262, 1/2

“Please come in, Blighter and Seabass,” Erick said, holding open the front door of his house in Margleknot. “I imagine there is lots to be said, like, for instance, if you’re still my lawyers or not.”

Blighter and Seabass were both vampire-like elven beings from Wraithborne. They were also the best lawyers around. The last time Erick had seen them was at the Fae Enclave meeting, where Erick had been blipped to Layer 1, to the Endless desert of the time worm and Da’luwe. Right before that Erick had been struck by the Fractal Fairy, spilling blood everywhere in that multi-million point damaging ‘message’ from the Fairy to Erick. Erick had remembered all of that conversation and the surrounding moments of time since then.

He also remembered that Blighter and Seabass had both gorged themselves on all the blood Erick had spilled from his dragon body.

Erick added, “You certainly look healthy and happy, so I assume things are good?”

Blighter and Seabass both bowed, and then they walked into the house, Blighter saying, “Things are going wonderfully except for your case against Nothanganathor. I have spoken with Emperor Morbion himself, and he wishes you to know that there are no hard feelings over Da’luwe. That land is doing remarkably better by every possible measurement since your intervention, and Morbion wishes it to be known that perhaps they had gotten lax with how they ran things in their prison.” He added, “On a more personal note, I am grateful for the blood you shared with us at the Enclave meeting. Seabass is as well. Your blood since the Enclave meeting has erased my natural bloodlust ever since I had so much of it.”

Erick smiled. “I hope you kept some around.” Erick gestured to the side room where he had placed tea, coffee, and cookies.

“It was a madhouse to gather as much as anyone could. I believe that Lady Seraphaka found one of your larger scales in that skirmish and has made quite a lot of jewelry out of it. There was a minor war over three of your other scales, and most of that war is still happening. That particular conflict could flare to another war, just as easily as it could snuff out.” Blighter entered the side room. After Erick sat down, Blighter followed, putting his briefcase on the part of the table without the refreshments. He began taking out papers, saying, “The tale of Da’luwe and the time worm is still being debated in the Enclave, which is sort of like a minor war, but that is just the prelude to actual war. I have the full transcript here, along with personal notes.”

When Blighter took the notes out of his obscuring briefcase Erick read it in a flashing instant. He hummed in thought when Blighter actually finished laying the notes down, because he had to let Blighter finish speaking before speaking himself, of course; it was only polite.

Erick summarized, “So the lines are still Lady Seraphaka and Lady Aelorika against Lord Dakka and Lord Eldraki. The Fractal Fairy isn’t involved.” Erick frowned. “I would have thought Lord Dakka would have appreciated that I killed everyone and resurrected them into different forms, but he wanted actual blood and shit and rusted metal and torn lives… Hm.”

Blighter nodded.

Erick thought.

Blighter waited.

Erick sighed a little, then blinked, and asked Blighter and Seabass, “Do you want some fresh blood?”

Blighter’s eyes went wide. “… Your offer is duly appreciated, but I must decline.”

Seabass silently said the same thing by bowing a little.

Erick said, “Then coffee, tea, and cookies it is.”

Erick dished out some refreshments. He ate his cookie and sipped his coffee as he thought about the minutes Blighter had brought him. Blighter and Seabass politely ate and drank and waited.

Eventually, Erick set down his drink and said, “So I have to go to more war, since I’m certainly not trading anything to Lord Eldraki. I had assumed this was to be the outcome, but to see it so clearly stated is certainly a bit of a shock. Anyway! To start, I’m going to be building a branch of House Benevolence. Wraithborne has old liches you want [Reincarnation]ed, yes? I’ll make use of them, transforming them to Benevolence like I did for Eldawae. They can go on their way from there, or they can be a part of the Margleknot extension of House Benevolence, if they desire. I’ll also be raiding the Waiting Room for people. I already have a god helping me with that. With such a coalition I am going to go to war against the Slaver’s Den and erase that Evil from existence. You may warn key people about that if you wish. Or you may fortify the Slaver’s Den with the Evil people you don’t like. All are acceptable options for me.”

Blighter, ever the well-put-together lawyer, and probably prepared for something similar to the various news that Erick had given him, easily said, “I will carry news of these plans to Emperor Morbion and let you know his direct thoughts, but based on previous conversations with him I can tell you a few different things. Emperor Morbion would appreciate a few liches of ours turned into new existences. We have three names for you right now; Kakalakot of the Slavehold, Odarimisu of the Depths, and Witch Aragathara. I have their information here.” He handed over some paperwork, then continued, “Our Emperor appreciates being notified of your plans to invade one of our allies, and he expects at least a week to return his own decisions to you about your plans.

“He would have an answer within ten minutes, but he would like some time to enact his own counter plans in a way that will not run completely counter to your own given plans. We are allies for now, and Emperor Morbion would like to remain as such.”

“I accept this time table,” Erick said, putting the dossiers for the three liches of Wraithborne aside. “I am not going to war with Wraithborne, for I hope to completely turn Wraithborne to Benevolence eventually, and I am comfortable with working with former Evils who are no longer evil. Please tell him that Benevolence is a fantastic path to power, but that it requires the user to support themselves on the backs of well-made civilizations. Both of those seem like things Morbion is interested in.”

Blighter asked, “Would you allow us to know what sort of House you wish to build?”

“I’m sure you have my dossier, which includes all of House Benevolence’s construction, just like I have Wraithborne’s dossier on their construction with your primes and officers.” Erick said, “I’ll do something like the Overseer system I already have, but I’ll go simple, for now. An Overseer of Enforcement, one of Governance, and one more of Magic. I’ll find three friends or three people who can work well together, and then turn the whole thing over to them, alongside a good portion of the reson generation from my Benevolent Sun. That thing is making close to a trillion resons per day, for me, and so a portion of that given to my House up here will be more than enough to set them up for success.” He added, “Other than that, I expect to descend upon Slaver’s Den like a vengeful god, turning millions of them into new people and sending the rest to the Waiting Room. I’ll effectively ‘reincarnate’ the entire continent that belongs to Slaver’s Den into something better.” Erick asked, “Would you allow me to know what sort of counter plans Morbion will try?”

Blighter said, “Margleknot has been unbalanced toward Evil for a long while and so the loss of a few hundred million Evil actors is likely a good thing for us all, including, technically, Wraithborne. Therefore, your desired action against Slaver’s Den is likely going to be subtly empowered by the Balance, but your desired course of action is still in gross violation of several Great Contracts Wraithborne has with Slaver’s Den, who is a staunch ally. Therefore, at the base level, Wraithborne will have to provide assistance to Slaver’s Den in the form of information and physical assistance. When the assassins come for you, please know that it is nothing personal, and if those assassins could be let off with a stern warning and a simple kill instead of a twisting, such an action would be in accordance with the un-written allyship between Wraithborne and yourself.”

Erick said, “I’ll think about it.” He continued, “About this coming minor war: I was under the impression that murder is fine as long as soul twisting was not done, but that Wraithborne engages in twistings all the time with their contracts. Do you foresee there being a problem with me using grand soul magics upon people here in Layer 0?”

“As far as our Witches and Soul Mages have been able to discover, your ‘soul twistings’ are more ‘untwisting’ than anything, but we would still call them ‘soul twistings’ in a court of law, and the law would still agree. But no one is going to push the issue unless it has to be pushed.”

“That is what I assumed.” Erick continued, “So the Fae Enclave would not be involved with this?”

Erick already knew the answer to that question. But he wanted to know what Blighter would say.

Blighter easily said, “Balancing Wars are common on Layer 0. All people who die who are not soul-mutilated go to the Waiting Room, after all. Simple murder is also rather common. Continual murder is considered gauche. Going to War generally requires a notice of intent handed over to the Fae Enclave, though. It is considered polite.”

Erick nodded. “That’s what I’ve already heard. Can you assist with writing up that notice?”

Blighter flipped through some small parts of his briefcase and brought out a piece of paper with writing on it, saying, “Absolutely. Here is a basic form of Intent to War. The exact wording can be changed, of course.”

Erick glanced it over. The notice was a simple set of fill-in-the-blanks for one paragraph, some bullet points of articles which could be crossed out, or not, and a final empty part.

Erick said, “There will be no soul sundering, so you can cross off that threat. Soul twisting is still going to happen, and in a mass way, but if you could change that to ‘untwisting’, that would be acceptable. I’m starting this war with them for the purposes of freeing the universe of their slavery systems and taking their land. The people who I affect will be cast out from Margleknot. The people who I kill will go into the Waiting Room. I am willing to accept nothing less than their complete surrender, at which point they will be rapidly reincarnation’d into new lives. If they choose to remain here, then they can attempt to reintegrate, and I will accept them back. Otherwise, I can send them off into the rest of the universe to start their lives over elsewhere.” Erick looked it over again as Blighter wrote and then rewrote, using some small magics to rearrange wordings and already-typed parts of the declaration. Erick hummed when Blighter finished, then said, “Yes. That’s good.”

“Do you desire to have this filed now, or 10 days from now?”

“I’d hear Morbion’s decisions before you file it.” Erick stood. “And that’s all my business for today… Unless there’s more news?”

Blighter rose, bowed, then began putting his papers away as he said, “That’s everything on my end. I wish you luck in the Waiting Room. That place is a cacophony.”

Erick saw them out the door and off the property.

And then he called up Shadow through a messenger star.

– – – –

Shadow walked cautiously up the moss-laden root that was Erick’s front driveway.

She looked… Not terrified. But rather… embarrassed?

Erick called out to her, “What’s wrong?”

Shadow said, “Margleknot is here, Erick. Like here, here.” She walked a little faster, and this time in the air so that she didn’t walk on Margleknot’s root, or even on the plants on his root. “He doesn’t like people living on him. I’m surprised… That he went for this.”

This was her first trip to his house, wasn’t it?

Erick raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t we go over what my house looked like before? When I said I couldn’t receive the Waiting Room people here?”

“Seeing this place is different than hearing about it.”

Erick frowned at her. “Put your feet on the ground and walk like a normal person.”

Shadow… put her feet on the ground and walked like a fae creature, stepping weightlessly on the grasses and mosses and not bending a single bit of greenery out of place.

“Close enough.” Erick stepped inside his house, “Come on in!”

Shadow rapidly moved inside the house, opting to not spend a moment more atop the grasses and mosses outside. “So why am I here?”

“To talk about the glitter crystal that makes up the Fae Enclave, and which appears inside of a spell of mine that I got from Veird.” Erick held up a hand and conjured an image of the glittering, fractal crystal at the heart of his [Telepathy] spell. “This stuff. I believe it to be the Mark of the Fractal Universe, sort of how the Darkness is the Mark of the Painted Cosmology, but I’m not sure.”

Shadow had been steeling herself as Erick spoke—

But when Erick finished, Yggdrasil stepped into the room. “Hello, Father. Let us talk of this topic, all together.”

Shadow instantly said, “I’m going first! That is indeed the Mark of the ‘Fractal Universe’, which is a fine enough name, I suppose, and most people can’t see it at all or even know that it exists. I think the one you have in you is all fucked up, though, because it should be a source of resons like how the Mark of the Dark is a source of mana.” And then she said to Yggdrasil, “Apologies for stepping on your roots.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Yggdrasil said, “And yes. That is the Mark of the Fractal Universe. The Mark is not freely given, and not even given at all if this universe can help it. Melemizargo stole a Mark, put it in a person that they used to make children of which he only shielded in the first generation, and then let the Mind Mages perish or prosper until the Mark stabilized inside of them, granting them the abilities they have in the present day. That was not his original intention. He was trying to make people who had the ability to speak True Conversation without dying… though I’m rather certain that even he didn’t realize what he was truly doing.”

Shadow raised eyebrows when Yggdrasil spoke of True Conversation.

Erick asked, “Is that what I experienced with the Fractal Fairy?”

Yggdrasil said, “No. True Conversation is communication across Layers, usually toward oneself in different realities. This is how the Mark of this universe ‘makes resons’; by allowing one to self-actualize through viewed goals. Melemizargo mutated the Mark into a communicator of mind-to-mind in a single slice of infinity.” He said, “What you experienced with the Fractal Fairy was… Another thing I want to talk to you about, and Shadow should remain as well, because that’s somewhat related to True Conversation, but… Not.”

Shadow waited.

Erick waited as well.

Yggdrasil said, “I’m basically a paladin of the Fractal. Shadow is a paladin of the Darkness. Using ‘paladin’ like that is kinda like considering a toothpick a valid weapon all your life and then suddenly finding out someone that has invented a nuclear bomb. So while the term is correct, it is also incorrect.”

Erick said, “I assume that the Dark and the Fractal empower you to do their bidding?”

“Yup,” Shadow said. “And occasionally we speak for our universes, when they desire to talk. Usually they do not. We can survive those conversations though. You almost didn’t survive a single utterance.”

“… It felt like a full letter?”

Yggdrasil said, “It was a single utterance.” He continued, “Anyway. If you want to repair the Mark of the Fractal then you can. This will allow you to speak with other versions of yourself no matter where you are in the universe. Or, you can wait till you get back to Veird and break open [Telepathy] and learn Mind Mage Magic. They’re two different paths. You can only pick one…” He almost said more, but he stopped.

Shadow said, “He wants you to become a Paladin of the Fractal.”

Yggdrasil sighed. “And she wants you for the Dark.”

Erick said, “Well I’m certainly not picking any right now. But… That’s a big offer?” Erick thought about it for a second, then said, “Not right now. Probably not ever. I don’t really like accepting power from those so far above me.”

Yggdrasil smiled a little with relief.

Shadow said, “That’s what I figured, too. Anyway! Mind Magic seems fun, and I’m glad to get that tiny conversation about all the Really Big Stuff that doesn’t even matter. So? Are we doing the Waiting Room thing now? I would like to get this show on the road.”

Erick smirked. “Yeah. I want to build House Benevolence, too.” He asked Yggdrasil, “Will the Fae Enclave have a problem with me destroying the Slaver’s Den?”

Yggdrasil smiled. “Nope.”

Erick realized something. “Ah… You would have asked this of me if it didn’t happen some other way.”

Yggdrasil grinned wider. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, father. I’m not some mastermind planner at all.”

Erick laughed once.

And then Yggdrasil stepped backward and vanished.

Shadow smiled wide, saying, “Let’s go raise an army!”

Erick messaged Cascadio.

– – – –

Erick wore a burnished-gold pendant on a gold-thread necklace, empowered with the Light of Cascadio, as he stepped through the swirling gold-and-green portal. Shadow followed at his side, his companion for the day, or however long this took. Might take a few days, might only take an hour. Shadow might leave after only ten minutes and then come back later.

The Waiting Room was supposed to be rather safe, but only because it was rather strict in its rules, and almost no one spent time here unless they were working.

As they stepped onto the platform beyond, they were greeted by words in the air.

Welcome to the Living Waiting Room.

Violence of any sort is not tolerated at all and will result in an automatic stasis lock and expulsion from the Living Waiting Room and a lockout of 10 years, at a minimum. Most sentences are 100 years or more.

Our automated systems have marked you as <Ascended> and <Fae>, which means that our systems cannot do much to you directly and so we will have to send people after you. Should we need to, we will send people after you, and also Margleknot’s transportation network will not work for you for 1,000 years. Please respect the Living Waiting Room, so that we may respect each other in polite turn.

And that right there, the threat of Margleknot’s gates not working for a person, was more than enough for most people to avoid this land completely.

Shadow said, “I got expelled from here once. I won’t be doing that again. And this place moves around, too, so the only real way to get here is with Margleknot’s help. Otherwise you have to find it first, and that’s the real pain.”

Erick stared out across the land, feeling a strange pang of homesickness yet again.

The Waiting Room looked like Ar’Kendrithyst, or Stratagold, or Bluite, or any of the Geodes of Veird, where the wrought lived and grew. Mostly, it looked like Ar’Kendrithyst from before Last Shadow’s Feast, before Erick broke the Shades and Anhelia started taking over the place. Shadows and more swirled inside the crystals.

It was crystal towers. A lot of them. All orderly and organized, like rows of 250-meter-wide octagonal crystal trees that had been planted in some sort of monoculture farming pattern. They were rainbows. They were clear. They were red, purple, and black. And then they were blue and gold, or white and yellow, or orange and blue. Purple and pink. White and black. The colors changed on whims, or maybe in some unknown order. The only constant of the Waiting Room was the churn of glitter and shadow inside of every single crystal spire, and the indistinct glow of white light beyond the crystals, far, far away, past an unknown distance of air and magic in every single direction with any sort of clear line of sight at all.

From Erick and Shadow’s private entrance platform, Erick gazed out across that unknown distance, down an aisle of empty air in four directions. The crystal towers stood in orderly rows. Here and there among the towers were crossbeams of further crystal. Light and dark and magic and souls flowed through those crossbeams.

It was so much like Ar’Kendrithyst in the beginning of Erick’s time on Veird, that it really took him a moment to see the parallels. Here was a land of many, many souls, all mashed together in a cacophony known as the Dead Waiting Room, just beyond this Living space. It was apparently intelligible once you were inside, but from out here, all Erick saw was a susurrus of souls.

It was like the trillions of souls that Melemizargo had rescued from the Old Cosmology and which he kept locked in the spires of Ar’Kendrithyst for so long, hoping to one day bring them back to life. The Shades had used those souls to make shadelings all the time, or to allow for shadelings to naturally arise on their own, as they pulled themselves out of that susurrus. Here, though, there was no automatic pulling. Everyone was locked to Death until their resurrection cost was finally funded, either through personal expenditure, or through the common cause payment which took 10-ish years to happen, on average.

After Erick had evicted the Shades from Ar’Kendrithyst, those souls of the Painted Cosmology had decayed and changed into the soul slime which Jane had then killed, which had then become the first dungeon slime.

Those souls were the souls that were used in the NPC program inside every dungeon core on Veird. Or at least pieces of them were.

Erick stared out at the glittering shadows of the dead of Margleknot, and thought this whole system was like how Ar’Kendrithyst was supposed to work, and yet did not, because of Nothanganathor. Those uncountable dead of the Old Cosmology were too lost to be helped through normal methodology anymore. When Melemizargo had created the dungeon slime, had he been trying to help the Old Cosmology dead? In a way he didn’t really know how? Highly likely.

This system here was in perfect working order, and Ar’Kendrithyst was… not.

Erick stared for a long moment.

And then he looked around.

Erick looked over the edge of the platform—

A warning appeared.

There is no place in the Living Waiting Room that is more or less conducive to resurrections than anywhere else. Please do not leave your private platform. Leaving your private platform is a minor violation. Three minor violations and you will be removed and your access to the Living Waiting Room will be revoked for 1 year.

Erick complained at the words, “I’m just looking over the edge.”

The message went away.

Erick looked down. All he saw was more light and air down there. “How big is this place?”

“As big as it needs to be,” Shadow said. “According to rumor, anyway.”

Erick came back to the center of the floating platform, asking, “I was meaning to ask you: Cascadio treated you with deference. Like you were older than him? But stars are like 4 billion years old when life starts to develop around their planets, right? Is he 4 billion years old, or… What was going on there?”

Shadow smiled a little. “I don’t know how old I am, Erick. What a weird question. I’m as old as I need to be. Cascadio probably kept track of his actual age, though. It’s probably something like 3 or 4 billion, yes. Whatever his people say he is, usually.”

Erick shook his head a little. “Sometimes these numbers are just ridiculous.”

“I agree. That’s why I don’t think about them.”

“And that’s not even accounting for time travel. I’m pretty sure I’m at least 60, but I might be 64.”

“So young!” Shadow said, laughing. Still smiling, she asked, “Who are you going to search for first?”

“The potential administrators. Lanzoil, Querkooda, and Ta’Kamoil.” Erick said, “But whoever I find first is probably coming out of there first. Are you going to wait by my side? You don’t have to. I could use you in the staging area, talking with the people as they come out.”

Shadow shrugged, and then she moved her hand through the air like she was picking up something that wasn’t there, and then she did exactly that. With a mug of beer in her hand, she sat down on a chair that also simply appeared, saying, “I’m pretty sure that assassins are going to try and get you here.”

Cascadio stepped out of the air, saying, “I’m sure they will try.” The big bear of a dark-skinned god stood level with Erick… And then he realized he was standing level with Erick, and he smiled. “You got taller!”

“This is my normal height when not going incognito,” Erick said, “Anyway. Welcome, Cascadio.”

Shadow waved her beer mug as she grabbed a book out of the air and started reading, saying, “I might move back and forth between here and the resurrection island. For now, I am here.”

Erick nodded, then asked Cascadio, “The prep space?”

“All ready and waiting. I am here, and I am there. If you bring back some of my unreachable flock first, then that would be good for those who follow. I’m sure that they will have interacted with some of those on your list in the many thousands of years they’ve been trapped by Wraithborne Contract.” Cascadio said, “I fully expect some of those interactions to have been positive.”

“I can do that, too.” Erick asked, “Who first?”

“Emberpeace, Hypenade, Lurros Chet Tri, Hangu Aldu, or Withershin Shine.” Cascadio said, “Any of them would have tried to build something Good if they could have.”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author’s consent. Report any sightings.

Erick nodded. “I’ll see what I can do… But honestly, I’m going after whoever is closest, first.”

Cascadio smiled like the rise of dawn, turning to golden flame that enveloped Erick with the warmth of a new day, and a Path toward the future. His voice echoed, “Then we dive into Death, young, powerful Ascended, in order to bring forth life.”

Erick breathed out—

And then he floated outside of his body. It had happened so fast that he had not been fully prepared for it. He looked at himself, and he looked down at himself.

A golden light enveloped him; a warmth of person and purpose.

A golden light enveloped his body, which was still him.

Erick adjusted his senses back to his body—

And Erick was in his body again, looking up at a ghostly version of himself floating in the air in front of him.

Erick said, “Ah. It’s a [Familiar] spell? Or more like an [Avatar]?”

Cascadio’s voice spoke all around Erick, but also through the pendant on Erick’s chest, “Similar. But not at all. The only way to enter the Dead Waiting Room is to be brought there by a god, or be rendered dead in some other way. This is less of a projection of life, and more of a projection of death. Most people are highly vulnerable as a ghost, but that’s ‘most people’. You, specifically, should only take… twenty times more damage? I am estimating, here. You are very powerfully built, Ascended Flatt.”

Erick chuckled and returned his senses to his ghost—

And spoke from the air like a soft whisper of a life gone by, “You’re powerfully built yourself.”

Cascadio laughed joyfully, and then he calmed. His voice turned whispery, “Shadow will hear everything said, except for this, and what you don’t want me to tell her. She is still a fine ally to have when paths align, but she is crafty and not-Good.”

Erick smiled at the care in the god’s voice. He quietly said to Cascadio, “I know. Your concern is charming and heard loud and clear. Thank you.”

Cascadio nodded without nodding at all.

And Erick floated forward, toward the nearest crystal, toward the rainbow surface filled with glitter and shadow and—

– – – –

Erick slapped down onto broken asphalt in a dim city.

A light flickered overhead. Wetness soaked into his jeans… He was wearing jeans? And a teeshirt. The light overhead was a streetlamp. The dim city was an Earth city and the sky was so very familiar with stars that Erick hadn’t seen in an age. Erick rapidly realized a few things. His Status worked fine. His Lightning Path was still there, arcing into a distance. He was alive and intact and inside the Dead Waiting Room, and yet not. He was also inside of his own memories, in the first room of the Dead Waiting room; his own room.

That sky up there was the North American sky over Michigan in Autumn, and this city around Erick was an amalgamation of a few different places. There was Erick’s childhood home. Over there were the dormitories where he had stayed at college. Over there was the orange stone house from Spur.

The sky was not actually a fully North American sky, either, with the Big Dipper and Orion. It had those stars, but it also had the Bucket and the Spearing Lion of Veird’s night sky.

It was an amalgamation of places. It was Erick’s ‘safe space’ that he could retreat to if the normal cacophony of the Dead Waiting Room got to him. Everyone who entered this place got one of these safe zones. Except, they weren’t really safe zones.

Erick extended his mana senses outward—

That didn’t work, actually.

Right. Nothing worked like it should here. Not exactly.

The only magic that worked here was resonwork and frameshifting-soulwork. That was one of the reasons that Wraithborne was so good at this place; at this land of Soul Magic.

Gods helped people return to life from the Waiting Room in more or less even amounts on the Good-Evil spectrum, and there were lots of organizations on all sides of Margleknot that worked this land to find people, but the fact was that the number of Soul Mages on the side of Good did not add up to a tenth as many soul mages on the side of Evil. It was for that reason that Evil would always rise above Good when it came to truly understanding the soul, and working the Dead Waiting room. This was because Evil did not care about the souls of others as anything other than a thing to be used. As long as a victim didn’t get soul-sundered, a Soul Mage could fuck as many people up as they wanted to acquire proficiency at Soul Magic. Good people had standards of care.

That was why Cascadio had asked Erick to consider expanding his soul-rescue plan many times larger than his initial 120-ish soul goal—

Erick put that stuff out of his mind. He was busy. He had goals. It was time to get to those goals.

The first step was frameshifting himself out of this personal space. To do that, Erick imagined himself as here, in the Dead Waiting Room. Not inside a memory of his own making.

Erick stared into the land around him, and then he slowly closed his eyes, not all the way at all, but merely mostly, manifesting the shift—

Flames rolled in from every horizon, like the rising of a great, burning sun.

And then the flames were there, and they were warm.

Through barely-closed eyelids, cacophonous existence assaulted Erick from every side and every sense. It was loud with ten billion voices screaming, talking, laughing, shouting, roaring, whispering, saying unkind things and saying brilliant loving things all at once. Erick cracked open his eyes and saw the madhouse colors of the Dead Waiting Room. He felt the ripping finger touches of others on every exposed part of his flesh. He felt the heat of Cascadio all around him, keeping him himself. And then Erick closed his eyes fully.

He pulled in the fire. He pulled in the light.

He shifted his sense of the world around him, attempting to experience the Dead Waiting Room as a single sort of existence, instead of ten trillion ways to live all at once. A single form of existence would have to cover a lot of ground in order to make sense of all of this, though.

Erick imagined Ar’Kendrithyst, with its tall towers and dead souls and bright sun overhead and red/purple shadows and Dark—

The madhouse shifted.

Soft breezes touched his skin, and everything was still.