268, 2/2

Erick stood near the deep waters of the central fountain of Benevolence Itself. The ground was hexagonal white stone, just like it was everywhere else, but there was a lot more greenery growing around here. That greenery formed a carpet of moss and grass and mushrooms and small trees all around the fountain.

Erick quietly asked, “Rozeta? I want to clean up Veird, now.”

Rozeta appeared, looking a little worse for wear than when Erick had last seen her. “What is the goal for today, Erick?”

“Stability, solidity, and a foundation on which to counter Nothanganathor.”

Rozeta nodded. “Okay. How?”

Erick held up a hand and produced a copy of his [Infinite Imaging] spell.

Rozeta stilled, her eyes going wide.

Erick said, “I based my Ascension on the stuff that the Script gave me.” He let go, and the Benevolence crystal hovered there. He pulled out a copy of [Spellsurge Weave] next. It looked almost the same as the first one, but Rozeta instantly noticed the difference, her countenance going from quietly elated to strongly worried. She glanced between Erick and the [Spellsurge Weave]. Erick said, “Can you use these?”

“They could end all life on this planet.”

“Yes. If the wrong spell is attached.”

“No. I mean—” Rozeta said, “It’ll open up rifts everywhere, and the Red will spill forth like an Ending. This is the other half of your Valkyrie magic, isn’t it.”

“Ah. That. Yes. That is true, too. I’m aware of the Red in the side dimensions. This spell will save all life on this planet, though, because I’m going to use it with this.” Erick produced a copy of [Benevolent Cleanse]. “This balances out the world, heavily decreasing Malevolence while leaving Benevolence alone, which means that the Benevolence is free to act upon the Malevolence as is its nature, which should put it ahead of Malevolence by a lot. It worked on the Nothor Beasts I pulled out of my own spellwork, after I Ascended. It should work here. The valkyries don’t come in till later.” Erick said, “What I need from you is to know if this will disrupt anything on Veird, or in the Core. I imagine it will break a lot. I wasn’t able to do this on Margleknot but I am going to do this here, when the world is ready for it.” Erick asked, “Are there any experiments out there that can be killed, for now? Or can we do this?”

Rozeta took a moment.

Erick added to her worries, saying, “And then I’d like to put a [Hasted Shelter] across all of Veird, to give us months and months between attacks.”

Rozeta allowed herself to be distracted with the topic of a [Hasted Shelter]. “We tried that Shelter idea already. It gave us a month of calm, and then Nothanganathor broke through the dilation in pieces without us knowing. He twisted Veird’s [Haste] into a [Slow] for us and a Haste for him. Solomon and Destiny had to do some Wizardry to get us out of that. That’s why Quintlan is missing its center; Nothanganathor won over the liches and we had to purge them all.”

“That’s the first war we have to win, then; a war of Time.” Erick said, “We’re going to get there after [Benevolent Cleanse]ing Veird.”

“… Okay. What’s your full plan?”

Erick breathed out, relaxing some. “Eventually, I want your help figuring out how to put manaminers into normal people to make them ‘False Ascended’, or whatever you want to call it, so that they can operate independently and protected from Malevolence or other dangerous magics. They will become our ingress into Nothanganathor’s domain. That’s for the future, though. Step Three, if you want to call it that.

“Step One is probably the most complicated with the most moving parts, because this step is us reaching across the nearby slices of this Layer of infinity to clean them up with Weavers auto-cleansing Malevolence. From there, we begin actively killing a lot of things that are immune to the [Cleanse]s.

“Step Two is a [Hasted Shelter] for all of Veird. Glad to know you all tried that some. That is probably what accounts for much of the missing time between when I left and when I came back. We can fix whatever systems broke and then re-do that.

“With those steps complete, we should have more time to do a lot of things. I would call this the intermediary stage, when we’re fighting against Nothanganathor’s attempts to fuck up our defenses.

“During this time, I will be cleaning up Kirginatharp’s Dragon Curse, freeing him and Veird of that plot from so long ago, while also ending a few other problems, like the Forever War. If the angels and demons won’t listen to reason I will simply Valkyrie them all into new lives, and End their rivalries in a combination of Exalted and Vile at the same time.

“Eventually, we’ll be defended enough so that we can move on to Step Three, which is real Ascended and however many False Ascended we can make, that all have untouchable mini-Scripts implanted in them, like how I did for myself.

“When Step Three is achieved, we move to Step Four; the counter offensive.

“That’s when the war really starts; when we’re on FENRIR and fighting multiversal enemies, because by then Nothanganathor will take us seriously, if he hasn’t already.” Erick said, “That’s probably when he’ll start pulling out all the big shit that he has told me he ‘does not want to use’, but like I fucking believe that!” Erick’s anger ran away with him and he let it. “Fucking asshole bastard is a complete fucking liar-by-halves. Told me he’d give me a week before he started fighting me! A week! But he’s been picking off SO MANY PEOPLE WHILE I WAS GONE.” Lightning flickered from Erick’s skin and clothes to dance across the ground, leaving black trails— And then Erick dashed his anger and quietly said, “I’m going to annihilate him, Rozeta. Help me do that.”

Rozeta had been rapidly calculating things as Erick spoke, her worry multiplying a great deal at the mention of her son, Kirginatharp. At Erick’s anger, Rozeta turned fearful. But then Erick asked for her help, all her worries were laid to rest. At realizing that Erick wasn’t going to make a move on Kirginatharp except to help him, a great deal of Rozeta’s worries fell to the side and she let out an anger to mirror Erick’s own.

There was so much that had happened to Veird while Erick was away. He had seen a hundredth of it, or less; he had no idea. But Rozeta had seen it all. Since the Sundering, until now. Her son made a pawn, her other son made a different sort of pawn. Her very work on the Script undermined. Not everything since the Sundering had been Nothanganathor’s fault; that was giving him too much credit. But a lot had been his fault.

Erick had a rage within him, but Rozeta’s rage was so deep that no mortal could ever hope to know its depths.

The Goddess of the Script quietly said, “We’re going to do worse than annihilate him.” And then she reined in her anger, like the closing of blinds on house windows. She still raged inside, but it was impossible to see when she didn’t want it seen. With grace, she said, “There are some things to know before we start.”

Erick contained his anger, too. He nodded.

“The Old [Cleanse] and a bunch of other spells were sources of Nothor Beasts, as you know, most of them appearing when people came in for Status Resets and those old spells were purged from their souls. It wasn’t till later that these purges collected into the truly smart Nothor Beasts; the sources of the Claws and otherwise.

“We gods cannot make our own magics for the Script. Long ago, we decided to disallow that. It’s not actually a choice of ours that we must use mortals to make magic; we specifically cannot fix anything ourselves. It’s a part of the God Pact, too. Melemizargo has been an exception, of course, but not through any fault of mine trying to stop him all the time.

“Mortals, like you, have to make magic that we then share with the world.

“But while we cannot make magic, we can certainly disallow it, and that is what we had to do for certain spells.

“[Cleanse] is one of these spells.

“We disallowed that when things got bad and we figured out what was wrong.

“This broke a great many systems, like the [World Cleanse] that we used at the end of Forgotten Campaigns and in the beginning, when the Script needed it to clean up monumental problems, like widespread poisons. More recently, there were the Particle Magic mistakes.

“Idyrvamikor made that original spell, you know? My son—” Rozeta wiped away a tear, then moved on, “That [Cleanse] Archmage over in the Warlord Clans of Ooloraptoor made a new version that she used herself for a long while; for years and years. I believe you knew her. Koori Pale Cow. I got her to donate her spell to the Script, and then I instructed her how to make a much better one.

“She was Erased an hour later, before she could give me the proper version. You are among the very few who remember her.”

Erick felt a touch of cold hate pass through him at knowing that Koori Pale Cow was gone forever.

Rozeta continued, “Koori’s [Cleanse] only cleans off surface grime, while balancing the mana among the primary 6. It does nothing against anything else.

“[World Cleanse] is gone; I had to rip out that system completely. The Core… A lot has been damaged, Erick, and I’m in the middle of finally being able to repair it with those manaminers you brought me. I would like time to repair things before you go doing Wizard Magics, please, but I can see I won’t get the time I need. This is fine. We can start slow, I assume.

“And yet, we cannot start slow.

“The second you start attacking him there will be a massive counterattack, and probably from every side-dimension that your Weaver punches through and a whole lot more besides. So I won’t do this plan without full assurances that it will work well.” Rozeta asked, “I need to know your full plan, and then I will be pairing that plan with giving [Benevolent Cleanse] to the world and remaking [World Cleanse]. I will not be using [World Cleanse] at all, though, because… I ripped out that power thoroughly. It will take a month to remake that magic, and we don’t have a month.

“I tore out so much of the Script, Erick. So very much.

“It was so infected with Red. It was like looking at a Red Core.

“So I would like to start small before we bring out the Wizard Magics.”

Erick’s rage had already turned to planning, which seemed like a good thing in retrospect. Erick nodded. “Okay. How stable are the world’s node networks? With the great loss of life we’ve had, as well as the increase from the other people?”

Almost darkly, Rozeta said, “The Lighter’s Guild is making miracles every day, keeping the lights on and the defenses of cities high, but don’t expect to do anything big with the mana collected from any city. Nothanganathor is targeting the people, primarily. This has had ripple effects everywhere, and the loss of node network integrity is high on the list. Whole Lighter Guilds have been Erased, too.

“We gained several billion people when Solomon Genesis’d the angels and demons to life along with many people from a few side realities.” Rozeta chuckled darkly. “You’d think that would solve some problems, right? But no. The Script is still barely mana positive. I think Nothanganathor just does that, but I can’t figure out how.”

Erick felt another hollow in his heart. He decided, “I’ll make my own mana, then.”

Phagar stepped into the conversation, saying, “Let’s make some time-dilated dungeons like you wrote down in your reports.”

Rozeta easily said, “Now that, I can make work.”

Erick smiled a little. It was strained.

They got to work.

– – – –

The Splinter Mountains of Nergal were covered in ice and snow, as far as the mortal eyes could see.

This particular part of the Splinter Mountains looked rather the same as the last time Erick was here, if you ignored the missing mountain that had been the Orrery of Rozeta. The great flowing spheres of brass and tracks of magic and all the people who lived here and worked here, observing the universe and the solar system of Veird, were gone. It had all vanished in a Claw attack several months ago, all of the people therein Erased. The giant brass orbs that made up the Orrery were nowhere to be found; even with eyes that pierced the clouds below the mountain tops, those spheres of the planets were nowhere to be seen. The side mountains, with their supportive cities and villages, were all gone, but for reasons other than Erasure. The people had moved on because their central reason for being had been Erased. Erick wondered what sorts of excuses those people told themselves about their lives; their reasons for being here in this frozen land of nowhere.

All was ice and snow and dark clouds, this close to Frozen Nergal, at the southern side of Veird.

Without the Orrery, the world here seemed even colder than before.

The snow stopped falling, and then a portal of white lightning opened.

Erick, Rozeta, and Phagar, stepped onto an observation platform far away from the canyon that used to be the Orrery. Erick stepped to the edge of the platform, casting his gaze down into a cloud-covered land.

It was a ruin, but only to those with the eyes to see the giant claw marks that could have been valleys, and who had known what had come before.

Rozeta spoke on the still air, “I was hoping this space would get used for something good.”

Erick said, “And so it shall.”

Erick brushed aside time-frozen clouds and snowstorms with casual extensions of his aura, like sweeping snow off of a driveway, but on a size comparable to mountains and all at once. Next came a [Hasted Shelter], which Phagar would bless once Erick was done with these ‘mortal’ magics. With a tug, Erick elicited eternal stonewood trees from the ground, filling in the canyons and the mountain tops with a forest of trees, each kilometers tall.

Erick rose into the sky with a single step, and then he let the dragon out.

His perspective shifted, everything looking much more small and manageable, while his aura multiplied sizes several times over. With expert crafts, Erick created multiple sets of dungeon towers, 50 in total, across a large portion of the Splinter Mountains, linking them all with covered sky bridges and waterways and movement systems for what would come next; for the slimes and plants. Actual dungeons —spaces into the Dark— would come later, or maybe erupt from the ground between his dungeons, for there were a few of those down there already. Erick poked his senses into those Dark holes in the ground and saw simple places; unmanned and non-dangerous, and not a problem.

Erick turned on the [Terraforming] and strung the whole place with [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] before enveloping the whole thing in [Weather Ward]s and heat magics. Weather was crazy right now on Veird and there was no easy way to change all of that, though it was certainly possible once Rozeta managed to fix the major issues of the Script, so Erick simply made the place weather-proof.

As Erick worked, time passed for him but not for anyone else. [Terraforming] was a simple grey cloud with frozen white lightning therein. The node networks and the Draining magics of the [Undertow Star]s were still, their shadow tendrils not moving at all. [Grow] made plants that were simple green buds on churned loam; they would grow later. [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] made lights of many colors that did not move at all; not like they should, not like they would.

When Erick was done with the main thrust of the building, he turned back into a person and did some final touches; leveling a floor here, securing a wall of the new lake there, poking into the dungeons and seeing that one of them had some horrors inside so he eradicated that one. Normal stuff.

And then Erick stepped back, to stand with Rozeta and Phagar on a mountain further from where they had started.

Rozeta casually said, “You’re bigger than last time.”

Erick chuckled. “A bit.”

Phagar smiled, and then he waved his hand, and Time shifted, tiny fractals spreading out from the white walls of the new dungeon city.

Erick wondered about that presentation of godly power, and not for the first time.

Phagar, wearing Erick’s own face and body as he usually did, smiled, and said, “I wonder, Erick. Have I always had these fractals as a part of my godly presentation? Or is that something I had forgotten that came from this Fractal Cosmology? Am I a god from this Fractal Cosmology? I’m not sure anymore. Could be that fractals are simply neat, and present in multiple lands, coming from multiple influences to arrive at the same ideas.”

“That last one has some real merit,” Erick said, huffing a laugh.

The dungeon city transformed as Phagar spoke, the [Terraforming] rapidly unfreezing and then turning absolutely chaotic in its frenzy of life-bringing rain and lightning. The first greenery caused the next greenery to come in much faster. Life died and then grew back. Moss covered white buildings like a living carpet. Trees bloomed as rivers flowed and the lake filled in the center of the land.

And then the [Terraforming] truly took off, filling the entire sky of the dungeon city with rain.

Shadows of things moved in the racing time, mere afterimages of slimes and some small monsters running fast lives here and there. Trees grew to be a hundred years old in an instant and then they died to a hurricane cleaning up the land.

The hurricane was not a continual thing; the [Terraforming] fluctuated its power. It killed periodically, and then rested for an age, becoming a simple rain cloud filled with lightning sparks and shadow tendrils that hovered over the lake in the center of the space.

Rozeta sighed as she watched it all happen, like she was resting in a hot tub. “That’s so much Benevolence mana. It’s already clearing up problems in the Script, in the tangles of Wrongness caused by Malevolence. I don’t know what the exact difference is between your mana, Erick, and the mana of everyone else, because they’re near-qualitatively the same in several instances… Ophiel, for one. Yggdrasil for another. But your mana does very well against Malevolence. I think it might be that Reson Magic.”

In a commiserating sort of way, Erick said, “That shouldn’t be a question you have, Rozeta. You should know why things are the way they are. Phagar should know why his godly presentation looks like the magic I saw of the Fractal Fairy. But you’ve all been crushed down to Nothanganathor’s desires. He has cut away the option for you to know this stuff, for knowing the Red triggered the Red. You might have even cut out that knowledge from yourself. But we can fix that, eventually.”

Rozeta simply stared ahead, hoping.

Phagar continued to work fractal Time upon the land ahead of them, saying, “I’ve opened up all my memories that have been ‘open in case of emergency’. This conspiracy goes deep, Erick. There is hope, though.” He grinned, saying, “The overall plan of Nothanganathor’s relies on powers derived from countless small wizardries and meticulous planning, and all of our Foundations being laid upon beds of sand and shifting undercurrents. But you could open communications right to Margleknot, pulling possibility here to Veird, and if worse comes to worse, we can enact an Endtimes Plan and you can [Grand Reincarnation] everyone to new lives, in new parts of the universe.”

Erick felt a twitch of calm pleasure at that suggestion.

Even if Veird fell, and Erick and Melemizargo were trapped in the final power of Nothanganathor, the people could escape.

Erick said, “Let’s call that ‘Plan Omega’; the very last one.”

Rozeta said, “I would prefer to save Veird. This larger universe is something I wish to contend with after Nothanganathor loses, and with all of you with me.”

Phagar nodded. He pulled back his Time from the dungeon city.

The world beyond once again froze in time, due to the shared [Time Stop] of Erick, Rozeta, and Phagar.

The white land had changed into one of green and blue and flowers and mushrooms and brilliance and shadow.

Erick said to Rozeta, “I need the space released from the Script, so that the mana is fully usable, and not taken by the Script. I plan on helping Solomon and Destiny Ascend here, too.”

Rozeta flinched. “Do you have to request that?”

“I do,” Erick said, “Right now the system is probably only pulling out a tenth of what it should. For instance: I made almost 200 Benevolence dungeon towers on Margleknot. The mana coming from those was visible in the air as a white thickness, and my [Reson Gatherer]s started turning the excess into currency and true power. I see no excess here. I need all of the mana here to clean up Veird.”

Rozeta bargained, “Then how about I invert the Authority of the Script, and give every living thing here a lot more mana than they normally have, and thus the excess spills out and I can regather that, and you can use that vastly increased node network to send your [Benevolent Grand Cleanse] all across the rest of Veird.” Rozeta looked to Erick. “How about that?”

“… Huh. Well damn. Yes. I’ll take that option and also the area over the lake, free of the Script.” Erick said, “On the island I built there.”

Phagar smirked. “That island wasn’t for statues?”

Erick went, “Ha!”

Rozeta forced herself to say, “If you can promise me that you won’t blow up anything from here, then… I agree.”

“I will definitely be blowing things up from here, Rozeta.”

“Oh you know what I mean.” Rozeta looked to the right and up, took a moment, and then she turned back toward Erick. “Done.” She added, “Mostly. There’s a 10 meter sphere of space on that island that’s Script-free. That’s the maximum size I’ll allow. The Script-given mana of every living thing in the rest of the space and a kilometer beyond the walls is highly artificially boosted.”

“Thank you.” Erick said to Phagar, “Time dilation?”

“Of course,” Phagar said, as the land beyond began to move again, and rapidly. Not as fast as before, but still fast. Soon, the air began to fill with a thickness of mana. “Nothanganathor will be able to notice this space, now, if he is looking. Let’s go inside.”

Erick stepped forward, vanishing from the frozen-snow mountaintop far outside of the city to land on a bare island in the center—

Erick sighed in some kinda relief. The air in here was warm and humid and lovely. The lights of many Radiances filled the world with light, birds chirped in the trees, bugs buzzed in the grasses and wild places, and slimes troddled all over everywhere. The lake was clear of slimes, but there were plenty of fish in the lake, and even some monsters.

… There were monsters kinda everywhere, actually. Only small ones, and some stranger big ones. None that bothered to come out this far to the island in the center of the lake, for Erick had cordoned this place off with a [Force Wall] before he left, and the [Force Wall] remained strong due to the line of the node network that Erick had dropped down into this space.

The land was growing and plentiful, and though Erick had grown past such things as the need of air or warmth, air and warmth still felt good.

The Script being not-here felt kinda bad, though. It was an uneasy sort of feeling.

Phagar and Rozeta appeared next to him. Rozeta looked worried. Phagar looked ready for something bad to happen.

Erick said to them, “Here we go. The first real cast of this magic, and what will probably poke a great big hole in the dimensional fabric and call forth Nothanganathor. The spell might not even work past this space, though, what with the Script. But this is an act of Wizardry, so it might work anyway. This first cast is going to target—” Erick glanced around with his senses, and spotted some shadowolves out there in the depths of the dungeon city. Those things and the birds and the bugs must have gotten in from the dungeons. Erick said, “—All the shadowolves in this space.”

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Phagar asked, “How about starting with targeting Malevolence in this small space under this [Force Wall] dome?”

“Sure. We can start there.”

Rozeta was calm, but worried.

Erick cast [Spellsurge Weave] and [Benevolent Cleanse] at the same time, marrying the spells together and targeting Malevolence here in this small space under the Force dome, to get everything started. Just one cast, though! He tied the spell off to the node network line up ahead, giving the magic all the mana it would ever need, a billion times over. Thick air rapidly misted out of the space and then flash-transformed into a map of the nearby area —a kilometer out— as a white Weaver cascaded light up above. The map turned iridescent—

Red Sparks suddenly crawled out of the map—

And the Weaver banished those Red Sparks with a flash of a [Benevolent Cleanse].

Red turned to thick air, becoming a sudden rush of a whole bunch of different types of mana and other powers that did not really exist on Veird, but which the Script would be able to clean up a lot easier than how it handled Malevolence. Erick categorized what he saw as Carnage and Vile and a few others… And he also saw twists of something that was hard on the eyes, which were invisible to his mana senses, and which he thought were spent resons, but which kinda looked… corruptive? Maybe? Maybe they were remnants of spent abilities that were not mana-based, turned to something Erick simply could not understand. There was a lot of that up on Margleknot, after all.

Erick hit the motes of weirdness with another [Benevolent Cleanse] and the weirdness remained, but it did spread out, like a stain diluting.

If it was corruption, then Benevolence might be good against it?

Erick hit it with a jolt of Benevolence lightning… Which did jack shit. Well okay then.

Not corruption—

Nothanganthor wouldn’t use corruption this early in the fight, anyway. He would be called a Corrupter and then dealt with by the Fae Council… Maybe.

So what could he be looking at?

Erick began, “Do you two know what—”

And then he looked at Rozeta, and knew several things at once.

Erick frowned. “The Script is still here and those are Banned elements, aren’t they. It’s the same thing I saw in the Vaults with those spaceships. It’s almost the same thing I see every time I look at a Mind Mage or see a person use Mental Magic; those tendrils of thought. Ah, dammit. Yup. That all makes sense now.”

Rozeta frowned. “I can’t actually make this space 100% Script free. It’s 99.9999% free. And yes, those are Banned Elements. Specifically Elemental Tyranny and Elemental Corruption and Contract and a whole bunch of other tiny things. Looks like some abilities from other power sources, too, which is very weird for me to see, Erick.

“Malevolence is its own thing, but your [Benevolent Cleanse] seems to smash it to whatever pieces it can smash it into. As for the Mind Mage stuff, yeah; those are resons, too, but those aren’t Banned. I tried Banning Mind Magic; it simply didn’t work, so I hid it behind the same obfuscation that the Banned stuff goes behind. We can talk about all that later, at length, if you want. You deserve to know everything.

“But for now!” She put away her frown, saying, “This is going to work.” She added, “Deploy it on a larger scale. Target Malevolence in the nearest kilometer.”

Erick put away his objections to an imperfect world and slightly-untrusting-allies (Because Rozeta probably knew things he did not know, and he trusted her anyway), and said, “Sure. This works at the speed of a Weaver, which is fast, but not instant. I can make it work larger than just the nearest kilometer. Here: just follow it.” And then he set the Weaver to find all Malevolence within the dungeon city and [Benevolent Cleanse] it away.

The entire Cleanse Map turned blue with targets.

Erick winced at that, saying, “Welp. It does Image here and also in a side reality, for it goes through a side reality to scan from here to there.”

The Weaver was already off, heading outward and rapidly splashing the world around it with a [Benevolent Cleanse], turning the air around itself into a thick white mist that rapidly dispersed. Strangely enough, the Weaver flew on a mere half-meter before it carved out another 10-meter-diameter sphere out of the air, turning all of that space briefly Red before it flashed over with white thickness. The Weaver went another half meter and did the same thing.

It kept going, showcasing Red in the air before turning that Red into a bunch of different manas, some of which were Banned.

It was kinda like a constantly flowing firework, actually.