192, 2/2 End of Book 6

… But before the building could begin, first things came first.

Probably some more talking, actually.

And also checking up on the Benevolence.

Erick gazed out across the sky of his [Gate Space], and focused upon twisting iridescence upon that expanse. Within seconds, lightning appeared, like great serpents writhing across reality. But instead of tangling, and showing themselves as fulcrums upon which all of Veird would move, they settled down. The larger threats were no longer there. All that showed was a scattered net of barely-visible problems, like twisting black threads far in the distance.

Erick knew what he was seeing.

Fairy Moon had killed the Red Dot Mage, and that problem was no more. It had vanished from the sky. Goldie had eliminated the problem of Patriarch Xangu, and that problem had also vanished. The third tangle, however, was still there, but that fractal mess had spread out and dimmed a great deal, becoming just another part of the background sky. A larger part, for sure, but not nearly as much of a present danger as it had been.

Even the problem of the Converter Angel was almost as dim as the other problems, far in the future; the hundred year wall of change coming when Yggdrasil finally matured and became his own person. All of that danger was barely even visible, far beyond clouds of uncertainty.

… And that was fine.

This was good.

The first order of business was done!

Erick grinned a little as he dismissed his sunform and plopped down on the rim of his stone fountain. The sounds of trickling water and flickering flames melded with the susurrus of the easy breeze that touched upon his skin like springtime. A little ways away, Yggdrasil hung in the sky, his rainbow crown and canopy of flaming green leaves rustling in the wind, their light rippling with the movement.

Erick cleared his mind of everything.

And then, gradually, he considered all of what had just happened.

Starting off his new world order with two high-profile assassinations might not have been the most morally prudent way to start a new world order. And yet, the sky was clear of problems. Benevolence would stand for a while longer. At least hundreds of thousands of people would not die due to the actions of Xangu, or the Red Dot Mage. Objectively, Erick had made the right call.

One could not fault that murdering one’s problems tended to make those problems go away.

It was the same as when he had exterminated Terror Peaks, and all the Hunters of the Crystal Forest, and all the Hunters and serial killers of Songli. (And all the monsters he had killed, too, of course.) As least he hadn’t gone on any murder rampages himself. He didn’t actually kill all those people on his own; he had simply enabled them to be found and killed in the first place by the civilizations they had wronged.

Erick felt bad about what he had done, but also, he did not feel bad about ordering the deaths of those two future problems. Terror Peaks was finally gone. Now that that culture was fully eradicated, maybe Songli wouldn’t have to face the same problem in another 50 years; Erick had broken that cycle as much as he could. And! Messalina could finally get some closure for the murder of her Village. Perhaps Erick could actually get some positive diplomacy out of the Life Binder.

Maybe, if she hadn’t already solved Rats’ malformed soul problem, then Erick could solve that problem for him! He had invented a [Reincarnation] machine, after all. It wasn’t the same as [Resurrection], for Erick’s machine degraded broken bits of the soul and replaced them whole cloth, but he was surely to get pulled into the [Resurrection] debate for having made the Renewal Tank. His name would be spoken of beside Messalina’s name, for sure.

Erick did not like Messalina, for she had chosen to pursue the Red Dot mage by throwing parasites out everywhere she could, all in order to catch every Hunter she could find. She had even worked with Caradogh and he had used those parasites to directly harm Spur. Messalina was maybe 35% responsible for the tragedy of the Farms.

But he could get over that, too, if Messalina proved to be a valuable ally. That all depended on how she responded to the news that Erick had solved her Red Dot Mage problem. She couldn’t get her revenge, which seemed to be her primary reason for acting as she had. If she turned out to be too much of a problem then Erick would just have to kill her, too.

And then probably kill her several more times to be sure.

An unpleasant thought, but it was what it was.

… He would probably have to kill her.

Erick moved on.

Now that the trials of that final meeting with Fairy Moon, and Melemizargo, and Rozeta had passed, Erick realized that he was actually rather satisfied that Fairy Moon had murdered the Red Dot Mage so quickly. He was satisfied that Goldie had managed her assignment as well, even with the [Blessing of Empathy] in her soul if that Blessing was, indeed, still there. It probably was. Rozeta would have said something if it wasn’t, or if Melemizargo was trying to pull an actual trick.

The Dark Dragon’s goal of regaining a universe of magic was better served by Goldie retaining her [Blessing of Empathy], and not trying to trick anyone, so… Erick felt that Goldie still had her Blessing. Whatever the case with the Blessing, Erick was still eager to see how she fared in her assignment. Looking out at the clear sky, she clearly succeeded, but what did that mean? She had killed Xangu, yes, but what about all the other parts of her assignment?

Would Erick finally gain the knowledge of who was behind the soul spears and the Extreme Light materials? And had he really gained the Shade of Assassination as a… a what? A soldier? A guardian?

Did he want that? Absolutely not. And yet, Erick had already —and would continue to— accept that poisoned chalice of a gift. In the same way that he felt his own goals currently aligned with Melemizargo’s, Erick felt that Goldie’s ‘assignment to work with Erick’ was the manifestation of that alignment.

… Was Erick comfortable with, apparently, falling right in line with Melemizargo’s goals?

Again: absolutely not.

But at least there hadn’t been a battle. At least Rozeta and Melemizargo and Fairy Moon seemed to have come to some sort of understanding. Most people seemed to be on the right page; accepting that Erick had made the anti-Sundering Element, and that he could continue to act as he wanted to act, free of most influences. And eventually, Erick would open the path to the stars, and Yggdrasil would open up all the rest.

Yggdrasil was young, but he was growing.

Erick breathed deep, listened to his own little world for a moment longer, and then he asked, “Yggdrasil? Are you doing okay?”

Yggdrasil’s childish voice carried on the wind, “I’m okay. Are you okay? That was a lot of talking with big people.”

Erick smiled at Yggdrasil’s words, and at the improvement of those words. He was barely 7 months old, and he was speaking in mostly-full sentences. “It was a lot of heavy talking, but I think the largest of the large talks are over.” He glanced out at the sky, and focused on one thin black thread, far in the distance. “I don’t like how the Converter Angel is still around… And apparently smart enough to not try for a confrontation. So that’s concerning. At the same time, though, I don’t want to be enemies with the Angels, or the Demons. I’ll probably have to have another heavy talk with those two forces and with Kirginatharp, the Headmaster—” A thought occurred. “Do you know about Kirginatharp? Have you seen him yet?”

Erick didn’t think he had ever directly said anything about Kirginatharp to Yggdrasil, but it was entirely possible that the old dragon had visited Yggdrasil without Erick’s knowledge, though that seemed out of character for Kirginatharp. Erick had certainly said some… less than great things about Kirginatharp, though, and Yggdrasil had overheard those words, for sure. And that might be bad. Erick didn’t want Yggdrasil to have a bad impression of Kirginatharp, though there were certainly a lot of reasons to have a bad impression of the dragon.

This could be fixed, though.

Now that Rozeta had personally vetted her son, and… possibly defused whatever sort of bomb might have happened otherwise, Erick wanted to have a talk with him.

He needed to know why Kirginatharp taught magic the way he did. Why all the math? When communication was more important. Why all the rad dust for enchanting? Instead of runic enchanting. Why not teach about runes? Why not teach proper metalwork? Why not teach gridwork? Gridwork was a very simple way to make magic that Tenebrae had taught Erick, and Jane, and Teressa, which had finally allowed Jane and Teressa to start making some decent tier 2, 3, and 4 magics. Gridwork, at least, should be taught in every basic magic classroom! And yet there was so much more that Erick had only ever experienced outside of his two months of lessons at Oceanside Academy.

And why not aura control!

And the truth of Elemental Bodies! That they were aura control workarounds!

And what about Idyrvamikor? And the Dragon Curse? What the FUCK was up with that shitshow?

And what about enchanting! The enchanting methods taught at Oceanside were fucking terrible!

And what about accretion! And how magic used to work!

And the truth of how the Script was different from real magic! All the things that the Script does for a person, as compared to what base magic is like! And how people made 10 mana per day, but the Script recycled mana for everyone to use as though they were true mages! And how Wizardry was just ‘having a lot of your own mana, and working it properly’—

Well.

Now that Erick considered it, perhaps Kirginatharp taught magic like he did in order to weed out all the bad apples before properly teaching all the good ones. Still, though… Erick was still going to ask the guy these questions, just to see how he answered.

Yggdrasil answered, “I’ve heard you talk of Kirginatharp. I don’t know him.”

“What do you remember me saying?”

“You don’t like him.”

“… Ah. Well. It’s a lot more complicated than that.” Erick began, “My issues with Kirginatharp started when Tenebrae showed us this way to do magic, called gridwork. You were still too young to talk, or to really know what was going on back then, but that little revelation was but one of many contributing factors to my disillusionment of Oceanside, and its Headmaster…”

The wind blew, and Ophiel chirped as he played gentle games with himself. The fire above the fountain warmed the air. The stone of the platform was solid under Erick’s feet, while the water burbled over the lip of the fountain, to then flow through a channel in the platform, to trail out into the open breeze, to Yggdrasil.

And Erick told a long story.

Yggdrasil listened, and asked questions.

Eventually, the story ended. Erick felt he had painted Kirginatharp in a rather decent light, while still explaining obvious problems.

Erick finished with, “As far as I know, Kirginatharp has done a lot of good for the world, and the people living in it, but there are a lot of problems with his stewardship. The Book Binders, who use [Duplicate] to publish approved books by the millions, which is both a good and bad thing. His Curse which controls the dragons; also good and bad. With regard to his teaching methods, I’m sure he’s operating under a lot of restrictions from the wrought, because even if he is the Second to Rozeta, he’s still just one dragon, and it is the wrought who truly control the spread of magical knowledge… Which is not a bad thing.” Erick said, “I’m pretty sure Kirginatharp tries to help as many as he can, but… magic is dangerous. That much is very true. And yet, magic is the solution to… So much. Not the solution to everything, but magic is certainly the solution to all material problems.”

“What can’t magic solve?” Yggdrasil asked, as though such a question baffled even him.

Erick smiled, saying, “Magic can solve everything, but there are a lot of moral issues with using magic to solve interpersonal problems. So for those, talking is usually the best way to work through any issue with other people.”

“Why did you Bless people, though?”

“Because the other option was death, and I believe that enabling a person to see what they did wrong is a better solution than killing them, and ending all possibility for a better future.”

“Why did you…”

Yggdrasil asked questions about everything. From what he had seen in Ar’Cosmos, to what he saw elsewhere in the world, to what he had heard Erick speak about in passing, to everything he could think of.

Erick relaxed as he answered. He knew that he would need to spend a lot more time with Yggdrasil than he had. Which was great, actually, because now, Erick would have that sort of time.

One hour passed in calm answering, and then a second hour flitted away without Erick minding at all. Eventually, though, the questions slowed, and then stopped.

Erick asked, “Are you tired, Yggdrasil?”

“I’m awake…” Yggdrasil said, “But I am tired.”

Erick stood up. Ophiel had settled down here and there across the space, upon the stone and in Yggdrasil’s branches, but when Erick moved Ophiel flapped and sang in violins from ten different bodies. Some of them took to the air again. One of those little guys hopped back on to Erick’s shoulder.

Erick said, “Then it’s time to start working again. I’m going to be a lot closer to you for a long while now, Yggdrasil, like back when I was at the cavern near Stratagold. I was thinking of making another house in your branches at Candlepoint and we could see each other every day. Would you like that?”

“Yes! I want another house. You can live with me.”

Erick smiled wide. “That’s what I’m going to do, then.”

He gave one last look out across the lightning sky and tried to gauge the growth he had seen and felt in the last two hours. The place had started off as roughly a half a kilometer across, but as Erick had sat there, talking and listening, the place had grown a little bit. It was, perhaps, a meter wider on all sides, ballooning out from ‘half a kilometer wide’ to ‘maybe 502 meters across’. Hard to tell, exactly, since the outer edges of the [Gate Space] were rather nebulous, since they were made of iridescent lightning and then a hazy nothing far, far beyond where Erick could see. The place was growing, for sure. Actual growth would come with time, but even this much was enough to reach all across the world, and that was pretty awesome.

He had already sent Goldie to the Underworld far on the other side of the world, and Fairy Moon to Archipelago Nergal. Could he reach anywhere on Veird, already?—

Erick paused.

“Huh.”

… Probably not, actually. Erick would certainly test the theory bubbling up in his mind, but he was pretty sure that he could only reach to where the Benevolence showed a problem, or within some innate distance from Yggdrasil. Looking out across the half-kilometer wide space, and based upon the ‘100x reach’ inside [Gate]’s blue box…

“Within 50 kilometers of Yggdrasil? Or… Larger?” He actually had no idea. It was time to experiment. Confirm some things before he started making more plans. Erick said, “I’ll be back soon, Yggdrasil.”

“See you soon, Father!”

Erick picked a target and opened a lightning portal into the Crystal Forest. His goal had been the sheer wall of stone that surrounded the desert. Specifically, a spot near the northern wall, far, far north of Spur, just south of the Wyrmridge Mountains.

He stuck his head out of the hole in reality… And then he stepped through. Ophiel followed.

Something had gone wrong, and it was time to find out what. Surrounded in his sunform and with all ten Ophiel flying all around him, and high in the sky, Erick saw nothing but dunes all around. A northern wind blew hard, scattering the edge of his sunform into silent sparks.

Sand, sand, and more sand. No mountains in the distance at all.

Erick lightstepped upward, leaving behind a trail of bright white lightning, before he settled back into position a good forty kilometers up. The first thing he noticed was that he had left a lightning trail behind. The lightning was new. It was a problem, too. It seemed like a rather large weakness to openly display the direction one lightstepped… But that wasn’t the main problem right now.

There were dunes in every direction. As far as Erick’s many senses could see.

“Okay. So.” Erick asked himself, “Where am I?”

Ophiels zipped around, playing with their own new ‘lightning form’. It took them a grand total of ten seconds to figure out how to lightstep without leaving behind lightning. Erick smiled at that, and then he got to practicing, too. Soon, he was zipping around just like he used to, leaving behind no vulnerable tells of where he was aiming to move.

And then he got to exploring. He decided to lightstep 50 kilometers south, since that might have been the increments he was dealing with.

Nothing.

He moved another 50 kilometers.

Still nothing.

So he had Ophiel spread out in every direction, hopping through the light with 50 kilometer hops—

Half a minute later, Ophiel started responding with sights from multiple directions, and Erick realized where he was. He instantly lightstepped 450 kilometers south to where Ophiel had spotted a known landmark, and he stopped. All of Ophiel rapidly caught up.

To the south, the desert ended in a large wall, easily thirty meters tall and half as thick. It was not the wall of Ar’Kendrithyst. It was more like an earthworks construction rather than an impossible barrier, though both sides of the walls were rather flat; no monsters would be crawling up and over that line in the desert. Beyond that wall lay a poorly-maintained land of green grasses, small trees, and scattered shrubs. Someone had [Grow]n the desert to green and then left it to fallow; to flourish or die on its own merits. This land was rather far from civilization, but it was rather near a source of water.

A lake.

And far, far in the distance, was a green and rainbow mountain, poking up above the blue horizon like a mirage. Yggdrasil. Had to be. This was Candlepoint’s lake. To the southwest, about 30 kilometers away, lay that city. All the rest of this walled-in land was just to prevent crystal mimics from getting near the lake. Erick turned around and gazed at the empty sands, to the north, and realized that he had probably had his meeting with Rozeta, Fairy Moon, and Melemizargo, roughly 500 kilometers from Yggdrasil’s Candlepoint body.

[Gate]’s blue box read, exactly, ‘The outside distance your nodes are capable of reaching is 100x larger than your gate space would suggest.’ Erick had suspected that this meant he was at 50 kilometers of reach, but no. He was at 500 kilometers of reach. Maybe his ‘half a kilometer wide’ node space was actually a lot bigger than he thought? Or the ratios were different from how he thought.

“Well that’s all… Somewhat in line with what I expected.” Erick reoriented toward the east, and a little bit toward the north. “That means Spur is over there.” He turned back. “Okay! Good. I know where I am now. Time to see if we’ve got a 500 kilometer limit, or something smaller.’

Erick opened a portal to the grass traveler lands.

He stepped through.

A river wound through the lands directly below, while grasses grew on all sides. This was not grass traveler land. This was south of grass traveler land.

Erick lightstepped south, aiming for a 500 kilometer jaunt, expecting to find Ygg—

Erick stopped. He had found Yggdrasil exactly.

Yggdrasil’s rainbow crown and green mountain of a canopy spread down below. With a quick step, Erick shifted positions to stand inside Yggdrasil’s greenery. And yup! He was at Holorulo’s Yggdrasil. The lake down below had seemed large back when Erick had first planted Yggdrasil, at being nearly 3 kilometers across, and connected to the wide and deep Wanzhi River via a large lock. Now, though, Yggdrasil’s green canopy had overshadowed the banks of the lake, and his roots had drilled through the entire embankment which separated the lake from the river.

Erick asked Yggdrasil, “Is that where the fish notifications came from?”

Yggdrasil said, “They were biting people so I stopped them biting.”

“Have the people tried to repair the embankment?”

“Most don’t get close to me anymore.” Yggdrasil said, “The Wandering Soul people still get close. I keep the box filled! Some others tried to steal but I solved that.”

A few diplomatic problems? Thefts? Eh. Nothing to fret over. Erick hadn’t gotten any Kill Notifications for people, so… it was fine? It was fine.

Erick asked, “Do you want the embankment repaired? It would keep out the scary fish and let people come here more easily.”

“… I don’t know?” Yggdrasil asked, “Do I?”

He was fishing for the correct answer, and he seemed reluctant for some reason. Erick had a guess at that reason, since Yggdrasil’s roots went far and deep into the Wanzhi River and he probably wanted to keep his roots out there, but the embankment needed to be repaired.

Later, Yggdrasil would have to make these correct decisions himself, but for now, Erick guided him, saying, “Yes. Let’s repair the embankment. You can still stick your roots out into the river, though, like you are, but the people who will come here will want a lake free of dangers. You’re going to need to protect many people, Yggdrasil, and the lessons on how to protect people have already begun. It’ll be a nuanced and difficult subject, and I don’t get it right all the time myself, but that’s fine. All you can do is try your best.”

“Okay! Where do I start fixing?”

Erick began, “I’ll show you how to start with some [Stoneshape], and then you can continue, okay? It goes like this…”

Erick stretched his senses through Yggdrasil, took a moment to adjust himself to the heightened senses, and then with the power of a World Tree, began moving stone and dirt through the waters, like he was playing with sand on a beach. Through his actual eyes, though, he watched as the world transformed in front of him.

Erick started the repair, but he let Yggdrasil take over, and with a bit of direction the separation between the Wanzhi River was restored.

“Good job, Yggdrasil.”

“I like my roots in the river.”

Erick smiled wide and patted the big guy’s white bark, saying, “I’ll be right back; I’m headed down to Stratagold, next. See you there!”

“See you there!”

Erick stepped through the lightning and arrived at Yggdrasil’s Stratagold cavern. The water was clear, the sky was stone. Everything was dotted with massive glowing crystals that were so large, and yet so far away, that they looked like stars. Their light was a lot stronger than starlight, though. The entire cavern was as bright as the Surface at midday.

Erick landed on Yggdrasil’s branch, patting the big guy, as he said, “Hello again, Yggdrasil.”

“Hello again, Father!”

A second later, all of Ophiel flitted through the portal Erick had left open, and then he closed that portal behind them. With a quick flap of Ophiel’s sunform, Erick checked out the beach that led to the embassy. That once sandy locale was now half brickwork and buildings. The architecture was rudimentary, being rather blocky and completely unadorned, and so the buildings were probably placeholders. Where the tunnel to the embassy lay, though, there was a staging ground of brickwork and utility, where people were setting up.

Instinctively, at being seen, Erick almost pulled Ophiel back before they could truly notice the little guy, but that was impossible. So Erick just left Ophiel hanging out on the waters away from the beach. He didn’t want to deal with Sitnakov and Tasar and Riivo and King Alfonin and Kromolok… And others. He wanted to open a portal to Candlepoint, to escape the coming talk…

But that would be the wrong move, for multiple reasons. His stuff might be down there on that beach-turned-boardwalk, captured by the wrought after Erick had been fairy-napped. Or maybe his stuff was inside his [Fairy Stronghold] here, at this Yggdrasil. Whatever the outcome of the coming diplomacy, Erick needed his stuff, or maybe just his knife, in order to carve some Gates…

Erick steeled himself and…

Went into his [Fairy Stronghold] instead. So he chickened out! So what. It was probably a good idea to have gone into the [Fairy Stronghold] anyway, since Tasar still had access and if they had wanted to fuck Erick over, or something, they could have destroyed his house. And he needed to check on that!

And… The [Fairy Stronghold] was exactly as he had left it.

Nice wooden walls with a nice wooden floor. A few stories of rooms and large open spaces in the center. Kitchen, bathrooms, etc. Balconies that opened to the outside. A bedroom for him, and a personal library with most of his collected books from the journey. His adamantium knife and various metals and otherwise were all exactly where he had left them. The wrought had not destroyed anything.

This boded well.

Erick was glad he had come in here first.

The only real difference from the last time Erick was here, was that the room in which Tasar had been practicing her Spatial Magic was fully cleared. All her little projects and various theories and mathematics that she had been piecing together in order to understand [Gate] were gone. No bowls of water, that she would blip back and forth and turn from ice to liquid and back. No hourglasses, randomly resetting their levels of sand. None of that.

Looking back on her experiments, and knowing what he now knew, all those experiments failed to grasp the truth of [Gate]. The current understanding of the Dimensional Ban, and even current language, failed to even allow oneself to understand the actual problem of [Gate]. Though, Erick supposed, taking Spatial transformations and applying those ideas to reality and Reality transformations, was on somewhat the right track. Perhaps the problem was that Veird’s various literature and plays and such did not ever deal with the idea of ‘traveling to another dimension’… Which was another problem to bring up with Kirginatharp.

Or perhaps the people of Veird didn’t like to think about the Sundering (or the fae?) too much, which was yet another perfectly reasonable explanation for the lack of dimensional thinking in popular media. Though, on the other side of that argument, dimensional thinking actually worked and was easy to make happen here with mana. Erick didn’t understand the exact reason why [Gate] was so misunderstood, but whatever.

Anyway.

Tasar had left a note behind after she had cleaned up. That note sat rather conspicuously on a table to the side of her experimental space. It was a short note, reading simply, ‘If ever this note should reach you, I pray that when you come out of Ar’Cosmos that you are the same person who went in. ~Tasar, Geode Guardian’

Erick cast his mana sense into the past, to view exactly how long it had been since Tasar had left this message. He was good enough to have Remade [Witness], and since Erick had been fairy-napped about 13 or 14 days ago, then he should be able to see some… thing…

“— Ah! There she is.”

Erick caught a glimpse of everything getting cleared out of the space, and then fast-forwarded a bit to find Tasar setting down the letter. It was blurry, but he could make her out. At a guess, Tasar had been here and cleaned up maybe two days after Erick had been taken. She hadn’t been inside the house since then, or, if she had, then she had erased her presence. Erick hadn’t permitted other people to enter the house, so she was the only one who knew the way, but even still, it was odd to not see anyone else try to barge into this land since then.

“… Probably just erased themselves from the manasphere, if they did invade.” Erick glanced at his own history in the manasphere and saw nothing. He felt the pink/green/white gemstone hanging around his neck. “I doubt this little thing is unique, at all.”

Erick looked around again.

It boded well that no one had torn down his house with outside Fae Magic, and that no one had torn down Yggdrasil, though. Erick cast his gaze back out to the wrought upon the beach who were all very aware that Ophiel hovered out above the waters. It was rather hard to miss the little guy, Erick supposed. He hung there in the sky over the clear waters of the lake, like an eldritch jellyfish with tendrils of silent lightning flickering out of all parts of his tiny sunform. He wasn’t very good at holding his [Pristine Benevolence] in at all, but that was fine, for now.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Erick put Tasar’s note in his pocket, gathered up all his necessary enchanting stuff and a few necessary books into a go-bag, left it there, and then stepped out onto the balcony, facing the beach in the far, far distance. Yggdrasil’s green leaves and branches held far overhead, looking like a green ocean and lightning because of the distance, but those leaves were each meters across, and the branches were hundreds of meters thick. The big guy seemed to have grown a bit since last Erick had seen him, too.

Erick said to Yggdrasil, “If the next ten minutes are calm, then that bodes well for the next few hours. If all we do in the next few hours is talk, and talk, and talk, then that bodes well for the next day. If we get a day of calm order, then that bodes well for the next week. By that time, either we’ll be at war, or we won’t. What happens is pretty much all up to them.”

Yggdrasil’s weather-balloon-sized [Scry] eye appeared in the air outside of the balcony while Erick spoke. It rapidly shrunk down by the time he finished, and then Yggdrasil took his open spot on Erick’s left shoulder. Ophiel fluttered upon Erick’s right shoulder.

Yggdrasil said, “If war comes then you come to me. I will protect you.”

Erick smiled a little at the iridescent white eye, then he looked out across the waters, saying, “We can protect each other, as family. Have you spoken with your sister, Jane, much? Or with Poi?”

“They asked what I saw inside Ar’Cosmos, but I didn’t know what to tell them, so I said nothing. You said never talk of Wizards.”

Erick nodded. “I did say that. Thank you for keeping my secret, Yggdrasil.”

He probably could have said a lot more, to clarify everything for Yggdrasil, and to make Yggdrasil feel safer because that is what parents tried to do for their children, but they had already spoken for a long time and this next conversation was likely going to confuse the heck out of him. And also, Erick had made Yggdrasil with the express purpose of protection, so the normal way to raise a child didn’t really count here. Either way, Yggdrasil would likely never need to keep quiet about Wizards anymore, since Erick was going to come out in a big way, but that would confuse the big guy and Erick did not want to do that. He could already see it now; ‘But you said not to speak of Wizards!’ And here Erick was, headed out to meet the wrought and to likely field a ton of questions about Wizardry…

Erick was hesitating. He realized this.

… So he forced himself to lightstep off of the balcony.

Here we go.