089, 2/2

Erick, as Ophiel, floated above orange sands, directing sand-laden winds around a floating map of the area. It was sand storm season, and there was a minor one in the area. High above in the afternoon sky, barely above where high winds blew dust from the north to the south, a cascading white orb blanketed the land in radio waves and detection magics.

And beside the map, and Ophiel, in the tiny calm of the storm, was a pitch-black man in dark leathers. His short black horns were almost indistinguishable from his medium length black hair, and the ever present darkness that licked across his dark skin. He was covered in natural shadows, all except for his fully white eyes. He gazed down at the resolving map in front of him, and at the blue dot to the left of the map.

Without lifting his head, Bulgan said, “How good of you to join me, Archmage Flatt.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so violent, then I might have come sooner.”

Bulgan turned his glowing white gaze toward Ophiel and smiled wide, revealing bright white, sharp teeth, that reminded Erick of another place and time, with a much larger maw, and much sharper fangs. But then the man spoke, and ruined the illusion; he was just another monster. “I am as the world has made me.”

“People have shitty lives all the time and come out better for it. You chose your path.”

Bulgan paused, his face scrunching with barely concealed joy. “You’re right. I did.” He walked around the floating map, his eyes wandering everywhere, but his attention never leaving Ophiel. “Are you happy with the path you chose?”

Erick did not answer the man. He stayed silent, and turned all but one of Ophiel’s eyes away.

Bulgan smirked, noticing Erick’s slight. He said, “My path was one of strength. Might makes right. It’s a simple philosophy, and my ascension to the Clergy has shown me over and over again that without power, nothing can be done to change the world for the better. You seem to be doing okay with gathering power, too. You’ve come a long way from a simple human crawling out of the Forest, begging for scraps at tables forged by your betters. A long way since you hid behind your daughter while I sent peons to kill you and ransack the Sewerhouse.” He smiled. “You’ve even called down lightning. Created a dungeon for light slimes. Created a whole new school of magic! All very impressive. And all very fitting.”

Erick said nothing.

Bulgan’s smile twitched, then went away. “Either participate in this conversation, or I will make you stronger by stripping away enough of what holds you back so that you lose yourself to the fury.”

Erick said, “You focus too much on strength. If you had less— if Veird had fewer people like you, fewer people who threw their weight around and brought ruin to all in their path, then maybe the Quiet War would be over. Maybe we wouldn’t have stretches of land like the Crystal Forest, devoid of all life save for a monoculture of monsters.”

Bulgan’s smile returned. “So you choose the power of community, instead of power for yourself? That’s just another form of power seeking behavior. We are no different in our goals, just our methods. We both desire power in order to protect what we hold dear.” He added, “The only difference is that I am not lying to myself as you are. You seek power through community? Laughable! And proven false by virtue of your very title, archmage.”

“You shouldn’t talk about ‘virtue’.” Erick said, “Not when you sought to kill me and my daughter, for just existing. Not when you endangered Spur with your shadowcats and your Shade plots.”

“Ha! ‘Endangered Spur’? Ha! One of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Veird cuts away bad flesh, and Kendrithyst is the primary scalpel of the One True God, but even the Quiet War is another way to hone strength in those who are worthy. The only ones who die are the weak, and they have no place whatsoever in a strong society.

“Why do you think the monsters exist, archmage?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“I am! They exist to make us stronger.” He gestured to the west, toward Candlepoint, far beyond the horizon. “That’s why this new settlement exists. That is why we are here.”

Erick’s blood boiled. He rarely felt hatred, but right now, he wanted to end Bulgan. That he was a Shade only intensified his feeling; if Bulgan was a person saying this shit, Erick could have ignored him. But Bulgan wasn’t just anyone. He was in a position to actually bring the hammer down upon civilization.

But Erick wouldn’t fight right now; not yet.

Erick said, “Power for the sake of power is worthless.”

“I don’t think you fully understood what I said,” Bulgan smirked. “To reiterate: The need for power is why I’m here, on the edge of the Wasteland.”

Erick felt his anger double, as he instantly connected the dots. He said, “You want to incite the Quiet War.”

“Almost had it!” Bulgan said, “I want to end the Quiet War, forever, as my people win their offered gifts and take up their swords.” He sniped, “You’ll probably get to stick around for the long centuries, though. Melemizargo seems fond of you. Maybe I’ll ask him to [Baleful Polymorph] you into something less offensive than a human. A slime, perhaps? Your daughter doesn’t deserve the same treatment; I’ll probably just kill her.” He said, “Her showing up my boys on the sparring yard proved her as unknowing of her place.”

Erick went silent again, as radiant rage boiled in his chest. He was unsure of what he could say to Bulgan that wouldn’t start the war off right away. He almost blasted him with a [Luminous Beam], and that certainly would have started the war, but he didn’t. He shoved down his rage, and waited till he could leave.

Bulgan said, “I wonder which of our communities will be able to survive the coming purge. You, and your insistence that everyone get along, only to shove hatreds down deep, to fester in the dark and come out stronger and deadlier than before, to start the cycle of killing all over again. Or me, and my idea of killing off or [Polymorph]ing every single human, and then blowing up Celes.” He smiled wide, as he looked up at the afternoon sky. The sandstorm around the two of them parted, like an ocean separated in two, in a massive, yet casual display of power. He revealed the eastern horizon, and the white moon of Celes hanging in the sky. He brought his hands together, then rapidly pulled them apart, saying, “Boom!”

Nothing happened to the moon, but the entire sandstorm around them collapsed to the ground. Air stilled. Nothing moved.

Bulgan laughed, drawing Ophiel’s eyes back to him. “Almost had you.” He offered, “So hey, do you want a Stat fruit? Free; no strings! Gotta have an enemy worth fighting, after all.”

“… We’re not enemies, Bulgan.” Erick had no idea where he was going with this, or why he was speaking this way, but he needed to deescalate the situation, before he killed thousands of people by touching off the first domino in a long, long chain. He said, “I’ve even been working with the Magisterium to clean up their recent mimic infestation. Helping your people.”

Bulgan scoffed, “That’s not what you did! What you did was steal experience from its rightful people.”

Erick countered, “You killed off the stronger, ‘rightful people’, so the infestation needed help before it rolled over those who never had a chance to prove themselves as strong.”

“Hmm. Yeah no. You’re still my enemy. And a thief.” He paused, then smiled, and got dramatic, saying, “Oh, the crushing weight that I must bear! I fear that it will kill me, because of the ones I did not kill when I had the chance! Oh, for those days of yesteryear, before the axe of fate chopped through my choices, and left me with one path to tread, and fall upon. If I could but return I would take that axe and chop down the tree that uprooted my house, before it grew too strong for my arm, and my mettle.”

“… I have no cultural understanding of what you just quoted.”

Bulgan sighed, then got snide. “The Champion of Peace and Folly?” He chuckled, like Erick was an idiot. “You truly never read it? ‘Tis your loss. At least you understood it as a quote. Maybe you’re not a total failure as my foil.” He gestured toward the map, and said, “You know this tart you’ve set your sights upon is the same one that tried to kill you, right? And her father, too.”

“Correction.” Erick suddenly remembered a lot more about Kirzal, saying, “Her father threw a few [Healing Word]s at me when your minions decided to stab me in the kidney. If it weren’t for him, your own minions would have been kicked out of Spur long before they got the chance to get killed at the Sewerhouse.”

Bulgan said, “Correction: If not for her father, then my minions would have continued, and you would have been stabbed to death, and you wouldn’t be here today, to confound me yet again.” He smirked, then vanished in a blip of shadows.

Erick immediately went back to his body, but left Ophiel and the map there.

 

– – – –

 

“Dammit!” Erick said, “He got away before I could say, ‘Correction! Then there wouldn’t be any new magic on Veird, and all that other shit, asshole’! FUCK HIM. He knew he was losing!”

Merit, Poi, and Teressa, each perked up, as Erick came back to himself. And then Poi frowned, while Teressa backed away, and Merit sighed.

Merit asked, “Did you… antagonize a Shade?”

“Fucker antagonized me!” Erick said, “I didn’t do shit to him besides talk, because if I didn’t talk, then he was going to ‘strip me of what was making me weak’, which meant ‘kill everyone I care about’.”

Merit asked, “What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to—!” Erick stopped.

If Bulgan had told literally anyone else his plan to beef up the Wasteland to prepare to fight the Quiet War, then it would have gotten out there by now, and Erick certainly would have heard of it, wouldn’t he? Either Sirocco or the Baroness or someone else would have gunned much harder to get Erick on their side, or maybe Silverite would have said something. And now that Erick was back in his body, the Silver Star on his chest was slightly warm.

So Erick turned to Poi, and thought at the Mind Mage.

Poi grimaced, then said, “Gods dammit. Don’t tell anyone that. You might be right.”

Merit waved a dismissive hand, as she said, “Then I don’t need to know.” She looked to Erick, saying, “Not right now.”

Poi said, “If he speaks what he heard to anyone, events would unfold how Bulgan wishes, just by virtue of how it would change your response to outside stimuli. I’m checking right now, but from what I already know, what Archmage Flatt heard has not been explicitly stated anywhere else. His particular experience with Bulgan was a test, and an impetus to war, and no one here should fall for the trick of a Shade. Let it be.” He turned to Erick, and said, “You have been given a memetic hazard. Tell no one, and take no direct action, and nothing will happen. Let events unfold as they will.”

Kirzal yelled, “Is my daughter okay!?”

Everyone turned to the grief stricken man. Erick was honestly surprised to see that the man was still here.

“She’s on the map inside Candlepoint.” Erick said, “I don’t know anything beyond that.” He asked, “What the hell is a ‘memetic hazard’?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Poi said. “It’s not a big deal as long as it doesn’t spread.”

“Okay. Okay?” Erick said, unsure, “That’s fine, then?”

Kirzal said, to no one in particular besides himself, “I need to go get her back.”

Merit said, “You journey under your own cognizance. Beware the shadows, Mister Saker. They will swallow you whole and keep the bones.”

Kirzal looked to Erick, and said, “Thank you.”

He blipped away before Erick got a chance to speak to him.

Erick turned to Merit. “He ‘pulled every string he could’ to get this meeting?”

“You’re still being protected by the Guard, Erick.” Merit said, “Mostly casually, these days; your house is a fortress and you’ve managed to make a pretty good name for yourself, so a lot of the larger threats have vanished.”

Erick felt his anger ebb away. The meeting with Bulgan had been rough. Very rough. But Erick was successfully calming himself down, now that it was over.

… Now that it was over, for now.

“Okay. Well. Thank you… for that.” Erick said, “But people looking for their children— Shit.” He asked, “Kirzal was a good father, right? No histories of abuse or otherwise?”

Merit said, “No bad history. He’s just a good man who has gotten himself into a lot of bad situations over the years. This business with his daughter being his latest problem.”

“Good! Great. I really should have asked that question sooner, but I usually try to do that outside of directly asking the person in question.”

Merit looked over Erick, and asked, “You have a lot of experience with this sort of thing?”

“Ha! Not at—” Erick paused. “Well. Yes. Yes, but not in this context.” He said, “There was no magic back on Earth and I never did any of this in a warzone, or had the ability to directly help like I just did, and… I’m not even sure if I did the right thing.” He added, “But I’ve helped runaways, and gang members… A lot of what I did was helping people get medical care or into housing or out of bad situations. Bad situations that were considerably easier than the bad situations that can occur here.” He said, “Almost all of the problems I dealt with there are not the problems you have here.”

Merit smiled softly, as she said, “Mister Saker tried to walk up to your house yesterday, but the guards on the scene blocked that from happening, like we block most people. Then he tried to go through your Garden Council, but they all turned him away. Then he went though me, with a formal request, and I’m glad he did.” She turned to the table beside her, where several items waited on metal plates; hairbushes, dragonkin scales, white cloth dappled red, and more.

Erick looked at the items, and saw the capability to do a lot more good, today.

Merit said, “We’ve got a small stack of missing people that could use your help, all asked after by concerned family members or loved ones, each request vetted. No stalkers or Hunters or otherwise, here.” She turned to Erick. “With the prevalence of [Teleport], in our high level community, we usually can’t do anything for these people except take down their names and likeness and then pray to the gods that they are delivered safely back to us. But since word of what you can do has gotten around, a lot of people have left these sorts of mementos with us, hoping that you could help.” She asked, “So, can you?”

Erick felt as though the world stabilized, just a little, as he said, “Yes. I’d love to help.”

Merit smiled wider, and said, “Thank you, Erick.”

Erick walked over to the table and picked up a plate of scales, and began.

 

– – – –

 

Merit had a small section of her guards who were primarily employed for their [Scry]ing abilities. At Erick’s displayed willingness to work with the Guard, Merit telepathically called for her [Scry]ers to get in on the action. It wasn’t long till tiny eyeball orbs hovered in the air around Erick’s map of Spur.

Erick telepathically communicated the locations of his other maps to one of Merit’s people, a man named Anneal, who further spread those locations to the rest of his team.

And then he got to work. An hour turned into two. And then it was over.

Finding people who were lost was not as rewarding of an experience as Erick expected it to be. Of the eleven people he searched for, the only one who was alive, was Zimmy. Two people were nowhere to be found, while the other eight were bodies, located everywhere from the remains of a burial site outside of Portal, to huddled and dead in a pile of rags in a rarely-used alleyway in Spur, to the site of a recent wyrm kill east of Vindin.

When Erick was done, he dismissed the maps outside of Spur, along with those Ophiel, and said, “Shit. I hoped at least one of them would have been alive.”

Merit had gone off to work on other necessary things, while Erick stayed in the courtyard and searched, but she had come back when he was nearly finished. She said, “It’s not the best outcome, but their family and friends will at least have closure.”

Erick said, “How long have some of these cases been open?”

“Weeks, some of them. Most people give up after five or six days of no contact, but since you searched out the people who attacked Spur, we’ve had a change in how long people are willing to keep their cases open.”

“I’d like to be alerted within a day, when these sorts of cases come up again.” Erick asked, “Do you have any other searching problems that I can solve for you?”

Merit nodded, saying, “Yes. There’s a lot of Spur-centric business we can knock out, if you’re willing?” She said, “A search for illegal magics across the city. Mainly [Force Trap] and [Invisibility], but there’s also a Blighter going around ruining food stores that we’d like to find. And a murderer, burglarizing homes with floating, summoned swords. They take gold, only, so searching for the killer has been tough. I’m wondering if you searching for [Conjure Force Elemental] would be enough to locate that problem, but if not, then we can try something else. Probably have to try something else for the Blighter, too.”

“Ah.” Erick was ready to hop on board, and then Merit mentioned murderers. “That’s… normal guard work… I should have come here and offered my services sooner.”

Merit smiled. “I’m just glad you’re here, now.”

“Yeah… Me too.” Erick asked, “What’s a ‘blighter’?”

“Ah?” Merit looked at Erick for a moment, then said, “Oh. It’s the opposite of [Grow], except it decays almost all organic material. [Grow] and Mana Altering for Decay. If you can’t search for it, then try searching for [Grow]. Maybe it would work like how I hope searching for [Conjure Force Elemental] will work.” She added, “The Blighter is a heavy nuisance, clearing out entire grocery stores every other night, but its not as important as the Sword Summoner.”

“Well. We can try!” Erick turned to the map at his side, and recast the spell, saying, “Let’s try for [Grow], first. Seems like the simpler spell to search for. I can try making [Blight] later.”

Merit smiled wide, as the white map shifted in front of him, and the [Scry] eyes of Merit’s [Scry]ers hovered around the spell.

Erick looked up [Blight] in the Script as the map shifted, to see what he was working with, but got nothing. “Is [Blight] not in the Open Script?”

“Nope.” Merit said, “Gotta make it yourself, and not many people are capable.”

Erick hummed.

The map of Spur remained white. Erick said, “Uh. Hmm. Well. I think I might have to leave it running. If the spell isn’t active, then it won’t show.”

Merit frowned. “Dammit. We’d probably only end up with farmers, anyway. Okay. That’s…. fine. Then… Please search for [Force Trap]. Those should be active.”

Erick switched the map. A good fifty or more blue dots immediately appeared across the hologram of Spur, scattered all over. Erick’s eyes went wide. He did not expect so many results. Shouldn’t most of them have altered their [Force Trap] into something besides the base spell, anyway? Thereby making the search for the base spell useless? Maybe it didn’t work like that? Erick needed to experiment more with [Cascade Imaging] to understand the limitations of the magic.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Merit chuckled. “Ah ha! Perfect.” She stepped into the spell to get a better look at the blue dots, the white map parting and reforming around her body, like mist momentarily disturbed. She pointed out two locations at the tops of two different towers. “Clear. Clear. The others are illegal.” She looked up to the [Scry] eyes, saying, “Deploy!”

Erick watched a dozen more [Scry] eyes appear in the air around his map, as he asked, “What’s going to happen to these people?”

Merit spoke as though reading from a lawbook, “Depending on the nature of their spell work —which, in the case of [Force Trap], is primarily used to indiscriminately kill people— the caster might face anywhere from a thousand gold fine, to exile, to execution.” She said, “We haven’t had a Trapper Killer in months, but it does happen. But besides that, any of these traps you’ve found could have accidentally triggered on a kid, killing them rather instantly. We usually only find out that some idiot has trapped their ‘treasures’ after they accidentally kill someone.”

Erick felt his heart beat hard as his skin turned cold.

Merit noticed Erick’s change. She looked from Erick, to the map, saying, “This might take us a good hour to fully clean up. If you want, you can go. I would ask you to switch this map to [Conjure Force Elemental], in an hour or two, and then leave it up as long as you can, if that would even work. The Sword Summoner likes to strike at midnight.”

“Yeah.” Erick was very okay with leaving the Guardhouse for the day. He was glad to help prevent [Force Trap] deaths, too. And he would be more than happy to find this ‘Sword Summoner’ for Merit. But he was ready to be done with this, for the day. “Sure.”

“We’ll pay you a fair wage, of course.” Merit said, “Other Guardhouses pay based on crimes prevented, but that would just encourage false reporting and unwanted violence. Spur pays a daily wage of 5 gold for unskilled people of your level, no matter what happens, as long as you work a full shift and adhere to all the proper rules of conduct. But with your capability, we can triple that, and cut the workload down to specific tasks.” She nodded toward Teressa. “Miss Rednail’s capability puts her at double pay, for a few tasks each day.” She looked to Erick. “I’d love it if you came back tomorrow. Whatever time works for you. We can work around your schedule.”

Erick said, “Sure.” He looked up, and saw the moons framed by four courtyard walls, upon a field of dim blue. It was not yet sunset, but it was getting late. The sun had passed far to the west, and draped the courtyard in deep shadows. “It is getting kinda late. We’ll take the short way home. See you around, Merit.” He held his hands out to Poi and Teressa, who had mostly stayed silent this whole time.

Merit nodded, saying, “Gods Luck to you, Erick.”

As his own guards took his hands, Erick said, “And you, too.”

Blip.

They reappeared in the foyer of the house.

“Hello!?” Kiri called out from the kitchen. “Did I hear people?”

Erick smelled something delicious on the air. He called back, “Hello, Kiri!”

“Oh, good!” Kiri appeared at the archway that led to the kitchens, briefly, before turning around and walking back, saying, “I’m making dinner. Chicken and cheesy rice. Be ready in half an hour.”

“Smells great.” Erick said, “Thank you for telling me about that, Teressa. Helping the Guard is something I have been putting off for far too long. Sorry if it was boring for you. I can probably just send Ophiel tomorrow— Oh!” Erick conjured an Ophiel and sent him blipping out to the Lake and the Ranch, to start a series of platinum and normal rains, as he said, “I need to keep up the rains, too.”

Teressa said, “It’s fulfilling work, for sure.” She smiled. “But I can do without chasing after thieves chasing after gold, when they could have just gone out and killed a few hundred mimics and paid for whatever they wanted, outright.”

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to.”

“Eh!” Teressa said, “I know. But I want to. Not every day is solving a murder. That’s actually pretty rare. Assault, though! Now that’s every damn day, and I am glad I am not a normal guard.”

Erick smiled. “How far is your [Witness] these days?”

She grinned, revealing lower fangs, as her eyes went bright emerald. “As far as it needs to be, and a good four days into the past.”

“Wow.” Erick said, “Holy shit, Teressa.”

She beamed joy, saying, “Thank you, Boss. I couldn’t have done it without you. Using it inside this house is like powerleveling.” She waved her hand through the dense air of the house, saying, “[Prismatic Ward] is tough to see through. Very, very tough.”

Poi said, “Sir. We need to talk.”

Teressa’s smile fell. She said, “Right!” She thumbed toward the kitchen, as she walked that way, saying, “I’m going to see if Kiri needs help.”

Erick said, “Oh, right! Teressa?”

She turned back to him.

“I was thinking of journeying up to the Wyrmrest tribes, or wherever Archmage Syllea is, to see about some magic. You’re from around there, right? Would you be interested in showing me around?”

“Absolutely!” Teressa’s eyes lit up, as she smiled. “Whenever you want to go, I’ll be there.” She rapidly added, “If we are able to go during Festival— You want to be there at Festival, Boss. It’s at the end of next month. 47 days away.”