204

Stars twinkled beyond Yggdrasil’s green leaves, far, far above the glass windows of the [Fairy Stronghold] warehouse. It was late at night, and the Wizard was hard at work.

Sweat ran down Erick’s torso, causing tracks in the soot that stained his hands and his pants. Lightning flickered in his eyes as he gazed upon his work.

Three weeks ago, Erick had begun devoting his nights to the problem of magical iron and runic webs. In all cases, magical iron worked fine to channel about a thousand mana before it began to rust, and rust hard. Runic inscriptions would flake red at channeling 1,500 mana, sending small showers of dust to the ground whenever the runic web was handled, and even when it was not. At 2,000 mana, the iron would crumble. It could still hold and empower the magic placed inside the runic web for a time, though it was like a child trying to hold onto a dream after waking. At 2,500 mana the dream was gone, and all that was left was a rusted, pitted, red stretch of iron.

All these numbers were generally true, but Erick had discovered that there was variation.

The larger the object, the slower the degradation. The more surface area exposed to the air, the faster the degradation. Runic inscriptions exposed a lot of surface area. The purer the iron, the better it handled the inscriptions, but it also degraded faster.

Erick had collected these small nuances into a journal which sat to the side of the room. It would probably prove useful for whoever came after him, trying to follow in his footsteps of making iron work as well as platinum for runic webs. It wasn’t an original work, though. The Overseer of Magic of House Benevolence, Aisha, had had her people working on this problem for a while, and so, while Erick had used their own notes as a start to his own work, they used a bunch of math and Erick didn’t like math.

Erick still gave those guys a copy of his own notes whenever he felt like he made a breakthrough. They were all working on the same problem, after all.

But the Office of Magic had no idea what the fuck to do with Erick’s notes. Oh sure, they took those notes, and they were thankful, but they had no idea what to do with them. Erick’s lack of rigorous math was like turning in homework to a teacher with flowers drawn on it instead of doing proper calculus or moon-landing-levels of trigonometry, or whatever. He still used some math, of course, for this stuff had to be plotted out over a surface.

Eh! It was what it was.

The Office of Magic could do as they wanted, for in his own way, Erick felt he was on the right track. After his first night of sleeping in a [Hasted Shelter] three weeks ago and then having all the rest of the night to himself, Erick had started on this project. He hadn’t done much more in his free time besides work iron.

In those first nights Erick had discovered something unexpectedly important, and it had nothing to do with the physical and magical properties of iron.

Erick would rate his magical control as ‘super fine’ on the Script-suggested scale of ‘gross, normal, fine, and super fine’. But sometimes, and usually during extended periods of [Incandescent Aura], [Condense Iron], and all the rest of his Particle Magic, a control rated at ‘super fine’ was not good enough.

There had been blowouts.

Molten iron flew outside of Erick’s control for brief moments. Superheated air had flashed outward, burning away Erick’s clothes and spreading soot everywhere. There had been a few accidents that had burned Erick’s clothes badly enough that a [Mend] could only do so much.

Erick’s skin could withstand brief exposures to 2000 degree Celsius air a lot better than his clothes. He could even withstand (temporary) prolonged exposure of several seconds without being hurt too much, and he had Healing Magics, anyway. And so, due to his lack of perfect control, the temperature of the warehouse usually went up more than it went down every single night.

Erick had begun to work without shirts.

He had tried working without pants once, but that had been… Uncomfortable. So the pants stayed, even if they did occasionally get burned away when Erick turned up the heat and turned 20 metric tons of rusted slag back into 19.90 tons of magical metal.

And that was another thing Erick had discovered.

No matter what sorts of cocoons of [Condense Iron] and other Particle Magic Erick laid into the workspace, it seemed there was always a bit of blowout when working with this quantity of metal. Erick did a little bit of [Duplicate] here and there to get the metal in the first place, but he wasn’t about to fully [Duplicate] his problems away; not when he needed to work in a way that other people could eventually copy. And so, when he ended up with rusted piles of junk, he recycled; he took the molten iron and mixed it around inside a [Prismatic Ward] while letting it cool down to make it magical again.

And then he went back to the drawing boards.

The entire goal behind Erick and House Benevolence’s work here was to make useful magical iron; not just stuff that iron wrought could eat for food. [Condense Oxygen] and [Condense Iron] were the primary ways in which Erick tried to make this work, but that was just a starting point. A final product needed to allow other magics to also inhabit the runic web.

The theory was solid. The execution was the problem.

Various prototypes that did not work sat to the side, showing Erick’s progression over the last three weeks. The first actual success was a solid cylinder of iron about two meters tall with a dome cap and runes tracing up and down the outside. That prototype had happened on day 5 of this new endeavor, after many failed starts, and it had been the basis for everything to come.

It was rusted to shit, so it had failed. Every single runic inscription had acted as a centering point for the oxygen to start rusting, even though Erick had tried shoving all that condensation toward the top. The dome at the top was also rusted to shit, and it had rusted first, so Erick had managed to get that much right at least. It had taken 10,000 mana and lasted a full day at full power without rusting, but on the second day, in the middle of a meeting with Erick’s brand new Cooks, the runic web was starting to rust. Over the course of an hour the rusting intensified, eventually breaking the entire web not 75 minutes after the first signs of rust appeared.

Erick had moved on.

The second prototype success was also rusted to shit, but it had managed to stay unrusted for a full two days.

This second one was not a solid cylinder of iron. It was a hollow tube, and the runic inscriptions were on the inside. Erick had needed to make it a lot bigger than the first cylinder so that he could write on the inside, so it was more like a barrel than a tower. When Erick capped it off and sealed the web inside, he started introducing [Condense Oxygen] into the web from the ‘backside’ of the runic web. Upon filling the runic barrel with all the appropriate spellwork, the barrel design had lasted a full two days before rusting to shit.

That rusting had happened a lot faster than Erick had expected it to happen. Over the course of 10 minutes, starting from the first signs of rust, the whole thing turned pitted and red like it had been sunk at the bottom of a salty, warm ocean for a hundred years.

The third, fourth, and fifth prototypes were all variations on this second design. Each of them failed in different ways that Erick compensated for in the next version.

But tonight, in the hot air of his warehouse and covered in sweat and soot, Erick felt like he had finally done it.

Disintegrated and shaved iron dust covered the floor. Piles of slag and piles of half-rusted metal lay pushed to the sides of the large space. Lightning flickered in the black runic dagger in Erick’s right hand.

And a hollow sphere of black iron held in the air in front of him. It had not been black ten minutes ago; it had been cherry red and billowing heat out into the warehouse space. It was still a dark red in some of the swirls upon the hollow sphere, but it was cooling down in the dense air of a [Prismatic Ward], and a whole bunch of other magics.

The runic sphere looked almost like a dark model of Jupiter, about a meter wide, but with a lot more Great Red Spots and no banding at all. When it finally cooled all the way, hopefully the runic web in the hollow, airless center of the sphere would remain intact. According to Erick’s mana sense, the runic web held.

Three Ophiels held in the air around the sphere. With a collection of overlapping auras, they kept the interior of the runic web cold so as not to disturb the runic designs, and the outside warm, but gradually tapering off. That split between the cold, airless interior and the molten exterior had been the hardest part of this construction. The metal warped twice already and Erick had needed to redo the whole thing, but according to prototype 5 this was the way to proceed.

And so, Erick proceeded. With a wash of hard, yet suppressed [Pristine Benevolence] that acted a lot more like solid, lightless [Telekinesis] than how it usually did, Erick held the entire sphere in his power and gently continued to push more power into the ‘backside surface’ of the runic web, ensuring that it absorbed magic from both him and from the dense air all around. He had Ophiel adjust his own auras, gradually pulling back the heat, and expanding the cold from the center. Soon, the red glows fully vanished, but Erick continued to gently push against the sphere with his own power. With grinding smoothness, he pressed upon the swirls, ironing out the iron so that there were no ridges, disallowing any possible interruption in the various Condensing spaces planned and laid down inside the sphere.

This time it might actually work.

The hollow sphere cooled even further.

Five minutes later, Erick was done. The work was finished.

The black sphere was now as polished and smooth as a mirror, and looking a lot more silver than it had before. Erick saw himself in that mirror, and he smiled. Lightning flickered from his eyes and from the runic dagger in his hand. He laughed a little, and then he took over the magic Ophiel had been supplying, fully cutting off the [Incandescent Aura] as well as the [Frozen Mist Aura]. With a bit of telekinesis and only a brief moment of tension at the weight of the thing, Erick set the sphere down into a waiting holder made of white Yggdrasil wood. The white wooden holder didn’t even groan or shift as it readily held the ten ton sphere of iron.

Now it was time to add the magic.

Erick had made a few more new spells for this working, which had all come about from what the wrought were doing with the base spell, [Condense Oxygen], in order to cure wrought rot.

[Anti-Oxygen] was not a perfect spell, though, because Particle Magic did not work on individual particles. It did, however, work on molecules, and most atmospheric oxygen was of the O2 variety. With just this one spell, a lot of wrought could recover from wrought rot on their own. [Anti-Oxygen] was a miracle spell in that respect, but it was not a sudden, perfect cure. It was medicine, properly administered over a course of a week, and not too much or else it could seriously harm the wrought, but with this medicine a wrought suffering from rot could heal themselves.

[Anti-Oxygen] only halfway worked against the oxygen in water, but Erick had more solutions for that problem. He had a lot of solutions for all the problems of this project, for ‘rust’ was not simple iron and oxygen. The thing known as ‘rust’ was oxygen bonded to iron and hydrogen, and in rare cases, a whole bunch of oxide compounds that Erick had never known about while back on Earth. He had discovered most of these other rust combinations through working on this project himself, through a lot of trial and error, and through reading the work that the wrought had done on wrought rot.

Iron reacted with a lot.

[Anti-Carbon], [Anti-Phosphorus], [Anti-Water], [Anti-Bromine], [Anti-Flourine], [Anti-Chlorine], [Anti-Iodine], [Anti-Nitrogen], and more, were most of the spells Erick had needed to make, and then put into this runic web. He even used the normal version of [Condense Iron] to ensure the web remained as solid and as unchanging as he could make it.

It still hadn’t been enough.

And so, Erick went for a broad spectrum solution. He had already made [Catalyst], and so he had needed an [Anti-Catalyst]. The anti-[Catalyst] spell was simple enough to make, though it wasn’t called that at all, because someone else had already made that Basic Tier magic long before he even thought to make it. He didn’t get any points for Remaking that magic. He did, however, get that new magic.

All of that went into the runic web.

It was complicated. It was messy. It didn’t work 5 times already, though Erick admitted to himself that perhaps his creation hadn’t been robust enough until now. He had been trying to make something small, to make magical iron that was usable for everything from wands to Gates. But apparently, this stuff was only ever going to be useful on large-scale stuff like Gates and Denial Spheres.

Once all the theory was done and put together, though, this creation had required expertise, a steady hand, the magic to make it all work together, and not much more than that.

It also required [Renew], but that was icing on the cake, really. Anyone else could have made this without [Renew], but [Renew] tied everything together and allowed the empowerment of any magic channeled into this sphere to power the entire sphere.

Erick explained to Ophiel, “Which was the purpose of [Renew] all along.”

Ophiel chirped.

Erick touched the part of the runic web where the [Renew] lay on the other side of the hollow sphere. Power flowed into the sphere, and like a lightbulb turning on, the iron runic web lit, bright white and radiant. Erick couldn’t just put normal spellwork in there. He had needed to make this runic web hold something in addition to the normal working. This version held a simple wardlight spell.

So far, so good!

Erick forced his smile away, saying, “And now we inspect the web.” He leaned in, looking over the sphere as he said to Ophiel, “See here? The mirage-like sheen atop the iron? That’s the [Inhibitor] and the Anti spells all working together. None of them work properly because Particle Magic can’t work on individual atoms, but together they might work well enough…” Erick frowned. “Maybe.”

Ophiel cooed in quiet violins.

“You’re right; it should work.”

Ophiel looked up at Erick’s shoulder and twittered in guitar thrums. He seemed to ask, are you done, Father? Your shoulder is too dirty to sit on but I want to sit down now.

Erick smiled a little bit. His shoulder was quite dirty with soot and sweat. With a localized [Cleanse] that only caught his own body in the effect, Erick was suddenly clean and thick air flowed away. A larger [Cleanse] would have been bad because the floor was dirty with scattered but useful iron, like so much black sand. With another sweep of magic Erick gathered up the black sand and forged it into a block of iron that he could work with tomorrow.

With one last look at the glowing iron sphere, Erick felt hope rise again.

Maybe he had done it this time.

And then he got naked and went for a swim among Yggdrasil’s roots.

– – – –

Night stretched far, far overhead, filled with twinkling stars, but down here on Veird, where water formed a lake in the desert, the world was filled with light. Green light from Yggdrasil’s canopy, but also white light from his trunk. Rainbow light filtered down through the green, and smaller lights held on the horizon to the east and the north.

And the Wizard swam naked through the illuminated water, enjoying some time to himself.

Zolan pulled back to himself, in his office at House Benevolence and regarded the messenger in front of him.

Enforcer Iriki was an orcol from Enforcement. The large, red-skinned man was also from Ar’Cosmos. He was not Enforcement’s usual way of delivering important and possibly-urgent messages to this side of the House, but that is what he had just finished doing.

Iriki repeated some of his message, his voice strained with worry. “At least 32 [Scry] orbs out there right now. A few from Treehome, one from Oceanside, but the rest are impossible to tell.”

Zolan sat back in his chair feeling less than happy at this news. To some it might seem he was working late, but no, he was working truly early. The sky was full dark; the day was at least two hours away. It wasn’t so odd for him to be awake this early, for he was truly happy to work for 20 hours a day when the numbers were up and there was gold to be had. Ever since the Gate from Spur and the Gates to Portal had opened business was booming, even at a simple 1 gold per ton, 1 gold per person rate.

Zolan should have been happy.

He was… Generally happy. Life was really good these days. Better than it had been in a long time. And yet, the Wizard’s sometimes-habit of swimming in the lake, nude and in full view of the world, was concerning. Zolan cast another [Scry] and gazed out across the world.

Yup. Still looking rather defenseless as he swam through the illuminated water like a lightning-trailing fish. He was obviously not defenseless, but that’s certainly not what it looked like.

“Such an odd and unnecessary risk.” Zolan came back to himself. He looked to Iriki—

Suddenly, and silently, pieces of Zolan’s mind came together and drew a slightly different picture than the one presented to him. Zolan recognized what was happening as it happened, and it was good news. His magic was finally working again. It was like he was seeing again for the first time in a long time.

It would not last. This sudden awakening of his larger mind was about the tenth time this had happened since Zolan’s [Reincarnation]. The awakening lasted longer and longer as his magic gently reasserted itself across his collective knowledge, but it was still not stable yet.

And so, Zolan considered what lay before him. Or rather: who.

Iriki was not a bad looking man, though he was from Ar’Cosmos so the plan forming in Zolan’s mind was something of a risk, but according to what he had seen over the last two months of living and working here at House Benevolence, Erick wouldn’t go for Iriki, anyway. The outcome of what Zolan was about to do ended up with Enforcement taking a much needed knock; they were getting too strong in Zolan’s opinion.

To start with, Zolan simply asked, “What are your thoughts on the matter?”

Iriki stood a bit straighter. “Enforcement needs our Wizard to listen to us, and to stop these nightly swims. He started this nonsense 3 weeks ago and he continues to ignore the guidance of Enforcement. I am here to ensure that the message gets across this time in as solid a way as possible.”

Zolan calmly said, “You already said that and I heard you the first time. I have even given our King this much guidance before, both on my own cognizance and at Enforcement’s request.” Zolan said, “What I asked, though, was what are your thoughts on the matter?”

Iriki instantly said, “He needs a swimming partner.”

Expected.

“A better solution than my initial one of telling him to stop, and one I already tried.”

Iriki scowled, not understanding, more than a little lost. “And he continues to swim alone?”

Suddenly, Zolan reevaluated his plan. He had been thinking of making Burhendurur look bad and Iriki look horrible, but he saw something there.

Some sort of genuine concern.

That made Zolan pull back a little. Admittedly, Zolan had had little interaction with Iriki, though the community here was rather small and therefore Zolan knew of Iriki quite enough. Until now, Iriki had always appeared as the usual hothead battle nut that came out of Ar’Cosmos and went into Enforcement. Until now, Zolan had seen no need to update that label with anything besides a continued list of information on the man.

But now…

Iriki respected their king a great, great deal, and he wanted to serve Erick in any way possible. If one of those services were in the bedroom, Iriki would take to this assignment with the same fervor he showed when he cut down monsters in the name of House Benevolence.

Zolan’s initial plan had ended in a deep embarrassment for Enforcement, but now…

It could actually go well?

After briefly weighing the pros and cons of a physically-important-to-Erick person working in Enforcement, under Burhendurur, and also from Ar’Cosmos, Zolan decided to go full throttle. Ar’Cosmos could not be allowed any good hooks into Erick.

Zolan said, “Since Erick is not willing to forgo his swims, I will have to assign someone to watch over him. I think Miloxo is awake—”

Miloxo was a fantastically handsome orcol man from Oceanside who worked under Zolan, and who was gaining a rather promiscuous reputation among the staff for his brazen attitude. He had even hit on Erick once, almost a week ago, though by Miloxo’s standards it had been a rather weak attempt. Nothing had ever come of it, as far as Zolan knew, but the important thing there was that Erick had taken those flirtations in stride and had even flirted back a bit.

Much to everyone’s surprise.

Who knew! Erick might accept Miloxo’s bedwarming offer eventually, though rumor was that Miloxo had been terrified two days after Erick had flirted back. No one knew quite what had happened there, but either someone talked to him, or Erick talked to him, but as far as Zolan knew, Miloxo had simply realized that he was chasing Darkness by pursuing Erick. It just took him two days to realize this.

But bringing up Miloxo had the expected sort of reaction in Iriki.

“I will do this myself,” Iriki said, puffing up his chest and squaring his shoulders in a way that Erick might find attractive. “I can solve this myself.”

And thus, the plan was set.

It had been rather easy, actually. Iriki was an attractive man, and maybe Erick would be receptive. Rozeta knew that a lover might do Erick some good, for though Erick hadn’t critically failed any meetings due to lewd advances by the other party, those Trademasters from Portal had certainly set the tone for every other meeting with Portal.

Erick didn’t attend those particular meetings anymore.

Zolan was beginning to think that Erick might have some hangups, for some reason, though everyone knew that he had bedded that one warlord in the cow lands north of Songli, and had taken that Runesmith out on a date. Erick had only gained power since then, so taking someone to bed should have been even easier. So… Yes. He had to have some hangups.

Zolan had participated in a few delightful diversions courtesy of Zaraanka Checharin’s wonderful Pink House over at Candlepoint, as well as a whole bunch of colleague-level investigations at the New Folk’s Home. He was rather sad that Mox desired much more than he was willing to give, but such were the breaks of dorm room romances.

“Good luck to you, Iriki.” Zolan said to the hopeful orcol, and he found himself only halfway hoping for a disastrous failure.

It wasn’t that he wanted Ar’Cosmos to look bad…

Ah. Well.

He wanted Ar’Cosmos to look exactly like they were and—

Iriki left the room.

He did not bow as he left the room.

… A small spike of annoyance lodged itself in Zolan’s forehead, causing him to narrow his eyes. Iriki should have bowed considering their stations, but Iriki only showed deference to Erick, or to one of the two dragons at the House. Every single person from Ar’Cosmos was still like that, even all these weeks later. Sure, all of them could have gone into any of the Overseer positions if Erick had chosen them to go into those positions, so Zolan understood how they were all ‘sort of equal anyway’, but Erick had chosen their positions. He had solidified a command structure.

All the people from Oceanside and Stratagold were bowing when they should! They even bowed to their Ar’Cosmos superiors of Burhendurur and Volaro! Iriki’s and Ar’Cosmos’s general lack of respect for the command structure would have been fine, but Iriki bowed to Burhendurur. The people from Ar’Cosmos didn’t bow to anyone who was not from Ar’Cosmos!

This! This right here was why Zolan had done what he had done and tricked Iriki into pursuing Erick.

Erick would be fine. He had been hit on so many times this last half month that Zolan knew exactly how resistant the man was to amorous aggression. And yet…

If Iriki worked out, Zolan would take credit.

Zolan gave the man a 10% chance of landing that big fish.

More, if Iriki approached their king with a proper measure of respect. Maybe, if Iriki asked to accompany Erick and bolster his honor guard at all possible hours, and maybe even inside the bedroom, Iriki’s plot might work. Erick certainly needed more guards these days.

Teressa was in the Benevolence Research Tower almost all the time, honing her prognostication skills. Kiri was working with Tasar on magic, to Zolan’s continued surprise, when she wasn’t working with Mox to turn the land around here habitable. Jane was still adventuring in the Underworld with Sitnakov and others. At least Poi was still by Erick’s side most of the time, except when Erick decided to go for a swim at—

Zolan looked at his clock on the wall and his eyes went wide. “4:40 in the morning.”

Iriki’s interruption had cost him time.

Time spent on something that would likely amount to nothing.

Representatives from Songli would be showing in four hours and Zolan was still working out this stack of paper in front of him. He shut out all other distractions and began tearing through the sheets, devouring the information within and sorting it through his mind, spitting up tax rate information in Holorulo, shipping rate information through the ports of Eralis, and Wayfarer Guild plans in the Highlands. Everything went into his mental library, sorting itself out as long as Zolan had the mana to spare to record everything he read.

Zolan had once known all of this by heart, but he had needed to regain this information after his [Reincarnation]. It would take years to regain everything he had lost, especially since he had no time to just sit down and read and read and read, but actually putting what he read into work was better than simple reading.

This job —this life!— was a dream come true.

– – – –

Poi woke up bleary-eyed when Erick blipped back into the house, carrying with him a cloud of flustered feelings and tension. The man himself was invisible due to that necklace he wore, but his mind was a cloud of rainbows and lightning and thoughts moving through the house, following the Wizard. That cloud roiled. Poi was briefly worried, but after mentally confirming that Erick’s most recent experiences were nothing special, Poi rolled back over in bed and pulled the covers tight over his head. He would talk to Erick about what had happened in the actual morning.

An hour later the sun peeked in through the window.

Poi got out of bed and went to the kitchen, first. Sitting on the counter, under a nice wrapping of [Ward]s, lay some of the best pancakes that Poi had ever eaten… Or would eat, anyway. That was the impression that he was getting from Erick, who was already eating his own pancakes on his breakfast balcony. Poi helped himself to a trio of his own 3-centimeter-thick loaves of syrup-soaking deliciousness, along with some of the verdant-cactus syrup that Poi had been missing since this time last year. He missed that syrup every year, for he always went though this stuff rather fast, but the point still stood.

The syrup only went on sale right before the end of the year, when the natural growth of the sugar cacti slowed down, and they started producing the truly great, thick as ooze stuff. After a bit of cooking, the late year harvest turned deliciously brown and then the harvesters bottled it up and sold it on the market streets of Spur.

And now that the Gate between Spur and Candlepoint was open, Poi got to experience this deliciousness without needing to go through proxy markets.

Poi could not wait to dig into these pancakes!

The Cooks Erick had hired were proving themselves well worth their pay.

Now this? This right here? This is what Poi imagined when he signed on with Erick almost two full years ago. Comfort. Security. Soft breads and nice syrup and all the fish imports he could eat. He did not imagine that he would be making the world a better place (not so much, anyway), nor that he would now be living on the branch of a World Tree, and that all the enemies of the world would be working for his boss.

Erick had solved a lot of problems here on Veird—

As Poi carried his loot out to the breakfast balcony where Erick was already eating, and as Poi’s presence pinged on Erick’s thought cloud, Poi had a funny thought. Of all the various problems in their lives, somehow Erick’s recent bashfulness surrounding sex had not been something Poi had expected to see. Sex was nothing important unless one made it important, and usually sex was not important to Erick, but recently that had changed. This hangup could develop into something deeper, and so…

Poi decided he was going to rip through this problem.

He sat down beside Erick, saying, “You should fuck Iriki.”

Erick shuddered a little, his fluffy-pancake filled fork halfway to his mouth, his eyes suddenly wide as his mind filled with a thousand different experiences all at once. Gazing at that swirl of sudden information was like looking into an abyss and seeing a thousand pairs of eyes staring back, so Poi didn’t look too hard. As the abyss swirled and stilled, Poi naturally picked out Erick’s thoughts as though looking at the pages of a book; he couldn’t help but read everything he saw.

Erick had some worries.

Propriety. Balances of power. Morality and social concerns over what would happen if people found out that all it took to get in bed with the Wizard was to ask him and show up naked while he was swimming. In that same moment, Erick thought about how ballsy it had been of Iriki to try that, which then morphed into a thought about balls and what Erick had seen last night when Iriki proudly stood nude atop one of Yggdrasil’s roots, saying that he was here to swim, too, and act as a guard for his king at the same time.

That particular moment played for Poi like he had been there, in the water in Erick’s body, looking up at Iriki standing not too far away.

And then came a bunch of thoughts on sex, including the intrusive thoughts about Erick having sex with Poi. It was rather easy to skip past that part of this particular book, for Poi had been desensitized to those particular types of thoughts long ago, and Erick was usually rather devoid of intrusive thoughts; it was one of the reasons why Poi truly liked the man.

Most people, and especially those who labeled themselves adventurers or otherwise, had a great deal of intrusive thoughts all the time. Most people even went down intrusive thought patterns sometimes, thinking through all the bad things that they would never want to actually do. Thankfully, Erick knew when his thoughts were unhelpful and he usually banished them whenever he could.

Erick moved past his own thoughts, saying, “It wouldn’t be right to… Accept Iriki’s offer.”

Another sudden cloud of sexual thoughts filled the air, and Poi ignored that cloud, too.

“You decide what is right, Erick. That’s what it means to be king, and while you are king, your actions have consequences beyond the physical. If you attach too much meaning to a simple flirtation then it will have meaning.” Poi said, “If you decide not to ever have sex anymore, then when you finally do find someone you like then that relationship will have so much meaning that it will be uncomfortable for all involved.”

Erick’s thoughts stilled.

And then Erick suddenly realized something he should have realized already, that Poi was right.

“I’m certainly not going to let that worst case scenario happen,” Erick said, sighing a little. He still wasn’t about to do anything that Poi suggested, but at least Poi had exposed Erick’s reluctance for what it could turn into. Erick said, “Sometimes I feel like a stupid teenager.”

Poi smiled. “That describes about 95% of your staff at least sometimes, so you’re in good company.”

More sexual thoughts filled the air, of all Erick had unintentionally seen.

“Gods! They just won’t stop, will they!” Erick said, but deep down he wondered what it would be like to give in to the small invitations he had been getting practically every single day since the incident with Portal’s Trademasters. And then Erick’s upbringing reared its head, dominating his mind, along with worries over vulnerabilities, and knives gleaming in the dark. Erick said, “I’m not sure I want this to be the culture of House Benevolence. They planned an event over at Zaraanka’s Pink House and Zaraanka is planning on expanding.”

And Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“We have a therapist at that Pink House,” Poi said, plunging the conversation into deeper waters than where it was already headed.

Erick froze, but his mind did not.

His thoughts turned to a red storm of blood and death. Bodies mangled by monsters. Pus and viscera and rib cages half stripped of flesh and broken bones and brains spread out across the stone floor as a red wave flooded the land, and solid light evaporated it all. Death and blood returned soon enough as more bodies fell to swords and spells wielded by unseen enemies, along with hopelessness that Erick could never kill the enemies fast enough before they killed everyone he loved.

It was hard to look at.

For a brief moment, Poi saw Erick’s thoughts as the thickest cloud of horror that he had ever witnessed, but that was untrue. It was just the thickest cloud Poi had seen in a while. Erick had been getting better, but the second any conversation turned to serious topics, like Benevolence’s dark knots, or being intimate with another person, or even just a casual meeting between people who wanted something from Erick that had nothing to do with violence at all, and had everything to do with all the good Erick had done, or, how good Erick physically looked. Sometimes it seemed that every single thing pinged Erick’s trauma in a small way. Sometimes in a large way.

Poi asking Erick if he wanted help, to talk to someone, usually pinged this trauma and all these thoughts of blood and monsters and death. It was why Poi rarely brought up this subject. It was also why Poi knew that he had to bring up the uncomfortable subject.

Today’s attempt didn’t seem to be bearing any fruit, though.

Erick settled down, saying, “No. I don’t need to see a therapist yet. But…”

Erick surprised Poi. His thoughts turned toward questions, instead of toward denial.

“… But tell me what therapy looks like here on Veird.” Erick shrugged. “I might as well know, right?”

Poi grinned a little, then began, “It could look tens of different ways. There’s erasure, which is the most extreme option, or simple talking, which is the least option. Most people fall closer toward the smaller options.”

Poi would have continued, but Erick had a sudden, visceral reaction to the offer of erasure. That mental reaction passed like a flash of lightning—

And then Erick began truly considering it—

For all of half a second.

Poi would have been worried if Erick had considered erasure for any length of time longer than that, for erasure meant erasing a part of one’s own mind. Erasure was a good offer when it came to healing away defining trauma that would never happen again, but with Erick making himself a king, the trauma was not over. Therefore, Erick could not safely remove that trauma from his mind.

Erick asked, “Middle of the road option?”

“A reframing.” Poi said, “Reframing takes the specific trauma and turns it into a source of growth. You’re familiar with the idea of ‘post traumatic stress’ turning triggers into full blown war responses. Well, a proper reframing turns mental scar tissue into something more productive; ‘post traumatic growth’. It’s invasive, perhaps even more so than an erasure, but in my professional opinion, you’re already far down that path, so I’m not sure what a Mind Mage-assisted reframing could do for you, but it is an option.”

Erick sat back in his chair and thought.

Poi let him think, tuning out the storm of thoughts crowding their breakfast nook.

The two of them got to eating their breakfasts, and smaller conversation started. Plans for the day, news of the new prototype iron web over in the warehouse, words over Zolan’s latest ‘newspaper’ which Erick had been reading before Poi had come out and tossed Erick down a different series of thoughts. When Kiri and Teressa came out for breakfast the conversation turned to land development surrounding the lake, and to what was happening in the Benevolence Research Tower.

Jane called when breakfast was over.

Poi patched her through to her father. As father and daughter connected, all thoughts of Iriki vanished. Erick filled with joy as he spoke with his daughter. Poi stayed out of that conversation, but he was still providing the connection so he heard everything.

– – – –

‘I love you, Jane! I hope your search goes better.’

‘It might! I love you, dad. Bye!’

Jane cut the connection.

They had talked about a lot, as they usually did. Jane asked after dangers threatening Candlepoint and the only thing her father spoke of were meetings and how everything was going well, as he usually did. Her father had asked her after the dangers she had been facing, and she… Mostly spoke the truth.

What was she supposed to tell him? That she had almost died three times while exploring the Underworld in these last two months? And that it was the best time of her life? She might not have found her sword, but here she was, prowling the depths of Veird with a team at her side, visiting little spots of civilization everywhere they went, helping with smaller problems and sometimes very, very big problems. She had tried telling the full story to her father once, and thankfully her father had not rushed after her, but Hizogard and Sitnakov started to stay closer to her than they needed to. Such a failure of party dynamics had almost ended in Danaro getting killed.

So they stopped doing what her father had wanted after the first week of being down here in the depths.

And Jane loved it!

“You like this life a bit more than you need to, Jane,” Ravan said.

Ravan retracted her mind tendril and stood up. She was a Mind Mage dragonkin with scales like bright smoke. A generous person would call Ravan a silverscale, but Ravan was not a generous person and she appreciated facts above all else.

Ravan announced to the group, scattered across the campsite, “Jane has checked in. It is time to finalize a plan for moving on. Everyone awake!”

No one moved fast enough for Ravan’s liking, so she pulsed a telepathic gong, filling their cave with silent sound.

The ripple of power passed over a pool of blackness sitting in a crack in the side of the campsite. Sitnakov jolted out of that blackness, halfway forming his orcol body before he realized that there was no danger, so he slowed down and yawned wide. He started crawling out of the hole in the ground. With the back of one hand he rubbed grit and rocks out of his eyes and with the other hand he plucked a spike of stone out of his side, casually tossing the stone back into the small sleeping pit. With one final, full body shiver, Sitnakov stood tall and himself again.

Then he got to putting together his pack.

Down the short tunnel, where their camp seemed to end in a solid wall, another orcol rested on a rock beside that solid wall. This orcol was female and fleshy, with bright red skin. Her name was Lyrical Carnage, and she was rather skinny for a full grown orcol, but that was probably due to the Carnage Dragon in her. Jane thought she smiled too much, but she had a nice voice and nice attitude which all went rather well when she sang and played her strummer. Her instrument of choice was a battlefield version of a one handed guitar which she had strapped to her palm, leaving her other hand open for a sword; she held and played her instrument with only her left hand.

With a cheer in her words, Lyrical hopped away from the wall, flicking the strings on her strummer, asking, “Are you all ready to hear a new song? I finally got it worked out!”

Sitnakov yawned again, saying, “Is it going to ping on me, or on the sword?”

Lyrical said, “It might just ping on you again!”

That was an old ‘argument’, which no one really cared about anymore. Sitnakov was made of adamantium, and so was Jane’s sword. It made finding the damned sword rather difficult.

At the noise all around (and not due to the telepathic pulse, apparently) the last two members of their group pulled themselves out of their combined bedroll. Hizogard was a bog-standard good-looking human man, with blonde hair, flawless skin, and blue eyes. He was a frontline fighter who was still getting back all of the magic he had once had, before he had taken a dip on Ar’Cosmos’s Renewal Tanks to rid himself of his corrupted half-dragon nature.

The other man in the bedroll was a pale red incani named Danaro who used to be a shadeling. Now, he was just an incani, and a rather skinny one at that, like he never quite ate enough. He was still working on getting back some of his more nuanced Healing Magic, but almost all of it was back now that he had been an incani again for the last 6 months.

Danaro grogged out, “Are we going back to Healing Waters yet?”

He had been asking that question for the last two weeks. He had loved that place, even if it was filled with electric spiders and rapidly mutative cancerous danger. Jane had loved that place, too. Healing Essence condensed in some of the animals who lived there, and if they didn’t turn into failed horrors of amalgamated flesh and fangs, they became almost ascended lifeforms, unable to be harmed in their natural environment at all.

Jane still hadn’t been able to kill one of the brighter fish. She almost wanted one of them for a Familiar Form, but without the Healing waters of the aptly named ‘Healing Waters Cave’ (which was more like a Great Lake), they lost almost all of that power. Such a Form still might have some useful properties, though. Jane still hadn’t found another useful Familiar Form in their two months of hunting the Underworld for her sword, but that was to be expected.

Jane said, “Not going back to Healing Waters until Lyrical’s magics fully clear this place again.”

Danaro sighed as he fully untangled himself from his shared bed with Hizogard. “I miss the Healing Waters Cave. I could actually explore there, and not hunker down in camp, or wait for you all to kill the monsters.”

Aside from Jane and Sitnakov, no one else was able to explore the full breadth of Jane’s fugue-state-fueled race through the Underworld, where she bounced through Abysses of Blood monsters, caverns filled with Sand and Shadow, rivers of Healing and Lightning, and a whole bunch of smaller places that Jane barely remembered, and only thanks to the Mind Mage in their group, Ravan.

Hizogard began packing up his belongings, saying, “We’ll get back there soon enough.”

Lyrical happily skipped forward, saying, “Not if I can find the sword today!”

“I’ll believe the sword is here when I see it.” Hizogard said, “It probably got lost in the Abyss. We should go back there.”

Sitnakov said, “If it got lost in the deeper parts of the Abyss then we’re never seeing it again.”

That was another point of contention. Jane’s sword was very small compared to the places they were exploring. Some of these places even Sitnakov couldn’t travel safely.

Ravan said, “I still feel it got stuck in Ar’Kendrithyst’s walls, and none of us know enough about how they work to know if it was truly lost, or not.”

“We can go bother the new settlement again?” Sitnakov offered. “Or look for more people who need monsters killed? There’s that settlement north of this cavern that we didn’t get to yet.”

Hizogard and Danaro were the last ones to put away their camping shit, but Jane and everyone else were ready to get a move on. Jane’s backpack was a rather thin thing that she could strap onto any sort of Familiar Form she had, but right now it was a simple weight upon her normal human back. The bulk of their stuff was held by those who stayed in the backlines while others fought on the front.

Ravan telekinetically hauled one such very large backpack onto her back, and supported its weight with a long term [Weightless Platform] spell, as she said, “We should go to those settlements. We could spread word of the outside world and Candlepoint, as well as ask around about the sword.”

Jane said, “It’s still surprising to me that there are places down here that aren’t connected to anywhere else.”

“We try to keep people connected,” Sitnakov said, “But we don’t require them to stay connected.”

Lyrical grinned brightly, reminding Jane yet again of her father with his perpetual joy, as she said, “It’s all going to get so much more connected in another fifty years, too! There won’t hardly be a single place that’s not a week’s journey from a Gate!”

Lyrical’s infatuation with Jane’s father also reminded her of Erick all the time. In one of Jane’s more bitter moods, Jane had suggested that Lyrical try to ask Erick out on a date, knowing that the woman would get shot down hard, but Lyrical had laughed it off, telling Jane that she was here for the journey and the experience and to make something Good. She had absolutely no interest in her father, but if Teressa was interested, then she would take that introduction.

Jane had been pretty sure that Teressa would not be interested.

Lyrical took that information in stride, and that little conversation had dispelled practically every dark thought that Jane had had about Lyrical.

It seemed like everywhere Jane had gone during the Worldly Path, someone had been wanting to shack up with her father, through her. That had sensitized her to every single person who saw her and their eyes lit up and then they started being nicer.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But it turned out that Lyrical was just a nice person. And a lesbian.

Jane returned some of Lyrical’s joy, saying, “Sing us a Seeking Song, Seeker!”

Instead of instantly starting in on her magic, fully thrumming her strummer in her palm as she sang loud and clear, Lyrical’s grin faltered. She looked around.

Sitnakov looked around as well, but he didn’t seem nearly as concerned as Lyrical… or Hizogard, now that Jane was looking around for other discrepancies. Hizogard had been helping load up Danaro with another bag, but he faltered and that bag fell off of Danaro’s pack, tumbling to the ground. Ravan was already looking around. Something had happened, but Jane had no idea what.

There were no sounds from the ground. No big and heavy monsters on the way. Just the usual whipping wind noise beyond the cave that barely filtered into this space. Jane focused on that noise to see if there had been any change, but nope, no change.

The only ones not in the loop were Danaro and Jane, even with both of them throwing their senses wide.

The cave was empty. The stones around them remained unmoved, and uninhabited.

Jane broke the silence, “… What?”

Lyrical looked around again. Everyone else did, too.

Sitnakov said, “Sounded like Fae Magic in the air.” He looked to Jane, “Did you finally figure out your Domain? Or was that just a roll of the tongue?”

All attention turned to Jane, and Jane realized what had happened. Alliteration.

But at the mention of a Domain, Jane’s mood darkened. There were many reasons for this trip besides just finding her sword and helping people. She still didn’t have a Domain. She was getting better at aura control and everything else, though.

“It was just a roll of the tongue.” Jane said, “I am constantly stressing my aura, though. There could have been some Fae Magic in there?”

A moment passed.

Ravan broke the silence, saying, “Doesn’t feel like there’s Fae in the air. Let us move on.”

Sitnakov shrugged.

Hizogard said to Jane, “A Domain will come with time. My own [Domain of the Sword] took me a decade to understand. Second time was easier.”

Sitnakov said to him, “A more generic Domain is usually better.”

That was a new, old argument between them. Sitnakov usually won because he had the weight of time on his side, but Hizogard’s recently recovered [Domain of the Sword], a Force-derived Domain, was rather good at cutting things. Jane liked that idea. It fit in well with her own Prismatic Magic, and her own Truth that she could be whatever she needed to be in order to advance.

Danaro said, “Domain of Blood is still the more useful Domain, I wager… Not much use against all the elementals we face down here, but it has been useful! What can a sword do but stab?”

Hizogard smiled and leaned in to Danaro, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He pulled back, saying, “I think I can stab rather well.”

Danaro rolled his eyes.

Lyrical had allowed them all to speak as they wanted, but now she spoke up, saying, “Well, whatever happened with Jane’s words, there was resonance in my strummer—”

Everyone looked to her as she held out her left hand. Her strummer was glimmering faintly on the pinky-finger string.

“—and I already started the new song, Seeking Adamantium Swords.” Lyrical questioned, “Maybe the sword is actually close by, and there was some resonance with Jane’s aura and some random Fae stresses? Your magic is supposed to be prismatic, anyway, right?”

Jane’s eyes lit up. “It could be here!”

Sitnakov smiled, saying, “I hope a monster found it.”

Ravan held onto the straps of her bag, saying, “We were already going to search the area again, so let’s get to it.” With a flick of magic, a layer of silver spellwork draped around Ravan and her large backpack. When it settled, she looked sort of like a volcano inspector, with her bright silver hazmat-like suit.

The camp was already cleared, and so, one by one, each person began conjuring their own armor. Everyone had armor that did a few different things, like having zero gaps, added air filtration systems, and whatever other conveniences they could cram into that spellwork. Jane had updated her own armor to match theirs.

Sitnakov didn’t need any of that, though. He transformed his outer layer into smooth armor so debris wouldn’t accumulate on his surface.

Lyrical held up her left arm, where her strummer held under a clear glass case that surrounded her fist.

Ravan brought up and maintained their group [Telepathy], and after a routine series of ‘ready!’s she pointed at the solid wall where Lyrical had been taking her watch. The wall vanished, becoming a crack in the world, letting the noise of an ever-tumbling avalanche rush into the cave, drowning out all normal sounds. Another cancel command from Ravan extinguished all lights and warming fires in the cave, so that their light wouldn’t attract anything out from the storm beyond.

Beyond their nook of safety, roiling darkness that was not darkness at all enveloped the world. It was a corridor of obsidian sand storms a hundred kilometers across, where glimmering shards of glass cut apart everything it could, leaving behind either obsidian sand drifts kilometers deep, scoured stone, or violent elementals. The sapient natives to this land hunted these depths for the rarer types of elementals made of silver or iron or other valuable metals, but the main enemies encountered were obsidian elementals, and those things were not nice. Especially the big ones.

Lightning flashed in the upper parts of the obsidian desert cave, where wind and mana poured down from above, briefly illuminating the massive obsidian elementals that kept the storm going. They were each the size of twisters, and they fought and broke the world around them with every tornado-filled step, vying for position around the mana vent.

The cavern their little party had picked out was far, far south of the main monsters that called this land home, which no one engaged. If you tried to fight them, they fought back and usually murdered the attacker, but if you ignored them and stayed away, they usually didn’t bother you, because they were always primarily fighting over the mana vent.

When Jane had come through here the first time, with Melemizargo, she did not notice the elementals. It was highly possible that the elementals fled before Melemizargo, though.

Jane sent through their connection, ‘We should investigate the center again.’

Ravan replied, ‘You should at least allow Lyrical to search before you suggest a course of action that takes us directly into the jaws of death.’

Sitnakov backed Jane up, saying, ‘I bet the monsters have it, anyway. They usually do!’

Ravan looked up at Sitnakov.

Jane couldn’t see through her silver armor, and her mana sense wasn’t large enough to let her spy like her father could, but Jane got the impression that Ravan was frowning at the giant black wrought.

Sitnakov allowed his armor to transform a little, showing a smirk. He instantly seemed to regret this as grit flew into his mouth.

All the while, Lyrical had been gesturing back and forth with her glass-bulb hand, the strummer clearly visible. She moved the musical instrument back and forth a few times, and then up and down. She settled on a straightforward and downward path, pointing toward the giant obsidian elementals…

And then a bit to the right, and her strummer pulsed with an unheard song. ‘I think we should check out the settlement north of the cave.’

No giant obsidian elemental fights today!