208, 2/2

Teressa looked up from her book.

She was comfortable in bed, warm under the covers, and yet with a cool wind blowing across the space, and with plenty of pillows propping her up. This was perfect. A warm cup of tea sat gently steaming on the table beside her. And yet… She felt the need to do something. She put her bookmark in her book, then set it aside and cast her gaze out into the world, into the near past, and into the far future. Mana sensing was easier for her than ever before, and her range was now easily in kilometers, but only for certain things. Her steady range was at about 300 meters, though—

… Teressa sent to Poi, ‘There’s a guy in the garden. Looks like he’s playing a game of ‘steal from the wizard’, but I could be wrong.’

Poi woke up instantly, tracing across Teressa’s connection to the world, seeing what she was seeing.

The man was heavily veiled, but not veiled enough. He was just under 2 meters tall, human, and crouching by the peppers, taking some of them as fast as he could.

And then Poi’s voice came to Teressa, ‘You’re looking in the future again. But he is here now.’

Teressa blinked and refocused.

And then she saw the man appear on the edge of the garden, just inside the fence, inside the very obviously-placed [Alarm Ward]s. As he stepped into the garden itself he tripped the non-obvious [Alarm Ward]s, sending a tiny jingle throughout the house, warning that someone was in the garden space.

Poi’s voice suddenly hit Teressa, ‘Full [Benevolence Sight]. NOW.’

Teressa obeyed.

She gazed upon the man in the garden, piercing all of the veils around his form, seeking his future, breaking the world into lightning fractals.

In three hours he would be back with his friends and he would have successfully completed his mission of ‘steal from the wizard!’, to the cheers of all his drinking buddies.

And two days later he would be dead.

He was going to die to one of his drinking friends in a bar fight, to a knife hastily drawn, in a fight that should have been nothing but fists. The garden invader would bleed out and die, even after Healing Magics had been applied by the healer at the bar. That shouldn’t have happened. Most bars hired at least one person who could cast some healing magics, which they did, and the healer had tried to heal the guy, but they failed. One simple knife wound shouldn’t kill anyone who could veil and infiltrate with this guy’s precision and power.

Teressa looked deeper.

She looked at the ‘friend’ and reality broke into sparking fragments again.

The friend was the same age as the man. They had known each other for a long time, but something had changed. Every single future that Teressa saw was one of death, with the friend killing the garden invader in two days time. Or maybe three. Rarely did the invader get away from the friend. Always, it was the same argument. Over a woman?

Yes. Over a woman…

That didn’t sit right with Teressa.

She returned to the bar fight and focused…

The knife!

The knife in the man’s back broke into shattering fractals, but then focused into a thick line of lightning, leading off to a pawn shop. The invader had bought the knife for his friend as a birthday gift years ago…

No.

Teressa backed up.

She scanned the bar fight—

She should have caught it the first time. The healer at the bar. They made a show of healing the man, but the healer’s fractals were more obscured than any other’s. They were an impenetrable hole in the world. But the tiny needle made of blacknight was not obscured at all. That deadly poison was one of the only ones that could kill faster than [Cleanse] could save, and it was almost always fatal to humans.

Teressa pulled back.

The man was still plucking peppers, stuffing them into his bag. Two hours ago he had been playing a game of Wizards’ Towers with his friends, and then someone had joked about invading an actual Wizard’s Tower, and they were drunk enough to do it. They had all heard stories about how people stole from Erick’s garden all the time when he was living in Spur.

Surely stealing from his home on Yggdrasil couldn’t be that hard!

Let’s go do it!

And now this one guy was here, proving his manhood by the depths of his pure stupidity, and someone else had taken advantage of that. The same healer in the bar where he had boasted of his prowess. Teressa had no idea why the healer had killed the man, but—

Poi didn’t need any more proof than that.

Whatever was going on with the invader, it was over, now. The man stopped everything he was doing as Poi took control of the man and sat him down on the dirt. That sight sent a chill down Teressa’s back, for Poi wouldn’t do that to another person unless there was a real danger.

‘He’s a patsy of some sort.’ Poi sent, ‘And our schedules are getting too obvious. We’re only aware of this happening at all because you remained awake, reading your new book.’

Teressa shuddered in her bed as the calmness of the past few months came crashing down. They had had a lot of smaller scares, and Teressa felt that this might still be one of them, but there was still a cynical part of herself that saw dangers everywhere, sometimes. She was glad that she had stayed up to read her book, though. Poi was right; they were becoming too predictable. They needed another person in the house with them, or the garden needed to be removed, and they needed to move the house to a new location.

Teressa felt the last option was the best.

And then 3 hours later, Teressa was very relieved that she had been worried over nothing. (Though they should consider moving houses again.)

Teressa pieced most of it together herself from looking at long-range [Witness]es of the various interviews of every single person she had seen in her visions, from invader, to the friend with a knife, to the healer at the bar with the blacknight needle. Poi helped fill in some of the more intricate details.

The man was going to die due to a chain of interwoven events; not some grand plot pointed at Erick.

The invader had won his ‘round’ of ‘Wizard’s Tower’, stealing the prize from the top of the tower.

He would boast of this.

He would win the heart of the girl he and his friend were both chasing. So the friend would knife him in the back in a barfight, to teach him a lesson that was too stupid for Teressa to entertain as anything other than the raving of a denied man. The friend was not aiming to kill, though.

The healer at the bar hated the boasting garden invader, though. He saw his chance to kill the man, and he took it. And there, right there, posing as a healer at a bar in Portal, was a serial killer.

Teressa didn’t even know that she was gazing all the way to Portal with her Sight, until all that happened and they, through working with the embassy of Portal, were able to find the serial killer in that city.

In the end, Erick had been informed of what had happened after the fact. After he stopped panicking that he was working too hard and that he should have been home (Teressa and Poi kept trying to tell him that it was not his duty to always protect everyone, and certainly not them when they were already protected and at home) Erick finally accepted that ‘nothing’ had happened.

He did formally demand that Portal open a real investigation into the healer at the bar, and the bar itself, though. Which they did. That would take time to sort through, though.

And now it was a day later and the house was on a different branch and the garden had been abandoned and regrown inside a [Fairy Stronghold] greenhouse, attached to the main house.

Teressa lay in bed, reading again, and this time she got to the end of her book without interruption.

She did not feel the need to open the next one; she just closed her book, shut off the wardlights by twisting the wood irises closed, and lay down to sleep.

She slept well.

– – – –

Mox studied seven different city proposals on her desk. Each had merit. Each were from reputable people. But the problems were that each of these people were former dragons, newly Benevolence dragons, coming out of the cave, as it were, and now they wished to move all their holdings to be near Candlepoint, or to start their own city somewhere under King Flatt’s aegis.

Every single request was easy enough to fulfill, for they all came from powerful people, who, if they were not now openly dragons, then Mox would have happily suggested that Erick take all of them. These people were nothing but boons to all the rest of Candlepoint and House Benevolence. They would be fantastic additions to the Gate Network, too.

But they were dragons.

Erick would probably want to grant them Gates on Financial Road.

But they were dragons.

Especially Dead Tide. That land was both underwater, and a bit in the Underworld. Located at the bottom center of the Wikwacchi Ocean, south west of Continental Glaquin, Dead Tide was incredibly hard to reach and escape from, through all normal means. That was one of the many places where the oceans spilled down through the Surface and into the Underworld. All manner of riches were had in that place, mostly in the form of magical everything; animals, plants, etcetera. The very ground itself grew metal tendrils that reached up through the mana-thick waters and continued to grow, providing some of the purest magical gold and platinum and silver and everything else on Veird. Of course, you needed to harvest those wafting beds of gelatinous metal rather carefully, and then process it to get rid of the slimes that made the stuff; because that’s what was actually happening there. Filter-feeding slimes.

All of Dead Tide’s riches had to go down, first, for magic did not like going against the trillion-ton flow of ocean water and ephemeral mana that constantly also went down. One of those many, many spillways ended up near Stratagold, if Mox remembered correctly, and she did. Most exit routes for Dead Tide went to all the other Underworld waterways down there, into the dark.

A Gate to Dead Tide would be revolutionary for Candlepoint, and all the rest of the world.

And here was a dragon from Dead Tide, who wanted to bring his business and family to Candlepoint, through a Gate to his lands down there. He wanted to maintain that Gate, too. Of course the dragon wanted to control that Gate, which was simply not going to happen. But this was a good starting point for negotiations with Dead Tide for a Gate.

Dead Tide was not one nation, though. Dead Tide was 7 nations in a large coat, sometimes acting as a single nation. If Erick approved this request for this particular dragon, then that dragon would become the absolute ruler of Dead Tide.

… Which was a thing Erick could choose to do.

Those negotiations would likely include Stratagold, though, since a lot of those metals and goods went through Archmage’s Rest, near Stratagold and controlled by Stratagold. Of course, a lot of the people of Dead Tide tried their luck with avoiding Stratagold entirely, and chancing a run through the dark. Stratagold did not mind that, though…

But still. Stratagold would need to be included in these new talks.

Mox set that application to the side. All of these applications required clearance from Erick, but that one especially needed more attention than most.

And then she went onto the rest.

– – – –

Raingorl was busier than he had ever been.

Ar’Cosmos was coming to Candlepoint with 25,000 new people and he had nearly 200 applications for teaching positions and more than 300 that wanted to recreate the Renewal Tanks that Erick had made inside Ar’Cosmos, and which they had personally used. This was great! He wanted that magitech.

He needed more people.

He did not have enough money to pay any of them, nor did he have enough materials for them to teach with, or classrooms or hospitals for them to work their particular brands of magic, nor did he have the infrastructure to absorb nearly this many people as he needed to absorb.

Luckily, Erick was filthy rich, and Raingorl was both a great delegator and very willing to get his hands on those Renewal Tanks. Burhendurur got involved when Renewal Tanks came up, though, and then Raingorl got to meet Inferno Maw, the current leader of House Death.

Inferno Maw was a tall, thin man, with incani features and a grey cast to his skin and his long, upward-pointing horns. And he stared a bit at Raingorl as they sat down across from each other in one of Raingorl’s offices. Raingorl was used to this by now and paid no mind to Inferno Maw’s uncomfortable-for-him stares.

Raingorl was very used to the stares by now, and he kinda liked it. He had never been this way in his previous life, but… It was kinda nice to be pretty.

Raingorl broke the [Force Wall], asking, “I understand you wish to speak of some sort of meshing of Arcanaeum Consortium teaching, and Ar’Cosmos teaching.”

Inferno Maw came back to the moment, adroitly saying, “That is correct. I am the High Chancellor of Ar’Cosmos Arcanaeum, in charge of all that is taught at our own centers of learning. My goal of this conversation is to ensure that a few problematic areas in our teaching protocols are resolved to the satisfaction of us both. Erick will, of course, have final say, but I already have clearance from him to directly engage with you about how you fill your classrooms, and the knowledge you teach.” He took a small book out of his robes and set it on his own lap, as he asked, “Is there any place that you would like to begin, specifically? If not, then I would speak of which Elements are taught, first. Specifically, the non-mention of Fae and Carnage and Mystical in any Arcanaeum Consortium approved books.”

Raingorl wanted to scowl, for there were reasons those magics were not taught. This would be a long conversation, for there was no way that the teaching or non-teaching of specific Elements was among Inferno Maw’s strongest Bolts. Luckily, Raingorl had blocked off 5 hours for this conversation.

Raingorl started with a weak Bolt of his own, saying, “We will never teach the proper use of Fae or Mystical in a classroom here at Candlepoint. Those Elements are too rife for abuse. Other Elements that we will not teach are Elemental Time, Elemental Pirate— Any of the various Wizard Elements that have cropped up over the years, with the exception of Benevolence. And besides that, I oversee the mundane school; the University. I do have capabilities to teach Healing Magic, but all other magical learning is to be completed through Aisha.”

Aisha hadn’t done a damned thing in creating a ‘magic school’, yet. Raingorl was still pissed about that, and he was only getting more miffed as days went by.

“Aisha has not started her school of magic yet,” Inferno Maw said. “You have started yours, and even if you do call it a simple ‘university’, you still teach basic magics. [Grow] and The Vegetable. [Watershape] and [Stoneshape] and Habitation. You might not teach Force Magic 101, but you do teach Adventurer’s Readiness, which includes basic Healing Magic applications. And you do teach Healing Magic in your hospitals. It would be easy for you to inform people that they can stress almost any Healing spell in specific ways and gain another Healing spell. Stress [Rejuvenation] deeper into the body and you get [Regeneration], transforming a pitiable heal-over-time into allowing one to regrow severed body parts. You should already be teaching this, and yet, normal Arcanaeum thoughts are to not teach this at all, except through the apprentice programs.”

All true.

And so, since Aisha was not actually doing her magic school, as Erick had asked her to do, Raingorl decided that he wanted to speak openly about many things. Just to see what Inferno Maw said. With the two of them working over Erick together, Raingorl might be allowed to take over—

A knock came at the door.

Inferno Maw scowled a little.

Raingorl turned toward the door just in time to see the iridescent steel woman herself, Aisha, walk into the room. Raingorl hummed.

Well that was unexpected.

Aisha looked from Raingorl to Inferno Maw, then she pulled up a chair, and sat beside both of them, saying, “I understand we’re talking about magical teaching?”

Raingorl said, “I suppose we are.”

“Fantastic!” Aisha said to the both of them, “I have already spoken to Erick because I thought this would happen soon, and now that we’re here, we have leave to come to some sort of arrangement where you, Raingorl, officially become the ‘High Chancellor’ of Candlepoint Arcanaeum, where you teach all knowledge, both mundane and magical, but where I have leave to deny certain subjects be taught. If those subjects and students do need to be taught —if only to prevent them from killing themselves— those students will be directed through the normal apprentice system. My office of Magic will be doing all of that apprentice system.” She asked Raingorl, “If this is okay with you?”

Raingorl was stunned. But only for a moment. “Yes. This is acceptable.”

That was…

Exactly what he wanted!

Inferno Maw had been worried, but now he grinned a little in decided pleasure. “A wonderful adjustment. In light of this new happenstance, I have about a hundred new things to discuss, if you are both amenable?”

Aisha nodded. “I have 4 hours scheduled for this. I feel it might be enough.”

Raingorl said, “Let us proceed.”

Inferno Maw began, “Let us restart this conversation, with a discussion of Elements to be taught. Let us start with Fae, Mystical, and Carnage; specifically.”

Aisha frowned a little. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m fine with taking these sorts of students and teaching the advanced forms of this magic, but I suggest that Raingorl leaves them out of the normal curriculum.”

Inferno Maw perked up. “Really? This is counter to the normal direction of the Arcanaeum Consortium. Usually Kirginatharp needs to personally clear when those magics are allowed to be taught.”

“Our King has widely displayed Fae Magic to all, for every single person he granted new life to was held in a [Fairy Stronghold] for a day. And then there’s Weald; everyone there knows what Fae Magic is, and that the Bands of Intent on Fae Magic are getting relaxed in a few years.” Aisha said, “And Erick wants everyone to learn all the magic they want to learn. Mind you, I know this will come back to slap him some day, but he wants to do it, and he will be personally cleaning up any messes made by his new world order.”

Inferno Maw’s eyes went a little wide.

Raingorl easily said, “I’m still not going to teach Fae or Mystical, but Carnage is acceptable to add to the list of accepted Elements.”

Inferno Maw moved on, “I assume that Benevolence will be taught by Aisha?”

“Probably people I tap for the job, but yes.” Aisha looked to Raingorl. “Yes?”

Raingorl agreed.

They moved on.

It was a productive conversation.

And now… Raingorl was the Head Chancellor of Candlepoint University and Arcanaeum—

Well. They’d have to get official accreditation on that last one before Raingorl started calling the mishmash of buildings he had an ‘arcanaeum’. That accreditation would be a canyon and a half to cross, but Raingorl felt he had wings.

He could cross that canyon, and with speed.

– – – –

Zolan had four staff members looking over some resumes from some new hires, while he was conducting an interview with a man who might form the backbone of a ‘Greater Candlepoint Sewermaster’s Alliance’, as they had over in Songli. Soon, Zolan dismissed the man, but ticked his resume as a possible hire. That particular applicant was a new Benevolence dragon who was moving on with his life, but he was not the ‘Al’ person who Zolan had known that Erick had transformed first.

‘Al’ was still in Spur, pretending to be a normal person, according to Zolan’s various informants.

… Zolan would have preferred Al for this sewermaster position, truly. But it was not meant to happen.

– – – –

Volaro ordained the introduction of ten new judges in the wake of the Dragon Exodus, and the creation of Weald.

He still had reservations of some of the new people from Gambler’s Rest, but they were all qualified from their previous lives. Those people from Gambler’s Rest might even become some of the best judges in this land, for this land was to have only one set of laws. Because of that, it was every judge’s duty to ensure that that set of laws was upheld fairly across all peoples.

That last part was tripping up a lot of the new arrivals not from Gambler’s Rest; the nobles who expected better treatment than anyone else.

Normally, Volaro would have made arrangements to keep those people happy, for most of those people were from Ar’Cosmos, but he was too busy to ensure such preferential treatment, and it was rather nice to simply look at the law and decide that if a commoner was fined 10 gold for stealing from the market, then a former noble would be charged the same. Such an act won him no friends among the formerly powerful, but that was just it. They were formerly powerful.

Volaro liked not having to suck up to them.

… Gambler’s Rest’s people were perhaps too happy with that particular decree of ‘the same law for everyone’, so Volaro let them remain at their own lands, for now, though he did pluck two of those people and put them in the main court, in Candlepoint. He needed help getting through all these cases made by the mad rush of refugees, after all.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Volaro hired a bunch of new inspectors, too. The judges were just for when the inspectors decried a new building and the creator of that building was not willing to budge.

‘What do you mean the stone walls on our 3 story house need to be at least 30 centimeters thick! I never did it that way back in the islands!’

Well, sir, you got exceedingly lucky back on the islands— Oh wait! Aren’t you a refugee from there, and your entire city was destroyed by crashing waves? Oh? Yes? I’m right about that, eh? I wonder why that happened to you? I wonder why your house and entire city fell to some simple waves.

Volaro didn’t say all that himself, to anyone. But one of the new judges had said that. Volaro liked that judge rather much because of that, though he would need to rein in that fiery young lady’s tendencies if she overstepped clear lawful lines.

But there had already been a few buildings that fell apart on their own, nearly killing the inhabitants, so some righteous anger in the courtroom was warranted.

– – – –

Quilatalap had seen quite a few [Reincarnation]s and [Blessing of Draconic Benevolence]s over the last few days, but only when he specifically asked Erick if he could watch. That man may have been a dragon and a Wizard, but he acted like a common civil servant on a deadly deadline, every single day; always something happening, and never enough time to relax. There was something admirable about that, but Quilatalap preferred a quieter existence. As for his own magical efforts in his quiet existence, he still had his bean-growing experiment going on, maintained by a little automatic skeleton magic, but he only checked on that when he wasn’t putting together all the rest of his life.

Erick had given him three buildings for his own use.

The first was his new home on Yggdrasil, which was quite nice. Well protected. Quilatalap couldn’t fault any of Erick’s spellwork, or any of his runic webs, and Quilatalap even had some really nice views of the Gate District from his porch. The nature of the house did disclose that Erick had probably seen Quilatalap’s similar home in Ar’Kendrithyst, back during Last Shadow’s Feast, or at least the one he allowed people to find. This was a little awkward since Quilatalap did not actually like that house.

When Quilatalap got a moment to ask Erick about where he got the design for the house, Erick said he had copied his own house, and then he asked if Quilatalap would have rather a cottage like the one he let Erick stay in with him, during Last Shadow’s Feast. Quilatalap would have actually preferred that, and so, Erick transformed the house the next chance he got. He even installed a little runic [Renew] station so Quilatalap could keep the house strong on his own, which was rather thoughtful; Erick had just forgotten to do that the first time.

But really, Quilatalap felt that Erick was probably just getting more comfortable with him.

The second building was a workshop like Erick’s own, inside another [Fairy Stronghold], but outside of any other district. It was a space for him to practice whatever he wanted. Quilatalap didn’t use that one much, but he appreciated the thought.

Mostly, Quilatalap was in the library. The public portion of the library was in the designated-Shade tower, occupying about four empty floors at the top. That public space was completely empty, too, but that was because Quilatalap was expected to fill it with whatever he felt like. Erick suggested ‘good books’, and then rattled off most of the books in his own library. They were all magic books.

And so, since Quilatalap thought Erick was heavily lacking in a great lot of basic magic books, that became Quilatalap’s first goal in setting up that space. Just the basic magic books, though. All the more devious ones would go into the private part of the library, which was maintained in a smaller [Fairy Stronghold] that was, once again, on Yggdrasil’s branches.

No one was allowed in Quilatalap’s library, by his own personal decree, by Erick’s decree, and by great big signs on the doors, but by the gods above, did people try. Mostly they tried to ask Quilatalap questions. Thankfully, he only had to repeat his Erick-given words that he was not teaching anyone anything, for any reason whatsoever, until they got clearance from all Overseers, and Erick himself. Only then, would Quilatalap even consider teaching the person.

And maybe not even then.

It was a rather moot point, anyway. Good luck with getting Aisha of Archmage’s Rest to approve of anyone. Ha!