257, 2/2

“Congrats on the sun. How much did you learn about Nothanganathor?”

They hadn’t been in the booth for more than a second. As soon as the privacy magics went up Shadow got right to business. She was moving fast.

Erick was right there with her. “I learned he’s on the list of approved evils of Margleknot, and that he was sent to the Painted Cosmology in order to find out what happened to Margleknot’s Painted Cosmology extension of himself, and then the Sundering happened, and now he’s Arbiter of Veird. That timeline is measured in thousands of years, I am sure.

“I’m around 90% sure that the people here do not know that Nothanganathor caused the Sundering, and I have no idea if they know that Nothanganathor is corralling Veird in order to take Melemizargo’s Mantle of the God of Magic for some reason. I’m not sure how you people don’t know that, but that’s the impression I get.” Erick added, “There’s a lot more, but it’s rather nuanced. I got a Margleknot-created report on my own life, which should highlight a lot of what went down on Veird, which I am rather sure that a lot of people got, too, but it’s missing all of the specifics of Nothanganathor. I’m rather certain that that is because Margleknot still has a dedicated agreement with Nothanganathor for the knowledge he was supposed to find, which he never did, so he cannot work against Nothanganthor directly.”

Shadow listened, the gloom around her deepening as Erick spoke, and then turning absolutely Dark when he mentioned the Sundering. When Erick finished, she was composed again, as she said, “The shape of Nothanganathor’s general story is fully known in these lands, though no one believes he caused the Sundering. That I was never able to fully prove to the Enclave. I doubt you will be able to prove it either. I doubt they will even accept your testimony since you are not originally from Veird.”

Erick asked, “What’s up with that, anyway?”

Shadow controlled her anger, and said, “Until a True Wizard naturally arises from a quarantined land, then those lands remain quarantined. Veird is quarantined because it is the survivor of a True Sundering, and Nothanganathor is the Arbiter because…” She frowned. She said, “Because he’s my great, great, hundred-great grandson, and I never cared for Margleknot or this universe or the Fae Enclave here, and so I failed to care enough about the bureaucracy of this land. When the Sundering happened, Nothanganathor was already there, gathering all the parts of the Painted Cosmology that fell into this universe in order to contain whatever problem it was that caused the Sundering. ‘Containing universal destructions’ are an extension of the original duties he took for himself, to discover the cause of the loss of the ‘Margleknot’s world tree’ —Pah! He shouldn’t have had that duty. We had had many surviving True Wizards. They should have been allowed to take over Veird, but Nothanganathor killed them all… though I was never able to prove that, either.”

Erick sat back in his chair. Fury swirled in his heart, mind, and soul, but it was a distant sort of fury.

He had a think.

He figured out his first question rather fast.

Erick looked at Shadow, saying, “You know what caused the loss of Margleknot’s link to the Painted Cosmology, don’t you.”

“No. Actually. I do not.” Shadow sniped, “Because there never was a Margleknot connection to my Painted Universe! It was a separate freaking universe, Erick. It had no connection at all to this one!”

Yggdrasil slipped into the booth with them, already looking furious, saying, “Untrue! Planars existed as they always have, and I had a part of me in there—”

Shadow sniped at him, “No natural connection! People crossed over all the time, and you slipped a person into my universe, you fucker. That’s common as shit, though! Happens to every universe out there! And you have a part of you everywhere, you damned Old Roots! You didn’t have a powerful version of yourself in my universe at all! I didn’t let you!”

“And maybe! If you would have! The Sundering never would have happened!” Margleknot said, “I stabilize universes!”

“You control universes! You’re an extension of the Old Fae bastards who we got away from!”

“I help your kind, fairy, and all others—” Margleknot suddenly restrained his anger. He sighed, as though this was an old argument that he never wanted to have. “I have always helped everyone I could.”

Shadow wiped away an unruly tear, marring her face with black as she controlled her voice, asking, “Is Erick’s testimony that Nothanganathor caused the Sundering enough to remove him from Arbiter?”

“… No. He’s not from Veird; he only grew there. Erick has no proof. No one has any proof. All the information we have is circumstantial evidence of Nothanganathor rolling back time when people got close to the Sundering Source, and he’s going to claim that he was simply preventing the apocalypse of your Painted Cosmology from spreading.” Yggdrasil explained to Erick, “He is Malevolence, and Malevolence is pointed toward bad ends, so all he has to do is avoid those bad ends in order to keep contained whatever caused the Sundering. He also uses Malevolence to keep himself in power, because the ‘bad ends’ it causes is ‘bad for everyone, in a way that benefits him’.” Yggdrasil looked to Shadow, adding, “The creation of Malevolence is why this one is probably completely at fault for the destruction of her own universe, though that’s never been proven either.”

Shadow’s eyes went from normal, grey-ish eyes, to absolute pools of Darkness as she slammed her fists on the table, shadows spilling out from everywhere around her. Her voice was an abyss as she said, “I did not destroy my universe.”

“Take it down a notch,” Yggdrasil spoke, with even more authority.

The air cleared.

Lyra briefly appeared around the corner of a pillar on the otherwise-empty floor of the tavern. She looked ready to give someone a talking-to; probably Erick, Shadow, and Yggdrasil. And then she saw who was sitting at her table, making the fuss, and she turned right back around.

Erick returned to the conversation, saying, “I’m not going to be taken seriously by the Fae Enclave with regard to their decision to empower Nothanganathor.”

“No,” said Shadow. “You’re a planar. You’re already far down on the list of respected people.”

“… What?” Erick asked, completely unsure what the heck Shadow even meant.

“You didn’t come up from a single location,” Shadow explained. “It makes your achievement less of an achievement.”

“You need to see them and be denied, and then you might have more options,” Yggdrasil said.

“Okay. Sure? How did I end up on Veird, anyway? Planars happen. How? Exactly?”

Shadow waved a hand, saying, “They happen! It’s magiphysics.”

Yggdrasil said, “Maybe focus on the current problem.”

Erick… allowed that digression. “Sure.” He asked, “So what’s the story of Malevolence?”

Yggdrasil looked to Shadow, as though waiting for her to lie.

Shadow narrowed her eyes at Yggdrasil, then said to Erick, “When Melemizargo’s mother, Ikaramaliana, chose to become One With The Dark and pass on the Mantle of Magic to a successor, there was a contest of strength. This is always how it is. Melemizargo prevailed. Nothanganathor did not, and he was an ass the entire tournament, and now we’re here.”

Yggdrasil gave her a ‘really?’ sort of look, then said, “And when Nothanganathor lost that contest for godhood Melemizargo cursed him, stripping him of his mana signature and his ability to ascend. So Nothanganathor grew wider rather than denser, becoming the sun-spanning never-god that envelops Veird’s sun. He is cursed to never ascend in any way, but he has as much strength as any world tree or proper ascended, which is a lot.”

“… Ah. So that’s a lot of theories confirmed.” And reasons for those theories. Erick said, “This whole time, this has been personal. This Sundering had always been a trap for Melemizargo, specifically. But Melemizargo needs some people in order to survive and for his godhood to remain intact, so Nothanganathor controls Veird to allow that, and to make people try and overthrow Melemizargo all the time. If Melemizargo ever let go of his mantle, for any reason, then Veird would instantly die, because Nothanganathor would surely intercept that exchange, and thus he would no longer have a need for the planet.”

Erick was furious all over again.

Shadow nodded. “I’ve never been able to prove it. He always lies so well in court.”

“What makes Melemizargo’s godhood special?”

“Nothing at all,” Shadow said, lying.

Yggdrasil lied too, shrugging as he said, “Not much.”

… Okay fine.

Erick went ahead and laid out the gist of his entire next train of thought, “When did your world tree person vanish, Yggdrasil? And did Nothanganathor eat it, taking that power for his own, in order to grow so large?”

Shadow widened her eyes at Yggdrasil in a very ‘Yeah! Tell us, asshole!’ sort of way.

And then she said, “Yeah! Tell us, asshole!”

Yggdrasil frowned at Shadow, then said, “About 9,000 years pre-sundering, so 10,450-ish Veird-time, is when a piece of myself died in the Painted Cosmology.”

“So about a thousand years after Melemizargo cursed Nothanganathor to obscurity?” Erick asked, to be sure. “Since Melemizargo was God of Magic for 10,000 years before the Sundering.”

“Like 9,900, but yes,” Shadow said.

“Yes,” Yggdrasil said. “That’s the correct-ish timeline.”

Erick looked to them both, saying, “I’m going to try for an injunction against Nothanganathor to take Arbiter of Veird from him, and if that fails, then I’m going to try something else. Yggdrasil. Could you please… I don’t know…” Erick felt his Lightning Path flicker and focus. “Direct the Benevolence to finding people who might make good lawyers among the rescued populace?”

Yggdrasil said, “I can’t do much in that direction, but I can give you some messages if anyone pops up. I don’t do directed control of anything like that; that would be interfering. You should hire some prognosticators to do that for you. There are some at the Celestial Observatory. And with that said: Can you leave Shadow and I to discuss something in private?”

“… Ah?” Erick paused.

Shadow stared at Yggdrasil, then frowned, and said, “I suppose we’re done for the moment, Erick, and Margleknot never speaks to me. I would like to accept his offer, and meet with you at your house later.”

Erick nodded. “Then I suppose I know enough for now.” Erick took one last gulp of his very nice beer, then hugged Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil smiled, hugging him back. “Thank you, Father.”

Erick said, “I don’t really know anything, and the more I learn the more I realize I know nothing, but I do know I want peace and prosperity for Veird and to open them up to the greater universe. I also know I want to help as many other people as I can, but Veird comes first.” He pulled away from his son. “And I know you’re keeping so very many things away from me, guiding me toward them on my own time. I know that one of those hidden truths is massive. The Big One. When the greater danger is done, we’ll talk about this propensity of yours toward machinations and plotting of family, instead of just talking. I’m fine with not knowing the Big Truth for now, but I want to know it eventually.”

Yggdrasil’s face fell slightly. “I’m a lot more experienced than you are right now, Father. I know what I’m doing.”

“And I trust you. I’m also telling you that I am seeing things that concern me. I love you, Yggdrasil… and Margleknot.”

Yggdrasil smiled softly, then said, “It’s so easy for you to love weirdness and people you don’t quite trust or know, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Love is easy for me. I love you, my son.”

“I love you, too, father.”

Erick smiled. And then he gave his beer to Yggdrasil. “I only drank some of it. It’s pretty good! I’d like a portal to the Celestial Observatory, please.”

Yggdrasil happily took the beer and a portal opened to the side. Shadow, meanwhile, stared at the whole little conversation like a fish gasping for air.

Erick left behind a very flustered Shadow who rapidly reoriented on Margleknot, her entire demeanor changing into something more Dark, as Margleknot became something more Fractal. Erick imagined, for some reason, they were both representing Others in that moment. Or at least that’s what his intuition was telling him.

And then the portal—

– – – –

— closed behind him.

Erick did a few things rapidly. He looked around himself, he checked his reson wallet, and then he tried to reconcile what he knew with what he had just heard.

The land around him was clouds and distant crystal mountains and stars up above. Those distant mountains were sort of like Ar’Kendrithyst, actually, the entire crystal mountain made of white and blue spires. Here and there in those crystal cities, were domes. Those domes had crystal columns poking out of them. Those had to be the observatories of this land, this Celestial Observatory. Each individual mountain was connected by wide, solid sky bridges, too.

Erick stood upon one of those middle-of-the-sky bridges, far away from two different crystal-spire mountains.

Other than that, the land was rather understandable as disconnected mountain cities above the clouds, and lots of green valley lands below the sparse clouds, filled with even more cities that seemed much more rustic and normal. Roads. Rivers. Stone walls. People walking around at markets. Etcetera.

This land was a lot bigger than just one place. It was an entire world.

What Erick noticed most of all, was that the mountains and the clouds seemed never ending in the distance, but the general shape was an outward, downward flow, like Erick was on top of a very large sphere. No sun above this sphere, though; just stars in a night-blue sky.

The entire land sort of glowed white and blue. The bottoms of the clouds out there glowed sunshine-white, bathing that green land in sunlight, for sure. It was a land without a sun, and it was truly beautiful.

It felt like a sort of heaven.

Erick took in his local area. He was atop a kilometers-wide sky bridge between two mountains, just above the clouds. The mountain of crystal spires in front of him was massive. The mountain behind him less so. No one was on this bridge at all, so Erick kinda wondered why Yggdrasil had put him down here, but he figured it was for a good reason… And then he thought back to how Yggdrasil was obviously hiding stuff and purposefully guiding Erick in certain ways.

And like, yeah. You do that for your parents. You help them out when they don’t know better. ‘Oh son, I can’t figure out the remote control or how to connect to the internet. Can you help?’ ‘Sure, dad. Let me do it for you.’

… Erick should be less mad about that. Maybe he should even apologize to Yggdrasil.

He should probably apologize.

Erick started walking toward the bigger mountain. It was a good walk, because it gave him more time to think, and more time to let time make some more resons for his wallet. He had only had his wallet for maybe 2 hours so far, and it had helped him a lot already. Were other people able to requisition resons from Margleknot’s bank? Erick assumed so. But Erick’s wallet was usable in all parts of this universe and others, so he was glad he had made it.

He was currently sitting pretty at 3.8 resons per second; self-created.

Resons: 22,973 [+34 = +3.8]

Minus the few thousand he spent with Lyra —which seemed like a really good investment, now that Erick was thinking about it more and more— he was sitting pretty.

Lyra was obviously a ‘Knowledge Mage’ sort of person. A good person to know, and to be friendly with, even if her entry in Yggdrasil’s book labeled her as an elven thief. She obviously sold information to other people, and that was probably a knock against her, but maybe she would find some good contacts for Erick to use to combat Nothanganathor? Seemed a high possibility. He’d have to go back and ask her about that.

Erick hoped whatever that special reson-crystal he gave her would help her how she needed. Erick still wasn’t sure what he did there, exactly. Probably something that would fully help one person out? Maybe imbue them with Benevolent Luck? … That might be exactly it.

Anyway.

Nothanganathor had tried to win the Mantle of the God of Magic back when he and Melemizargo were in the running for the same thing. Melemizargo won, while Nothanganathor lost, and in that losing, Melemizargo cursed him to never be able to ascend… For some reason. So that made sense. Nothanganathor was a total asshole who needed to kill Melemizargo, but not really, because the Mantle of the God of Magic could only be given away, and so Nothanganathor had needed to kill the entire Old Cosmology first…

“Oh shit.”

Erick paused there on the crystal skyroad, his eyes going wide as he realized something big.

In order to kill a god, you first needed to kill all that god’s people. But Nothanganathor did not want to kill Melemizargo. He wanted Melemizargo’s mantle. So first, he Sundered the Painted Cosmology.

That’s what people tried to suggest to Erick, way back when he first fell to Veird; that if he ever wanted to ‘solve the problem of the Shades’ he needed to kill Melemizargo, which meant killing all of his believers, first.

Erick frowned. “I find it very fucking unusual that no one here believes Nothanganathor Sundered the Painted Cosmology… But all I have is circumstantial evidence that he did that. To hear people talk about it, Nothanganathor already has defenses against those circumstantial evidences. He was ‘just in the neighborhood’ and ‘invested with the universe already’, so of course he ‘moved to contain the only remaining part of the Painted Cosmology’, to ‘keep that apocalypse from spreading’.” Erick’s voice was filled with hateful sarcasm, both because Erick was rather furious, but also so that the people out there listening to him could know what he was about. “I suppose, if I hadn’t come up from Veird myself, then I might have believed whatever lies Nothanganathor was spinning.”

… No one responded. Well that was fine.

Erick kept walking.

Someone would come out to talk to him soon enough. They were there in the air near Erick. He felt them watching. Or maybe it was just [Scry] spellwork from a long distance away. This was the Celestial Observatory, after all. Even if Erick couldn’t see the [Scry] spellwork, it was out there. Watching.

Soon, people did start to appear, but not beside Erick.

Up ahead stood a massive gatehouse that was dwarfed by the crystal mountain behind it. Behind, at the other side of the large, crystal bridge, stood a similarly massive gatehouse that was much larger than the mountain behind that one. Erick had been walking toward the bigger gatehouse.

The gates at both mountains were closed. The side entrances opened, though, and people moved out from those to stand and present arms, if Erick was reading that right. Maybe-paladins in shining armor stood with maybe-archmages in voluminous white and blue robes. They had floating shields, or floating staves. The whole arrangement of people looked rather polished and practiced, but also done in a large hurry. They didn’t seem angry.

They were getting prepared, though.

It’d be several minutes before Erick got to the gate by the big mountain. He took his time. People were still moving around by the time he got close enough to not need to yell to speak to them.

And then he got a bit closer.

Aside from the scattered archmages and paladins in lines to the side, three main people stood directly in front of the closed gate.

There was an elven woman with long ears, with three pairs of disconnected white wings floating behind her back.

There was a man who was wreathed in black.

And an entity made of blue-white crystal with a bunch of organs hanging out in his crystal body—

“Oh shit! I know you.” Erick stared at the crystal person from 15 meters away. “From a vision of a Grand Wizard Tower of the Painted Cosmology in the Dark. You were walking with some sort of sun god. You look… exactly the same.”

The winged elf, the dark mage, and everyone else were a little surprised by… Well probably a lot. Erick wasn’t sure what surprised them more. Perhaps his expletive?

The cyan crystal seemed to sigh. “Ah. You could have heard that from Shadow, but I don’t believe she knows I’m here, so I guess you’re the real deal.”

“Apologies,” Erick said, “I don’t know your name. I assume this is Moonarcher and Darkcaller?”

“Yes yes. I’m Crystalmaster. Moonarcher and Darkcaller are good friends of mine. They’re not going to help you. None of us are.”

“… Okay. I got a letter from you asking for me to appear, though. So… Why?”

Crystalmaster said, “The Wraithborne Tower has issued a preemptive edict against us assisting you in any way, threatening destructive action if we should entertain your anything. They are demanding you speak with them if you wish to pursue any actions against Nothanganathor. That is why we sent the letter to you.”

Erick had some anger, yes, but it was a distant sort of emotion. “And what if I wanted to free all of Margleknot from slavery of all sorts, and destroy a few different evil institutions along the way? The Wraithborne Tower may or may not be on that list because I heard it’s the biggest one, but I haven’t decided. The Slaver’s Den is for sure on that list.”

Contrary to any sort of eagerness at Erick’s brash declaration of… whatever that was, he wasn’t even sure himself, Erick only saw defeat in the eyes of every single person there.

Good had been defeated.

Erick had already assumed that, anyway, at the start of this whole mess, when he saw Yggdrasil’s Guidebook and knew that there was only one Good place on Margleknot, and several Evil ones. But to actually see that resignation in the eyes of the people here… it was both sad and infuriating.

Erick held his tongue.

Crystalmaster said, “It’s a non-war between us and them. A stalemate. We flourish, and they flourish, and we don’t fight each other directly. Individuals are allowed to fight individuals, but the Celestial Observatory cannot fight the Wraithborne Tower, or any of the splinter lands of Evil. It’s a balance in homage to the Balance. If we moved against it, we would surely perish in mutually assured destruction. And worse than that—” He moved his aura around, saying, “Every single person here except for Moonarcher, Darkcaller, and I, have soul shackles upon them. If we let you into these gates, these people die directly; soul sundered. If we tamper with their shackles, they die; soul sundered. Others are then triggered to die, for every person like this is paired with another person which changes daily. You get the painting. It’s standard Wraithborne Tower anti-war protocols.”

“… Okay.” Erick took a moment, then said, “I’ll be back.” He asked the sky, “Yggdrasil? Portal to the Wraithborne Tower, please.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

A portal opened up behind Erick.

He stepped through.

– – – –

The portal closed behind him.

He stood in a business district.

Tall, sleek buildings. Stone roads. Normal-looking trees growing in cut-out sections of the road. Enchanted parts of the road that were clearly for walking fast upon, as evident by the glowing arrows that colored those lanes of the road, and how people were walking upon them but also zooming—

A spirit floated up from the floor in front of Erick. It was a man dressed as a butler, and partially transparent, except around the eyes and fingers. Those parts of him were a lot more solid. He spoke draconic with a funny accent, “Wraithborne Tower greets the True Wizard of Benevolence, Erick Flatt, planar of Earth and Veird. Welcome, please. We hope whichever message of ours you found was one of the more agreeable ones. I’m the Tower Ghost, a conglomerate entity created to help the people of our land with normal tasks, and to assist all guests who should journey here, to help them achieve whatever cooperative goals that the Tower and our guests might decide to cooperate upon.”

Erick rapidly got over the fact that they knew who he was. ‘Incognito’ simply didn’t matter with some powers. Erick briefly wondered if Lyra truly hadn’t known who he was, or if she had been pretending.

“I got your message at the Celestial Observatory. The one where you threatened to kill soul shackled people should they speak to me without me coming here first.” Erick’s voice had an edge to it that he couldn’t quite erase, even with all of his experience with dealing with untoward elements like evil necromancers. He was fine with that edge. He purposely tried to be more personable, though, as he said, “I understand that things are done here in Margleknot through slavery and other terrible ways, so I cannot fault you for doing what you have to do to survive. I would hope that you would understand that things do not have to continue to be done the same way, though. In that sort of spirit, I would like to discuss the complete, peaceful transition of all of the Wraithborne Tower to a more good-aligned conglomeration of people, if your people are open to such a thing.”

Without missing a beat, or having any sort of reaction at all to Erick’s larger words, the ghost simply said, “My superiors would love to discuss that with you. Would you like an air wagon to pick you up? Or we could walk to Center, and I could show you some of Tower City along the way? This is the main city of Wraithborne Tower, after all. It is quite impressive, if you ask me. We’re home to 3.2 trillion souls here, and over half of them are alive!”

He said the last part like some sort of inside joke.

Erick wasn’t very jolly right now.

The ghost did not seem to mind that his joke fell flat.

Erick said, “Let’s walk, Tower Ghost.” Erick started walking forward. “I would like to know more about this land, from your perspective. What I read about you is that you’re all about different types of slavery, and I do not approve.”

Tower Ghost floated alongside Erick and a subtle path lit up on the ground, like a white carpet glowing just above the stone underneath, stretching out several meters in a straight line. As Erick walked forward the path behind him vanished, while the path further ahead materialized. It was a navigation system, obviously, but the end point of the navigation system wasn’t there yet; only the next several meters.

With his senses looking out from all of his body, and not just his eyes, Erick spotted other people using the same sort of navigation system on a street one over from this one, and far, far behind Erick, following this same road that Erick walked.

Tower Ghost said, “I would start from the beginning, if you do not mind. We have a bit of a walk ahead of us, but the fast path will get us there in a decent amount of time.”

Erick nodded.