102, 1/2

From high above, in the grey, cloudy sky, Erick watched through the eyes of his [Familiar], as the dark city and the surrounding land settled down, around the newest lake in the Crystal Forest. And it did settle down. The new depression in the land was slight, but it was there, and with a quick check, Erick found that it went out to at least fifty kilometers.

And then he got to work, in rapid and disorienting order, fixing the fallout of Melemizargo’s [City Shape].

He blipped drowning shadelings out of the water. Prevented a building full of injured people from collapsing into that water. Fished the dead out of the lake. Killed crystal mimics who saw past the crumbling walls of the city to the greenery of the Farms beyond, before they got too close or too enraged. Shored up the new coastline, so that Candlepoint didn’t crumble into the water. Recreated the city walls up to the lakeside, then did a smarter thing, maybe, and walled up the entire new lake with roughly made stone blocks, each five meters high.

And then there was a sudden infestation of bright purple snakes or eels or whatever the fuck they were, that decided to come up from the Underworld, to corrupt the new lake. When they reached the coast, they crawled onto the land, and began chasing people. They weren’t that dangerous on land, for they moved like earthworms, but they had rings of sharp teeth and they knew how to use them. Erick saved a few insensate shadelings from being an easy meal, but most people easily got away. Most people, except for those still in the water.

Erick honestly did not think he would ever have to worry about underwater combat, so he was less than prepared for the event. [Force Bolt]s fizzled before they struck. [Force Shrapnel], as an aura, slugged through the water, clipping worms-eels, turning the water wine-dark, but also not doing much at all. [Flying Striker], though it was flying sword and water was not air, worked well enough. The worm-eels weren’t monsters; Erick would have used [Withering] in that case.

Or maybe he wouldn’t have used [Withering]. Shadelings were in the water, helping to combat the eels. Slip, the Shade Captain of the Guard, was someone who prepared for underwater combat. What Erick couldn’t kill, he could, as he zipped through the water, untouched by all, turning worm-eels into mush with some sort of telekinetic power.

But the problem still poured up from below. That was an easy fix. With a [Prismatic Ward] in the way, water got through, but the carnivorous squiggles did not. They certainly blocked the other side, though.

Thousands and thousands of worm-eels layered on the other side of the [Prismatic Ward], pushed up from below by the power of the spring. All of those bodies would have made a seal, and thus built pressure until the dense water popped, so Erick fixed that with a heavy application of a spell, worked in a way he had never attempted before. Mana Altering for Lightning and Chain, and [Force Shrapnel]. It worked better than Erick would have thought possible.

 

 

Ophiel hovered in the center of the gushing spring, at the very center of the lake, down in the depths. He was well protected by a density in that passage that only he could traverse. Others were not so lucky. With gnashing teeth and writhing bodies, purple worm-eels crushed against the blockage, pushed and piled against one another by millions of liters of water, gushing up from the deep dark below.

Ophiel cast lightning into the water, in an unexpected way. A ring of bright white light coalesced into the water around Ophiel, in parts, at first, but those pieces of light quickly came together to form a halo five meters wide, horizontal, and perfectly smooth. It wasn’t smooth for long. Lightning arced from that halo, through the water, crackling down, a million fingers of power touching off from one purple worm-eel to the next. Purple worm-eels fried from the inside out, unable to take the strain of the underwater storm. Those that survived did not survive for long; their last moments of life were as paralyzed intruders, crushed against the bodies of their kin, and then fried by even more lightning.

Ophiel filled the water with a second, [Cleansing Aura]. Thick water spilled away from the other side of the [Prismatic Ward], trailing up, past Ophiel, with the inexorable pressure of the spring below. Burned worm-eels, too far broken to ever be considered bodies, turned to naught but a thickening of the water, to then dissipate into the lake above, as Ophiel continued to crash lightning down into the swarm.

Erick left Ophiel to that process. Inside the [Prismatic Ward], he could regenerate more than enough mana to keep up the spells, as needed. And he would need to. Even as Ophiel cleared out the first blockage, more purple worm-eels appeared, crushing up from the other side.

Erick’s thoughts trailed elsewhere, for now. For a more permanent solution, he would have to go down below and fix up the other end of the spring, like how Al had put bars and columns over Spur’s river inlet, deep under the city.

… Or maybe he could invent a permanent filtering [Particle Ward]? Or…

Maybe some other day, when people weren’t in mortal jeopardy…

Actually. He, and a few hundred other shadelings with the capability, had saved Candlepoint from further falling into the waves. A wall surrounded the new lake. People were wet, but okay.

Erick quickly went over the city. Was Candlepoint saved, again? Or was another disaster looming on the horizo—

… Some shadelings were grilling worm-eels on metal racks, with [Prestidigitation] fires flickering underneath the filleted animals. Some were already eating, like it was the first real meal they’d had in months. Maybe it was.

But tiny worms wriggled in the bodies of the uncooked larger worms, and the eyes of the shadelings were dusk dark, with barely a light inside. Erick asked them if they should be eating food that was obviously both under cooked and filled with living parasites, and they growled at him. Growled. Like they were animals.

Erick quickly got some other shadelings involved. Mainly Slip, the Captain of the Guard. Erick couldn’t take food away from starving people, but Slip and his guard had no issue. They saw the problem, and started solving it, by turning parasite-infested meat to ash. There was a fight. Erick let Slip handle the altercation, as he was already onto the next problem: destroying all the worm-eel bodies he could find that he had chopped up and left behind.

… Apparently! Chopping them up wasn’t enough! They still wriggled!

Their insides were especially wiggly.

Some of the worm-eels had gotten to the dead bodies. Those bodies were now filled with parasites.

“Shit,” Erick mumbled, through Ophiel, as he hovered over the now-writhing corpses.

With another Ophiel, he found Zaraanka, and Mephistopheles. Both of them were busy adjusting the whole city, again, what with the new lake and all. They had moved on, after Erick and Slip moved in on the worm-eel problem. Mephistopheles was by the farms. Zaraanka was by the coast, further shoring up the shore.

Erick told both of them, “The worm-eels had parasites and they are spreading among the bodies. There is no time to honor the dead like we should. If anyone wants to say some words, then come now.”

Mephistopheles stood in the ruins of an apartment building near the new lakeside, gently taking it down with ten other people. He lowered his hand, and a roof turned to sand, as he stepped backward, avoiding the fall. He looked to Ophiel, hovering above him, and said, “I’ll be there.” He called to his people, “We’re burning the bodies.”

Two women and one man collapsed to their knees at Mephistopheles’ words; crying. Others comforted the stricken, as tears flowed.

On another side of the city, where Zaraanka directed hundreds of women and took stock of a the supplies of the city, the woman in pink said, “Finally.” She tossed a pad of paper onto a pile of clothes she likely wanted Erick to [Mend], next to assortments of burned items and other fragments of life, then shouted to her people, “Break time!”

The women and men around Zaraanka seemed hollow, compared to most. They had been gathering supplies out of the city. Some of them still held those cloths or carpets or carried dirty mattresses on their backs, but at Zaraanka’s announcement, and at her directed walk down south, they dropped their loads and they followed. After a few steps, a few froze in their tracks, understanding what was happening, but others just walked along, numb to it all.

Ophiel was already in the south of the city, hovering over the bodies, using his new lightning spell to kill the most obvious parasitic worms—

The entire new lake was infested, wasn’t it? Shit. Intellectually, Erick had already understood this, but now that fact sunk in.

Lightning crashed from white halos, as multiple Ophiel flew across the corpses. The halos mostly stopped crashing when the parasites were dead, but Erick was not going to trust that. Besides, it was time to burn the bodies. Cleanup could be easier when there weren’t tens of thousands of corpses in the way—

Erick hated that he had that thought, but he had it, and then he moved on. The largest infestations of worm-eels were dead, so he cut the lightning, and pulled Ophiel back, so that others could come in.

People ghosted out of the shadows, to stand on the edge of the fields of the dead.

The disparity of dead to survived was nine to one.

A man stood over his whole dead family, a woman bawled on the edge of a parking lot of bodies. It was horror, and it was traumatic. Those who cried, cried loudly. But most had been through too much already. Most just stood, in temporary vigil, watching, witnessing. Erick had seen people like that before, both on Earth and on Veird. He had called these people here, numb, because that’s what he was used to seeing.

But he saw a deeper truth in some of their eyes. The bodies and death that laid before these people was merely another trauma in a long line of horrors. They had seen it all before. They had lived through it all before, too.

Or maybe that was Erick’s own [Hunter’s Instincts] coloring his view of the world, right now.

… He’d turn the skill off when it wasn’t necessary.

… Which was actually right now. Erick turned the skill off, and participated in the ceremony before him, as a silent observer, and a coordinator.

Mephistopheles wasted no time taking center stage. He was slightly faster than Zaraanka, who hid her scowl well, but not completely.

Mephistopheles stepped forward, into the field of bodies. He spoke to the sky, so that all could hear, “We consign the fallen to their fates. There but for the grace of Melemizargo, go us all.” He stared across the fields of flesh. He stepped back. “Light the fires. The worms are spreading.”

Erick aimed a spell at the overcast sky. The winds of Candlepoint slowly resumed their endless journey from north to south. The clouds would not dissipate for hours, but the smoke from the pyre would flow away from the city.

Ophiels descended from the sky, and fulfilled Mephistopheles’ command, lit bright white [Cleansing Flame]s across the field, turning bodies to thick air, revealing the worm-eels hidden in corpses. Purple threads writhed in the white fire, looking for something to eat.

Shadelings watched, as fires glowed and parasites struggled.

Erick went to Mephistopheles and Zaraanka. “The people should participate in this.”

Zaraaka took the lead faster than Mephistopheles, her voice rising above the roar of the flames, “Anyone with fire magics! Burn the field!”

A few instantly threw out fireballs or burning lines of light, exploding flames across the bodies, filling the clean burning fires with smoke that rose into the sky, black and ugly.

Erick asked Mephistopheles, “How should we remove the parasites in the lake?”

“I don’t know. Ask Slip.” Mephistopheles sneered, adding, “He probably knows.”

Erick did.

Slip was by the lake. He was watching the light show down below, at the very bottom of the blue. At Erick’s question, he turned to Ophiel and gave a complete answer, “We need Draught of the Violet Eel for the people. You’d find that at an alchemist. You might have to get some Underworld supplier. For the lake, we need mud flits. You could buy them over in the Wasteland. They’re all-purpose parasite cleaner fish. Your lightning is good, but those eels can burrow into the ground and gain a foothold here if we do not clean them out with a natural, permanent solution. So we need the mud flits. After a week, then we can add the normal three reservoir fish, in order to keep the lake healthy.” He looked a little ashamed, as he said, “I heard you had them in your lake at Spur.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

His eyes glowed vaguely brighter, as he smiled, saying, “Water lilies. Grasses. Lakeweeds of all sorts would be good. Trees. Bigger walls around the whole lake. But we can do all that later, and the people can help with the wall.” He looked down at the flashing lights at the bottom of the lake, saying, “You should run a pass through the whole lake with your lightning; kill off most of the eels that you can. When there aren’t any visible eels, we should be good for a large shipment of mud flits. We can probably take them tomorrow.”

In several places at once, and as he watched red and green and blue fires erupt across the white fires burning on the fields of the dead, he said, “Good man, Slip. Thank you. I’ll get that done.” He added, “I’ve also got meats and breads along with beer and wine coming in a few hours.” He spoke through another two Ophiels, to include Mephistopheles and Zaraanka in the conversation, as he added, “Food will arrive soon. Anything anyone can make from the Farms will be needed, but I’m also bringing fabrics and such. I’ll try to get more tomorrow. Make some lists of what you want.”

Mephistopheles nodded, as he watched the burning land.

Zaraanka burned the land, and shouted, “Thank the Darkness! Food!” She added, “I hope it’s good, Lord Flatt!”

“Me too,” Erick added, “You all deserve something better than what you’ve been dealt.”

Erick felt more than awful about everything that had happened to these people, but as some overheard his words spoken to the three people in charge, for now, and some of them smiled, he felt a bit better. Not much. But… It was a good feeling.

 

– – – –

 

Clouds hung in the sky over a city transformed by hardship. What was once home to a hundred thousand, made of close knit apartments, drenched in rainbow lights, and stuck in the middle of a sandy nowhere, was now a sparse land of scattered structures, a great lake many, many times the size of the city, and farmland stripped half bare by people too hungry and tired to cook the vegetables first. Some held on to their sanity. Most turned insensate after all the recent deaths. Some squirmed on the ground; victims of their need to eat, and parasite-filled eels being the closest food around.

Beings of light descended on the town, into squares and courtyards, into the land surrounding the dark Crystal in the center of the city. They came with gifts of actual food. Shredded meats grilled well and fast, set into stone containers. They had been [Cleanse]d out of sight of all eyes, before being delivered onto conjured tables, but no one needed to know that. Beer and wine came in on feathered wings. Cheeses descended to where farmers had gathered their corns and their potatoes and their rice, to prepare what they could for all comers.

Rods of [Treat Wounds] flowed through the town in grips made of light. Tiny vials of purple liquids carried on intent toward those suffering from eels. Not everyone took their medicine. Some had to be forced upon people who had no idea where they were, or what they were doing. Some fought. They did not fight very well. They all got their medicine, in the end. Soon enough, they also stopped struggling against the pain in their chests, and their guts, as the sources of those pains died inside of them. Vomit and other awful facts of life was a common aftermath. Erick simply released more [Mirage Slime]s into the city.

As the sun set over the lake, turning the sky red and gold, and Erick took a break to let the people of Candlepoint fire their own spells into the water, others ate and drank and talked quietly about what was next. What would happen, now that they had a human overseeing the town? Sure, Erick was an archmage, and the current focus of the Darkness, but what did that matter when Melemizargo discarded broken things and created new things, at his whim? Was their reprieve from the Well just a cruel joke? Was this all there was to life, now? A pittance of food from a man who was too soft to undertake the problems coming on the horizon? A man who couldn’t even get enough food to feed ten thousand survivors? Some of them hadn’t even gotten to the meat before it was all gone. And while beer and wine were good, they needed water, too.

Erick had wanted them to be self sufficient from day one, with his catered meal as more of a luxury treat than actual food. But then the farmers had to burn the fields closest to the lake, a third of the Farms actually fell into that lake, and the rice paddies had been filled with purple eels. And then much of the water in the city, as well as the entire rudimentary sewer system, had been infected with eels. Those damn eels had screwed over all of Erick’s planning.

So he improvised. And he probably did what most people might call ‘too much’.

He went to his kitchen, in Spur, and cooked some mashed potatoes. With magic to assist in its creation, Erick made some of the best mashed potatoes, ever. Swimming in butter, with enough cheese and heavy cream to make them the best damn thing anyone could ever taste, those mashed potatoes were carried on feathered wings out to the middle of nowhere, where those two kilograms of food became two thousand. After a thought, and a concern to logistics, Erick added another thousand kilos of mashed potatoes to the mix.

Solving the water problem was easy. Erick just made it rain into cisterns, that he created, on the eastern side of the city.

When the next shipment from the caterers was ready, it was the last, so Erick tripled it, keeping some of the better cuts behind in case he needed to send more, but still sending more than enough food for everyone to have seconds. Each singular bottle of wine became ten bottles of wine. Each barrel of beer became three barrels. Cheeses and breads would keep for longer than the meats, so Erick quadrupled down on those, sending a house-sized shipment of hard cheeses and more than enough bread to last a week.

As the people of Candlepoint ate, and drank, and ate some more, Erick conjured temporary beds in every house in the city, as well as stacking temporary mattresses in the Crystal Courtyard for anyone to take. [Conjure Item] got a workout, but this was not a spell to rely upon. Using conjured beds for a night was okay, and what adventurers usually did when they were out in the field, but tossing or turning, or even sitting down in a conjured bed, was sometimes all it took to disintegrate the conjuring back into the manasphere. And yet, still, people were overjoyed at the beds. Some called for [Cleanse] over themselves, which they got, as they grabbed a mattress and rushed through shadows, to find a spot to sleep in a darkened house, or building.

The sun set, pulling its light from the world, turning the sky into a vista of dark clouds and starlight. Three crescent moons hung over the horizon, casting pink, silver, and white glows into the rainbow dark city. The prismatic lights of previous structures still hung in the air, like ghosts floating where walls and alcoves and roofs no longer existed. A few people went around under the orders of others, or on their own recognizance, casting new lights onto new buildings, or [Dispel]ing the old.

The new lights were not uniform. They were gold, or green. White was popular, but so was yellow. One building had red on the outsides. Erick had no idea why someone would paint their building in red lights, since it looked a bit bloody, but as Zaraanka came around, and shouted at the casters that she wanted pink, Erick saw what was happening. Zaraanka was rebuilding her Pink House; her bordello.

Erick let it lie. The matron of the bordellos wanted to reopen her pink doors to the public, and Erick did not have the energy to countermand her right now.

But it was nice to see that people were putting up lights that they wanted to put up.

… Still. Maybe tomorrow, Erick would see about organizing Candlepoint’s architecture and sewer and all of those public parts of city life into something everyone could live with. But. Eh. He wasn’t going to be a tyrant. He was support. The people of Candlepoint could make their own decisions.

Women laughed as they drank bottles of wine. Men joked over meat and mashed potatoes. Orcols made houses sized for them, while dragonkin and incani conjured castles and apartments, and groups of all sorts played cards under moonlight. People laughed over copious food. Some discovered, the hard way, that the mattresses Erick conjured and gifted to the town were not suitable for all activities, but some simply found sleep. They rested, and would hopefully recover.

Some cried themselves to slumber.

Some cheered at a fortuitous roll of the dice, or downed another beer, or dealt more cards.

When a woman found a guitar in the rubble and brought it to Erick for [Mend], she started playing, while others sang. Other people brought out their violins, trumpets, drums. Songs filled the night, soon enough.

Celebrations caught on slowly, but built to new heights as Erick copied food and beer, and even a few of the instruments and decks of cards and other such small niceties. He did all of that out of sight, but he knew that someone must have seen what he had done. These people could literally meld with the shadows, after all.

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And then it was time for more gifts, freely given. Fabrics piled into the Crystal Courtyard, all at once, at midnight.

A woman from Zaraanka’s pink house was not the first to spot the new gifts, but she was the first to rush the pile. Ophiel guarded it, though.

Erick gently said, “Free to take, but make something and gift it to someone else, too.”

A fast agreement saw the woman off with needles, threads, and a luxurious roll of orange cloth, suitable for blouses or dresses or anything nice. She cried a little as she left the courtyard; happy, mostly, but sad too. Others came quickly, got their gifts, and left with the same message of supporting one another.

Erick was under absolutely no illusions that once he gave the items away that what happened next was completely outside of his control. But that was okay. Hopefully no one would get into fights over resources. If they did, Erick would have to covertly [Duplicate] those resources and leave them lying around the town…

Not too often, though. If he did that, then people would notice the pattern, and exploit it.

Whatever was to come, would come later. In thirty minutes, every single roll of fabric, from the heavy duty browns to the luxurious whites to the gauziest rainbows, was gone. Secreted away into some stash somewhere, or openly displayed in small meetings where one person brought the loot and everyone got a share. Rolls of cloth were now in the hands of people who could use them. And that was good.

Somewhere in all of that, the fires from the bodies and the eels burned low, then out. The only people left in Candlepoint were the living.

The city looked safe, for now.

 

– – – –

 

Erick sat up from his chair, and stretched. He yawned. It was well past midnight. The sun would be up in a few hours.

Teressa read her book in her chair on the other side of the library, but at Erick’s movement, she looked up. “Done for the night?” she asked.

Erick yawned again, as he dismissed an Ophiel over at Candlepoint, and summoned another in front of him. That Ophiel twittered in happy violins, before taking his spot on Erick’s shoulder, as Erick stood up from his chair. He said, “Yes. Done for the night. More work tomorrow.” He added, “Thank you, very much, for running all those errands, by the way. As soon as Kiri gets back she can run them.”

Teressa set her book down, as she smirked. “Glad to help.” She said, “It makes me feel kinda nice to help some shadelings. I just hope you’re making the right choice.”

“The way I see it, there isn’t any other option. They’re desperate people who the world sees as evil. Shared suffering. Religious indoctrination… The Shades have laid an awful trap, and it will only be defused through careful and plentiful assistance. If these shadelings aren’t supported, they will become what people expect them to become.”

“I could see that.” Teressa said, “But there’s still a danger, here. I just don’t know where the danger is going to come from.”

“Probably from some interfering Shade. Or. Heck. Maybe some other city state, or nation?” Erick walked out of the room, saying, “Good night, Teressa. Thanks for looking after me.”