Erick stepped out of the Abyss onto white stone, next to Kromolok.
His first inclination was to look behind them, because they had gone through a [Gate] and ended up in front of a standing armed building, filled with people. Erick rapidly decided the building and the people therein were not a threat.
It was an entire research city up here filled with wrought of various kinds. Most of them were obviously either researchers or guards, and there weren’t a whole lot of them, but they did exist; this place was constantly guarded by living forces. Those living forces glanced at Erick and Kromolok, briefly going on high alert, but then rapidly deescalating. No problems here! Just the Wizard visiting the Vault with the Head Inquisitor.
They had been warned ahead of time, for instead of mumbling to each other about the pure oddities of what was happening right now, they were quick to resume their normal guard duties, which chiefly seemed to be viewing their targets from far away or standing at attention, or walking their patrols this way or that.
What they guarded lay ahead.
Erick and Kromolok stood on a cliff, overlooking the Vaults.
The worker city had all the aspects of a real barracks city, with some nice trees and people on the streets walking from there to there. The Vaults, proper, were not that at all. It was impressive in the mundanity of it all. Down below the cliff under Erick’s feet, for a hundred kilometers or some other stretch of space, cubic buildings of various sizes stood like gravesites. Most of the buildings were maybe a hundred meters cubed but some of them were much larger. All of them were separated by streets, all of it done in a grid, all of it either white or off-white stone. No windows. Only solid stone. Diffuse light coated everything, everywhere, allowing no shadows at all, while extra light was painted onto the big gold numbers that adorned every corner of every Vault, marking each cube from every direction.
Magic in this land was still crushed down to nothing, but Erick’s artifacts still functioned.
He saw some Red Sparks here and there in the Vault but none of the Sparks looked too egregious. Just random floaters here and there—
Scratch that.
There was one Vault down the way, maybe twenty kilometers in and ten to the right. That one was suspicious.
Erick pointed. “What is in that one?” He squinted, trying to read the number off of the Vault’s corners. “122-571.”
Kromolok eyed Erick. “… A double memetic threat, kept in stasis through the interactions of each other.”
“Ah.” Erick lied, “That must be what I am sensing.” He moved on. “Which one is the ship?”
Kromolok eyed Erick for a moment longer, then he moved on. He stepped to the side, toward a staircase, saying, “There are multiple ships, actually. All of them are kept in storage this way.”
- - - -
The first ship was a thing of sleek silver metal and metal splashes that looked nothing at all like a ‘stereotypical’ spaceship. The ‘ring ship’ was about sixty meters across and rested in a simple, hundred-meter cube of a room. Kromolok had peeled back a lot of the restrictions in the room, so Erick was fully able to mana sense and experience the ship with all of his senses.
And Erick felt his heart pump hard as he learned an uncountable number of things just by viewing the swirled-silver machine. It wasn’t a gate, but holy shit, it probably could do that if it wanted. And that was just the start.
“Oh my gods,” Erick said as he stepped forward. “This means people use magic outside of Veird.”
Kromolok softly said, “Yes. We’re not sure what kind of magic, though.”
Because of the lingering Red Sparks upon the machine, Erick knew what kind of magic was out there; the exact kind that the Red Sparks didn’t want anyone to learn. Revelation upon revelation dawned within Erick and he struggled to keep up with all of them, so he went through what he saw, and how it must work, in an orderly manner.
First, the shape of the spaceship. All the rest of Erick’s thoughts extended from that first oddness.
The base ‘ship’ was a silver ring around 1 meter thick and 60 meters wide. It rested above the ground due to large grips of what were clearly a part of the stone structure of the building, and not the ship itself. The silver ring of the ship was solid silver metal, with a whole bunch of ‘splash-like’ silver metal parts that looked like it was almost flowing, stretching up and down from the ring, like it was crawling over an invisible orb that would have existed in the center of the ‘ship’. It almost looked like an art project, but Kromolok said it was a spaceship, and Erick absolutely believed him, but mostly he believed the Red Sparks lingering on the runic structures inside the metal.
The Red Sparks did not want people understanding ways out of its power, and this was one way to get out from its power.
The runic structures inside the meter-thick base ring, located several centimeters underneath the silver metal, were too dense to be understood, but they were runic structures, for sure. Maybe it was better to say they were like several different crystalline structures all overlapping each other. There was no circuitry. There were no electrical parts. There was no need for that sort of mundane shit. But this stuff certainly was ‘circuitry’ of a magic sort. Mana flowed through the interior crystals, and even off-gassed from the structures, forming a haze in the air that the Red Sparks devoured.
That was produced mana.
It was not siphoned mana, or mana transformed from the environment. That was new mana being made by the ship. It was a living ship… Or at least it produced its own mana. Like a cultural artifact? Hmm. No. ‘Living ship’ seemed more correct.
Erick asked, “Why not let its mana production get subsumed by the Script?”
Rozeta stepped down into the room, saying, “Because then this mana would be distributed to all the rest of Veird, and we don’t do that. For what it is worth, it seems about as neutral a mana as I’ve ever seen, but we don’t allow anything strange into Veird’s manasystems, and especially not strange mana from living ships.” She added, “Also; Hello, Erick.”
Erick smiled. “Hello, Rozeta.” He gestured to the machine. “Is it operable?”
“Not that we’re aware. I’m not letting you play around with it overmuch either. We don’t know what it does, only how it used to work. It used to fly around quite well, but the original pilot died, and though she left instructions on how to pilot it and that woman’s friends used to be able to fly it back then, it is a living machine, and the living machine doesn’t like anyone else touching it. Everyone who tries, dies.”
“That’s fine. This is a lot of information anyway. I never expected to be able to take a ship with me. Do you have any idea how the crossed crystals work?”
Rozeta frowned a little bit, thinking if she wanted to say anything, then thinking about a lot more than that. She asked, “Will you tell me why you don’t want people to mind read you?”
“Would that I could, but that would be a bad idea.”
“You understand how worrying that is.”
Erick nodded. “I do understand that. All I can really tell you is that I am not doing anything major for a while, and I’m probably going to pull back from rescues from beyond the Black Gate, as well. Solomon will be taking over a lot of that. Since you’re here, though; I want to help him become a Wizard through the use of the Lifeblood Heart. There’s a good handful of things to discuss with you about all that, but at the start, there’s the idea of grabbing a Void Well from the Dark, or a Grand Cleanser to control the mana around the Heart, or asking you to maybe work out some sort of… Release valves across all of Veird, or something… Not quite sure how that would work, but the idea is to put the Heart in orbit around the Core, and lay down a track of Void for it to follow while also pressuring it from the outside to stay inside. There’s a lot to work with there.”
Rozeta raised an eyebrow at the mention of the Heart. “We have a plan and you have stumbled upon a few key aspects of that plan, but not their full nature, of which we would be keeping private, especially since you have been exposed to a disruptive meme.”
“Fair enough. I’m going to give birth to Ophiel and Yggdrasil before we try for the Heart, though. So maybe in a month or two for the Heart.”
“That’s a fine timetable. How about 45 days to prepare for it?”
“Sounds good!” Erick smiled, asking, “Now the runic structure of this ship? The crystalline overlapping parts, that look like several grains of crystal all overlapping, somehow. Is it some sort of—” Erick had been about to say ‘quantum overlapping, or whatever’, to start that whole conversation, but apparently that was too close to what would eventually make the Red Sparks vulnerable. The air filled with a few more sparks, all of them multiplying and spilling out from every edge of space. In his excitement, Erick had fallen off his own Benevolent Path for a moment, it seemed. So he backpedaled, “Some sort of physical overlap?”
Calling what those crystals were doing a ‘physical overlap’ was completely unhelpful.
The Red Sparks retreated.
And Rozeta said, “We’re not quite sure how it works, only that it doesn’t work anymore, and that the neutral, unknown mana coming off of it is rather boring. It’s still quite alive, but it’s hibernating. The silver metal is just silver, but with some organic compounds strewn throughout. The Silverthorn Oaks that grow down in Nergal in that reserve and in the Gardens of Ar’Kendrithyst and a few other Geodes are similar in structure to the silver metal of this ship. So whatever made it, grew it.”
Erick smiled a little, looking over the ship. “This is awesome, you know. There’s life out there— Well duh. I already knew that. But seeing their magitech is… It’s a lot. A lot of good things. Can I have some of the silver?”
Rozeta said, “The silver disintegrates when it is removed from the ship.”
“Ahh. That’s a no, then.” Erick looked over the ring ship once more, then said, “Mind if I touch it? Use some Particle Sense Class Ability to poke around a moment? I don’t have to actually touch it, though; just aura?”
Rozeta leveled a glare at Erick. “What did I just say, Erick. It kills anyone who tries to touch it. This is why I came down here. Don’t touch it.”
Erick surrendered. “Fine fine fine! Heard and understood. Onto the next one!”
Rozeta sighed in relief, then said, “Don’t touch any of the other ones, either. And now, I must depart. Farewell, Erick.”
“See you later.”
- - - -
The second ship was much more what Erick was expecting. It was something he would have found in any sci-fi television show made back on Earth, and though Erick didn’t watch a whole lot of that back then, it was impossible to be a living person in America and not develop a few preconceptions about what a spaceship should look like.
This particular ship was not whole. It had been struck with some sort of power in several locations, exploding metal and other parts away from the main structure, leaving great holes in the ship. It was a shame.
Other than the holes, it was a boxy rectangle with a bunch of viewing ports and wires in the walls and a plant growing room that was devoid of anything living and bed rooms and mechanical systems that Erick didn’t understand at all, except in the broadest of strokes. There were also things that were like the ring ship’s multi-crystals stuck here and there within the wired system of the ship, almost like lymph nodes in a body, but this ship was not alive at all; no mana exuded off of it at all. These crystals were clearly some sort of magical system and solid state computers of some sort, though… probably. The crystals here had some Red Sparks on them, but barely any at all. There was something to be discovered here, but not much.
Still though, it was very high-tech.
Erick floated in the air near the rear of the ship, looking at the massive engine exhaust ports, or whatever they were called. “Someone should be working on this. Trying to make this thing functional.” Erick looked down to Kromolok, who had chosen not to fly around as Erick investigated the ship. “Have you all tried to repair any of this stuff?”
“No. All ways off this planet were deemed too high of a risk versus reward, what with Melemizargo being Melemizargo.”
“Understandable,” Erick said, floating back to the ground. “Have you all had discussions about that decision in any recent years?”
“Nothing beyond a reaffirmation that we’re not ready to explore space, but if we manage to get 50 more years of peaceful, calm growth, we’ve agreed to revisit the issue in a large way.”
Erick thought about that as he looked at the ship. “… Any interesting metal here?”
“We have samples of the hull for testing, if you want them. Adamantium is still superior, but adamantium needs to be exposed to at least some level of mana every ten years to maintain structural integrity, or else the mana-made alloy ceases to be a cohesive object.”
Erick’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t know that!” His brain raced away with him, and he instantly asked, “That 10 year timeframe is solid? What about when exposed to the rays of the sun? Cosmic rays? Extreme Light, etcetera.”
“As long as the level of Extreme Light does not exceed the level of ambient other-mana by any more than 5 times over, then that timeframe of 10 years to degradation holds. At 6-times over 10 years becomes 10 months. It’s a rather precipitous drop in integrity.” Kromolok said, “Outside of the Edge of the Script or a contained mana production system or a bunch of other nuances, adamantium will disintegrate under the sun in a matter of months. Still pretty good, though. Plenty of time to fix it.”
“… Hmm.” Erick thought. He asked, “The levels of solar rays versus, say, the ambient mana produced by a good hundred slimes?”
“A self-sustaining population of slimes is fine, so you could have around 10 and be good. But as exposure to the sun’s Killing Rays is not a uniform thing, I wouldn’t try it with less than a thousand slimes.”
“… Yet another thing I did not know.” Erick glanced at the increase in Red Sparks in the air and decided to end that line of questioning there. “What’s the final ship look like?”
- - - -
It was a simple disk about ten meters wide, half a meter thick, and solid white. It was also another magic ship, filled with dense, quantum-entangled multi-directional crystals that were also filled with Red Sparks. It off-gassed mana just like the first ship did, but in a whole lot lower quantities. The first ring ship gave off what was effectively a thick air all the time. This thing only had a mirage near it, and that mirage faded in the [Cleanse] of the room.
All three ship rooms had a [Cleanse] spell active at all times, making sure the mana production of these ships did not affect anything else, or be allowed to build up. All the rooms had a similar system, actually.
“So aside from the vast amounts of xenological information in the other two ships, and maybe even in this one, this one is boring and it’s not even alive like the first one.” Erick asked, “Does it work at all?”
“It does not work.”
Erick asked, “Want to talk about the histories around each item?”
“Not really,” Kromolok said, honestly.
“I can’t really blame you for being distrustful right now, Kromolok, but come on man. I’m still me.” Erick said, “If I could let you in on what is happening, I very much would. But that would be detrimental to you and yours, and you would not be able to understand me anyway.”
“I can understand anti-memes just fine, Erick. I am the person who comes up with a great deal of the meme and antimeme countermeasures here on Veird. I feel like you are being dismissive of me and it is making it hard to trust you.” Kromolok said, “It makes me feel that you have encountered something and it has changed you.”
“Encountering world-changing information will do that to a person—”
The Red Sparks crowded.
And Erick sighed. They were near a rollback, and that was frustrating. He had probably been rollbacked every time he talked to Kromolok, hadn’t he? Because, of course, now that he was here, Erick recognized that since he was investigating an anti-meme, he should have come to Kromolok or Kromolok should have come to him long before now. It only made logical sense to talk to the man who was in charge of all the anti-meme and anti-antimeme countermeasures in the world, right? … Or maybe Ascendant Prime had something to do with all that, too.
Now why hadn’t Erick spoken to Ascendant Prime before now, either?
It was easy to make excuses after the fact; Poi was there, Ascendant Prime never showed himself most of the time, Kromolok was more Erick’s contact for this sort of world-affecting stuff, etcetera. But looking back on it, Erick should have been talking to Ascendant Prime, Kromolok, and even Phagar, really.
Erick had only been at this for, what, 2 days? Hard to tell with all the rollbacks. But as for the anti-meme itself, Erick should have been talking to those very qualified people before now… And yet, if he had, he would have fallen off this God Pact world, wouldn’t he?
So of course, the one that survived was the one who didn’t do all that.
Well shit.
The Red Sparks were playing at the edges of this God Pact world, making sure no one ever found out about it, and rolling back when people got closer to it. But maybe it was time to talk to the other gods about this sort of stuff. Erick was more immune now, wasn’t he? Maybe he could—
Red Sparks flashed.
- - - -
Kromolok stared at Erick, saying, “It makes me feel that you have encountered something and it has changed you.”
Erick sighed, and repeated what he had said earlier, “Encountering world-changing information will do that to a person.”
“Yes, but whatever information you encountered has changed you for the worse.”
Kromolok was staring at Erick, probably half a step away from truly taking [Mind Control] of the situation.
And that hurt.
Erick said, “I would accuse you of being too paranoid, Kromolok, but paranoia is a good thing sometimes. I’m rather paranoid right now, too. Mostly, I’m paranoid that you have touched my mind and been very careful, not realizing that you are dancing around something that will literally not let you know about it, and the second that you do, you are dead.”
Even after Erick said the words, he had no idea why he had been allowed to say them, for surely the Red would have rolled him back. He had basically implied the true existence of the anti-meme, and that was too much information—
Erick realized something bad.
They weren’t in the God Pact world anymore.
There should have been a rollback, but there had been no need for one because Erick had fallen off the knife-edge of chance and straight into death.
In that realization, the Script slipped away from him. The Script was gone. Erick felt it leave him like a soft sigh in a bedroom. Kromolok had no idea, but he would surely notice the loss soon, too. But Kromolok didn’t need to read Erick’s mind to know something was happening far away; he could see Erick’s face.
Primal Lightning was eating away at the edges of the world already.
Erick did not panic, even as Benevolence began to seep away from his body in fits and spurts, erupting from his skin and pushing back all other mana. Kromolok started to say something, his eyes going wide, tendrils of thought ripping out of his own body and plunging into Erick—
And then Kromolok knew.
His eyes went wide, and defeat closed in.
There was no need for the Red Sparks to rollback this world, because it was already winning.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
But Erick had hope. As white lightning flooded out of him like soft, sparking light, touching everything and harming nothing, the world transformed into green life and brilliant futures even in the face of The End. Perhaps all this life in this tiny section of a piece of the world would allow it more futures, in a Many-Worlds sort of way, allowing it some time to stave off the end. Erick wasn’t sure, but the world certainly wasn’t collapsing nearly as fast as it had when Erick had been talking to Sininindi.
It was still falling fast though. The Core of Veird was gone. How much could truly be left?
It had only been a single minute so far.
Erick had afforded Kromolok all the time he could, and this place was guarded against Time Magics of all sorts, for now, so he couldn’t give him more without triggering the alarms himself. When the [Ward]s failed under Primal Lightning, though...
“Kromolok.” Erick spoke, “What is the one thing I can take from the Vaults back to the God Pact world?”
Kromolok had a thousand things to say to Erick, but there was no time.
Most of his words did not need to be said, though, for Erick understood.
The sudden loss. The personal failure to guard against what he had spent his entire life guarding against. The unknown danger beyond the Edge of the Script all this time, and yet already here, on Veird. The depth of the problem. The fact that Primal Lightning still existed at all.
And then he moved on.
Kromolok stared at Erick, while the room of this final platform ship filled with greenery and white lightning. Moss and mushrooms sprouted around his white metal legs. He did not step above the growth; he accepted his fate even as vines twirled up his legs.
“I apologize for pushing you at all. You should do more to navigate that better; less poking, more softness.” His admonition finished, Rozeta’s Head Inquisitor said, “Nothing can be removed from the Vaults in a timely manner. Even the end of this world will not allow that to happen.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Erick said, the ground giving way under his natural mana generation, like a helicopter brushing grasses to the side and yet a lot more than that. A lot of weirdness was going on, so the floor literally transforming into grass was not too surprising. It was kinda odd to not have his skin breaking apart and his body destroying itself through his mana flow, either, but then, of course, the Script was probably holding him down back there on the God Pact world. Even under ‘no-Script’ dungeon spaces, the Script was still there, somehow. Erick wasn’t sure why he didn’t recognize the ease at which his body naturally exuded mana back when he was talking to Sininindi at that other Bad End, but he certainly recognized that fact now. As he floated there, above the spreading life, while Kromolok continued to accrue greenery, looking up at him beseechingly, Erick asked, “Please give me something, Kromolok—”
Explosions rocked the outside world, and Erick’s lightning greenery suddenly crumbled away the roof of this spaceship hangar. His mana pressure pushed away all falling stone, revealing the world outside.
The walls of the Vaults flickered prismatic, seeming like an entire stone sky lighting up as something struck the outside like a violent child tapping at the glass of an aquarium, scaring all the fish.
The [Ward]s were failing.
Hidden things in the Vaults were already escaping, going on sudden rampages, or twisting the world in ways it was not meant to be twisted, or fighting each other, or feasting. The Vault protection squads atop the cliff were trying to contain the sudden damage, sending people flying around out there, shooting spells at the escaped dangers to the world—
Kromolok spoke a deep secret, “The secret of the omni-directional crystals found in the ring ship is adjacent to the inward-growing mana crystals found in the Glittering Depths. They are like cousins. But they use different types of mana than what we have here on Veird. And yet, that mana exists here, too.” Kromolok Looked at Erick, and in that moment he trusted more than he had ever trusted before. “That form of mana was called ‘resons’ by the woman who crashed to Veird on that ring ship, in the Forest of Glaquin several centuries ago. She was what you might call a ‘space elf’, but her species was called ‘astraelif’. She lived among the orcols for years, proving herself completely different from the stories of elves of the Old Cosmology. She was even to be married to an orcol man and Aloethag was to transform her into an orcol in the accepting of her vows, but a confluence of events conspired against her like a thousand things happening wrong and the entire wedding party raged, murdering that space elf on the altar. In honor of that woman, Aloethag took her would-be-orcol form as her own; a form she still wears to this day.
“That ring ship killed itself after the death of its creator and has hated all life that ever tried to touch it, ever since then.
“I had no idea why that all happened as it did back then, and I blamed Fate as the most likely of causes for a plethora of reasonable reasons. But now I know the real culprit.
“I think you’re right about the Many Worlds, Erick; the protection it offers us. But you are taking too many risks. You shouldn’t poke at this anymore. You might not make it back to your world if you keep testing the Malevolence like this.”
The world roared.
Prismatic [Ward]s failed.
Red poked in from the distant walls of the Vault, like leviathans invading a nest, looking for things to devour.
And then those endless streams of Primal Lightning tore through those walls, crashing through every single [Ward] in the place—
And suddenly all the defensive, crushing, anti-magic powers of the Vaults failed.
Kromolok was covered in greenery, breathing deep in his final moments, holding in the panic, putting on a good show for Erick, but he was terrified.
Erick said, “I’ll make sure this never happens, Kromolok. I’m sorry.”
With a ragged sorrow, Kromolok said, “Get going, Erick.”
Erick pulsed with power, then he constrained and warped that power. A twist. A flicker. A Connection formed with the Proper Path. A spark turned to lightning.
An imploding pop.
And then Erick was gone.
- - - -
Erick stepped out of his [Gate], onto the white floors of the entryway to the Vault, to see Kromolok, Alfonin, and Abarnikon standing there, waiting for him. It was a welcome sight to see them alive and whole.
“Greetings, Alfonin, Abarnikon, and Kromolok,” Erick said, “Thanks for agreeing to let me see the ships. I understand it’ll only take an hour, though, so if you have anything else we could see or talk about how life might work outside of Veird, I’d love to do all that.”
Erick was emotionally wrung. It was hard to play off what had just happened, but they were in the God Pact world again, and thus that other, doomed timeline simply did not exist. Erick managed.
Alfonin smiled a little bit, saying, “We have a wonderful little presentation about all of that up at the White Palace, for later. I know you were wanting to see some true astrophysicists, and my son and I are rather decent at all that, so I hope we can finally talk about the Star Map you made for Rozeta and even the dyson sphere of a decade ago.”
Erick happily said, “I would love that.”
Alfonin and his son Abarnikon had a few smaller words that were much like the ones they had had before, with Abarnikon subtly suggesting that Kromolok let Erick take samples of the ship, and Erick easily agreeing with Kromolok’s stubborn sense of duty, placating the inquisitor in a comforting way.
There was talk about Erick asking for them to mentally ignore him, and how that was a breach of protocol, but Erick gave some similar words to what he had done earlier, and easily navigated that Red Spark-lined conversation.
The next hour proceeded more or less how it had before, but Rozeta did not show up this time because Erick did not press any advantage at all. Visiting the space ships the second time was kind of numbing, actually; like he was seeing some great hidden work of art for the second time, even though it should have been his first time seeing it.
Kromolok seemed kind of relieved that Erick wasn’t too impressed by anything. That fact certainly lowered his defcon level.
Of course, Kromolok was subtly reading Erick’s surface thoughts this whole time, staying far away from any real knowledge, and so he knew Erick was rather calm and yet worried about everything; a normal way to be, really. Maybe Kromolok was just reading emotions? [Sense Emotion] was a spell, after all. Emotions seemed fine to sense; there was no actual information there.
Soon enough, Erick had passed back through the Abyssal Vault door with Kromolok to stand in the hallway with the boring door at the end. As he walked past the golden line in the floor, Ophiel chirped on the perch, and then flew back to rest on Erick’s shoulder.
Kromolok, looking relaxed, said, “I must be honest, Erick. I expected that to be more weird. I expected something unknown to trigger inside the Vault; for you to express whatever hidden thing you have in your mind and to cause some sort of problem. I am always glad to be proven wrong in my paranoia.”
Erick grinned, saying, “It’s not paranoia if the bad guys truly are out to get you.”
Kromolok chuckled a little, smiling brightly. “To the White Palace, then? Central courtyard; I believe that is where the Stratagolds await.”
Erick opened a [Gate], and the two of them stepped through into a courtyard under the false suns of the Geode Stratagold, into the center of the White Palace. Erick had always liked this place. It was shaped like a starburst of crystals kilometers across, and surrounded by floating crystal platforms. Erick had been here long ago for a Bright Tea ceremony, under an ultraviolet light, where all the wrought danced and glowed together, to honor their sacred duty to the world, and to Rozeta. He had been to Bright Tea twice more since that first time. Nowadays he came here to talk with Alfonin about this or that, whenever the mood took him.
Erick already knew where to go, so he took a left and walked by some guards into a massive open meeting hall, with Kromolok at his side. At the far end of the space was a whole bunch of tables set up with charts and orreries of various sizes and metals. A bunch of wardlights held in the air, with the largest star chart being a copy of the one Erick had done in that ritual a while ago. That Star Map held to the side of the grand meeting hall, taking up a good twenty meters of floating space.
Abarnikon was at the paper charts, poking between them and an orrery on the table in front of him.
Alfonin was playing around with the Star Map. He noticed Erick first, his black metal face going from stoic to happy in a short moment. “Erick! That didn’t take nearly as long as I figured.”
Kromolok said, “Delivered as requested.” And then he said to Erick, “Good fortunes, Erick. Don’t go opening up Veird to cosmic expansion too soon, okay?”
Erick chuckled. “No promises.”
Kromolok eyed Erick for a moment, then said, “I hope that is a joke. See you later.” And then he spoke to a red incani wrought beside the door they had come in from. “[Gate] to my offices.”
The red woman bowed, softly saying, “At once, Head Inquisitor,” as she opened a [Gate] of red light, with the other end—
Erick instantly, reflexively, counterspelled the Script-given [Gate].
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then Erick shrugged, and said, “Sorry. I just had a really, really bad feeling… Uh. Here:” He opened a [Gate] to the beach area outside of the Yggdrasil at Stratagold. On the other side lay the wrought offices of Stratagold Transportation, set above and overlooking a wide, heavily busy avenue of transportation, where massive floating barges whipped through gates to travel to the Surface, and then continue on to the rest of the Gate Network at Candlepoint. The very few people in those transportation offices looked Erick’s way, but they said nothing; they wondered what they were seeing. “Again, sorry Kromolok. I have no idea why I did that—” A lie; he didn’t want the very good Mind Mages in Kromolok’s Inquisitor offices to catch anything at all from this side of the red [Gate]. “—And this spot is close, right?”
“… Sure, Erick.” Kromolok said, “I was actively protecting people from seeing your mind in my offices, though.”
“… Perhaps you were, but I’m not being overly paranoid here, Kromolok.”
“Fair enough.” Kromolok went through Erick’s [Gate], saying, “See you later.”
Kromolok greeted the people at the Stratagold Transportation office, all of the wrought ones bowing instantly while the fleshy people wondered what the fuck was happening. Some of the fleshy people suddenly realized and then they bowed too, and then even more as they saw who lay beyond the unexpected [Gate] in their offices.
Erick gave a little nod and shut the [Gate].
And then he went toward Alfonin and Abarnikon, saying, “Sorry about that. I’m a bit jumpy right now. So let’s talk about metals for use in space! And dyson swarms and colonizing planets and all that fun jazz, and where all those other planars might have come from.”
Alfonin raised an eyebrow at Erick, then he simply smiled and moved on. “Any planar stories you’d like to hear about in particular?”
A servant offered tea to Erick and he took a cup. Then the servant offered tea to Alfonin and Abarnikon as well, who also took some. They all three had a sip of their own; a little ritual of hospitality.
And then Erick said, “There was this one story I heard about long ago when I first landed on Veird where an elf fell to Veird and then orcols killed her for being an elf. What’s all that story about?”
The royal family of Stratagold were all shaped like orcols, so Erick suspected they might have a slightly more nuanced take on that particular planar. He was soon proven right.
“I think Abarnikon was more privy to that planar than I. I believe she called her race of people ‘astraelif’. ‘The Cosmic People’ in their language. I don’t believe she was an Old Cosmology elf at all, but her appearance tracked with our records of those extinct people.” Alfonin looked to his son, asking, “What was her story?”
Abarnikon began, “That story is one of the prime stories of elves and orcols, and shapes much of modern day orcol culture. It began with a woman named Ivalia Starstriker, a planar elf who fell to Veird centuries ago, in the year 838 or 839. She was lost in the Forest of Glaquin for an unknown amount of time and the registrar sent to find her could not find her. This is because she fell in her spaceship, and her ship, while damaged and healing, was able to guard her from all sorts of scanning magics used by mortals, and the divines were bickering at her arrival, so there was a lock on using divine magics to find her, as well. I believe you would have seen her ship down in the Vaults, Erick; it is the ring ship.”
Erick raised his eyebrows in half-surprise; he had heard about the ship’s origins last go-around, but Kromolok had given the impression of never wanting to talk about the specifics of any of the ships at all. Erick hadn’t expected to get this sort of sharing from Abarnikon, or Alfonin.
Erick smiled, saying, “That’s an interesting ship you got down there.”
“It is,” Abarnikon said, “Unfortunately, it is beyond broken. It was what Ivalia called a livingsilver ship and it died when she died, though its corpse still lives on, still producing that unknown mana that it produces. I doubt Kromolok is willing to talk about any of those ships, so your surprise is expected.”
Erick chuckled a little. “He’s pretty tight-lipped.”
Alfonin smiled at that, too.
Abarnikon continued, “We’ll get to her death later, but for the first several years of her life, she was hunted by orcols for the threat she represented through Aloethag’s various elven-sympathy proclivities…”
In the way that wrought did a lot of the time, Abarnikon spoke at length, and in depth, going over the 18 year-long history of Ivalia Starstriker and her livingsilver ship like a university professor asked to give a filibuster. Erick did not mind. No Red Sparks encroached upon Erick at all, and he was using Ophiel outside in the courtyard to check on the rest of the world through a bunch of [Gate]s. This was just a known-history story, finally getting told to Erick, though millions others probably knew the story long before now.
That story ended as Kromolok had already explained; with every orcol at the wedding Raging and tearing the bride-to-be to shreds of flesh and nothing more.
The commonly accepted reasoning varied, and Abarnikon went over many of them. In one version of the story the husband had been turned into an elf instead of the elf being turned into an orcol like had been agreed, and the wedding party killed them both because Aloethag was cheering for her new elven future. In another story the elf had done Blood Magic to the entire wedding party as part of a ritual, attempting to turn them all into elves. Another version had the elf just lay down some dormant blood magic in the wedding party that would have come to fruition generations further along, turning all orcols into elves, or something to that effect. And then there was Kromolok’s Fate-fuckery version of the tale, though that story was told in confidence, and not to be spread to others; world secrets and all that.
Eventually, the conversation moved on to Erick’s thoughts on elves (no thank you) and getting the ship out of the Vault for better inspections (“Probably never, Erick,” Alfonin said) and the uses of metals in space.
“It cannot be as simple as ‘adamantium is the best’,” Erick said, “The Script supports adamantium; it is not a naturally occurring alloy. And Ivalia’s ship is ‘livingsilver’; whatever that is.”
They were still standing around the tables, talking, drinking tea, and eating some small snacks, even several hours after starting in this very same place. They hadn’t gotten to any of the charts yet. They hadn’t gotten past a single story and a few tens of tangents. It was quite relaxing, actually, so Erick did not mind this at all. It was better than seeing Red Sparks everywhere.
Alfonin smirked, saying, “Adamantium is wonderful outside the Script, Erick. It soaks up mana of all kinds and even produces a minor Domain to keep that mana in. We used to have a large adamantium shell surrounding all of Veird to protect us from the Killing Sun in the beginning of the Script, but that only lasted weeks. No one wanted to be trapped inside anything at all, least of all Melemizargo, so we developed the current Edge of the Script.”
Erick’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
Abarnikon said, “Adamantium is not a perfect metal, for sure, but there is a reason that it is the royal metal. Many reasons.”
“… Could we make a giant adamantium shell the size of a mountain and throw it out there, filled with slimes, and it would survive?”
“Ah ha!” Alfonin smiled, gesturing to the table with the dyson swarm and other planetary schematics. “And now we can get to the math of it all.”
… Well. They had to get to the math eventually, didn’t they? Oh well. Erick understood the math of it all, but it was no fun, so he paid attention but not too much.
He did have to pay attention to all of the logistics, though.
Abarkinon said, “[Duplicate], when used on a sufficiently uniform building block, like a hexagonal rod a hundred kilometers long that we have in this design here, will be able to join to itself using standard metal-melding properties in a zero-atmosphere environment, allowing us to partition out an ever-expanding series of continent-sized plates. This would form half the basis of every part of the swarm, and would be runed against other runes being used upon it. We would need an interior runic system though, so we would have that secondary rune system inscribed and then sandwiched between the top and bottom plates. This secondary system would provide gravity and magnetic locking capabilities that would extend to the whole continent-plate, while the adamantium would guard the inner, vulnerable plate, from wear and tear and terrorism and malfeasance. Dirt, air, water, and a breathable atmosphere would be maintained by the middle plate, with enough redundancies and self-healing properties to make even the most paranoid of inquisitors be comfortable building upon one of these plates.”
Erick took in the theoretical work they had done, and said, “Wow. That’s impressive.”
“It’s actually not.” Abarnikon said, “This is basic stuff from the Old Cosmology, adopted and transformed to fit this New Cosmology. Much of this plan is over a thousand years old, and proven to work inside the mana ocean. Making it work inside the void of space, fully exposed to the killing sun, will be a miracle that we will have to make happen.”
Alfonin added, “This plan does nothing to consider the mana requirements in order to use [Duplicate] to make the adamantium and other materials in the first place. [Duplicate] doesn’t take much mana to make objects, but it does take some, and when you start using that magic on an industrial scale —and especially a continental scale— those numbers tend to add up.”
Abarnikon said, “Rozeta won’t give real numbers for security reasons, but we’ve been able to figure that Veird can make one fully-functional Glaquin-sized plate every 10 years.” He added, “That’s right now, of course. In 70 years, when we’re 20-ish years out from Yggdrasil sending off his first seed, we might be able to have a flattplate waiting in orbit for him, for his first world. That orbiting land can suckle off of Veird for several years, taking monsters and dungeons and people with it, and then float off to land on one of the other planets, growing strong. We’re imagining Yoril would be the first target world.”
A ‘Flattplate’! Ha!
A slow grin crept onto Erick’s face as he looked at all the plans. “This is… This is nice. I never even considered something like that. Tell me more!” He rapidly added, “We’re not calling it a ‘flattplate’, though.”
“How about a ‘flattearth’?” Abarnikon asked, completely straight-faced.
Alfonin smiled, though, giving away the game as he asked, “You don’t like the idea of a flattearth?”
“… My daughter has been talking to you about certain subjects that I wish never followed us here from Earth, hasn’t she?”
Alfonin laughed loudly, while Abarnikon cracked a smile—
Erick realized, “It was Sitnakov, wasn’t it!”
Alfonin smiled softly, saying, “Want to talk about how our children are mingling, Erick? Because I have heard that they are, and that you have finally found this out.”
“… I’m not ready for that conversation yet. As soon as Sitnakov approaches me about it, then we can talk. I am not opposed, but… I have 6 daughters now—” Erick winced. “… 4 daughters, and 1 son, and Yggdrasil and Ophiel too, of course.”
There was a brief look of oddity upon the royal faces in the room. They didn’t know about Debby; the Red had taken her from this world in all ways. Only through Melemizargo had Erick and the others been able to remember her at all. Perhaps they thought Erick was having some sort of minor mental break, but they moved on.
Alfonin nodded. “That’s fine with me. I’m not opposed to Sitnakov and Jane. Just putting that out there.”
Erick said, “So let’s talk more about plans for solar system colonization.”
And they did.
Erick eventually got out of there six days later, but he went back after a day of rest to continue the conversations. He was much more lucid that second time, and he had a lot more questions about metals in space, and he even paced himself this time, asking for a break after two days and then coming back for another three final days of more talking about space and math and logistics.
Alfonin and Abarnikon’s enthusiasm for the universe, and for the Star Map Erick had done, was infectious.
Erick had known his Star Map had made a splash, but this was the first time he saw the results of that splash among the ‘hobbyist astrophysicists’ of the world. This was the first time he was truly exposed to this whole subculture of the wrought, too.
It turned out that every planar who ever landed on Veird had tried to connect themselves to their place in the universe, but Erick’s attempt was the only connection that ever produced the effect they saw with his Star Map, when Fairy Moon, Rozeta, and Melemizargo were all present. Other people just did basic drawings or wardlights or sculptures of various kinds.
Ivalia Starstriker, of the astraelif ‘space elves’, had a galaxy shaped like a five-armed broken-up scattering of stars. It was not the Milky Way, but maybe it could have been? Probably not. Erick had always drawn the Milky Way like a whirlpool with spirals that made most of a full rotation, and sure, some of the other galaxy representations were like that, but the real maps, like the one taken from that boxy spaceship down in the Vaults, had a real star map that was very much not the Milky Way at all. That particular map was like five uneven and long islands, swirling around a center scattering of stars.
None of the maps resembled the ‘Renew Rune Shape’ of Veird’s galaxy.
- - - -
Erick woke up in the house under the floor of the slime dungeon.
He rolled over and hugged Quilatalap.
Quilatalap blinked open his eyes. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
Quilatalap smiled. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. Would have been back sooner but asking them to not read my mind made them all highly anxious, so they needed a week of talking to me to check me out that way.” Erick smiled, adding, “And I got to talk about space colonization, which was surprisingly fun.”
Erick had needed a week to get over the fact that the Script was interfering with his mana generation process, anyway. For some reason, even disconnecting from the Script through no-Script spaces caused him to crystallize instead of just softly exuding Benevolence like he had both times when the Primal Lightning came for him. And that was news.
Talking about theoretical, far-away futures was good for the nerves, and the Red Lightning didn’t seem to give a shit about that, or maybe planning for good futures caused even more futures to spill outward, pushing back the Red even more.
Who the fuck knew! Not Erick. He had guesses, and that was it.
Quilatalap kissed his forehead then got out of bed, saying, “You ready to give birth to Ophiel?”
Erick breathed deep as Ophiel squeaked on the headboard of their bed.
Ophiel asked, “I’ma real boy?”
“Soon, Ophiel, if you want that.” Erick sat up in bed and Ophiel flopped into his lap. Ophiel was a bunch of feathers and eyes, but his form had mostly settled into four wings and a scattering of eyes on both sides of a feathery head. Erick asked him, “Do you want to be a human boy? Or a feathery boy? We’re not sure exactly how you’re going to turn out—” Erick suddenly added, “And you don’t have to do this now. But… You’re only a few months away anyway.”
Ophiel said, “I get purpleberry pie when real, yeah!?”
Erick smiled. “Yes. You could actually taste it if you had a physical body. Do you want that?”
“I want real now!”
Erick took a deep breath. And then he happily said, “Okay! Then yes. Time to be born, Ophiel.”
Ophiel tweeted in joyful violins, saying, “Yay!”