239, 1/2

Adventure City had a real name long ago, but that name was lost to time, and little more than useless trivia these days, for the city had gone through a good hundred names or more. ‘The Cavern’. ‘Hope’. ‘The Illuminated Land’. Etcetera.

Located roughly a thousand kilometers up from the Core of Veird, and directly below Quintlan, the exact history of the place was as nebulous as the stories surrounding it, because until Erick came along, it was damned dangerous to get here. Level 90 monsters prowled this part of the Underworld regularly, and the [Ward]s of the place could only do so much, and even more problematic is that when the caster who made those defenses died, those defenses died with them. Many people survived those purges, though, but only for one reason. If you lived here, you were a powerhouse, willing to raise other powerhouses to glory, while doing your damnedest to escape death.

It was a journey of months, and sometimes years to get to Adventurer City, where a team of ruffians and ne’erdowells could come into their own, surviving in the Dark and becoming a team worthy of song when they finally made it to this base. And when they got there, they’d be an asset to those who lived there.

Most people just died on the journey.

Sometimes, people pilgrimaging to Adventurer City would get here and find it destroyed, and survivors trying to take it back. Most of the time, people would come here and rest up and make new friends and connections in order to go right back out, into the Dark, or deeper toward the Core. Or they’d work to build roads through the Dark, always looking for the real challenges.

And then there was the prestige of it all; of getting down here, and then surviving to tell others the way. The Adventurer’s Guild, as it exists today, was built upon the actions of people who did all of that, and more. The people who lived here could trace their history to those who had rescued the world from the Dark since the Sundering, and some people could trace even further back than that, to places and powers in the Old Cosmology.

These were people of courage and strength. Of power. Of drive.

Erick took the [Gate] network.

Granted, Erick did have to come down here on his own once before, to set up the Gates. He had even spent a few more hour-long visits beyond that to spend time with Jane. But he hadn’t stuck around at all. This was Jane’s home now, and Erick tried to respect that distance she had put up between them, even though it wasn’t any real distance at all.

But with Erick had come a connection to the Gate Network and a complete obliteration of the entire culture of this land.

It was a welcome change for many. There were only so many times that a starving and desperate adventurer could boil the green muck they find off of cave walls and eat that, before they went mad with the desire for a nice chicken sandwich. Or potatoes. Or fresh bread!

These days, millions of people the world over avoided all of that ‘adventurer nonsense’, as they called it whenever the adventurers weren’t around, to get right to this metropolis in the Underworld; the only place where the wrought were a side attraction, instead of the main defensive force. Or at least that’s what both the rulers of this land and the nearby wrought led people to believe.

According to Silverite, told to Erick in drunken confidence long ago, Adventurer City was kinda like the Sovereign Cities, before Erick came along. Adventurers are all kinda shadeling-shit crazy, after all. Those kinds of people did not make for great governors. But still it was better if this land was occupied than not, so the wrought tried to help from the shadows, when they could, for this land was very, very large, and it needed a lot of people to maintain it, and the nearest Geode was too far away to do it themselves.

In all the ways a society could be measured, Adventurer City was better as it was now, with the Gate Network, than it was before, with the vagaries of broken governance and otherwise that had plagued its existence for the last 1400-ish years.

Like a common tourist, Erick stepped out of a circle of white light, onto a white stone platform, directly into the city, into a land of light and stone under a stony sky, where unassailable [Ward]s marked the land with ultimate defense, and nothing crawled in any of the shadows, and the shadows weren’t real shadows anyway. Erick hadn’t been here in a long time, and the place was looking better than it had before. A lot more civilized. Amazing what some uninterrupted peace could do even for a place like this.

All around Erick lay the central Gatestation of Adventurer City, the central node of the Local Area Gate Network down here, in this part of the Underworld. Four other Gates held open across the square, with illuminated wardlights holding above those passageways into other lands, telling where they were connected. Those wardlights and their connected magitech could turn and show a different destination, while also shifting the other end of the [Gate] into the next land. All of that was under the control of the central waystation, where workers and guards stood watch over it all, shifting the Gates and hurrying people along to their destinations as necessary.

Those people instantly saw Erick, while Erick made a show of looking around, craning his neck as Ophiel flew away, into the [Ward]ed air. There were zones open to flight beyond the city in those [Ward]s out there, looking like open windows among the light, but the nearest open zone was several kilometers away, and highly guarded. So Ophiel just made himself some small [Gate]s to get past the barriers, into the grand cavern beyond.

All of the Underworld had caverns like the one down here, but not all of them were built the same, or uniform. Some places were passageways. Some were holding areas. As for the passages, there were intakes going from Surface to Core, where thick air from [Cleanse] and otherwise sunk down, following paths of least resistance, following alongside water in some cases. There were also places where water and otherwise went up through the tunnels and canyons and empty spaces of the Underworld, up to the Surface; water springs the size of seas. Large open spaces abounded everywhere; from the massive ocean that lay just beneath Candlepoint, to the large open space below Ar’Kendrithyst, where the Living Geode Kendrithyst used to exist, but did no longer.

Adventurer City was an open space and downflow both.

The current iteration of the city was a large sphere, a hundred kilometers across, festooned with buildings and spires and otherwise, rising up from that sphere. The sphere itself floated off to the side of a large gap in the Underworld. To the north of the city was the downflow, where thick mana collected from holes all across the interior of the space, to flow together into a strand of thick air, down, down, down to the Core. Level 90 Domain monsters were located around 500 kilometers down that hole. Up here, by the city itself, the monsters were still level 90, but they didn’t have Domains.

Most of those monsters were inside the dark dungeon entrances scattered everywhere out there in the cavern, though. Not too many wandering around, these days. Not too many dangers out there, preying on people.

The city was protected, anyway. The node network that lit up this land like the Surface at noon had a lot to do with that. Adventurer City even had a dungeon, deep in the core of this 100 kilometer-wide stone sphere, which further protected this city by making sure no dungeon slimes extended their dungeons into this land.

Erick cast his gaze wide, to the edges of the cavern far, far away, to see black portals here and there amid the dark rock, and shadows. He flicked his All-Seeing Eye amulet wide, to pierce stone and [Ward] and all obscuring objects, to see the small hole in the very center of Adventurer City, where the dungeon portal of this city lay, mostly inactive.

He pulled his Absolute Sight back and saw bakeries and theaters and arenas and war halls and mercenary company houses of all kinds. The Adventurer’s Guildhouse down here, located way over there, looked nice. It was sort of like the United Nations, both in size and in effect, for the whole ‘Adventurer’s Guild’ was more like a series of loosely affiliated franchises than any true monolith of power, and meeting here was about as good as meeting anywhere these days. Mostly, there were no meetings. Most adventurers just used their guildhalls as drinking and story spots. When the only threats to the world were the constant, low level ones that always assailed the people of Veird, there wasn’t much to do but business as usual. The only real organization that happened in that place was when real threats came about; the 9, 10, and 11-Star threats.

But Erick and House Benevolence took care of those ones these days. And since there were a lot fewer threats to the world these days, half of the Adventurer’s Guildhouse was empty.

The Dungeon Guild was absolutely packed, though. Looked like they were expanding, too—

And that was all Erick was able to see right now, for people were looking his way, and they were starting to freak out and get excited in unequal measure. Looked like more excitement than fear, but Erick could be wrong about that. He had been here for about 3 seconds so far, which was a decent enough response time. Could have been better, though.

“HOLY shit!” “FUCK is that who I—” “YES, that’s Flatt!” “The Guildmistress?” “No! The father the Wizard, you idiot!” “But isn’t he supposed to not be here?”

Erick smiled a little at that last line, because yes, he wasn’t supposed to be here. There wasn’t any official ruling or request for him to never come here, of course. But Erick had stepped away from this land because this was where Jane had decided to make her home. There had never been any official declaration of his reasoning for staying away, but people were not dumb.

But now that unspoken contract was broken, for Erick was making a public appearance.

That was because it was time to do some fathering.

Jane had been working with Melemizargo without telling him.

And probably for years!

Erick calmly walked toward the waystation filled with guards, smiled gently, and asked, “I haven’t been here in a long time. Got any problems you need a Wizard archmage to solve?” When everyone just stood there gobsmacked instead of answering, which was to be expected, Erick asked again, “Nothing at all? Surely there’s some crisis happening nearby that you’ve all heard about that needs actual solving, and soon?”

One brave traveler spoke up from the side, “They get some ol’ domainies encroaching on the north face!” The speaker was a young man with flour on his white apron, carrying what looked to be a whole bunch of paper-wrapped sandwiches. He had been caught up in his delivery to the waystation when Erick had appeared. The only reason he had spoken up was probably due to him being a Xoatist, what with that characteristic white-feather pin stuck on his chest, above his heart. Enthusiastically, he said, “All the ‘venturers talking ‘bout ‘em! Ain’t no one killin’ ‘em, and they need killin’! … Er… Mister Xoat, sir.”

Erick would have cringed at the ‘Xoat’ comment if he wasn’t making a statement of his own right now. As it was, he pointed north, asking, “That way?”

“Yes sir!”

Erick smiled and nodded, as Ophiels beyond the [Ward]s headed toward the north. “I’ll have those cleared up in a snap, but for now, I must depart.” Illumination crowded around Erick as he turned on his Sun Form. Instantly, the air shook as the entire node network of the city fought against his Domain, but Erick shook right back, tuning himself quieter, toning down his power to just the soles of his feet and boots. There was no need to break any [Ward]s, after all. Erick said, “A pleasure to meet you all. I’m sure to leave some monsters for those who want them, and I won’t stay long.”

And then Erick stepped lively, nodding at the intake zones of the Gatehouse, filled with people who all stared at him, as he bypassed all security by just stepping through another [Gate] of his own, opening directly on the large courtyard outside of the Gatehouse, near the train station. People outside stared. Some screamed. Some shouted for ‘Xoat Reborn!’. Erick nodded professionally, and then bypassed the train station, to step onto the roads leading into the rest of Adventurer City.

There was a fast lane, filled with traffic, most of it with people moving fast, using whatever abilities they used to move fast. And there was a car lane. A few vehicles were on that road; some floating Platform spells, some actual cars. Erick noticed a shiny blue car that sped along under electric power; it was one of the cars from Ooloraptoor Industries, the grass traveler nation to which Erick had bequeathed the electric engine and the differential. Erick was a little surprised to see that car down here, but the grass travelers were doing very well with their electric car production.

Erick smiled as he walked on. The node network was less stringent down here, and so Erick enveloped himself in light, and began walking at a rather relaxed, quick pace, headed toward the Dungeon Guildhouse. He was in no rush, and he was splitting his attention with Ophiel outside the city [Ward]s, to locate and kill monsters here and there. As Erick surprised hundreds of people on the roads, he also surprised guards posted on the north side of the cavern.

Those people readily recognized Ophiel’s [Luminous Beam]s, as Ophiel killed monsters inside the tunnel. There might be lots of dungeons all around, and monsters might take refuge in those places primarily, but there was still a lot of mana in the air out in the tunnel, and the bigger monsters were drawn to drink deep from that well, whenever they could. People noticed when monsters and Ophiel fought.

It would be a matter of moments before Jane was notified of his presence, if Poi didn’t tell her what was happening already.

Erick had brought up the topic of Jane working with Melemizargo over a week ago; eleven days! But she cut communication down to nil after that, and Erick had let her have her space. Surely, she would want to talk on her own time. Surely, she would tell her father about how she was secretly a PALADIN FOR MELEMIZARGO—

Erick calmed himself.

He wished Jane would have talked to him, but she had deflected. And now, since all the gods were on Erick’s case about FINDING THE CAUSE OF THE SUNDERING…

Erick breathed as he lightwalked down the road, keeping his mind even and calm. No need to get upset, Erick! Everything was fine, Erick. Jane was a perfectly responsible adult able to make her own decisions.

Right?

Right.

– – – –

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Jane muttered as she closed her office door, having sent the last of her help away for the day. She couldn’t send everyone home, for the guildhouse had about 1300 workers, but she could certainly send home everyone that worked directly in her offices, who could possibly enable her father to truly know what she had been up to for the last few years. It wasn’t anything bad, but… Jane calmed herself. She squared her shoulders, and she prepared. “I knew this was coming eventually… I have prepared for this.”

And she had—

Jane froze.

Andri Lightwalker, one of the more enthusiastic converts to Xoatism, and the head of the local branch, rushed into her offices, having come from the main guildhouse like a man seeking salvation. Jane liked Andri, but Andri was not someone who she wanted talking to her father right now. In fact, he needed to go.

Jane stepped through the world, to stand right before Andri.

Andri saw Jane, his face lighting up as though he had found his salvation. “Jane! I heard your father is in town and already cleaning up problems! Would you mind terribly giving him this?” He pulled out a packet of paper, and held it forward. “It’s a list of problems that he can fix, if he desires, ranked several ways; in order of importance, in order of ease, in order of minimal disruption to the current political landscape, and otherwise.”

“… You’re not going to try and talk to him yourself?” Jane asked, taking the papers, concern over Andri’s presence rapidly changing into concern over the papers. She began reading.

“Oh my no!” Andri said, “He’s obviously here to see you, and I don’t want to be here for that.”

Jane finished reading the papers. There was a lot there, from the warehouse district problems with embezzlement and missing goods, to the exiled noble’s district with their unfounded claims of thefts from lower ranked adventurers, to the vanishing of people who go down to southside. Jane frowned a little at all of that. All of this was completely out of her jurisdiction, so she couldn’t act on any of it, but… Her father could, if he wanted. More than that, though…

Jane looked up to Andri. “How the fuck did all this stuff pile up so fast?”

Andri smiled wide. “All the world changes when the Wizard is out of his tower.”

Jane kept her face schooled. “Nothing is happening, Andri.”

“Sure sure.” Andri continued, “I’ll be here in Adventurer City for a long time to come, working the good work and fighting the good fight, but I would like to know if there is anything I need to be ready for. Anything at all you might feel the need to tell me, to watch out for, or whatever.”

Andri always knew more than he should, for though he was a human, he had an orcol’s sense for prognostication. He reminded Jane a lot of Teressa in that way, and he had even helped Jane to understand Benevolence a bit more than she would have otherwise.

Jane was no longer that angry girl who had fallen to Veird and become jealous of her father’s rise to power, but she had still needed distance from her father to really understand who ‘Jane’ was, on her own in this world. Andri’s certain brand of irreverence for her father, and also praise, had helped a lot. Other Xoatists saw Erick as a mortal divine, but Andri just saw the good work he had done, and that he continued to do. Jane appreciated that a lot about him.

Living in a land of warriors and archmages had helped a lot, too. There was a lot of magic and power down here in Adventurer City, but there were no kings. No ultimate authorities…

Or at least none that showed themselves.

Jane said, “I’m probably going away for a while. I’ve left instructions with others, but the teams are going to be delving without a leader. Look after them, will you?”

Andri stood strong. “I will do this, and more.” And then he asked, “Are you finally following your own Worldly Path?”

Jane smiled softly. “Not if I can help it.”

“If you can’t help it, then step strongly, Jane.”

Jane chuckled— And then she stopped all of that, and ordered, “You should get out of here, Andri.”

Andri grinned, and then he bowed. “Till I see you again. Good luck.”

Jane watched Andri depart.

And then she went back to her office.

Erick was already there, waiting for her.

When had he shown up? Jane had no fucking clue. The manasphere was devoid of answers, for her father was clearing it away just as fast as he made impressions on it; whatever happened here was under a veil of Privacy that no one would be able to break.

Which was good, Jane supposed.

“Hello, dad,” Jane said, a pit of dread opening up in her stomach, as Ophiels twittered around the room in greeting.

– – – –

Erick smiled, “Hello, Jane. I think I failed to notice how nice Andri is to you. Are you two in a relationship? Should I give him The Talk?”

Jane breathed deep, her father’s words catching her off-guard. “You’re in a fine mood today.”

“I am faking it!” Erick said, “There’s a lot going on right now that I am very worried about. By the way, I’ve finished about half the stuff on Andri’s list; the other stuff is political and I won’t touch that. You can solve it when you get back from our trip.”

Jane almost went to her chair, behind her desk, but then she decided she wanted a drink instead. She went to the decanters, poured herself one, and then poured another. She downed hers in a single gulp, then handed the extra to her father.

Erick took the glass and downed it in a show of solidarity.

Jane was already on-board with fighting whatever threat was coming their way, even though she had no idea of the specifics of that threat… Maybe. How much did she know, exactly? Erick had no idea. She probably knew a lot more of what Melemizargo planned, and Erick was rather eager to hear what those plans involved…

But for right now, they were just father and daughter, sharing a drink in solidarity, both of them occupying rather different places of power in the world, and both of them powerful in their own right.

In that moment —and many more besides— Erick was extremely proud of Jane. She had accomplished a lot. She almost looked the same as she did at 22, when they first fell to Veird together, in that car of hers. At 36 she had a few laugh lines on her face, and a strength in her body and spine that had always been there, but which had become fully developed with another decade of living in this land.

They’d get to the big topics soon. But first…

Erick threw her a softball, “How was your birthday this year?” He glanced over to her shelves, where Erick’s gift sat stacked with the others. “Did you read much of my gift?”

Jane smiled a little, then said, “I had a great party this year. Hizogard and Lyrical showed up. Their teams are doing great. They just headed out to join Ar’Cosmos’s push into the low Underworld, to secure the space under the Forest of Glaquin. Danaro is sick with worry over Hizogard’s absence, but he has the orphanage to worry about. They’ll all be fine.” Jane glanced to her shelves, where the 5-part scientific series ‘Magic of Earth’ sat, waiting for her to read. It was the second printing, done five years after the first, and expanded into two more volumes. Most of it was chemistry but a lot of it was about everything else that Erick and Jane had both brought with them to Veird. Erick had gotten her the most practical set, while his own copies, gifted to him by the author, were big things encrusted with gems and otherwise, and sitting on his own shelves back home. Jane said, “I started on the first one, but it’s way too… It reminds me a lot of when we first got here and I tried everything I knew to make magic, but none of it worked.”

Erick nodded, saying, “All that stuff does work, but not for everyone. Your Truth lay elsewhere.”

Jane smiled, chuckling.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Years ago, if Erick had said that, Jane would have gotten angry with him. But now she laughed instead. Erick loved to see that, his insides tumbling with warmth as he witnessed yet another point of proof that Jane had come into her own. Her Truth was that she could be anything she needed to be in order to overcome whatever she needed to overcome, and that Truth had served her well. But it wasn’t the ‘Truth of Lightsabers’ or all of her other smaller experiments with magic, there in the beginning.

Jane’s Truth didn’t lend itself to wide-scale power, either, as Erick’s Truth had done for him.

“My Truth works well, for me,” Jane said. And then she looked at her father. “You want to talk about the search for the Sundering, now?”

“We’ll get to that. You’re on your Worldly Path, too?” Erick said, “I didn’t know that, either. When did you start?”

Jane winced and tried not to show it. “… Years ago. Kinda left that to the wayside, unwilling to take the final steps.”

“Don’t want a little dragon blessing from your father?”

Jane’s face grimaced a little, as Erick had struck the heart of the matter. “Melemizargo has told me that the moment I accept becoming a Benevolence Dragon, I’ll likely make my own Gatespace. So yeah, I left that Path to the side. I still have Draconic Inoculation, anyway, because I don’t want to be a dragon.”

Erick wanted to be angry about that. But instead he withheld all judgment about everything. He liked being actually present with his daughter, in her home space, and that hadn’t happened for over a year. Jane had come up to House Benevolence a few times, of course. But when she was up there she was a different person. Down here she was who she truly wanted to be. Erick didn’t judge her for that, at all.

But her words about not wanting to be a dragon hurt for a bunch of different reasons.

Jane was a Polymage, after all. Shouldn’t she want all of that power, that came from being a dragon, at her base? All of her Forms would benefit. But, no. It was that old problem, yet again. She was denying Erick’s help, in order to become her own person. For a multitude of reasons, some old, many new and heavy on the mind, Erick was mad about that.

He pulled back from his instinctive response, and instead spoke with measured words that he had been holding back for a very long time.

“Jane,” Erick began, “You’re strong enough to avoid many of the pitfalls of this world, and the danger of your own existence. But it pisses me the fuck off that you keep denying my assistance on such a basic, powerful matter. It’s really quite angering, you know. Or perhaps you don’t actually know, because I never tell you exactly how I feel. And so, I’m telling you now—”

“I know how you feel,” Jane said, firmly. “Do you have any idea how many nights I lay awake, thinking about what I could do with the power of a dragon? Every time I lose a team. Every time I have to go out and kill a rogue core. But then I hear stories about how a Benevolence Dragon ended up doing weird shit and ended up making the world a better place for it. Immolating and healing people for hours on end; it seemed like torture, but no, it was putrescent slugs. Shit like that.

“And I can’t do that to myself, dad. I already know what it’s like to lose myself to the monster, and I won’t ever let that happen. So as soon as you can make a dragon-type that doesn’t fugue-out and drop everything to go help a grandma halfway around the world get medical treatment for some soul-problem she didn’t even know she had, then I’m gonna continue fretting about how little power I actually have in this world. I will continue to deny your help in becoming a dragon.”

There was a lot there.

“… Okay. I withdraw my complaint. I don’t want to contribute to your loss of self. I didn’t even know that was a problem.” Erick knew that Jane was keeping stuff from him, but this? A crisis over the loss of self? This seemed like something she should have wanted to talk to him about… But she always kept her biggest problems away from him. Erick felt he had failed as a father at that moment. Of course Jane didn’t want to be a Benevolence Dragon. Maybe not any type of dragon at all. Erick softly asked, “When did you lose yourself to the monster?”

“It was years ago.” Jane looked away, saying, “Seven years ago, by now. I killed a dungeon core that was halfway to becoming Grand, and I had just gotten a spider form that I have since discarded. When I woke up, I was chewing on the leg of one of my teammates who had cut off her leg to escape me. She and I don’t talk much anymore because of that. She grows stuff on a farm, on the other side of the city.”

“I’m sure she must have known you had an issue. People have issues, and people forgive, too. And she’s not dead, right? Of course healing that rift isn’t as simple as an apology, for any act of using power against a friend can lead to disastrous relationship fallout. But did you apologize?”

“I did, at first, but… Never really followed up on that. There was another crisis in another dungeon.” Jane said, “You know how it is.”

“I do know how it is. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Jane stayed silent, thinking.

Erick waited.

Jane said, “So we’re searching for the cause of the Sundering now.”