188, 1/2

The sun cast light into Erick’s room at a slight angle. It was almost noon. Tomorrow, Redflame would attempt to make [Renew]; spending a million or more mana in order to create something that Rozeta had already explicitly said that she was never going to allow to be Remade. Erick wasn’t sure if such a restriction worked here in Ar’Cosmos, but he bet it would. Fairy Moon had even confirmed over breakfast that Rozeta’s restriction would likely hold.

There was a still small chance that Redflame could actually succeed, but that chance was measured in the single digit percentage points.

And so, in order for peace to have a chance, Erick had decided that Ar’Cosmos could not be made overly vulnerable due to the loss of Redflame’s minor mana fortune. Ar’Cosmos was actually the weakest ‘most powerful force’ on Veird at the moment, if only because of their lack of land, and now that the Shades were gone and the stability of Glaquin shattered, the dragons might be next on the chopping block.

But the dragons represented a possibility to Erick. A possibility for him to attain stability and power and protection. He knew that, under the current situation, he would not get anything like that from Kirginatharp, or from the Wrought, because as soon as they found out he was a Wizard then they would have to try to capture or kill him. Erick’s only other options besides Ar’Cosmos were the remnant Shades, and Melemizargo, and that seemed like the absolute last resort.

And so, Erick went back to the accretion books from Illustrious and the enchanting books from Inferno Maw. He needed to change the game. He needed to add a new variable. And he already had a good idea. He could try to use Redflame’s [Renew]-based theory on curing the Dragon Curse, and make that cure himself.

… And he had.

It was, for sure, not the solution that the powers of Ar’Cosmos had wanted. But the people trapped here with half-mutated Curses and half-dragon bodies might appreciate what Erick had done.

If this actually worked.

The idea had come to him in a flash of insight when reading about how one could create a second core, thus advancing to Third Foundation, and thus increasing one’s mana-per-second cap to 1000, and also how one could abandon one’s core entirely, without dying due to catastrophic loss of soul and Dragon Essence. A catastrophic shift of Dragon Essence, either with gaining a new core or trying to abandon their old, usually killed most half-dragons that tried for it. This is where wyrms came from.

The soul both created and was created by one’s core, after all. That’s just how it worked. To break the core was to severely harm the person and usually kill them, but dragons had been creating and discarding cores for forever. They knew how to discard a core. Gaining a second core or abandoning an old one were both integral parts of attempting to accrete one’s way out of half-dragon status.

Gaining a new core or discarding an old core did not fix the muddled Dragon Essence problem which caused half dragons to exist, though. Now that was a complicated problem. But attaining such a transformation of one’s soul boded well for future attempts at fully embracing Elemental Fae, Death, or Carnage.

Actually removing all the Dragon Essence one had was a theorized way to ‘step around’ all these problems. But there again was another problem. For minor cases of Dragon Essence poisoning, one could recover from the removal of such Dragon Essence. Jane had experienced this, herself. She only consumed a small bit of Dragon Essence, though, and the removal of that had put her in a hospital at Oceanside under a medically-induced coma for a month.

Dragon Essence was… Complicated.

And not just because of the Blood Curse imbued into Dragon Essence itself, way back at the start of the Script. That Curse caused all dragons who saw and recognized another dragon to instantly attack the other dragon. According to what Erick had read outside of Ar’Cosmos, and even here recently, what the Curse did was turn the territorial instincts of a dragon up to 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. Dragon Essence demanded victors rise to the top and losers pay homage. Before the Curse, the winners rose to the top in their society while the losers paid homage to the winners. Nothing else would happen. Under the Curse, though, the losers just died, because winners took the Dragon Essence they won directly out of the losers, and such a loss was catastrophic to the soul.

Dragon Essence, when it touched a soul, was like a comprehensive Blessing, Curse, and transformation all rolled into one. A soul touched by Dragon Essence was forever changed. It was like taking the bones of a person and replacing them with adamantium, and then gifting that person the ability to thrive under such a change. But the removal of the Dragon Essence was the removal of those bones. Such removals left a person without any structure to support their souls, and thus they collapsed into wyrms.

The only way dragon society had ever survived the horror of ‘removing’ the Dragon Curse was with Paradoxing/Creationing their Dragon Essence into one of the approved and experimentally proven ‘safe essences’.

Or by living in Ar’Cosmos, where Dragon Essence wasn’t affected by the Curse. Here, in this fae-blessed land, dragons could live without the Curse driving them to kill each other on sight. Here, in this fae-cursed land, was the only place dragons could ever meet each other without going to war.

Erick wanted to change that for so many different reasons, but also because it was the right thing to do. No one should be trapped in a tiny world like Ar’Cosmos, or anywhere else for that matter.

But also, releasing such powerful beings like dragons into the world at large…

Could be dangerous.

… Would be dangerous.

Rozeta had explicitly said that Veird could not handle a true flight of dragons, whatever that meant.

And so, with the ideas of ‘core formation’ at the same time as ‘core purification’, which would then lead to ‘core removal’, and through using runic inscriptions to enact a [Renew]-based effect…

Completing the initial designs had taken Erick about an hour.

And now, his latest enchanting project sat on his desk, waiting for him to continue. He had started with a square-shaped line of platinum a meter long, and then he had added two small angles to the ends. Then, he bent the whole thing into a circle, ensuring that the angles matched and that the whole thing was stable, and solid. It wasn’t a perfect ring due to a gap between those angles, but it was the shape it had to be; the rune for [Renew], but weighty and thin.

The metal rune was fully chalked up and ready for inscriptions. Erick had stopped there, because while getting this far was easy, and the next part would either work or it wouldn’t, he was still stuck on ‘should’, or ‘shouldn’t’. He was probably going to, even despite his reservations, just because Redflame would know by tomorrow that Renew had already been made, and all the other implications thereof. Adding to that the fact that this sort of magic was going to get out, anyway, because that was Erick’s whole goal in making [Renew] in the first place, and…

Erick was hesitating. He knew that. And yet…

Erick breathed deep as he circled back on his decision for the tenth time.

He was pretty sure that this thing was going to work. And that it was going to work really well. The effect was simple, once you ignored all the intricacies of soul surgery and shit like that, which, to be fair, should not be ignored. But then again Erick was doing Wizardry here, and Paradox Wizardry at that.

This thing…

When Erick finally made it.

This thing would first [Identify] the bloodline of the person using it, and then suppress that bloodline through the methods outlined in the manuals Erick had read, and then the actual effect would begin. Through constant use, this runic device should replace a person’s bloodlines with clean, untainted mana. It would fully remove all Elemental Body influences, and replace those influences with stable, baseline mana that coincided with the user’s original mana. It would remove the Dragon Curse by removing the Elemental Dragon Body from a person, turning them into whatever body they happened to be at that time.

There were nuances to using it properly, of course, like one needed to [Polymorph] into whatever Familiar Form they wanted to be before they used this device. Otherwise they’d just end up existing in whatever Familiar Form they were when they used it. Erick wasn’t fully sure, but he was pretty sure that this thing would erase all Elemental Body spells from a person, since that was the idea behind the whole thing, after all.

This device was most decidedly not what Redflame or the dragons of Ar’Cosmos wanted, for they wanted to make dragons out of half-dragons; not humans/incani/whatever out of half-dragons. But this idea had come to Erick and it had lodged in his brain as the best possible option.

Maybe.

But…

Erick could already tell that this design could be modified. With a certain kind of addition —perhaps replacing some of the [Cleanse] runes Erick had used here and there— one could gain any type of Elemental Body they wanted.

This could easily be transformed into some sort of dragon-maker.

And now that Erick was here, staring at his project, he was unsure —yet again— if he wanted to proceed.

Erick breathed deep, and whispered to himself, “I guess I started off making rings that cleaned away curses… Only fair that I’m here now, I suppose. And that I made another ring.”

[Renew]’s rune was very much a ring; Erick had not missed that when Rozeta had shown him [Renew] for the first time.

There was something poetic about that…

Which is likely why Erick finally decided that he had to do this, for it was going to be done anyway, and he might as well be the one to cure the Dragon Curse. Let other people be blamed for transforming his good will into horrors. Halting progress just because it led to dangers was not the right way to live.

Dangers could be solved, anyway, once they were known.

… That did it.

Erick picked up his black carving knife and started cutting into the platinum, imbuing each word with power.

It took him nearly 3000 mana and half an hour to finish the inscriptions. The ring of square-sided platinum was now absolutely covered with sharp runes and powerful meaning. Sweat dripped from his brow as he leaned back in his chair, holding the ring in his hands. He set it down…

And then he began working on a second ring.

This one was designed differently; specifically with regard to the ‘replacement’ function of the original. Instead of fully cleaning out a bloodline, it would replace all possible bloodlines of a person with the imbued bloodline. This, then, was something closer to what the dragons actually wanted.

It probably wouldn’t work with the already-Paradoxed House-approved bloodlines of Ar’Cosmos. Elemental Fae, Death, and Carnage seemed like they were too mutated to be put into a ‘Cleansing Renew’ ring.

For this second ring, Erick imbued it with his light-aspected bloodline, since it was the only option he had on hand.

It was just a prototype, though, for a true ‘bloodline replacer’ would likely need to use some Elemental Essence of some sort… But maybe not? Essence armor was designed to get used up, and soak into the soul of a person. This thing would never get ‘used up’. It would just string mana through its various runes, transforming into a bloodline, and then that bloodline would go into a person, and gradually reinforce itself through continued use of the ring.

With two rings now sitting in front of him, Erick hoped he had done the right thing. Both of them were prototypes in idea and execution, so they might not even work, but if they did…

He needed to test them. Erick did not use the Eraser, which is what he just now decided to call the first ring. But as he looked at the second one… He decided to call that one the Replacer, and to use that one, to see if it worked at all. Theoretically, there shouldn’t be any change to his core or himself at all, and it should feel like he was simply [Renew]ing himself; generally pleasant, and relaxing.

Erick grabbed the second one in both hands, held it in front of himself, and soaked it with his aura. Instantly, the white-gold metal began to shine with an inner light. The runes etched into the sides began to glow iridescent white.

Slowly, he channeled [Renew] into the ring—

White mana flowed through the ring like trickles of rain, pitter pattering inside the platinum, streaming around like a lazy river, until it hit the gap in the ring. Light welled within that gap, and a droplet of iridescent white mana gathered—

Like a tiny river splitting in half, barely flowing at all, one drop of white light fell into the other arrow, back into the ring. A second drop of light fell sideways, aimed directly at Erick’s chest like the ring was the sky and Erick was the ground. The magic went right through his shirt and his flesh and struck his core, directly, soaking in without resistance.

The contact was like a relaxing massage, or the touch of a loved one on the scalp.

Erick cut the flow. Light dimmed. The ring dulled, though the platinum was shinier than before, but barely; Erick had enough Perception to tell that much. It was very, very lightly enchanted.

And it had worked.

At its most basic level, which was to accept mana and turn it into liquid-soul-healing magic, it had worked. The effect was rather relaxing, too, which was exactly the same feeling Erick got when he had [Renew]ed himself to keep his core stable. Before Erick had been dragged to Ar’Cosmos he had felt that cycling and [Renew]ing and eating rads were the only ways to heal a broken core, but now he knew that proper accretion could do the same…

For a long moment, Erick just sat there, wondering what he had done.

“Well,” Erick said, mostly to himself, but also to Ophiel and Yggdrasil who had watched him this whole time. “It might be able to cure a dragon of their Curse. Or it might really, really fuck the user up. I have no idea.” He frowned a little, as he looked at the world-shifter in his hands. “Human trials are next… eh?”

Erick stared at the Replacer in his hands. He glanced over to the Eraser, then back to the Replacer.

… He could try clearing out his bloodline, and then getting it back?

“Nope!” Erick decided rather emphatically, “Not doing that.”

But this was as good as Erick could do in a day.

It needed to have been done today, too, and now, Redflame had to see them. To do that, though… Erick would out himself as a Wizard. ‘Reluctant’ was not a large enough word, he felt, to be able to encompass all of his current emotions surrounding the current scenario.

Whatever.

Erick had Ophiel [Metalshape] some iron into an octagonal box to hold both the rings, one in each half of the clamshell design. A few additions of cloth and clips secured the rings, while a single cast of [Sealed Privacy Ward] made for rather decent security, but which would only last an hour. Erick could [Renew] that magic to extend that duration, if he was surreptitious enough about it, but he likely would not be doing that. Ophiel would just have to cast the spell again if it was needed.

… Erick added a secondary cast of [Delirium Charm] upon the box that would last ten days. It would have to be good enough.

– – – –

Erick spent ten more minutes agonizing over what he was about to do, and then he put those thoughts behind him. There was no getting around what was coming. He just had to deal. In order to deal, though, he needed to prepare…

Erick sat down onto his accretion pillow and held his aura open, extending a thread from his core to the air above his palm, giving the coming ritual a place to deposit the result of his casting. Extending his aura like this was pretty normal for him, since getting a core. He didn’t actually have to do this for most of his smaller spells, but for his larger spells, the ritual of it all was necessary.

(There was a lot of nuance to that statement, and all of that nuance was about how people cast from their souls, but with a core which fully held Erick’s soul, every spell he cast should have burst out of his chest in gruesome ways. But that didn’t happen. He could still cast spells with the point of origin being his hands, for instance. The accretion manual writers of Ar’Cosmos had answered this question for Erick, though; Health and body-accretion acted as a soul for the purposes of spellcasting origins.)

And now, Erick finally had the base mana needed to cast some of his larger-cost spells, like [Summon Ophiel]. Having a few more Ophiel would go a long, long way to being prepared for a rainy day, or a bad time revealing secrets to Redflame! Ophiel couldn’t just summon more of himself, though, even here in Ar’Cosmos when the Script was so far away. Erick had already tried that.

There were multiple reasons for such a limitation, Erick guessed.

He supposed what was actually happening, besides an imposed limitation of the Script against Propagation magic (no summoned creatures could summon more of themselves) was Ophiel had his own mana, and his own regeneration, but he didn’t actually have mana, or regeneration. He had base values that were directly derived from Erick’s values, at the time of casting.

And since Ophiel had no actual base values, the ‘value’ of any Ophiel he cast would therefore be 0; an automatically failed spell. But all that seemed rather too nuanced to be the root cause of the problem.

Erick still figured that the Propagation Ban was what was really preventing Ophiel from summoning more Ophiel, though, even if Ophiel wasn’t like most other summons. Ophiel actually regenerated his own mana, after all, and that was new. Erick had done that. Had that been Wizardry?

Results inconclusive.

Erick had also helped other people to accomplish the same thing, so maybe… Maybe Ophiel wasn’t Wizardry? Maybe Ophiel truly was just a new type of summoned creature? Or maybe not.

Ophiel was not the only instance of Erick summoning a creature who already had mana. Yggdrasil was the same, sort of. With this other data point, and the fact that no one else had ever made a World Tree before, perhaps Erick had just uncovered a way of summoning that was mostly lost to others?

For a long moment, Erick felt self-conscious. Had any of his successes been his own? Or was his Wizardry the cause? Inferno Maw had openly disdained the Wizards who could no longer do magic once their ‘easy magic’ had been taken from them…

Whatever.

Erick cleared his mind, and focused on the [Summon Ophiel] spell inside of himself. He had never really cast like this, or even gone ‘soul searching’ like this, but this was part of the process and he could probably figure it out if he kept at it enough.

With eyes closed, Erick focused inward, trying to find something which he had only ever seen once, and back when he was in the middle of a lot of pain from that Soul Spear attack. Ophiel’s ‘node’ had been a windy, chiming—

Oh.

Right. It was easier than that, wasn’t it?

Erick hummed a tune of [Summon Ophiel] and his light-filled aura vibrated with the magic.

He opened his eyes, and watched as he filled his aura with a cast of [Summon Ophiel], while simultaneously realizing he had fucked up. Mana rushed out of his core like a breach in a dam, for he was trying to cast like he always had; a single spell every second, no matter the mana cost. Usually his mana costs were only in the double digits, anyway, thanks to Intelligence.

Less than a second had passed since he had started, but it was too late to stop the flow.

Everything fell apart as a small crack traced across his core. Mana gushed out of the mana veins of his arm in an uncontrolled burst; following the line from where he was trying to cast, to his core. Erick winced. Ophiel cooed nearby, twittering in concerned flutes. Erick just waved him off, saying that he was fine, and he was. Mostly. He had no Status to display his loss, but he felt like around 750 mana had been lost to the air. The crack in his core was more phantom than reality, too, for as Erick gazed inward, he tried looking for the fracture and found nothing. Either he had healed that fast, or… Erick wasn’t sure.

All he knew was that he had drawn too deep and his core did not like that.

Erick breathed deep, and centered himself again. This time, he went slower. Ophiel’s original spell cost 1505 mana, so Erick plotted out a four second cast time to be on the safe side. He extended a pseudopod of light-filled aura out from his hand. He focused, and then restarted the ritual. The center of that light container filled with the image of Ophiel, which then filled in with solidness, manifesting over the course of four seconds. Wings, eyes, flutes and violins, the sounds of birds and the sound of the wind.

And then the ritual was done.

Erick released his aura and Ophiel popped into the world, blinking and tweeting and already reorienting himself to his new position. The Ophiel on the headboard bounced and trilled as the second Ophiel took his place on the balcony outside, happily dancing and flopping around in the sun, positioning himself to the next most important vantage point nearby.

This was good. Erick smiled. He had trained the little guy well.

There were some small issues, of course, for this latest Ophiel only had around 3000 Mana and 6000 Mana Regen per hour while at Rest. The original Ophiel had around 13,000 Mana, and 60,000 Regen, for he had been cast with Erick’s Normal Form’s powers. This was fine, though. This was still an expansion of Erick’s capabilities, and a large expansion at that.

Piece by piece, he was getting his power back.

For his next Ophiel, Erick attempted to make use of his newfound understanding of Elemental Mystical.

His first try got him an Ophiel for only 950 Mana. Erick barely understood how he had done that, but it certainly felt like it had only taken 950 Mana to cast a 1505 Mana summon. Now he was bottomed out, though, so, perhaps… This was good enough, for now?

It was.

Erick got up, grabbed the clamshell ring case, and headed downstairs.

Fairy Moon and Maid Maria were waiting for him in the dining room. Both of them had been doing some paperwork, but they stepped away from that work when they saw Erick. Both of them stared at the iron luggage in his left hand, and while Fairy Moon soon moved her gaze toward Erick, Maria’s vibrant pink eyes were locked upon the octagonal box. She knew what was inside the [Ward]ed box, and she wanted it, though she was afraid at the same time. Erick had no idea what that was about, exactly, but he would likely find out soon enough, for Fairy Moon and Maria both wore nice clothes. They were both ready to head over to Redflame for an unscheduled visit, just like Erick was. Tomorrow, Redflame would attempt [Renew], so Erick needed to lay out everything to the old dragon, today.

An hour from now, or possibly less.

Erick still wasn’t sure if he was ready, but like that ever mattered. He had questions to ask, though.

… But as silence stretched, he wasn’t sure how to ask his questions.

Fairy Moon and Maria just waited. Maria seemed to need the extra moments to gather herself, anyway. It took her a full minute to pry her eyes off of the ring case, but she finally looked to Erick, and then she realized what she had been doing. She was embarrassed for her break in decorum, but it was a small embarrassment, easily overlooked.

There was a lot going through Erick’s mind, after all. Mainly, Erick had not entered into a covenant with Fairy Moon last night, and he hoped that his hesitation had not been a mistake.

Fairy Moon waited patiently for him to speak.

Erick breathed in, then said, “I want this to work out in everyone’s favor, but this desire includes my own fate. Can I count on you to be on my side, Fairy Moon? Or will you give me up to the dragons when they demand my sacrifice?”

Fairy Moon spoke, “I will protect your purposes and person as though they were my own, as long as your desired destiny drives you to seek the stars.”

Caveats upon caveats.

Not good.

But probably as close to ‘good’ as Erick could get.

Erick added one specific clause, though, demanding, “No more mind fuckery.”

Fairy Moon drew herself up, and then said, “If my magics will save your purpose and your person without causing undue duress, I will not leave any option off the table.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“… Make sure it’s your last option, then.”

“I will make it near the last, but if the solution to a Sundering is to slave you for a single sentence, then I will do what I must do,” Fairy Moon said, without remorse.

Erick frowned. “I don’t want to regret helping you and yours, Fairy Moon. I need you to understand that.”

“I understand utterly.” Fairy Moon said, “I sense the Sight of Fickle Fate before us, and will ensure that each of us come out of this with much more than what we went in.”

Erick took a deep breath and dialed down his paranoia. He said, “Then let us be off, and see what becomes of this new world order.” He hefted the metal case, adding, “If these things even work.”

Fairy Moon turned and walked toward a closed door that instantly opened, revealing a forest path beyond. Erick followed, and soon enough, Maria hurried along. Yggdrasil hung out on Erick’s left shoulder, while one of Ophiel sat upon his right. Fairy Moon briefly looked at the second Ophiel, who rapidly followed behind, catching up with Erick on the forest path.

– – – –

The third Ophiel remained behind, in Erick’s room. He had a bit of trouble sending his sight through that Ophiel, but with his latest understanding of the true nature of Clarity and Elemental Mystical, he was able to spend more of his own mana, since he could also regenerate that mana with some manual Meditation.

He could see through that Ophiel’s eyes, if he needed to.

Hopefully he wouldn’t need to.

– – – –

The forest walk was uneventful, and even relaxing.

And then Erick spotted Redflame’s white castle through a break in the canopy. He steeled himself, gripping the metal case tight. He recast the various anti-Sight spells upon his ‘gift’, so that the rings weren’t revealed prematurely. Two minutes later Fairy Moon’s winding path through the forest brought them to the grey stone door at the base of the cliff.