269, 1/2

Erick gazed up at the sky over Ascendant Mountain and saw holes in that sky. The blue illusions ended, and what remained was broken black metal that formed giant rents, as though claws had carved up the sky. That was exactly what had happened, too. A while ago, Nothanganathor had sent Claws and probably even a Leviathan toward Ascendant Mountain, to attack Melemizargo’s new home for his shadelings and Shades. Those Claws had started high above the Surface Sphere of Veird, several spheres up, making a path through adamantium shells to arrive here.

If there had been a Leviathan involved, the rest of the world didn’t know about it, and the Shades Erick had spoken to so far had opted not to say anything in that direction. Melemizargo needed to appear strong, and so, Erick let that lie of omission stand.

Looking down at Ascendant Mountain, Erick could see why the Shades and maybe even Melemizargo didn’t want the world to know that they had been so thoroughly targeted.

Before the attack, Ascendant Mountain had been split in half, with the large southern part filled with white crystal towers filled with shadelings, like in Brightwater, before Last Shadow’s Feast in Ar’Kendrithyst. The north half of Ascendant Mountain had been filled with gardens and wild spaces. The crack in the middle had been filled with dungeons. A million shadelings or more had made this place their home. It had been a nice place.

Right to the south lay the Black Gate Dungeon, which was still rather well defended, for that’s where Solomon had made his home and his base of power. Solomon and the people there had never seen whatever happened here; one day, Ascendant Mountain had been Ascendant Mountain.

And now Ascendant Mountain was this.

There was no land of crystal skyscrapers and a million shadelings all trying to simply live their lives and gardens filled with dungeons and danger and reward. Those few shadelings who had survived the attack moved to Candlepoint, to join those who still lived there in the Shadeling District. Those people didn’t know what had happened here, either.

Just a crater with some broken skyscraper-sized white crystal here and there.

The crater ran rather deep.

Erick opened up his aura and reached down into the broken ground, grabbing a few hunks of building-sized crystal. Some copying magic rapidly gave Erick a literal mountain of crystal that he suspended with a judicious use of gravity spellwork, and then came some Shaping magic. Raw materials flowed together. Dirt flowed outward, along with air and other impurities.

Soon, Erick had a sphere of quartz-like crystal several kilometers across, that was only partially quartz. It was more like Kendrithyst, Bluite, Stratagold, or the clear crystals of the Waiting Room; quartz-plus-mana. In this case Erick had wiped away whatever had been here before, and now there was Benevolence crystal, because that’s what Erick had on hand.

It was clear and lined in light.

Erick allowed the giant sphere of crystal to begin to crystalize for real, making shapes out of the flowing material. Giant crystals began to grow out of seed crystals, and then the whole thing began to grow much faster, for Erick was directing that growth rather strongly. He separated crystals, delineating growth, making sure everything was shaped as he wanted it to shape.

Soon, Erick set down a few kilometer-tall and rather-thick pillars into the ground. Then he [Duplicate]d them, until he had an approximation of Ascendant mountain. It was not the same, at all. These crystals didn’t have any shadows in them. They didn’t have any homes carved into them, either. What Erick had made was a monument to give rise to what he was doing next.

In the highest reaches of the crystal, Erick created a thick white crystal dais that he then copied several times over, stacking the stone on top of itself, to raise a pillar above all the rest. Some gentle Shaping magics made that pillar strong and tall and a single piece of brilliantly clear, shimmering crystal. Light split into rainbows. Lightning gathered along pointed edges.

The stone was kinda weak right now, though. This was a lot of weight. In normal circumstances the place would not hold on its own. What saved it from self-collapse was that it was half underground, and the direction of gravity once you got below the Surface was ‘toward the nearest, largest object’, so it didn’t weigh that much. Not really. Not any more than the upper 10% of all of the crystal towers of Ar’Kendrithyst, anyway. Some cracks still formed here and there in the upper reaches. Erick fixed those cracks, rearranged some things, and the cracks stopped forming.

Erick had done all he could do, though, for this wasn’t his place.

Erick sat down on the central dais. He called out to the air, “Hello, Melemizargo. Sorry I was gone. I’m back, and would like to talk.”

Shadows swirled, becoming Dark in the false light of ‘day’, the artificial sun overhead doing absolutely nothing to impact the gloom gathering in front of Erick.

Melemizargo resolved himself to a mere 25 meter tall dragon. He settled down on the white crystal, and Erick saw shadows swirl in the crystal. Erick had not left any impurities in the building of this place, but with Melemizargo taking over the gift he had given him, the place seemed more solid, at least five times over. It supported the multi-ton weight of the Dark Dragon, and it would probably support a lot more than that.

Melemizargo lightly said, “We’ve already moved back to Candlepoint. There was no need to rebuild this place, unless you want us gone from Candlepoint.”

“This can be a summer home, if you wish. I merely made it because I was sad to see it broken. It was a nice place.”

Silence.

They could have spoken about anything. They probably should have started on the important topics, like the Dark Mark and the Fractal Mark and Mind Mages and Nothanganathor and Margleknot and the fate in store for all of Veird, but especially in store for Erick and Melemizargo.

Maybe they could have started with why Melemizargo had failed to protect his Ascendant Mountain, or why he didn’t let Solomon remake it, or what was the story going on there. Were Solomon and Melemizargo at odds with each other? Maybe.

Erick let Melemizargo set the tone.

Melemizargo said, “I’m not sure where to start.”

Erick knew where to start.

Erick said, “I want you to know that I’m fully in favor of killing Nothanganathor. I want you to know that I’m going to rip him from his throne of convenient truths and End him in every way a person can be Ended. I’ll find a way to undo his Erasure through helping Solomon achieve Ascension and otherwise, and bring back everything Nothanganathor ever broke. I’ll figure out all the secrets of this cosmology and beyond and break everything that needs breaking so that it can be made better in that breaking and remaking.

“And I want you to be there with me.

“I fully expect for this to come down to a battle between me and him and you, and you and I need to be on the same side, because I want to see Nothanganathor obliterated and I believe you do, too.”

Melemizargo stared a little, seeming to turn softer in the moment of Erick’s proclamation.

Erick waited.

“I remember him now,” Melemizargo said, his voice filling the world. “I remember his little nodes of power he built everywhere, and how I used to pull at them to draw him to me, so that I could send his avatar back to him with new memories of pain. I spent a decade of real time pulling at those nodes once. After that he got creative and began putting his Sundering nodes into people, instead of into places. Those ones were much harder to find and I eventually stopped caring. I did not know they were Sundering nodes at the time. I did know that they Sundered small spaces when they were killed improperly…

“I let him cast his magic, though, because I believed he wasn’t a threat anymore.

“If I would have been a better god then this wouldn’t have happened.

“And yet, he was always like this. Always destructive and manipulative and coercive toward only his own gains.

“My first memory of him is all of us hatching in the clutch, and then fighting each other as dragons always do. We’re usually too tiny to really hurt each other and most escape instead of die. But when we all hatched together… I believe I was third to hatch. I opened my eyes and saw Nothanganathor first. He was a white hybrid of leviathan and true dragon. He was long, and curled around some blue thing that was still struggling against him, and his tiny arms were clenched on some membranous blue-scaled thing. He was pulling on what I would later realize was a wing. Nothanganathor was born without wings, you see. He hated them on others. He hated the leviathan part of himself most strongly. He recognized his own hatred in the very first moments of his life, when he saw our eldest sister’s blue wings and knew he would never have them. So he killed her for his own hatred.

“He was weakened by that struggle.

“I bested him, driving him out, but he killed our eldest sister and our youngest sister before that happened. The youngest one was green, and she was still in her shell when Nothanganathor ripped into her.

“It was just me in the end, the victor left to consume what remained in the nest, as dragons often do. I forgot about Nothanganathor after that.

“It wasn’t until I was much older that we met again.

“I was Second to my mother back then, and I was courting a woman.

“Nothanganathor killed that woman.

“He had been tracking the Second, which was me, and then he killed my woman, because he wanted to tear me apart piece by piece, which is what he usually does. He seems to have retained that part of himself, even to this day.

“I returned his pain to him every way I could, but our mother forbade me from killing him outright. He was to be my whetstone, our mother had said. She said I was only allowed to kill him when he presented a true danger, and not a rival.

“The torments escalated.

“Eventually, mother died, as you now know. The story of the true nature of the Goddeath poison was new, but… yes, I can see that is what happened.

“Mother created the tournament for Second, for the Passing of the Mantle. Nothanganathor was there, of course. I took his wife during the tournament. I tortured her for information on him, and that’s when I found out how much deeper our hatred for each other went. That was when I found out he had poisoned and killed our mother.

“Mother had known.

“The whole tournament was set up to enlighten me to the truth. She wanted to give me the opportunity to destroy her killer. Now was the time to go beyond the rules of engagement she had set, and murder Nothanganathor once and for all.

“The call to torment was too much, though.

“If I had simply done… If I had simply Ended Nothanganathor, then this never would have happened. I went for the torment-kill instead. I had not often misinterpreted my mother’s words… But it appears I had. She told me to end him. I failed. I will not be making that mistake a second time, Erick.” Melemizargo looked at him, and said, “There will be no sparing, this time. It does not matter if he has chained this universe to self destruction and he holds those threats over our heads. If this universe has allowed Nothanganathor that sort of power over itself, even knowing what they now know, then this universe deserves to die for their hubris in setting up this Trial of True Opposites.” He sneered. “Or maybe only ‘the parts with life in it’ will be Sundered.

“That would be poetic.”

An eternal moment settled.

Melemizargo was spiraling, but he would never admit it.

Erick truthfully spoke, “We’ll find the full way through, Melemizargo. I need your help for that, and for everything that is to come.”

Melemizargo looked worried and sad for a moment, and then he banished those emotions and returned to being strong. “Bah! Of course I will help. Where do you want to start?”

“First: Thanks for protecting my family as much as you could. Everyone is saving each other now and again, so this much is to be expected, but none of them are quite comfortable thanking you directly except for maybe Jane, and only when she thinks no one is around, so that’s one big thing I needed to do.” Erick repeated, “Thank you.”

Melemizargo looked pleased, but he pretended nonchalance as he huffed, “Well of course I saved whoever I could. We’re allies in this.”

“We’re much more than allies in this, Melemizargo.” Erick smiled as he joked, “I’m even courting your great, great, super-great grandmother.”

Melemizargo relaxed and laughed. “She’s more like a crazy aunt. Fairy Moon is more like the great grandmother; she was always more reliable.”

They were past the hard part, it seemed. Or at least past the first of many different hard parts.

Erick asked, “So that creation story is the real one?”

“Oh yes. Shadow isn’t letting any of us forget that now that she is back. She arrived on this world like a dawning void, you know. Not a single one of us who were able to recognize that sort of thing could ever miss her presence. A great many memories cleared up in her arrival. Mostly the deep history.” Melemizargo said, “And speaking of which: I want to revive the Goddess of Knowledge. She will be able to give us a crucial edge on keeping Erasure at bay and might be able to help with ending that threat, forever. She might be able to help with reversing it. She was always against the destruction of Knowledge; she would be fully against Nothanganathor.”

Erick’s eyes were wide, his breath stilled. He focused. “What do we need to do for that?”

“Reviving a goddess of any sort is both an easy and incredibly difficult task. I will let you know when I know more. I think her body was released from the Red by the Day of Clouds, though Rozeta is still trying to deny that. She believes the Goddess of Knowledge would attempt to take over the Script. Perhaps she would. Therefore, I believe it would be best to let Rozeta decide to do something with the body instead of trying to pounce on it like treasure thieves.”

That was a lot.

Erick eventually nodded. “… Sure. That’s a few different Steps away from my main plans, but it’s good to know others are working on that— Can you include Solomon in this? He needs to be able to Establish Debby, and though we haven’t discussed it, I believe he has hit an absolute block on making Genesis unErase people.”

Melemizargo raised an eyebrow. “It would be more important for you to gain this power, Erick, but I can see wisdom in giving some knowledge to Solomon. No doubt it will end up in your hands anyway.”

“I assume so, too, but Solomon was the one who wanted all that, so I expect him to cleave through that Path as soon as he can. It is highly likely he needs to Ascend to True Wizard first.” Erick asked, “Do you know if he still has the killswitch in him, that I passed off to him?”

“He does,” Melemizargo said, “Rozeta has been rather strict with him, when she could be. It has probably hampered his progress overmuch.”

“Then I’ll need to untangle that web. Thanks for the direction.”

Melemizargo nodded, looking satisfied.

Erick continued, “Step Two is a [Hasted Shelter] for all of Veird. Can I count on your support with that?”

Melemizargo turned serious. “I do not know how Nothanganathor managed to corrupt the worldwide Shelter we imposed last time.” He glanced upward at the rent in the sky, then said, “The hole made by the enemies that struck here is nothing compared to the carving that the white bastard did to Quintlan.”

“I noticed some of that area. I did not linger long. Do you believe that the Day of Clouds and the subsequent magics we put up were enough to end his direct influence on this land? Could our [Shelter] idea work this time, to give us more time to prepare against him?”

Melemizargo said, “We could put our world into a Shelter and this time that Shelter would work, but Nothanganathor corrupted our previous attempt through an infiltration of Malevolence and small divinities, and that was only one of the ways in which he subverted us. He also simply has a larger domain. We could protect the world, but he could Erase an area of the space outside of our world that would be much larger than we can protect; a hundred thousand kilometers across, enveloping all of Veird and much of the space beyond. It would be a day of Sundering in a different sort of way; in an absolute sort of way. I believe that is his true weapon. That is why we must revive the Goddess of Knowledge; to protect ourselves through an Absolute Establishment that we do exist, and that our futures are bigger than Nothanganathor’s.”

Another deep proclamation.

Erick added his own proclamation, “When we win, whatever comes next will be better.”

Melemizargo smirked. “Everything can always be made better, eh?”

Erick smiled. “Exactly.”

There were some more small words about what came next, but Erick was on a schedule and he needed to leave, and Melemizargo recognized that without needing to be told.

Erick departed.

Hopefully the raising of Ascendant Mountain —and perhaps more the talk afterward— would bring the dragon God of Magic out of whatever self-imposed exile he had made for himself, for he clearly felt like this was all his fault. He did not say that, and Erick did not say it either; there were a lot of things left unsaid. From the Mind Mage Mark of the Fractal, to smaller things like Al being a Shade…

None of that needed to be spoken about right now.

Right now, the walls needed to be reinforced.

A lot of people were doing a lot to make that happen.

Primarily, Rozeta was working on implementing [Benevolent Cleanse] further into the Script, while the other gods were now finally able to solidify various weaknesses all around.

The Blue Corps already all had that spell in their Status, and they were all on the front lines right now, out on the outer two shells of Veird; the shells made of Koyabez’s Silver Star. They were doing work. Thanks to the Establishment that Veird existed and the [Benevolent Cleanse], Erick didn’t need to make another Weaver-cleaner, and he did not want to. While he was rather sure that Nothanganathor couldn’t corrupt that magic through normal means, there were always abnormal means available, and there was no need to put out a spell that he wouldn’t be personally attending to all the time; not a spell with so much Elemental Destruction in it, anyway. The Blue Corps did have some of Erick’s [Infinite Imaging] magics, though, to target all the various prominences of Malevolence out there in the world, seeping in from the Edge. Those viewing spells were being watched over by various paladins of various gods to keep them working as intended.

Absolutely everyone was busy.

Some were more busy than others.

Some gods and people had lost hard in the last two years, and were rather more adrift than anything else. Melemizargo had almost been one of those gods. Things had looked really good after FENRIR went up, but then the hopeful future never fully materialized, and Nothor Beasts appeared having already eaten millions of people without most people noticing. Even the gods didn’t notice, because the gods had been corrupted, too.

They didn’t want to admit it, but Malevolence had touched all of them.

Erick had cleaned up a lot of that Red, like [Cleanse]ing cancers from a body, but now there were open wounds, and [Cleanse] was just the first step toward healing the body.

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– – – –

Erick landed on a tiny island located on the string of islands known as Archipelago Nergal.

This particular island only had a few natural features; white sand beaches, a hill in the center that had a few hardy trees, some big rocks that served as a weather break, and some dune grass. It also had a temple in the shape of a lighthouse, high on the hill. It was a dedication to Sininindi, the Goddess of Sea and Storms. The temple had a garden to the side and a storage space underneath, and a tower with a crystal ball that shone light out into the world, and nothing else.

The lighthouse had one guardian.

Erick settled down on the island, keenly aware that the inhabitant of the island was panicking like a crazy person, her voice raising up and filling the air with expletives, for her goddess had told her that Erick was here to see her. Rapidly, the woman was at a window, looking outside. She had white feathers for hair and an owl mask on her face. She saw Erick standing there on the rocks leading up to the Church of Sininindi.

Tiza Nindi panicked.

Then she collected herself as best she could.

Soon, the Head Priestess of Sininindi was out of her hermit home on the second floor of the church, rushing down the stairs into the main worship area, and then crashing out of the door. She stopped in her tracks, there upon the rocks. She looked at Erick some more.

There was no true recognition on her face. All she saw was the Benevolent Wizard; a person she had never seen before, and never expected to ever see.

There was no memory of all the times she had spoken with Erick about this or that; of her visit to Spur after Erick gave his lesson on Particle Magic, of her calling him an adulterer or making trouble later for Quilatalap in Storm’s Edge.