176, 2/2

Erick experienced a minor epiphany as he went about solving problems. It was ‘minor’ because this was not a new epiphany.

This world had more inherent danger in the form of changelings and ‘holer beetles’ (which were exactly as horrible as they sounded) and monsters in the dark, than him, as a Wizard, trying to make it all better. A lot more. Like, yes, there was a horrible fact that with his power he was able to change a lot of established norms, and that made a lot of powerful people powerfully uncomfortable, but he had a track record with magic stretching back a whole year! …Which, he admitted, was a problem. The people here just didn’t know him yet. His history of being a social worker simply did not matter to them; all they saw was the recent upheaval of established norms.

Erick knew what he was about, even if the majority of the people around him only knew of him through hearsay and news. And this was bad. There was no truly good solution to this problem, for all he could really do was leave behind allies wherever he went. He could prove himself a hundred times over, but the world was a million times bigger than him, and he wasn’t even sure if proving himself as ‘good’ would ever be good enough for some of these people, like the wrought.

At least Kromolok hadn’t outed him yet, because there wasn’t an Inquisition currently on his doorstep. Maybe tomorrow, but maybe not!

The problems of living in a society aside…

There were solvable problems everywhere down here (most of them in the form of monsters) and Erick was very capable of solving these issues. So he did.

From an infestation of water worms poisoning a local water supply which led to the discovery of a nest of cannibals picking off people from the edges of town, to bringing a kidnapped kid home to his parents, to some sort of infestation of thundering ghosts that obliterated an outpost and which no one could remove. [Physical Domain] proved very useful against the ghosts’ Elemental Thunder, but then again, the outpost was so far out from everyone else that it didn’t really matter if the place got cleaned out, or not.

Most of the requests were like that; large problems that were far away from everyone else. Only a few of the requests for assistance had him rooting out problems that were right beside civilization, or which had intruded into civilization.

And so, just like that, in the space of 8 hours, Erick cleared out 29 requests for assistance. Three of the original 32 planned monster requests were more so the issuers could get in touch with him, than for any real physical or safety need. In his time filling out those requests, Erick realized that, while his fears of being found out as a Wizard were real, allies could still be had, and he discovered a lot more about how the Underworld physically operated. His range was only a few thousand kilometers down here but it was enough to plot out the major landmarks.

Stratagold was like a hundred kilometer wide/long/tall boulder with Main Roads crossing all around it, like raised highways encircling a major metropolitan area. But the Underworld was also a 3D space, built up and down, and some of those highways went over or under the wrought Geode. Those Main Roads extended off to the south, east, and west, but not to the north.

Vibrant Falls was to the north.

Erick did discover a continuation of the Main Roads north of Vibrant Falls, but not before he explored what the Falls actually were. A kilometers wide ocean of water was falling through the center of the place, after all; that wasn’t something that one ignored.

Calling it an ‘ocean of water’ turned out to be correct. The roof of Vibrant Falls was connected to hundreds of tunnels where water funneled down from the ocean at the Surface to fall down, down, into the Underworld. Erick expected a maelstrom whirlpool on the Surface, but what he found was more like a series of switchback tunnels that led to smaller tunnels that led to the ocean above.

It was practically sewer maintenance architecture on the level of gods. If calling it the ‘godly sewers of Veird’ turned out to be a technically correct but blasphemous thing to say, Erick would not be surprised. There was definitely something odd going on in those tunnels, though, for the water pouring down was freshwater, but the ocean was salt water, which meant there was some unseen magic happening between up there and down here, and Erick couldn’t find that delineating line.

But back to the Main Roads.

The Main Roads (and the various ‘natural’ state-sized caverns interspersed on those roads) were like the anchoring lines of a spiderweb, with Stratagold in the center. The roads did not go up or down very much. It was more like they were laid out flat across what could have theoretically been a layer of Veird. In some places there were holes punched through many layers, like Vibrant Falls, but every layer of Main Road was more or less upon a different Z axis. Side Roads could go anywhere. It was through the Side Roads or other natural breaks between layers that people moved up or down, between the layers of Main Roads.

Mostly, the Underworld was a many-layered cake, with —Erick guessed— about 1% of it made of tunnels or otherwise open for travel or habitation. Stratagold occupied a portion of the Underworld where the Main Roads were rather well maintained, which, Erick guessed, was probably due to Stratagold’s influence. Life underground was certainly different from life on the Surface, in many more ways than the obvious, though.

One of those ways was truly disturbing, once he understood what he was looking at. The monsters were an obvious problem that need not be examined too deeply, except to know that they were dangerous, and prevented a great deal of life from properly taking hold in all these spaces that had been made for people. Because now that Erick was down here, he saw exactly how Veird was supposed to work.

Sure, the land was destroyed and much of the infrastructure was gone, but the tunnels themselves remained. The general ‘sewage system’ of the oceans and waterways remained. Massive caverns that should have held nations were now empty. Skyscraper-sized crystals that should have lit up the dark, bringing light to the deepest parts of this world, were now on the ground and broken in millions of pieces and covered with a millennium of dirt.

But, back when Veird was first created…

This land was meant to be filled with people.

All of it. Filled to the brim with people. Filled with worlds of life.

And yet, it was filled with monsters.

There were a lot of people down here, too, but not nearly as many as this place could support. Just like Yggdrasil’s cavern, the Underworld was only 1% populated. And wasn’t that a kick in the pants. This place had been an ark and now it was a graveyard.

That was ancient history, though.

Erick noticed something more present-day as he scouted out the Underworld. Remembering back to the holographic map of the local t-station network, under the embassy, and connecting that map with the settlements he saw out here, Erick recognized the wrought garrisons in some towns as holders of a t-station. Those towns with a t-station (and with the wrought garrison protecting that t-station and town) formed minor hubs in well-protectable locations. Outside of those main lands there were settlements located near other natural resources, like underground lakes and farmable lands. But those people in those satellite lands were high level and ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. The wrought garrisons were obviously fallback points only to be used in an emergency, which would have been fine, but…

One question kept coming up as Erick scouted the Underworld. Where were the other lands? The other nations, outside of Stratagold?

But there was nothing.

The world was dark down here, and only those people who had access to a t-station, or lived near a place that had a t-station, were able to survive. But the t-stations were not like a [Gate] network, linking everyone to everyone else.

Thanks to his talk with Tasar about shipping, Erick knew that people regularly moved between settlements, out in the deeper dark, trundling along under massively heavy guard and lots of active, protective spellwork. It was only thanks to those wrought caravaneers and the strong mages and other flesh-based defenders of various noble houses that any of these societies could exist at all. People —vetted people, mostly nobility— could sometimes move between t-stations, but cargo could not; there were rules about that. A lot of rules, but with those rules came a lot of help.

It was clear to Erick, from all the evidence sitting in front of him, that it was impossible to make it in this land without a direct connection to Stratagold. That fact had some disturbing implications for just how much power Stratagold had over these people, because it’s not like the people in these places were weak. There were humans and dragonkin and incani on every single fortification wall, casting [Fireball]s and otherwise, right next to wrought commanders. But only the wrought garrisons themselves had runework. Only the wrought garrisons had runic cannons like Erick had seen at Enduring Forge. Only the wrought had t-stations. There were anti-[Stoneshape] runic webs in every wall and under every foundation, but they were hidden like secrets.

City life was safe enough, but it was a very loose definition of ‘safe’. Erick was literally clearing out problems inside some of those cities that had no idea they were under threat. Sometimes the barons got mad that certain responsibilities weren’t upheld by the wrought, but the wrought always said something about ‘not being allowed to do X, and you know we’re not’. Erick found himself siding with the barons almost all the time. But at the same time, it seemed to him that the wrought were allowing themselves to be pushed away from responsibility, which… Was a thing.

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

And yet, it was clear that ultimate responsibility for safety lay at the feet of the wrought. All the fleshy people in this Underworld lived under their silent rule.

Now, to be fair, Erick did not think that Stratagold was doing anything untoward; not at all. But what was happening was that Stratagold held the reins of power, and they were using that power to support other people. Without them, there was no life down here. The Underworld flourished or died based on the whims of the wrought.

… This was probably vastly unfair to them. People could only do so much against the dark; even immortals could not change the reality of monsters everywhere, and of Melemizargo prowling out there just out of sight. Perhaps it was different in other lands, where there were no wrought. Perhaps Erick was simply in the ‘center of a nation’ as it were, and of course, Stratagold held the power while within their national borders. Perhaps handing out runic webs to the people at large had led to horrors in the past, and since the wrought were immortal, they knew not to do that, so they buried their anti-[Stoneshape] runic webs out of sight.

Erick was deeply uncomfortable with what he was seeing, because…

Would he do it any differently? If he had control of a nation, and people wanted to live near him and benefit from his power, would he demand they follow his rules? Would he allow them to make their own mistakes? Erick had already done just that, a little, by slotting himself into Silverite’s reign as one of her archmages. But for Candlepoint, he was very much silent. He was an assistant; not a leader.

Was that the correct path? Was Candlepoint falling apart without his direct oversight? Likely no…

Probably not.

It was arrogance itself to assume that he knew best how to manage anything, just because he was strong. No. Leave the management to others. Erick could guard the walls.

… Which was exactly what the wrought were doing. So maybe he sided with them, actually.

All of this was a topic to bring up with Tasar and the EIPC people the next time he saw them.

Anyway. According to the wrought’s ideology, and unless Erick was wildly misinterpreting what he was seeing, they were doing the most they could reasonably do. And Erick could help with that. Maybe he needed to see what Ryul was doing with Archmage’s Rest, and get in on that, for there was likely more than enough archmage-level work to go around.

Ah.

At that thought, Erick relaxed many of his objections to Stratagold. They did help people, all the time. The problem was just too large to ever actually solve. Or, at least, it was too large to solve with current methods. That’s where Erick needed to focus his goals. Solving systemic problems as well as solving monster problems. The people down here could certainly use more runic webs.

Of course, the downside to interacting with the wrought was the threat of outing himself as a Wizard.

Eh.

People still needed help, and he was going to give it to them.

If the worst came to pass and he needed to run, Erick had already found one way out of the Underworld that didn’t require t-station access. Only the one, though. Erick’s range wasn’t what he was used to down here, so maybe there were more, but Vibrant Falls came down from the ocean, so, theoretically, he could return to the Surface by going up the falls.

That was only in case of emergency, though. If Bright Tea and the inquiry went well, then he would have Stratagold at his back, and then Oceanside came next, and then came ‘finding a Wizard’, which Erick suspected would become something closer to ‘try to figure out this Wizardly shit while dodging Tasar’s various sights’. If things went badly he’d…

Go to Candlepoint? Set up with the shadelings?

No. That seemed like a bad idea for a hundred reasons.

Anyway…

Erick came back to himself, had some physical food and some [Renew] food, and then he went to bed. He slept well knowing that he had done a lot of actual good out there today. Tomorrow, he’d do even more. Maybe he’d even take a look at some of the other letters he got, see if there were any other large non-monster problems he could solve for people.

– – – –

Erick woke. Breakfast was another copied meal and more [Renew]. And then, since a day had passed, Erick tried to make another [Steadfast Ward]. This time he kept it utterly simple, using just [Force Wall] and [Personal Ward] and a good Shaping to Ethereal, making the Force fall in line with the rest of his body.

It turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but Erick was on the right track, for sure.

He decided that he wanted to keep the ‘This spell is extraordinarily resistant toward dispelling effects.’ part that he got from including anti-Dispel frameworks. So then he made that spell. A blue box appeared.

For his third attempt, Erick decided to try adding [Renew] to the mix, just to see what would happen. It wouldn’t be an undirected addition, of course. He channeled the spell through a hand and listened to the sounds of renewal and regrow—

Hmm.

There was something there.

Erick channeled [Renew] in one hand and [Grow] in another.

There was something there. Whatever it was… Seemed recursive? Like an ever growing sound that didn’t actually grow at all? Well… That just made a whole lot of sense, didn’t it! Erick smiled. See this? This was why he loved magic. There were so many connections everywhere, and this right here was too good of an avenue of inquiry to leave unexplored.

Erick handed five spells off to Ophiel; [Ward], [Force Wall], [Dispel], [Grow], and [Renew]. It was an odd combination, with an odd melody hiding within the discordant sound, but with an adjustment here and a heightening there the fog of jumbled Realities began to clear into something deeper. Erick added in some tricks of Permanency—

Suddenly, the obscuring static between him and this new magic went away, revealing the music of a mountain that only grew with each drop of falling mana. He realized that all his ideas for Permanency magic were already inside [Renew], and also that he had cast the spell before he had thought to cast.

Ethereal Force took hold inside his flesh, solidifying in his body like so much phantom imagery. Bones of heartwood that might bend but would never break. Bark for skin, and only the strongest wood for muscle. Structures like roots spread from his heart, perfectly following his arteries to then return through his veins and strengthen all the other tubules of his body.

He held up his hand, slowly and just as easily as he usually did, feeling no entrapment or danger. He did feel a hollowness inside, though, because this spell had taken a lot of mana—

Erick blinked a bit, and then smiled. This was a good spell. This was almost exactly what he wanted, anyway. Magic was wonderful! After a bit of testing with [Hermetic Shredder], [Unbreakable Form] worked exactly as it should. It even looked good; like nothing at all except for a very strong and oddly Shaped [Personal Ward], that one would only notice as odd if they had a good mana sense. Erick’s usual [Personal Ward] sometimes shimmered white when he took damage, or when he moved too much, but this thing had no visual effect at all.

It might not work for Erick, himself, for anything over 2000 damage would still get through this sort of defense, even with it maxed at 500 absolute defense, and he had very much taken hits worth well over 50,000 points of damage in the past. His current [Personal Ward] was worth nearly 130,000 points of defense, for reference, but there were no natural damage reductions on that. Erick took the full hits, every time.

With this new spell, even counting his Constitution-enhanced defenses with [Defend] active, which only lasted a minute, giving him 95% damage reduction, a 50,000 hit would still cause 2500 points of damage, which would still be 2000 damage straight to Erick’s Health.

He only had 2600 Health.

So Erick needed something more normal than this. Perhaps Riivo was right and a [Steadfast Ward] was just not good for him. A hybrid spell would do everything he wanted, but that sort of spell was apparently ‘too difficult’. According to Riivo, they had records of such things in the archives of Archmage’s Rest, but nothing substantive other than ‘yes, this theory does actually work; good luck trying to replicate this success, and also this person never filled out that record properly, so I can’t even show you how it is supposed to go together’.

Anyway! Yggdrasil couldn’t very well use a [Personal Ward] for at least another 100 years, because that would require him to use all his mana to make a good one, and since he was mana, that would kill him. So [Unbreakable Form] was good for him.

Erick handed the spell over to Yggdrasil. The big guy cast it upon himself and nothing visually changed. But it worked. There was a definite ethereal/physical change, though. Thanks to Yggdrasil using [Eternal Stonetree] his body was more than that of a normal [Familiar]; it was filled with actual structures instead of hollow magic. He had heartwood and bark and sapwood, along with vesicles of his own. Now, those things became lined in Ethereal Force. On the surface, there was no change, but under the surface, Erick watched as Yggdrasil became much more solid.

Yggdrasil exclaimed, “The bitey fish no longer bite!”

Erick smiled. “Absolute defense is like having tougher skin and stronger bones; you simply can’t be hurt until the attacker overcomes that barrier—” He paused.

Erick almost asked if Yggdrasil wanted to do some testing, to see exactly how much damage he could take, but Erick didn’t want to hurt Yggdrasil. Not at all. And yet he probably should, just to know what sort of numbers he was dealing with—

That reminded him of something else. How much ‘Health’ did Yggdrasil have, anyway? For [Familiar]s, their Mana was their Health. For Ophiel this number was easy to know; it was the same as Erick’s own Mana, at just over 13k. But the blue box for Yggdrasil only ever said that Yggdrasil had a lot more mana and resources than him. So, actually, there was no way to know what sort of mana resources Yggdrasil had at his disposal.

So did Erick need to do that sort of testing right now? Would it even be useful? No. Not really. Yggdrasil would eventually become fully real, and at that time, Yggdrasil could run his own numbers himself. For right now, [Unbreakable Form] was more defenses than the big guy had ever had before, and those defenses would continue to grow, so this was fine.

Erick continued, “Your [Unbreakable Form] will become a lot stronger with more casts, so when you can, recast it. Don’t get low on mana, though.”

“Okay!”

Yggdrasil instantly recast the spell, then again, and again. And agai—

“That’s enough.” Erick said, “You can stop. That’s maximum effectiveness.”

“Okay.” Yggdrasil shimmered a bit, then said, “This funny feeling. Strong feeling.”

“Are you okay?”

“I good!”

“… Yes, you are good, Yggdrasil.”

And he had just spent 37,500 mana. Erick knew that Yggdrasil had a lot more mana than him, but damn.

Erick almost went back to magic making, but he decided to put his thoughts in order while he did something else for a little while, and he knew just what he needed to do. First, he tore apart the failed spells he had made, and then he said to Yggdrasil, “I’m going to go back into town for a while. Are you going to play with the fishes?”

“Yes.” Yggdrasil said, “Big fishes Holorulo bite rough, but can’t bite now. I stronger.”

Erick smiled, happy for several reasons. First, it was rather apparent that [Unbreakable Form] suited Yggdrasil quite well. Yggdrasil also seemed to be getting better with words. The big guy was still missing a lot of joining words, but he was getting there.

Pretty good for a 5 month old.

– – – –

The Church of Rozeta was split into two parts; public and business. The whole thing was large enough to be a cathedral worthy of two or three gods, or perhaps all the varied gods of Veird, but it was dedicated to only one. The embassy was easily over 100 times the size of the church, though, so the church obviously wasn’t the important structure in this cavern.

The public section of the church had thousands of people waiting for appointments with hundreds of Registrars, while a small ceremony for the freshly Matriculated was going on in the main room, under the watchful eyes of a stone depiction of Rozeta, half-hiding behind her clouds.

The business section of the church, nearer and connected to the embassy, was much more in line with the rest of the embassy; hallways, offices, nice lighting instead of opulent lighting that truly made the sculptures and frescos seem to come to life.

It was that part of the place that Erick now walked, having been guided this way by the guy at the front desk, and further by the various signs here and there. He had yet to talk to someone in the church. People had been staring at him this whole time, and no one had tried to talk to him, to ask why he was there and if they could help. They wanted to know why he was there; Erick could tell by the wide eyes and the quiet stares and the polite bows that everyone gave him. None of the people here looked like young acolytes, either. Maybe some of the shinier wrought were young, but they were silver, so Erick sort of doubted that interpretation. It was hard to tell the age of most wrought based on their looks.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Not a single person stopped his walk to the deeper offices.

Which was kinda odd. If Erick hadn’t scouted the place out with Ophiel flying around outside then he would have been lost. Maybe it was because Erick knew where he was going that no one made to stop him? Perhaps.

The place he was headed didn’t seem too popular, though it was still very much an important part of the church.

Erick arrived near his destination. A basic stone arch framed the start of some stairs that went to the floor above. It was a rather basic architectural feature of little importance, except it did read in thick, unassuming runes: ‘Offices of the Inquisition’. There were no guards. There were no guarding magics. The nearest other offices were in the other hallway. Nothing was here, in this place, that wasn’t supposed to be here.

Erick walked through the archway and started up the stairs.

The stairs curled back over to the second floor, where Erick exited into a plain office room. He was almost startled. He didn’t expect to see Rozeta here, but—

She wasn’t Rozeta.

She was a white wrought of human female form, and she had thoughts coming off of her whole body like invisible tendrils. Erick instantly reevaluated the woman. She sat behind a desk, like she was a normal person here to greet visitors and not some ancient killer of people exactly like Erick.

The woman passively looked his way, a bit perturbed by Erick’s wordless words of recrimination.

Erick almost apologized, but he knew he had gotten his impression right the second time. And besides, he had a lot more words of recrimination for them besides that. What was going on outside these walls was near criminal. Stratagold should be helping everyone everywhere, a lot more than they currently were.

The white woman narrowed her eyes a fraction.

Oh, sure, there were problems of runic webs getting out of control and everything ending up in a Forgotten Campaign anyway. But if everything worked out with his own Worldly Path, then he would be opening up new worlds in maybe ten years, or a hundred at the latest. All he had to do was get everyone on board, first. The inquisition was just the first step —perhaps the largest step— of many more steps yet to come. Making Melemizargo sane was a large problem too, and he had no idea how to fix that except for the passage of time, and with people actually helping the guy through his trauma instead of shunning him. Which… Someone had to have attempted it in the past, right?

The woman sighed.

“Unsuccessful attempt, then,” Erick spoke, breaking the silence.

“I heard the stories about how good you are at reading people, but I’m still amazed to experience it myself.” The woman said, “And you’re… So very much not a mind mage. You have absolutely zero capability. And yet…” Her words trailed off as if to say that Erick was a mind mage, but of a different sort. One that they weren’t allowed to force into their society, to adhere to their rules. She said, “Yes. Exactly that. Anyway. Kromolok will be back in minutes.” She got up from her chair, then walked toward a side room, saying, “Come on then. We have some rooms that can’t be spied on. Can’t have this discussion out here.”

Erick followed, asking, “What’s your name?”

“Uchena.” Uchena said, “Kromolok has been here the longest of any of us, but I am a close second.”

They walked into a side room with runic web ribbons strung throughout the walls, like a Faraday cage. The spellwork was inactive at the moment, but Erick guessed it was some impressive Privacy magic. While the whole church and embassy had a timeless quality to it, the furniture in this room looked comparatively new; comfortable and soft. Uchena grabbed a seat for herself as she gestured to one of the others in the room.

“How old is Kromolok and the Inquisition?” Erick asked, as he sat down across from the white wrought.

Uchena said, “Kromolok was among the first of us born on this world when the Grand Translation solidified the wrought into their immortal forms. I came along soon after, but the Inquisition didn’t come along until year 11; when the first of the extra Bans needed to happen. We didn’t learn these Mind Mage tricks until later.” She added, “We don’t actually adhere to the Mind Mage code, either. We’re the enforcers of that code. We’re the enforcers of many unsaid codes all across this world, to ensure that nothing ever breaks ever again.”

Erick felt a spike of worry and almost asked what she meant by not adhering to the Mind Mage code, but it was a reflexive question, which he already knew the answer to. This woman was a killer. So why was she trying to intimidate him? Was… Had he walked into a trap, while thinking he was just going to pop in to see if they needed help with something? But Kromolok had told him to come on over if he wanted to talk, and—

There was a dissonance here. What he saw in Unchena’s microexpressions and tone of voice and all the rest of her was not the feeling that he got. She displayed poise, but she was ready to kill.

She wanted to kill him.

But that was just… Ridiculous. Right? He had come here to help, and she was trying to…

Something was very, very wrong. He was in danger. Nothing had changed in the manasphere, and nothing had tested his Domain. Uchena remained seated in her chair, looking like a perfectly at-ease person. But she was very much not that at all. She was boiling with anger. Ready to cut him down if he moved wrong at all. And she would do it without remorse, too. The only other people whom Erick had ever gotten this dangerous feeling from were the Shades.