227, 2/2

Meetings, meetings, meetings.

It was near midnight, over 20 hours later than it had been six hours ago, back on the beach with the arbors, and Erick had finally gotten out of the last big meeting of the minds at Storm’s Edge. He honestly had not needed to do any of that; to talk with the nobles, or the merchants, or the Local Area Gate Network administrators, or with those of a priestly nature. But he did it anyway. It was good to let people know what House Benevolence’s stance was with the dungeons, and it was also good to be seen standing alongside Regent Augustive.

High Storm Priestess Tiza Nindi wasn’t present for any of it, which was strange, but not really, for early on in the evening her lackeys had privately and politely conveyed to Erick that Tiza wanted to meet privately, after everyone else had had their turn. Erick had decided to grant that request.

And so now here he was, sitting down in a nice hardwood chair, across a desk from the middle-aged owl shifter, in the second-highest room in the lighthouse of Storm’s Edge’s harbor. It was a nice room, slightly meant for public dealings with others, but the lighthouse itself was a mostly private location, with beds and personal effects in its many church-cells down below. Tiza’s bed, books, clothes, and a hand-span-sized fish lazily resting in a large tank, lay beyond a door right over there, to the side of this office space.

The lighthouse was something of a church and a guide for ships; in those ways it was used all the time. But it was also a deterrent for monsters, and that function hadn’t been used in years. Right above this office space, past a half-floor and then up in the air, sat a massive, slowly-rotating grey stone that shone with lightning all day and night.

There hadn’t been much conversation between Tiza and Erick yet; just perfunctory greetings, and Tiza holding herself back a great deal.

Erick decided to break the ice again. “So that lightning stone up above acts as a collector and discharger of divine lightning, yes? It shines rather well, too. Illuminates at least half the harbor out there and more besides.”

Tiza frowned a little bit. “… It doesn’t scare you at all to be this close to our base of power, does it.”

“Absolutely not,” Erick said. If that is how she wanted to play this, then that is how it would be played. “I know I am in good standing with Sininindi, and will be with Everbless, eventually, and I am currently the living treaty between the Light and the Dark and the rest of the world. And you couldn’t kill me even if you tried. So no, I’m not scared at all of you or yours, Tiza. Are you scared of me?”

Tiza didn’t answer. She just glared from behind her mask, that layer of wood and enamel only serving to hide the upper half of her face, leaving her frown on full display. It barely covered her upper face, too. Erick had long ago found out why shifters wore such ineffectual masks, and for most of them it wasn’t to hide. All shifters carried over the hallmarks of their animal form in all of their forms, but most had perfectly normal faces. Tiza’s eyes were a bit larger than a normal human’s eyes, and her hair had feathers in it, but that was about all. She could clip those feathers and look like a somewhat-odd human if she wanted to.

Shifters wore masks because they were ‘always wearing masks’. Whether in public, or private, in a human-form or animal-form, everyone wore masks. Shifters just decided to openly display that fact. The mask they wore was to reveal who they were to others; not to hide.

… Erick’s mind was wandering since Tiza wasn’t answering—

Erick said, “You shouldn’t be scared of me—”

“It’s not often that someone shoves me through a [Gate] and then locks me out of all the important gatherings of my home.” Tiza said, “I have earned my place here at Storm’s Edge, Wizard Flatt. As I had called you once, I call you again: You are a usurper, a blasphemer, and an adulterer, and I am not scared of you. I am disgusted by you. I am disgusted by your mangling of Lightning, your disregard for Storms, and how you have Wizarded your way into making Sininindi forgive you.”

Unperturbed at her statement, for Erick had heard a lot worse (particularly after the Teleport Exodus and how ‘beneficial’ that was for his Gate Network) Erick said, “I understand the usurper and blasphemer, but why adulterer; that part I never understood.”

Tiza narrowed her eyes. “You make mockery?”

“I do not. Explain yourself, lest I leave this conversation for more important matters.”

“To use Lightning outside of Sininindi’s domain is to cheat the Goddess of her throne.”

Erick nodded. “Ah. So that’s how you figure… Well you’re wrong and I don’t care about your opinion on that matter, so I’m still gonna do it. Cheat cheat cheat! All the way to my own throne.” He added, “Now that was me making mockery. Now you know the difference.”

Tiza scowled.

Erick didn’t often make light of the serious complaints of others, but what was ‘serious’ to Tiza was asinine to Erick, and he honestly had no idea why the woman was still being so antagonistic after all these years and distances— Well. He knew why. Tiza had told him why. She did not like that Erick had stolen the lightning from the sky. That was her honest, true complaint. Everything about her hatred of Erick stemmed from that place of understanding…

There was probably more to it, but sometimes people were irrationally uncompromising, and Erick had (mostly) learned to live with that fact.

Not fully, though.

Erick began, “I have healed Melemizargo. I have given a reliable [Control Weather] to Sininindi as well as a World Tree. I have stopped the Shades. I have made a Gate Network. I have taken down rogue Wizards, and I will ensure that we get to the next world and the next. I have gifted Veird Particle Magic and the Node Network, and OH YEAH, Elemental Benevolence, to prevent Sunderings for all the rest of existence. And then I made myself no longer a failure point for any of that, because we’ve got Benevolence dragons making Benevolence all on their own and Kiri will replace me as the Gatemaster eventually.”

Tiza glared all throughout Erick’s speech, but at the same time her breath was shallow. She was worried. A lot—

Oh.

She was worried Erick was going to execute her.

Gods above, this woman didn’t understand him at all.

Erick decided to give her an out. “I understand you must have some need to maintain your rage, but we haven’t interacted in over a decade, Tiza. I might have come into your lands and messed with your established order, but a storm is coming, and I needed to prepare, and you weren’t being cooperative, and I doubt you would ever want to be cooperative. So while I understand your continued anger, I actually have no idea why you choose to be angry with me when Sininindi isn’t even angry anymore. And so, I offer you a complete forgiveness and forgetting of what has come before. You can continue this imagined feud you have with me, if you want, but know that I am done with this feud. Please, can we move past this hatred?”

“You put shadows in the same church as the light, Wizard,” Tiza said, harshly. “Those shadows are more than enough for any sane person to condemn you as a trick of the Dark. Benevolence? Pah! A lie. A mask to hide yourself.”

And there it was, along with a deep insult about masks that only really worked with other shifters, but which Erick understood the meaning of anyway.

Whatever.

The Sininindi stuff was one of her reasons for hating him, but the Darkness stuff was the real reason. Erick appeared at Spur all those years ago, oh so close to Ar’Kendrithyst, and then he made Particle Lightning. Tiza would literally never trust him, ever. In her mind, Erick was a pawn of the Dark, and she was waiting for the moment when he destroyed everything she knew and loved.

No wonder she was terrified of him killing her.

And yet she was still confronting him? She was, wasn’t she.

There was a certain amount of bravery there, Erick thought. Almost admirable.

“Guard the walls and keep the lighthouse lit, Tiza, and don’t ever forgive the Darkness if you don’t want to. I won’t ever ask you to do that. But what I do ask for is some sort of civility in our future engagements. Can you and I agree to that, at least?”

“… I can do civility, but since you flicked me away during that conversation in that major meeting, I will no longer be pulling my [Strike]s against your actions in this land. I called you here to tell you that.” Tiza said, “I will fight you on everything you do here in Storm’s Edge. You have won the dungeons, but don’t expect to win anything beyond the Pit.”

Erick nodded. “Fair enough.” He stood.

He almost left—

But Tiza continued, “Toward that purpose of ensuring your Darkness has no power in this land, we’ve decided to resume the Church’s summary execution of all cultists found within Storm’s Edge, and we’ve decided to kick the Xoatists out. Religious tolerance is for religions, not for your cult. Never your cult. These measures will take place tomorrow. If those cultists Vanya and Soltic should come out of that dungeon, and leave that Pit, they will be executed as well. If any of the monsters those two make should try to come to Storm’s Edge, they will be executed, too.” She finished with, “And we Storm Priests will not be going inside that place when the Storm Prophecy unfolds, if it ever does and if this wasn’t all just another power grab by you. The Darkness will never be a shelter from any storm, you uneducated outlander. Should a Particle Storm develop, as I am sure you will make it happen, we will be fighting the good fight out here, against your corruption of our lands.”

Erick managed a calm tone as he asked, “Are you done?”

Tiza narrowed her eyes. “I am done. Get out of here, Wizard, and go rescue your cultists before I kill them all.”

Erick left in a flicker of lightning that took several moments to fizzle out.

Tiza glared at the lingering white sparks, dancing across her chair and the floor, until they vanished, leaving black marks on everything.

– – – –

Fury.

Rage.

And then some calmer words.

“Don’t be a tyrant, Erick. Don’t be a tyrant,” Erick mumbled to himself as he stood upon the shore of a river, deep inside the Forest of Glaquin, where hopefully no one but the free-roaming monsters could see him. And Ophiel. With false relaxation, he declared to himself and the world, “There is no need to be a tyrant, because no one has died yet, right? Right.”

Jarod Maryol. Glariol Maryol. Nero Maryol.

Those people were at the top of Erick’s rescue lists, though there were more, apparently. Erick had already had an Ophiel scan all of Storm’s Edge for those people since Tiza’s anti-cultist declaration not ten minutes ago. He had not been able to find them on Storm’s Edge, which was somewhat expected, but only after Erick had seen what had happened. The three Maryols and a few other cultists were all on the next island over.

Barda, Nero’s girlfriend/fiance/whatever, was nowhere to be seen. She might have been considered a cultist-by-association and thus left in a hurry once it became apparent that everyone she knew was getting rounded up, and then even faster when the guard confronted her. Her and Nero’s room at the Dungeon Guildhouse had been stripped. According to the manasphere, Barda had gone in there alone, tears almost falling but not, right before she had been summarily dismissed by guards of the Regency, punted through the Local Area Gate Network, off to the Greensoil Republic, to Riski, on the southern coast of Glaquin.

Erick didn’t know the other people caught up in Tiza’s crusade, thrown into the same prison as the Maryols, but he would save them, too.

Erick would save them all.

Calmly, Erick said to Ophiel, floating in the air beside him, “I almost lost it back there, Ophiel, but I managed to control my anger, and now I have a path forward. One that… Only involves me being a little bit of a tyrant. But it’s a rescue mission… And not a [True Resurrection] mission. She could have done that instead… She could have said that she had killed them all, and that if she found anymore that they would suffer the same fate… But she’s given me a day to get them all out. Or more like an hour till sunrise? That’s… Fine. So this is… Not that bad? Not that bad— Ah. But…” Erick got paranoid as she said, “She’s probably looking to see which ones I rescue, and she’s going to use that against me somehow. She thinks that there’s some great big plot against everything that she values, and there is a plot, but it’s one that Sininindi herself asked for. What complicates things is that Tiza is in league with the Regency, for how else could they have all known to keep this information away from me, which is both very normal since I’m an outsider to them, and which would explain why I haven’t heard of what happened to the Maryols all this time. Or any of the cultists they rounded up. They were purposefully keeping that hush-hush, and I suppose I didn’t directly ask for Soltic and Vanya’s full history of interactions with Storm’s Edge, which probably set off some warning bells for them…”

Ericks voice trailed away as his words started going in circles, there on the riverbank of a rather lazy river, the water gently rolling through the depths of the Forest of Glaquin. Kilometer-tall trees blocked out the night overhead, but luminescent mushrooms grew here and there among the canopy and on the ground, providing more than enough light for Erick’s Perception-enhanced senses. Erick sometimes came here to think and do other things when he didn’t go to Yggdrasil to relax.

Ophiel watched his father think.

Erick’s thoughts were interrupted by another problem.

Erick decided, “I’m going to eat something first and then I’m going back there to solve this newest mess.”

And then he turned to the left, where a monstrous chimera was charging down the river’s rocky bank toward him, rocks flying out from underfoot as it moved. It was an alligator-like thing with too many horns and too many long legs, with masses of saliva flinging from its roaring, open maw. Erick flickered with lightning, and when the lightning faded, he was a black dragon, his wings flapping out to the sides to tower over the suddenly-terrified beast. A quick swipe of claws killed the thing, while a few more swipes cut it into four bite-sized pieces. It tasted alright. Not great, but not bad either. The monsters’s Elemental Decay and Stone made it sort of like eating a meaty tart, while the bones provided a nice crunch.

When he had finished his first kill, eating everything bones and all, it hadn’t been enough.

Ophiel leapt through the air, leading the way, saying, “Big fish there!”

Erick chuckled. “Thank you, Ophiel. You were already looking for more food, weren’t you?”

“Father eat lots!”

Though the Dungeon Exodus had happened over eleven years ago, the Forest of Glaquin was still home to many different wild monsters, for unless a dungeon was properly managed, then it never grew large enough to hold all the monsters that would invade. Wild dungeons formed, deepened when they were taken over by a monster large enough to keep all the other ones in line, then through a series of perfectly normal events, other monsters rose to power inside that space and ate the bigger one, thus starting a chain of events that usually led to the core getting damaged, and thus expelling all the monsters therein. This was colloquially known as a ‘dungeon break’, but a break could actually happen in multiple ways…

Eh.

Erick was hungry and angry still, and his thoughts were spiraling. Anyway. The current problem was that the Forest was a lot calmer than it used to be, but it was not that calm at all.

As a massive black dragon with wings and bright white eyes, the Forest was deader than a doornail.

He would have to actively hunt his next meal, which he did.

Fish were easy to catch and he only really grabbed the one, for [Duplicate] solved all quantity issues. As Erick ate and ate the same fish over and over again, gradually his anger seeped away. He didn’t spend too long on the process for there were people to rescue, so he was still a little angry by the time he left the Forest behind, but not being hungry helped a lot.

– – – –

The Regent was asleep.

And then he wasn’t, because Erick came calling at 5:30 am.

Erick almost felt bad for doing that to him, so he offered, “I can wait ten minutes if you want to sleep for a good ten hours in a [Hasted Shelter]. I know you only had about an hour so far.”

Augustive looked at Erick, rapidly going from worried to a little miffed. He was slightly disheveled from having just rolled out of bed to attend to Erick’s request for an audience, but only Erick could really tell that dishevelment. The man was Classed as a Regent, and so he had quite a few niche spellworks that allowed him to forgo the usual problems of being a mortal king, such as a long-range [Clothe]-type spell allowing for instant dressing and hair and styling and cleanliness needs of all sorts, whenever he wished to spend the mana. The tiredness in his eyes still showed past that facade, though. No real cure for lack of sleep besides the New Stat, Constitution, and the Regent did not have that; not many people did.

“… I would take that sleeping shelter option after I hear and help solve whatever issue requires my attendance at this late hour— Early, hour. It’s nearly 6?”

“Only 5:35.” Erick explained, “Tiza taunted me by threatening to execute prisoners of Storm’s Edge who are thought to be cultists, just because they are cultists. What’s more, she threatened to murder Miss Silver and Mister Cross should they come out of those dungeons at any time. This is intolerable for a multitude of reasons, the first of which is that cultists are no longer allowed to be executed out of hand; this was decided by international decree, and Storm’s Edge signed this decree.”

According to his face, Augustive had expected this to happen. “Storm’s Edge cannot abide cultists of Melemizargo at this dangerous juncture, and so the ones we discovered in the city have been stripped of their property and put in cells. We are not going to execute them, though; Tiza exaggerated. We were going to exile them. Probably to Candlepoint, if you would have been amenable to that, and in accordance with that decree you’re talking about.”

“… Is that how you wish to play this action by Tiza Nindi? To be soft on her? For her crimes of over-policing others?”

“Yes. She is the harbor guardian of Storm’s Edge and her Lightning Magic can incinerate tangled hydras and worse. Her position of power is a lot less physically powerful today than it used to be, thanks to the dungeons removing most monster threats from the ocean, but should her power be required to defend Storm’s Edge then I want her to be happy with Storm’s Edge.” Augustive said, “I fully expect her power to be needed to fight against the coming Storm Prophecy.”

“… Fine.” Erick said, “Exile them to Candlepoint; I’ll take all your undesirables and give them new lives.”

“Thank you, Wizard Flatt.”

Erick offered, “Do you want a [Hasted Shelter]?”

“I would love one of those.”

Erick nodded and sent Ophiel along with Augustive, saying that he would be back later to personally take the cultists to Candlepoint. But he had other places to be right now, since the cultists-issue had been sorted.

– – – –

Seafoam Manor was lit brightly, like a beacon of civilization hidden among the night-cloaked greenery of the mountain. The outer defenses were down completely, so Erick descended upon the house without worry, down onto the lit lawn. It looked rather nice compared to how it had been before.

Instead of a slightly-overgrown lawn and trees that needed trimming, the lawn was cut, the trees were in their proper shapes once again, and the fountains burbled. A bunch of small night birds with long legs poked across the freshly cut grass, eating insects uncovered by the cutting, while the noises of the forest flowed into the air from outside the property; nightsong birds and howling monkeys, and chirping bugs of all sorts.

The house was no longer boarded up. The closed front doors were exposed to the world, in all their carved beauty, the windows were open on much of the front of the house, and the smell of something cooking wafted on the breeze. Some sort of stew, according to Erick’s casual mana sensing of the interior of the house.

Also according to that mana sensing, minutes ago, Goldie had been talking animatedly with Oozy in the kitchen, over dinner. She had taken off her face mask in order to eat with a spoon, while Oozy had just spooned some of the stew onto himself, there in his floating Force bowl. They seemed to be getting along well.

But then Erick had shown up, and Goldie had rapidly moved into the foyer of the house, to present herself for Erick’s arrival. Oozy had been a little slower than the Shade and a lot more scared, but he had come out to present himself, too.

Erick walked forward, the double doors opening before he needed to open them himself. Goldie smiled a little as she laid proper eyes on him, while Oozy quivered in his bowl.

“Greetings again, Oozy Stormcaller, last King of Storm’s Edge,” Erick said, and Oozy flummoxed there in his bowl.

“That’s not me anymore,” Oozy said, “I cannot be King.”

“Even after I turn you back into a person?”

“… I want to be a person again, but… not…”

Oozy fell silent.

Good to know; he wouldn’t upset the Regency, and all the power Erick was trying to build here.

Goldie took that moment to hand over some [Reincarnation] paperwork. “We worked on it together.”

Oozy fell down into his bowl completely and it was only through sheer fortitude that he didn’t float backward, to vanish off to someplace where he would not be seen. Erick admired him for his bravery, and in more ways than just being willing to ‘stand’ before Erick without quailing anymore.

Erick glanced over the paperwork, taking a full moment to let Oozy know that he really was looking it over. It was rather standard requests; average height, if a little on the shorter side, average build, if a little on the smaller side. He kinda wanted to look like a mix of the original Aroido, and Frydrika, which was fine. The only odd thing to stand out was that Oozy wanted a [Blessing of Empathy], because he knew he wasn’t like other people, and he wanted an easy way to understand others.

Well. That was the second odd thing.

The main one was that he wanted to burn down the house and leave forever, and he wanted Erick’s help with that, too.

“Pardon me, Oozy, I need to ask Goldie something in private.”

Oozy instantly backpedaled, floating away down the hallway in the back of the stairs, vanishing behind a corner as he said, “Of course of course!”

Erick put up a Privacy around him and Goldie and the goldscale Shade turned serious, her bubbly nature vanishing under what was obviously a concerning moment. Erick asked her directly, “How was he? Can he make these sorts of decisions?”

“Oozy Stormcaller is possessed of a certain kind of madness that makes him rather docile around people stronger than him, for he lives in constant pain and is terrified of more pain. He acts well enough to hold a conversation and he knows the largest topics of the day, for he does know how to spy on people and look at the rest of the world, but he doesn’t know where he is, who he is, or what is really happening out there. He is both 250 years behind the times, and able to work with modern magics quite well. Currently, he is under the care of himself, but only because he has lived in this house for the last 40-odd years of his life and he literally never leaves.” Goldie said, “And no; he cannot make any sort of real [Reincarnation] decision. I had to help him a lot with all of that, and I am absolutely sure that you will have to redo the [Reincarnation] afterward.”

“How did he respond to you being a Shade?”

“He comes from a different time, back before the Great Purge of Spur when we stopped making Shades all the time and Fallopolis began her job as Culler; I was only around for 40 years of the previous era, which was long before some Shade cursed Oozy. He thinks it was the Witch, because he thinks he had some sort of positive correspondence with the Librarian over some books he used to read, and the Witch didn’t like that for some reason.” Goldie said, “Back then the Shades were monsters in the dark that you prayed never knew about you, and if they did, and if they came to you, you did what you had to do in order to appease them. So when he was with me, inwardly, he was terrified the whole time, but that terror was probably the only thing keeping him on track in our conversation. He felt the same way when he saw you; he probably can’t tell that your eyes aren’t actually full-white, and that you have pupils.”

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

Erick looked over the paperwork again, then he dismissed the [Privacy], and said, “Thank you, Goldie. That will be all.”

Goldie slammed a fist over her chest, and then vanished into the shadows.

Erick called out, “Oozy. Can you come out? We’ll get you [Reincarnation]’d and then on your way to a new life, okay?”

Oozy peeked out from the hallway behind the grand staircase, paused, and then rolled forward. “Uh. Yes, sir. I’m ready for a new life!”

Erick nodded. “I have a question about the paperwork, though. It says you want an average height body, if a little taller?”

“Yes sir!”

He had written down ‘if a little shorter’.

“And average stature, if a little muscular?”

“Yes sir!”

He had written down ‘if a little thinner / smaller’.

Welp! Goldie was right. It wasn’t that Erick didn’t believe her, but it was good to check on these sorts of things.

Erick said, “If you don’t like what I do today then you can get another body later. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready!”

Erick was rather sure that the guy was not ready at all, but after he regained a mind he would be able to communicate his thoughts better, and quite literally better, too; oozes couldn’t [Telepathy] or do Mind Magic at all, but as a person, Oozy would regain all that capability. Erick began the transformation by making some completely superfluous gestures with his hands, winding some Benevolence glows into the air, giving the illusion that he was starting. A lot of people felt more comfortable when they knew what was coming, and as soon as [Reincarnation] actually started, people usually went directly to sleep.

Erick said, “You will feel some discomfort, but that’s because you don’t have lungs or the biology to absorb this sedative anesthesia I am creating. That will pass fast.” And then Erick began casting and real magic began to flow into Oozy. The bathtub of red gelatin and gore began to flop a bit, and then go completely rigid, body parts floating to the surface, multiple eyes wincing in utter pain. But then lungs began to develop inside the pile, and Oozy relaxed. As the patient’s lungs began to work, and proper biology began to happen once again, Erick relaxed, too, as he spoke to himself, “That wasn’t so bad. The pain part is over. Now to make you what you wished to be.”

Erick had gotten very good at making young, healthy people out of all sorts of types; the old, the infirm, the broken, and the non-person-shaped. Oozy was a slightly special case, but not really special at all. As Erick cast, and the magic took full hold, Oozy’s soul began to transform right alongside his body. The ooze had been a red-souled sort of person, but murky and full of shadows. Ten seconds into the procedure a brilliant spark of bright red blossomed within that murky soul and then overtook all the rest, like light shining through the dark. All that dark was really just accumulated spellwork and messed-up soul stuff and other assorted things that were being pushed away, as the true soul took hold of itself once again.

The ooze shifted. The lungs moved to the center. A red-boned spine developed out of the red slime—

… Red bone? It wasn’t white bone. It was red. And not just a film from the ooze? But really red?

What the fuck?

That was Erick’s first clue that something was wrong. Red bones were not the sign of a good [Reincarnation]… Probably. But then again this had literally never happened before, and everything else seemed to be working out well. Erick had no idea what was actually happening, but he would figure it out later. For now, the procedure continued.

Ribs and femurs and a skull collected out of the mana, all red, but not red like the spine. Pink, maybe. Soon, a full skeleton developed out of the gore that was Oozy. It was red at the spine, and then pink going outward, with the bones turning normal-white at the fingers and toes.

That skeleton curled up inside that Force bowl, as though it was alive already, but it wasn’t. It was still halfway an ooze.

And then red lightning flickered across the skeleton, followed rapidly by the growth of red muscle and blood and skin and thankfully the skin was pale tan, exactly as Erick had chosen.

Red lightning was funky. Not normal. But also, not causing a major probl—

The third clue that something was wrong with the [Reincarnation] had come and gone, and Erick hadn’t realized that something had gone wrong until he was staring down at a nude man in his early 20s, who looked completely normal.

Erick hadn’t seen the world shatter into fragments of futures. Erick had not picked Oozy’s fate for him—

A fourth problem occurred.

Oozy woke up.