers of his power naturally forming phantom crawling jolts of power, joining him to the white stone platform, like he was the center of a plasma ball that you’d find in a mall back on Earth. And then his core passed through the edge of the no-Script space, and he radiated glows.
Greenery began to spread underfoot forming a carpet of thick moss. Tiny Benevolence crystals grew within that moss, like drops of morning dew.
Guile watched that growth, his eyes going fractionally wider. “So this is Benevolence, then. I heartily approve of your beginner Element, Solomon. It will make a good cushion for me.” Guile gestured with a paw.
Solomon smirked as he stepped away from the greenery he had made, though more greenery appeared under where he moved.
Guile took a seat on the moss, like a cat finding a spot in the sun. “Soul sight, aura control, and a preponderance of self-actualization are the main tools that one uses when guiding one’s transformation from one body into the next… And there are about a thousand lessons we should be having before we get to this point, but I will assume that you have had most of those lessons, and rely upon you to tell me if there is something you do not understand.”
Solomon nodded.
Guile continued, “Wizards are the pinnacle of self-actualization possible in… the Old Cosmology. That is what makes a Wizard a Wizard. They are who they wish to be, and most of them are unending and never dying, unless they wish to end their lives. That is the common end of most Wizards. They reach the final point of what they want to do with their lives, and since they see no point in continuing, they break apart, becoming one with their Element.
“Everything from these ‘particles’ in this New Cosmology… Well actually, I do not know if they will interfere. But they shouldn’t.
“Starting over.
“Everything from these ‘particles’ to all these bits and bobs implanted within you by the Script, should be subsumed in a Grand Act of Self-Creation. You take your Alpha and your Omega and you combine them into one. Your creator over there, Erick, Is Benevolence Itself, and as soon as his [Familiar]s mature and he realizes various deep truths about himself and his place in this universe, he might have an easy time ascending to True Wizardry.
“But he is not you.
“You are just a man with some power and a few good tools on his own Path in life.
“To get to the point where Erick is, and then beyond, we first prime the body with our mana, seeing depth within ourselves. This is usually done through controlled meditation. Like this.”
Guile’s aura had been flexing as he spoke, as he accreted his core inside of his tiny chest, but now his sunshine yellow aura calmed, filling his body. That core began to grow by leaps and bounds. That core had been gradually increasing in facets as he channeled more and more mana into his core but it would be at least an hour before he gained a true, spherical core; the end point of most every dragon or accretor or delver in the world.
Erick and Solomon and Guile would eventually go beyond that, to full crystal.
Guile stopped his focused accretion, opening his eyes to say, “Just like that, but more time spent doing it. If you aren’t in possession of a full core this sort of meditation has the side effect of growing your core most strongly, and it will be the method I use to grow to fullness soon enough. Now you try, Solomon.”
“… I’m not sure what you did, exactly.” And then Solomon took total control of his aura, focused it, and did some basic accretion. Visually it looked the same as what Guile had done, but… “Is that the same?”
“Ahhh. No. It’s not the same.” Guile said, “What I want you to do is meditate on yourself and your path in life. Let the possibilities of your future float up from your mind and rest upon your soul, and when you find one that resonates with your soul, causing a resonance, then you should write that down, and continue meditating. You will come across several ideas, usually accompanied with phrases, that resonate with you. These are future paths that you might take, or they might be corruptions in your soul that you need to purge on the way toward self-actualization.
“Becoming a True Wizard is all about finding your Path, and these phrases… Or ‘Phrases’, said all special like… These Phrases that pop up while meditating can be your guiding signs toward the best possible you.” Guile said, “Once you collect enough of them, and firmly discard enough of them, then you will pull forth your power into yourself, and become a True Wizard, all in a flashing second.
“You will likely go through a period of crystallization at that point in time, exploding in a thousand different directions since your mana generation will absolutely destroy your body, but those phrases will bring you back to yourself.
“I have simplified the steps of it all most terribly. But that is the idea.
“And that’s all there is to becoming a True Wizard… As long as you have the mana generation to start with and you don’t die in the final crystallization part. Coming back from death is no easy feat, which is why I will be making judicious use of the [True Resurrection] measures in this dungeon in order to try to regain my previous power. Rest assured that my Wizardry would be toward making myself invisible to most, for I do not appreciate being seen by many. I prefer my greatness to go unnoticed.” Guile finished with, “I will likely die a few times before I get my own phrases sorted. Nothing quite like a ‘Sundering’ to make you question everything you thought you could count on!” He yipped in tiny laughter, like the fox that he was. His gallows humor didn’t last too long, though, for he calmed, and frowned, as he looked at the ground.
Solomon frowned a little, too, thinking deeply. While Guile looked perhaps sad, Solomon was angry.
Erick was kinda mad, too. “That’s it? That’s all there is to becoming a True Wizard?”
Guile huffed, “That’s all there was. I have no idea how particles affect this natural process or this Script, for that matter. It’s all way too much interference— divine interference, too! The divine nature of the Script is one thing, but this world has too many divines as well. Gods keep to their corners, Wizards keep to theirs; that’s how it should be. Crossing those two domains is useful in many, many different ways, and gods and Wizards should work together most of the time, but Wizards must go alone on this particular journey.
“When a person is adorned with Power wrought from tools and from themselves, and when they are anointed with Purpose wrought from Wizardry, that person is a nascent Wizard. To complete their Path, they must seek themselves among the multitudes, and become who they are meant to be.
“There is no trick.
“There is only doing.”
Solomon said, “Sounds like a trick with extra steps.”
Erick laughed.
Guile hummed, then looked to Erick, “Don’t you have politics to be doing? Shoo.”
“I’m on sabbatical.”
“Bah! Spy on my lessons with Solomon if you must, but please leave already. You’re too far down your Path for me to help, and any help I could give you might inhibit the progress you have already made. All that you need to do is actually do it.” Guile looked to Solomon. “My servant has to tear himself down and build himself up a great deal.”
Erick said to Solomon, “I’ll let you know when things get started to rescue Avandrasolaro.”
Solomon nodded, and went back to meditating.
Guile did the same.
Erick left, stepping on the light, a bunch of thoughts on his mind as he cast one final glance toward Solomon and Guile, toward their auras, and their souls. Solomon’s power was the same as Erick’s right now, and so was his soul, but all that would change eventually. Guile was an odd little critter. Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about him, but he seemed trustworthy, and nothing he said had been too different from what everyone else had said regarding Wizards. And even if he did accrete to True Wizardry… Well. All the gods trusted him, right?…
Hmm.
Erick looked at Solomon and Guile’s souls, even as he lightstepped away—
He stopped.
Their souls looked like souls always did. Like mist, contained within the body, ever dense and yet ephemeral as fog. Zooming in on the soul didn’t help to clear that mist, either; it just made the soul look like more soul. It took a very skilled Soul Mage in order to suss out what was inside a person’s soul, and they didn’t use [Soul Sight] by itself to achieve that. They frameshifted their reference viewpoint in order to categorize what they were looking at, but that sort of shifting always lost things in translation.
… In ‘translation’? Huh. What a curious thought.
Anyway. As it was, 90% of the soul was impossible to see without proper tools, because it was just so complicated, like billions upon billions of… dust… stars...
Erick blinked a bit.
… Why was he standing in the middle of the air—
Oh, right. Guile was instructing Solomon on Wizardry.
Erick lightstepped into the house of the dungeon.
Poi was there.
Poi stared hard at Erick… And then Poi relaxed. He asked, “So is that all there is to Wizardry? ‘Just do it’?”
“Just keep on keepin’ on,” Erick summarized. “Heard anything about Avandrasolaro yet?”
“I have. Some people from the Church of Peace will be here in 5 hours to help set up. You remember the woman who took over Songli’s clergy after Terror Peaks bombed every house of peace, to stop the pre-Chelation War talks?”
“Oh! Yeah. I remember her. Lorizal Ex, the Head Priestess of Koyabez for the Highlands region.” Erick recalled the woman as a dark ruby incani who had shaved their horns down to nothing. “I haven’t seen her in a long time, not since she requested ‘control’ over that [Undertow Star]...” Lorizal couldn’t actually control the Star he had put up there, north of the Highlands, but Erick had set down some rules and Shapings on that Star at their requests, and those Shapings should still hold.
Erick had to be sure, though.
He glanced through Ophiel, then looked outside the dungeon, and then all across the world, his sight traveling far, through his own [Gate Network], as Ophiels carried his gaze to the mountains north of Ooloraptoor, far north of the Songli Highlands. There, among the mountains, sat a Grand Church of Peace, underneath one of Erick’s own [Undertow Star]s and a scattering of a node network. It was one of the oldest Stars Erick had ever cast, looking like a white point of light surrounded by shadows and tendrils that reached out for kilometers. Except for the node network which had been added later, the Star looked rather like Erick had left it, still doing what it was Shaped to do, gently feeding off of the people looking for the salvation of Peace from war, while violently feeding off of monsters, and anyone who stood in one space directly under the Star; people who wanted to be ‘cleansed’. Seemed like that tradition was still going strong. Some people went into a pool of water at that heavy-draw point, ducking themselves under crystal waters as they passed below the Star, light trailing away from their bodies. All those people were supplying power to an entire mountainside and valley filled with houses and farmlands, but Erick hadn’t been the one to make that change.
Erick came back to himself. “That Grand Church seems to be using that Star well.”
Poi nodded. “Under Lorizal’s direction, the Church of Peace is recovering well all throughout the Highlands, between the South Central Tribulation mountains and the South East Tribulations. Blood-On-Hell has taken direct notice of all that growth, but only recently, and only because of their own failure to thrive under your rise to power. That is why they want Lorizal Ex back into their fold, but she’s a firm believer in Peace.”
“… Oh.” Erick realized, “Lorizal is a descendant of House Blood-On-Hell.”
“Something like the 17th generation. We’re not sure. Our records show that she’s still heavily in debt to them in some unspecified way, but that’s true for all incani with any demonic ancestors who have any power at all in Hell. Blood-On-Hell is trying to recover power, and they seem to be cleaving hard toward Koyabez, and an end to the Quiet War. This Avandrasolaro-thing is to try and tie both her and you to the interests of Hell as deeply as they can.” Poi said, “They’re making big moves to make this work.”
Erick had mixed feelings about all that. “Going from Forever Warmongers to Peace, eh?”
“We think they’re trying to survive.”
“That’s usually what it takes to change people; sure.”