Ophiel loved Earth. It was quaint.

Mostly, Ophiel loved Earth because he got to see where dad grew up. He got to see all the influences that turned him into who he was, from the lack of free housing to the lack of common help, to the over-reliance on commerce as the best way to make things better. That sort of economy had done a lot for Earth, but the place was a dump and the oceans were rising and precious few people were doing what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe that everyone saw coming. Precious few people could actually do anything about those problems at all.

Dad could, though.

The year was 2024, almost 5 years since Dad and Sis had left this place through a planar tunnel. That planar tunnel had happened because the Fractal wanted to speak to the Dark, and it sent Erick and Jane… or maybe Dad and Jane sent themselves. The manners of how universes talked to each other was via ‘particles’ of people, and personal agency was important in those talks, but had that ball rolled downhill because it chose to roll down that hill, or was the nature of the universe, of ‘gravity’, doing most of the work?

Whatever the case, the Fractal was speaking with the Dark lots these days in the ways of action and exchange, and that’s what the Fractal wanted. The Dark theoretically wanted that, too, but who really knew aside from Dad.

Whatever the case, the place where Dad and Jane had come from was falling apart, and Ophiel was here to do what he could for the place.

Ophiel was shaped like a normal human person of 22 years old. He was mostly in 1 body, but he had left a part of himself in the Benevolent Safehold he had planted in Antarctica in order to watch over that place. His wings were hidden behind some Elemental Fairy which had effectively dismissed them from this plane of reality. And so, wearing a teeshirt and jeans, and with dark eyes that glimmered rainbow if you saw them at the right angles which he didn’t feel like changing at all, Ophiel walked through the cities of the United States.

Mostly the midwest.

He hopped around, taking a little Step here and there to get around. Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Fargo, Oklahoma City. Wherever the Lightning flickered, Ophiel moved. He cured a man’s cancer, he shut off the gas in a house so it didn’t explode, he helped a woman with some groceries and a few smaller things here and there. It was nice to do that for people. It was a lot easier than the usual help he did, which was to rescue people from monsters, usually pulling them through [Gate]s into Benevolence Itself and then setting them back down elsewhere. The Lightning told him what he could do, if he wanted, but Dad didn’t expect Ophiel to do everything. Mostly, Benevolence was already working on its own to do things here and there.

Ophiel watched as an insurance agency experienced a ‘catastrophic’ failure in its new AI program that was designed to automatically deny claims, and now it was approving everyone. That was nice.

The lightning flickered a lot, and it never stopped, so eventually Ophiel decided to stop and take a break.

Chicago seemed nice enough so he stopped there for some food.

A pizza? Yes, a pizza.

Ophiel went into a pizzeria and got some deep dish stuff. It was pretty good! As he ate he watched the people walk by the windows, going this way or that, completely oblivious that their world was going to change forever. Ophiel was here to do that. He just wasn’t sure where to start.

Dad hadn’t been certain, either, and he wasn’t about to make decisions for worlds that were not beyond saving themselves.

Dad had told Ophiel, “I’ve got some good ideas but all of them are bad in certain ways, so before I do all of that, I want you to tell me how you would do it, and we can talk about it. The girls and Evan want nothing to do with the place and Yggdrasil is too busy on Fenrir, but you showed interest in Earth, so... How would you introduce Earth to the universe, Ophiel?”

Eating pizza in a little place in Chicago, Ophiel wasn’t quite sure how he would introduce Earth to mana and magic.

Ophiel could just make a scene somewhere. Show off his wings and his multiplicity. Get on the news. Make a few scenes everywhere, really… Except he had wings and they’d think he was some sort of Christian thing. Even if he turned into his Big Form and showed off all his eyes and stuff, they’d still think he was Christian. Probably even more so, really.

And then there was the House of Resons.

And… Yeah. Ophiel was probably going to contact them soon.

He saw their touch everywhere. In that climate change activism gathering over there. In that public broadcasting station over there, educating kids about morals through puppets. And in that big bank-thing over there, across the street.

It was not just a bank. It was some sort of market manipulation thing, or something. Ophiel noticed the big building because it was filled with all sorts of people who had all sorts of small magics, and Marks of Benevolence. That’s why Ophiel had decided to have lunch here at this pizza place; to study the marketplace a bit more.

Also, the owner of the place had a Mark of Benevolence and Darkness. That was kinda common since they went hand-in-hand most of these days, but the big dude making the pizzas had a Mark of the Fractal, too, which was very rare outside of Personal Scripts. And there were no Personal Scripts on Earth. Not yet. So this guy had been given a rare gift, and possibly because he saw what no one else could; he saw possibilities everywhere.

Which is probably why he opened a pizza shop across from a big market/bank/thing; a lot of people with suits ate here all the time.

Ophiel finished off his whole deep dish, large-sized pizza. A waitress had spotted him eating and eating, and was amazed, so she had told the head cook, who was also the owner and with three universal marks in him, that ‘someone was eating the entire big pizza!’. The head cook had stuck his head out of the kitchen to see a few times as Ophiel kept eating 1-pound slices of pizza.

A few waitresses clapped happily when Ophiel finished. Some of them said they thought he couldn’t do it, but then he went and did it!

The head cook smiled, saying, “You must be hungry, kid!” He set out some garlic knots in a to-go box, saying, “I packed this full just for you. Free! On the House.”

The guy had said ‘house’ like ‘House’, full of meaning. The only people to get the ‘joke’ were himself and maybe the cashier over there, who seemed to be the guy’s wife. She raised her head a little, and then marked down another tic on a private tally beside the register.

Ophiel happily took the box, asking, “On the House of Reasons?”

The head cook paused.

The cashier perked up a lot more, narrowing her eyes at Ophiel.

The head cook smiled wide. “I knew you seemed like a good guy! Yes! The House of Reasons! You’ve heard of them?”

The waitresses all scoffed and went back to doing normal waitress stuff, though one of them muttered something about ‘that cult’.

“I’ve heard of them from my father, but now I’m actually going to go find out about them myself.”

“They’re great! They helped me to start this business and I make all the best pizza in all of Chicago now. I should introduce you to some people...”

And so began a month-long order of events that started with Ophiel getting introduced to one person, and then another person, and then, with a few more words said here or there, Ophiel ended up at a big House of Reasons meeting on a Tuesday night. They were some of the nicest people Ophiel had ever met, offering him housing for the night when he told them he was currently homeless, offering him meals when they asked when he last ate and he said a day ago, and helping him meet other people when he told them he was looking to make big changes in his life, and in the world. From one local chapter to the next, Ophiel couch-surfed around with purpose, thanks to the kindness of strangers.

He helped wherever he went, too.

A little healing here, a little bit of money miraculously appearing over there, helping to look after a baby while a mom went and did an errand, and just talking to people, learning how Earth worked.

Eventually, Ophiel ended up on a plane flying to Hawaii.

He could have gone there himself and a lot faster than a month of getting around on Earth, but this was working well. Every single person that met him seemed to lay eyes on him and know something big was happening, and how he could help them and everyone else. But eventually they moved him up the chain of command. Ophiel hadn’t told anyone about his real intentions here on Earth yet, but… Soon.

He was pretty sure the higher ups knew something was up with him, anyway. Something big. Even if they didn’t know, then they knew in a Benevolence sort of way. At least some of them… Right?

This was the right way to do this, Ophiel reflected, as he watched the Hawaiian islands come into view beyond the windows of the plane. This gave everyone time to get ready.

- - - -

Butterfly Prognostication was rather simple.

If a dark butterfly should appear when Deborah was strolling in her garden, asking questions, then the answer to her question was something close to, if not actually, ‘no’, depending on the appearance and disposition of the butterfly that crossed her sight. If a light butterfly should appear, then the answer was something like a ‘yes’. Moths were an acceptable divining tool in a pinch, but who really knew with those guys.

But the Hawaiian islands didn’t have many true black or white butterflies, and so she had needed to get creative with her interpretations of the local flutterers many years ago. It was one of the reasons that she loved this place the most, actually.

The Asian Swallowtail held a special place in Deborah’s heart, and in her butterfly magic.

The Asian Swallowtail was mostly black and white, but sometimes the white was more yellow, and the female had blue and orange on the tail, while the male had very little blue and orange. They made excellent prognostication buddies, because even as much as a twist of the wing or a shaft of sunlight or shadow could turn them into a myriad of different answers.

And somehow, about 500 of them had molted from some unknown citrus field or somewhere, and they were fluttering all over her gardens, outside of her house.

Deborah had woken to the sight with a gasp, and then began making big, sweeping preparations for the war. Because the Asian Swallowtail was a sign of Grandpa. The Founder. It was the butterfly she had associated most closely with him, and there were so many of them. She had woken everyone she could wake. She had told people she trusted to keep eyes open. The House of Resons, inside the House of Reason, was on full alert.

That had been a month ago.

The mania had mostly died down and Deborah had lost a lot of political favor when nothing big happened right away.

Deborah was convinced something was happening, though. She just couldn’t see it.

Deborah sipped her coffee as she sat at her desk, watching the wall, filled with screens, each of them holding a live stream from a butterfly garden she had personally started in this or that part of the world. And she worried. Each garden needed to be maintained for the butterflies, but she had mostly hired out that sort of help, so each of these gardens was not a perfect weather vane of the world.

But it was easy to find young witches who were eager to learn their power, to learn what Deborah could teach them, and they needed some prognostication tools anyway, and so, Deborah piggybacked when she could. Even her main garden, here in Hawaii, was mostly maintained by younger witches. Deborah just put her touches onto it every weekend; trimming trees and bushes and weeding the flower fields. Deborah simply didn’t have the time to maintain the gardens like they should be maintained, even if she was only maintaining a tenth of the House of Reasons that she used to control.

Several more splits of faith had occurred when Grandfather left five years ago, and more splits might be happening sooner, rather than later, thanks to Deborah’s mania...

And yet Asian Swallowtails were still everywhere, on every live stream from all parts of the world, and if not them, then other black and white butterflies. Marbled Whites in England. African Caper Whites in South Africa. Ohgomadaras in Japan. Particularly white Methona Themistos in Brazil. Where did they all come from! Where did they hatch! Some of these life cycles were not this long, but the butterflies were still alive, a month later.

Some people in the House thought Deborah was doing some sort of stunt.

Some people were on even higher alert, though; like Deborah.

And right now, a very white Morpho Luna was hanging out near the camera in the Mexico garden, fluttering its wings. It looked rather rainbowish-white-black as it moved. Normal Morphos, or rather the ones that everyone thought of, were iridescent blue. This one was white and black and iridescent anyway.

It seemed rather cheeky.

Gail walked into Deborah’s office with a stack of reports, looking nonchalant about everything happening on the wall.

Deborah asked her, “Look at that one there? Doesn’t that Morpho Luna look like the cat that got the cream?”

Gail plopped the papers down, giving a glance toward the wall… She paused. She hummed. “Maybe it’s a bit… Aggressive?”

“But in a subtle sort of way?” Deborah asked.

“Maybe in a ‘this is happening’ sort of way.” Gail said, “That’s Marianne’s garden, isn’t it? She’s always been focused on that war of yours.”

Deborah stared at Gail, saying, “It’s a real thing. We were warned, Gail.”

With perfect diplomacy, Gail said, “I believe that the warning was real, but I also believe that the Founder was always going to win his war. That’s what my own vine reading has told me for the last month, ever since this whole mass maturation event started.”

Deborah paused. She looked at her old friend. “… You actually did a reading? Recently?”

Gail winced. It was obvious she had not wanted to tell Deborah that, but Deborah knew things sometimes.

Deborah grinned, and then huffed a laugh. “Your reading must have turned out just as bad as mine!”

Gail said, “The vine curled too much. It started growing in squares, though. Not sure what that meant. It’s still 3 days out from flowering, too, so… I didn’t want to tell you before the actual reading happened.”

Gail had been with the House of Reasons for 20 years, and though she wasn’t as fast with her magic as some people she truly knew how to make the best predictions on long-ranging questions, though her vine magic did take a long while to mature to a readable state.

Deborah said, “I’ve told you a hundred times Gail, your readings are exactly what they are meant to be; you just don’t understand enough to know the full extent of what you’re looking at.”

Gail sighed a little. “If the Founder would have told us more, then I would have been able to read the vines better. Anything I ask the vines about him always goes weird.”

From any other person, Deborah would have worried that those words were a prelude to yet another departure; another splitting of the House into smaller and smaller fractions. But Gail was just blowing concerns into the wind.

Deborah said, “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out when we need to.” She picked up the stack of papers Gail had brought in, shuffling through them, asking, “Anyone interesting?” She picked one out a random—

Her fingers sparked with static as she opened the folder, briefly seeming like the brightest thing in the room. And then the static was gone, and Deborah imagined she had imagined that.

Gail sucked in a breath, though, saying, “That one, that you picked out. Oh my gods.”

Deborah breathed shallowly as she looked down at the open folder, at the image of a young man, taken from a security camera, and then a few more images at local gatherings of the House of Reasons over the past few weeks. He looked rather cute, in a nephew sort of way. Like Deborah needed to give him some food and fatten him up. Black hair, dark eyes, but otherwise a rather plain, North-American-white sort of complexion…

And yet, the image of him smiling at the camera had caught Deborah’s gaze.

A flash of insight came and then went.

Deborah breathed out as she sat the picture down, and then briefly looked over the reports themselves. Mostly, it was personal recommendations from the Chicago branch. They had all seen the kid’s spark of goodness and they wanted it nurtured, even if they didn’t quite have the words to describe their reasonings. Such was the Touch of the Founder, as some people called it. The House of Reasons was a very large organization, but only a few people at the top knew what the rest of them all knew.

That magic was real.

That power could be had, in the service of good.

And that they needed to support each other, for whatever might come.

Deborah closed the portfolio on the kid, and then softly said, “I want to meet him, Gail. I need to meet this ‘Ophiel Flatt’ today… It has to be a fake name, right?”

“Absolutely. From what I heard it took some doing to get him the plane tickets. He has no paperwork or social security number or anything like that.”

Holy shit.

Deborah got up from her chair, saying, “He’s staying at the hotel, right?”

Gail paused. “… Maybe you should let him stay under observation for a day or three.”

“Nope!”

- - - -

Ophiel sipped a drink out of a coconut as he sat by a pool, by the ocean. Tall palms waved in the gentle breeze and the world smelled of sunscreen and salt. Life was good. Everyone here had magic, too, which was nice to see. It felt like home again, but in a lesser sort of way. The air was not thick with power, and yet power existed. All of the power here was Benevolence, too, which was just… really nice, really.

Ophiel smiled as he sat in the sun, in his black board shorts, drinking his drink and waiting.

He was also down at the Safehold in Antarctica, fixing up the place. More than a billion people had been ushered through there, onto other worlds and other lands. The backlog was massive and kinda hard to get at due to the breadth of time separating this day and age from all the other years in Earth’s history, but so far no other gods had interfered in the necessary time magics. So far, the reincarnation of every dead soul to ever die on Dad’s Earth from the last 75 years was going well.

When some of those souls from that long ago were told about their options, only about half of them chose to live again, elsewhere. The further back the magic went, the less likely people were to accept reincarnations and the harder it was to place people in new lives. Fenrir was taking a lot of them, though.

This wasn’t the first world that Ophiel had reincarnated, and it would not be the last, but by the pure nature of the situation, this sort of situation didn’t happen too often. After all, how does one discover a world that doesn’t already have a fractal god on it? Not very often. Going through any normal channels at all, to find an unclaimed world, would be going through those channels, and all known worlds were claimed.

That’s what made them ‘known worlds’.

Perhaps Earth was claimed, too, but Ophiel had yet to see any signs of someone disallowing the grand reincarnations at Antarctica. Eh! Ophiel put that problem out of his mind.

He focused on the present, because Deborah was coming out of the hotel, wearing a veiled swimsuit and a big hat, looking like a normal sort of person simply coming out to the pool by the ocean.

She got a coconut drink of her own and sat down two lounge chairs away from Ophiel.

“Ah! This is the life!” Deborah said, smiling, starting up a conversation with Ophiel, a ‘complete stranger’. A lot of people in the House of Reasons did that. They made attempts to make people feel more welcome, and to foster a sense of community.

Ophiel smiled back, saying, “It’s pretty great. I’m Ophiel. Nice to meet you.”

Deborah grinned. “Deborah. What brings you out here, Ophiel? You look a little young to be vacationing alone.”

“I’m here for this House of Reasons thing. They put me on a plane and shipped me out here, said I should meet some people and they’d help me figure out my life.”

Deborah grinned. “Those people are great! They own this hotel. Let anyone come in and hang out as long as they attend some seminars first. That’s why I’m here.”

“I already went through one of those. Most everyone on the plane did, but you weren’t on the plane? Are you a local?”

“Not originally, but I’ve been here for 15 years and I love the place. I am in the House of Reasons, though, and I’ll be doing intake this year,” Deborah said, dropping the casual act a little. “Right now I’m just meeting people where they are.”

Ophiel chuckled. “That’s a good way to do it; meet people where they are. It’s usually less disruptive that way.”

Deborah blinked a little, and then she smiled softly. “Where are you from, Ophiel? That’s a pretty nifty name you got there.”

“Dad gave it to me on a world far from this one, called Veird, where he and his daughter fell to about 30 years ago, but also just 5 years ago. Time is wonky at vast distances, and when Layers and gods are involved.”

Deborah’s heart beat erratically as her eyes went wide.

Ophiel smiled softly, saying, “He won his war, Deborah. It’s solved, fixed, forevermore, and he sent me back here to decide how to bring Earth into the greater universe. Want to talk about that? Or do you want to hang out at the pool for a while?”

Deborah’s eyes dilated as she breathed deep. Her chin wobbled with emotion as her throat clenched. She wasn’t convinced, though. She quietly asked, “Do you have proof?”

Without showing anything at all, Ophiel looked at the empty, blue sky, and said, “It looks like rain.”

Deborah’s heart skipped a beat as the empty sky flickered with new clouds, rumbling with distant thunder. The clouds rolled in, and the rain began. The rain did not touch them at the poolside, though. Rain cascaded around a [Weather Ward] that Ophiel had put up.

The rest of the world vanished behind the sudden rainstorm, but it was a soft sort of rainstorm. Gentle, and yet obscuring. The perfect thing to use to hide a small meeting, and yet, if people were really looking, this meeting wouldn’t be hidden at all.

Deborah stared at the sky, at the rain.

Ophiel sipped his drink, letting her have a moment.

Deborah looked to him. “You really are… connected to him?”

Ophiel sat up properly to face Deborah as he let his wings out, all large and black and rainbow, saying, “Yes. I’m—”

Deborah jolted out of her seat to stand on the pool deck, exclaiming, “What the fucking fuck?! He said he wasn’t god!”

“… Er.” Ophiel put his wings away. He stood up, too…

And he wasn’t sure where to begin.

Deborah demanded, “Was he a god, or not?”

“Okay! That’s a good starting point. He was not a god. He is now. He’s not the god of Christianity. But obviously there was some influence here and there and dad’s a god now, for sure. I’m his son, one of his paladins, and since you’re his adopted granddaughter...” Ophiel held out a welcoming hand, smiling, saying, “Nice to meet you, sibling Deborah. Or niece?”

Deborah looked at his hand for a moment.

Ophiel waited.

Deborah grinned, and then she chuckled. She shed a tear as she laughed, saying, “I’m the aunt. You can be my nephew.” And then she hugged him, saying, “Welcome to Earth, Nephew!”

Ophiel chuckled on Deborah’s shoulder, saying, “I’ll have to introduce you to all the others sometime. You’ve got, like… a lot of siblings. We’re all sort of connected to dad in various ways.”

Deborah held tight, asking, “He’s okay, then?”

Ophiel held her back, saying, “He’s good. Dad won his war. Earth is safe from the bad ending, but now we’re here and we have to make a good beginning. All secrets will not be secret anymore.”

Deborah pulled back, wiping away a sudden tear as the rain fell all around their little [Ward]ed area. She stood facing Ophiel, saying, “Let’s start with some names, then. Can you finally tell us his real name?”

Ophiel smiled, saying, “Dad’s name is Erick Flatt, though a lot of people call him a lot of things. Apparent King. Wizard of Benevolence. Dragon God of Many Colors. Light in the Dark. Benevolent Darkness. Savior of Veird and Father of Yggdrasil. God of the Bright Path. God of the New Path. Hand in the Sky. There’s a lot more and he’s racking up more names every single day. Every new world he visits and saves from disaster gives him a different name. I assume you have a few names for him here. He told me a lot about what he had done on Earth, but not everything.”

Deborah wiped away another tear, saying, “We call him the Founder, mostly. I called him Grandpa, though.”

Ophiel grinned. “I just called him ‘Dad’.”

Deborah laughed happily.

Ophiel asked, “Have you made many plans to integrate Earth into the wider universe?”

“Oh gods,” Deborah said, still laughing a little, and yet understanding more of the situation by the moment. She had clearly been expecting a day like this for years now, but it overwhelmed her a lot more than she had expected it to. She said, “We have some plans. None of them were deemed acceptable. We tried bringing in some governments across the world a few different times but we had to abort those plans when the prognostications pointed toward everything going wrong— and you do not want to ignore the prognostications. We found that out the hard way a few times.” She breathed deep, then said, “The main problem is that powerful people like to prey on the magic of the House of Resons in order to use it for themselves, and that was bad, so relations broke down. But twice now, some people broke from the House in order to work with those other nations, trying to change them from the inside, even as they used their power for their own efforts. The China House and the Russian House… We barely have contact with them anymore, and the American House is… It’s complicated. We talk to them the most, but… I am not the lead of the American House anymore.” Deborah paused. She asked, “Would you like a tour of the place? We can talk about some of that stuff… But I need to know, first...” She spoke seriously, “Will Grandpa be coming back?”

Ophiel said, “He’s pretty busy back home on Fenrir, and in the Painted Cosmology beyond.” He clarified, “Fenrir is a dyson sphere around a sun with a radius of about Earth-Distance, while the Painted Cosmology is another universe beyond that land. Him and the other gods and a bunch of fae are building all of that right now, using the mana made on Fenrir and the new universe itself to fund the expansion of that universe. That other universe is entirely self-sufficient, but more growth is better at this stage of the project. It’s a forever-project, though, so they’re taking constant breaks.”

Deborah blinked a few times. And then she said, “Oh yeah.” She picked up her coconut drink. “We should have this discussion inside.”

Ophiel conjured some grey robes onto his body, asking, “Is this the proper look?”

Deborah looked at Ophiel, and then she broke down in tears, sobbing about how this was really real, and how she had felt so lost, and then Ophiel hugged her again. She hugged back, but only briefly, then she patted him on the shoulders and chuckled as she stepped back.

She looked embarrassed as she said, “Maybe something a little less ominous.”

Ophiel opted for a normal Hawaiian shirt, but in greyscale and black and white.

“Better,” Deborah said. “Now let’s go blow some minds. You can turn off the rain, though.”

Ophiel smiled and flicked some power at the sky, unraveling the working he had put into the heavens. The rain soon stopped, and Ophiel walked beside Deborah into the House of Reasons Hotel…

Ophiel spotted the coconut drink maker kneeling on the ground, a rosary in his hand as he mumbled prayers to the divine. He looked up at Ophiel and then purposefully averted his gaze from Ophiel.

… Ophiel did not wince —much to his own surprise!— and let the prayer happen without interruption.

As he walked into the house, he told Deborah, “I’m not an angel, the angels I know are nothing like what popular media shows here, and I know my black wings probably means something to you due to your butterfly magics… I’m not sure how to handle that, exactly.”

Deborah laughed as she wiped away another tear, saying, “It’s a whole can of worms, isn’t it.” She smiled. “Birds are terrible for prognostication and I banished them from my concerns ages ago.”

Ophiel laughed at that.

Several people were standing around the hotel lobby as Ophiel and Deborah reached it. There were four maids and four people in various fancy clothes, from one woman wearing a suit to a Japanese guy wearing a semi-formal yukata. All of them were looking Ophiel’s way. The Japanese guy, and his two bodyguards, had just walked into the front door, while Ophiel and Deborah had walked in the back way, from the pool.

Deborah froze as she saw the Japanese guy.

And then Deborah pointedly ignored the Japanese guy, and gestured to the woman in a suit, “Ophiel, this is my right hand woman, Gail.” She raised her voice, saying, “Everyone!” She glared at the Japanese guy. “—And Toshi—” She added, “Ophiel is the Founder’s son. The Founder is not coming back yet, but he will be back soon. Start rumors if you want. We’re not hiding this. The Reunification of the House will begin today, in the standard outline for such a reunification that I have outlined in the past.”

People gasped.

People stared at Ophiel.

Without moving, Toshi threw a [Benevolence Jolt] at Ophiel, who easily caught the magic and held it in his hands. He probably called it something besides [Benevolence Jolt], though. What would he have called it? White lightning? Eh!

It didn’t hurt.

The confusion of Ophiel’s arrival and Deborah’s declaration vanished in the light of that lightning. Everyone glared at Toshi, while his bodyguards backed him up.

And then Deborah yelled at the guy, “WHAT THE FUCK, TOSHI!”

“Kill the Buddha,” was Toshi’s only response.

Gail retorted, “That’s not even what that saying means.”

Ophiel flickered away the lightning in his hand like it was nothing more than static, saying, “You attribute way too much divinity to me, Toshi-chan.”

Toshi narrowed his eyes at the honorific ‘chan’.

Ophiel grinned.

And thus began 3 days of rather complicated political chaos that Ophiel mostly sailed through, playing his cards close to his chest, for now. When the initial chaos turned to solid desire for questions to be answered, that was when Ophiel told Deborah that he was ready to start giving out all the details, and answering all the questions.

“But I’ll need to give a presentation, first,” Ophiel said.

“Oh gods, Ophiel,” Deborah said, “I don’t think we’re ready for that yet.” She tried, “Next month?”

Ophiel grinned. “We’re ready now.”

- - - -

Several heads of the various Houses of Reason sat around a large U-shaped table in a conference room in Honolulu. All of them had extra people with them, and though Deborah had limited it to 2 extra people, some had as many as 5. The extras sat at the back of the room, practically stacked together. Some people stood outside of the room.

Ophiel had intended this to be a top-level dispensation of information, but it was what it was, and that was fine.

Toshi softly argued with a woman from the Russian House, named Kudrina, about how this was really happening. He did not like any part of this. Kudrina still didn’t believe this was happening at all, and that it was all some sort of ruse, but she was here anyway.

Other disbelievers had simply chosen not to come.

Deborah was one room over, beyond a thin door, softly yelling into her phone. And then she hung up. She walked back into the room, keeping her face serene. “It appears House China has chosen to simply not come, and their representatives here in the hotel are walking out.”

Kudrina stood up and spoke in a thick Russian accent, “We never should have come back, either.” She looked at Ophiel. “He is a charlatan. I do not know how he got the magical might he has, but the rain had to have been a cooperative effort from the Hawaiian House, and we will be looking into that.”

Toshi stood, saying, “Your House is in disarray, Deborah. We are glad we left it.”

Deborah looked about ready to strangle every single person in that room.

Another person stood up to walk away.

Ophiel was currently in a few different places. Most of his attention was on the Safehold down in Antarctica, where a billion souls had already been processed. Benevolence’s reach through time was mostly done, but there would always be some gathering happening due to the nature of slices of infinity, and the multiverse. Dad’s original slice of Earth was on to normal operations, for now; Everyone who died on Earth from now on would be funneled through there, and given choices.

And so, Ophiel had some spare bodies to throw at this particular non-cooperation happening before him.

Ophiel had been waiting for more people to gather, but it appeared the room would grow less crowded, instead of more.

Ophiel stepped to the center of the U in the conference room, and said, “I will now prove that I am not a false paladin.”

Toshi scoffed at the word ‘paladin’, starting to say something, but he never got far.

Ophiel opened [Gate]s, the rings of lightning revealing lands beyond this sterilized office space. One portal opened up to a specific place near Beijing, China, where an old man named Jin Jin stood in his ‘office’, looking at the world beyond, where a large wall separated him and his building from the forested mountains beyond. Jin Jin was the leader of House China, though he hadn’t been allowed to do much in a long while.

The people in the conference room could see the man looking at the wall beyond his compound, and how he was dressed in plain clothes with ID tags on his sleeves. He had no computer on his desk, and he had no electronics anywhere in his ‘office’, but he did have papers.

Jin Jin turned and saw the portal. He smiled, and said, “Ah. Hello. I was wondering how this was going to happen. I just step through, yes?”

Ophiel had not spoken to the man before now, but Benevolence had a way of letting people know when stuff was happening that was good for them, and that’s what Ophiel was doing right now.

Ophiel said, “Yup. Come on through.”

Jin Jin came on through and smiled as he saw everyone else in the room. “Ah! Friends. I have missed you all. How has the world been since my imprisonment?”

Stunned silence.

No one said anything.

Ophiel told Jin Jin, “I’m already picking up your compatriots and depositing them downstairs.” He held up several pill-shaped trackers that were still covered in blood. “I took the liberty of removing all of your trackers, as well.” Ophiel set them on the table, and then [Cleanse]ed the blood from his hands, as he turned and said to the Russian woman, Kudrina, “Your situation is stickier. We can discuss that later.”

More stunned silence.

Kudrina went stoic as a few eyes turned toward her.

Ophiel dismissed the [Gate].

Jin Jin was busy getting his seat at the table, so that is what he did while everyone else just stared. When he sat down he happily asked, “What’s happening, my friends? Who is this young man who rescued us?”

Ophiel forestalled the drama of the moment, raising a hand to conjure a lightward image of Fenrir about two meters across. He moved that image to the back of the room, saying, “I’m the son of your Founder. I know him as Erick Flatt. Dad.”

All possible conversation died in its crib as Ophiel conjured more lightward images.

Veird with its onion-like layers of land carved away to reveal the whole structure. Size comparisons of Veird to Earth. Comparisons of Veird to Fenrir. He made some numerical notations in the air, giving relative population numbers of the various lands, along with percentages of habitation. Fenrir was currently at a population of 3.9 trillion. Veird was at 16 billion, which was a vast improvement from before the Red War. Earth was at 8 billion.

Fenrir, with 2 million moons around it, had a total surface area somewhere in the 5x10^19 area. With its population of 3.9 trillion it was still only .000002% inhabited-by-average. It was actually a lot less inhabited than that since most people lived in communities of various sorts, condensing population down to civilization centers held together by gate networks, but Ophiel’s displayed numbers were fine for as-the-[Fireball]-falls sorts of comparisons.

That wasn’t counting the Painted Cosmology beyond Fenrir, though. Ophiel displayed that particular land-space number as ∞. That population was unknown to Ophiel, since it was growing all the time. He put up a ‘<∞’ for that population count. It was good enough.

Based on some comparisons, Veird was at least 8 times the size of Earth, even before the 13 new Shells that Solomon put around the place, and that wasn’t even counting the Underworld. Even with Veird’s double population of Earth, Veird was much, much less populated comparatively. Ophiel didn’t have that exact number, but he put it up as ‘~.005% inhabited’ and with an asterisk saying that it was a total guess.

Earth was maybe 10% inhabited. Pretty easy to make that guess, there. The internet gave Ophiel that sort of information… Well. 10% or 3%. Ophiel went with 10%.

As Ophiel let those numbers hang out there he added a few lightpaintings of House Benevolence, on Veird. The Reaching Hands in the center of Fenrir. Some depictions of Dad’s true size when compared to a planet like Veird, and Earth, and Fenrir. A whole bunch of other pictures.

He put Dad’s dragon form wrapped protectively around Fenrir.

The room was silent as he worked. A woman from Brazil scoffed quietly about illusions, but as Ophiel kept going, she went quiet. The people of the House of Resons could conjure illusions when they really needed to, but nothing on this scale. Ophiel was spending thousands of mana to do this. Not a single person in this room even had a core. They only had, maybe, 150 mana per person. And only the top people in the room. Ophiel had stores of power far beyond any of them, and the skill to match those resources.

Kudrina poked Jin Jin to make sure he was real. Jin Jin grinned and poked her back, chuckling a little as he did so.

In front of a silent audience, Ophiel stepped to the middle of the presentation space and turned into his ‘true form’.

Ophiel’s many wings spilled out of his body and he became a 2 meter tall many-winged iridescent black conglomeration of many eyes and colors.

People gasped.

Some looked like they were seeing god.

None ran.

Ophiel intoned, “My father, whom you know as the Founder, began life as a man named Erick Flatt, of Earth. When he fell to Veird, from Earth, in 2019, his goal was first to simply survive and thrive on the world called Veird, with his daughter, Jane Flatt. That was 30-ish years ago.

“Some of you are already recognizing many problems with this timeline.

“I say 2019, and that is the true date. This is when your Founder left, as well. I say 30 years, and that is also true. I would give you more exact dates, but your Founder is the Prime God of a universe these days, and stuff goes weird around gods of all sorts, and especially around my father.

“He won his Wizard War.

“But, as is the nature of these things, and as is the nature of Dad, time got all wonky.

“And so, I have traveled across infinity and through time, at my father’s behest, as a Paladin of Benevolence, to Earth, to have these sorts of conversations that we’re having right now.” Ophiel drew himself back together, back to human-shaped, as he donned some black and white mage robes that were cut in the warrior-style. They were rather fashionable robes back home, but they’d stick out like a ‘cosplayer’ on Earth, so he hadn’t worn them until now. With an easier tone, but with even more gravity to his voice, Ophiel said, “My goal here is to induct Earth into the greater universe, under the protection and ownership of my father, His Dark Benevolence, the Dragon God of Many Colors, the Wizard of Benevolence, Erick Flatt.”

Ophiel waited as the gathered people in the room absorbed all of that.

Deborah took charge, looking almost frightened but also hopeful, as she asked, “What does that sort of ‘ownership’ look like?”

Ophiel said, “For starters, I, as the hand of my father, have decided to do a few things to Earth. Everyone who does not like what I will be doing to Earth is allowed to develop technology or whatever in order to escape and build outside of Earth, on all the planets of this solar system. To be clear, when I say ‘ownership of Earth’, I mean this entire part of the Milky Way. There are other civilizations out there but let’s not talk about them right now, as they do not concern us.

“As for what I will be doing to Earth, I am going to start with complete nuclear disarmament, and the disarming of every army out there.

“From there, I will be cleaning up all the landfills, healing all the people, and installing a manaminer on Earth, to keep mana contained to Earth and allow for the proliferation of magical knowledge among the common person, since mana has a tendency to blow away if not contained.

“I’ve already installed an afterlife on Earth, so that anyone who dies will be transported to new worlds, with new powers to help them live new lives, but I imagine most people will want to come back to Earth, and I’ll be keeping an eye on that, and making adjustments accordingly.” Ophiel had a lot more to say, but he finished with, “And that thing I did with the lightning ring—” Ophiel conjured another [Gate] and stuck his hand through it, to reach out of the air a meter away and wiggle his hand. He pulled his hand back. “— This thing. I’ll be making a Gate Relay system here on Earth eventually, and when Earth connects to Dad’s godly timeline in 15 years, that [Gate] system will connect to Fenrir.” Ophiel stepped back adding, “And that’s it for my presentation, for now.”

More silence.

Jin Jin spoke up, “Is that it for the big words?”

Ophiel was surprised by the speed of the Chinese guy’s turn around, and so was everyone else according to their faces, but Ophiel saw where some of this was going, so he said, “That’s the big, overview stuff; yes.”

“Good.” Jin Jin said to everyone else, “I suggest we overthrow the United States, Russia, North Korea, and then China, all at more or less the same time, but if we have to pick an order, that is my order.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Everyone tried to talk at once.

And yup, that’s where Ophiel thought this was going, but that was fine. For now.

Kurdina, from Russia, spoke above the sudden outpouring of words, “We can reason with Russia. We cannot reason with North Korea or with the American House, or even the Americans.”

Deborah defended America, saying, “Our people aren’t nearly as bad as your people! We don’t black-bag people and assassinate them in hospitals.”

“You do Guantanamo instead,” said Toshi, from Japan.

The yelling started.

Ophiel let them yell at each other for a while.

Ophiel only stepped in when the delegation from Brazil roared about this being too much. Those people got up and made for the door—

And Ophiel silenced the room. People moved their mouths without speaking, but Ophiel’s voice carried fine, “This is the fate of your world you’re walking out on. If you want to leave, you can, but however the change happens will be decided in this room. Maybe not for an hour of yelling. Maybe not for a day. Maybe not for ten years. But the general shape of it all will happen here, and if you leave, then you leave.”

… The people from Brazil sat back down.

The room got much calmer.

The initial panic about Ophiel’s presentation was still there, and everyone was in shock, but they were coming to grips with his words. Maybe Ophiel could have gone softer, lobbed his pitch easier, but changing a world was never an easy thing to do for mortals like him, or like all the others in this room.

A secretary from Brazil, a man named Rafael, asked Ophiel, “This has to happen?”

“Yes,” Ophiel said, without equivocation. “All of this is happening. The timeline is not set and the reveal can come in parts, but this overall shape is happening.”

“Why? Why not let us be ignorant of the universe?” Exasperated, Rafael said, “No one wanted the Founder’s war. No one wants him here anymore, either. Can’t you just leave?”

Deborah scoffed, but she held her tongue; she wanted to know Ophiel’s answer to that question, too. Toshi looked imperious, but also concerned about how Ophiel would respond. Jin Jin thought it was perfectly normal for the Founder to come in and change everything for the better; that’s what he did all the time while he was here, after all. Kurdina just wanted to go back home and she did not care about Ophiel’s answer; she was resigned to being here, though.

Ophiel said, “Because I see pain, and I must heal it. If you’re looking for some deeper reason than that, you will not find it. We are at the base level of Benevolence. That is the nature of the power each of you have inside of yourself, that creates the mana you use. Benevolence is the nature of my Calling. That is who I am, as a Paladin of my dad.” He added, “Sometimes a surgeon must cause harm in order to help. That is what is happening here. I apologize for the harm I am causing, but I am still going to cause this necessary harm. Absolutely no one should live in ignorance of the greater universe, and mana is too useful to all people to allow it to go unknown for any longer.”

Silence.

Slowly, Deborah said, “Sounds like the Founder to me.”

Toshi was unconvinced, but he had hope. He said, “Sounds like a Founder that isn’t hiding anything anymore.” He stared at Ophiel, asking, “Tell us of the war.”

“Sure. We can start there.” Ophiel began, “So there was this person who killed a universe.” Most people paled at that declaration. Ophiel continued, “That is who my father fought against. Who he won against. That other person has been Forgotten by decree of the gods, and you might learn of him if you pursue those sorts of questions with the right sort of people, but that person is gone and we’re all better off that his great evil is no more. Let us Forget him, but not the lessons he taught us in his tyrannical evil…”

Ophiel spoke for a time, never naming names, but he did give an overview of what had happened, from the anti-memetic threats, to the erasures of timelines and planetary destruction, to the nature of Margleknot, the hub of this neck of the Fractal Universe. When necessary, Ophiel spoke of magic. The people here knew a lot more than the rest of the people on Earth, of resonwork and the slices/layers/structure of the Fractal Cosmology, but they needed more to understand what Dad had actually done.

Dad had never given them any names at all.

Ophiel fully suspected that someone here would try to ping the ‘rescue me’ yorddle system later, so Ophiel told them that if they did that, they would be meeting fae, and those fae would probably steal their names, souls, etc. Don’t mess with fae; that was a big message.

Some people were going to learn that the hard way, though.

Eventually, Deborah asked about everything, “Why did Grandpa do this? This way? Just to protect us?”

“Yes,” Ophiel said, “Power calls to power. Knowing too much would have gotten you killed. Now that the Great Evil is gone, and Dad won, that sort of calling won’t happen. Other dangers still exist. For now, Earth is not a concern to anyone else, so calling out to Power probably won’t get you noticed. And Dad owns this place now— Well. Him and his wife; Her Benevolent Darkness Shadow.”

Ophiel wondered if the shadows in the room would spit Shadow out, but she appeared to be busy. Maybe she would show up later, or maybe not. Probably not.

Ophiel continued, “And so Dad is now a filter through which all communication flows from this land, back to Margleknot, to Yggdrasil. Other than him, you’re pretty much on your own here on Earth. And that’s for the best. Of course! As I said earlier, that’s just here on Earth proper. If people go outside of Earth they can do whatever they want. I’m thinking we can make the humanity on Earth into a solar-system-wide civilization in under 10 years, and once you’re out there you can do whatever you want. Earth itself is going to be controlled by Dad, though.”

Toshi narrowed his eyes. “You’ve said that a few times now. How are you going to control Earth? Are you going to...”

Conversation resumed, and this time it was less worried, and more constructive.

Ophiel wondered if Dad could have done it better—

Ophiel caught himself in that thought. Of course Dad could have done it better, but this was Ophiel’s time to grow.

This was his isekai.

Right now was the introduction phase.

A few weeks from now, or maybe even today, Ophiel would start handing out Personal Scripts.

That’s when the real changes would really start.

He hoped all of the people here would become good friends, like Dad had found in Spur.

Ophiel dreamed of Spur sometimes. Of those simple times back when he was just sitting on Dad’s shoulder, watching the world. He wanted that for himself. Earth could be his Spur. These people could be his found family. Maybe most of them would go their own ways, but he could see some of them becoming a big part of his life here on Earth.

Jin Jin was absolutely ready to throw down with some big political action, so that was fun. He didn’t want to kill anyone, either, which was even better. When you had enough power violence didn’t have to happen, and Ophiel had lots of power. Jin Jin seemed to be magically empathic, too, which would be useful going forward. His power was actual power, though; Dad’s empathy had always just been who he was.

Toshi was going to be a problem, but only because he wanted to go too soft and too slow. He wanted to be inevitable, not transformative. Ophiel could see that as a valid strategy considering that all the dead on Earth went on to new lives elsewhere. So there wasn’t a true need to move fast. No one that died on Earth due to inaction would really die. But Toshi didn’t really understand that, Ophiel hadn’t really explained it, and no one here would understand that until Ophiel showed them all the Safehold. Mainly though, Ophiel wanted Earth to be better, and that included the people currently living on it. There was friction there, and only time would tell if Toshi ended up being an ally or a noncombatant. He probably wouldn’t become an enemy.

… Probably.

Kurdina was an enemy, but only because she thought her Russian contacts were the better path for Earth. That was fine. People were free to do what they wanted. Kurdina’s path might even prove beneficial in the end, when she came for them alongside the KGB, and the House of Resons was forced to fly, or falter.

Deborah would be a great friend for the rest of Ophiel’s life. She was already family, even though they had just met.

This was wonderful.

The Benevolent Sky in Antarctica’s Safehold showed that bad things were going to happen, but Ophiel would be here to prevent the worst from happening.

… Maybe he’d also build a moon base…

Deborah looked at him quizzically, interrupting the flow of conversation to ask, “What?”

Everyone looked at Ophiel.

Ophiel just shrugged and said, “I was thinking of building a base on Luna or maybe on Ganymede. Yeah, people would panic when they saw that stuff go up, but they’d also start moving to understand what was happening.” Into the stunned room, Ophiel said, “If I built it on Ganymede, then only the top scientists and governments would know, and it would give the world time to prepare. Crazy shit would happen, but it would be controlled by the people already in power. If I built it on Luna, facing Earth, then everyone would see it and that would get the ball rolling very fast. Probably too fast. So the far side of Luna? Or maybe none of that at all. I’m sure some scientists in Antarctica are going to find the Safehold I built there soon enough, which is also a way to get the ball rolling.” He smiled. Ophiel made a decision, “Speaking of which! We’ve probably talked enough for today, for here and now. It’s time to show you all how the afterlife is going to work on Earth, from now on.” He opened a portal to a land of darkness and cold.

Freezing temperatures billowed into the room but Ophiel held back the cold with some wardwork. A few casts of light later, and Ophiel revealed a mountain of snow and ice in the distance. Before that distance, though, there stood a permanent Gate.

It was a tall, white-glowing tree with shimmering green leaves and a rainbow crown. It was not Yggdrasil, but also it kinda was. Like a sapling. Its roots knotted into whorls and twists at the base. The largest twist of rootwork and thick trunk held a glowing white portal filled with softness and mist.

The mist parted and warmth spread out from the base of the tree, transforming the frozen world into illuminated summertime, though the ice was still thick upon the ground and the sky still dark with winter night.

The cold stopped billowing into the conference room and Ophiel stepped through the portal, saying, “This way to the afterlife. Don’t worry. It’s warm over here and I’ll bring you back fast enough.”

This was a large leap of faith for most of them; Ophiel saw that. In their terrified faces. In their desire to know more. In the turns of their head, as they looked away, not wanting to leap.

He still asked them to leap.

Grasses and flowers started to bloom upon the ice.

Jin Jin was the first out of the conference room, through the portal, happiness on his face and a spring in his old steps. He giggled like a schoolboy, asking, “Imagine getting into heaven while alive!”

The others warily followed, though not everyone. Most stayed behind.

Deborah was the second through the portal, though Gail was telling her not to go. As she stepped onto fresh grass, she said, “You beat me by a half a moment, Jin.”

Jin Jin grinned. “I always was a bit faster than you at these decisions.”

Toshi came through next, saying, “There is a fine line between determination and death, and you have already run afoul of that line before, Jin.”

Surprisingly, Kurdina came through, too, saying, “I never thought I’d see real magic again. Ever since the Founder left… I…” She fell silent as she gazed upon the Antarctic land, and their small slice of heaven spilling out onto that land.

Ophiel walked up tree roots that were like steps, striding toward Benevolence Itself, saying, “Dad is still not coming back for a while, but he’ll be here if we absolutely need him. The goal is to not need him, though.” He stepped through the portal, letting his wings out so he could flutter into the sky beyond.

And then he waited for the humans to come through.

Eventually, after some small talking amongst themselves, 4 leaders of the current Houses of Resons stepped into Benevolence Itself. Deborah came through first, followed by Jin Jin, then Toshi, and then Kurdina.

They stood upon a kilometer-wide platform of white, hexagonal stones where a fountain burbled in the middle and then flowed into streams that floated off into the horizon. An illuminated wind rose beyond the edges of the platform, carrying souls into a sky filled with clouds, like bright spots in fog rising into Infinity. When the lights touched the sky, those souls turned to lightning and then flickered off in geometric patterns, following their destiny to their next world.

Yggdrasil was there.

Past the impossibly far horizon, like a green mountain ringed in rainbows, supported on a sea of rivers, floating, watching, maintaining. Yggdrasil was here, and yet, not really. Just like in Margleknot, you could always see the Universal Tree in Benevolence Itself if you looked for him.

Jin Jin was the first to spot a spot of fractal power upon the top of the fountain, like a pearl of impossibility floating on nothing at all. He went to it. The others just stared at everything, but Jin Jin knew what he needed, and Ophiel watched it happen, smiling softly as Jin Jin touched the ‘stone’. Some people called it a ‘stone’. Others called it ‘The Fire’. Some people wrongly called it ‘The Fractal’. Some people poetically called it ‘A Revelation’. It looked like all of those things, and yet not at all.

Ophiel just called it the Personal Script.

Jin Jin picked it up, and yet, he did not pick it up at all. He picked up a copy, while a copy still remained on the fountain.

Power flowed into him, slipping into his skin and soul and mind like water into a sponge. He jolted a little, but that was it. And then he started reading the air.

Ophiel smiled and landed beside him, saying, “Use it well, Jin Jin.” He looked to the others. “Anyone else want one?”

Kurdina looked at everything again, her eyes locked onto the Personal Script, and then she backed away, fear changing her entire expression. She walked away, out of Benevolence itself, away from the enormity of it all. She dashed into the cold, and then through the portal back to the conference room in Honolulu, praying that she would make it before it closed. Ophiel was not going to close the portal, but Kurdina didn’t believe that.

Toshi followed her, silent. Less fearful, more ‘having made a decision’.

The two of them passed Rafael on their way out, glancing at him, warning him away in soft, fearful tones, not stopping to say anything more than that.

Rafael was terrified, but he was the third in command from Brazil, and he walked forward anyway. He strode into Benevolence Itself, affecting confidence that he did not have at all. And then he was there, in the light, in the warmth, staring at everything.

Deborah watched that happen a little, but then she came forward and grabbed a Personal Script of her own. The spark of eternity soaked into her body and soon she was looking at words that only she could see.

While Deborah and Jin read the air, Rafael came forward.

Rafael looked at the fractal Personal Script sitting in the air above the fountain. He had seen Deborah take that power for herself. He was scared, but he was here, being brave. His voice did not waver as he asked, said, prayed, “That’s real power, isn’t it. And you’re just giving it away.” He wondered, “Will you corrupt the world with it? Or will you be here to see this through to the end, unlike your father?”

Rafael was a skeptic. That was good and fine.

Ophiel simply said, “Power reveals, Rafael. Would you like to receive a revelation?”

Rafael had almost walked out of the meeting earlier, with his faction from Brazil, but Ophiel had made them stay with a casual threat of not allowing them to write the future of Earth from the inside. And now Rafael was here; terrified, yet still here.

Rafael breathed deep, and then he stepped forward.

With a hand that was shaking, he took a copy of the Personal Script.

Ophiel smiled as the three of them gained power. He waited for them to come out of the initial trance of integration. Soon enough, Jin Jin blinked and looked around.

Ophiel asked him, “Your government will be looking for you, Jin Jin. Want a [Reincarnation] to hide better? And also to gain a lot more years of natural life. I can do that for you.”

Jin Jin happily said, “Absolutely! Would you be interested in doing the same for everyone else in the world, in an organized sort of way, to form a basis of power upon which we can overthrow every established power base out there? In a non-violent way, of course, but with a large amount of defensive violence if necessary. And it would be necessary.”

Ophiel blinked a little. Going right for the throat, eh?

Deborah came out of her integration halfway through Jin Jin’s proclamation. She frowned at him almost instantly, then said, “What happened to you, Jin Jin?”

“Many things,” Jin Jin said, “And all because of the fear that mortals have of the divine. Now that I am out of their captivity I will forgive them all, and my people will forgive them all as well, but we will not forget. It is they who will be exiled outside of governments, this time.”

Deborah breathed deep.

Rafael came out of his integration, blinking and looking around.

Deborah said, “Then I suppose we have choices. We can do this the short, violent way. Or the long, maybe more violent way. I would like to present us as a boon to the world, though. Not just different sorts of tyrants.”

Jin Jin said, “I’m fine with any solid action, backed up with defensive plans.”

Rafael offered, “I was always fond of the Miracle Healer plan… Which is probably why I was offered a Quest for [Cleanse], [Greater Regeneration] and an Elemental Healing Aura.” He looked at the others. “My Other Self heavily suggested [Cleanse], so I went with that one to start. The Founder spoke of it sometimes so I… I picked that one.”

“He also said it was one of the most dangerous spells out there,” Deborah said, warily.

Rafael shook his head. “What were you offered?”

Deborah said, “[Witness], [Scry], [Future Sight]. I went with [Scry]. [Scry] is just… just what I need.”

“[Know the Path],” Jin Jin offered.

Deborah and Rafael looked to him. Deborah asked, “I don’t know that one?”

Jin Jin grinned. “Me neither, but it was the only one I offered myself.”

Deborah shuddered a little bit, giving a nervous chuckle, because she wasn’t sure what Jin Jin meant by that, and she had a bunch of her own Big Thoughts weighing on her. “This is truly the start of it all, isn’t it?”

Rafael said, “The kicking of the avalanche.”

Jin Jin said, “The start of the House of Benevolence, Earth chapter.”

Deborah sharply inhaled, keeping her thoughts to herself.

Rafael said, “My Ghost said something about that name.” He looked to Ophiel. “And you said something about ‘Wizard of Benevolence’, didn’t you?”

Ophiel grinned, and then he stated, “The House of Resons was established under a name that differed from the original organization’s name, all in order to shield you from the enemy of my father’s second home. Now that enemy is no more. Now, we are free to use the original name, and you are empowered to take up our original purpose: To bring wellness to this and all other worlds, and to connect them all together.

“House Benevolence was founded as a Gate Network organization. Portals to connect this part of the world to that part of the world, and to other worlds out there in turn. That is the original form of House Benevolence, of the true form of the House of Resons.

“I’m rather sure that Jin Jin’s [Know the Path] will eventually lead him to figuring out that spell that connects us all, that I used to bring you to this part of Antarctica; [Gate].

“When he finishes his Worldly Path, your branch of House Benevolence will be able to connect to the moon, or to Mars, or Venus. To all the worlds of this solar system. Through you, the humans of Earth will reach the stars, and beyond.

“But first you got to sort out Earth at least a little bit. Enlighten people to mana and magic, and all of that turmoil that will follow.”

Deborah breathed deep.

Jin Jin grinned, knowingly.

Rafael stared at his hands, feeling the true weight of his new duties.

Deborah said to Ophiel, “We’re going to need your help when this all blows up.”

“Absolutely. That’s what I’m here for.”

- - - -

A man walks down a street in a village in the Congo. He is dressed in a white and black suit. The local kids are all in tee shirts with bright prints of action heroes; they have holes in their shirts. The women wear colorful wraps around their shoulders and hips. The men wear clothes that are of indeterminate color, for they are dusty and orange, for they have come in from the mines to get their pay from the office on the street.

The man in the suit is out of place.

Everyone looks at him. Some ask their neighbors about the man, but they don’t know what is happening either. Aside from his suit he looks local, as if some people recognize him, but no one truly recognizes him.

The man is local, but he hasn’t been home in a very long time. He is happy to be home once again, because now he can make a real difference. He touches a black and white circle pin on his chest that is either a circle with a break, or an arrow twisted to nearly touch its own tail; it is hard to say from a distance. He is bald, freshly shaved and waxed, and his clothes are immaculate, his black shoes shiny as his head. He is as presentable as can be.

The man breathes deep, and since there are no cars on the street at this time of day, he steps out into the middle of the orange road, into the bright sun, and casts his voice wide, “Friends! Neighbors! I am here to heal whoever needs healing! A touch is all it takes, but the magic breaks if you work too hard afterward, so come forward for healing, and then take a break from your manual labor for the rest of the day! Sitting around is fine, but no working!”

And then he waits.

Very predictably, absolutely no one goes to see the crazy man in the middle of the street.

Women click their tongues and talk about him in small words, and then words that he is clearly meant to overhear. Men from the mine laugh at him and tell him that he needs a hat; the sun has baked his brain! They talk about how they have mine dust on them and that maybe he needs some orange, too. It would block out the sun better than his bald head.

The man smiles at the miners, and then said, “Perhaps you are right! I do need a hat.” The man holds his hands out to both sides and, showing that he has nothing hidden anywhere, unfurls his right hand. A large white hat appears. It is a cowboy hat, for the man always liked those old stories of cowboys in America. It has a nice black trim and band, too. He put the hat on his head, saying, “Ah! It is so much better with a hat. Thank you for the suggestion.”

Silence.

And then laughter.

“Do it again!” shouts a kid wearing a superhero shirt, as he stands with his friends, under the watchful eyes of one of their mothers.

The mother holds the kid back and calls at the suited man, “Don’t be weird!”

The man smiles and said, “There is nothing weird about this! I am merely doing some magic! Would you all like to see more?” Without waiting for a response, but getting an enthusiastic response from the kids anyway, the man stretches a hand out and then waves it to the side. A glass table laden with cups full of ice cream appears, each of them all rainbow and cold, with little plastic spoons stuck into them. All of them have sprinkles. The man announces, “Some ice cream for a hot day!” He picks one up and starts eating it with the provided spoon.

There is a moment of utter surprise. And then the utter surprise breaks upon every viewer in different ways.

He does not have to tell the kids to come get some for they are already breaking away from their parents, rushing him and the cold treats. Some kids grab two, ensuring that the rest don’t get anything, but the man waves his hand and more ice cream appears, and what would have been a fight is not a fight at all.

But now the parents are here.

“What is this! What are you doing!” shouts one woman who looks particularly angry. She knocks the ice cream out of a kid's hands, saying, “Do not eat that! I said do not eat that!”

There is a confrontation between kids and adults that rapidly narrows between all of the gathered adults and the man in the suit.

The man says that he will leave, and he does so.

The men want to chase him out of town, but they cannot. No one can touch him.

Everyone loses sight of the man despite everyone looking straight at him, and the man gets away just fine. Some people make the sign of the cross upon their chests, others say louder words to chase away demons.

The kids complain about not getting enough free ice cream.

Mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, have to deal with those sorts of complaints for the next two days, and everyone making up stories about what the man was trying to do. Some people vow to drive him away if he should show up again.

On the third day since his first appearance the man walks out of the air in the middle of the road, in the middle of the town, as all the men are coming home from the mines again.

People start yelling right away.

But it is the owner of the mines, the one in the mine office, who steps forward, and everyone looks at him. The man does not tower, but everyone imagines he does. He looks at the man in the white suit, demanding, “Who are you?”

“I was born and raised here, though it appears no one remembers little Chibuike. It is fine if you don’t remember me anyway, Mister Orjea. I remember you, and I know you are a good man.”

Some people in the crowd pause.

Orjea frowns, trying to remember—

“Chibu?” says a woman, who Chibuike recognizes as Nkiru. She is a mother now and her recognition causes her to let go of her kid. “That is you!” Instantly, Nkiru is furious again. She grabs her kid and holds him back, thrusting the boy behind her skirts, out of sight. The boy complains about how he wants ice cream. The woman complains louder, “What are you doing here with this weirdness! You left 20 years ago!”

There are words of shouting and accusation.

Chibuike endures.

When he is allowed to speak again, Chibuike says, “I am here to provide free healing to all who need it, and I have a few tricks that allow me to escape unharmed, if I need to use those tricks. Healing is my goal. I came back here because I loved my home, but I vowed never to return unless it was with real hope in my hands.” He looked at Mister Orjea, and said, “This town would have fallen apart if it weren’t for you, but I am here to help it do so much more. I can heal miners. I can heal the sick. I can heal anyone. But my warnings from the other day still apply. The magic breaks if you work after I apply my healing.”

Confusion; that is what Chibuike sees.

Confused, Nkiru asks, “A doctor?” She remembered, her eyes lighting. “You went to France to become a doctor!” She frowns. “What is all this magic nonsense then!”

Everyone relaxes. They understand doctors and magic tricks. Nkiru’s words put Chibuike far down on the list of their big concerns. He is just some guy that is known, though he is still weird.

“I ended up going to America instead, where I was denied the doctor track due to a lack of education. I became a nurse, and eventually a nurse practitioner. And then magic found me. The magic that found me is enough to heal all your ails, if you wish it.” Chibuike asked, “Does anyone want to go first?”

Nkiru scowled, saying, “This is strangeness! I do not like this! Go back to America.”

The crowd agrees.

Mister Orjea agrees with the crowd, speaking up, “Whatever you are doing here with this stage magic needs to stop. Go away, Chibuike.”

“I refuse, and if I need to work outside of your bounds, Mister Orjea, I will.”

The air seems to crystallize.

Orjea is not a large man, but he towers anyway, as he steps toward Chibuike and prepares to poke him in the chest with two rigid fingers.

Orjea’s two fingers stop midair, as he pokes an invisible wall a foot away from Chibuike.

He freezes. He pokes the air some more. Yes, there is something there, but he cannot see it. It is invisible.

Orjea does not tower anymore.

His face falls and he backs away, silent and scared. A few people trail after him, looking back to Chibuike and then to Orjea, and then back to Chibuike. Some people in the crowd want to poke the solid air. Some want to poke Chibuike in the face, though Chibuike recognizes that desire more as ‘punching’ and less as poking. Some of the crowd begins to silently disperse, not wanting anything to do with—

Chibuike says, “I will be back tomorrow.”

And then he vanishes from sight, in the middle of the street.

There is a small panic.

The day passes with no small amount of discussion behind closed doors and speculation flying everywhere. There are cameras in the windows of some of the stores on the street, and some of those cameras had been pointed at the street for the entire altercation today. People begin to review those tapes.

They are bad cameras. They can’t see shit.

Someone sets up a much better camera, using one of their phones, setting it to record on the street, where Chibuike had stood twice in a row.

The next day, that much better camera catches Chibuike appearing at that expected spot as though he had pulled back a curtain of invisibility. Perhaps that is exactly what he had done. Perhaps it was just a trick.

There was at least one trick prepared and ready for today, though. A trick that Chibuike had set up ahead of time, now that people knew he was back home, now that he could make plans to actually help his town in the Congo.

Miners coming in from the mine were ready for him to appear. They had rods in their hands, and they were ready to drive him off.

But an older man was there, the local priest. He was in a wheelchair, pushed by his niece. The father was Chibuike’s trick that he had set up last night, asking the father to trust him. If the father ever truly trusted god to provide when provisions were needed, then he should trust Chibuike tomorrow, at this time, right here, right now.

The father did not trust Chibuike at all, but he would play this charade. On his own terms, he would be there.

The father wheeled out onto the street, and the miners paused.

The father rolled forward, pushed by his niece, saying, “I broke my spine in a fall when I was young and stupid, and God provided me a Faith to lift me up. You say you can heal this injury. Where from does your power spring? From God? Or some other, darker source?”

“I ask for nothing but to prove myself. Does it matter where my power comes from?”

“It always matters, and the fact that you deflect means you are hiding something.”

“I am hiding so much, but I can make you walk again and I ask for nothing in return, except your honest acceptance of what I can do. I am here to prove myself. Nothing more, nothing less.”

The father glared.

The people watched.

The father said, “Swear to God that your power is not from Lucifer or any demon.”

Chibuike put a hand to the symbol on his chest, saying, “I so swear.”

The crowd was heavy with disbelief.

Mister Orjea, the mine owner, stepped forward, angry. He had a rifle in his hand, pointed at the ground. “You need to leave, Chibuike.”

“I will leave, after I heal the father,” Chibuike said.

Orjea looked to the father, saying, “Don’t do it. He’s a demon.”

“Demons have no power in God’s Domain, Orjea.”

The father’s niece pushed him forward.

Chibuike’s hand was already glowing with white sparks. He reached out to the father, and the father looked at that hand with open wonder. Chibuike touched the father’s shoulder, power soaking into the man, as he said, “No working. Sit there in that chair and don’t do anything stressful at all. Don’t let people touch you too much. It takes a while for the magic to truly work and your legs will tingle as feeling comes back to them. Come by for a checkup tomorrow. I will be here tomorrow, at this same time, at this same place.”

The healing would take a while to work, but Chibuike knew it was already 50% done. The father looked up at Chibuike like he was seeing divinity. Words failed him. He could already feel his legs again; Chibuike knew. He would regain so much, soon enough.

The father did not know how to handle what he was seeing. What he was feeling.

Chibuike leaned down and whispered to the man, “This is not a religious thing at all. This is simple magic, given to the masses, by a divinity that exists far beyond Earth, though it was still born here, just like any other human.”

“Who do you work for?” the father asked, so very worried, and yet hopeful at the same time.

“House Benevolence.”

And then Chibuike stepped back behind his [Invisibility] and floated directly up on a little [Force Platform], so he didn’t leave any steps in the dirt road. He had been in the House Benevolence Personal Script program for 4 months before deployment, and he didn’t have nearly as many skills as some of his fellows in the program, but he had enough. More than enough.

Chibuike would become a turning point for all of the Congo, from this road, from his home village, and from there, all the rest of Africa. He’d eventually link up with Kiama in South Africa and Nassor in Egypt, but maybe not. All he knew was that he was going to be responsible for House Benevolence’s roll out in this part of the world, and if he did well enough, then his little village would become a metropolis, for it would become a hub of a Gate Network.

As Chibuike rose into the air, the village converged on the father, who was already moving his feet again and laughing happily. Chibuike hoped that the people in charge of the House knew what they were doing, and that all of this was going to work out, because he already felt like he was exactly where he needed to be, doing exactly what he needed to do.

He was not going to stop at all.

He saw his future unfolding before him, in the happy, worried faces of the father’s clergy, in the kids telling their parents that the ice cream was obviously fine and that they should have been allowed to eat it, and in the old women sitting with canes in the shade, chuckling, joking about getting their hips fixed, or their eyesight repaired. Some people didn’t believe. Mister Orjea was worried. Deeply worried. Nkiru was hopeful, but only because she had been destined for poverty, and she saw something in Chibuike that would give her more than that.

She wanted magic, too.

Chibuike recognized that look. He had planned on becoming a doctor in the states and coming back here with all of that knowledge in his pockets, but he found he much preferred having magic.

- - - -

A village in rural China, located on a heavily forested mountain, gained a healer that could not be caught by the authorities. The authorities spent an entire month searching for the healer and they eventually started bombing the cave systems to find the healer, but the healer could not be found, except when she wanted to be found. The healer simply appeared to the sick and the wounded wherever they were, sometimes just a hand, sometimes just an eye appearing out of the wind, and sometimes her entire person now and then, when it was safe.

When the authorities cracked down, surrounding the mountain and threatening to bomb it to make the healer come out of hiding, the stories diverged as to what happened next.

Top secret recordings showed the overall truth.

The healer stepped out of the air, above the village, the long sleeves of her dress fluttering in the wind, under the night sky and the brightness of so many searchlights. Guns unloaded at her floating, beseeching arms, as she raised her hands to the sky in prayer. Tracer rounds and bullets all simply went through her, bloodlessly.

And then a being of light and black wings appeared out of the night. Cascading song descended upon the village, filling the entire sky with power, answering the healer’s song with a song of its own.

The mountain disappeared.

A crater was all that remained.

The story made international news when the mountain reappeared in Canada along with its 937 refugees, all begging for protection from China, and refugee status. The mountain had been placed far in the wilderness, but somehow, it landed with a power generator that ran without fuel, gardens full of food, and houses that were both repaired and made better in the fall to Canada. The weather around the place was even more temperate than frozen cold, like usual.

Canada didn’t know what to do with them, but it wasn’t like they needed actual physical assistance.

There were other problems happening in the world that were more important to deal with, anyway.

- - - -

Many people were violently overthrown in many places.

A government discovered all their nuclear bombs had been replaced by fakes when they tried to fire one. Most of the other governments already knew their bombs were fake; they just never told anyone. It would be a while for that conversation to step out into the open, but they were already talking about it in hidden rooms and via secured phone lines the world over.

Healers stepped out of the shadows and air the world over, giving help to those who needed it, and then escaping when their help was violently denied.

Some people set traps for healers.

Into those traps stepped warriors of shadow and air. Those warriors tore up those traps, cutting off limbs if necessary, but they also left [Greater Regeneration]s on those injured trap makers and instructions on how to care for the wounds.

Quietly, the phrase ‘House Benevolence’ began to spread across the world.

Some people knew where the magic was coming from.

When those people came with hard words and violent demands upon the House of Resons, Ophiel was there.

Ophiel was in ten places at once.

Eventually, the people in charge came with words instead of weapons and attempts at war.

- - - -

Ophiel stood behind Deborah, as she, in turn, sat behind a large white stone desk, inlaid in black.

The cameras turned on in front of them. Behind those cameras rose screens spread across an entire wall. Those screens began to flicker with images of flags or insignias. Just 12 screens. Just 12 nations to start. Ophiel had no doubt that Deborah would be speaking at the United Nations in a few more months. But for now, just these people.

The flags on the screens rapidly began to flicker as the feeds began. People began to appear. The United States didn’t send its president to the conversation, but they did send the Secretary of State, which was kind of discouraging. Most of the other nations did something similar, though.

It was fine.

Maybe the real people in charge would show up once Ophiel revealed himself a bit more, though he had expected the mountain-moving would have gotten real leaders into these talks. The real leaders were probably listening in, anyway.

Deborah began, “Hello, nations of the world. Can you hear me?”

They all started shouting at once, and then they communally decided to let the guy from the USA speak for them.

“We can hear you loud and clear, whatever you are, and we’re going to get real answers today. You might have taken all our nuclear bombs, but we can still reach you. We know where you are.”

Of course they did. They had known for a while that House Benevolence was on Honolulu, still operating as House of Resons. The Marine Base on Oahu had even sent people over here, to Honolulu, to prove that they could reach the House with violence. That didn’t work, though.

And now they were using diplomacy.

The fact that the Secretary wasn’t spilling the ‘secret’ of their location out to the entire world was actually a positive step in relations… Oh. By telling them that they knew where House Benevolence was, they were telling everyone else at the conference that they knew things, and they wanted to deal… Yeah. That sounded about right.

Deborah plowed on, uncaring of threats or machinations. With a strong voice, she said, “I’m Deborah, which is the only name you need to know. My previous affiliations do not matter, but my current ones truly do, and my current affiliations are to House Benevolence and our Founder, who is known as the Dragon of Many Colors, the Wizard of Benevolence, and the God of the Benevolent Dark. Perhaps you have heard some of these names. We have not made a secret of that information. This has all been to prepare Earth for the arrival of actual magic. What you have all seen our people do, from vanishing in midair, to flying away, to healing, all of that is simple magic. Really simple, actually.

“We’re giving magic to all of Earth, eventually.

“This will lead to trouble.

“We don’t want a mass extinction, but humans are sapient, and we all touch upon magic a little bit. Eventually, if we don’t gain understandings of magic, then we’ll be facing mass extinctions from a different direction; from outsiders coming in here and telling us what we can and cannot do. People slave-raid worlds like ours all the time. It won’t happen on Earth, mind you.

“But make no mistake: we are not alone in the universe.

“We are but one very, very small bit of life, out here on our own, and so very open to predation. That is why House Benevolence is rolling out magic slowly, and all in order to gather the attentions of your faces right here, and anyone else who might be watching. To warn. To help. To inform.

“Earth is currently under the absolute protection of the Dragon of Many Colors.

“It won’t be that way forever, and especially not once we advance past Earth as a species.

“Earth is protected. Earth will become a nature preserve. We will clean up the oceans of plastic and otherwise, heal the sick, rip the pollution out of the skies and the cracks in the ground, and ensure humanity makes it to the next step in the civilization ladder, which involves mana, and magic. If you want to stay in power, then you will assist us with this, otherwise we will fight, and we will win.

“We will not be killing you to get what we want.

“We don’t have to, and also it’s wrong to kill people.

“We don’t expect you to try and follow these self-imposed limitations of actions, as evident by some situations out there that you are all aware of, but we do hope you follow suit, now that our courses of action are laid bare.

“We don’t have to kill anyone to do what we need to do. All we have to do is show the world that the systems of power we offer means that they don’t have to rely on the old systems of power at all. Everyone can have magic. Everyone can have healing. They can have personal farms that sprout food in their front yards, and they can make houses out of the stone and water out of the air. It’s easier to do all of that collectively, though. Governments are still necessary, if only to protect us from ourselves.”

Silence.

The Secretary of State spoke first, “You’re going to destroy everything.”

A statement of fact, yes. Mostly incorrect, but also… not wholly incorrect.

Deborah started off with a joke that became anything but, “Surely you don’t like having to think about health insurance, do you? No one does! So let’s get rid of it and heal everyone directly. The doctors can easily be trained in Healing Magics and Pharma can do something productive with their new free time, I am sure. Maybe they can get to cleaning up the world, or planning on how to terraform the other planets of our Solar System. Scientists are still needed to develop stuff, but magic certainly throws a few wrenches into the machine. They’ll figure it all out.” She ended with, “It’s a big change. Bigger than Earth could possibly imagine. But we can weather this storm and come out the other side—”

Ophiel cleared his throat, because something had just happened outside.

Deborah sighed. “Ah. It appears someone attacked us, or something like that.” She looked up to Ophiel. “Ophiel?”

Ophiel let out three pairs of black wings from his back, eliciting disbelief in some of the people on the screens, but the representatives from China, the USA, Canada, and England, recognized the wings. They knew he was the one who had moved the mountain, and who stepped in sometimes when healers were targeted. Ophiel said, “You all have your ultimatums. Further talks to follow.”

Ophiel cut the feed, then said to Deborah, “Toshi just launched a four-pronged attack on our Tokyo House. Kurdina killed some people in Moscow. I have recovered the souls and reembodied most of them, but four of those people killed were sleeper agents due to some soul twistings. Those four people got [Reincarnation]d and sent along the Roots of Yggdrasil. The rest will be coming here. I’ve already reaped Kurdina and Toshi. You are needed to take over the remnants of the Japan and Russia Houses.”

Big news.

Betrayal was always hard.

Deborah sunk a little, and then she rallied.

The other people in the room, standing to the side and watching Deborah speak, all faltered a little. All of them knew of the other Leaders of the Houses of Reson, and some had even been a part of those other branches. The Houses of Reson had mostly cleaved back together in the last few months, in the display of real power and possibility.

Toshi and Kurdina never returned, though.

Deborah stood, saying, “Cleaning up messes.”

Ophiel nodded. “Cleaning up messes.”

- - - -

It took 2 more years and a lot of growing pains to ‘prepare’ Earth, because apparently, when artificial intelligence technology really starts going, and the world leaders have a need for it, they can make censorship AI rather robust. Propagandist AI, too.

Everyone already knew what was happening, though. There was only so much that could be done in the face of the story of the Moving Mountain. Even worse for hiding the truth was the Day of Clouds, which took place on one cold January 20th, on Erick and Jane’s Birthday. Perhaps, if the nations of the world had not tried to hide magic so much, then Ophiel and House Benevolence wouldn’t have needed to do a Day of Clouds.

Spellwork had flashed across the entire globe on that day, on the exact hour of Jane’s Birth, and healed every single person. All maladies fixed. All genetic issues erased and replaced. All broken bodies made whole, and all age-related issues repaired as could be repaired.

On January 25th, Ophiel stepped in front of a camera, and spoke to the world with his wings spread wide.

The resulting panic was not that bad, but only, of course, because House Benevolence had worked hard to get everyone on board before the Great Reveal. And the Day of Clouds mostly proved their intentions, as well as their possible reach.

Humanity’s troubles were not over at all.

In many ways, they were just beginning.

But at least Earth was fixed in all the ways it could be fixed.

- - - -

Ophiel fiddled with his tie and fluffed out his robes, and then he discarded the tie to the closet, saying to himself, “No. Not doing ties. Not at all.”

He strode out of the bathroom, into the hallway, scowling on the outside but secretly thrilled on the inside.

Deborah was there, wearing the robes of a headmistress. She had that same sort of disapproving look to her face, too. “Where’s the tie?”

“I’m not doing ties. I refuse to wear a tie for the rest of my life.”

Deborah frowned at first, but then she smiled brightly. With a hopeful expression, she asked, “Rest of your life?”

“For a while, anyway. I like Earth and… It’s nice.” Ophiel smiled a little. “You really want to do this sort of thing? It doesn’t have to be you, you know.”

“It most certainly, absolutely does have to be me!” Deborah said, trying not to smile. And then she looked to Ophiel, adding, “It doesn’t have to be you, though.”

“I’m doing a lot more than just this right now, anyway.”

But Ophiel was most present here, and now.

Deborah almost said something—

“Bah. Drop it, Deborah. I’m here, I’m doing this, and it’s going to be for the long haul, too. The others might only stick around for a while, but I’m here for longer than that.”

Deborah’s face broke into pure joy. She promptly forgot all decorum and grabbed Ophiel into a hug, saying, “Thank you so much.”

Ophiel chuckled, hugging her back. “What are big brothers for!”

They had decided to just be brother and sister a while ago, and Ophiel loved it. He never got to grow up with Jane and them, but he was pretty close to Deborah’s age, somewhat, and that made it a whole lot nicer. Jane was always off getting into trouble with different people all the time, anyway.

Ophiel hugged Deborah a little tighter.

Deborah laughed, and then she let go of Ophiel. She wiped away a tear, and then she glanced to the side, where an organizer stood at the side of a stage, back where no one could easily see them. Ophiel and Deborah were a lot further back than that. The guy on the stage right now was just finishing up.

The stagehand motioned to Deborah.

She was already walking out.

The guy on stage said, “And now, let me introduce your Headmistress, Deborah Flatt, and the Dean of Students, Ophiel Flatt!”

That was another thing that had happened. Deborah took Dad’s last name.

Ophiel walked out right behind Deborah, into a sea of flashing cameras and so many gasps. Many of them asked each other if they knew the Deborah was going to be here, along with the Ophiel. None of them had known that, because of course they didn’t. Deborah had bigger responsibilities than teaching the first class of mages on Earth, didn’t she? Or at least that’s what some people were already saying.

Ophiel thought Deborah had bigger responsibilities, too, but she always had that streak of a teacher in her. Or maybe she just liked organizing people. She oversaw all of the Houses of Reson as much as she could, after all, and ever since she got her Personal Script her ability to prognosticate was on par with Teressa, or any other Seer. Better than Ophiel’s prognostication abilities, actually. So Deborah probably knew what she was doing.

Deborah smiled, calling out, “Welcome to a new age of Open Magic!”

Butterflies of every color streamed out across the roof of the room, illuminating the new student body (and several observers from various governments) with a rainbow of light.

“We’ve got an exciting school year planned for everyone! From History of the Universe to Divine Studies to smaller, no-less-complicated topics like Healing and even Fire Mana, I expect everyone here to leave with some power under their belts, and, if you prove yourself as Benevolent, then you too will gain a Personal Script, which is the most basic part of what makes me and my people so strong.”

The audience gasped.

The observers from the governments quietly panicked and then started sending off texts to their handlers.

Deborah beamed, “Yes! If you prove yourself, you will have power! The power to shape other worlds, though. Earth is a nature preserve, under the Agreement of Benevolence, signed half a year ago by many nations of Earth. So prepare to learn everything you can, and go make your Benevolent mark upon this universe or any other!”

The opening talks of Benevolence Arcanaeum continued with introductions to some of their new professors.

Tenebrae, the archmage orcol and his wife, Palodia. They were gigantic, green, and very much orcols, which caused a bunch of reactions among the crowd. Tenebrae and Palodia would be teaching generalized magic and war, respectively, while they raised their kids, both elemental and orcol, here on Earth.

Redflame, the dragon who created Ar’Cosmos, was here. He was venturing out into the universe, and he kinda wanted a multi-decade stop at Erick’s home world. He’d be teaching history. He’d be opening up a gate space into Fairy, here on Earth.

And then there was Ezekiel and the fae of gems and jewelry Gnowmi, who were introduced as humans from Veird, and not as who they truly were at all. Both of them looked perfectly human right now, though. It was weird to see Gnowmi all human-sized. They’d be groundskeepers, upkeeping Fairy Earth and the Arcanaeum which would exist partially inside Fae.

And then there was Yggdrasil, pretending to be a normal orcol from Veird, and his Computer Mage girlfriend Darnella, also from Veird. Both of them might only be there for a year, depending on scenarios. Some people connected Yggdrasil’s name with what Ophiel had spoken about in the past, but most people were just confused by such a name. Everyone was confused when Deborah had said that Yggdrasil would be doing whatever he wanted, but Darnella would be doing computer sciences and magic integration.

Ophiel fully expected Yggdrasil to tell him he was doing something wrong here on Earth, but that’s what older brothers were for; they hadn’t gotten a chance to really talk yet. Both of them were exceedingly busy.

There were a few incani, and dragonkin, and other races among the ranks of the professors, but most eyes were drawn to the size of the orcols among the professors.

When Yggdrasil smirked down at Ophiel, Ophiel decided he had had enough of that, and he fluffed up to be orcol-sized, too. Yggdrasil chuckled, and then Yggdrasil increased his height by another few centimeters.

Ophiel narrowed his eyes at his older brother. “Don’t be an ass.”

Yggdrasil laughed.

Deborah’s speech to the gathered audience briefly paused, and then she resumed.

When the speech was over and Ophiel exited the stage, Deborah went the other way and Ophiel went and hugged Yggdrasil, saying, “Glad to have you here. Anyone else coming?”

Yggdrasil hugged Ophiel back, chuckling as he said, “Why would we need to visit you? You’ve only been gone for a few days.”

Ophiel sputtered indignantly, but he didn’t let go of the hug, and neither did Yggdrasil.

Softer, Yggdrasil said, “Earth has been in Fenrir’s timezone for about a month now, Ophiel. Travel will be a lot easier. I’ll stick around as long as Darnella does, or as long as it takes before you get tired of me butting into Benevolence Itself.” In a way that only asshole older brothers could do, Yggdrasil said, “You could use some help with all of that.”

“Bah! Dad helped, and he’s a lot better at it than you, so don’t put yourself out on account of me.” Ophiel let go, smiling, happy that Yggdrasil was sticking around some, now that the time streams were joined. He turned to Darnella. “My brother the asshole, am I right.”

Darnella had been about to say something, probably demure or whatever since Ophiel hadn’t ever really met her, but then Ophiel’s words registered. She got indignant. “Yggdrasil is a great guy!”

Yggdrasil laughed.