283 – Epilogue 1, A Return

Ophiel loved Earth. It was quaint.

Mostly, Ophiel loved Earth because he got to see where dad grew up. He got to see all the influences that turned him into who he was, from the lack of free housing to the lack of common help, to the over-reliance on commerce as the best way to make things better. That sort of economy had done a lot for Earth, but the place was a dump and the oceans were rising and precious few people were doing what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe that everyone saw coming. Precious few people could actually do anything about those problems at all.

Dad could, though.

The year was 2024, almost 5 years since Dad and Sis had left this place through a planar tunnel. That planar tunnel had happened because the Fractal wanted to speak to the Dark, and it sent Erick and Jane… or maybe Dad and Jane sent themselves. The manners of how universes talked to each other was via ‘particles’ of people, and personal agency was important in those talks, but had that ball rolled downhill because it chose to roll down that hill, or was the nature of the universe, of ‘gravity’, doing most of the work?

Whatever the case, the Fractal was speaking with the Dark lots these days in the ways of action and exchange, and that’s what the Fractal wanted. The Dark theoretically wanted that, too, but who really knew aside from Dad.

Whatever the case, the place where Dad and Jane had come from was falling apart, and Ophiel was here to do what he could for the place.

Ophiel was shaped like a normal human person of 22 years old. He was mostly in 1 body, but he had left a part of himself in the Benevolent Safehold he had planted in Antarctica in order to watch over that place. His wings were hidden behind some Elemental Fairy which had effectively dismissed them from this plane of reality. And so, wearing a teeshirt and jeans, and with dark eyes that glimmered rainbow if you saw them at the right angles which he didn’t feel like changing at all, Ophiel walked through the cities of the United States.

Mostly the midwest.

He hopped around, taking a little Step here and there to get around. Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Fargo, Oklahoma City. Wherever the Lightning flickered, Ophiel moved. He cured a man’s cancer, he shut off the gas in a house so it didn’t explode, he helped a woman with some groceries and a few smaller things here and there. It was nice to do that for people. It was a lot easier than the usual help he did, which was to rescue people from monsters, usually pulling them through [Gate]s into Benevolence Itself and then setting them back down elsewhere. The Lightning told him what he could do, if he wanted, but Dad didn’t expect Ophiel to do everything. Mostly, Benevolence was already working on its own to do things here and there.

Ophiel watched as an insurance agency experienced a ‘catastrophic’ failure in its new AI program that was designed to automatically deny claims, and now it was approving everyone. That was nice.

The lightning flickered a lot, and it never stopped, so eventually Ophiel decided to stop and take a break.

Chicago seemed nice enough so he stopped there for some food.

A pizza? Yes, a pizza.

Ophiel went into a pizzeria and got some deep dish stuff. It was pretty good! As he ate he watched the people walk by the windows, going this way or that, completely oblivious that their world was going to change forever. Ophiel was here to do that. He just wasn’t sure where to start.

Dad hadn’t been certain, either, and he wasn’t about to make decisions for worlds that were not beyond saving themselves.

Dad had told Ophiel, “I’ve got some good ideas but all of them are bad in certain ways, so before I do all of that, I want you to tell me how you would do it, and we can talk about it. The girls and Evan want nothing to do with the place and Yggdrasil is too busy on Fenrir, but you showed interest in Earth, so… How would you introduce Earth to the universe, Ophiel?”

Eating pizza in a little place in Chicago, Ophiel wasn’t quite sure how he would introduce Earth to mana and magic.

Ophiel could just make a scene somewhere. Show off his wings and his multiplicity. Get on the news. Make a few scenes everywhere, really… Except he had wings and they’d think he was some sort of Christian thing. Even if he turned into his Big Form and showed off all his eyes and stuff, they’d still think he was Christian. Probably even more so, really.

And then there was the House of Resons.

And… Yeah. Ophiel was probably going to contact them soon.

He saw their touch everywhere. In that climate change activism gathering over there. In that public broadcasting station over there, educating kids about morals through puppets. And in that big bank-thing over there, across the street.

It was not just a bank. It was some sort of market manipulation thing, or something. Ophiel noticed the big building because it was filled with all sorts of people who had all sorts of small magics, and Marks of Benevolence. That’s why Ophiel had decided to have lunch here at this pizza place; to study the marketplace a bit more.

Also, the owner of the place had a Mark of Benevolence and Darkness. That was kinda common since they went hand-in-hand most of these days, but the big dude making the pizzas had a Mark of the Fractal, too, which was very rare outside of Personal Scripts. And there were no Personal Scripts on Earth. Not yet. So this guy had been given a rare gift, and possibly because he saw what no one else could; he saw possibilities everywhere.

Which is probably why he opened a pizza shop across from a big market/bank/thing; a lot of people with suits ate here all the time.

Ophiel finished off his whole deep dish, large-sized pizza. A waitress had spotted him eating and eating, and was amazed, so she had told the head cook, who was also the owner and with three universal marks in him, that ‘someone was eating the entire big pizza!’. The head cook had stuck his head out of the kitchen to see a few times as Ophiel kept eating 1-pound slices of pizza.

A few waitresses clapped happily when Ophiel finished. Some of them said they thought he couldn’t do it, but then he went and did it!

The head cook smiled, saying, “You must be hungry, kid!” He set out some garlic knots in a to-go box, saying, “I packed this full just for you. Free! On the House.”

The guy had said ‘house’ like ‘House’, full of meaning. The only people to get the ‘joke’ were himself and maybe the cashier over there, who seemed to be the guy’s wife. She raised her head a little, and then marked down another tic on a private tally beside the register.

Ophiel happily took the box, asking, “On the House of Reasons?”

The head cook paused.

The cashier perked up a lot more, narrowing her eyes at Ophiel.

The head cook smiled wide. “I knew you seemed like a good guy! Yes! The House of Reasons! You’ve heard of them?”

The waitresses all scoffed and went back to doing normal waitress stuff, though one of them muttered something about ‘that cult’.

“I’ve heard of them from my father, but now I’m actually going to go find out about them myself.”

“They’re great! They helped me to start this business and I make all the best pizza in all of Chicago now. I should introduce you to some people…”

And so began a month-long order of events that started with Ophiel getting introduced to one person, and then another person, and then, with a few more words said here or there, Ophiel ended up at a big House of Reasons meeting on a Tuesday night. They were some of the nicest people Ophiel had ever met, offering him housing for the night when he told them he was currently homeless, offering him meals when they asked when he last ate and he said a day ago, and helping him meet other people when he told them he was looking to make big changes in his life, and in the world. From one local chapter to the next, Ophiel couch-surfed around with purpose, thanks to the kindness of strangers.

He helped wherever he went, too.

A little healing here, a little bit of money miraculously appearing over there, helping to look after a baby while a mom went and did an errand, and just talking to people, learning how Earth worked.

Eventually, Ophiel ended up on a plane flying to Hawaii.

He could have gone there himself and a lot faster than a month of getting around on Earth, but this was working well. Every single person that met him seemed to lay eyes on him and know something big was happening, and how he could help them and everyone else. But eventually they moved him up the chain of command. Ophiel hadn’t told anyone about his real intentions here on Earth yet, but… Soon.

He was pretty sure the higher ups knew something was up with him, anyway. Something big. Even if they didn’t know, then they knew in a Benevolence sort of way. At least some of them… Right?

This was the right way to do this, Ophiel reflected, as he watched the Hawaiian islands come into view beyond the windows of the plane. This gave everyone time to get ready.

– – – –

Butterfly Prognostication was rather simple.

If a dark butterfly should appear when Deborah was strolling in her garden, asking questions, then the answer to her question was something close to, if not actually, ‘no’, depending on the appearance and disposition of the butterfly that crossed her sight. If a light butterfly should appear, then the answer was something like a ‘yes’. Moths were an acceptable divining tool in a pinch, but who really knew with those guys.

But the Hawaiian islands didn’t have many true black or white butterflies, and so she had needed to get creative with her interpretations of the local flutterers many years ago. It was one of the reasons that she loved this place the most, actually.

The Asian Swallowtail held a special place in Deborah’s heart, and in her butterfly magic.

The Asian Swallowtail was mostly black and white, but sometimes the white was more yellow, and the female had blue and orange on the tail, while the male had very little blue and orange. They made excellent prognostication buddies, because even as much as a twist of the wing or a shaft of sunlight or shadow could turn them into a myriad of different answers.

And somehow, about 500 of them had molted from some unknown citrus field or somewhere, and they were fluttering all over her gardens, outside of her house.

Deborah had woken to the sight with a gasp, and then began making big, sweeping preparations for the war. Because the Asian Swallowtail was a sign of Grandpa. The Founder. It was the butterfly she had associated most closely with him, and there were so many of them. She had woken everyone she could wake. She had told people she trusted to keep eyes open. The House of Resons, inside the House of Reason, was on full alert.

That had been a month ago.

The mania had mostly died down and Deborah had lost a lot of political favor when nothing big happened right away.

Deborah was convinced something was happening, though. She just couldn’t see it.

Deborah sipped her coffee as she sat at her desk, watching the wall, filled with screens, each of them holding a live stream from a butterfly garden she had personally started in this or that part of the world. And she worried. Each garden needed to be maintained for the butterflies, but she had mostly hired out that sort of help, so each of these gardens was not a perfect weather vane of the world.

But it was easy to find young witches who were eager to learn their power, to learn what Deborah could teach them, and they needed some prognostication tools anyway, and so, Deborah piggybacked when she could. Even her main garden, here in Hawaii, was mostly maintained by younger witches. Deborah just put her touches onto it every weekend; trimming trees and bushes and weeding the flower fields. Deborah simply didn’t have the time to maintain the gardens like they should be maintained, even if she was only maintaining a tenth of the House of Reasons that she used to control.

Several more splits of faith had occurred when Grandfather left five years ago, and more splits might be happening sooner, rather than later, thanks to Deborah’s mania…

And yet Asian Swallowtails were still everywhere, on every live stream from all parts of the world, and if not them, then other black and white butterflies. Marbled Whites in England. African Caper Whites in South Africa. Ohgomadaras in Japan. Particularly white Methona Themistos in Brazil. Where did they all come from! Where did they hatch! Some of these life cycles were not this long, but the butterflies were still alive, a month later.

Some people in the House thought Deborah was doing some sort of stunt.

Some people were on even higher alert, though; like Deborah.

And right now, a very white Morpho Luna was hanging out near the camera in the Mexico garden, fluttering its wings. It looked rather rainbowish-white-black as it moved. Normal Morphos, or rather the ones that everyone thought of, were iridescent blue. This one was white and black and iridescent anyway.

It seemed rather cheeky.

Gail walked into Deborah’s office with a stack of reports, looking nonchalant about everything happening on the wall.

Deborah asked her, “Look at that one there? Doesn’t that Morpho Luna look like the cat that got the cream?”

Gail plopped the papers down, giving a glance toward the wall… She paused. She hummed. “Maybe it’s a bit… Aggressive?”

“But in a subtle sort of way?” Deborah asked.

“Maybe in a ‘this is happening’ sort of way.” Gail said, “That’s Marianne’s garden, isn’t it? She’s always been focused on that war of yours.”

Deborah stared at Gail, saying, “It’s a real thing. We were warned, Gail.”

With perfect diplomacy, Gail said, “I believe that the warning was real, but I also believe that the Founder was always going to win his war. That’s what my own vine reading has told me for the last month, ever since this whole mass maturation event started.”

Deborah paused. She looked at her old friend. “… You actually did a reading? Recently?”

Gail winced. It was obvious she had not wanted to tell Deborah that, but Deborah knew things sometimes.

Deborah grinned, and then huffed a laugh. “Your reading must have turned out just as bad as mine!”

Gail said, “The vine curled too much. It started growing in squares, though. Not sure what that meant. It’s still 3 days out from flowering, too, so… I didn’t want to tell you before the actual reading happened.”

Gail had been with the House of Reasons for 20 years, and though she wasn’t as fast with her magic as some people she truly knew how to make the best predictions on long-ranging questions, though her vine magic did take a long while to mature to a readable state.

Deborah said, “I’ve told you a hundred times Gail, your readings are exactly what they are meant to be; you just don’t understand enough to know the full extent of what you’re looking at.”

Gail sighed a little. “If the Founder would have told us more, then I would have been able to read the vines better. Anything I ask the vines about him always goes weird.”

From any other person, Deborah would have worried that those words were a prelude to yet another departure; another splitting of the House into smaller and smaller fractions. But Gail was just blowing concerns into the wind.

Deborah said, “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out when we need to.” She picked up the stack of papers Gail had brought in, shuffling through them, asking, “Anyone interesting?” She picked one out a random—

Her fingers sparked with static as she opened the folder, briefly seeming like the brightest thing in the room. And then the static was gone, and Deborah imagined she had imagined that.

Gail sucked in a breath, though, saying, “That one, that you picked out. Oh my gods.”

Deborah breathed shallowly as she looked down at the open folder, at the image of a young man, taken from a security camera, and then a few more images at local gatherings of the House of Reasons over the past few weeks. He looked rather cute, in a nephew sort of way. Like Deborah needed to give him some food and fatten him up. Black hair, dark eyes, but otherwise a rather plain, North-American-white sort of complexion…

And yet, the image of him smiling at the camera had caught Deborah’s gaze.

A flash of insight came and then went.

Deborah breathed out as she sat the picture down, and then briefly looked over the reports themselves. Mostly, it was personal recommendations from the Chicago branch. They had all seen the kid’s spark of goodness and they wanted it nurtured, even if they didn’t quite have the words to describe their reasonings. Such was the Touch of the Founder, as some people called it. The House of Reasons was a very large organization, but only a few people at the top knew what the rest of them all knew.

That magic was real.

That power could be had, in the service of good.

And that they needed to support each other, for whatever might come.

Deborah closed the portfolio on the kid, and then softly said, “I want to meet him, Gail. I need to meet this ‘Ophiel Flatt’ today… It has to be a fake name, right?”

“Absolutely. From what I heard it took some doing to get him the plane tickets. He has no paperwork or social security number or anything like that.”

Holy shit.

Deborah got up from her chair, saying, “He’s staying at the hotel, right?”

Gail paused. “… Maybe you should let him stay under observation for a day or three.”

“Nope!”

– – – –

Ophiel sipped a drink out of a coconut as he sat by a pool, by the ocean. Tall palms waved in the gentle breeze and the world smelled of sunscreen and salt. Life was good. Everyone here had magic, too, which was nice to see. It felt like home again, but in a lesser sort of way. The air was not thick with power, and yet power existed. All of the power here was Benevolence, too, which was just… really nice, really.

Ophiel smiled as he sat in the sun, in his black board shorts, drinking his drink and waiting.

He was also down at the Safehold in Antarctica, fixing up the place. More than a billion people had been ushered through there, onto other worlds and other lands. The backlog was massive and kinda hard to get at due to the breadth of time separating this day and age from all the other years in Earth’s history, but so far no other gods had interfered in the necessary time magics. So far, the reincarnation of every dead soul to ever die on Dad’s Earth from the last 75 years was going well.

When some of those souls from that long ago were told about their options, only about half of them chose to live again, elsewhere. The further back the magic went, the less likely people were to accept reincarnations and the harder it was to place people in new lives. Fenrir was taking a lot of them, though.

This wasn’t the first world that Ophiel had reincarnated, and it would not be the last, but by the pure nature of the situation, this sort of situation didn’t happen too often. After all, how does one discover a world that doesn’t already have a fractal god on it? Not very often. Going through any normal channels at all, to find an unclaimed world, would be going through those channels, and all known worlds were claimed.

That’s what made them ‘known worlds’.

Perhaps Earth was claimed, too, but Ophiel had yet to see any signs of someone disallowing the grand reincarnations at Antarctica. Eh! Ophiel put that problem out of his mind.

He focused on the present, because Deborah was coming out of the hotel, wearing a veiled swimsuit and a big hat, looking like a normal sort of person simply coming out to the pool by the ocean.

She got a coconut drink of her own and sat down two lounge chairs away from Ophiel.

“Ah! This is the life!” Deborah said, smiling, starting up a conversation with Ophiel, a ‘complete stranger’. A lot of people in the House of Reasons did that. They made attempts to make people feel more welcome, and to foster a sense of community.

Ophiel smiled back, saying, “It’s pretty great. I’m Ophiel. Nice to meet you.”

Deborah grinned. “Deborah. What brings you out here, Ophiel? You look a little young to be vacationing alone.”

“I’m here for this House of Reasons thing. They put me on a plane and shipped me out here, said I should meet some people and they’d help me figure out my life.”

Deborah grinned. “Those people are great! They own this hotel. Let anyone come in and hang out as long as they attend some seminars first. That’s why I’m here.”

“I already went through one of those. Most everyone on the plane did, but you weren’t on the plane? Are you a local?”

“Not originally, but I’ve been here for 15 years and I love the place. I am in the House of Reasons, though, and I’ll be doing intake this year,” Deborah said, dropping the casual act a little. “Right now I’m just meeting people where they are.”

Ophiel chuckled. “That’s a good way to do it; meet people where they are. It’s usually less disruptive that way.”

Deborah blinked a little, and then she smiled softly. “Where are you from, Ophiel? That’s a pretty nifty name you got there.”

“Dad gave it to me on a world far from this one, called Veird, where he and his daughter fell to about 30 years ago, but also just 5 years ago. Time is wonky at vast distances, and when Layers and gods are involved.”

Deborah’s heart beat erratically as her eyes went wide.

Ophiel smiled softly, saying, “He won his war, Deborah. It’s solved, fixed, forevermore, and he sent me back here to decide how to bring Earth into the greater universe. Want to talk about that? Or do you want to hang out at the pool for a while?”

Deborah’s eyes dilated as she breathed deep. Her chin wobbled with emotion as her throat clenched. She wasn’t convinced, though. She quietly asked, “Do you have proof?”

Without showing anything at all, Ophiel looked at the empty, blue sky, and said, “It looks like rain.”

Deborah’s heart skipped a beat as the empty sky flickered with new clouds, rumbling with distant thunder. The clouds rolled in, and the rain began. The rain did not touch them at the poolside, though. Rain cascaded around a [Weather Ward] that Ophiel had put up.

The rest of the world vanished behind the sudden rainstorm, but it was a soft sort of rainstorm. Gentle, and yet obscuring. The perfect thing to use to hide a small meeting, and yet, if people were really looking, this meeting wouldn’t be hidden at all.

Deborah stared at the sky, at the rain.

Ophiel sipped his drink, letting her have a moment.

Deborah looked to him. “You really are… connected to him?”

Ophiel sat up properly to face Deborah as he let his wings out, all large and black and rainbow, saying, “Yes. I’m—”

Deborah jolted out of her seat to stand on the pool deck, exclaiming, “What the fucking fuck?! He said he wasn’t god!”

“… Er.” Ophiel put his wings away. He stood up, too…

And he wasn’t sure where to begin.

Deborah demanded, “Was he a god, or not?”

“Okay! That’s a good starting point. He was not a god. He is now. He’s not the god of Christianity. But obviously there was some influence here and there and dad’s a god now, for sure. I’m his son, one of his paladins, and since you’re his adopted granddaughter…” Ophiel held out a welcoming hand, smiling, saying, “Nice to meet you, sibling Deborah. Or niece?”

Deborah looked at his hand for a moment.

Ophiel waited.

Deborah grinned, and then she chuckled. She shed a tear as she laughed, saying, “I’m the aunt. You can be my nephew.” And then she hugged him, saying, “Welcome to Earth, Nephew!”

Ophiel chuckled on Deborah’s shoulder, saying, “I’ll have to introduce you to all the others sometime. You’ve got, like… a lot of siblings. We’re all sort of connected to dad in various ways.”

Deborah held tight, asking, “He’s okay, then?”

Ophiel held her back, saying, “He’s good. Dad won his war. Earth is safe from the bad ending, but now we’re here and we have to make a good beginning. All secrets will not be secret anymore.”

Deborah pulled back, wiping away a sudden tear as the rain fell all around their little [Ward]ed area. She stood facing Ophiel, saying, “Let’s start with some names, then. Can you finally tell us his real name?”

Ophiel smiled, saying, “Dad’s name is Erick Flatt, though a lot of people call him a lot of things. Apparent King. Wizard of Benevolence. Dragon God of Many Colors. Light in the Dark. Benevolent Darkness. Savior of Veird and Father of Yggdrasil. God of the Bright Path. God of the New Path. Hand in the Sky. There’s a lot more and he’s racking up more names every single day. Every new world he visits and saves from disaster gives him a different name. I assume you have a few names for him here. He told me a lot about what he had done on Earth, but not everything.”

Deborah wiped away another tear, saying, “We call him the Founder, mostly. I called him Grandpa, though.”

Ophiel grinned. “I just called him ‘Dad’.”

Deborah laughed happily.

Ophiel asked, “Have you made many plans to integrate Earth into the wider universe?”

“Oh gods,” Deborah said, still laughing a little, and yet understanding more of the situation by the moment. She had clearly been expecting a day like this for years now, but it overwhelmed her a lot more than she had expected it to. She said, “We have some plans. None of them were deemed acceptable. We tried bringing in some governments across the world a few different times but we had to abort those plans when the prognostications pointed toward everything going wrong— and you do not want to ignore the prognostications. We found that out the hard way a few times.” She breathed deep, then said, “The main problem is that powerful people like to prey on the magic of the House of Resons in order to use it for themselves, and that was bad, so relations broke down. But twice now, some people broke from the House in order to work with those other nations, trying to change them from the inside, even as they used their power for their own efforts. The China House and the Russian House… We barely have contact with them anymore, and the American House is… It’s complicated. We talk to them the most, but… I am not the lead of the American House anymore.” Deborah paused. She asked, “Would you like a tour of the place? We can talk about some of that stuff… But I need to know, first…” She spoke seriously, “Will Grandpa be coming back?”

Ophiel said, “He’s pretty busy back home on Fenrir, and in the Painted Cosmology beyond.” He clarified, “Fenrir is a dyson sphere around a sun with a radius of about Earth-Distance, while the Painted Cosmology is another universe beyond that land. Him and the other gods and a bunch of fae are building all of that right now, using the mana made on Fenrir and the new universe itself to fund the expansion of that universe. That other universe is entirely self-sufficient, but more growth is better at this stage of the project. It’s a forever-project, though, so they’re taking constant breaks.”

Deborah blinked a few times. And then she said, “Oh yeah.” She picked up her coconut drink. “We should have this discussion inside.”

Ophiel conjured some grey robes onto his body, asking, “Is this the proper look?”

Deborah looked at Ophiel, and then she broke down in tears, sobbing about how this was really real, and how she had felt so lost, and then Ophiel hugged her again. She hugged back, but only briefly, then she patted him on the shoulders and chuckled as she stepped back.

She looked embarrassed as she said, “Maybe something a little less ominous.”

Ophiel opted for a normal Hawaiian shirt, but in greyscale and black and white.

“Better,” Deborah said. “Now let’s go blow some minds. You can turn off the rain, though.”

Ophiel smiled and flicked some power at the sky, unraveling the working he had put into the heavens. The rain soon stopped, and Ophiel walked beside Deborah into the House of Reasons Hotel…

Ophiel spotted the coconut drink maker kneeling on the ground, a rosary in his hand as he mumbled prayers to the divine. He looked up at Ophiel and then purposefully averted his gaze from Ophiel.

… Ophiel did not wince —much to his own surprise!— and let the prayer happen without interruption.

As he walked into the house, he told Deborah, “I’m not an angel, the angels I know are nothing like what popular media shows here, and I know my black wings probably means something to you due to your butterfly magics… I’m not sure how to handle that, exactly.”

Deborah laughed as she wiped away another tear, saying, “It’s a whole can of worms, isn’t it.” She smiled. “Birds are terrible for prognostication and I banished them from my concerns ages ago.”

Ophiel laughed at that.

Several people were standing around the hotel lobby as Ophiel and Deborah reached it. There were four maids and four people in various fancy clothes, from one woman wearing a suit to a Japanese guy wearing a semi-formal yukata. All of them were looking Ophiel’s way. The Japanese guy, and his two bodyguards, had just walked into the front door, while Ophiel and Deborah had walked in the back way, from the pool.

Deborah froze as she saw the Japanese guy.

And then Deborah pointedly ignored the Japanese guy, and gestured to the woman in a suit, “Ophiel, this is my right hand woman, Gail.” She raised her voice, saying, “Everyone!” She glared at the Japanese guy. “—And Toshi—” She added, “Ophiel is the Founder’s son. The Founder is not coming back yet, but he will be back soon. Start rumors if you want. We’re not hiding this. The Reunification of the House will begin today, in the standard outline for such a reunification that I have outlined in the past.”

People gasped.

People stared at Ophiel.

Without moving, Toshi threw a [Benevolence Jolt] at Ophiel, who easily caught the magic and held it in his hands. He probably called it something besides [Benevolence Jolt], though. What would he have called it? White lightning? Eh!

It didn’t hurt.

The confusion of Ophiel’s arrival and Deborah’s declaration vanished in the light of that lightning. Everyone glared at Toshi, while his bodyguards backed him up.

And then Deborah yelled at the guy, “WHAT THE FUCK, TOSHI!”

“Kill the Buddha,” was Toshi’s only response.

Gail retorted, “That’s not even what that saying means.”

Ophiel flickered away the lightning in his hand like it was nothing more than static, saying, “You attribute way too much divinity to me, Toshi-chan.”

Toshi narrowed his eyes at the honorific ‘chan’.

Ophiel grinned.

And thus began 3 days of rather complicated political chaos that Ophiel mostly sailed through, playing his cards close to his chest, for now. When the initial chaos turned to solid desire for questions to be answered, that was when Ophiel told Deborah that he was ready to start giving out all the details, and answering all the questions.

“But I’ll need to give a presentation, first,” Ophiel said.

“Oh gods, Ophiel,” Deborah said, “I don’t think we’re ready for that yet.” She tried, “Next month?”

Ophiel grinned. “We’re ready now.”

– – – –

Several heads of the various Houses of Reason sat around a large U-shaped table in a conference room in Honolulu. All of them had extra people with them, and though Deborah had limited it to 2 extra people, some had as many as 5. The extras sat at the back of the room, practically stacked together. Some people stood outside of the room.

Ophiel had intended this to be a top-level dispensation of information, but it was what it was, and that was fine.

Toshi softly argued with a woman from the Russian House, named Kudrina, about how this was really happening. He did not like any part of this. Kudrina still didn’t believe this was happening at all, and that it was all some sort of ruse, but she was here anyway.

Other disbelievers had simply chosen not to come.

Deborah was one room over, beyond a thin door, softly yelling into her phone. And then she hung up. She walked back into the room, keeping her face serene. “It appears House China has chosen to simply not come, and their representatives here in the hotel are walking out.”

Kudrina stood up and spoke in a thick Russian accent, “We never should have come back, either.” She looked at Ophiel. “He is a charlatan. I do not know how he got the magical might he has, but the rain had to have been a cooperative effort from the Hawaiian House, and we will be looking into that.”

Toshi stood, saying, “Your House is in disarray, Deborah. We are glad we left it.”

Deborah looked about ready to strangle every single person in that room.

Another person stood up to walk away.

Ophiel was currently in a few different places. Most of his attention was on the Safehold down in Antarctica, where a billion souls had already been processed. Benevolence’s reach through time was mostly done, but there would always be some gathering happening due to the nature of slices of infinity, and the multiverse. Dad’s original slice of Earth was on to normal operations, for now; Everyone who died on Earth from now on would be funneled through there, and given choices.

And so, Ophiel had some spare bodies to throw at this particular non-cooperation happening before him.

Ophiel had been waiting for more people to gather, but it appeared the room would grow less crowded, instead of more.

Ophiel stepped to the center of the U in the conference room, and said, “I will now prove that I am not a false paladin.”

Toshi scoffed at the word ‘paladin’, starting to say something, but he never got far.

Ophiel opened [Gate]s, the rings of lightning revealing lands beyond this sterilized office space. One portal opened up to a specific place near Beijing, China, where an old man named Jin Jin stood in his ‘office’, looking at the world beyond, where a large wall separated him and his building from the forested mountains beyond. Jin Jin was the leader of House China, though he hadn’t been allowed to do much in a long while.

The people in the conference room could see the man looking at the wall beyond his compound, and how he was dressed in plain clothes with ID tags on his sleeves. He had no computer on his desk, and he had no electronics anywhere in his ‘office’, but he did have papers.

Jin Jin turned and saw the portal. He smiled, and said, “Ah. Hello. I was wondering how this was going to happen. I just step through, yes?”

Ophiel had not spoken to the man before now, but Benevolence had a way of letting people know when stuff was happening that was good for them, and that’s what Ophiel was doing right now.

Ophiel said, “Yup. Come on through.”

Jin Jin came on through and smiled as he saw everyone else in the room. “Ah! Friends. I have missed you all. How has the world been since my imprisonment?”

Stunned silence.

No one said anything.

Ophiel told Jin Jin, “I’m already picking up your compatriots and depositing them downstairs.” He held up several pill-shaped trackers that were still covered in blood. “I took the liberty of removing all of your trackers, as well.” Ophiel set them on the table, and then [Cleanse]ed the blood from his hands, as he turned and said to the Russian woman, Kudrina, “Your situation is stickier. We can discuss that later.”

More stunned silence.

Kudrina went stoic as a few eyes turned toward her.

Ophiel dismissed the [Gate].

Jin Jin was busy getting his seat at the table, so that is what he did while everyone else just stared. When he sat down he happily asked, “What’s happening, my friends? Who is this young man who rescued us?”

Ophiel forestalled the drama of the moment, raising a hand to conjure a lightward image of Fenrir about two meters across. He moved that image to the back of the room, saying, “I’m the son of your Founder. I know him as Erick Flatt. Dad.”

All possible conversation died in its crib as Ophiel conjured more lightward images.

Veird with its onion-like layers of land carved away to reveal the whole structure. Size comparisons of Veird to Earth. Comparisons of Veird to Fenrir. He made some numerical notations in the air, giving relative population numbers of the various lands, along with percentages of habitation. Fenrir was currently at a population of 3.9 trillion. Veird was at 16 billion, which was a vast improvement from before the Red War. Earth was at 8 billion.

Fenrir, with 2 million moons around it, had a total surface area somewhere in the 5×10^19 area. With its population of 3.9 trillion it was still only .000002% inhabited-by-average. It was actually a lot less inhabited than that since most people lived in communities of various sorts, condensing population down to civilization centers held together by gate networks, but Ophiel’s displayed numbers were fine for as-the-[Fireball]-falls sorts of comparisons.

That wasn’t counting the Painted Cosmology beyond Fenrir, though. Ophiel displayed that particular land-space number as ∞. That population was unknown to Ophiel, since it was growing all the time. He put up a ‘<∞’ for that population count. It was good enough.

Based on some comparisons, Veird was at least 8 times the size of Earth, even before the 13 new Shells that Solomon put around the place, and that wasn’t even counting the Underworld. Even with Veird’s double population of Earth, Veird was much, much less populated comparatively. Ophiel didn’t have that exact number, but he put it up as ‘~.005% inhabited’ and with an asterisk saying that it was a total guess.

Earth was maybe 10% inhabited. Pretty easy to make that guess, there. The internet gave Ophiel that sort of information… Well. 10% or 3%. Ophiel went with 10%.

As Ophiel let those numbers hang out there he added a few lightpaintings of House Benevolence, on Veird. The Reaching Hands in the center of Fenrir. Some depictions of Dad’s true size when compared to a planet like Veird, and Earth, and Fenrir. A whole bunch of other pictures.

He put Dad’s dragon form wrapped protectively around Fenrir.

The room was silent as he worked. A woman from Brazil scoffed quietly about illusions, but as Ophiel kept going, she went quiet. The people of the House of Resons could conjure illusions when they really needed to, but nothing on this scale. Ophiel was spending thousands of mana to do this. Not a single person in this room even had a core. They only had, maybe, 150 mana per person. And only the top people in the room. Ophiel had stores of power far beyond any of them, and the skill to match those resources.

Kudrina poked Jin Jin to make sure he was real. Jin Jin grinned and poked her back, chuckling a little as he did so.

In front of a silent audience, Ophiel stepped to the middle of the presentation space and turned into his ‘true form’.

Ophiel’s many wings spilled out of his body and he became a 2 meter tall many-winged iridescent black conglomeration of many eyes and colors.

People gasped.

Some looked like they were seeing god.

None ran.

Ophiel intoned, “My father, whom you know as the Founder, began life as a man named Erick Flatt, of Earth. When he fell to Veird, from Earth, in 2019, his goal was first to simply survive and thrive on the world called Veird, with his daughter, Jane Flatt. That was 30-ish years ago.

“Some of you are already recognizing many problems with this timeline.

“I say 2019, and that is the true date. This is when your Founder left, as well. I say 30 years, and that is also true. I would give you more exact dates, but your Founder is the Prime God of a universe these days, and stuff goes weird around gods of all sorts, and especially around my father.

“He won his Wizard War.

“But, as is the nature of these things, and as is the nature of Dad, time got all wonky.

“And so, I have traveled across infinity and through time, at my father’s behest, as a Paladin of Benevolence, to Earth, to have these sorts of conversations that we’re having right now.” Ophiel drew himself back together, back to human-shaped, as he donned some black and white mage robes that were cut in the warrior-style. They were rather fashionable robes back home, but they’d stick out like a ‘cosplayer’ on Earth, so he hadn’t worn them until now. With an easier tone, but with even more gravity to his voice, Ophiel said, “My goal here is to induct Earth into the greater universe, under the protection and ownership of my father, His Dark Benevolence, the Dragon God of Many Colors, the Wizard of Benevolence, Erick Flatt.”

Ophiel waited as the gathered people in the room absorbed all of that.

Deborah took charge, looking almost frightened but also hopeful, as she asked, “What does that sort of ‘ownership’ look like?”

Ophiel said, “For starters, I, as the hand of my father, have decided to do a few things to Earth. Everyone who does not like what I will be doing to Earth is allowed to develop technology or whatever in order to escape and build outside of Earth, on all the planets of this solar system. To be clear, when I say ‘ownership of Earth’, I mean this entire part of the Milky Way. There are other civilizations out there but let’s not talk about them right now, as they do not concern us.

“As for what I will be doing to Earth, I am going to start with complete nuclear disarmament, and the disarming of every army out there.

“From there, I will be cleaning up all the landfills, healing all the people, and installing a manaminer on Earth, to keep mana contained to Earth and allow for the proliferation of magical knowledge among the common person, since mana has a tendency to blow away if not contained.

“I’ve already installed an afterlife on Earth, so that anyone who dies will be transported to new worlds, with new powers to help them live new lives, but I imagine most people will want to come back to Earth, and I’ll be keeping an eye on that, and making adjustments accordingly.” Ophiel had a lot more to say, but he finished with, “And that thing I did with the lightning ring—” Ophiel conjured another [Gate] and stuck his hand through it, to reach out of the air a meter away and wiggle his hand. He pulled his hand back. “— This thing. I’ll be making a Gate Relay system here on Earth eventually, and when Earth connects to Dad’s godly timeline in 15 years, that [Gate] system will connect to Fenrir.” Ophiel stepped back adding, “And that’s it for my presentation, for now.”

More silence.

Jin Jin spoke up, “Is that it for the big words?”

Ophiel was surprised by the speed of the Chinese guy’s turn around, and so was everyone else according to their faces, but Ophiel saw where some of this was going, so he said, “That’s the big, overview stuff; yes.”

“Good.” Jin Jin said to everyone else, “I suggest we overthrow the United States, Russia, North Korea, and then China, all at more or less the same time, but if we have to pick an order, that is my order.”

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Everyone tried to talk at once.

And yup, that’s where Ophiel thought this was going, but that was fine. For now.

Kurdina, from Russia, spoke above the sudden outpouring of words, “We can reason with Russia. We cannot reason with North Korea or with the American House, or even the Americans.”

Deborah defended America, saying, “Our people aren’t nearly as bad as your people! We don’t black-bag people and assassinate them in hospitals.”

“You do Guantanamo instead,” said Toshi, from Japan.

The yelling started.

Ophiel let them yell at each other for a while.

Ophiel only stepped in when the delegation from Brazil roared about this being too much. Those people got up and made for the door—

And Ophiel silenced the room. People moved their mouths without speaking, but Ophiel’s voice carried fine, “This is the fate of your world you’re walking out on. If you want to leave, you can, but however the change happens will be decided in this room. Maybe not for an hour of yelling. Maybe not for a day. Maybe not for ten years. But the general shape of it all will happen here, and if you leave, then you leave.”

… The people from Brazil sat back down.

The room got much calmer.

The initial panic about Ophiel’s presentation was still there, and everyone was in shock, but they were coming to grips with his words. Maybe Ophiel could have gone softer, lobbed his pitch easier, but changing a world was never an easy thing to do for mortals like him, or like all the others in this room.

A secretary from Brazil, a man named Rafael, asked Ophiel, “This has to happen?”

“Yes,” Ophiel said, without equivocation. “All of this is happening. The timeline is not set and the reveal can come in parts, but this overall shape is happening.”

“Why? Why not let us be ignorant of the universe?” Exasperated, Rafael said, “No one wanted the Founder’s war. No one wants him here anymore, either. Can’t you just leave?”

Deborah scoffed, but she held her tongue; she wanted to know Ophiel’s answer to that question, too. Toshi looked imperious, but also concerned about how Ophiel would respond. Jin Jin thought it was perfectly normal for the Founder to come in and change everything for the better; that’s what he did all the time while he was here, after all. Kurdina just wanted to go back home and she did not care about Ophiel’s answer; she was resigned to being here, though.

Ophiel said, “Because I see pain, and I must heal it. If you’re looking for some deeper reason than that, you will not find it. We are at the base level of Benevolence. That is the nature of the power each of you have inside of yourself, that creates the mana you use. Benevolence is the nature of my Calling. That is who I am, as a Paladin of my dad.” He added, “Sometimes a surgeon must cause harm in order to help. That is what is happening here. I apologize for the harm I am causing, but I am still going to cause this necessary harm. Absolutely no one should live in ignorance of the greater universe, and mana is too useful to all people to allow it to go unknown for any longer.”

Silence.

Slowly, Deborah said, “Sounds like the Founder to me.”

Toshi was unconvinced, but he had hope. He said, “Sounds like a Founder that isn’t hiding anything anymore.” He stared at Ophiel, asking, “Tell us of the war.”

“Sure. We can start there.” Ophiel began, “So there was this person who killed a universe.” Most people paled at that declaration. Ophiel continued, “That is who my father fought against. Who he won against. That other person has been Forgotten by decree of the gods, and you might learn of him if you pursue those sorts of questions with the right sort of people, but that person is gone and we’re all better off that his great evil is no more. Let us Forget him, but not the lessons he taught us in his tyrannical evil…”

Ophiel spoke for a time, never naming names, but he did give an overview of what had happened, from the anti-memetic threats, to the erasures of timelines and planetary destruction, to the nature of Margleknot, the hub of this neck of the Fractal Universe. When necessary, Ophiel spoke of magic. The people here knew a lot more than the rest of the people on Earth, of resonwork and the slices/layers/structure of the Fractal Cosmology, but they needed more to understand what Dad had actually done.

Dad had never given them any names at all.

Ophiel fully suspected that someone here would try to ping the ‘rescue me’ yorddle system later, so Ophiel told them that if they did that, they would be meeting fae, and those fae would probably steal their names, souls, etc. Don’t mess with fae; that was a big message.

Some people were going to learn that the hard way, though.

Eventually, Deborah asked about everything, “Why did Grandpa do this? This way? Just to protect us?”

“Yes,” Ophiel said, “Power calls to power. Knowing too much would have gotten you killed. Now that the Great Evil is gone, and Dad won, that sort of calling won’t happen. Other dangers still exist. For now, Earth is not a concern to anyone else, so calling out to Power probably won’t get you noticed. And Dad owns this place now— Well. Him and his wife; Her Benevolent Darkness Shadow.”

Ophiel wondered if the shadows in the room would spit Shadow out, but she appeared to be busy. Maybe she would show up later, or maybe not. Probably not.

Ophiel continued, “And so Dad is now a filter through which all communication flows from this land, back to Margleknot, to Yggdrasil. Other than him, you’re pretty much on your own here on Earth. And that’s for the best. Of course! As I said earlier, that’s just here on Earth proper. If people go outside of Earth they can do whatever they want. I’m thinking we can make the humanity on Earth into a solar-system-wide civilization in under 10 years, and once you’re out there you can do whatever you want. Earth itself is going to be controlled by Dad, though.”

Toshi narrowed his eyes. “You’ve said that a few times now. How are you going to control Earth? Are you going to…”

Conversation resumed, and this time it was less worried, and more constructive.

Ophiel wondered if Dad could have done it better—

Ophiel caught himself in that thought. Of course Dad could have done it better, but this was Ophiel’s time to grow.

This was his isekai.

Right now was the introduction phase.

A few weeks from now, or maybe even today, Ophiel would start handing out Personal Scripts.

That’s when the real changes would really start.

He hoped all of the people here would become good friends, like Dad had found in Spur.

Ophiel dreamed of Spur sometimes. Of those simple times back when he was just sitting on Dad’s shoulder, watching the world. He wanted that for himself. Earth could be his Spur. These people could be his found family. Maybe most of them would go their own ways, but he could see some of them becoming a big part of his life here on Earth.

Jin Jin was absolutely ready to throw down with some big political action, so that was fun. He didn’t want to kill anyone, either, which was even better. When you had enough power violence didn’t have to happen, and Ophiel had lots of power. Jin Jin seemed to be magically empathic, too, which would be useful going forward. His power was actual power, though; Dad’s empathy had always just been who he was.

Toshi was going to be a problem, but only because he wanted to go too soft and too slow. He wanted to be inevitable, not transformative. Ophiel could see that as a valid strategy considering that all the dead on Earth went on to new lives elsewhere. So there wasn’t a true need to move fast. No one that died on Earth due to inaction would really die. But Toshi didn’t really understand that, Ophiel hadn’t really explained it, and no one here would understand that until Ophiel showed them all the Safehold. Mainly though, Ophiel wanted Earth to be better, and that included the people currently living on it. There was friction there, and only time would tell if Toshi ended up being an ally or a noncombatant. He probably wouldn’t become an enemy.

… Probably.

Kurdina was an enemy, but only because she thought her Russian contacts were the better path for Earth. That was fine. People were free to do what they wanted. Kurdina’s path might even prove beneficial in the end, when she came for them alongside the KGB, and the House of Resons was forced to fly, or falter.

Deborah would be a great friend for the rest of Ophiel’s life. She was already family, even though they had just met.

This was wonderful.

The Benevolent Sky in Antarctica’s Safehold showed that bad things were going to happen, but Ophiel would be here to prevent the worst from happening.

… Maybe he’d also build a moon base…

Deborah looked at him quizzically, interrupting the flow of conversation to ask, “What?”

Everyone looked at Ophiel.

Ophiel just shrugged and said, “I was thinking of building a base on Luna or maybe on Ganymede. Yeah, people would panic when they saw that stuff go up, but they’d also start moving to understand what was happening.” Into the stunned room, Ophiel said, “If I built it on Ganymede, then only the top scientists and governments would know, and it would give the world time to prepare. Crazy shit would happen, but it would be controlled by the people already in power. If I built it on Luna, facing Earth, then everyone would see it and that would get the ball rolling very fast. Probably too fast. So the far side of Luna? Or maybe none of that at all. I’m sure some scientists in Antarctica are going to find the Safehold I built there soon enough, which is also a way to get the ball rolling.” He smiled. Ophiel made a decision, “Speaking of which! We’ve probably talked enough for today, for here and now. It’s time to show you all how the afterlife is going to work on Earth, from now on.” He opened a portal to a land of darkness and cold.

Freezing temperatures billowed into the room but Ophiel held back the cold with some wardwork. A few casts of light later, and Ophiel revealed a mountain of snow and ice in the distance. Before that distance, though, there stood a permanent Gate.

It was a tall, white-glowing tree with shimmering green leaves and a rainbow crown. It was not Yggdrasil, but also it kinda was. Like a sapling. Its roots knotted into whorls and twists at the base. The largest twist of rootwork and thick trunk held a glowing white portal filled with softness and mist.

The mist parted and warmth spread out from the base of the tree, transforming the frozen world into illuminated summertime, though the ice was still thick upon the ground and the sky still dark with winter night.

The cold stopped billowing into the conference room and Ophiel stepped through the portal, saying, “This way to the afterlife. Don’t worry. It’s warm over here and I’ll bring you back fast enough.”

This was a large leap of faith for most of them; Ophiel saw that. In their terrified faces. In their desire to know more. In the turns of their head, as they looked away, not wanting to leap.