065, 1/2

The sun hung low on the sky, but still ascending. It was a nice, breezy morning, as Erick walked across the flat orange land of the Human District, toward the Mage Trio’s house. He passed his garden, smelling the air, loving the smell of lemons and greenery on the breeze and the scent of a freshly baked lemon cake in the stone basket in his hands.

He approached the front door, and it opened before he could knock. An icy fox appeared on the other side, like a child answering the door for their parent. Ophiel fluttered on Erick’s shoulder; eyes opening up to take in the sight of the other [Familiar]. The ice fox howled in tiny mews, calling backward into the house.

Eduard appeared in a blip of blue, next to his fox, looking at Erick with surprise on his face. “Uh! Hello?” He looked down to the basket in Erick’s hands. “Uh?”

Erick smiled, pushing the basket out to Eduard, saying, “As thanks for help with the Hydra, and to say that if you want anything out of the garden, that you can go ahead and take anything you want. Or Ramizi, can, anyway. He’s the only one of you that’s into plants, unless I’m mistaken.”

“You are not mistaken.” Eduard took the basket and lifted up the lid to look inside.

“It’s a lemon cake,” Erick said.

Eduard nodded, then shut the basket’s lid, saying, “You really should consider hunting Messalina with us. She is a menace.”

Erick smiled softly, saying, “I have no interest in denying someone her vengeance against those who killed her family.” He added, “But if you spot any monsters on Mog’s list, or any more aberrations like the Toxic Hydra: I’m only a [Telepathy] away.”

Eduard continued, undeterred, “As of right now, your potential Particle [Scan] spell is only one avenue for Messalina to use to find the Cinnabar Hand, but finding people in the Crystal Forest who don’t want to be found is exceedingly difficult. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Hand are laying low. They will not be found; they know who is after them.” Eduard said, “Eventually, Messalina will grow tired of her fruitless pursuit. She will start to make real monsters.” He stressed, “These monsters will attack every single person they find, and eventually Messalina’s plan to find the Cinnabar Hand will mutate even further. She will kill every single person she finds outside of the major cities of the Crystal Forest.”

Erick felt a sudden lethargy. “Please don’t be hyperbolic at me.”

“I have every reason to believe what I say. Though a few centuries have passed, she is the same as always, according to everything we have found.” Eduard said, “Time will tell which one of us is correct, and I just want you to know, now, that when the time comes, we will welcome your help in giving Messalina the justice she deserves for the crimes she has committed.” He sincerely added, “Thank you for the cake. Please enjoy your time in Oceanside.”

A sudden anger overtook Erick. He asked, “Why don’t you help her find the Hand? You cannot possibly believe that her reasons for leaving her jungle are wrong.”

Eduard frowned. He kept his voice even, saying, “The Cinnabar Hand is a known enemy factor taken into consideration everywhere. City Guards take care of all of that; and civilians are forbidden from acting on suspected impostors. Messalina is an outsized threat, living outside of the city, that spawns other threats.” He said, “Dopplegangers are murdered on confirmation, but it is up to adventurers and mages like you and me to deal with those like Messalina.”

Erick breathed deep. He said, “I came here for a few other reasons, too. I need a [Polymorph] potion for Oceanside enrollment. I want to buy one from you, or however Jane went through this process. Is [Reflection] just [Rebound] and [Ward]? And… I understand what you’re saying, Eduard. Really. I do. She killed random people in anger, and she doesn’t sound like the best person in the world. But right now, she is hunting hunters.”

Eduard said, “[Reflection] is indeed [Rebound] and [Ward]. Good luck. Ramizi is selling a brisk market of [Polymorph] potions. I can get you one; they’re a thousand gold and a grand rad. Or two grand rads. Whichever you prefer.” He paused. He added, “Messalina’s balance of souls is hundreds of thousands in the negative. Whatever she does in the future— whatever good she accomplishes will always be tarnished by countless lives taken before their time.”

“Are you talking about murders, or reinstating people in other bodies.”

Eduard blanked, then said, “There is no difference.”

Erick stood there. Then he gave a mental push to Ophiel on his shoulder. Ophiel blipped away in a smattering of white light. He reappeared in moments; Handy Aura holding the bright red grand rad taken from the red [Ward] wyrm, and one of the eight green grand rads taken from the Toxic Hydra. Eduard’s eyes went wide as he looked upon the bright red grand-rad.

“Uh.” Eduard said, “Just the red one, is fine.”

“Nonsense.” Erick took the grand rads with his own Handy Aura, and set them on the front step in front of Eduard. “The price is two. This is two.”

Eduard looked down to his icy fox [Familiar]. The blue fox blipped away and right back, daintily carrying a dark glass flask in his icicle-filled mouth. Eduard took the flask and handed it over. Erick took the potion. Pearlescent black light flowed inside, like warm honey. It almost looked sinister.

Eduard said, “You must drink it all at once and then nothing else for an hour. It helps to Meditate while the potion takes hold, making sure the change settles in like a fine liquor. If you don’t get it right your guts will spurt out of both ends for about an hour, but Ramizi’s potions have a ninety percent success rate.”

Erick held the potion in his hand, then said, “Thank you.” He asked, “Is Spur treating you three okay? I saw some other humans out in the fields the other day, but not much else besides that.”

“Spur is a fine city. The Headmaster has wanted agents out here for a while, but no one was willing to take the post, and subject themselves to the disharmony of the city and its neighbors. And then you showed up.” Eduard said, “It has been a wonderful experience, getting to know this Spur.”

Erick nodded, and held up the potion, saying, “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Archmage.”

 

– – – –

 

Erick sat in the sunroom. Poi stood to the side, watching. The rod of [Treat Wounds] and the [Polymorph] potion sat on the table in front of Erick.

Erick asked, “Was it just me, or did that feel like a particularly awful talk?”

“He did not invite you inside.” Poi said, “He is exceedingly angry, but he is good at hiding it. He was exactly as polite as normal city-life demands, and not a touch more than that.”

Erick frowned. “I thought so.” Erick asked Poi, “This thing with Messalina… What do you think?”

“I think Messalina needs to die for her crimes and that she is a threat to the security of this household. Taking into account her murder of murderers, and her… version of recalcitrance in her letters? I don’t know. She is an unknown factor, but many things are.” Poi said, “I cannot say, sir. But I do wish her the best in a speedy resolution to her vengeance.”

Erick breathed deep. He stared at the polymorph potion as he thought.

He said, “You know, Poi? In my world, historically, revenge was almost never the correct, best choice of action. Accomplished revenge makes the person think that their actions were justified, and upon getting their pound of flesh, they realized they only want more, against other real or imagined slights. Violence begat violence.” He added, “And there’s the fact that just ruminating on revenge makes a person crave additional violence. And there’s the fact that revenge never restored what was lost in the initial act of violence.”

Poi listened.

Erick turned to Poi, asking, “Is that thinking correct at all, here?”

Poi frowned slightly. He said, “I don’t know, sir. But even you had courts and justice, right? What are those, but revenge organized by the state? What are those, but a community coming together to say that a person’s revenge is the correct action to undertake?”

“There’s a degree of separation and communal judgment when a court is involved. It’s not revenge.”

Poi said, “I can tell you right now that if Messalina showed up and asked for Spur’s help in locating the Hand we would be honor bound to execute her for her many, many, well documented necromantic crimes.”

Erick sighed out, saying, “Fuck.” He asked, “Is putting some willing person’s soul into a new body, murder?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Poi frowned. “Because they died.”

Moments passed. Erick stared at the black potion, wondering if soul transferral really was murder, or not. Maybe he just wasn’t understanding what ‘soul transferral’ truly meant. He decided to put those thoughts out of his mind for now.

He asked, “How bad were the letters Messalina sent us, warning us about the Headmaster?”

Poi said, “She is a self-involved cultist devoted to the temple of herself. But this does not make her wrong about at least one thing. The Headmaster is not Rozeta. He is not neutral. He takes a side, and never wavers.” Poi smiled, saying, “The Headmaster is rather famous for his desire to see both the moons of Hell and Celes destroyed.”

Erick would have laughed, if the subject wasn’t so heavy. He said, “That’s one way to end the Quiet War.” Erick picked up the black potion. It had been sealed shut with [Stoneshape]. With a bit of his own [Stoneshape], Erick unfurled the pinched-glass bottleneck. “Here’s to good resolutions, whatever they may be.”

“I hope so,” Poi said.

Erick downed the potion, all at once. It tasted of licorice and body modification, which was a very weird taste. Erick Meditated. Tingles and touches flowed through his body, under his skin, along his bones. Through his guts and further down. Like an internal, gentle massage, the potion did its thing.

And Erick Meditated, feeling the mana all around him, like a warm ocean. His own mana flowed out, as new mana flowed in.

After 45 minutes, the potion stopped squirming. A blue box appeared.

 

 

Erick breathed in, and left the skill at that. Jane once spoke of a slime body and the ability to remove unwanted invaders with a pluck of [Telekinesis]; maybe Erick needed to get a slime of some sort, too.

But that was enough of that. It was time to rain on the farms and to find the proper [Teleport] path to Oceanside.

 

– – – –

 

Ophiel blipped across the empty sky, blue all around, wind under his wings. Far below laid the sands of the Crystal Forest. He blipped again, and still, the sky was blue all around, and the Crystal Forest stretched out in all directions. The sand here might have been a shade darker than before, or maybe not. Crystal Agave and Mimics plagued the land in every direction.

This place truly was an ecological disaster.

Ophiel, and Erick, ignored the thousand year old environmental problem under them, and blipped again.

Sand met the sea; theoretically. Ophiel couldn’t see anything at that juncture of land and ocean, because the land was covered in Crystal Mimics. The jangling, blue-white monsters picked at the beach, stabbing green kelp that had washed up on shore, slicing it into bits and eating those bits. This was no place to have a nice picnic, but if someone was so inclined, they could probably get a lot of experience here. But only if they were at a level that could both handle this number of monsters, and still get something from the killing.

A red mother mimic prowled among the rest.

Ophiel stared at the monster, but then decided to ignore it.

Another blip sent Ophiel deep into the sky above the ocean. Blue above; darker blue below.

Blip.

Ocean.

Blip. Blip. More ocean.

… Blip. Blip. Blip

… Blip, blip, blip-blip-blip-blipblipblipblipblip—

Land!

Now… if this was Oceanside, it would have… This was not Oceanside. This island was a tiny thing. Trees dotted the land just past the beach, and past that was a hill, but past that, was more ocean. This was not Oceanside. This was just a tiny, nowhere island.

Ophiel blipped north. Then blipped again, and again. Then he vanished; dismissed.

Erick came back to himself, sitting in the sunroom, looking over the maps set on the coffee table.

… Okay. Back to the original plan. Full [Teleport]s east, ten times, then three south. Fuck trying to find a shorter path. Oceanside really shouldn’t be this hard to find. It was a freaking two thousand kilometer long island, for Rozeta’s sake! Like, twice the length of New Zealand, but it was skinny the whole way from northeast to south-southwest. Erick might have overshot it, actually.

It took Erick forty five more [Teleport]s to find Oceanside, but he finally found an ‘island’ which was absolutely covered in mountains, beaches, seaside cliffs, and trees hundreds of meters tall. Flying high in the sky over the center, Erick barely saw the ocean on one side, and after flying rapidly east, the other ocean came into view.

Another blip took Ophiel north. Over the ocean. Nothing but ocean, in every direction.

… Another blip south repositioned Ophiel over the actual Oceanside academy. Elation carried through from Erick to Ophiel, and Ophiel reflected that happiness back to Erick; they had finally found their destination. It really shouldn’t have been this hard to find. The city was the size of the lower half of a ten kilometer-wide mountain, after all.

Smooth cream-colored towers stretched up from densely packed city with roofs and buildings of every color. The city grew upon the arms and back of a crescent of mountain that long ago must have been the site of a massive celestial impact, or a long dead volcano. The land of the city stretched out into the ocean, like arms enfolding the water, while cliffs stretched north and south of the city, separating a thin beach from the treelines above the water. Oceanside was the perfect, naturally protected harbor, in the middle of a coast of tall cliffs.

Boats flying every color cloth and design sailed in and out of that harbor, while people flew around on [Force Platform]s, or on their own, from one place to the next.

Erick spent the next hour plotting a better course to Oceanside, and making sure his mana still flowed to the Ophiel over the farms; it did, the farms were getting their rain. When Erick was done plotting that course, he came back to himself, sitting in the sun room across from Kiri.

Erick laughed, happy to see Kiri; to have someone to talk to about what he had just done.

“Welcome back.” Kiri asked, “Did you find the path?”

“I did!” He exclaimed, “Magic is fucking amazing! I could go there right now, if I wanted. Back on Earth a trip like this would take planning and organization, and I’d have to pack myself into a tin can that flies and sit there with my legs cramping up for hours. But no! Not on Veird!” Erick gusted, “Wonderful.”

Kiri smiled, saying, “It boggles me how your people managed to live without magic.”

Erick switched gears. “It boggles me how a few bad apples in your societies don’t use the Script to just kill everyone they want.” Erick said, “Sure, you got killers on Veird, too, but if the average person on Earth had access to this level of weaponry we’d have had an apocalypse on our hands.”

Kiri paused. She scrunched her face at Erick, asking, “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “Undoubtedly.”

“But wouldn’t people like that tend to die early, and quickly? That’s what happened to the people like that back in Tower Town.” Kiri said, “We call people like that waywards; those who cannot maintain the politeness that city life demands. They usually become hunters living outside the walls, if they can live long enough to not get executed by the Guard.”

Erick said, “We just didn’t have access to this level of power, Kiri. Not on the individual level. Earth and Veird’s circumstances are vastly different, in almost every way. We didn’t live in walled cities. We didn’t have monsters outside those non-existent walls.”

“… Surely you still had violence?”

“Physical violence was a very small part of life.” Erick thought for a second, and said, “My life, anyway.” He thought for another second, then said, “Mostly.”

“Oh. Emotional violence, then? That’s pretty common.” Kiri seemed to speak from experience, “Very common.”

Erick nodded. “The first time I ever killed anything was when I came here. Back on Earth, I was just a guy in the system, trying to get by and help others in the process.” Erick said, “Most people were like that.” He added, “But actual violence was rare; the State was supremely powerful. You couldn’t act against them; not really.”

“That sounds almost exactly the same as here, though.”

“Imagine only the state having the Script.”

“… Oh.” Kiri said, “Well. They’re the only ones that use their power inside city limits. So it doesn’t really sound all that much different.”

Erick smirked, saying, “Maybe so.”

Kiri nodded, then said, “I found my spell.”

“Ah!” Erick smiled wide. “Fantastic! So? What is it?”

Kiri conjured three sheets of paper onto the coffee table between them, saying, “I’ve had to pop seven [Scry] eyes today. I can see why you don’t write anything down.”

Erick chuckled, picking up the papers, saying, “Only seven? That’s pretty low.” He started reading. There was a lot of information here, and a lot of it was extrapolations from Erick’s own magics. “I don’t think [Crystallize Diamond] would be useful in this way. But I can see where you would get that idea.”

Kiri said, “Maybe not something like [Crystallize Diamond], specifically, but the idea of a solid matrix is an old standby. An extrapolation from [Crystallize Diamond] is only one possible way for this spell to work.”

Erick set down the papers and asked, “[Harden Wall], though? Surely someone has made this before.”

“It is true that [Harden Wall] is already a spell along the [Stoneshape] line, but I want a Particle version that makes [Unbreakable Wall] and is usable with any medium; even air. The name is a placeholder, mainly because it’s easy to rhyme with ‘wall’.” Kiri said, “I don’t actually have a [Solid Ward] yet, but I want to know if this is possible. If this works, it could trivialize [Force Wall].”

“This seems like an application of all the other Shaping spells, too.”

Kiri said, “Well… More like [Force Wall], and an Altering or a Shaping, and sometimes both. But: yes.”

“I almost had it right.”

Kiri smiled. “Almost.”

Erick read over what he was looking at, and threw a hundred mana at the air, asking for Particular Insight into Kiri’s particular spell. No response came. Erick looked to the ceiling of the sunroom and saw orange stone lit by wardlights, and a normal enough manasphere; like soupyness to the air.

He frowned.

He threw another hundred mana through Particular Insight.

A voice came to Erick, along with a divine twist of the manasphere; Phagar spoke, ‘Oh hello there. Busy busy! Uh. This spell… It should work if you made it. Not sure if it will work if she makes it. There’s obvious problems.’ A pause. ‘Already been made, though. Well… Mostly. I’m looking through the registry now, and it looks like… Oh. Over a thousand new spells.’ Another pause. ‘Looks like Rozeta is going to do some culling, soon. Go ahead and make this spell. If it’s different enough, or even better, this spell might replace the one already out there.’

‘Thank you.’

A whisper of divine light left the room. Erick looked down to Kiri. Her emerald eyes were wide and unblinking. At Erick’s glance she looked down to stare, with her entire being, at her papers.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Erick said, “Looks like a spell similar to this one has already been made, but a culling of excess magic will take place soon. If this one is better than the one already out there, this one will remain.”

Kiri’s eyes traced around the room, eventually coming back to Erick. She whispered, “How do you know that?” She instantly said, “Nevermind!” She stood, slightly frantic. “Let’s go make it?”

Erick smiled, remaining seated. “First, I want to talk about this part here…”

“Uh!” Kiri sat back down. “Sure!”

For almost twenty minutes, Erick worked with Kiri to perfect her spell.

 

– – – –

 

The sun held high in the sky, in a semi-random part of the Crystal Forest. Agave and mimics, and all that; it was still kinda beautiful to see, but after witnessing the tall trees of Oceanside, Erick wanted to spend some time in an actual green place for a while. Not just green farmland that only existed because of his own daily magics.

… When he got back, he was going to find some way to turn some part of the Crystal Forest back to green, without the mimics coming back to ruin the whole thing.

Erick stood beside Kiri on a stone platform. “Go ahead and get in touch with the magic.”

Kiri frowned a little but she schooled her face, and stared out into the sky. The air flowed across her body, ruffling her clothes—

“This is really stupid.” Kiri said, “I don’t understand this— this singing thing.”

“Okay okay.” Erick asked, “But? Do you really have to understand? Not everything has to be understood to work. I don’t know why electricity and gravity exist, but I know they work. Besides, there’s already a well established heritage of rhyming in enchanting. And this is what you’re doing: Enchanting a spell out of the manasphere.”

“… Enchanting and… this, are completely different.”

“They’re really not.”

Kiri breathed deep, the dry air. She said, “You… might be correct.”

Erick smiled. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But what worked for me, was communicating with the mana, and working with it to create what I want. In this way, this process is exactly like enchanting. Only instead of communicating with the Script along predetermined lines, you’re communicating with the Mana.”

Kiri latched onto that, saying, “That is the difference, and it is huge.”

“If you’re scared of an Error, both Poi and I each have—”

“I’m not!—” Kiri spoke calmly, “I’m not scared of an Error.”

Erick nodded, then silently stepped back.

Kiri said, “I’m just… never mind.”

Erick watched as Kiri breathed deep.

Kiri stared north, at the blue sky. She held her head high, her green scales sparkling in the sunlight like dew on leaves. Her shoulders relaxed. Her arms opened up. She said a few quiet words; a prayer of some sort. She sang,

“Objects object to solid stable, where time seems froze as though a fable

“but here be once where naught is moved; a picture snapped, a myth is proved.

“But time’s not froze, it’s simply stabile; space can’t change, it is not able!

“A domain fast struck with heavy zeal, lock down this lot: [Hermetic Seal]!

Erick mostly noticed Kiri falling to the ground. He rushed to her, rod of [Treat Wounds] already out and glowing. He caught her before she struck the sand, his free arm catching her by her back, lowering her to the ground, as he knelt behind her to support her weight and tap the rod to her stomach. Magic flowed into her, as she sank to the ground. Her eyes fluttered. Erick held her upright, and tapped her again with the rod of [Treat Wounds].

She sighed out, “Fuck. Literally all my mana.”

Erick chuckled, supporting Kiri on the sand. Both of them looked up at the air.

There was no wind. There was no visible wall. With Meditation, though, the air was solid green. For about ten meters to the left and the right, and maybe five meters up, a blob wall of green laid upon the sands of the Crystal Forest, like an unmoving slime. Erick flipped Meditation on and off a few times, and was amazed at the difference, and at the pure invisibility of the spell outside of Meditation.

A blue box hovering to Erick’s side was a small distraction from the sight in front of him. Erick almost read the spell Kiri had made, but he wanted Kiri to see it first, to understand what she had done, as soon as she stopped blinking and was able to actually look at the land in front of her.

Kiri sat up and away from Erick, wonder in her eyes.