111, 2/2

Finding the ikabab trees was easy enough; Erick threw up a [Cascade Imaging] into the sky, targeting trees like the one he was standing upon. None of the trees were too far away. Creating Undine’s artpiece was easy enough, too. Filling the Jungle with platinum rain was easy, and so was creating the gems for Hollowsaur. Erick had a few spherical diamonds in his bag that were perfect for the task, that he had tucked away for just such an occasion.

Well. Not exactly this sort of occasion. He expected to need to remake his own gear, or make himself some new gear; not make gear for a Shade.

The problem, was that Fallopolis had not shown up after the ‘danger’ was gone. This probably meant that the danger was still all around him. Erick guessed that Hollowsaur and Undine were waiting for him to make himself vulnerable.

But then nothing happened.

He never truly made himself vulnerable, though.

Erick spent a good hour being careful with global cooldowns, and positioning between him and Hollowsaur and Undine, and the dispersal of three Ophiels to go out and grow the Jungle and cast [Tree of Light]s on the ikababs. Erick wasn’t willing to make himself any more vulnerable than that. Those Ophiels had to wait a bit under [Prismatic Ward]s to regenerate the necessary mana to continue laying down 5000 mana [Tree of Light]s, and monsters attacked them a few times, but the three of them were as invulnerable under a single sunform as Erick was.

For a while, platinum rain fell upon green Jungle. For a while, Erick enchanted spheres, and locked them under silver metal. And he waited.

But nothing happened.

There was a slight hiccup when he had to recraft the permanent lightward for Undine, but even that turned out okay. She had seen the diamond spheres, and wanted her lightwards locked to one of them.

She now held that diamond sphere in her power, but also a good hundred meters away, because the lightward was a fifty-meter wide construction of tetrahedrons. Three on the top, one on the bottom; the lightward was an inverted, 3-sided pyramid, cut into four other three sided pyramids, with triangular rainbow fractals falling into each triangular face of the lightward. The center of the four-prism construction, where the lightwards were anchored, was the diamond sphere. That part had a random assortment of crystals that would slowly either appear or grow from the center, to protrude out of the empty space between each tetrahedron.

It was quite pretty, in Erick’s opinion. All rainbows and interior fractals, while platinum rain fell all around. Making lightart was nice. Easy, too. All one had to do was set a plan into the light, and it would follow through rather well, until it got too complicated, and it broke. The trick was getting it to break back to its base form, rather than break entirely, so it could then resume fractalling.

Undine sat in the air, with her back to Erick and Hollowsaur, staring at the artwork. Platinum rain washed across her body because she allowed it. She smiled. “This is good.” She declared, “I’m happy.” She looked out at the Jungle, and at the lush greenery. “That’s good looking, too, and it’s already flowed into my lake, and turned the shallows thick. I like it.” She looked up, then folded her head backward, to stare at Hollowsaur with an upsidedown head and unblinking eyes, while her neck resembled an accordion. She spoke with the abyss in her voice, “A deal is a deal. Do I have to enforce this one?”

Upon seeing this oddity, Erick felt as though he was a scared fish.

Why a scared fish?

It just seemed appropriate.

Hollowsaur tsk’d, then frowned. He looked to Erick, as glowing rain fell around him, not touching his skin. He said, “They’ll be ready, soon as your end is fulfilled.” He looked to the gems sitting in front of Erick. “You gonna hand those over?”

“Of all the people here, I think you’re the least trustworthy.” Erick said, “You’ll get them when the people are safely released and in Undine’s care.”

Undine shifted her upsidedown stare to Erick, but then breathed deep, and twisted, shifting her rolling head back onto her shoulders as she turned to fully face Erick and Hollowsaur. She stood up in the air, saying, “I have been remarkably well behaved. Let us be done with this as soon as possible. Hollowsaur. Fix them. Let them go. My slipperys miss me, and I miss them.”

“Dark dammit, Undine.” Hollowsaur said, “No one can save those people.” He gestured behind him, at the black dome covering most of the plateau. The black dome vanished. “I didn’t think you were serious about this scam.”

Undine just frowned; the weight of an abyss behind her mien.

Erick’s hopes fell out of the bottom of his sunform as he heard Hollowsaur and looked beyond the man, to the revealed ‘animal farm’.

His first thoughts were of cows. But cows, of the Veird variety, had red-brown fur and horns and a swishy tail. There were also black varieties, and white varieties, but Erick liked the red-furred ones the best. These cows were not like those. But the red hair on the head of one not-cow was similar to the red fur of normal cows.

The hair on these cows’ heads was like a person’s hair; long, or crew-cut, or any of the other styles Erick had seen. Some of the cows had scales instead of hair; those kinds were scaled over their whole body. Some had horns like an incani’s, along with the violet skin to match. Instead of hoofs on their four legs, there were hands, and feet. The scaled ones had talons of course, because they had been created from dragonkin, and dragonkin had talons.

The only solace Erick took, was that they looked like happy cows. There they were, eating grass, or tossing their hair in the rain, or rubbing up against scratching posts. Some bounded back and forth with each other, playing in the mud.

And then Erick looked up, above the first platform, above the first field. There was another level, where the cows had too many eyes, or too many heads, or too many legs, or too much, red, red flesh.

And Erick couldn’t look at the horrors any longer. He turned his attention to everywhere. He cut the platinum rain. He waited for an attack.

Undine said, “Just make them look like people again. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

Erick found himself asking, “What did you do to them?”

He knew what he had done, but he asked anyway.

Hollowsaur looked to Erick, and laughed, saying, “Some soul mutilation! They came into my home, hurting my pets, so I hurt them! That’s why I thought this was a scam.” He laughed in Erick’s face, saying, “I thought you would have known how I operate. Fuck. You people have surveillance on me all the time! How could you not know? You came in here, this unprepared? How stupid!”

But Erick knew. Maybe not in so many words. Maybe not fully. For how can anyone know horror until they experience it? But he had been told about the soul mutilations. Killzone had skipped over some of the more difficult aspects of what each and every Shade did, when Erick had visibly balked at the horrors divulged.

But he still listened. He still learned.

He had hoped that Hollowsaur was just reluctant to change people back, not that he couldn’t.

Erick said, “I had thought you were reluctant. Not incompetent.”

“Ha!” Hollowsaur said, “That’s thick. You don’t even know how to Break the Shroud.”

Erick looked from Hollowsaur to Undine. They both regarded him; Hollowsaur, with malevolent eyes, her, with curiosity. What was ‘Breaking the Shroud’? Soul magic, obviously, since Hollowsaur had spoken about mixing sapient souls with cow souls, This might have been an attempt to get him to dabble in soul magic? Or was he reading that wrong?

That didn’t matter.

“I truly thought you were just reluctant, Hollowsaur. If it is beyond you, then you should have said so. We could have had a much more honest talk.” Erick shoved his emotions aside, and continued, “In light of this, I want you to release them to someone who can help them, and then refrain from leaving out high-level monsters to lure more people into your traps.” He looked to the small green people standing around on the battlements of the plateau, and said, “You obviously care about some people in this world, so why not care about more?”

Hollowsaur seemed to solidify, like a cat preparing to pounce, or maybe an executioner readying their axe. He calmly asked, “Is that a threat?”

The small woman on the plateau, as well as a few others, had watched the proceedings, silently, until then. They called out against Erick. Demanding that he leave and that he stop bothering Hollowsaur, and that the cows got what they deserved.

Twenty-five silver spheres hung in the light around Erick, as he asked, “Are these green people who you wanted these gems for?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you like setting traps for adventurers to trip, just so that you are able to kill them without worry, without remorse. Is this true?”

Hollowsaur was still calm. “Yes.” He said, “I feel like we’re talking in circles.”

“We are, a little. I’m just confirming things multiple times before I move ahead.”

“And where is your investigation taking you?”

“The same place it’s taken me for a long while.” Erick did not take his eyes off of the Shade, as he said, “But the cows look happy. You’re a horribly cruel man for doing that to them, but your torture is not constant.”

Hollowsaur frowned at Erick.

Erick continued, “And so, I’m sorry that we met like this, and that you’re an asshole, but I’m not taking arms against you today. I’m not going to harm your people in the crossfire, no matter how much you need to be put down.”

Hollowsaur extended a hand back, without looking. A lance of shadows briefly appeared in his hands, before it shot off, down into the center of a herd of ‘cows’, impaling one through the neck and driving a meter deep into the soil underhoof. The ‘cow’ screamed like a man in pain, as it tried to pull away, but the pole was through its neck, and it could not get away. Its bleating wore on, ten seconds, twenty, then nothing; it was dead.

Erick was stock still the whole time; preparing for the next shoe to drop.

Hollowsaur called out, “Meat for the Feast. Butcher it. Put it on a cart. I’m taking it to the Palace after we’re done here.”

The green people below hurried at the Shade’s order.

Did cannibalism qualify as the next shoe to drop? Erick wondered at that question, as a butchering took place upon a grassy field, where ‘cows’ had been playing, and there had been no blood, until Erick showed up and demanded a change. For the briefest of moments, he wondered if he was in the wrong, to ask for someone to be better than who they were before, that this was his fault, somehow. And then he banished that self-destructive thought. When Evil did Evil, it was the duty of all good-thinking individuals to not get trapped into thinking that their attempts at good were what caused Evil.

Hollowsaur sneered, saying, “If you hadn’t shown up, maybe that one would still be alive.”

Erick lifted into the air—

Hollowsaur flinched. Undine watched Erick intently, but she also glanced to Hollowsaur.

— and then he backed away. Slowly. Silently. One step at a time, going a normal distance with each step, to begin with. When Erick was ten steps away, he turned, showing his back to the Shades, but still watching them with his full field of vision. With silver gems floating around him, he slowly, but certainly, made for the opening in the kendrithyst where he had entered the Jungle, his steps growing larger with each passing stride.

Erick reached the mountains of kendrithyst at the edge of the green space. He went in. He strode through purple abysses, where the crimson of the upper reaches was hard to see all the way down where he was. All of his Ophiel followed, and once they were fully out of sight of the Jungle, he proceeded south. He got a good distance before he let his emotions relax a fraction. If he had had a body, he would have puked, his anger and pain would have gotten the better of him, and he would have done something truly stupid well before he got nearly this far away.

Fallopolis did not show.

She didn’t show after the first ten minutes of walking south. She didn’t show when Erick walked up, into the crimson light, back into the Upper Layer, to cast a [Cascade Imaging], to reorient himself because he realized that he had no idea which way was actually south. With a miniature map of Ar’Kendrithyst laid before him, and after reducing a giant centipede to sliced segments, Erick resumed his journey south, to the Palace District.

Fallopolis did not show.

And Erick knew why.

– – – –

Erick pulled his sunform close, returning to flesh and bone.

Glowing red crystals dominated the horizons and the land all around. Purple yawned below. Shadows danced inside towers. And Erick just breathed. He had a little cry. Then he breathed some more. Then he copied a vanilla cupcake and ate it, as he copied his canteen and had a long drink of water. He resumed the journey south, walking carefully, but not slow.

He pissed down onto a kendrithyst tower from ten meters above, just hanging it all out there for a moment. It was a minor joy, for purely juvenile reasons.

He passed a Desert Rose. It was growing upon the top of a kendrithyst tower like a strangle fig. The plant was giant; thirty meters across, with thorny vines draped across every nearby tower. It was also closed; the ‘rose’ part of the plant hidden behind thick, green leaves. Erick gave the rose a wide berth, but still, a few hundred [Force Bolt]s poured out of its collection of central thorns, aiming at Erick. He didn’t do anything to stop the attack, for the Bolts didn’t hurt. If he had gotten closer, it would have loosed [Force Beam]s at him, and those might have hurt, but there was no need to test the Rose’s strength like that.

Erick continued on.

– – – –

An hour had passed since he left the Jungle, and Fallopolis still hadn’t shown, but Erick still had these 25 silver spheres. He decided to take a small break. The nearest opportunity to do so was several minutes later, when he came upon a thick kendrithyst tower that poked up, higher than all the rest. It didn’t poke up too much higher, and its thickness didn’t look too conspicuous; it simply looked like a better place to stop than most. The top of it was angled rather hard, but that was fine.

So Erick approached the tower, and stepped down onto its peak. He conjured a porch of hard wood, turning that peak into a platform that would last for a good hour, as long as Erick didn’t walk around too hard upon the surface. He conjured a chair, next—

He had a thought.

He tried flexing his lightform self, like he had when he remade all of the basic Force Spells. He had yet to remake [Conjure Item], but now was as good a time as any. He spent ten minutes trying again, but failed to do more than waste a thousand mana. So he moved on with his life.

He had his Ophiel conjure a [Prismatic Ward] across the peak, while a few other Ophiels conjured dense airs at the corners of the crystal tower, whereupon Erick set those Ophiel down in their defensive positions, to both relax, and regenerate back to full.

The shadows inside the kendrithyst didn’t seem to care. They lazed far below the peak of the tower; the top forty or fifty meters were clear of obvious shadowy threats.

Erick settled down into his conjured chair. He conjured a table in front of him, and grabbed a sliver of Deep Sky Silver metal out of his bag. It was barely a sliver, but with a bit of [Duplication Aura] from an Ophiel, and [Metalshape] with his own power, that sliver became a good four kilograms of blue-silver metal. He stuffed a dollop of the metal back into the bag, as he grabbed three of the enchanted orbs. Each of the orbs was a good three centimeters across, so he couldn’t make wrist bands out of them. Or, he could, but they would look rather funky. A necklace would work, but he didn’t want anything bouncing around his neck.

Did he want a crown, again? That seemed like it would be a rather gauche thing to wear, considering he was going to a party full of megalomaniacs. No. None of those options were good options.

A belt would have to do.

Metal bar became wire, pulled into seven long pieces that wove together in a concentrated working that resembled a steel cable, about a centimeter thick. This part would just be the interior, though. When Erick was done, this item would easily be twice that thick, and much better looking.

Erick took his three orbs and wrapped them into a separate working of silver-blue metal, fully covering and securing them in metal, so that they could not rub against each other, the belt, or Erick’s body. He wanted a high quality product, not easily damaged by normal wear and tear. When he settled the three orbs into position, the item was already a magical item, all on its own, worth 150 All-Stats, if Erick had made it right. Good news: it did not explode. Erick didn’t try it on, yet, though.

Erick pulled back the main cable of the belt and slipped the three-orb item into the center. It was a solid arrangement, but it was far from complete. He went back to the bar of Deep Sky Silver and turned out more wires. Thinner this time, and with the help of a few Ophiel, he had at least a thousand of them. From there, he began weaving with the wires, in and around the gem holder, and then down both sides of the belt using [Metalshape], over the interior cable band. Soon enough, he got into a rhythm, and hundreds of metal wires began flying around each other, creating a dense, overlapping weave.

He couldn’t do this with wrought-iron, or gold, or any of the other metals he had packed away in his single bag. Those metals strung into these shapes would have this belt break from casual, bendy usage. Gold would last a few days in a hard-working, flexible item like this belt. Iron would last longer. But Deep Sky Silver lent itself to these types of flexible workings that other metals simply couldn’t—

“That’s very pretty.”

Erick had seen the Shade coming, but he had ignored her, until now. He turned to face the woman standing in the air outside of his [Prismatic Ward]. She was a strong looking girl in her early twenties, with an unsheathed sword at her hip that seemed to be the most magical thing about her. Her adventuring leathers were worn, but well-cared for, but her boots were bright red, and completely at odds with the rest of her otherwise drab outfit. She was a Shade, for her eyes were bright white, but Erick found his sight drawn to the sword again.

“That’s a pretty sword you have, too.” Erick said, “Not a conjured weapon, I guess?”

“Of course not.” She tapped the sword at her hip, turning a little so Erick could see it better. It was a white metal, with a simple crossguard and a pointed pommel. Ancient Script scrawled down the length of the blade, reading, ‘pierce the heart, pierce the soul’. “I made it with White Bone Steel, just like the original. But this is a replica. No power in this one.”

Ah. The Librarian. Erick had wondered how close he was to her place.

Erick said, “The Librarian, I presume?”

“You presume correctly.”

Erick set down his wires and let go of his spells, as he turned to the Shade, asking, “Which book is this heroine?”

She smiled, saying, “Legacy of Bone.” She added, “I normally wouldn’t interrupt your crafting, but you’re nearing the end, and… Well… You’re getting close to my library, and while I don’t think you’d destroy the place, since I have no prisoners or… Anything. Really. Except for books.” She added, “You know Hollowsaur is trailing you, right?”

“I know.” Erick said, “I was expecting him to attack before I finished the belt, or even put it on.”

The Librarian nodded, then said, “I was kinda waiting for you to come anywhere close, because I’d like to know some stories from another world and I think you’d actually be willing to talk considering how your interaction with Hollowsaur went… But Hollowsaur is rather uncultured, and he would likely use the opportunity to harm something of… mine…”

The Librarian’s voice trailed off, as she looked to the left. Both she and Erick watched as Fallopolis stepped into the sky, not ten meters away.

“Hello, dear.” Fallopolis spoke in a kindly voice to the Librarian, saying, “Erick was rather close to killing that awful man, but he’s run off, now. You needn’t have interfered.”

The Librarian briefly frowned, then one-upped Fallopolis’s sweetness with her own saccharine facade and tone, “Hollowsaur would have tested me and then I would have had to be angry with him. It’s better for everyone if that doesn’t happen. So I stepped in. Pardon me for ruining your plans.”

“I’ve got plans within plans, so don’t worry about ruining them; I’ll just find another way.” Fallopolis turned to Erick, asking, “Are you going to finish that belt?”

“Can I commission a belt?” The Librarian asked, then clarified, “Not that one. Nothing magical. Just pretty. I like the woven metal with the boxy part in the front. A matching necklace and belt would be nice.”

Erick said to Fallopolis, “I was planning on finishing it, yes.” He said to the Librarian, “And sure, I can make a similar belt for you, and a matching necklace, too.”

The Librarian smiled wide. “Great!”

Fallopolis frowned. “Great.” She stepped closer to Erick and casually poked on the dense air around him and his platform. “I want a seat. And cupcakes. Let me in, or drop the barrier.”

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“Sure. One minute.” Erick handed some stray wires of Deep Sky Silver off to one of his Ophiel, as well as the two cupcakes in his bag. “This shouldn’t take long.”

While Ophiel lifted the cupcakes and wires to the edge of the dense air, but still inside, another Ophiel turned on his Copy Aura. Wires and cupcakes fell into Erick’s light, where he held them tight. He cut Ophiel’s aura, then moved the cupcakes out of position, while putting all of his wires into position. The next instance of Ophiel’s Copy Aura, unloaded a good hundred thousand Deep Sky Silver wires, ready for enchanting work. Erick held them all, while he sent that now-spent Ophiel down to a different dense air, while bringing a fresh one up top.

With more than enough wrought-quality Deep Sky Silver to make a few items, and a good three dozen cupcakes, Erick dropped the [Prismatic Ward], and said, “Care to join me for cupcakes?”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Fallopolis stepped onto the platform, and grabbed a chocolate cupcake as she conjured a dark chair to sit upon.

Erick looked to the Librarian, who had yet to move, and offered, “That invitation was for you, too.”

The Librarian smiled, and then walked forward. She sat down on a simple layer of darkness, upon Erick’s conjured porch. She grabbed a chocolate cupcake, saying, “Thank you for your hospitality.”

Erick resumed his metal weaving, adding in more wires to the ends of other wires with seamless [Metalshape]s, as he wrapped up the cable core of the belt.

Fallopolis finished her first cupcake, then silently began on her second. Erick was sure that if the Librarian weren’t here, then she’d be telling him how he fucked up with Hollowsaur, and how he succeeded. The Librarian, for her part, silently watched Erick work, going through one cupcake rather fast, then rushing onto a second and third, as Erick wove blue-silver metals into a cohesive whole. When he was done, with no one saying a word the whole time, Erick finished the belt by standing up, sizing it to his sunform self, then turning one end into a solid receptacle with a few slots carved out of it, and the other into a tension-loaded insertion. Erick tested out the ‘clasp’, by poking the insertion side into the receptacle. The tensions locked into the slots with an audible, four-piece click. Erick had to press down rather hard and in four different places in order to depress the tensions and unlock the belt, but that was on purpose.

And then, waiting for something to happen, Erick pulled his sunform inward, returning to his mortal coil. He already had copies of his rings if they exploded on him, though they shouldn’t. But this belt was already +150 All-Stats, and that was more than his rings, so even if an explosion occurred, he would be okay in the short term. Erick looked to the Shades, flanking him, and broke the silence, “I’m going to test this a few steps away.”

Fallopolis nodded.

The Librarian said, “I don’t think it will explode. The resonance is going to be pretty darn tight, but your soul-stability is higher than it was when you came in here. Dorofiend was level 85-ish, right?”

Erick hadn’t known that ‘soul stability’ had anything to do with Stat enchanting, but he kept that surprise off of his face, as he said, “Even so.” He said, “I’m still going to step away.”

And he did. And they let him. And Erick was still waiting for the attack to come, when he put the belt on, gained 150 more Stats, his rings stayed on, and everything was fine. Nothing exploded.

… Everything was not fine. There were Shades everywhere.

Fallopolis was currently on her fifth cupcake, while the Librarian was on her sixth, and while they seemed to be competing with each other in a casual eating contest, for whatever reason, the two of them also had their eyes on Erick. Fallopolis was rather nonchalant about the whole thing. But the Librarian was staring, and also trying not to stare, at Erick and his new belt.

… This was fine.

Erick returned to his conjured table, platform, and shady guests, and began working on—

The Librarian just couldn’t take it anymore. Half-amazed, half-disbelieving, she blurted out, “Do you even know how much of an advancement in the field of Stat Enchantment you have created? I mean! You do. But I don’t think you do? It’s just—! I’m happy to be able to see this happening in my lifetime. To see what you just did.” She added, “You have to understand, that I can make my own plus-100 Strength or Willpower or Intelligence belts and crowns, and I can even create a get-up that holds the four original Stats in harmony enough for a wearer to get 100 All-Stats. But you’ve combined them all into one nifty purple lightward!”

“Lightmask,” Fallopolis added.

“Right!” The Librarian said, “Lightmask.” She added, “And there’s no Stat Dissonance! You’ve balanced them all perfectly. Truly a breakthrough. I just have to ask: Why haven’t you picked up another Stat? Those are a pretty large breakthrough this year, too. Is it because a fifth Stat would lead to an unbalancing?” She said, “I can get you one of each fruit, if you want it. I can… Hmm. I probably can’t get them to remove the inherent curse.”

“No curses for me, please,” Erick said, deciding that reasoning was good enough for an answer. He asked, “The same belt? Or…?”

“The same belt, but no need for any gems; it’s a decorative piece.” The Librarian picked up a metal wire, saying, “You’ve figured out a lot of little tricks… For anyone. Really. Most Planars never get as far as you in their entire lives. Getting Deep Sky Silver to enchant-quality is yet another trick that you’ve seemed to have effortlessly picked up. Or stumbled upon. Of course, if we had True Magic, there’d be no need for these little tricks.” She set the wire back down, saying, “I will say one good thing about the Script, though, and that is that I do quite like [Duplicate].”

Fallopolis scowled at the Librarian, as she un-angrily huffed out, “Blasphemy.”

“This whole Shadow’s Feast this year is about bridging differences, Fallopolis.” The Librarian said, “Part of that is acknowledging that some parts of the Script are good. Like its ability to grow. Erick’s got a trick to his ability, for now, for sure, and so he’s ahead of the rest of us, but the Script does grow to include everything everyone puts in it… Eventually.”

Again without rancor, and maybe with a bit of a musical note, Fallopolis repeated, “Blasphemy~”

The Librarian looked to Erick, and said, “I expect Melemizargo to give up all of these new Stats, or for something major to change about them all. They’re just too disruptive, but they did bring everyone to the table. Everyone was waiting for you to pick up one of the new Stats, you know? But it’s probably for the best that you didn’t. Charisma is definitely changing.”

Now that was interesting. Not the part that they had been spying on him, but the other part. Erick asked, “Changing to what?”

“Intuition.” The Librarian said, “It’s my understanding that Melemizargo got the suggestion from his Silver Friend, and so that’ll likely happen soon enough. Or, what could happen is that we go the other way. Melemizargo’s new four Stats might make it to the real Script, without the need for our Stat Fruits.” She smiled, then lost her smile. “That’s best-case scenario, though.”

“It won’t happen.” Fallopolis said, “Not unless Shades like you get off your ass and help me kill the ones that don’t deserve to live, and then we all abandon Kendrithyst and go become hermits, or something. The Faith will have to go mainstream, too.” She added, “And that’s only a few of the necessary impossible events, listed like they were no big deal.”

The Librarian said, “It wouldn’t take much to gain the Orcols to our side. They’ve been looking to throw off the shackles of the Bloody One for a long time.”