249, 2/2

 

Several hours and no time at all later, Erick walked down the road from Melemizargo’s Throne, through the shadeling town of Ascendant Mountain. Inhabited crystal towers rose all around him, though he didn’t allow anyone to see him. Not right now. He was cloaked in a bend of light, his ‘sun form’ held tight against his body. Ha! A ‘sun form’. How deeply was Kirginatharp affected by these Red Sparks?

The ‘Killing Sun’!

A hundred other small events, all Red, all big and small.

The Stat known as Strength was even crimson colored under the Script. Melemizargo never mentioned it, but Erick wondered if that coloring and the popularity of Strength-based builds over magic-based builds was due to the influence of the Red Sparks. But then again, the makers of the Script had made it so that magic simply wasn’t as strong as it had been in the Old Cosmology, which was why Strength was so prevalent… But maybe that was the influence of the Red Sparks.

Or maybe the trauma of the Sundering and the aversion to Wizards was just logical.

… Only a Wizard could ever truly challenge the Red Sparks, though…

Once the veil had been pulled back, Erick started seeing a lot of things that he never saw before. His paranoia was ramping up, higher and higher, and Erick realized this, so he tried thinking more calmly, but it wasn’t working too well.

He couldn’t confront the problem, either. Melemizargo had explained that quite clearly.

… or at least he couldn’t confront it right now.

He and Melemizargo had spoken for a long time, but only minutes had passed out here. Talking in [Hasted Shelter]s and then not doing anything right afterward were one of the easier ways to ensure that the Red Sparks didn’t fight back, since the enemy was a time-based, long-view sort of enemy. Changing locations fast, hiding in the Dark, being underground where the sun never reached… All of these worked a little bit, but not completely. The Red Leviathan on the sun could not read minds, but it could prognosticate rather well.

Another way to avoid seeing the enemy was to avoid seeing the Red Sparks. Erick could easily tune his All-Seeing Eye and see those Sparks, but he chose not to, because reacting to the Sparks let the Sparks know you were there.

When he did turn on his All-Seeing Eye, though, he saw Red Sparks crawling all over his Lightning Shield. Which was expected. That was why Oozy had wanted the Shield so badly. Thankfully, the Red Sparks couldn’t act so brazenly openly, or else Oozy wouldn’t have needed to rollback the area and retry that conversation with him so many times.

The Lightning Shield would be a point of contention for Sininindi, though, so Erick was dreading that conversation.

A lot of conversations would become difficult, now.

Erick walked and thought, invisible under the light of the sun, in the shadows of crystal. Occasionally he glanced outward with his All-Seeing Eye turned to fullness and he Looked through Ophiel and Yggdrasil. He saw Red Sparks drifting in the air, in the far distance, and in all parts of the world.

Mostly, those Sparks did not touch Yggdrasil, or Ophiel, or Erick.

Those that did swing Erick’s and his children’s ways were matched by similar flickers of soft white lightning, like an encapsulating aura of white, and the sparking Red magic went through Ophiel and Yggdrasil and Erick like they weren’t even there. This, then, was the ‘immunity’ Erick was building up to the Red Sparks. It wasn’t perfect immunity, though.

Occasionally those ‘capsules’ of Benevolence broke open and the Red multiplied hard, but in those cases the response was either a larger jolt of cleansing Benevolence, or the Red came through Erick’s [Familiar]s to Erick himself, where the Red Sparks soaked into the Lightning Shield, and were destroyed.

So that was good news.

More good news followed. Erick had already checked on the Benevolent Sky, and the Storm was now 5 months away. It was quite disturbing to see that the Red Sparks were inside that event 5 months from now, though. As for other good news, the Red Sparks were not in every prophesied problem. Only several of the largest problems, almost all of them occurring beyond the Opening Of Worlds, when Yggdrasil started colonizing the planets of Veird’s system.

Thanks to current revelations, Erick saw why there would be problems beyond Veird now.

The Red Sparks would be able to infect new worlds at their very beginning.

Sure, there was no proper manasphere beyond the Edge of the Script, and thus all the mana out there was barely able to do any real magic —which was probably another reason why the Red Sparks were so weak— but as proven by Erick and other planars, you could still use mana outside of a proper manasphere. You could still cause problems in other worlds. And you could certainly plant Red Seeds onto the otherwise barren worlds of this system, which would sprout the very moment a proper manasphere took hold.

And so…

Erick needed to combat that eventuality, and he needed to use softer power to do it, otherwise the Red Sparks would work against him through impossible angles.

At least he could see the enemy now…

And Erick was already formulating a plan. It was not a good one and he could adjust on the fly, but it might work. As he stepped down into the empty clearing outside of the slime dungeon grove, Erick felt that maybe… Maybe this plan would work?

He needed to both decrease the influence of the ‘Red Leviathan’ on the Killing Sun —which he had pointedly not looked at, at all— and he needed to avoid the Red Seeds on the other worlds, and he needed all of the gods of Veird on board.

The first problem was… extensive and difficult.

For the second problem, Erick already had a possible solution. Or at least the beginnings of one.

The third problem would be… difficult. The main problem with involving the gods right now would be getting himself labeled as ‘yet another crazy Wizard, influenced unduly by Melemizargo’… but since he could see the Red Sparks and the gods could not, then…

Difficult.

But! Erick smiled a little. He never wanted to be a tyrant anyway, and a plan of soft power was inherently better than a plan of strong power when confronting big, systemic problems. Or at least it was until you got in range of murdering the actual problem. Then quick action worked the best.

Erick sent off a quick information packet to Poi which included exactly what Erick felt it could include, and not a bit more—

‘I’ll dissect that in a moment, Erick,’ Poi sent, ‘But for now there are about 17 different emergencies of varying levels happening right now, and you vanishing for an hour did not help.’

‘Okay. List out the major ones.’

‘The Sea Foam Throne is demanding the Shield.

‘There are five concurrent Shade problems happening across the world, and Fallopolis is trying to work with Burhendurur and Mox to solve those problems, but it’s not going well.

‘And there’s a Benevolence ring missing from storage.’ Poi stressed, ‘No one understands how that could have possibly happened. At least the Prophesied Storm is now 5 months away, but Teressa and Aisha are saying that it looks worse than it did before. Bigger.’

Erick heard, understood, and then sent, ‘The ring is unimportant. I know where it is. None of you will be able to find it so give up on that task for the next 6 months. Tell Fallopolis to come here to the slime dungeon. And tell the Sea Foam Throne to suck my dragon cock and choke on it. Tell them that exactly.’

Fucking fuck them. ‘Sea Foam Throne’. Like the Sea Foam Manor which Oozy lived in? He turned that memory of his home into his throne, then. Or at least he took the name and now everyone believed the throne of the Regency was the ‘Sea Foam Throne’ now. Fuck him.

Fuck Sininindi, too.

‘… Uh. Did something happen? You aren’t normally… Hmm.’

‘What I can tell you is in the packet, Poi. Open it now. Nothing bad should happen, for it is highly curated, but you’re going to eventually need to cede your Overseer of Mind Mages to someone else for the duration of this coming everything.’ Erick mentally shrugged, then added, ‘Or you just won’t be able to be near me at all.’

‘… One moment.’

Erick waited.

Poi came back with, ‘That told me less than nothing. I have more questions than you have given me answers. As far as ceding my Overseer position, that is not necessary. I will be able to mentally shield myself from listening to you, which will be a better proposition.’ With an uncomfortable tone, Poi said, ‘That’s going to be really weird, though—’ Poi’s voice cut. He came back. ‘The Sea Foam Throne wishes for you to contact Sininindi.’

‘I can do that.’

‘They also wish to formally tell you that they did not like your uncouth suggestion.’ Poi sent, ‘I’ve taken the liberty to clean up their language, obviously.’

Erick chuckled.

– – – –

Erick stood at the edge of a spit of land that wrapped around a storm-tossed cove.

At least Everbless was the same as he had been before Oozy came to town. Yggdrasil’s brother inhabited his massive cove as normal, looking like a grey banyan with a cloud for a canopy and heavy vines trailing down from that cloud, covering kilometers of space. He would eventually fill the cove and become even bigger than that, but his thunderhead canopy was already rising high, high into the sky, like a proper thunderhead. He even flashed with white lightning here and there…

He was not the same as he had been.

He flickered with Red Lightning and there were Red Fruits in that cloud canopy.

Those were the Red Seeds that Melemizargo had theorized must exist as a part of the Red Sparks’ journey to take over the solar system. Or maybe they were backups? Maybe the Red Leviathan hadn’t taken over any of the other planets out there in space, and the Leviathan was working overtime to get that done before Yggdrasil was ready.

This fact called into question Erick’s whole idea of needing to put a seal on Yggdrasil in the first place.

Had that seal been his idea? Or the Red Sparks’ idea?

The other gods had agreed to it, but Erick had been the one to demand it, and because he wanted to control Yggdrasil’s growth, to make sure he was a proper good person. Which, looking back on it, was incredibly selfish of him. You didn’t raise children in chains and expect them to turn out right, right?

… But Yggdrasil turned out okay, anyway…

But did he?

Erick needed to spend a lot more time with Yggdrasil. He was always off on his own, doing his own thing, and yes, Erick was always there for him and he made sure Yggdrasil was completely aware of all the various strings attached to him, as well as to Erick himself, and all of that. There was no such thing as ‘True Freedom’. Elemental Freedom had been Banned, and for good reason. True Freedom was anarchy and death and the rise of tyrants and people who mirrored the Shades in all but name.

Hierarchy always developed in some way. Even the basic family unit held hierarchy; from parent to child when the child is small, and then as equals, and then for children to help their parents in their old age. A peaceful world was one where the people at the top did what was best for everyone below them, and the people below those at the top kept the people at top in power; it was the mandate of the masses.

Yggdrasil understood that… Erick was pretty sure.

And now Yggdrasil was transforming from child to adult, and he wanted his restrictions lifted… Which was fine! Erick was on board with that. And so, Erick had ‘woken up’ from his [Onward] and began working to make that happen for Yggdrasil.

That release of Yggdrasil’s seal was still in the works, though.

Even after that seal was to be released, Rozeta would re-craft the seal to prevent Yggdrasil from being able to make world seeds, and Erick and Yggdrasil had agreed to that. But, if Erick kept to that timeline of 89 more years of Yggdrasil being unable to make seeds, then the Red Seeds from Everbless would make it out into the solar system and plant themselves on the other worlds out there, giving the Red Leviathan at least… Maybe 50 years? Of unimpeded growth before Veird began to spread? Erick wasn’t sure about that.

He was sure that would need to either clip these Red Lightning Fruits or fully un-seal Yggdrasil.

Both solutions carried problems of their own.

Erick was in a prognostication war, too, which meant there would be no actions taken right now, or even in the near, determinate future. Vague plans later that could change on a whim were preferred.

As Erick stood on the spit of land jutting out from around Everbless’s cove, the sea surged upon the rocks, sending sprays of saltwater into the air, and the sky flickered with gold and red lightning, with a few white sparks coming from Everbless himself. Everbless’s tentacled [Scry] eye was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Sininindi, or anyone else.

So Erick got the ball rolling as he spoke to the sky, “Hello, Sininindi. I hear you wish to talk.”

A wave crashed against the rocks, sending a plume of water higher than all the other times. Lightning fell in the distance. In the falling of saltwater and the rush of storm winds, Sininindi stepped onto the rocks in front of Erick. Her sailcloth-wrapped human body was five meters away from Erick, but she was a lot more than that; she was everywhere, in every drop of seawater and in every gust of wind.

She did not look angry.

This was a surprise. Surprises were not good right now.

Sininindi said, “I want to fix this rift before it widens.”

“… I would also like this.” Erick couldn’t say what he actually wanted to say, because he was in a prognostication war, and those things were touchy at the best of times, so he added, “But I believe something rotten is happening here in Storm’s Edge, so I will not be giving you back the Shield right now. Your ‘king’ Stormcaller is playing some sort of game with me and he killed Vanya and Soltic in order to do that. He also took over the dungeon that Quilatalap made for you, without any sort of talk with House Benevolence, or me; his solution was to go straight to killing.” Erick gestured toward Everbless, adding, “And I haven’t seen Everbless’s avatar at all since I came here earlier today. What is wrong with our son, Sininindi?”

Sininindi’s face was softer than usual as she looked at Erick, and asked, “How deep in the Dark have you gone, Erick? So far that you went through the other side and came out someone else?”

“… What?”

As Sininindi’s face fell a fraction, Erick suddenly realized he was already in the Red Sparks’ trap. He had taken Oozy’s statement earlier of him going insane as the ramblings of a tyrant madman, but to hear Sininindi say it, too…

The Red Sparks were going to discredit Erick by making him look insane through the reality altering of this world.

It had probably done the same during that Atomic War, and during… Everything major in this entire world. Every major event that could have led toward something better happening, was instead twisted into something worse.

But how? How could the Red Leviathan do that? It wasn’t doing Mind Magic, because if it could then it would be reading thoughts and acting that way. The most Mind Magic it could do was to daze people at important moments—

Oh.

Erick realized why Particle Magic allowed Melemizargo to wake from his insanity.

He realized something he had already known, but the depth of that knowledge had been hidden from him until now.

The God Pact allowed the gods to stabilize the collective reality of this world.

But Particle Magic and a Particle understanding of this New Cosmology was where quantum effects and gravity fields and the Many Worlds of this new reality took place. Those were the ‘mana’ of this New Cosmology, while the mana of the Old Cosmology was based on different elemental realities overlapping the main Dark.

Two different sets of fields, the Old made of mana, this New made of particles, which were both discrete things and simple wavelengths of reality.

Melemizargo had spoken of Other Realities as real only when observed, so here, now, was the natural result of the Red Leviathan observing those other realities and drawing targets into them.

Because the Red Leviathan was playing a much, much larger game against Erick than a simple prognostication war. This wasn’t a ‘war’ for the Red Leviathan. Veird was the Red Leviathan’s fishery, and you don’t go to war with the fish you raised. You simply eat what you want, and if anything gives you trouble, you remove it as easy as plucking a fish from a lake.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Sininindi said, “Oozy Stormcaller has been your friend for a decade. Storm’s Edge and my clergy have been allies of yours for as long as you have been here on Veird. And then you send Quilatalap here, at my request, and do everything you can to hide his murders and experiments, and you still want me to forgive him. But he hasn’t changed at all, Erick. You wanted him to change, and he appeared to change for a while, but he did not. He came here and he made copies of people in the dungeons and sent the copies out to get more people to come in, all the while he soul spliced and abomination’d every person who had the misfortune to fall within his sight. And now he releases ancient Shades into the world. The Archlich is dragging you down into the Dark, and if you cannot see that then I fear that Melemizargo’s insanity is finally affecting you…” Her voice trailed away. And now her anger came back, her eyes flickering with Red. “I could have forgiven you your foibles, but I cannot believe you would ask why Everbless is not talking to you. You attacked him. You might had been defending yourself from his own attacks, but he is a child, Erick. You don’t burn children to teach them lessons. The scars still haven’t healed, even 6 months on.”

Erick’s heart sank.

And then he glanced to Everbless, and saw where his bark was darker in places. Maybe those were burn marks? Erick wasn’t sure.

Sininindi said, “Tiza is taking it the hardest of us all. She used to be a great friend to you, Erick. Now, all she has is fury for what you have done and the path you are walking.”

It was a good thing this was so unnerving, because otherwise Erick would have laughed at that.

He almost laughed at it anyway.

This was all so ridiculous.

He had obviously been moved into a side dimension, or something. Or maybe the whole world had been moved around him? Erick wasn’t sure which was more crazy, or how to solve either of them. The first had at least one solution, though; become a True Wizard. True Wizards weren’t affected by the magics of others unless they allowed those effects to happen.

So.

Erick needed to get on that.

His previous plan to eventually fight the Red Leviathan was still workable… If he could get himself out of this situation. He could probably do that, right? Just a matter of shoving himself back to his home dimension; his home wavelength… Would that work? Sure; seemed plausible. Seemed like 90% of the solution, anyway. The mana could fill the final 10%.

As for avoiding this situation in the future…

All you had to do was move far enough and fast enough away from the focus of the Red Sparks and they couldn’t see you, or touch you that easily. Staying in one spot was what the Red Sparks wanted all its victims to do. So all Erick had to do was move far enough and fast enough and secretly enough, and he could… do something.

But first.

Erick played along with the narrative the Red Sparks was feeding him, “Perhaps I am going slightly insane. How would you like me to make it up to you? Ask for a Wizardry and I will do it, Sininindi.”

Sininindi said, “I would prefer to simply have the Erick whom I once called friend.”

“That’s going to take some time, for I have handfuls of Shades to cull and Empathy back into the fold and a thousand other things to do, as well as figure out what Quilatalap is up to.” Erick asked, “Ask for a Wizardry, Sininindi. Tell me how I can help you.”

Sininindi stared, her Red Lightning eyes—

And then she blinked.

Red Sparks spilled from Sininindi and washed away, cloying to everything, except Erick. The Shield ate those Sparks.