268, 1/2

Erick instantly put up a [Hasted Shelter] around the vast swath of his gate space inside Benevolence Itself, encompassing all of his family and a good hundred kilometers out, his Authority over the space feeling rather absolute in that expression of power. He wasn’t sure when the war would start, but he was going to take some time and reconnect with everyone he loved…

Most everyone.

Kiri was absent. As were everyone else from the House. Zolan and Mox. Burhendurur, Aisha, Volaro, Raingorl. Poi’s sister and Teressa’s husband were absent, too.

Yggdrasil grew over there, but his avatar wasn’t here. He was probably busy, though.

Ahhh… This was mostly everyone, and that was good enough.

Erick hugged Ophiel more, and Ophiel talked of everything that had happened, and Erick only knew some of it because Yggdrasil had only spoken of some of it—

“Wait. That part.” Erick asked, “About Oozy Stormcaller? What’s that? I told Melemizargo about him before all of this stuff. What happened to him now?”

Orange Ophiel excitedly said, “He’s the Avatar of Nothanganathor!”

Blue Ophiel said, “One of his avatars.”

“The main one,” Jane said, silencing all other talk. “He’s also gone. Everbless vanished, too, and we haven’t been able to find either of them and we’re pretty sure they’re not on Veird anymore. They’re probably on Fenrir. Our expeditions to that place have been difficult, to say the least. We have schedules of people leaving, but we have only fragments of memory of sending anyone, with Yggdrasil telling us not to send anyone again. We don’t send people out there anymore.”

So that was terrifying.

Kinda expected. Still terrifying.

Erick had one hand around his back, holding up Purple Ophiel who was currently hanging onto Erick’s neck with his arms, while his other arm was weighed down by Green and Yellow Ophiel. Erick made a decision. Then he said, “Nothanganathor hasn’t been allowed to kill Veird, because he wants to stay in the good graces of Margleknot… And I see most of those words are a surprise, so I guess Yggdrasil hasn’t been able to tell you all much?” Erick rapidly moved on, “So we’re fighting a defensive war. Protecting the ways in, disallowing certain magics, etcetera. I believe that Yggdrasil and myself can protect one Veird. As soon as we have more people from here that can protect more, then we’ll be protecting more. As soon as we can strike back, we’re striking back. Nothanganathor is a mastermind planner, but it’s taken him almost 12,000 years to get to this point, so we might have a little bit of time.

“Nothanganthor gave me a week’s time frame before he starts doing shit, but I don’t believe that at all.”

“A much more likely scenario is that he will strike within hours, while I am deep in a get-together with this family. So we’re going to do this, but it’s going to be fast.”

Everyone recognized the need for that. Ophiel gradually slipped away from Erick to stand strong.

And then Erick smiled, ruffled Ophiel’s hair, hugged him fast, and then said to everyone, “Hugs first, though! And I got power ups for everyone! Those powerups are kinda scattered all over, but we’ll get to them soon enough.”

And then Erick went right to Quilatalap, to look the big guy in the eyes, to feel his heart beat hard and see Quilatalap’s eyes light up wonderfully as they got closer together. Erick wrapped Quilatalap in his arms, and Quilatalap chuckled as he hugged Erick back.

He was warm.

After a long moment, Quilatalap said, “Welcome back, Erick. I missed you.”

“It’s good—” Erick choked up for a moment. “It’s good to be back.” He pulled back and kissed Quilatalap on the lips. They would be doing a lot more than that later but this was good enough for now. “Love you. I missed you, too. I heard I was gone for a year and change?”

“It’s been about 2 years now. There have been some Time Magics on this side of the equation, but I heard there were some on your end, too?” Quilatalap said, “It’s been pretty crazy. Not too crazy that I didn’t have time to make a bunch of food, waiting for today. I made practically everything you can think of, and in great quantities, too.”

Erick smiled wide. “I’ve got a lot of surprises for you, later, too.”

“I look forward to them,” Quilatalap said, smirking.

Jane cleared her throat.

Erick rapidly turned to his family, and to Jane, rushing to them to hug them and talk and catch up.

Soon, food came out and Solomon spoke of warfronts and Quiet/Forever Wars and Erick mentioned a few things about valkyries. Every single Jane-derived person and the original all scoffed at that, and then Solomon started talking about how Erick had really leaned in to the whole ‘Norse shtick’, hadn’t he.

“Ha! I even sacrificed my ‘eye’ —that All Seeing Eye— when I Ascended, so yeah.” Erick laughed over a plate of mashed potatoes and so much great gravy. “Kinda!”

“And Nothanganathor is the wyrm that eats the universe,” Jane said, frowning a little over her plate of meat.

Destiny waved her knife around and strongly said, “If he tries to eat Veird it means we’ll be that much closer to his heart.” And then she made a stabbing motion with the butter blade.

Erick chuckled, and so did some others, but the Janes were serious. Poi and Teressa were serious, too.

Erick stated, “Nothanganathor will not win this war. We will not roll over and die. We will exterminate him here, and everywhere else— Ah. I just realized. Poi. I can’t [Telepathy] you without running the risk of a few possible weirdities, right now, so did you pick up anything from Yggdrasil? He should have been limited in communications while I was gone, but now he should be fully open? Maybe regarding the information I distributed to everyone, and also the minds of the valkyries?”

Everyone looked to Poi.

Poi looked like he had some small thoughts that he had been waiting to share for a long time, and now it was time to share them. Poi said, “Your information is being curated by Ascendant Prime. Preliminary information was supposed to go out 30 minutes after your arrival, but we’re in a [Hasted Shelter] and last I heard there was a lot more information than anyone expected. So we haven’t gotten any of the big stuff. Yggdrasil has been drip feeding us major points for the last two years, but we’re absolutely sure that he used some Time Magic when he divulged information that he shouldn’t have divulged, in order to go back in time and erase ever having given us that information. He was limited, and it wasn’t by his own choice. He was being controlled by someone far beyond himself.”

Yes; Yggdrasil had been controlling himself…

The people here didn’t see it that way, though. Everyone at the very large table, out under the Benevolent Sky, was pretty worried about all of that; about the implications Poi was suggesting. Except for Ophiel.

Red Ophiel said, “Yggdrasil is just a doodoo head! He didn’t mean anything malicious about it!”

Not everyone believed Ophiel at all. A few of his selves didn’t quite believe what he was saying, either; or maybe those faces were simply the faces of self doubt. Probably self doubt, now that Erick was really looking.

Shit.

Was it really that bad while Erick had been gone?

Erick said, “We did a ritual to prevent Nothanganathor from Erasing people, like how he Erased Debby, and Yggdrasil was a part of that. Did he really lose so much trust for you all to think this way, and yet he was still trusted by Rozeta, Melemizargo, and Fairy Moon?”

After saying that, everyone was slightly less worried about Yggdrasil.

Poi said, “Facts remain facts. He used Time Magic to subvert events.”

Jane clarified, “He sent ten thousand troops to die against an incursion in the upper levels, with Nothor Beasts raging unchecked in the back lines. 32,000 people died by the end of that event— that we know of. It was a massacre. Every altercation with the Red is a massacre of unknown proportions, as some people simply never exist; eaten by the Red Sparks.”

Before Erick got really worried—

Solomon clarified, “Yggdrasil gave us good information. We failed to act on that information correctly, only realizing what he meant after the events happened.”

Destiny looked to Jane, saying, “Those troops did their job. They stopped the Claw from forming.”

“And it could have been a lot easier if—” Jane cut herself off.

Silence.

Erick wasn’t sure what a Claw was, but he could guess easily enough. He could also tell this was an old argument. To be sure of what he was seeing, though, he asked, “So Yggdrasil told you to defend a spot, and you defended it, but not as well as it could have been defended?”

Poi said, “Yes. He could have told us about certain obvious elements in the backlines that are painfully obvious in retrospect… And we think he did. And then he undid that telling… Or Phagar did. We’re not sure. Honestly, Erick. It’s been… Difficult.”

Solomon said, “Strained.”

Teressa said, “The Benevolent Sky is all fucked up, Erick.”

Teressa’s daughter, Lenitha, repeated after her mother, “Sky’s fucked up!”

Teressa nodded, softly saying, “That’s a powerful word, now, Lenitha. Don’t go saying it unless you really mean it.”

“I know, mommy!”

Evan said, “The House is having trouble, with the minotaur schism and the assassinations. The Overseers survived, but Zolan was crippled. He’s still recovering his memories.”

Destiny said, “Those fuckers at Death’s Throne turned Red briefly, too, before we exploded that part of the world. Quintlan has a great big hole in the center of it now, and so does the upper layer, and all the way down to the close Underworld.”

Quilatalap said, “They deserved it for abandoning this world for promises of another. I apologize for not annihilating them with you sooner.”

Silence. Nobody quite knew what to say to Quilatalap’s apology.

Quilatalap had had a strained relationship with everyone here, hadn’t he? Ah, shit.

And then Candice said, “You were busy with the Red Beasts. Quilatalap. We all had shit on our plate.”

That seemed to heal some bridges.

Jane still looked like she had a bridge on fire, though.

Erick made a decision. He said, “It sounds to me like Yggdrasil did what he could in order to play both sides of the coin because he needed to do that to allow for the victories we will have going forward, and that a lot happened that I am not aware of. Yggdrasil won’t be playing any sides anymore. He’s here, and he’s fully for the defense of Veird, just like me, just like everyone here.

“Things are complicated up there. Things are complicated down here, too. I really want to hear about whatever happened at Quintlan and all the rest, but first: I’m going to start at the beginning. I’m going to tell you everything that happened, and you can ask questions, but I will be as brief as I can.” With great aura control, Erick cast some lightward images on both sides of the table, so no one needed to turn around to see what he was saying. He began, “So I started on Fenrir, which I learned later took me a year and a half to land upon for some reason, and now it’s 2 years since I left, which is some more lost time somehow, but continuing… So [Duplicate] is really useful for being out in the middle of nothing, and then came mana production and collection…”

Erick rapidly moved through his Ascension, talking in mostly broad strokes about how he went with an infinitely dense core. That was primarily for Destiny and Solomon’s use, and both of them looked highly interested in that, but Quilatalap was fascinated, too. Erick decided he’d be telling them all about that in more detail later.

For now, Erick moved on to the first ‘fight’ with Nothanganathor—

Jane interrupted, “Dad. Do the one display and we’ll turn the table or something. I feel like I’m missing a lot if I don’t watch both, or that one of them is going to turn into an actual threat. We’ve had stuff like that happen before.”

Erick paused. He looked around. “Really? I mean… I can see it on your faces. I just didn’t expect— Ah. It’s a fae-like name-calling thing, isn’t it.”

Solomon said, “Displays of the wyrm have a way of turning real.”

Candice suddenly asked, “Is he a fae, dad? We’ve had debates about that.”

“No. He is not fae.” Erick said, “The scale of power goes ‘mortal-ascended-fae’, in that order. Gods are outside of the scale, and mostly weak because they don’t take direct action. I’m at the high-end of Ascended. Wizards are at the high-end of mortals.” Erick said, “Tell me about this image-attack.”

Some unsure relief passed through the group as most of them reoriented themselves on the new power scale.

And then Jane said, “The white Void Wall around Eralis in the Songli Highlands came to Red life after you left. It tried to eat Rozeta’s temple and Nirzir. Nirzir fought it off, but not without Phagar’s direct help. Eralis had been a bastion of protection before that. Now it’s a population crisis. Most people have moved away.” She added, “Phagar appointed Nirzir as his Champion after that. Phagar’s been a big help for the truly dangerous things.”

Erick breathed deep. “Oh. Shit.” Erick had a lot of complicated emotions about that. “Congrats to her, then. Um.” Erick got up from the table and said, “Let’s move some things around. Nothanganathor isn’t here though. My Authority in this place is rather absolute. He’s not here.”

Jane said, “Ophiel rescues a lot of people from the Red Sparks to this place. It’s a great temporary shelter.” She got up. “Still rather not have displays of the Red Wyrm on both sides.”

Erick nodded. They reorganized the table, and soon they were all watching one lightshow display in front of them, and Erick paid special attention to see if Nothanganathor was counter-scrying through his magic. He didn’t seem to be, but Erick stopped showing the man’s true leviathan face after Jane’s request.

Erick continued with the story.

Soon, Erick was at the part where he did the Margleknot Emergency Response Communication Yorddle, and what that all meant, while handing out notes on Layers and the Universe to everyone. He didn’t have any paper so he had to make some of that himself in the moment, so he simply used some resons to conjure paper from thin air, taking it from some universe that wasn’t using it.

Which brought Red Sparks into the space.

Erick ruthlessly crushed the Red, saying, “Well fuck you too, Nothanganathor. So that’s a trap there. Don’t use resons without specifically targeting a universe that doesn’t have his influence. Like this.” Erick raised his hand and pulled some paper out of the air, and this time the paper was perfectly normal and clear of influence… it had also cost a good 25 resons to do that. “So that should have cost 1 reson, since I was plucking from side realities in this Layer, but it cost 25, which means that other side realities are pretty far away from this slice of reality.”

Destiny nodded as Erick spoke, and then said, “Wizardry has gotten harder.”

“I’m surprised you could do that at all,” Solomon said. “Without inviting the Red in.”

Jane asked, “You’ve quantified Wizardry?”

Erick said, “No. That wasn’t Wizardry—” Destiny was about to argue, and she’d be right to argue, but Erick looked to her and rapidly added, “It was close, but it wasn’t Wizardry. They’re the same thing, but different. Maybe resonwork is Small Wizardry? I’m not sure. What I did was pull from side realities with resons. Grand Wizardry is more an expression of Authority, I would say. Resons are merely the magic of the Fractal Universe—” Erick panicked as he realized something.

The valkyries would have used some resons naturally, just to do stuff that they normally did. They knew it would be harder to do that sort of thing here, and a lot of them weren’t very good at that magic yet, but resons were the innate magic of this universe, and so people in-the-know about all that would use resons when they wanted to do stuff.

And Erick’s valkyries were in-the-know.

“I need to check on—” Erick rapidly stepped away from the table and opened a portal to the valkyrie center, saying, “—the valkyries… which are fine.”

Through a distortion of time, there was Aloethag, all orcolish, and Phagar, looking like Erick, sitting in a fractal waiting area, in front of the valkyrie center. They were having tea with each other on a nice white table, along with a few others. There was Nirzir and some orcols from Treehome, along with Shivraa.

Phagar, Aloethag, and Nirzir were the only ones moving at a normal speed. Everyone else was slowed down to 1/60th time. This was because Erick was viewing them at an increased time rate, and when someone viewed the God of Time with Time, then Phagar easily looked back at whoever was looking at him. All gods did that, of course, but Phagar did this more than all the rest.

Champion Nirzir seemed able to do this, too. She rapidly turned around when Erick opened the portal. She smiled and said, “Erick!”

Phagar interrupted, “We’ve caught all the problems that could have happened here with this resonwork magic. It’s a problem we’ve been working on for two years now, and we expected your people to try it, so we were ready for it. Take your time with your family.”

Erick sighed in relief. He smiled, and said, “Hello, Nirzir. Hello, Aloethag, Phagar. Thanks for watching out for this. I wasn’t aware that resonwork would be trapped.”

Phagar said, “You’ve got some time to fix that. We hope you have a truly good solution, because we haven’t been able to find one. As for the war: We expect Claws to descend in 6 real hours, which means it could happen between 4 and 8 hours from now, or 10 days at your current rate of time alteration. The timeframe of arrival gets smaller and smaller as we get closer and closer, which is why I can only give you an estimation. We’d like you there to combat a few of them. See what you can do. But until then, take some time with your family. You got about a week at your current rate of acceleration.”

Erick felt supreme relief. “Thank you. We won’t take all that time.”

Phagar nodded.

Aloethag asked, “I’m—”

Sumtir, the God of Righteous War, appeared on the other side of the portal, in the tea-time meeting, saying, “I love everything about the valkyries. They will be fantastic warriors. They are Propagation, though, so they are disallowed. However you manage to make it work, my generals will want to be a part of this magic.”

The God of Righteous War was adamant in his suggestion/demand.

Erick had no problem saying, “Of course.”

Aloethag said, “I want to help with this magic, Erick. With as much Carnage and Blood that is inside this magic, I can easily connect it to the Red Dream. This spell will never go wayward if you do this.” Aloethag added, “But I want the spell pledged to me.”

“Sorry, Aloethag,” Erick said, feeling glad that he could be completely honest here, “The spell is already pledged to the defense of the universe under the Fractal, and they already cleared up all those sorts of issues.” He said to everyone, “It won’t be allowed here on Veird, where my Siphon seems artificially minimized, but it’ll work well outside of Veird, which is where it needs to work. We’ll talk more about that later. I’m catching up with my family. Thank you for ensuring that the stuff I brought with me isn’t a problem. I foresaw many issues, but not the reson issue.”

Sumtir and Aloethag looked like they both had more words to have over that proclamation—

But Phagar moved on, saying, “The side-slices of Veird are all infected minimally. It started a while ago, and we believed it was to corrupt all attempts at Small Wizardry. We didn’t have the words to understand what was happening until today. Think of a fix, if you can, Erick.”

Erick said, “Let’s put that on the docket as the next thing to fix, to make the ways in harder.”

Phagar nodded. “We have some good news: there have been many attempted ‘Erasures’ but all of them were thwarted. The people still got damaged heavily by Nothor Beasts and other workings of Malevolence, but Rozeta patched-in some Child Protections for anyone who was affected. [Greater Treat Wounds] on everyone suffering from a Malevolence attack was enough to end that secondary threat.” He added, “You could work for years to fix things and still not be done, so go be with your family for now, Erick. We’ve got this.”

Erick was a little nervous, but not overmuch. He nodded. He closed the portal. He turned back to his family, and sat back down, saying, “I wasn’t aware resonwork was trapped. We’ll be fixing that soon.”

Solomon asked, “How would you fix that?”

Erick cast some imagery into the air, and began, “At first thought, I’ll be making Benevolence mana-dungeons and then attaching them to this spell called [Spellsurge Weave] along with [Benevolent Cleanse], and…”

The magic talk didn’t last too long, because Erick could see that Jane, Poi, and Evan wanted to get back to the tactical information regarding Margleknot.

So Erick got back to the story.

– – – –

Eventually, Erick spoke of his first meeting with Nothanganathor and the following events with the Fae Council, in complete detail.

Solomon sat back in his chair, saying, “Fuck. I’m even more angry now. The fucker really did tank your entire Wraithborne anti-Contract strategy, didn’t he?”

Erick said, “Wraithborne might be speaking to Tir Geal now that I’m not there, but yeah.”

Erick continued, speaking of fallouts and otherwise.

Eventually, he was done.

Dinner was long done by then, which was a good thing. Erick had ruined all of Quilatalap’s great meal with his terrible news and debriefing, but he would make it up to the man later as much as he could. He would find a way to make up for the Shadow-betrothal-thing, too.

But for now, Erick said, “I’m sorry for ruining the great meal, Quilatalap.”

Quilatalap blinked as he processed that apology, along with all the other stuff he was processing. “Don’t worry about it. I have more in other places for us to share.” And then he went silent again, to stare at the image of Nothanganathor’s avatar, floating in front of the table.

Everyone was silent.

Erick waited.

And then Jane spoke for all of her siblings, it seemed, as she spoke on a topic that everyone had avoided like the plague when it had come up.

“Of course mom’s a Malevolent bitch. I’d believe that more than anything else.” And then Jane stood, and said, “Okay! So! Let’s break for talks. Guys?” She looked to her siblings.

People moved.

In small discussions here and there, everyone spoke about everything that they had learned, and about how that lined up with what was happening on Veird.

Erick went into the house. Quilatalap followed.

When they were relatively alone, Erick wrapped Quilatalap in a hug and then held him for a while.

Quilatalap held Erick in turn.

Erick said, “So I’m betrothed. Sorry.”

Quilatalap chuckled. “You can make it up to me later, in private.”

Erick felt warm again.

And Quilatalap grinned.

– – – –

The rapid consensus was that if they hadn’t heard it all from Erick, they would not believe it.

Poi said, “I still don’t believe it all. Nothing in the Crossroads says anything about this stuff. It’s like you stepped out of some ‘Other Layer’… And I suppose you did.”

The two of them sat next to each other under a big tree, for Erick wanted to do some [Telepathy] work. And he also wanted to just talk to Poi.

Erick said, “Yggdrasil told you all some of this stuff, right?”

“In the broadest of strokes. ‘The enemy is out there and powerful and here are some measures you can take to avoid him’ sort of strokes. He was not forthcoming. Not entirely.”

Poi was having a lot of trouble right now, and Erick knew that most of that trouble came from him not being able to passively read Erick like he always used to do. For a Mind Mage, not being able to sense the mind of another was like someone brandishing an open knife. Poi might not have been able to read Erick right now, but Erick wasn’t doing anything to hide his own emotions on his own face, so Poi picked up on that much at least.

Poi said, “And it’s really hard to see you as you like this. I know you’ve probably already empathy-read me that way, which is why I guess you’re approaching me first after the talk… It’s hard to believe we have little ‘Fractal Marks’ inside of us all, too.”

Erick smiled softly. “See? You don’t need telepathy to read me that well at all!”

“Har har,” Poi sarcastically said… And then he softened. “It’s good you’re back.”

“I missed you, too, Poi.”

Poi chuckled once. And then he breathed, and asked, “So where do you want to start with this whole thing?”

“I want you to be able to read me, and then tell me if you can mind control me at all, and maybe not in that order. We’ll see what happens. But I do want you to do everything you can to try and influence me mentally.”

Poi breathed deep. “… Thought you might say that. Is your goal here to learn Mind Magic?”

“Hmm… Somewhat. Not really. I’m not sure. This is going to get complicated.”

Poi nodded. “Give me the complicated.”

Erick began, “Until new information presents itself I’m 95% certain that Nothanganathor cannot do Mind Magic like you can, for a variety of reasons, but he can still notice Mind Magic being done.

“Basically, Nothanganathor has a Fractal Mark, a Dark Mark, and probably more Marks that may or may not matter, but I can’t plan on those other ones; I can only plan around the Fractal and the Dark.

“Everyone on Veird who uses any sort of Mind Magic at all has a Dark Mark in them, which is the thing that makes mana, but also a Fractal Mark, inside [Telepathy] and such. It’s a mutated mark, but it’s still a Big Deal. Perhaps Mind Mages have a more basic Mark inside of them; I don’t know, I’m not a Mind Mage, and I can’t really see your soul all that well and I’m not about to be invasive about my search just yet.

“Anyway: I need to have some way to interact in the mental-arena that allows me a weapon to use against him, and a weapon to protect myself from whatever his ‘Sign of Power’ can do. I assume it consumes people who he has weakened first, or something like that; like a Mind Mage that consumes the minds of others.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“That’s the theory.

“Now here’s the evidence for that theory:

“The Fractal Universe does not give out Marks like the Dark gives out Marks, with every single person touched by mana going on to produce mana through the Dark. The Fractal Universe is actually quite picky about their Marks. I don’t think Nothanganathor had a Mark at all, but instead he has stolen Margleknot’s Mark, and that Mark was already made to do a few things, like contain lives and memories.

“And Nothanganathor can’t adjust it that much. Sure, he adjusted it to eat the Painted Cosmology, but he can’t use it normally.

“It is because his Fractal Mark —which is about connecting and communication— is consumptive and containment-oriented, that he could eat timelines when people spoke of the Red, back when talking about the Red was a problem, and why Mind Mages were hit particularly hard when they encountered that Anti-Meme, because Mind Mages were naturally interacting with another Fractal Mark when they interacted with that particular Anti-Meme, and there was some sort of resonance-eating happening there.

“So opening my own [Telepathy] spell and taking the Mark out of there to use it as-is would probably not work out very well, for a variety of reasons. The Mark of the Mind Mages seems particularly susceptible to Nothanganathor’s influence, because he completely Erased all the options that made the Mind Mage Mark able to fight him.

“And so, I want to make my Mark the opposite of susceptible to him.

“I’m not sure how to do that.

“So I want you to hit me with some Mind Magic and see what happens. This is very basic testing, at the moment. Advanced testing would be me trying to purchase more Mind Magics from the Script to try and pull them apart and see what makes them all tick, in order to build an anti-Nothanganathor Fractal Mark… or something like that.

“And yet, that may or may not be the way forward, to make Mind Mages truly strong against Nothanganathor.

“The original Fractal Mark that Melemizargo used to make Mind Magic was incredibly vulnerable to Nothanganathor once it was outside of Melemizargo’s direct oversight. What you all have today is an evolutionary result of what remains beyond Melemizargo’s direct protection. I clearly need to be having this conversation with him, too, but I’ll have big conversations with him later, and I don’t want to get into it with him right now.

“And so, I might ask you to let me see your soul later, to look at your own Mark directly, but the Script obfuscates the soul a whole lot more than I knew it did. Right now your soul is all cloudy. That’s not how it is outside the Script.” Erick said, “My own soul seems unchanged, though the edges of it are kinda cloudy.

“Real souls are all glitter-crystal and incredibly easy to see, once you start Looking.”

Poi listened, and Erick could tell that he was purposefully remembering everything Erick said, both because it was important, and also Poi was kinda terrified at all of Erick’s tearing-down of everything that Mind Mages thought they were. Incredibly strong against everyone? No, not really. ‘Bred to be easy to control’ was more correct.

Other people in other groups had stopped talking to listen in.

Way over there, Jane softly said to her group, “Well that’s fucking nuts.”

Erick remembered something. He called out to the Janes and Evan, “Oh yeah, you guys! I have really special spiders for all of you! They make the strongest, best threads known in the universe! The spiders and the threads are unbreakable unless exposed to destructive resonwork and if they break then they just regrow with an application of one’s own resons. The spiders are kinda cute, but the fabric is absolutely amazing. I’ll have to show you my outfits sometimes! Really great stuff.”

And now they were distracted in much better ways.

Erick turned back to Poi, smirking a little. Erick was there for Poi, but Poi was still on his own to deal with what Erick had told him.

Poi steeled himself; to lock away all his thoughts of Marks and evolutionary mutation and interactions with Nothanganathor. “Thanks for the theories. I’ll be talking to others about them. Moving on to [Mind Control].” He asked, “You sure about this?”

“Do it.”

Poi reached out with his tendrils of thought and plunged them into Erick’s body… and he only got half a millimeter in. Less than that, actually. Poi frowned. He pulled back. He said, “Okay. So. First problem. It’s like sticking a finger against a solid wall. That’s… not how a mind usually is. That’s not even how a Shade is. This is completely new territory for me.”

“That’s the infinite density; the out-flowing river.” Erick glanced at his Status. “Try again.”

Poi tried again. Ten seconds later he stopped. “I don’t think I can get in at all.”

Erick said, “I don’t think you can, either, which is both good and bad. You know how I said I gave myself a mini-Script with ‘Psyche’ as the mental resource? You were knocking a few hundred points of damage against that wall with every attempt.”