240, 2/2

The dungeon with the extra slimes was located about 25 kilometers beyond the city, on the southern slope of the northern crack of Mount Ascendant. The Platform had carried them beyond its physical lightrail, onto Lapis’s manually-created railing, and past a good twenty visible crystal guardians and another few thousand invisible guardians. The automatons did not attack, of course. Lapis explained that Erick, Jane, Ophiel, and Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye, were all approved parties of the Mountain, but also that they shouldn’t go into the dangerous parts of the Mountain unless they wanted the challenge. As long as they stayed in the air and away from everything important, like the patrolling guardians that held the keys to the Grand Dungeons, they should be safe.

As the platform landed on the forest floor, and a prime shadowolf attempted to attack and Erick killed it with a swipe of light, Erick chuckled a little bit, saying, “Nowhere around here is truly safe, though.”

“Untrue!” Lapis said, smiling. “The shadeling city is very safe for all people, and the adventurer city is safe for you as long as you stay away from the color-coded patrols.” And then she gestured forward, to where a copse of trees was bent and layered upon itself, weighed down and festooned with multicolored crystal that held it in that position. Beyond those rainbow stones lay a portal into shadows. “This area is only safe for you, Jane, and the people you bring here. I’m only safe right now because you’re here. It’s not completely secure, of course, because complete security is death. But it’s close enough.”

Erick raised an eyebrow at that and looked to the gore of the shadowolf he had just spread out across the land to the right.

Lapis shrugged. “It only appeared when you were here, so perhaps it was technically considered a guest of yours? The defense is made of golems, Erick. They’re not people.”

Erick glanced back through the manasphere, into the past— Ah. He came back to himself, and said, “Looks like the crystals are the golems.”

“Correct.” Lapis cast her glowing white gaze over the rock-candy-like crystals. “They’re dormant when you’re around. This dungeon has a lot of these golems inside, overseeing the area and ensuring it is stable. I believe I saw a shadowolf in there last I looked, but the golems have been killing every non-slime that makes its way into there, and then depositing them back out here.” She glanced toward the shadow-laced gore, saying, “That might have been one such unlucky wolf. Hard to say.”

Erick took a moment to look over the whole land, with all of his senses.

And he felt a supreme moment like he was standing on yet another edge, peering at the shadows below. All these recent upsets with the Sundering search, and the Glittering Depths, and Ashes, and Quilatalap being stuck in that dungeon at Storm’s Edge and the Storm Prophecy…

All of that stuff was way too large.

Erick knew that he had positioned himself as ‘The Wizard who deals with the big stuff’, but he had tried to step back from all of that recently with his attempts at making cover Familiar Forms for himself; to hide in plain sight, and to experience the world from a smaller perspective. He had even said to Yggdrasil recently that being smaller was even more important when you were overly large, because if you didn’t try to see the leaves of the forest, you’d never get to see how real people lived their lives, and you’d lose touch with them, and with yourself.

And now he was about to charge headfirst into the most dangerous problems that had ever faced Veird.

This was going too fast.

He needed to pause.

Erick had asked to come here, to this dungeon, to potentially pick up a few copies of himself and then… Search out the Sundering, or something like that. He was still in the information gathering stage right now, so his plan hadn’t been too solid, but it wasn’t like Melemizargo’s imposition was overly large. The Sundering search needed to happen eventually, and soon, but there was no rush.

Jane had been about to rush into all of this, too… Or maybe she would have taken her time? Hard to say. Erick obviously needed to have another talk with her about all of that…

Erick decided to ask her about all that right now. “Jane? Based on what you’ve seen so far, what should be our next step?”

Lapis and Erick both looked to Jane.

And Jane raised an eyebrow. Then she rapidly said, “Something small and directed toward the goal. Nothing major. Eventually, I would learn enough at the Well in order to go into this dungeon and then make a dungeon of my own, and then use that dungeon to make more of me. Only two or three at first. My copies and I would go out and gain base mana regen in the surrounding dungeons, then use the Well to narrow down dungeons that need breaking, then we’d go out and break those dungeons that need breaking, and witness history in the Dark, searching for answers.

“The first thing I’d search for would be some monsters from the Old Cosmology that could better survive the Dark. Once there were four of us with that capability, then we’d search for anti-anti-memetic threats, but only for half of us. Two of us would remain unprotected. It’s entirely possible that this threat with the Sundering is anti-memetic in nature, or, the threat is memetic itself, and everyone who learns of the Sundering dies automatically.

“So we’d protect ourselves in both of those ways, and whoever dies would die, with the unprotected Janes serving as canaries, so we’d first cross off the anti-memetic/memetic threat nature of the Sundering. That, to me, would be the first concern of the Sundering to lay to rest. As long as the threat isn’t knowledge-based, then the rest of the search would proceed as planned.

“But considering the Goddess of Knowledge was catatonic at the end of the Sundering, then I’m pretty sure the threat is some sort of knowledge-based attack.” Jane said, “One [Far Bolt] idea that is looking rather attractive to me right now is trying to bring back the Goddess of Knowledge, and letting her solve the Sundering problem for us.”

Lapis stood stunned.

“… Well now there’s an idea I hadn’t considered,” Erick said. “Is it a valid idea, though? Is such a thing actually possible?”

Lapis stood there for a moment, then said, “I would have to get back to you on that.” She rapidly, and very seriously added, “That solution of resurrecting a goddess is way, way above my level of expertise. I would direct you to the Champion of Melemizargo to ask those sorts of questions, but we don’t have one of those right now. Fallopolis would be the closest suggestion, or Melemizargo Himself, of course.”

“Well… I like the idea of bringing back Knowledge, on the surface,” Erick said.

“Obviously, yes,” Jane said. “I barely know anything about gods and next to nothing about the Goddess of Knowledge, so all I have is that idea. Nothing more.” Jane gestured toward the crystallized grove ahead, saying, “I do know that one of me isn’t nearly enough to solve this problem, which is why I was going to make more of me.”

Erick nodded, then turned back toward the dungeon. He didn’t move. The others expected him to move, but…

Erick said, “I think we should take a day or three to digest the information we have, and then get back to all of this later.”

Jane nodded.

Lapis gestured back to the Platform they had come in on, saying, “Shall we return to the city?” But then she saw that Erick wanted to do something else, so she added, “Or I can leave the research I’ve already done at the Well in your rooms, and leave you to the rest. Fallopolis would likely wish to speak to you in the morning, after you’ve made some decisions.”

“Let’s do that,” Erick said, “There’s a dinner feast I need to get back to at Aniduun—”

Jane went toward the Platform, saying, “I’ll join you later, dad. I’m going back to the rooms to speak with Lapis and go over the research.”

“… Sure,” Erick said. Lapis bowed, and then joined Jane on the Platform. Erick said, “That works. See you later.”

Lapis bowed again, saying, “Till the morrow, Fire of the Age.”

They took off into the air.

… Eventually, Erick took a white-lightning portal back to Aniduun.

– – – –

As the approved people left the area, except for an Ophiel high overhead, the crystals growing on the trees began to flex and shift like gelatin moving on its own. That soft stone fell back together, and soon golems made of crystal stood among the trees, ready and willing to cut down anything that might appear.

Another shadowolf slipped out of the dungeon, holding to the shadows, but a crystal spear stabbed it through its core and pulled it out of those shadows, killing it in the process.

– – – –

Erick sipped his after-dinner coffee, and made a decision, “When I was first told to come here, there was a certain dangling of dungeon creation laid out there for me. That had been my primary expectation, months ago. But now I have gotten here, and everything is much larger than I initially expected. And so, I think I will simply make a dungeon, for now.”

Guildmasters Baxter, Golgoro, and Debiza, were the only ones left in the dining hall of Aniduun’s largest dining hall, after the feast. The major talking had been done. The major questions of the state of the island, and of the known facts of the Sundering search, had all been gone through, and Erick had solved a good hundred small problems and rescued a bunch of people from dungeons they had no business being inside, all while eating wonderfully herb-roasted pork, and lots of different side dishes. Erick had done a lot to solidify the current state of Dungeon Island in the matter of a few hours, and then he had a very well-prepared flank steak as a reward for himself.

The Cook of that steak was none other than Donny, who had been among the first to get a [Reincarnation] years and years ago. The former Cook from Nelboor had tried and somewhat succeeded in becoming a famous Cook within House Benevolence, especially after his involvement with the food at the Shadow’s Feast right before the Teleport Exodus, but he had moved on to Dungeon Island years ago, and now there were franchises with his name on the signage in all three major cities. He had risen to franchise power, exactly as he wanted to.

It was always nice to see people he had helped long ago; to see them once again rise to power, and prestige. It was especially nice to help Cooks, because then Erick got to eat all the nice things they made, and this was yet another example of that wonderfulness. Dinner was long over, but Erick almost wanted to ask the kitchen to bring him another steak. Alas, it was time for after-dinner coffee, and some final talks of serious topics.

“But before I make a dungeon…” Erick said to Golgoro, “You’re all old enough to have been through Ar’Kendrithyst,” he looked to Baxter and Debiza, “Or if not there, then other places.” He asked, “Obviously dungeons and Ascendant Mountain are vastly different from the threats of ‘normal’ danger… But how has the usual ultimate danger been? The threat of the Dark Itself. Are you scared of shadows eating you if you were to speak out poorly against Melemizargo? Are Shades pressuring you into doing things you wouldn’t normally do? Or are they just being incredibly smart about their pressures?”

Golgoro rumbled with disapproval, baring his lower fangs at such a deep question. He was from the old guard of the world, and had been a sort-of ‘mercenary’ in the Adventurer Guild near Spur for a long time, taking people into Ar’Kendrithyst and then back out. Most of his charges survived those trips. But not all.

Golgoro shook his head, not willing to speak on that subject right now, then he drained his beer and got up to go refill it.

Debiza sipped her wine, her dark eyes dutifully not-focused on the shadows in the corners of the room. The jewelry on her black horns seemed to glitter just a bit more as she manually empowered the magical trinkets to do… something? Heighten her awareness? Yes, that was probably it. She took a moment to decide what to say, and then she said, “I will never be comfortable speaking of shadows, but they have never imposed upon us at Zawindi as they used to impose upon us at the Magisterium of the Wasteland. They were never terrible impositions, of course, because we did what they asked when we could, and because it never seemed horrible until looking back at it from a larger scope. A lot of Quiet War events were that way, too.” Her lips were an unknowable line, and her eyes and face gave nothing away, as she said, “If the shadows are playing a longer game than usual then we’re all dead anyway, so we might as well play along.”

Golgoro scoffed, but said nothing.

Baxter had been sipping his lemon-lime soda mixer, but he set that down and said, “If the Dark asked you to come here to make a dungeon, then make one. If he asked you to search for the Sundering, then delay, delay, delay. Everything between those two extremes is not something I can help you decide upon.”

At that, Golgoro had to speak up, and so he did. “I don’t trust gods and I don’t trust the Dark. But I do trust interests. I trust what drives people. For the longest time, with Ar’Kendrithyst and all the rest, I knew what drove the Dark, and his Clergy. And then everything changed. But did it, really? No. It did not. Melemizargo still wants off this rock of a world, but this time he’s being nice about it. ‘Nice’ is a lie. That nice lie has gone on for a long time and some people have forgotten how it used to be. But I didn’t forget, and you sure as steel didn’t forget, either. Or maybe you did. Maybe you were never actually subjected to the full lie, Wizard.

“Not quite your fault, for the Dark has ensnared you, too.

“Right now Miss Jane is off with the shadows, and they’re all working together! Bah! Never thought I’d see that damned day. Point is she’s there, and she’s the pawn to get you to move how the Dark wants you to move.

“Maybe the Dark is too damned smart for all of us, as Debiza thinks. But I took rookies into Ar’Kendrithyst all the time, and those that came back out came out warriors. If anything of history still remains true, then that one fact remains the same. The Dark is a carving stone, Wizard Flatt.

“It is not a guiding Path. It is not a virtue, or a fault. It is a thing that one must test oneself against, never forgetting that it wants to kill you if it can, and is always trying to lure you back with gold and treasure, so it can have another chance to kill you.

“So delay, delay, delay, like Baxter says, but in that delay, take the Dark for everything you can possibly grab, and make this world a true unassailable bastion.”

Debiza instantly countered, “But those trinkets stolen from the Dark could turn on us—”

“Yes, they could,” Golgoro said, strongly, “You can never escape the carving stone; you can only grind yourself against it, and hope your edges come out sharper than how you started.” He stood. “I am done talking. It was a good feast. Blessings upon you all.”

And then Golgoro left, turning to pink light as he lightstepped away. Erick had almost forgotten that the giant warrior orcol king had a pink mana signature, but Golgoro’s departure reminded him of that fact again. Erick wasn’t sure exactly why he liked that nuance to the man, but he did. Golgoro was a straight-shooter.

“When he talks, he makes a good point,” Erick said. “So a dungeon and delays.”

“What sort of dungeon will you be making?” Baxter asked.

“I would like to know that as well,” Debiza said, standing, “But it is getting late, and I must go. It was a pleasure to see you again, Wizard Flatt. I look forward to your presence on the Island for a while.”

Erick grinned politely as he also stood, saying, “I suppose I must be going as well, but I do look forward to being here for a while. If you need anything, just ask; either personally, or through the House.”

Debiza said, “If you have no plans for a residency on the Island yet, Zawindi would be honored to host you.”

Baxter had taken his time to stand, but he stood with Erick and Debiza, and now he offered, “We’ve houses here, too, Erick.”

“Thank you both for your hospitality and for the wonderful meal and talk, but I will be staying at the Mountain. I’ll let you know if something should change. I also won’t be allowing people to challenge the Mountain for the next few days, at least; I told you I saw that one team get pulled apart, well I’m not letting that happen again, even if it is their choice to be there. Let the others know, will you. Or at least let them know that they will be removed should they appear.”

Debiza and Baxter both accepted this task, and then they bowed.

Erick said, “It was a wonderful evening.” And then he stepped through a portal.

– – – –

Erick had thought he had stepped onto the cliff outside of the hotel.

But the air shifted, and he appeared on Melemizargo’s Throne, and Melemizargo was there.

“A delay is fine, Erick, but I would appreciate a delay of months, not years.” He frowned. “And I cannot believe that you would not just ask me about the goings-on around here; that you would need to ask the tested if the tests are too much.”

Erick frowned right back at the big guy. “This is the biggest thing you could have possibly ever asked of me or anyone else, so take your disbelief that I would investigate you down a notch.”

A sigh.

“… Fair.”

Erick suddenly added, “And I barely told them anything, because even if all the Relevant Entities are on board with this project, I’m terrified of this task, Melemizargo, and if I told everyone everything they’d panic and attack. You should be just as scared of this, too.”

Melemizargo sighed again, and rolled his eyes at Erick, who was so far down below him, there on the floor of the Throne, while Melemizargo’s head was at least 30 meters above it all.

“And another thing!” Erick did not like speaking upward, so he conjured a Platform and rose into the air, to look Melemizargo in the eyes. “While we’re here! What about bringing the Goddess of Knowledge back? What’s up with that? Is that a valid idea?”

Melemizargo stared at Erick, floating level with his face. His voice was tense, “She was sacrificed in more ways than such a simple word could ever convey. She’s not coming back. You don’t even know her name, do you? I don’t remember her name, either.” He frowned a little, and then discarded the attitude, saying, “All that is left is her Mantle, and there are no good candidates for that position at this time. If you want to find a good candidate, then you’re welcome to do so, but I have tried giving that Mantle to others before, and they all go insane within minutes. Perhaps my choices had been in error, for I was not wholly myself when I made those decisions, but perhaps the Script itself and the lack of enough True Knowledge is the real reason for the failure of a Knowledge god to rise again.

“For the longest time, I felt that particular failure was due to this world being a cage, and all True Knowledge being locked away from me.

“But I’ve gotten better since then. Now, I believe that there simply isn’t enough civilization to support the rise of any True God, of any flavor. Minor gods, sure, but the major ones? Not happening. Even the major gods that exist these days are bare fragments holding onto themselves more than they hold onto the world, because otherwise they would fall apart.”

Erick asked, “Are you responsible for the rise or denial of all gods?”

“The majority of them, but not all. Zephyrspray of Travel was born here on Veird, and is sized to this land. After the original Wild God finally died for their failure to hold themselves together in this tamed land, Fangorl of The Wilds created themselves, making a new Wild Mantle out of possibility. I still have the original Wild Mantle hanging around in my hoard alongside many others, waiting for someone to take up that power in truth. It won’t happen under the Script, though, for this land is not Wild at all, though some who don’t know any better might call it that.

“Knowledge is certainly not coming back under the Script unless you want another Mad God.” Melemizargo added, “But I’m rather sure we’re not doing Evil Gods anymore.”

Erick took a moment to think, then he asked, “Do you really want a Creation Wizard?”

Melemizargo frowned slightly. “The answers the Well might give you are different from my own. Personally, a Creation Wizard on level with yourself would be too dangerous to allow into this world, for without a Destruction Wizard to counter them they could create untold horrors and dangers, and no one wants a Destruction Wizard to appear right now. So: No. A Creation Wizard deprived of their Creation might work, but even that is a dangerous ask.” Melemizargo said, “Whatever might come, we should do this slowly, and methodically.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because I feel the need to make a bulwark against the worst possible outcomes, so I’m going to make a dungeon, and have that be the center stage for all the horrors that might come out of the Dark.” Erick asked, “If such a thing is possible.”

Melemizargo grinned. “The Dark is full of possibilities, Erick, and you are a Wizard. In order to make your possibilities happen, all you need to do is make them happen.”

Erick nodded at that.

Melemizargo nodded in return, and then floated backward, turning into shadow and nothing as he vanished into the night.

And then Erick was left alone in the middle of the air above the white disk of the Throne. The white crystal of the Throne glowed softly at Melemizargo’s departure, almost like the land was bathed in the light of full moons, but the moons were only slivers in the sky overhead, and the stars looked almost cold as they glimmered in the deep.

The air was cool. Erick decided to walk to the hotel. It was a nice night for a walk.

– – – –

Erick had almost gone into the hotel, but Jane was there with Lapis and Fallopolis and they were deep in a discussion about searching for three specific targets in the Dark. Based on the setups around the planning room, they looked like targets in the Radiant Depths, the Wild Green, and the Endless Library; a Wizard collective of sorts, an eternal font of life, and a separate collection of Wizards based around knowledge. If Erick interrupted that then all the conversation would focus on him, but Jane was definitely the most qualified for searching in the Dark, based on how she was talking of navigating around this or that horror she’d already seen in the Dark. He’d talk to Jane about all of that later.

There were other things that Erick could do to propel this project forward.

So he had an Ophiel appear in that planning room, and say, “No need to interrupt based on me. Just letting you know I’m going to instantiate that dungeon we saw earlier under a repro of myself, in order to have a firm bulwark against whatever might come from our searching.”

Jane softened a little, saying, “Okay, dad. Yeah. That seems like it would be for the best.”

Her tone was solid, as though she had been worried about asking him to do exactly what he planned on doing, and then Erick had made the decision on his own. It only took a moment longer for Erick to understand why, for he had already had half of that thought himself.

Erick easily said, “It’d be easier for either of us to kill a version of me than it would be for you to kill a version of you, or for me to kill a version of you.”

“Yes,” Jane said. “… Theoretically, anyway.”

Erick nodded through Ophiel, and then he departed the planning room.

– – – –

Erick stood before a copse of trees all crusted over with rainbow crystal. The night was dark, and full of monsters, but the crystals glowed faintly, making the darkness inside those crystallized trees look truly deep. Erick strode forward, under heavy boughs, into—

– – – –

As shadows peeled from Erick’s sight he found himself upon a wide, floating stone staircase, somewhere near the bottom of an endless stretch of floating stone, but not actually near the bottom at all.

There was nothing to his left and his right except a great, black openness. Perhaps there were walls somewhere out there, but Erick couldn’t see or sense any walls at all. There was still light, of course. The black world was illuminated from some unseen overhead space, mostly showing on the staircase under Erick’s feet, and upon the vast, tumbled and smooth white stone land far below.

That land reminded Erick a lot of the Light Dungeon he had made for Kirginatharp all those years ago, with small water features here and there inside depressions in the white, and flowing down slides here and there. Glowing prismatic power floated in lazy trails above that ground, tracing arcane patterns over the land, providing sustenance to the creatures that inhabited the dungeon, to the slimes.

Slimes of every color bounced and tumbled and played in the water and in the light, and there were so many of them that Erick could not hope to count them all. They mushed into each other, and then trailed away to find others to play with, with small colonies of single-color slimes gathering here and there, but mostly mixing up everywhere else. It was a land of color, and white stone, and water.

Ophiel slipped forward off of Erick’s shoulder to fly down, past the end of the staircase, and then further down into that far-away land below. Soon Ophiel had taken on a ball-of-feathers form, to play with a particularly large purple slime that trundled down a lazy river. The purple slime was a little too large to be able to float down the river like all of its friends, but it tried. It was not the only overly-large slime in the dungeon, but Ophiel liked purple, and so Ophiel played with the purple slime.

Erick let that happen as he turned his attentions to the rest of the space.

The staircase led back the way he came, ending somewhere… far above. The white staircase seemed almost ephemeral past a few kilometers up, where shadows crawled across the glowing white stone slats, like clouds passing across the sun.

Looking down again, Erick noticed there were only a few hundred steps to get to a landing. That landing was still high above the slime land below.

Erick walked to that landing, taking his time to test his magics, to see if anything was barred from him. He cast a Bolt spell into the air, and then tried to cancel it, but found that canceling wasn’t possible. A Script-assisted Bolt did not happen; so the Script was partially blocked, but Erick felt his mana coming back to him through the Script, so it wasn’t fully blocked. His Intelligence and Perception seemed normal enough, too, and when he began accreting a second core in his stomach, Rozeta’s Accretion seemed to be working out perfectly normally, as well.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

 

Erick began fully developing the second core as he continued down the stairs, testing his magics to make sure that everything worked more or less normally. And it did. However this dungeon was currently programmed, it was rather minimally programmed. Which is why Erick next flowed out Elemental Book into the air, to see if he could ping the dungeon for stats about itself. He did not get a return signal like in the Glittering Depths. He got impressions.

A riot of color, surrounded by black, being teased out in every direction by claws made of both light and shadow. There was a frizzy-haired old woman, with a big black staff. A house of welcome, and known capability. A place of security in the Dark.

“Ah,” Erick said to the air, “Looks like Melemizargo and Fallopolis made this dungeon themselves, eh?” Erick stepped on the platform, and the platform began to descend toward the ground, more than a kilometer below. Looking over the edge, and through Ophiel, Erick saw Ophiel playing with a trio of orange-colored slimes now, following them up and down a waterway splash zone. Casting his gaze forward, Erick saw the dungeon core… “Or at least the entrance to the core.”

The platform stopped about 5 meters above the ground, in the southern-middle of the large, slime playground. Erick hopped off of the platform and landed on the ground where he was instantly attacked by a pair of red and yellow slimes.

‘Attacked’ was perhaps too strong of a word for what the slimes were trying to do to him.

They definitely butted up against his legs and backed up to launch themselves at his shins, which was sort of like an attack, but they didn’t actually do anything except to hurt themselves, because they trailed away little bits of color in the wake of their [Strike]s. As the big purple slime and a white slime came in to join their brethren, to attack the interloper, Erick decided to wrap himself in light and turn invisible. A bit more magic, and he stepped into the air, to avoid a confrontation entirely.

A part of him looked at Ophiel bounding around among the slimes, looking like a slime and therefore not a target at all, and Erick thought of his own Light Slime Familiar Form… But he discarded that option. The slimes couldn’t see him anymore, anyway, which removed all confrontation as he traveled to the hole in the northern-ish side of the dungeon. Ophiel tired of slime games when Erick passed by, or maybe he knew to be present instead of playing around, so Ophiel turned back into a bird-ish form and landed, invisibly, upon Erick’s shoulder.

With a voice filled with childlike need, Ophiel whispered, “We play slimes?”

He wanted Erick to join him in slime-time.

And Erick… Needed to do that, because Ophiel asked, and Erick was a good father.

“We’ll do some slime-time later, okay? I have to do something else, first.”

Ophiel fluffed up happy as could be, whistling in violins that filled the air with joy.

The slimes all started looking around, trying to find the source of the noise, each of them looking slightly agitated or joyful at the noise. Big purple did a full-body shake, and then rolled out of the lazy river, to follow where he had heard the noise.

Erick left big purple behind, smiling softly as the big slime stopped where Ophiel had cried out.

Ophiel whispered, “We be back soon!”

Erick smiled wider at that.

Soon, Erick reached the hole in the northern side of the dungeon floor. It was not just a hole, though. It was also a very large ridge, which no slimes could accidentally climb over, to fall into the space beyond.

Erick descended. Beyond that hole lay a second floor which was much smaller than the first floor, and with several key differences.

The land itself was a domed space, while the inside of that dome had some sort of intricate illusion painted on the whole thing, giving the impression that this cavern was on the Surface, in the forest up above. Dark trees lined the land, and the sky was full of stars, except the hole that Erick had arrived through; that hole was just black, and looked like a new moon perpetually hanging in the sky above.

And then there was the house sitting in the middle of the cavern.

The property around the house was barren, orange-ish stone, which could easily be turned into sand, and then with some [Grow] and some water and some clover, it could be turned into proper soil, for growing things. It was a familiar-looking land surrounding the house, but the house itself was more familiar by far. It was not the cottage house that Erick and Quilatalap had shared at all, and Erick was glad for that. It would have been weird to see his and Quilatalap’s house here, in this place.

It was his house from Spur, though, and that was almost as disconcerting.

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Three stories tall, with a mage tower on the north and south sides, and with balconies on the second floor and third floor, it was an intimately familiar house. The original one, from way before Erick and Jane had gotten to it and then [Mend]ed it from destroyed foundation into ‘new’ house, had been so well destroyed by time that the [Mend]ed version had turned out lumpy and indistinct. And so Al had helped to fix it up properly, since he was a Stone Mage capable of architecture-level stonework. Jane had wanted a ‘Victorian’ style house, but Al had had no idea what ‘Victorian’ meant, but he was accomplished in stone, and he had figured out what she wanted soon enough. The actual style of the house had become ‘Newood’ style due to that interaction, while most of the other houses of Spur remained flat-roofed places that weren’t too well suited for rain.

A lot of Spur had adopted the Newood style because of that house and Erick and his rain, but a lot of places in Spur had just opted for some slopes and drainage to their usual desert style.

Erick had lived in that house with Poi, Teressa, Kiri, and Jane, for a long while, when Jane wasn’t out gallivanting around the world, or delving into Ar’Kendrithyst or other dangerous places.

The original house in Spur was gone, and had been gone for many years by now. People kept either trying to destroy it, or venerate it, and neither of those outcomes was acceptable, so Silverite had ordered it demolished. Al had turned it into sand and brushed away that sand into the Crystal Forest preserve that surrounded Spur. Now, the only thing left in Spur where Erick had started his life was an empty space upon the orange stone.

But here was that house again, inside a dungeon, located just outside of the ‘New Ar’Kendrithyst’.

Ophiel was also having a prolonged confusing moment, but his moment was completely distinct from Erick’s. The little guy fluffed up and took off of Erick’s shoulder to fly inside the house, to look around at the furniture and at the books on the shelves, and at the chocolate bars sitting on the kitchen table, alongside freshly–seeming baked cookies. Or at least those cookies had been freshly baked. Ophiel disturbed [Preservation Ward]s everywhere he flew, breaking them as he twittered in concerned, unsure guitar noises, as he poked around at cans of coffee and at frozen beef in the chill room. The little guy was having a lot of trouble understanding what he was seeing because he wasn’t a real person with real memories, and yet he had some memories, and that was disturbing to him.

He remembered the house, but not enough to really know what it was.

Erick steeled himself and walked through the front door of the house.

Steeling himself wasn’t enough to completely nullify the emotional response of stepping into the past like this. His heart pumped. His breath hitched. And then he walked forward, into the well-lit house that was lit with wardlights exactly as Erick had once lit it with wardlights, over a decade ago.

Everything about the house was old-tech compared to what Erick now had in his cloud castle. The wardlights weren’t shuttered at all; they were just always on. The [Air Conditioning Ward] had lapsed, and it needed to be remade, so Erick did that, and then he began tying all the magic in the house together with a proper node network, casting the lines of the network into the stone, so that everything was hidden from sight. With casual gestures of his aura control, he began remaking the lights into more perfect lights, righting a tilted one he had put up in the second floor hallway so that it pointed directly down, instead of at a tiny angle. Why did he cast the original one at an angle? Erick wasn’t sure; probably just so he didn’t look perfect, so guests could see that magic and say to themselves ‘oh, he’s not perfect, I feel better about myself now’.

His bedroom looked the same as it did, oh so long ago. The other rooms looked similar to how they had looked a decade ago. Erick’s mage tower even had most of his copy of Earth’s Solar System, done in stone, hanging on the ceiling.

“But that’s different,” Erick said, looking up at the ‘sun’, and then at a few spots in the ‘asteroid belt’.

‘The sun’ was the dungeon core. That was the only thing it could have been. Bright white and iridescent, the core was a good meter across and radiating power. The planets were just plain orange/white stone. 17 of the asteroid belt’s asteroids were [Ward]ed and secured dungeon master slimes. They looked like fist-sized amoeba-shaped plops of goo suspended in crystal spheres.

“Whelp,” Erick said, “No time like the present… I suppose.”

Erick finished off the second core in his stomach and put his hand under his shirt, into his stomach, reshaping his flesh to pull out that second core. A small bit of blood scattered away as he did so, but there wasn’t much pain at all. Erick held up the iridescent white core below one of the crystallized dungeon master slimes. Drops of blood slid off of the core, past Erick’s hand, to fall upon and mar the otherwise clean orange-and-white stone ground.

As if knowing that it was time to become real, the dungeon master slime that Erick held his core under began to flex. The protective seal burst into fragments of dissolving magic. The slime fell through the air and Erick guided it to gently plop directly onto the core. It still splattered, but that splatter rapidly came back together, to subsume the core into itself. Erick held onto the proto-him, the little guy flexing and squirming over the core to right itself into the correct position, as Erick walked out of the mage tower, and into the hallway that led to his room.

Erick set ‘himself’ down atop a bed that was not his, but which was his, and would become his, soon enough.