“Overall, I like the shape of Veird,” Erick said, in ten million different ways, from the shape of the land itself to the people to the friends he had made, and also to the idea of a God Pact, and even Forgotten Campaigns, within reason. “I would like to keep that sort of thing happening, going forward.”
Rozeta spoke in ten thousand ways, “Without the whole memetic, unseen dangers of Nothanganathor, I assume.”
“Yes,” Erick said, regarding both Nothanganathor’s threat, and to a lesser extent, all of the other memetic hazards he had witnessed over the years. Putrescent slugs, mind control of all sorts, and even emotional control. “Though some of those things can be used for good, I would like to have it so the average person does not worry of mind control, or of being trapped in any sort of mental trap.”
Melemizargo countered, “Magic is the purest expression of freedom. We should not begrudge the mortals their choices. If we remove those powers, then we cannot use them, either. And if we don’t codify them, then they’ll simply come in from the outside and wreck what is built using outside strength.”
Erick said, disbelieving, “So the standard solution of Paladins really is the best?” And then, in a million ways, he considered the Dark Mark, and how a person made more mana if they knew more magic, and if they helped others to learn more magic, too. “I’ll just hand out Benevolence Marks, too, and hope for the best. They’re almost exactly the same as Dark Marks, but they’ll be more limited, as I am not going to be an all-powerful god at all. That should help curb excesses of the worst sorts of magics.”
Rozeta spoke, “In attempting to control how mortals act, you become the controller yourselves, and that threatens yourself with usurping. That is the true nature of the need for neutral magic. Give to all, and let them work out what they want for themselves.”
“A fair point,” Erick said.
The conversation of the gods rotated around that point for a modicum of years, and then came back around to a higher order of examination.
Phagar said, “I would like gods to be less powerful, individually.”
Erick spoke of his memories of being Xoat and watching gods and world-sized monsters duking it out in the mana ocean, destroying parts of the universe with their bodies, racking up collateral damage, as he said, “I also appreciate gods being smaller in this Godpact. So how about we establish that you can only have Avatars or Champions or similar powers, going forward, except in the case of averting major disasters?”
Melemizargo brought up Erick’s own fight with Nothanganathor, saying, “That does nothing to stop the excesses of mortals.”
“Mortals will learn as mortals,” Phagar said.
Rozeta nodded.
Erick agreed, as well.
Sumtir was war and righteousness and ten million battlefields, and of all the assorted details of that image of him fighting in the Painted Cosmology that had stuck out so much in Nothanganathor’s mind; of worlds being destroyed by his presence of War. He said, “The incident you saw was me stepping in, directly, to avert a much larger disaster. I could instead ask you to deal with it, but it was a personal thing that got far out of control.”
There was no solving the bigger issues except for tackling them when they came.
Erick moved on, “Let us speak of the Personal Script now, and of crafting a more inclusive power structure for the Pantheon in that infinity, within the mortals whom we all love.”
Erick gazed around beyond the mantles of the assembled gods, and saw within them the wholeness that made them people. Most of them had come from the Painted Cosmology, or, like Dinnamoth, had been raised up here in the Fractal Cosmology, but they still had roots in the Painted Cosmology, in the Dark. But Dinnamoth was a demon, imbued with Elemental Vile, which was a thing unto itself, separated from the Dark and claimed as his own, as Elemental Demon.
Avandrasolaro was an angel of Elemental Exalted, but again, his power was claimed and personal, in Elemental Angel.
Atunir was actually a fae, with power far deeper and more her own than what the Dark had crowned her with. Erick imagined it was Elemental Creation, but ‘Creation’ wasn’t an exact Element under the Dark. It still worked, though.
Atunir smiled as Erick Looked at her. She spoke with a hundred memories of past lives and different selves, “I am from the Painted Cosmology, but that Fae life of mine is far, far gone, and I never thought of myself as one of those anyway. Not in the classical sense, anyway. I have always been myself, sort of like you.”
Erick glanced around and saw Phagar was the same sort of ‘fae’. His Element was more Destruction, though that didn’t really exist as a proper Element, either.
Phagar said, “I started off as a Destruction Wizard wanting to destroy Death.”
Erick asked, “Did you all embody the trinity of Creation, Destruction, Paradox, or did you invent that?”
They looked to Melemizargo.
“Embodiments, one and all,” Melemizargo said. “Xoat was all three and he became the many, which became others. Shadow began as almost entirely Paradox, if you’re wondering, but in a much different way than Time Wizards are. Will we be staying with the trinity, or adding in a Benevolence?”
“Sticking with the same, I should wager,” Erick said, giving a thousand smaller answers to a thousand smaller questions that rushed through like a thousand underlying conversations all at once. “Xoat really wants to return to it, eh?”
Melemizargo said, “The Dark is the Beginning and End of All Things for a lot of the Truest Immortals. Most of the time they simply vanish into the Dark, never to be seen again. Xoat… I will not speak for Xoat’s motivations. I suggest we continue this conversation of Pantheon matters until satisfaction is reached on the major points of the new structure of the Painted Cosmology, and then go to him for final thoughts.” He looked at Erick from many directions, asking, “And then, I assume, that Xoat will have no input upon anything we do, but he will remain in the background? You will be more than a person who sometimes steps up into the role of the Prime God? The rest of us are left to our normal devices? Normal Pantheon functions, as they existed during your first [Onward] time, perhaps from 1445, to maybe 1447, as a rough estimate?”
There were a lot of small words there, and clarifications, and conversations.
But Koyabez summed it up well as he smiled beatifically, saying, “Those were good, peaceful years.”
The whole Pantheon had further things to say about the Pantheon structure, with concerns of Melemizargo being ‘first among equals’ and then ‘that title needs to belong to Erick, obviously’ followed by ‘Erick is the Prime, Melemizargo can be First among Equals’.
“Sure,” Erick said, in many different ways, and then he continued, “As for the Personal Script, I believe we should put one or two starter spells into the Personal Script, based on whatever inclinations the user has. I imagine Melemizargo would be of the opinion that even categorizing someone’s spellwork into a button in their soul is too much. In some ways, I agree with that.” Erick explained about some of the worlds he had changed through necessity, and through Benevolence. The Personal Script was good as it was, but starter help of various kinds proved to be necessary more often than not. And yet, oftentimes, simply making someone aware and able to control their mana was good enough for a start. With those thoughts filling the divine space all around, Erick said, “I would like the input of everyone here.”
Rozeta said, “I believe we are starting off too far into that conversation. We should discuss implementation first. Who gets it, and who does not, because even with the Script it was an opt-in sort of thing, but the only ones who didn’t opt-in were those who…” the disbelievers, the wary, the scared, the worried about being twisted, the scared of Melemizargo and the Dark forsaking them, the ones under the heels of the powerful, the ones who never got a chance, the ones who heard stories of people messing up their souls and their power and never recovering. “… and then there’s the whole ‘gods stepping on the toes of other gods’ aspect.”
It got complicated fast.
Erick discussed every point in detail, along a thousand different theoretical lifetimes, from a pauper to a king to the average person who experiences danger in their life and wants out, to the person who just wants to be able to work the world with tools larger than the physical tools given to them.
Melemizargo started tackling every life individually, and so did all the other gods.
The conversation lasted an eternity and also for no time at all, and in the end nothing was decided except that everyone would go their own way, personally handing out Personal Scripts as they desired.
Erick expected them to come to some conclusions of their own in the next few millennia.
At the end of it, Erick said, “Before we move on to Xoat: My Unwelcoming has already rid this part of the universe of Malevolence, but we are still in the middle of a war due to the removal of the Valkyries. Does anyone have any suggestions? I can always put the Valkyries back, but they are an extension of me, and thus they take the dragon’s share of the worship generated in an area when they’re working.”
The gods of Veird spoke a little about divinity and the parceling of portfolios, but not too much. Things would stay more or less as they were.
In the Fractal Cosmology, gods were what their people thought they were, but for gods with Mantles, they were what they desired to be, and then they also got lumped in with whatever people thought of them. Sininindi was of the oceans and the storm, but people had recently come to believe she was a breaker of adamantium, thanks to what she had done against the undead forces of Quintlan, years ago in the middle of the Nothor Beast crisis.
Thanks to the crisis of multiversal life painted onto the surfaces of Fenrir, every god here was experiencing a twisting of portfolio. They were all still who they were, but they were also changing, and fast, hence all the infighting in that crisis.
As for Erick, he had been mutated a little bit, too. He was no longer just a black dragon, which was fine. Mostly, he was who he wanted to be, and the Valkyries wanted him to be strong, yet kind, and Erick was wholly on board with that.
“And yet, it is still enough of a change to cause a great confusion upon us all,” Rozeta said.
Melemeizargo stated, “I had a plan to fix all of that. It began with the Valkyries, though they were a new addition. It’s actually an exceedingly old plan, which started all the way with the shadelings. With some adjustments, I can still make it work.”
Erick said, “I would hear this full plan.”
A crash of power.
A seeping of Dark.
Xoat stepped into the conversation.
“Nope,” Xoat said, “I want to return to the Dark. I want to live again.”
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And just like that, Erick fell back down to being a person, at a fae party, among a forest full of colorful lights and deep shadows behind those lights. Mushrooms served as stools to sit upon around feasts piled high with every delicacy known to life. Some of the distant delicacies would have been considered wrong for many different cultures, but they were fae food, and not quite real. The nearer stuff was all normal fare, and all of it looked fit for a going away party for a god.
Erick was among all the other gods who had fallen back down to themselves, here at this party. They stood apart from everyone else, at a large open space in the middle of the festivities.
The party was entering its final moments, in a land that was larger than it appeared to be, where the shadows were Darkness and nothing existed beyond this space at all except for the incessant Dark.
Fairy Moon stood at the edge of the open space, looking resplendent in the absolutely most ornate dress that Erick had ever seen, with every inch decked out in spiraling flowers and vines made of lace. Her dress and body sparkled with white, while her green and pink eyes sparkled with tears at the torture of letting go of Xoat, yet again. The party had been going for a year and a day, but it was time for father to let go of son, once again.
Gregarious stood by his king’s side, looking beautiful in decorative silver armor that was more like a suit than real armor. He smiled softly, distantly. It was time for mother to let go of son, too.
Shadow stood nearby, looking demure in darkness and shadows. She had some deep emotions, but she was trying not to experience those emotions too much. She did smile at seeing Erick, though.
Gnowmi was over to the side, tiny and glittering in gold and jewels and all of half a meter tall, standing next to Ezekiel, whom Erick was surprised to see was a bruiser of a man. He wore a matching wedding ring with Gnowmi. A lot had happened there, for sure.
Cascadio, the god that Erick had put on the sun, was in attendance. He had provided much of the food, it seemed. To look at him from this angle made the god seem more of a vending machine than a real person. He certainly didn’t look that way, and in fact he looked big and brown and jolly, as usual. But that was just the front, and Erick could see from multiple directions at once, and behind the face there were ten million different interpretations of the god all inhabiting the same divine space. He was what his people made of him.
To a certain extent, even the gods with Mantles were the same, but there was a very present and definable core to every god of Veird’s Pantheon.
And then there was Xoat.
He looked like a young, androgynous man, wearing diaphanous black.
As though he was at the end of a conversation held outside of Erick’s sight, Xoat said, “So yeah. Aside from some last minute housekeeping, I’m ready to live again as a normal person. First thing: I like Cascadio. He knows how to party. Give him the Mantle of the Sun.”
Erick smiled as Xoat was already on his own wavelength. Erick happily approached Cascadio, the big not-man looking at Erick with ten million different eyes and then sensing that Erick would be asking a much bigger question than he knew how to deal with. Erick likened his approach to Cascadio as a person approaching an animal.
Erick said, “Long ago, you ascended to godhood and lost your sense of self. I would like to give you your sense of self back. Will you accept?”
Cascadio engaged his inner systems and the systems ground to a halt, as he said, “I don’t broker deals like that.”
Erick Looked deep inside Cascadio, past the fractal mess, past countless ages, millions of years falling away before an eye could blink. There, at the center of the man, was the idea of a star that had been embodied many, many times, over and over, because his world had worshiped that star as their sun for a long time. They even had a ritual to crown the sun onto a man, in order to bring about a Bountiful Era.
One man so adorned finally accomplished the task, becoming emperor in his life and then enshrined as the God Of Bountiful Radiance, the Evergiving Sun. This, then, was the Truth of Cascadio’s beginnings.
His soul was stretched far further than any soul should ever be stretched, with almost everything that wasn’t him becoming the new him, like pouring resons into an already-filled person. Erick had almost done that to himself, once upon a time. His resons had fallen out of him like golden amber.
Cascadio’s resons had become him.
Erick called to that soul, at the center of it all, “Do you want to become a person again?”
… yes ...
The answer was quiet, not even really there at all, and then came a cacophony of questions from all the rest of Cascadio, from all his other reson-filled self. Cascadio was a god to trillions, and he did not want to lose that. He wanted to help people. He wanted to party forever, bringing bounty to all.
Erick couldn’t, and wouldn’t, shove a Mantle onto him. What he could do, though, was what he did.
Erick grasped the sunlight in the sky and wove it into threads along with the Mantle of the Sun taken from his own, where all the other nascent Mantles lay, creating a half-cape that was more than a little bare. He held out the threadbare Mantle to the entirety of Cascadio, but mostly to his inner self, saying, “You’ll have to fill in those holes on your own.”
Fractal Cascadio retreated.
Inner Cascadio reached out…
And then both of them paused.
And then they took the Mantle and put it on their own shoulders. It settled down, and it didn’t settle at all. It became one with Cascadio… And not at all. But it was there. Nothing grand happened, but Erick could already feel Inner Cascadio waking up. The man who had become a god was once again becoming a man, and it would not happen in any short amount of time.
Xoat saw it all and said, “That’ll take a while. Too long for me to see the result. Now for some Other last measures.” He turned and looked upon the dragon in their midst. “Melemizargo. You are not forgiven for the hatred you sowed within Nothanganathor. Don’t do that. This is your second chance. You don’t get a third chance.” In an offhanded way, he added, “Unless Erick wishes to give you a third chance. I certainly didn’t foresee Nothanganathor using my power to start all this mess. Maybe a part of me wanted to come back so I could say hello to everyone, but I really doubt that. I much prefer a smaller sort of life than this one. Nothing seems real, here.”
Fairy Moon spoke through her tears, “You don’t have to leave so soon.”
Gregarious gently took Fairy Moon’s hand, saying nothing and just enough at the same time.
Fairy Moon squeezed Gregarious’s hand like it was a lifeline.
Shadow sighed a little.
Xoat smiled, and said, “I want to return to life, Father. This… This is but a dream. I want to leave before the dream becomes a nightmare.”
Fairy Moon gave a tiny, tight nod, as she had no doubt done many times already.
They had said all the words they needed to say, long before today.
Xoat said to Erick, “You’re the reason that this is turning out so well for everyone. So don’t forget that. I think the hatred between Melemizargo and Nothanganathor really got to my greater self in a way that I never expected. Wizard Wars tend to do that, and that one grew way too large. I think, if Nothanganathor would have won, then I would have chosen anger and rage, instead of loving understanding. Who knows how long I would have raged, with no one able to hand off my life to. Whatever universe he created would have been destroyed in a thousand years by people coming to kill me and return me to the Dark… But he was a good emperor, so maybe not. He probably had plans for everything. He certainly would have been putting down rebellions all the time, though, and some Wizard would have eventually overthrown him after we got fed up with his shit.
“Forgiveness is easier on the soul, and the future.”
Erick said nothing. This was the time for him to listen, and that is what he did.
Xoat said to everyone, “Erick here is the reason that the Primal Lightning you saw was White instead of Red. Everyone who saw the White had a chance to live, on Veird. Everyone who saw the Red perished, drawn into Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power.”
Some people’s eyes whipped around to Erick, to Rozeta, then to Melemizargo and back to Erick. Rozeta simply breathed in, as a piece of Knowledge she had not had, firmly set into space. There were gasps.
Rozeta looked up, at no one and everyone, as she confirmed for herself, “Everyone saw the White Lightning. It did not kill the Painted Cosmology. It led people to Veird, as the epicenter of the Sundering storm. But the actual center of that lightning was Erick. As Xoat.”
Everyone looked to Erick with new reverence.
Erick felt the Mantle around his shoulders grow heavier with purpose.
Ah.
Erick’s primacy had been questionable before, hadn’t it?
Now he felt what true power was.
Xoat said, “Erick. A final gift to you, to do with what you will. I suspect Melemizargo has plans for this, since he knows what lies inside, but you need to retain the actual item.”
Xoat, wrapped in Black and the Darkest thing in this space, held out a hand and curled it over. Like a coin trick, he revealed Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power, all colorless sharp edges, endlessly collapsing and expanding with Infinity. Both Erick and Xoat had been trapped in it for several thousand years, but only 1400-ish of that were truly lucid for Erick, and even that was a stretch. Looking back on that time spent in there, trapped as he had been, it all felt like an [Onward].
Xoat handed the Sign of Power to Erick, who took it.
Erick did a coin trick of his own to bring it into himself. Instantly, he knew another whole reality.
He would get to that later.
Xoat intoned, “My Carving Knife. Our Erick Flatt.”
The world washed away a little bit at that utterance. Many fae vanished. Some gods did, too. No one died, but everyone who needed to evacuate, evacuated.
“I want you to know what you are doing, so you do what I need you to do.
“Look upon me, and know that I am too much. You have seen the one you call the Fractal Fairy, and you know their strength. I am holding back a lot right now. I don’t want to hold back at all. I like people. I love life. But I am too strong to be around the people I love, to experience the lives full of people I will love. So I parcel myself out so that I don’t break the world.
“I don’t want that power.
“No one should have that much power.
“And so, as you carve, know that you are creating something that can experience life as a real person, once again. This is what I want. This is who I want to be. A Wizard in a tower, playing with magic. A baker with a side-gig as a farmer. A shipwright. A slave. A master. A killer, and the killed. All parts of me separated fully, expanded out to forever, to join with My Darkness and carve out life from my life well lived.
“That is what you are doing.
“This is not a death.
“Not for me.
“You should cherish life, for it is the best thing out there.”
Xoat stopped speaking and there was a simple knife sticking out of his chest, that was not simple at all, for Erick held the hilt and the knife glowed gold and black and white and rainbow.
Reality flowed out of Xoat’s wound, into the world, channeled along Erick’s axis of Benevolence.
In an offhanded sort of way, Erick noticed that the other people in the party were evacuating, as the very land itself turned to black rainbows, as power flowed out from where Erick held the knife. In another offhanded sort of way, Erick felt Xoat’s soft hands upon his forearm, gripping the knife in his chest. His touch was gentle, and so was the flood, at first.
And then he gripped Erick and a universe flood poured out of him, from the wound in the front, and in his back.
The world washed away in Black rainbows.
And then it was just Erick, floating in the Dark, with Xoat coming apart in an aurora of light that became Everything. The Dark grabbed at the Light, and pulled it into More. It drank the Light, it drank up everything that was Xoat, and worlds appeared through the twists of Dark, in the cracks between tendrils and claws and hands and everything else.
And then Fairy Moon was there, floating beside Erick, holding Erick’s free hand, her other hand on his shoulder, as she watched her son come apart in the Dark.
Shadow appeared next, a hand on Erick’s other shoulder.
Gregarious touched Erick’s outstretched arm where his hand still gripped the dagger in Prince Xoat’s heart.
The other fae appeared, as though stepping out from behind Erick, to take part in the sacrifice.
In the Creation.
Xoat smiled as he closed his eyes once again, his strong grip turning softer, holding Erick’s hand to the dagger in his chest.
A tidal wave of light and power rushed outward, streaming into the Dark.
A long, long time ago, Xoat and the Dark had been separate entities. And then Xoat got cast into the Dark by his Sister, upon Xoat’s own design, and he became One with Darkness. This body here? This temporary existence as the Prince, as Xoat? It was not the real him anymore. He had ascended and become something more when he joined the Darkness all those eons ago, and this here was just an embodiment, like pulling the mind out of a person.
The Dark called to Xoat, and Xoat rejoined himself in a flood, becoming the headwaters of a new mana ocean.
Xoat’s voice was a soft thing in the rush of power, “Consider your Mantle a test run for when you want to make your own universe, and know that sacrifice isn’t the only path. After you walk that path, wherever it might lead, send me some of yourself.”
Erick said, “Might be a long, long time.”
“As it should be.”