218 2/2

“Holy shits, Erick,” Quilatalap said, grabbing Erick and picking him up, holding him close in a tight hug. “This is so much worse than I thought it would be.”

To say Erick was surprised by the sudden hug was an understatement of the emotions swirling inside of him.

He was mainly really fucking happy. Erick wrapped his arms around Quilatalap’s impressive everything, feeling a warmth in his heart and an airyness in his stomach. A few tears fell; out of joy, fear, and love.

“I thought you hated me.”

Quilatalap lowered to his knees, setting Erick down, and then he rose, and looked away, lost. Without turning back he said, “This is a time of change. Everyone is getting violated in ways they never should be violated. Me. You. The world. The gods and…” His voice trailed off. “I took a [Time Stop] and sat there in the emptiness for a few days after you left the room.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “Okay? Uh—”

Quilatalap rolled over Erick’s attempt at words, saying, “I learned I missed you a lot. I think I might even love you. But I need a break from world events. I suppose you do, too, but you won’t walk away and I’m not asking you to. I know that whatever minor fight the fairy stopped back in that room would have caused major problems, if it had been allowed to happen, and I know that you stepped away because all of what truly happened was a conversation on how to save the Surface from societal collapse, and that needed to happen with as little war as possible.

“I still hate her utterly, but I am not naturally a hateful person, and I don’t want to be. I just don’t want to be around her at all, and since you will continue to be around her…” Quilatalap said, “I don’t know what I’m saying, Erick, except that I’m not moving into your house, and you’re not moving into mine. I would like it if everything else remained the same, except I won’t go out in the public eye anymore, and will be taking steps to ensure that no one can find me except you.”

Ah.

Not a break up?

Confusion swirled, and settled. Erick saw that Quilatalap’s words of ‘forgiveness’ for what Fairy Moon had done and what Erick had done in response were a shield for his own psyche, so that he could pretend that everything was okay. He still blamed Erick a lot, knew that it was wrong to blame him, did so anyway, while also knowing that the real problem was Fairy Moon, and she was never going to change.

Erick tried to get a grip on what he was seeing. All he could say, though, was, “So you’ll… hide in the library?”

“Or whatever dungeon Melemizargo saddles you with, if that is okay with you. I think he means to place the one downstairs in your care. I would take over that one.”

Erick saw a lot of Quilatalap in that moment. Too much, for all of Erick’s senses were working overtime, as his heart beat hard. He saw how he could talk Quilatalap out of this. He saw that Quilatalap both wanted to be talked out of this, and how he did not want to be talked out of this. The archlich was a mess, and yet he was as strong-willed as ever. He had come to his decision. It wasn’t a breakup, but the future wouldn’t be as easy as Erick wanted it to be.

There was only one thing Erick could do.

He asked, “Can I talk you out of this? Do you want to be talked out of this? Do you want to move in with me? Or me with you? Like we discussed? I know that you have made your decision, but… I would like to talk some.”

Quilatalap was silent for a moment. And then he said, “I’ll move into the dungeon. I’ll be your Caretaker, if you would have it. Melemizargo has already assured me that she can’t reach me there like she can out here. That was one of the main reasons I went into Ar’Kendrithyst in the first place, Erick. That safety.”

“… Okay. Then… I guess I’m getting that dungeon down there? And I’ll visit you, every night.”

Oh holy shit, did Erick actually want that?

… Sure.

He could try it, for now.

Quilatalap relaxed a fraction. “Thank you.”

Erick nodded, shoving his emotions in a box and leaving them there. He put on a small grin. “So I’m getting that dungeon? I feel we glossed over that?”

Quilatalap gave a sad little grin. “Yes. That’s your dungeon, now. I discovered that in the past few days but… It can take multiple dungeon masters, too. We can go in together later, if you want. That’s what I want, and I hope you do, too.”

“… Honestly, Quilatalap, this is too much for me right now. I’m not going into that dungeon right away. It’ll take me a while.”

Quilatalap didn’t mind that, saying, “That’s fine! I understand you don’t trust the Dark. Normally he’s not very trustworthy. But this is big and— Ah… Let’s just leave all that for another day, then.”

Erick forced a grin. “Yes. Let’s leave all that for another day.”

“So [Book Bolt]!” Quilatalap began, “You don’t have many Bolt spells at all, right?”

Erick looked up his magic, but he was already saying, “Yeah. Not many of those.”

After looking over his options, Erick said, “Most mages at my level have Bolts of every flavor, right? I only have 15.”

“15?!” Quilatalap barked a laugh. “That’s about 50 fewer than I imagined you had.”

Erick studied Quilatalap in that moment, probably more than he should have if he wanted to remain secure in his own emotions, to let him do what he needed to do; to work. Quilatalap was both strong, and fragile, and the man hated that part about himself so, so much. Emotional vulnerability was one thing, and Quilatalap was wonderful in that way. But Fairy Moon made him physically vulnerable, and that made him jagged and dangerous.

The Archlich of Necromancy was trying very hard to be softer, right now.

His emotions were still all over the place.

Erick felt that Quilatalap would feel a lot better inside the dungeon, if it truly was as adjustable and protected as Fallopolis and Melemizargo and that black book suggested it would be…

Erick got his head in the game, asking, “So [Editing Bolt]? Mana Alter for Book, and [Force Bolt]? Anything special about the [Force Bolt]? Etherealness, inexorableness? Anything like that?”

Quilatalap nodded, saying, “You can do it either way. Include all of that, and have every [Editing Bolt] you throw have those inherent capabilities, no matter if your original Bolt spells do not. Or make your [Editing Bolt] basic, then mix and match Inexorable and Ethereal from your target combination spells, as needed. [Editing Bolt] is probably too complicated to go for the heightened descriptors, though. I would stick with the original descriptors.”

Erick thought. “There’re few scenarios I can think of where I would want something less powerful in my arsenal, but the basics are good to know, too.”

Quilatalap nodded.

Erick held up a hand and, since he had no Book spells, he channeled [Identify] through his palm. The sound of the most basic Book Magic spell was as complicated this time as the last time Erick had dipped his toes into this particular magic.

Eventually, Erick stopped and asked, “Got a Book spell I can listen to?”

Quilatalap held up his hand and produced a prominence of black magic that sounded like everything and nothing all at once. Like static, but also like a TV station playing in the other room. There were words but they were unintelligible.

“Different one?”

The flare of black magic switched.

Erick listened, then said, “You can put it away. Elemental Book sounds like a telepathic connection to a child— Oh. Is there Book Magic in [Telepathy]?”

“Yes. A minor amount. At its base effect, [Telepathy] is two minds connecting and sharing ideas and images, but there’s some Book Magic in there that allows for the reduction of all of that into words. This reduction vastly increases the mana-to-effect ratio of that magic.”

Erick had once channeled [Telepathy], so he knew what to expect a bit from this next experiment. It was still weird, though. Erick held up a hand, channeled [Telepathy], and listened to the emptiness of the throne room all around, along with a few of his own untempered thoughts, and the complete stillness of Quilatalap. The guy was very controlled right now, not allowing anything to slip out anywhere.

Weird.

[Telepathy] was weird.

Erick cut the spell and tried to use Ophiel to replicate the sounds he had heard, but the sounds were too complicated to copy. Ophiel ended up sounding like several record players playing at the same time, which was not the sound of Elemental Book at all.

He wasn’t getting anywhere with more tests, so Erick decided to just go for it. He took Mana Altering for Elemental Book, combined it with [Force Bolt], and injected the intent to be able to edit any and all of his other Bolt-based spells.

A flicker of power spat out of Erick’s hand and impacted the floor. A box appeared—

— but Erick was more focused on the spell that had just come out of his hand. Before the bolt had struck the ground, Erick saw that the Bolt was actually a swirl of white mana made up of the words ‘BOLT’, in multiple fonts and languages and sizes, from as small as hair, repeating a thousand times, and wrapped like a bundle of thread around itself, to a centimeter tall, and forming the main mana form of the Bolt. It was quite pretty, really.

Erick checked the recent past in the manasphere, to look at the spell more closely, and some of the words in the Bolt had transformed at various points in the spell’s lifespan. ‘Zoom’ was present in the tail section of the spell, while ‘Aim’ was in the front section. When the Bolt hit the ground, all the words had transformed into ‘bam’, along with a scattering of a few exclamation marks.

Erick came back to himself, saying, “It makes a Bolt of words?”

“Words of power, yes.” Quilatalap said, “To use Elemental Book is to view and categorize the world through its information. Remember when I said earlier that Elemental Book makes for crude transformations when used to cause an effect on an object? Well, since all magic is possibility given form, if you use Elemental Book in stationary, solid magics, like [Force Wall], you’ll actually strengthen the wall’s defensive properties, because to use Elemental Book is to solidly, surely, communicate your intent to the mana. Elemental Illusion and Mystical work very well with Book, for that specific reason… As long as you keep the resultant illusion simple and direct.”

More than 20 seconds had passed during Quilatalap’s speaking on Book, which meant another Script Second came around. For this next experiment Erick didn’t want to strike the floor of his throne room, though, so he had an Ophiel conjure a [Fairy Item]; a plain white boulder.

Erick mentally lined up two of his Bolt spells as he cast [Editing Bolt].

A shining star of brilliance rocketed out of Erick’s hand and slammed into the boulder. The boulder didn’t budge, and it didn’t break, either. The faintest scorch mark painted the white boulder, but that was it. There were no words in the Bolt Erick had just fired —he checked— like there had been with [Editing Bolt], and Erick didn’t get another blue box.

Erick hummed to himself, though, because the Bolts he chose to combine didn’t really prove the power of [Editing Bolt] at all.

Quilatalap asked, “What was that one?”

“A [Pure Force Beam Bolt] and a [Radiance Bolt].” Erick said, “Hard to tell the difference between an Edited version, and what would happen if I combined them normally, though. I think I might have to make some Bolt spells specifically for testing.”

It took him a minute, due to the time dilation of the Feast Barrier, but Erick eventually made a few different Bolts.

 

While he had done that, he and Quilatalap had spoken about basic spells, and how they all combined in weird ways under the influence of Book Magic, and how Book Magic was not ‘word magic’, though some people called it that. Erick asked about the tiny magics that he and Quilatalap never really spoke about, and Quilatalap happily spoke of Bolt and Wall and Bomb and Crash; all the various basic forms of Force Magic.

Erick shot out some weirdly-done [Editing Bolt]s at a target.

Soon, Erick was throwing truly strange combinations. Using his new spells, he managed to make a Bolt of white magic that impacted with the explosion of a tiny fire, spreading droplets of Decaying, freezing mist over a small area. In the very next use of [Editing Bolt], using the same input-Bolts, Erick made a spike of ice that partially turned to snow when it hit, and ignited into white fire.

Soon, Quilatalap said, “Looks like you’re getting the hang of it. Moving on to the Editing spell? If you don’t get it right, there’s the lesser version made with [Force Bomb], instead of [Force Wave]. That one is a lot more unwieldy, though. Some might even call it explosive!”

Erick laughed at the joke.

And Quilatalap smiled.

And then Erick rolled his shoulders, feeling the magic and listening to Elemental Book, sung by Ophiel as soon as Erick asked it to be sung. He listened, and heard nuanced noise. He lined up his full idea. [Force Wave], [Identify], Mana Altering for Elemental Book. All Force becomes Book, categorizing the world all around, but especially a Variable amount of targets, soaking into those items in particular, allowing Erick to move around attributes at will.

Erick had two Ophiel cast two different [Fairy Item] boulders onto the ground in front of him. Both were the same, except for their color. One was red on top, blue on bottom. The other was red on bottom, and blue on top. It would make for a good test.

Then Erick cast.

A pulse of power rolled out of him, suddenly and in every direction. That pulse washed over Ophiels and Quilatalap, and struck the boulders. In that soaking second, Erick saw and understood what he was looking at, and he also imposed his will on what he wanted to change.

The wave of power passed.

One boulder was full-red, the other full-blue.

Erick breathed out, tension passing, as he felt like he had passed a crucial worldly test. If he had needed to wait a day to try again then that would probably mean thousands dead, due to some Gates not going out—

A blue box appeared.

 

Erick showed the box to Quilatalap.

“Decent. More importantly, it’s workable. Aurify?”

Erick melded [Editing] with Mana Shaping’s Aurify, and the world turned strange. Everything was not made of words at all, and yet, if Erick focused on anything at all, his mind instantly dissected every little thing he knew about that. He looked at his own hand, and at first, he saw it made of the words ‘hand’, but then as a second passed, Erick saw ‘skin’ and ‘finger’. Another moment caused Erick to recognize his ‘thumb’, to differentiate that one from all the rest. As soon as Erick saw that ‘thumb’ difference, his other fingers changed, listing themselves as ‘index finger’ and all the rest, before Erick looked even closer and saw ‘fingernail’ and ‘cuticle’ and—

A big blue box appeared right in front of his sight.

He read the words, and saw it was the box for [Editing Aura]—

— but he also saw, in that blue box, deeper words than he had ever known before. His fingers were labeled simply. But this blue box was bolded in some ineffable way, like someone had taken the very unreality of Erick’s Personal Reality and carved a small truth into the fabric of it all, and the words were all about the spell. [Editing Aura] was so much more than the words there on the box, but the box had done such a good job at describing what Erick was sensing, that he had no idea what he could possibly have done better.

On a whim, Erick opened up several other boxes.

They were all the same. They were all small truths, locked into blue backgrounds and white text, except, of course, the ones that were not blue and white. But even his special spells, like [Perfect Benevolence], with their white boxes, were the way they were due to what it would take to truly describe them.

Erick dismissed the blue boxes, promising himself that he would return to those later, and then he took in the two boulders sitting in front of him. Red on the left, blue on the right. Erick focused his [Editing Aura] focused on those boulders, and Erick understood them as stone and paint, though he knew they were not. They were [Fairy Item]. Erick learned another thing in that moment. [Fairy Item] was good enough to fool [Editing Aura], even when Erick knew what he was looking at.

Erick ignored that foible for the moment.

Erick saw the ‘red’ and the ‘blue’ parameters, like oil sitting atop the stone. With a flex of will, Erick popped that color to the surface. Words flowed through the air, from one rock to the other, like two schools of fish suddenly switching ponds. In a flashing second, the red rock was now blue, and the blue was red.

Erick flicked his power again, trying for something more complicated; for polka dots.

He smiled, as the red rock gained blue dots, and the blue rock gained red dots. The word ‘circle’ even demarcated those dots on both boulders now, like an extra descriptor added, pulled from the ether. He glanced at his mana, and knew that what he had done with the dots likely would have cost a thousand mana or more, but with his Intelligence, Erick barely noticed the 50 mana per second drain of the aura, or the cost of actually using the aura.

Erick blinked away the words of the world, ending his [Editing Aura]. It took a moment for him to come back to his proper mind, for words to stop appearing in his sight… But they weren’t really appearing in his ‘sight’ at all, were they?

“While active… It was like I was the center of a shifting part of the world. I think I defaulted to mana sense, instead of sight, but… hard to say.” Erick said to Quilatalap, “That was one of the trippiest situations I have ever experienced.”

Quilatalap smiled softly. “[Editing Aura] is a strange time, for sure. Did you see all the limitations, though?”

“What I saw was rather simple. Those boulders are [Fairy Item], but that wasn’t present at all. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly. Book Magic is crude, but powerful in its crudeness. Moving around a [Gate] should be possible, though.”

“Just need to make a spell-eating spell that allows for control over the resultant spell, but not in a way that is a [Teleport Spell] sort of situation, because that’ll bloat the control schemes of the Gates about a hundred times over, considering what Tasar and Archmage’s Rest needed to do to make their t-stations work in the Dark.”

Quilatalap said, “At least you won’t have to worry about duration preservation when it comes to this theoretical spell. That would bloat the mechanisms of it all by a factor of Elemental Time.”

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Erick smiled. “Or I could use [Renew]. Or better yet, have my Renew Network connect to them all.”

Quilatalap stood a fraction straighter. “Ah.” He grinned. “I suppose you could.”

“What other sorts of factors should we account for?”

Quilatalap nodded, then said, “Well… This is something I have been thinking about for a little while now, and now, speaking of [Renew], this is a good time to bring it up.

“I’m not sure this is even possible, but: If you want to use the sort of [Control Gate] spell we devise today offensively, as a more generic [Control Spell] spell, then having a backwards-flowing [Renew] might be useful.

“[Renew] doesn’t allow you to take over ownership of a spell, as far as I know, but if you attack the spell from the other direction, and have your [Control Spell] flicker at the target spell, and have your [Control Spell] adopt the mana signature of the target spell, then you could take over any spell you see. I’m rather sure that you wouldn’t gain near as much actual control over any ongoing magic with as much precision as the caster of that magic, but you could gain some modicum of control. Enough to cancel any magic you wished, at the very least. It would be Tricking Magic but on a much more general scale. [Ultimate Dispel], if you want to give it a name. One spell, 100 mana, cancel any magic out there.”

Erick stood rooted to the spot as he considered all of that.

“… Ah. That’s a problem, then?”

“Just another way to do magic, really.” Quilatalap shrugged. “Might not even work, but theoretically, it sounds like it should. I doubt anyone but a truly great Book Mage would be able to make that magic, though. Or a Wizard. The actual impact on the world will be minimal, but that might change in a good decade or so, when [Renew] goes Open Script and a bunch of people start considering this backwards-[Renew].”

“You’ve been thinking of this for a while?”

Quilatalap shrugged. “This recent foray into Book Magic has me thinking of how [Renew] will interact with that. Particle Magic, too. I’ve tested my own [Editing Aura] a little bit before today and I don’t see the ‘particles’ that I know to be there. It is quite possible that Book Magic is simply too crude to make this sort of [All Canceler] or [All Controller] [Renew]-based spell.” Quilatalap said, “I do know that Book Magic can be used to switch around active spells that you control, even though that is rather difficult… But controlling the spells of others is something else entirely, because the spellwork of others is very much not under your influence, because of the ‘everyone’s mana is different’ problem, but then you have [Renew], which solves that problem. But [Renew] doesn’t allow control of spellwork, either. [Renew] changes one’s own mana to match the mana in the targeted spell… So you’re going to have to do some odd stuff to get that to work backwards. Still. Might be possible.”

Erick thought. “… I’ll consider [All Controller] later. For now, I need [Gate Control] to work on my own [Gate]s.” Erick popped a pair of [Gate]s into the air, each one leading to the other, about a meter apart. For a moment, Erick had wondered if he could [Gate] inside the Feast, but he could; no problem. “Okay then! Let’s see if [Editing Aura] works like it should?”

Quilatalap nodded.

And Erick transformed the world into words.

A minute later, Erick retracted his ‘word sense’ and pondered aloud, “I don’t see anything to grab onto, to switch around the locations of the [Gate]s. Size, shape, location, destination; none of that is visible. All I can really see is a ring of the word ‘Benevolence’ and ‘link’ and ‘gate’ repeated over and over in the lightning ring. I am able to confirm that both [Gate]s are actually separate entities, though, since the specific spiraling of the words is different in both locations. Theoretically, I should be able to move one or the other, but… I don’t see anything to grab onto; to shift.” Erick asked, “What do you see?”

“About the same. This means you need to add some links, through some other method. You were going to put your [Gate]s into proper Gates anyway, so perhaps we can test to see if a Gate can serve as a proper ‘destination’.” Quilatalap said, “And yet… With this step, I think we might have discovered a cliff, and not a simple step— Ah. I know. Let’s pull back a fraction and you can try Editing some [Force Wall]s around. Those are always anchored properly. Put out a few of them and try moving them around. If you can’t see the anchors in them, then your [Gate] issue is more fundamental.”

Easy enough.

Erick cast another spell that he hadn’t used in a long time, and a lot faster than the current limitations of the Script Second would allow, too. Within a single second, a good ten [Quick Wall]s went up into the air, each of them Shaped into different numbers, 0 through 9. 20 seconds later, Erick was finally able to use [Editing Aura] again.

This time, unlike with [Gate], Erick saw some threads he could pull.

Each [Force Wall] held Force, of course, but here and there were Shapings upon those workings, like matrices of written words woven into the spellwork. With a flicker of intent, Erick shifted around the Shapings he had imposed onto the Walls, transforming one number to another, shifting around the 3 and the 7, and then the 4 and the 5. With a greater pulse of power, he switched everything back to how it had been before, and then another flicker reversed the order.

Extrapolating from his mana, with his bonuses to cost reduction, it took about 5000 base mana to do all that switching. Only took him 250.

He noticed a problem, though. Here and there the Force structure of the Walls was fraying.

“I think I’ve damaged the spells?”

Quilatalap smiled. “Yes. You have. The result of improper Editing is usually a reduced duration, or the destruction of the spell itself. This is fixable through learning how to better use [Editing], but you can simply fix the damaged spellwork with [Renew]…” He lost his smile. “Probably? Try it and see.”

With his [Editing Aura] still active, Erick had an Ophiel pump some [Renew] into the fraying numbers, and they were repaired fully. The altered Shapings took full hold in their assigned Walls, and the Force solidified once again.

Erick nodded. “A confirmed theory, then. You were worried that a mal-Edited spell wouldn’t be able to come back with [Renew]?”

“Yes. But… I suppose I shouldn’t have been worried about that. Hmm. You probably realize this, but you can’t actually repair spellwork through Book Magic. It’s been tried and failed millions of times before. What you just did with [Renew] continues to amaze.”

Erick smiled. “When I went looking into [Renew] I briefly looked at Book Magic, saw that people had tried this before, and then failed.”

“That’s why I didn’t suggest Book Magic to you at all, back when you asked last year. The Tears of Aloeth worked out, though?”

“It was a good direction to start.”

Quilatalap nodded, thinking.

Erick continued, “Any other suggestions for better learning Book Magic?”

“Quite a lot!”

Quilatalap spoke of spellwork. Erick did tests.

And slowly, wonderfully, Erick felt he was learning more magic, which was great, but also, Quilatalap was healing. Most of that healing had been done out of sight, which Erick understood, but still hurt. Things were not perfect between them. The future looked rocky. But there would be a future, and that was important. Everything could be made better, as long as there was something to be made better, after all, and that included relationships.

Somewhere between tests of Rift spellwork and tests of multiple [Gate]s and roughly-carved Gates that served as little more than anchors, Erick paused.

He turned to Quilatalap. “You said earlier that you might even love me, and I think I love you too. Just thought I should make that clear.”

Quilatalap chuckled, then looked away. He turned back, nodded, and then— He stood straighter. “Oh! You might need to make a tier 2 [Gate] spell that is specifically Editable. Just add some hooks to the base spell. And! You might also need to actually get Gatemaster.”

Erick chuckled. “All good ideas. How to add hooks, though?”

Quilatalap grinned. “I’d love to hear you sing again.”

Erick felt his face heat. “Maybe once I understand how Elemental Book works then I’ll sing a song, but blind creation seems like a bad idea.”

Quilatalap nodded, and the conversation moved on.

– – – –