260, 1/2

 

“Would you say that Da’luwe is representative of the overall nature of the Wraithborne Tower?” Erick asked.

The city administrator, who was an ancient crone of a woman with long, white hair and one good eye, said, “No. Many places are far less kind. The slave ways, for instance, are among the worst locations for the individual among all of the ‘verses. People are chopped up and sent along the path to be resold as goods and services for others down the line who don’t want to do the chopping and mutating themselves.”

Her name was Vondria Irons, and her soul was barely there among her body. She had stitched herself together in a hundred small ways, keeping her existence going long after she should have perished. Erick counted at least five major ways in which she was falling apart.

Her brain was half technology, firing with sparks of some density that Erick didn’t know, but which he suspected was some sort of mind expanding magics or power that allowed her to hold onto distant memories. Blue light filled what might have been mana veins inside her body, but which looked a whole lot more like circuitry, with lines that were too straight to be wholly biological. She had something going on with the insides of her bones that may or may not have been some sort of nanomachine thing, but it was too small to see without proper imaging and it seemed to cloud Erick’s mana senses, as though it was inimical to mana. Her heart was doubled, the second heart pumping in time to the original, central heart, and her liver was some sort of symbiotic organism with a completely different soul than Vondria’s own.

Other than those internal things, Vondira was an old, heavily wrinkled woman, with a hardness to her eyes that well-matched her last name of ‘Irons’.

“You would count Da’luwe as kind?” Erick asked.

“Aye. I would. Eldawae doesn’t give a shit about this place as long as the numbers are meagerly positive and he can have his peaceful view of the Endless, and occasionally flex his magic to destroy great swaths of uppity tyrants. We got it pretty good here.”

“… When you say ‘meagerly positive’ and ‘destroy tyrants’ and ‘view of the Endless’… If this place were to improve to be highly profitable, all tyrants were to be eradicated, and the Endless turned into lush green land, what would happen?”

Vondria grinned, showing off teeth that were only in her gums because she had technology making sure her teeth remained in working order. “I don’t know! It’s never happened before. I’d like to see it happen. I’d like to see a land where people don’t fight over drops of water, and the cost to get to Layer 0 wasn’t so huge.”

“I gotta say, Vondria, I wasn’t expecting you to badmouth your boss so much.”

“If you give me the power to overthrow him, I will do it. But that won’t happen for a number of reasons. First, you’re not sticking around, which means: Second, we need Eldawae to keep us safe from the true forces out there because: Third, we’re a safe haven in Layer 1 for all who come by, and there are a lot of people who come by because the Tower represents safety. Honestly, if your gifts of power work in my favor, I’ll try to keep Eldawae happy however he wants to be happy as well as institute new measures to expand the bounty of this land. I fully expect with a changed attitude in life that I would want to actually help those evil fuckers out there, and with enough power I’ll actually be able to do that.” Vondria said, “But we get the most Evil sorts of people here, Ascended Flatt. We’re at the bottom of Layer 1. If someone fucks up bad enough to get sent deep enough, to here, then they’ll come in and fuck up everything you try to do, while the strongest of us hide and wait out the storm as Eldawae kills and enslaves those tyrants and makes them into ghosts, or sends them on their way.”

Erick thought.

He said, “I’d like to have the names of the worst offenders in the inmate population right now. Those would be the ones I remove from this land.”

“And you shall have it.” Vondria said, “The only thing I ask of you is for you to review the production logs and to attempt to keep our production positive.”

“I’ve seen the logs. You all make 750,000 resons per day, at a cost of 700,000 resons per day. I wonder if those are the true numbers, though, because with those Benevolence towers out there you should have been making a lot more than that.”

“Only those who are Contracted to the Tower produce any resources. The mana of the Darkness-wrought life you created out there does not pay any bills.”

Erick looked at her. She wasn’t lying. Not really—

“We do capture the mana they made, and the water created,” Vondria said, without the barest of breaks in her outflow of words. “But more water than mana. Your systems are rather solidly made, Ascended Flatt. The only real resources we’ve gotten from your systems would be the mana made by subsequent life outside of the towers, and the water created by the copy machines. The mana produced inside the towers seems to remain inside the towers, though. This does decrease our bottom line, but not much right now.”

She left it there.

Erick got the distinct impression that Vondria didn’t have to watch her words around Eldawae at all, which is why she had been so easily willing to speak a half-truth to Erick. She was simply unpracticed with courtly intrigue, which… well. Good for her? It spoke well of Eldawae that his people were so easy with their words. That meant that the intrigue that happened around here wasn’t that deep. There weren’t many courtiers here in Da’luwe as far as Erick could tell. Eldawae might have been the only one.

This was probably on purpose.

Erick stood up. “I’ll speak more later.”

– – – –

Erick was in the third interview with a third city guard, and aside from individual reasons and individual ideas of what needed to be done, he was just like the other two in every way that mattered. They were also similar to Vondria, in that they had little patience or virtue in the courtly arts.

Kylychbech shot his hands into the air, yelling, “I don’t know what to fucking tell you to get you to intervene! Those fuckers in fifth section are set to run over the defenses of the outer rim of that new city by the inmate tower and do exactly to that land that they did to three others!” He scowled, pacing, saying, “You have power! Go out and fucking USE IT! Or use me to enact your will! Eldawae said that if I got dragon’d that he’d let me go end that fucking threat— My mother is in that inmate tower town, sir! I’m about ready to commit treason to go out and save the bitch! She won’t even fucking care if I killed myself to save her fucking bitch ass, but I still gotta do it!”

Erick had heard more than enough. “I appreciate your candor. I got some more interviews to go, then I’m going to go solve that warfront problem. From what I saw the marauders still had hours to reach the inmate tower.”

Kylychbech looked stunned. He collapsed to his knees. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Erick left for the last set of interviews.

– – – –

Erick stood in an open courtyard beside the large wall of the inner city.

Four ghostly beings stood halfway out of the wall, their forms indistinct here and there, but they were intelligible enough to understand. One of them was a traditional dragon who had given his name as ‘Solid Sky’. The others hadn’t wanted to give names.

Solid Sky spoke with a whisper, “I was born in a land of green and blue in a time far from time. I was cast to this land by the cursed fae. The land grows and I want to see it grow more. That is all I need to tell you.”

The flaming bedsheet said, “The desecrators must be desecrated themselves.”

The amalgamation of arms and eyes, said, “Rip and tear those who would rip and tear, Ascended. Water the land with their blood! Let new death fuel new growth.”

A being of faint light, barely visible in the air, whispered, “The Endless consumes and we are forever on the precipice of falling deeper into the maw. Too deep to ever escape. Too far gone to ever come back. We struggle. We survive. I would have us thrive. You have given us a lifeline. Wings to soar out of the depths, and into the light! Secure your power through my soul, Ascended Flatt. Use me for the betterment of our lands!”

The dragon bowed. The ghost bowed. The amalgamation bowed. The person of light bowed, kneeling before Erick, showing themselves as a person-shaped sexless existence.

Erick said, “I’ll be back.”

And then he flew away, into the sky, headed toward the inmate tower.

The ghosts watched him go and then they spoke amongst themselves as they faded into the wall once again, asking each other if that went well, or not. Solid Sky spoke of how there was no way to truly tell. Erick was too chaotic to read.

– – – –

The warfront was getting ready for war and Erick hovered high above like invisible and intangible light.

The inmates of the Benevolence tower were to the west, while the marauders were to the east.

Or at least those were the directions that Erick was calling ‘west’ and ‘east’, since there was no real north, south, east, or west out here as far as Erick could see.

… And yet. Hmm. That thought prompted him to actually test that theory by making a little container of water, a floaty bit, and a magnetized bit of metal to sit on top of the floaty bit. The magnet pointed at him, for some weird reason. Erick dismissed the compass, opting to figure that mystery out some other day.

And he looked to the warfront.

The war looked to be fought with sticks and blades, for not a single person down there had spellwork going around them at all. That would be because of the manaminer of Da’luwe, for sure. Perhaps some of the people down there had been true persons of arcane might, but they had been laid low in the enactment of disastrous Contract spells, and now they either hid out in the back lines making dinner out of sand rats and grasses, or they learned to pick up a sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with allies-of-convenience.

The armies were only a few hundred strong on the Benevolence front, but they were the real warriors of the Benevolence town. They had the best equipment and the best weapons. Or at least they looked the part, with those shiny bits.

The marauders were 15,000 strong, but they carried their entire civilization on their backs, with almost everyone there being… Well. Strong-looking men, mostly using sticks fashioned from trees that had grown in the towers. So. Great job, Erick. Arming them for this war. Fun times. Anyway. The demographics of Da’luwe were pretty skewed. Most people here were elven or human or orc or generally bipedal-shaped men, but there were some outliers here and there.

One of those outliers was a woman with four white wings hovering behind her back. She flew forward, ahead of the marauders, carrying a flag of red on black. It was a black bolt of lightning. She was flying to speak to a man who was walking out of the lineup from the Benevolence tower.

That man walking forward wore a light purple outfit. It wasn’t Nilton, for Nilton was far behind the frontlines, watching this all happen from atop a watch tower with a pair of binoculars as he spoke into a walkie-talkie, or something like that. There was technology everywhere, apparently, which was really quite odd for Erick to see since he had been without tech for a long time. Some guys down there even had gun-like things.

The marauders looked like they had a whole contingent of riflemen, each of them holding onto homemade metal tubes with sparkly bits to them.

Erick wondered at their range.

And then he wondered what sort of technology he should import to Veird when he got back to Layer 0, and solved this Fae Enclave nonsense…

They wanted him to kill things to prove his power, right?

Erick looked down at some ‘armies’ that could be considered a ‘proof of power’? Maybe? Of course the Enclave would just say, ‘they were weaklings, go have another challenge’. So Erick would have to do something… special.

Erick hummed.

… He had a solution, there. But…

… Hmm.

Yeah.

It was a good solution.

Kinda extreme.

No better place to test it out than here, though. It would have a lot of moving parts. It would be a great solution to this whole Da’luwe issue. They’d keep their production… Hmm.

Anyway.

As Erick toyed with that solution in his mind, he listened to the representatives of both groups meet and speak to each other.

“Greetings,” said the mouthpiece for Nilton.

“Death to you and yours,” said the not-angel woman, in a way that was so easily given and without rancor that Erick imagined it was a common greeting for her, for whatever weird reason.

“As much of a witch as ever, Totte.”

“As much of a murderous bastard as always, Peten.” Totte said, “Give us access to this tower or we burn it down.”

“Try it and die, yet again.”

“I seem to recall chopping off your head before you blew the fail safes and destroyed the last four towers. I bet you’d die again this time.”

“This tower is rigged to blow this time, too.” Peten said, “Maybe you’ll believe us this time when we tell you that you cannot have it.”

“If I can’t, then you can’t either.” Totte said, “This time we’ll pursue your deaths until you’re so deep in debt that you get dusted, your soul forever bound to Wraithborne.”

“Yet another empty threat. That’s all you’re good for. Here’s a real one for you, crafted by your betters, so you might learn the difference: We’ve got half a million resons in reserve. We’ll pay to triple your debts and then live fine while you’re dusted. Or. You can go away and buy from us, like we offered. We’re the kings. You’re the slaves. So either be good slaves or get stomped from on high. We have the resources to fuck you over quite well and you have nothing.”

Totte raged at that answer, cursing at the man, her flag transforming from wood and cloth into a long glaive as she beheaded Peten right then and there.

Peten just smiled, even as his head fell to the ground. He looked truly happy as his body turned to dust and his soul flowed away into the sands, headed elsewhere.

A small part of Erick wondered if Peten was so secure in his victory-in-death because he had come back a few times already. The majority of Erick was somewhat furious at Totte for not playing along at Nilton’s conquest, for pursuing a path that was bound to end in nothing for anyone. And then Erick grew mad at Nilton on Totte’s behalf. Blowing up places he had lost? Terrible form.

Erick’s anger was a quiet anger. The calm before the storm.

The storm built as fast as war broke out all across two kilometers of space between the tower defenders, and the marauders. Rifles fired metal balls that cracked wooden shields and sprayed blood into the air. Swords flashed at limbs, cutting and severing. People roared. Some marauders flew to the sky, having powers of flight that were not mana or reson-based or able to be stolen by the manaminer of Da’luwe. One marauder fired bright red lasers from his eyes. A man in black on the tower defenders’s side opened up holes in the world that swallowed all flying objects with absolute precision. Totte screamed, disrupting everything around her as she flew forward, her glaive leading the way.

And now Erick was mad.

He stared down a Lightning Path. He saw many different ways to remake the world.

He could talk to them all / They weren’t willing to talk.

He could force a compromise / [Reincarnation] could only do so much without oversight to keep people from reverting.

He could build a tower for the marauders on the other side of Da’luwe / And thus begins a different sort of war.

He could separate this war right now / And put off the problem for another day.

In his flight over here, and after getting some dossiers on the major actors of this warfront, he had considered transforming some of those major actors into Benevolence dragons at best, or maybe trying to work out some Empathying magic again. Erick didn’t actually have his Empathy magic anymore, because he had used that up to make the Crystal Star, and then the Crystal Star had moved on, back into the hands of Koyabez’s Church, and Erick had been granted the [Blessing of Empathy] spell from Koyabez, renewed automatically every time he used it. But that spell was from Koyabez, and it didn’t transfer over with him when he left the Script.

He could have made his [Blessing of Empathy] again; he was absolutely sure.

And yet, leaving behind that soul twisting magic had been kinda nice. Once that particular weapon was out of Erick’s hands, it had been like laying down a bloody and effective knife; it had been cleansing.

And besides that, Erick still had lots of ways to make people more empathetic. Kinder ways. Fresher ways.

That’s what Erick focused on now.

He focused on his Lightning Path as it stretched out from him, down into the center of the battlefield and stretched out in every direction, touching everyone on the field and arcing all the way into the Benevolence Tower town, and beyond. At the same time, a spell in Erick’s core vibrated with need. With Erick’s own desire.

As warriors killed warriors, and souls vanished into the sands, the Lightning Path coalesced.

Not five minutes ago a barely-conceived solution to the problem of war among the inmates had presented itself to Erick. Now, that solution proved as easy to walk as the Path.

Erick’s Benevolence laced his words as he spoke with mana and resons,

“In thunderous words, these strifes I mend.

“With proven power, a path’s creation

“pierce hardened hearts to gently bend.

“To distant shores! To tranquil stations.

“These souls released, on love we send

“down life’s grand cycles; a Grand Reincarnation.”

A lot of things happened all at once.

The spell did not take just from Erick’s Mana. It took from his Health and Psyche, too.

White Benevolence arced down from all of Erick’s Everything, into the center of the battlefield where it split and hit Totte and the man she had just killed, ripping both of their souls out of their bodies and ashing what was left. The ash rapidly turned to plants. The lightning did not stop. It continued right down both sides of the conflict, hitting people in the heart, or head, or leg, and then traveling out the other side, where it split again, and arced further.

That lightning then flowed into the sky, worming through cracks in reality here and there like it was struggling to escape, but escape it did.

Erick’s body automagically created the magic he had done, marking it down as a Benevolence crystal inside his soul, and words popped up. Erick had not consciously done that. He had been prepared to do that, but he had not actually done that.

Grand Reincarnation, instant, special range, 500/500/500/100 resources/resons per target

Bestow bountiful existences upon a set of targets.

May those so touched by your power forever find themselves on a Benevolent Path.

May their new forms fit them better than the ones that came before.

For some reason the ‘spell creation message’ wasn’t there, which was fine. That was marginally less concerning than the fact that the spell had made itself into a pressable ‘button’. At least the spell cost went down from 5,000 per person, to 500 Mana, Health, and Psyche. Probably because Erick had no control at all over any part of this spell. People were getting put into the multiverse left and right, zapping away to Fractal or Darkness knew where, being placed in bodies that Erick had no control over at all.

Hopefully the people had some control over the spell themselves.

That’s how it felt to Erick, at least, as Benevolent Lightning lashed out at soldier and warrior and scared mother and dying father and killer and genocider and tyrant and murderer and slave and master and—

Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation] continued far beyond the battlefield, his mana resources dropping disastrously fast while his resons went a fifth as quick. He had had nearly 500m each in Mana, Health, and Psyche, and 15m resons due to all the time he had spent flying through the Endless.

But 475,000 inmates of Da’luwe and 50,000 residents added up fast.

The first hundred million Mana, Health, and Psyche went faster than all the rest, and there also seemed to be a precipitous drop in resons that was a lot larger than the cost should have been in the beginning. That probably had to do with the power that was necessary to get out of Layer 1; it couldn’t be a trap layer if leaving it was a normal affair.

Lightning arced through the entire battlefield below and where it took people, it left plants in the aftermath.

Some people defended themselves and the spell went around them, only to strike from behind. The lightning ran up swords, into hands and then souls. The lightning pushed through small magics here and there as if they were nothing. Most everyone was defenseless. Most people had no idea they were moving on until Erick moved them on, forcibly.

Those that were taken were turned to Lightning themselves to vanish into Elsewhere.

The battlefield was no longer a place of war at all. It was a small forest.

And still, the Lightning sang through Erick, turning into a soft torrent of light when it had no one to hit right away. The light washed out into the surroundings. It gathered into bolts once again when it found a target, which were the 50 meter tall flesh golems who were guarding villages that no longer had people because the Lightning had already taken them away. Giant golems became moss-covered stone before the Lightning moved on.

Almost every resident of the inmate Benevolence Tower town vanished in a sweep of Benevolence.

That sweep continued outward to the walls where it danced through the spellwork of the Obsidian Knife Wall, striking out at the guardian flesh golems here and there and evaporating even more towns of inmates, leaving behind moss and grasses and flowers and trees.

The spellwork crashed into the center city of Da’luwe, trying to transcend every mortal and chained undead living under the lich into Lightning that vanished into the sky. Half of the central walls of the city were turned to nothing, but power rang out from the grand hall in the middle, Evil Death pulsing outward to rebuff the Benevolent Lightning, like a sudden shield of killing intent.

In a scant minute, maybe less, the spellwork fountaining out of Erick stopped flowing nearly as fast, or as deep. The flow cut. Erick sagged in the sky. He had never felt tired ever since his ascension. Not truly. But now he felt tired.

And people remained everywhere.

Not many. Maybe only 1%. One out of a hundred? No. Erick looked around. Less than that. A lot less. Of the 15,000-ish marauders and the 20,000-ish in the Benevolence Tower Town, there were maybe 30 people total. They all had ‘spellwork’ around them, too. Not real mana spellwork. The black disk guy had survived. Nilton and his guard, standing on top of an observation tower, had survived due to the guard having some sort of [Force Cube] magic. A marauder with a bunch of feathers in his hair had survived—

Well.

Not ‘survived’, but rather ‘refused to escape’. Even if what Erick had done had looked rather sinister, anyone listening to his words —which had been everyone there— would have known it had been a gift.

Erick smirked.

He had just committed a very large prison break. He felt kinda funny about that. Kinda nice—

Eldawae’s words boomed out of the sky.

“Please come speak with me, Ascended Flatt. I would have calm words.”

“Whoops!” Erick said to himself, feeling kinda giddy. Giddy giddy! Okay. Erick took a moment to calm, because he was way too happy about helping all these people all at once just like that— Erick breathed. He calmed. He shouted back with the entire sky, briefly filling the world with lightning, “Be right there soon!” Thunder rolled under a clear blue sky. Erick turned back to the battlefield down below, to the tower where Nilton and his guard looked terrified, saying, “You and I will be talking right now.”

Nilton told his guard to escape.

The guard did exactly that, rushing down the ladder of the tower and then picking his way through the growing forest as fast as he could. He tripped over a downed tree. The land here wasn’t very stable, after all. It was all sand and bare dirt. All this plant life would need to die and become part of the sand to even begin to be useful for growing more life.

Erick floated in front of Nilton’s tower, saying, “You should have accepted the reincarnation. You could already be on your way to realizing that sundering souls for personal wealth is a terrible business model.”

Nilton brushed past Erick’s concern, saying, “My man acted on instinct. I have already forgiven him. I’ll take a personal reincarnation, though.”

“Done.”

Nilton rapidly held out a mutative, corruptive treasure in his hand, trying to intercept the lightning, but he had not been fast enough, nor had the artifact been corruptive enough. A bolt of Benevolence came out of the clear blue sky, disintegrated the corruption, and entered—

– –

Erick stood with a nude Nilton on the shore of a beach near a gleaming silver city where cars flew in lanes in the sky. Nilton looked around and rapidly shifted from con artist planning on taking as much as he could get from Erick, to a man who had seen true hope for the first time in his life.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

This was his home world. That much was easy to see.

A moment passed in calm silence. Some bugs chirped in trees. Gold fish flickered in the waters beyond the beach.

And Nilton stared at everything, whispering, “I never expected to make it back.”

“You’re not back yet and you know I won’t let a user-of-people back into the greater world.” Erick spoke, “Choose your fate, Nilton.”

With sudden tears flowing, he said, “I want to be loved.”

“You get what you give.”

– –

—before leaving in a flash of white, sailing back above, the white lightning taking away Nilton and then vanishing. As the lightning passed it looked like a crack in the sky healing over, to solid blue at the horizons, to the imagery of Margleknot high, high overhead.

Erick knew that Nilton would be a source of true power wherever he needed to be, but it wouldn’t be like before where he used everyone around him for his own gain. His personal Truth had been ‘all for me’ according to Vondria, the city administrator of Da’luwe. Erick knew he had shifted Nilton’s truth into something a lot more Benevolent. He’d still use people, of course, but he’d give them a lot in order to gain for himself. That would be how he would eventually Ascend, for sure.

If he managed to do that himself.

Erick wished him well, even if he probably shouldn’t. Nilton was a tyrant. He sundered people. He used people. Erick hadn’t Empathy’d him. Not wholly, anyway. Not directly.

The important thing was two things: that Nilton was out of Da’luwe, and thus not able to afflict this land with his presence anymore, and that he had a chance to start over with a better Truth that would help instead of harm.

Erick moved on.

He decided not to hunt down every single person who had failed to accept his [Grand Reincarnation].

He went toward the ruined Benevolence Towers instead. It wasn’t nearly as difficult to repair what had been broken as it had been to create what did not exist in the first place.

A mere 5 hours after starting that repair project, Erick had some [Terraforming]s, node networks, and [Undertow Star]s, all working together to create new life once again inside every tower. What had been burned and exploded became mulch for the next generation.

Life went on.

When Erick was finished with that, he made a billboard out of wood with some writing on it and some illustrative diagrams, and then he copied that billboard and stuck those copies into the ground near every large settlement within Da’luwe’s protected area. The billboard had an image of lightning-like arrows vanishing up and away from the desert, and the same message in 20 different languages, ‘Your fellow inmates have been sent into new bodies and new lives all across the multiverse. I doubt any of them ended up in the same spot at all. You defended yourself and thus the lightning did not take you. If you wish to go on to your next, hopefully happy lives, then come out of hiding and walk toward the center city. I will be removing all Wraithborn Contracts from people, too, if that is what you desire instead. Or, if you want a new body, I can do that, too. I will be checking for travelers in the next few days.’

And then Erick went to the central city.

– – – –

The center of Da’luwe was a ghost town more in the figurative sense than the literal sense. But maybe, Erick considered, in the literal, Earth-type sense, too.

There weren’t any people left in this land. Pools held no swimmers. Charcoal sizzled in the sun on grills that had no burger flippers. Pancakes dried in the open air, and books lay where their readers had dropped them. Those places, and much of the city, now sported new green growth, from moss to grasses to flowers and even a few trees here and there. Three nice palms now waved in the breeze high above the roofs in the main part of town. There were even a few tall oaks, or elms, or whatever other exotic name that people might have for a few of the more traditional trees, poking up between buildings here and there.

And then there was the destruction.