252, 1/2

 

A week passed with little fanfare, a few emergencies that were easily handled with liberal usage of [Gate] and Super Long Range or Super Large Area spells, and a whole lot of talking with a great many different people. Mostly, people wanted to congratulate Erick on the successful instantiation of Ophiel. Ophiel eagerly wanted to participate in a ‘debut party’, which was the tradition of nobility across the world when their children came of age and Matriculated into the Script. But Erick shut that down politely, because Ophiel was only mentally around 14, even if he already had Script access.

They could have a party maybe next year.

Jane, Abigail, Beth, Candice, Evan, and Solomon, all visited for a short while, but aside from spending a day with the family, all of them swimming and talking with Ophiel and hanging around, they were all incredibly busy with bringing things out of the Dark and setting up for the Lifeblood Heart.

When the topic of the anti-meme came up, Ophiel briefly displayed a moment of future clarity again and pointedly called out, “No business! Only play!”

Solomon eyed Erick, saying, “So we’re not talking about it.”

“Solomon!” Ophiel said, splashing in the waters. “No business!”

Solomon looked at Quilatalap with the Lightning Shield for the tenth time so far, and moved on, saying, “Lots to not talk about right now, then.”

“Exactly,” Erick said, and then he waved his hand through the water and caused a minor tsunami, sending Solomon swimming. Ophiel giggled and all the girls and Evan resumed their games of tag with the new kid in the family.

Between a sudden deluge of gifts given by everyone across the entire world, and Erick needing to put down several problems happening across the world because they thought he couldn’t work his magic as well without Ophiel, another week passed inside Benevolence.

Quilatalap had to leave Benevolence in the third week after Ophiel’s birth because Benevolence was starting to itch against his skin as it always did to those who stayed too long. Thankfully, Quilatalap was immune to the Red Sparks by that time, which is probably why it took him over 26 days to get kicked out instead of the normal 5; Benevolence had been shoring up his soul. And now that he was fully inoculated against the Red, Quilatalap needed to destroy and remake every single phylactery he had ever made. First, though, he created a phylactery for Erick to squirrel away on Yggdrasil inside Benevolence.

And then he left to travel around the world, remaking his soul depositories.

The Red Sparks did not interfere with Erick all that time, and Erick did not have another incident regarding them ever since he stepped foot inside Benevolence. They didn’t interfere with Quilatalap, either, and Erick checked in on the man daily to be sure.

This was the first time Erick had ever spent any great length of time inside Benevolence, which was not that surprising to him since there were always problems in the real world to solve and Benevolence was a peaceful land where nothing happened except prognostication. But with Ophiel here, growing up, Benevolence became a land of 1 playful child in 10 bodies, and a father who was struggling to keep up, but in a happy sort of way.

Erick also spent days with Yggdrasil, too, sitting on his roots, talking about this or that. With Erick ‘not really doing anything’ and always being nearby, Yggdrasil eagerly took the time to speak with him about everything happening everywhere, especially inside the House, where Yggdrasil had his office of helping people. ‘What would you do here?’ ‘How would you help this person?’ ‘I met this grandmother who was having this problem with her grandson and this complication with her granddaughter-in-law; how would you help?’

Yggdrasil also sometimes just plucked people out of trouble here and there across the world, opening [Gate]s for some bleeding person, or crying person, or lonely person to fall into, and then stay for a moment or a day in peace and quiet upon a distant gateplate of Benevolence. There, those guests of Benevolence would eat from fruit trees growing on the sandy banks of floating rivers, and sleep upon soft grasses under a never-dark sky, before they got up and left one way or another, with a less-tattered soul and a healed body. Yggdrasil rarely interacted with those people unless they called out, or if they needed real help.

Erick wasn’t quite sure how Yggdrasil was doing that.

“Mainly the knowing to help someone, somewhere,” Erick said. “I’m not clear on that.”

Yggdrasil simply answered, “I feel a pain, and then I help heal that pain. It’s more like scratching an itch than anything else. Working in the House makes more sense than opening [Gate]s for random people to fall into. The House does directed help. That’s easy to understand.”

“Huh. Well, that’s kinda really nice, Yggdrasil. How often does that happen?”

“A few times a month? Sometimes I rescue animals, too. There was a cow that stayed on the Nelboor gateplate for a month. She was a great big orange shaggy thing. She eventually took a dip in the river and kept right on swimming down, through the bottom. I followed her with an Eye and she ended up walking out of a puddle on a farm, into the arms of some old man; she was his prized cow who had almost died to his son trying to butcher her for meat, to hurt his father.”

Erick went, “… Huh.”

Ophiel’s assistance with interlopers was much more direct. He also somehow knew where people needed help, so he snapped [Gate]s across people who didn’t expect help at all, grabbing people in the middle of combat who were fighting for their lives. This ended poorly for Ophiel half the time.

The fourth time some adventurers accidentally-on-purpose killed Ophiel was when Erick got truly angry.

“OPHIEL!” Erick yelled, sitting in the living room, catching up on some paperwork for the House, while also watching Ophiel spawn from the Ophiel in the house, who had been playing with blocks on the living room floor. Both Ophiel winced. Erick stared at his son and controlled his voice, “Do NOT rescue people without being prepared to rescue those people! It might take you an hour to manually cast an [Animadversion] but that shield lasts forever.”

Yggdrasil was sitting in his orcol form to the side of the room, reading quietly, but now he was watching Ophiel get yelled at. He seemed to share Erick’s disappointment in Ophiel.

“But Daaaaaad!”

“No buts! Stop getting yourself killed! That’s an order!” Erick forced himself to calm— And then a lightbulb went off. “You know what. All the girls and Evan and Solomon have been asking to know things that I won’t tell them, and Solomon wants to visit you, so they’re going to come in here and you’re going to start training with them.”

Ophiel made a face. “… Do I have to?”

“YES.”

Ophiel sighed big time, saying, “FINE.” And then he bargained, “How about after you release Yggdrasil? He knows stuff I don’t know and I think we need that before other people get involved.”

Yggdrasil raised his eyebrows. He knew about Ophiel’s time displacement, and he was interested in being himself, so it was hard to pin down which part of Ophiel’s words were more interesting to him.

“… I suppose I do need to press the issue with Rozeta. It’s been much more than a week.”

“And your soul is healed,” Yggdrasil said, with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Erick couldn’t blame Yggdrasil too much for that enthusiasm, but he could blame him a little. “Ophiel is still vulnerable, Yggdrasil—”

“He’s going to be vulnerable for 25 years!” Yggdrasil exclaimed.

“Butthead!”

“Fluffbrain!”

“Stop it, both of you.” Erick said to Ophiel, “That’s a smart bargain you tried to do by distracting me with Yggdrasil’s issues and then gating your participation behind his seal release. You’re not using the Lightning Path on me, are you?”

One Ophiel managed to look completely oblivious.

The other Ophiel looked down and away, as though he had been caught.

Erick frowned a little. “Don’t use magic to solve social problems, Ophiel.”

“But it makes it so much easier for everyone!” Ophiel said, “You got what you wanted and I got what I wanted!”

Yggdrasil said, “And I would like to be unsealed, too.”

Erick decided not to argue the point at all. He had given the lesson. Time and personal failure were always better teachers than the words of parents; all Erick could hope to do was to ensure that enough lessons got through to stave off the worst of the bad ends.

“… I still don’t like you using Benevolence against me, or against anyone you care about. It’s like someone using Mind Magic to solve social issues.” Erick added to Yggdrasil, “And I’ll work on that soon.”

Yggdrasil wasn’t entirely convinced.

Ophiel had a different reaction. The two of him paused. Then both of them looked at Erick. “… Did you use the Benevolent Path against me?”

Erick’s face scrunched in complete disbelief. “What? No.”

Yggdrasil smirked a little. “I think you might have, Dad.”

“I did not!”

Ophiel said, “Empathy is magic, too.”

“So is Intelligence,” Yggdrasil said.

“Words are very magic,” Ophiel said, sagely.

Yggdrasil said, “And he’s a Wizard, so you never really know with those types—”

“Okay! Okay. Okay. You made your point.” Erick got up out of his chair, saying, “I need to go talk to Rozeta anyway.” He glared at Ophiel, “I love you. I do not like to see you in pain. I certainly don’t like to see you die.” He lightened. “Please keep yourself safer, Ophiel.” Erick looked to Yggdrasil, “And you, too, Yggdrasil. I want you to be safe, too.”

Yggdrasil complained, “What did I do!”

Erick Looked at him. “Have you done nothing worthy of my worry?”

Ophiel’s black iridescent eyes went wide and all of him looked like he wanted to burst with information—

Yggdrasil glared at Ophiel—

Erick nodded, saying, “I don’t need to know everything about what you all do. I just want you to be safe.” And then he went to Ophiel and hugged the left and then the right one quickly, but both of them demanded extra kisses and they got them on the forehead. Erick moved on to Yggdrasil and hugged him, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead, too, even though he didn’t ask for one. Yggdrasil was smiling nicely and his hug was full of warmth, though, so that told Erick more than enough. “I’ll be back later and hopefully with good news.”

Yggdrasil smiled—

Ophiel said, “I want to come, Daddy!” And then one of him turned into a blackbird. He squeaked, “Twwweeee!” He paused. “Twee?”

The other Ophiel looked down at the bird. “My words aren’t wording in bird body.”

Erick patted the bigger Ophiel. “You’re not coming anyway.” Ophiel began to complain, but Erick turned to Yggdrasil and said, “Look after him!”

“But daaad!” said everyone.

“No buts!” Erick added, “And get your girlfriend ready for a visit, Yggdrasil— And don’t you dare say anything, Ophiel.”

Ophiel briefly pouted.

And Yggdrasil went still. “… Okay.”

– – – –

Erick stepped out of Benevolence onto the wide open prairies of what used to be the endless sands of the Crystal Forest, but which was now a simple grassland between several burgeoning towns and villages. He was well over a thousand kilometers northeast of the Greater Candlepoint area. There were at least thirty kilometers between the villages out here, in the middle of nowhere. The only visible thing was a road made of very durable rock, sands, gravel, and stone, and a line of light in the sky, about a kilometer up, following that road left and right. That line was a connection to the Node Network of Candlepoint, and it serviced all the little places out here.

For all that Erick had done for the world, there were only a few new ‘must have’ spells of the Script. Even so, only one or maybe two people out of every family purchased [Renew] for a point, and then spent another point on [Node Network], which allowed them to tap into the lines of light that kept defensive spellwork functional all the time. Even so, the Lighter’s Guild had a lot better spellwork than just [Node Network] to maintain the node networks scattered across the Crystal Forest; they had diagnostic and troubleshooting magics to ensure that there were minimal leaks, and that people who used the node network were at least contributing some mana back into the system. They were always hunting down people who misused the network, too; that was where they spent the bulk of their time.

Of course, some people didn’t use the system at all, and simply put up [Node Network]s around their homes that their families contributed to, which supported all the [Ward]s and lights around some of the more remote structures out there. Even in this world without [Teleport], some people still liked to be hermits, and those places were not maintained by the Lighter’s Guild.

Erick marveled for a moment at how different life was for him now that Ophiel’s senses were not there for him to use.

And then he got onto the somewhat-dirt road, and started walking in a direction… North, he decided. The warm winds of the land brushed against his face and curled inside his loose tunic and brown pants, and he wondered, for a moment, if he was underdressed. He was barefoot because the roads that House Benevolence had paved across this part of the world were suitable for going barefoot along their hard-pack sand edges, and Constitution and Strength kept any small bits of gravel from feeling like much at all. Not to mention his [Unbreakable Form], which was like he was wearing armor all the time.

Nothing was wrong with Erick…

But walking in the real world was surreal.

Erick had been ‘gone’ from this side of reality for almost a whole month, and after today he would probably go back to Benevolence to be with Ophiel a while longer and to give Yggdrasil some good news, which meant further sequestering himself from the world for a little while. Honestly, he was probably traumatized by the Red Leviathan; by Nothanganathor and his Primal Lightning.

But at least with Gatemaster, and the Class Ability to move [Gate]s around at will, and make them outside of the Script Second, Erick was able to keep tabs on the entire world easily enough. Mostly. With Ophiel, he could have put his eyes out there, to see what was going on. But with [Gate]s, all he had was his mana sense, unless he directly looked through the [Gate]s.

So that’s what he had to do. He looked at the world, with his actual eyes.

Like some sort of savage.

Erick kinda chuckled at that.

He floated tiny holes in front of his eyes, this way and that, to spy upon the world, to see that Eralis of the Songli Highlands was doing fine, and its Void Wall shaped like Rozeta and its Node Network were keeping the millions of people there safe as could be. The Wasteland Kingdoms were doing well, along the river that ran through the middle of their lands, where incani farmed the marshes and the lakes and the land didn’t look much like a ‘wasteland’ at all. Greensoil and its humans were doing fine, though there was still a lot of racial prejudice there, and Erick saw some dragonkin getting chewed out for loitering by some human guards on the street… Erick almost got involved there, but that would be overstepping. Treehome and the orcols and all the arbors were doing well, surrounded by the Forest of Glaquin on one side and the Wyrmridge Mountains on the other.

Yggdrasil was easy to see far, far in the distance, far beyond Treehome, from Erick’s kilometers-high mini-[Gate]. He was like a mountain of green fire, surrounded by a rainbow, far, far into the Forest, well past the Arbors and their similarly eclectic bodies of flame, or steel, or rot, or red…

Hmm.

Red.

Well. No Red Sparks. Just the normal red bark on Redarrow… Who was the prognostication specialist of the Arbors of Treehome. This realization caused Erick to do a thorough investigation of the tree, which probably caught his attention, but Erick was circumspect about it as much as he could be and no Red Sparks gathered in the air. Redarrow was clean.

Erick wondered if he was now traumatized by the simple color red.

Probably.

Not many Red Sparks in most of the world. Just the normal amount, really, which was almost none.

Phagar walked beside Erick, looking like his twin in every respect, except he was smiling. “Finally decided to come out of Benevolence?”

“I did.” Erick asked, “Any idea if unsealing Yggdrasil is going to happen?”

“It could happen. I need to know why, though. Also why you won’t let any mortals touch your mind, why Quilatalap has the Shield, and why he’s acting cagey with mental barriers up tall, and why you weren’t willing to spill the secrets to your family, either.”

“Ahh… So did Rozeta hit a roadblock in discussions? Or she simply decided ‘no’?”

Phagar said, “You’re avoiding the question.”

“I am; yes.”

Erick was also watching the world for Red Sparks. None seemed to be approaching, which was great, but also suspicious. Erick opened a good thirty tiny [Gate]s, most of them into nowhere in particular; the air high in the sky in several places across the Surface, inside some major tunnels of the Underworld, a few places closer to the Core, but not in the Core at all. Erick kept his Domain heavily pressed against them all to ensure nothing came through, not even the Domains of monsters down there in the depths. He felt a minor pushback in those deep places, but nothing approaching the level of a Domain; just some auras.

Phagar noticed all of that. His initial smile turned into an even expression. “You’re avoiding something big, Erick.”

“Did you know? I had a daughter named Debby. She died not too long ago.”

“… I am aware that you believe you had a daughter named Debby, but there was never any soul there, Erick.”

Phagar was trying to gently tell Erick that he needed help, and that he might be influenced by something that did not exist. Perhaps Melemizargo was fucking with him. Perhaps he had stared too long at the mana, and the mana was influencing him with possibilities that did not exist. Phagar didn’t want to say that, though, because to say it was either to be incredibly rude or to be met with disbelief. Anything more than what he had already said would have been pushing the issue too far.

Erick tried a different tack, saying, “All this New Cosmology has people from other lands constantly visiting Veird. We call them planars. Outworlders. Outsiders. A few different names for them; all meanings are the same. People from outside Veird, like me.” Erick looked up and out. “Most people assume they come here as a vagary of magic. Accidents. Perhaps some do come here as accidents. But the fact remains that they exist out there, and something is stopping us from being a part of that larger community.” Erick looked to Phagar, saying, “Melemizargo is not a problem. I would bet my life on that fact on most days, especially considering how close we’ve come to the Sundering Search, to figuring out that most evil of Evils, and also considering all the good things we’ve pulled out of the Dark, to stabilize Veird.”

Phagar looked at Erick a moment longer, then he turned his face forward and simply walked alongside Erick. Northern winds blew the smell of greenery across the land. It smelled a little bit like flowers. A little bit like moisture and rot. New life, and the like.

Erick and the God of the End and Time walked in thoughtful silence for a little while.

Phagar asked, “Would Yggdrasil allow people to come to all his hidden locations, to check to make sure he isn’t making seeds?”

“I’ll ask him. He might say yes. What happens if he does?”

“Then we go back to the Relevant Entities with that development and see how the vote shakes out.”

“How is the vote looking right now?”

“Not great.”

“How would a voluntarily monitored Yggdrasil make the vote shake out?”

“Better than ‘not great’.”

Erick walked along, thinking.

Did he tell Phagar about the Red Leviathan? Did he throw out those Big Names that would draw attention? Could he go back to Benevolence and invite Phagar in there? Or would that be inviting the Red Sparks into his sanctuary, and dooming himself and everyone else?

Erick had not been taking it truly easy these last weeks. He had been looking at the world from ten thousand angles, viewing the Red working its magic everywhere. He had had long talks with Melemizargo, and Quilatalap. Ophiel could talk about this stuff but was too young to discuss the topic at length. Yggdrasil had not been a part of those talks. Erick suspected that Yggdrasil didn’t know about any of those Red Talks with anyone inside Benevolence, which was only possible through any number of explanations, but there was no reason to go exploring that problem right now, so Erick hadn’t talked about any of this with Yggdrasil at all. When Yggdrasil separated, he could send the big guy a huge [Telepathy] packet to detail everything…

… Erick wondered if he could ‘info bomb’ other people with a deep explanation of the Red Sparks and rapidly bring individuals up to speed on this whole problem, without the Red Sparks being able to act fast enough… It probably wouldn’t work that way. Erick could already see the Red problem forming in the air around him as he considered info bombing Phagar through one of Phagar’s head priests. Maybe Xerixio down at the Grand Unified Cathedral of Candlepoint? Phagar’s Head Priest was a rather great old man.

Red Sparks crawled through the air, touching Erick and Phagar and passing right through both of them. Nothanganathor’s Sight was not upon them, but his Element was doing its automatic thing right now, trying to latch on to the worst possible futures and make them happen, or maybe to prevent others from knowing about him. The Red couldn’t actually touch Erick or Phagar, though, which was informative.

It could probably touch them if Erick poked at them, though.

Red Sparks tended to cling and activate when someone poked at them.

Erick had avoided every single Big Conversation with everyone else because every time he spoke to others anywhere near the real world, he imagined divulging information, and then Red Sparks would begin to gather, like the charge before a storm.

Erick changed tacks again. “You never tell anyone what you see, but you see everything, yes? The whole multiversal possibility arrayed against us, and for us. All the different ways Veird can either succeed or fail long-term.”

“I do not see everything—”

Erick almost gasped when Phagar said that. As it was, he stopped in his tracks, right in the middle of a crossroads.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Phagar eyed him, then stopped with him, eyeing him as he continued, “… Though I do see a great majority. Hmm. Erick?”

Erick’s mind was whirring.

Phagar said, “Seems you have realized something big.”

Phagar was the arbiter of the God Pact; the thing which Erick suspected was the main reason how Veird had managed to keep and stay ahead of Nothanganathor all this time. And if Phagar couldn’t see the Red Sparks, it was because… He existed outside of alignment with the Red Sparks, maybe? Erick had just made that up; ‘alignment’. But it seemed correct. Phagar and —now that Erick was thinking of it— maybe all the other gods who were part of the God Pact, literally could not interact with the Red Sparks because they were on a different wavelength than the Red Sparks. If they did interact with the Red Sparks, then they ended up falling off the God Pact, leaving the other gods behind… Maybe.

But the God Pact remained, and the pieces of the gods who chose to ignore the Red remained.

Melemizargo was a god, though, and he was heavily affected by the Red Sparks, but he had a physical body, so…

Erick had lost his train of thought because there were too many holes in that burgeoning theory.

Was the God Pact stable because Phagar was more powerful than Nothanganathor? Or was Veird outrunning Nothanganathor through multiversal shenanigans? Or was something else going on there?

No way to know until it was too late, and it was infuriating to not know exactly how this shit worked. ‘A Wizard Is Doing This’ was probably the best explanation. Wizards inflicting pain, Gods saying ‘nuh uh!’, and thus the conflict between realities…

Which was probably exactly right.

There was one test he could do to understand what was happening here. He just didn’t want to, because the ‘good’ result was all of Veird being put into the sights of Nothanganathor, which was still really bad, and the bad result was Erick having to escape the Red Realm again. Erick wasn’t so sure he could continually escape the Red Realm. Surely, if the Red Sparks were alive and controlled by someone —and they were, based on that Red Eye Erick had seen last month— then that person would directly confront Erick eventually, and with his full power.