Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick sat back in his chair, briefly holding and reading the goblins’ application again. He set the paper aside and said, “So you want a monster moved. Not killed. Do I have that right?”

The lead goblin, a man by the name of Ykk, sat in the chair opposite Erick, while his people stood on the grasses on Ykk’s side of the platform. All five of them nodded at Erick’s words. Ykk said, “Yes, sir.”

Erick said, “This is odd, you understand. This deviation from the norm makes me think there is something untoward happening. I don’t wish to be involved in politics, and I certainly cannot abide by accidentally loosing some evil upon some unsuspecting area.” Erick said, “Tell me what is going on, here.”

Ykk and his people all stilled, their expressions going unreadable. They were already hard to read, but now it was practically impossible. They even seemed to consciously control the beating of their hearts, though Erick might have been wrong about that.

Ykk began, “What we are asking is not for a Dangerous Game, but for the solving of a problem caused by negligence among the Herders.” Ykk reached down into the neck of his black breastplate and retrieved a white metal disk, attached to a thin, white chain. “I have authority invested in me by the White Council —The ruling body of Homeland— to solve this problem as quick as I can, before it becomes a true problem and we lose the beast. None of us actually wish for the monster’s death. This is unusual, yes, but only because iron beasts are unusual beasts.”

Erick frowned a little. The goblin was completely unreadable. Perhaps goblin physiology was too far away from what Erick was used to, for the long nose and the pointed chin, and the black eyes, made it very hard to understand the micro expressions he was seeing.

Erick said, “I’m going to ask my guard, who is a Mind Mage, to lie detect for me. Do you consent?”

Ykk’s expression did not change at all, as he glanced to Poi, standing behind Erick. Ykk looked to Erick. “I consent.”

Poi nodded.

Erick asked, “Do you knowingly intend to cause harm or trouble for others with the moving of this iron beast that you have asked me to move?”

“No, sir.”

Poi nodded; no lies.

Erick held up the lightsculpture that the female goblin had made, asking, “Tell me about this monster, and why it needs to be moved, and not killed.”

The lightward showed a lobster-like beast, but with a dark iron shell and several pedipalp-like collections of tendrils instead of forward claws. For size comparison, a goblin stood next to the iron beast. The goblin was the size of the iron beast’s toe claws. Erick guessed that the live beast was the size of a two-story house. Possibly more.

Ykk said, “The iron beast in question was stolen from the hatchery two years ago by a child who thought to raise his family to power with the iron harvesting abilities of the beast. The child, against all odds, managed to do three unlikely things: hatch the beast, become its Beastmaster, and have the juvenile iron beast survive the transition to adult, when the small core turns into a grand core. All three things are highly unlikely, with such an event occurring approximately once every seven years. Most of the iron beasts we have under the White Council’s control are a hundred years old, and we’re always having some Beastmasters trying to raise a new Iron Beast.

“And so, we come to the problems of this boy getting his wish.

“Iron beasts are terribly temperamental. Once they turn into monsters, they never willingly leave their birth tunnels. This boy hatched his beast inside a mine of his own creation, far outside of established, patrolled, protected areas.

“The boy has gained his wish, and his family has become the caretakers of the iron beast, harvesting its ever-increasingly-large cast off shells for profit. This achievement has even brought the boy a true noble name of Tryker Ironknife, along with accolades and wealth of such an elevation. The White Council has accepted this elevation, for many of them got where they were through the same sorts of means.

“But the boy fucked up, or some uncle or sister did; we don’t know, and we don’t care. We only care about the possible loss of a highly productive iron beast. There is a reason we have well protected and patrolled iron beast areas.

“Iron beasts don’t move as long as their tunnels contain iron, and they’re able to [Grow] it out of the nearest hundred kilometers, but just last week some ballooning spiders clipped through the beast’s tunnels, and the beast is beset on all sides by hungry spiders. This is the problem. The spiders can’t get through the beast’s hide, for the beast curled up to protect itself, but at the same time, the spiders won’t move on from easy prey; all they gotta do is outlast the iron beast’s fat reserves. In five more days, it’s gonna get hungry, and it’s gonna have to fight, and it’s gonna die, because iron beasts are not that strong, and since the spiders opened up the beast’s tunnels, all manner of monsters have poured inside. This is the larger problem.

“It could be that some other monster will come inside the tunnels, hunting after the spiders, and they’ll find the iron beast just sitting there like a delicious, weakened meal. It’s happened before, and in much more secure locations than where the beast is now.

“So what we want from you, if you could, is to move the beast twelve hundred kilometers through the air or however you want to do it, to a new set of tunnels that we already got established closer to Homeland.” Ykk sat back in his chair, saying, “And that’s the spiel. Will you help us out?”

All of that was rather interesting, and especially the part how the iron beast could [Grow] iron out of the ground? How did it do that? Did it have some sort of mutualistic relationship with an iron fungus, or something? Whatever the case—

Erick asked Poi, “Any lies?”

Poi said, “No overly large ones. The part about ‘the monster will die in five days’ would show up as pink on a standard red-pink-green truthstone.”

Ykk seemed to solidify a little, though some part of Erick guessed that the small man’s true reaction was deflation. It was, as Erick was finding out in new ways every few seconds, kinda hard to read goblins.

Erick said to Ykk, “I already found it hard to believe that your people couldn’t protect one of these iron beasts. Tell me: why the minor lie?”

Ykk stared disbelieving for a moment, then he seemed to realize something. He said, “We’re not all archmages, sir. People die when they step outside of the walls of the cities of the Underworld. This iron beast is in very uncharted territory.”

Erick frowned a little, then asked, “Have you contacted the Wayfarer’s Guild? They should be able to get someone with [Teleport Other] or [Teleport Monster] out to the beast. Such a theoretical person should also be able to use [Conjure Force Elemental] to get that spell out to the beast; there shouldn’t be a need to approach the monster at all.”

Ykk scowled a little, his emotions seeming more human in the moment, as he said, “We have a Wayfarer’s Guild in the city… Truthfully, sir, all the normal methods we would have used are denied to us. The boy who controls the beast— Tryker Ironknife has upset many of the wrong people in his rise to power. No one wants to work with him, and so the White Council has been goaded into action so that we don’t lose an iron beast to the whims of the Darkness.”

Erick glanced to Poi.

Poi nodded; no lies here.

Erick decided. “I’m going to move this beast for you, and then I wash my hands of this politicking.”

Ykk brightened—

Erick suddenly realized that while he could understand Ykk’s expressions more, it was not because the goblin was suddenly understandable; it was because Ykk was mirroring him. The goblin was purposefully tailoring his reactions toward Erick, in order to relate, communicate, and put Erick at ease. Come to think of it, Shade Hollowsaur had goblins on his plateau inside Ar’Kendrithyst’s Jungle. They were the Shade’s main workforce; they took care of the cows.

There was something there in this mirroring; something deep.

Ykk seemed to realize that something possibly bad was happening inside Erick’s mind; possibly because the little green man was reading Erick’s expressions better than Erick was reading Ykk’s, and Ykk was automatically compensating for what he was seeing. Ykk had been on the verge of saying something, but he stopped.

Erick just stared.

The other goblins, who had been standing off to the side of the platform, watching this whole time, realized something was going wrong, too, at almost the exact moment that Erick and Ykk felt an oddity stretch between them.

Erick asked, “So what’s all this, then?”

A long moment passed.

Ykk softly said, “I request a Privacy, now. You, me, and your man.”

Erick Shaped his [Sealed Privacy Ward] to the platform. To them, nothing changed, but everyone else saw Erick and Ykk and Poi vanish from sight. Their chairs were still there, but they were gone. Mostly. If someone looked at Erick’s feet, they would see bits of him sticking outside of the Privacy. Perhaps, more importantly, though, Ykk was completely cut off from the other goblins.

Erick waited.

Ykk said, “I apologize for attempting to Mirror you. I need the beast moved, and I knew I needed to do everything possible to ensure that this meeting turned out well. I can only apologize that my skill was not up to the pressures of the moment. This is a black mark for me.”

So he apologized for being caught in a manipulation tactic; not for actually trying to manipulate Erick.

Interesting.

Erick asked, “Is that a skill you can purchase from the Open Script? What is it, exactly?” Erick had another guess, and as soon as the words left his lips, he knew he was correct, “Something to do with goblins, in particular?”

Ykk narrowed his eyes, possibly wondering if he was in actual danger. It was hard to know, for it seemed goblins were capable of completely hiding what they were actually thinking and feeling, using a mask of mirroring.

Erick explained, “I don’t actually know anything about goblins.” In a bit of his own ‘mirroring’, Erick said, “I can only apologize that I don’t know anything about your people.”

“… It’s a thing all goblins can do; yes.” Ykk said, “It’s impolite to Mirror others to get what you want, but people do it all the time. When we get caught we have failed… the Dangerous Game.”

“And yet, you told me that you wouldn’t drag me into this ‘Dangerous Game’, which I can only assume has something to do with subservience and subterfuge and making the people in power do what you want them to do.”

Ykk dropped his head to his hands, mumbling, “Oh gods. They’re going to demote me down to sewer scrubber.”

“I doubt that will happen.” Erick said, “You got what you came here for.”

Ykk flinched, then he rose, eyeing Erick with his dark gaze. “Uh?”

“I have just now [Teleport Other]d the iron beast out of its lair, and into the one your people set up. The giant lobster is already prowling around its new lands.” When Ykk didn’t understand Erick, Erick explained, “I was investigating Homeland while I cleared out the kill requests from the other petitioners, and all of what you said was more or less what I saw on the ground. Finding Tryker’s iron beast took a bit of doing, but that was easy enough. While I was having a conversation with you, I was also talking with Tryker. Your stories lined up, and now, the boy is overjoyed that his beast is saved. You will likely get some of that credit.” Erick shrugged, saying, “I don’t know much about goblins, but I can tell there’s something odd going on here since Tryker tried to Mirror me, too. But that’s fine.” Erick asked, “I assume that every goblin tries to Mirror everyone larger than themselves?”

Ykk was having a moment, and then he realized that he was still sitting in front of an archmage. He rapidly said, “Yes. It’s instinctive. That instinct is near impossible to overcome when interacting with the strong, and you are… very strong. I apologize for my ineptitude.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Erick asked, “The problem of the iron beast is solved. Good luck with whatever comes next. I’ve got about thirty one more life threatening issues to deal with before the day is over, so I’m going to have to ask you to quickly move on.”

Ykk sat up straight, saying, “Of course! Apologies, Master Flat— Archmage Flatt.”

Erick froze. ‘Master’?

Ykk froze, too.

And then Ykk scurried away, out of the Privacy, to his people. The woman with them rapidly asked questions and Ykk hushed them all, talking about how it was time to go, and that the problem was solved; Erick had moved the iron beast. As four of the five goblins smiled wide, revealing sharp teeth, Ykk glared, and they all stopped smiling.

The woman extended power across her entire group, and in a translucent white flash, the goblins vacated the field.

Erick was still under the Privacy. He turned to Poi, asking, “So is that Mirroring a racial thing imbued into them by the Shades? I suppose I should ask first: Did the Shades make the goblins?”

“All we truly know is that the goblins came out of the tunnels of Continental Nergal’s Underworld in the year 90, Post Sundering, and that no Shade has ever claimed their creation.” Poi said, “The most prominent theory is that the Old Demons attempted to create a second slave race with orcols as the starter, because the incani were starting to become rather rebellious. Whatever happened, goblins have the unique ability to Mirror others, in order to make themselves exactly what the viewer wants them to be, sometimes even to the goblin’s detriment. Goblins can also go into minor Rages, but that usually only happens when they accidentally gain the subClass of Slave… Which sometimes occurs when they are around powerful people and the powerful people don’t realize what’s happening.”

Erick got the distinct impression that whatever was going on there was much more complicated than Poi had explained.

“It is,” Poi said.

Erick sighed, saying, “Some things just make me uncomfortable, and I think I have found a new one, today.”

“Most people feel the same way.” Poi said, “That was why the goblins were on edge when they were around everyone else.”

Erick stood up, saying, “Well. Whatever. Not my problem. Let’s move on to the next group. Got any suggestions for speed?”

Poi frowned a little, then said, “Nope.”

“Bah! Fine.” Erick dismissed the bubble, reappearing to the gathered crowds. “Okay! One problem solved. Thirty one—” Another group appeared atop the white stone that Erick had set out to act as a Teleport Square. He amended his words, “Thirty two more groups.”

Erick got to work.

He dismissed three of the groups right away. No, he would not be giving an account for your ‘a history of the chelation wars’ book right now, thank you. No, he would not ‘swear fealty to your clan and receive riches beyond imagining’, go away now. No, he would not marry your daughter, not gonna happen.

- - - -

On average, in order to solve a problem that actually warranted Erick’s intervention, there was fifteen to twenty minutes of listening, followed by five to ten minutes of interrogation, followed by how ever long it took to actually solve the problem. To make it all go a bit faster, Erick began conducting his own investigations while the people were still explaining what they needed, so when he got to the interrogation part, he could usually just solve the problem right there and then, but only after knowing if it needed to be solved, of course. In all the cases brought to him, most people had no way to solve them, but Erick was not ‘most people’.

He located the kidnapped scions of a clan, and he brought them home.

He ended monster hordes before they could hit settlements.

He closed vast cracks in the surface of Veird, where monsters spewed out from the Underworld.

He helped to end face stealer problems four different times. Those incidents took a bit more time, and the inclusion of other people, like Sin Seekers and guards and such, for Erick was not about to enact that sort of justice on his own. In three of those four incidents, the petitioners had enough connections to enable the swift allocation of Sin Seekers to the verification, but on the fourth one, the petitioners were just a small clan that was extremely worried by the news they were hearing, coming out of the grasslands.

That small clan was a mountain dwelling society that existed in the deep foothills to the east of grass traveler land, almost inside the Tribulations themselves. There were only a hundred people there, and Erick was able to call upon Vania and the other Sin Seekers of Ooloraptoor to help with that search.

The only ‘sins’ that the Sin Seekers uncovered were of the normal sort. There were no face stealers there, which was a blessing. Every other place Erick investigated contained face stealers. For this clan, though, they were just rightly worried, and they were about to tear themselves apart through their paranoia. There was already a lot of blood on those streets. Luckily, no one had been killed.

Erick brought Vania and the other Sin Seekers back to Ooloraptoor and thanked them for their assistance. They told him that they were just glad to help, though Erick got the distinct impression that he was asking a lot of them; they had duties of their own, after all.

Maybe Erick needed to find some Sin Seekers of his own.

And so, the day came to a near close, as the sun set and the sky turned orange and purple. Erick had gotten through almost every single group that had been there at noon, waiting for him, but 29 extra groups now waited in the wings, hoping that he could keep going for a little while longer.

“I’m almost done for the day, except for one group.” Some people groaned, some yelled, speaking out that their problems could not wait another day, but Erick simply spoke over their outbursts, “All of the rest of you can return tomorrow afternoon. Or! You could take care of your problem yourself. I’m all for helping you, but you should know that I am a last resort. The Star’s Draining field is expanding when I’m done here, so don’t expect to camp out next to my yurt! And you five groups!” Erick gestured with his light, pointing out the new offenders. “According to your applications, I cannot help you. Return if what you wrote was a lie to hide the truth of your problem, or else don’t return, because I’ll just deny you tomorrow.”

Four of the five groups scowled; the fifth went quiet, and gave a small nod.

Erick moved on.

A lot of the gathered groups moved on, too. Erick casually memorized many of the monster problems that he had spied on scattered applications; he’d kill those monsters on his own, later tonight, or something.

The pixies floated nearby. They had waited patiently for their turn.

Erick turned to the pixies, gesturing for them to come forward. As they reached him, Erick spoke in a normal volume, “I’m going to need to know some locations, and I heard you are rather secretive about that.” Erick sat back down in his own chair. “Do you wish for a Privacy, Wellowbye?”

The male pixie, Wellowbye, floated forward, to alight upon the back of the petitioner’s chair. In that position he reminded Erick of a tiny man standing atop a very tall building. His two companion pixies floated beyond the chair. Wellowbye said, “A Privacy would be welcome, Archmage. Thank you.”

Erick cast the Privacy, then he conjured a map of Veird between the two of them, so that Nelboor and Nergal laid between him and Wellowbye. Erick asked, “So where is your place, exactly? Or rather, where are the variant toxic hydras?”

Wellowbye stepped onto the map like it was a solid surface, landing on a bit of Nergal that was closest to Quintlan. “Here are the beasts.”

Of course, he had to pick the part of Nergal that was furthest away. Erick frowned, saying, “That’s halfway around the world.” For a brief moment, Erick lamented. Then he banished that emotion, and said, “Okay. I can do that. Probably gonna take an hour of lightstepping, though.”

With professional mien, Wellowbye said, “We wouldn’t wish to burden you overmuch with travel concerns, and so, we wish to reveal to you a strategic asset.” He gestured backward, to the side, where one of his companions floated. “Oliolo is a Spatial Mage, capable of [Gate].”

Erick perked up. “Oh! That makes this a whole lot easier. I can cast through the [Gate]!”

Yet another reason to get [Gate] as soon as possible—

A deep thought struck Erick, combining several facts at once. Like turning a masterfully cut diamond in his hand and suddenly seeing the fire within, he saw the Worldly Path in a sudden, new light.

[Gate], when purchased through the Script, cost 10 points, and you could never learn the spell yourself.

Adding to that, once you got through the first step of the Worldly Path, you lost the ability to ever purchase [Gate] through the Quest. This was where Erick was at right now. He had gone too far down his own Path to ever make use of the [Gate] laid down by the Script. And it was a [Gate] ‘laid down by the Script’ wasn’t it? Perhaps, spending those 10 points—

As far as Erick knew, and could postulate, points were pieces of something (probably something to do with souls and Script magnifications) that could be used to reinforce oneself through the allocation of points into Stats, and also to gain new Basic Tier spells or Skills. None of those ‘purchase’ applications granted a person the full Spell or Skill. A new Basic Tier purchase always started off at level 1. A level 1 whatever then had to be ‘grown’ to fullness, to level 10, through use.

What was happening there, was that the basic option was being solidified into the soul. That’s what it meant to grow a spell to level 10. And once a spell was at level 10, it could be used in spell combinations, because at that point, the spell was ‘fully yours’, or something.

Points, once a person gained them, though, were definitely part of the soul. Spent points became solid parts of the soul, while unallocated Points were nebulous parts of the soul that could be transformed into any Script-allowed options.

Points could also be spent on non-allowed options, through Wizardry, like with Melemizargo’s New Stats. In that particular case, those New Stats became a part of a person’s visible Status. That the New Stats existed at all on the Status was just the Script’s way of codifying what was happening to the user, though, right? … Maybe.

Maybe.

Also maybe: It was entirely possible that there were invisible parts of the Status, as well.

And so, to bring that idea back to [Gate], and the Worldly Path, and Erick’s idea that [Gate] was actually a nebulous ‘summoned being’, like a Twisted Vision, which allowed people to ‘step in’ to one portal and then ‘step out’ into another part of the world…

When a person took their first step on the Worldly Path, and they gained the Quest with the option to pump 10 points and just get [Gate]…

Was spending those 10 points, in effect, ‘hooking into’ the [Gate] network/being that existed in the Script? The [Gate]-being that the gods used? Was spending those 10 points, perhaps, shoving one's soul at the locked entrance to the godly ‘Gate Network’, and thus creating a key out of oneself, in order to use that godly ‘Gate Network’? In order to use the Path laid down by the creators of the Script?

Erick felt he could be wrong about that.

But...

Such an occurrence would explain why Tenebrae was never able to understand the [Gate] of the Twisted Vision, or the [Gate] that various people gained by spending 10 points on the Quest. If the true goal of the Path was for a person to create their own ‘[Summon Gate Creator]’, then of course Tenebrae would never be able to tap into the [Gate]s already out there. Tenebrae wasn’t the creator of those two known ‘Gate Networks’, and the creators of those [Gate]s would never allow someone to usurp their power… Or, the ‘Gate Monster’ actively chose not to interact with Tenebrae’s attempts at connection? Or maybe the Gate Monster couldn’t interact with Tenebrae’s attempted connections.

Oh.

So that was interesting.

Erick felt right about it, too.

Wellowbye went, “Sir?”

Erick turned his attention back to the pixie standing in front of him and ignored his own social blunder. He asked, “What sort of variant? Could it be that these toxic hydras are actually people from Messalina’s Village?”

Wellowbye froze a little, but rapidly thawed to professional stoicism. His compatriots shared his sudden solidness. Wellowbye said, “I swear upon the Relevant Entities that if these variant toxic hydras are members of the— The Village… Then I do not know of it, and they certainly aren’t acting how true Villagers would act. As far as we know, these monsters are monsters, through and through, with no regard for life of any kind save their own.” He turned to Poi, asking, “Please tell the Archmage if I am lying, or hiding relevant information.”

Poi said, “Ambassador Wellowbye believes the variant toxic hydras are truly monsters, of the classical kind. He wants them dead, for their Extreme Light threatens many pixie cities.”

Wellowbye stood a bit taller, his wings sweeping out behind him like he was a soldier at attention. The effect was diminished by his decimeter height.

“Good to hear.” Erick told the pixie, “Tell me about the toxic hydras.”

Wellowbye paused as he stared a little, as though he was assessing if Erick’s turnaround was genuine, or not. Soon enough, he decided that overthinking was as disastrous as not answering, so he might as well let the chips fall where they may. He said, “We do not know their true names, but we know that all three of them share the same sort of traits, of Elemental Illusion, Elemental Star, and Elemental Extreme Light.” Wellowbye added, “We think there are three of them, but it could very well be a single beast, though each hydra is different enough from the other that they might be three separate monsters. The only reason we think they are Illusion hydras is because they can instantly heal any damage done to them, like they were never damaged at all, and they can move and appear wherever they want inside their pools of Extreme Light.

“It is possible that they are not Illusion-based, but at this point, that is highly unlikely.

“Physically, they are the same as any other fully grown toxic hydra. Each of them are roughly 250 meters from their main head to the tip of their tails, weighing in at around 16,000 tons each. Where they vary is in the number of heads, coming in at four, five, and seven heads. And they moved into the neighborhood two weeks ago. We’ve already lost many outer settlements to the hydra’s poison, and we are desperate to kill them.”

Huh.

For a lot of reasons, it seemed that there was Worldly Path fuckery going on with this request, for sure.

But to be sure, Erick asked, “Are they [Teleport]ing through their pools? Or are they just [Water Body]ing? Or [Lightwalk]ing?” Erick added, “[Illusionwalk]ing.” He glanced to Oliolo, asking, “Or is it actual Spatial Magic?”

Wellowbye turned to his compatriot.

Oliolo floated forward. She was a professional-looking pixie in a pink pantsuit. “They are not fully submerging, as one would need to do with [Water Body]. They are not using any Space Magic that I know of. If anything, they are using a form of [Illusionwalk], which is why we believe that they are Elemental Illusion hydras.”

Erick nodded, then asked, “How long can you keep open a [Gate]? I plan on casting through it to reach the battlefield from here.”

“I can keep open a pixie-sized [Gate] for hours.” Oliolo said, “A human-sized [Gate] would only last ten minutes.”

“Let us get to work.” Erick had Ophiel lift off of his shoulder and shrink down to the size of a hummingbird. “Ophiel will take you a good dozen kilometers away from here and then you will open the [Gate] to within a hundred kilometers of the target. Further away is fine, for I can find them myself.”

Oliolo bowed. “It will be as you command.”

- - - -

Ophiel passed through an opening in the world, passing from twilight night, to early morning.

Far below, kilometers away, the untamed toxic jungles of Nergal stretched out in every direction like a moldy green carpet of varying colors. A strong breeze blew across the world. Ophiel reflexively turned his sunform into edges, to hear the wind whistle across his light, and in preparation for a possible ambush.

Since no ambush came, another three Ophiel joined the first on the other side of the [Gate].

Briefly, the four of them danced in the new air, listening to the sound of the wind and reveling in the newness of the land. And then Erick took control, and the three of them stepped through the light, to float a good twenty kilometers north of the [Gate] that brought them here. Their connection to Erick remained strong, with the Ophiel near the [Gate] holding onto the thread connecting them to their creator.

A cascading light went up into the new sky, and soon, a map appeared.

A minute later, the hydras were revealed, but oddly; three fuzzy blue dots about fifty kilometers that way… and then other fuzzy blue dots appeared here and there. (Probably a result of the radiation, Erick thought.) First four more blue dots, and then another two, scattered here and there in other parts of the jungle. More ‘Illusion Star Toxic Hydras’?

While Wellowbye and his pixies freaked out a bit back at Ooloraptoor, and Erick dealt with that issue, one of Ophiel took off, racing to the original targets. The others went in other directions. Quick checks revealed normal toxic hydras at every site except for the expected site. The pixies calmed.

From a good five kilometers in the sky, Ophiel saw the beasts, their lair, and the problems that they had created for the pixies.

The jungle in this area, and for a great distance in most directions, was a marshland of trees thickly placed, growing out of dark brown waters, with barely any of the brown waters exposed to the open sky. But down below, the trees had been plowed aside by massive, scaled tails, like a man sweeping papers off of a desk. Those trees piled up like dams around a deep depression in the marshland, maybe a two kilometers across. In this place, the brown waters gathered into a true lake, turning dark black with their unusual depths, even in the full sunlight.

Or perhaps that blackness was simply from the hydras that lived there, for in those dark waters, were glittering lights. In the daytime, and to the untrained eye, those lights almost blended in with the sparkling reflection of the sun. But looking closer, Ophiel could tell that those glittering lights were like stars, upon a darkest blue background. That fit with the purported elements of these variants, for this much truth was practically written upon the hydras themselves.

Those same stars glittered on the dark blue scales of the hydras, each of which lounged in those waters, looking like sleepy bundles of snakes hiding just under the water’s surface. They probably hunted at night, but for now, they slept.

Their very presence was destroying their environment, but they probably didn’t care. The edge of their lake was brown with death, and to the north, in the direction the marshy waters flowed, the land was half-leafless, with dark, shimmering waters killing everything that was within five meters of the surface. A few stubborn leaves clung to the tops of many trees, but there was no wildlife. The trees themselves seemed to be able to withstand some of the Extreme Light, but they were dying, too.

As Ophiel descended to the waters, to explore the dead marshland, the edge of his sunform began to glitter with flecks of white. The Extreme Light here was strong. And then Ophiel dipped down, all the way to the surface of the water to inspect the runoff. This close to the toxic hydras’ signature power, Ophiel’s sunform edge was completely white. It was hard to see past the interference, but Ophiel managed well enough since he had many, many eyes, and more senses than just vision.

Ophiel moved north, inspecting the waters, seeing how far and how deep the damage went.

After a quick inspection of ten kilometers, Erick pulled Ophiel back, back to the air high above the hydras’ lair. The creator had seen more than enough to know that the hydras had to die.

The toxins of the hydras spread out from their lair, flowing north with the waters of the marsh, gradually spreading east and west and yet not diminishing in power at all except by diluting. How long had this been going on? Only two weeks? Really?

Back on the other side of the world, Erick got a repeated answer of two weeks, though they believed that the hydras were normal toxic hydras for years before that. No one bothered them, though, and their toxins never reached that far, until two weeks ago, when the problems started.

Ophiel felt a shudder pass through him.

And then he got to work. Ophiel fluttered above the targets, stabilizing himself 500 meters above the center of the lair. Power flowed through him.

An abyssal star broke the bright blue sky, shifting the world to shadows, bringing darkness to the day.

Hydras roared as they woke from slumber, recognizing the threat. They cast off the surface of the lake like sloughing skin, their dark scales glittering in the sunlight, and in the light of the Star above. The largest hydra opened three of its seven maws. Starlight burst forth like beams of dark radiance, carving across the sky, but dying in fits and spurts as the abyssal Star shone its own [Luminosity]s, breaking up the attack far, far before it could reach the Star.

And then the Star pulled. Health and Mana flowed from the monsters like streamers of glitter, empowering the Star above to pull even harder.

The seven-headed hydra stuck three heads into its lake, sucking up its star-filled waters to refill its own power. After a few seconds of buildup, the hydra opened the maw of its central head. Power flared like a supernova, blasting out of the hydra as meters-thick white light. The attack neared the Star, and then it failed. The hydra’s power struck some invisible force a hundred meters from the Star, breaking from a laminar flow into a scattered rush of light that spiraled outward, and then swirled inward, like a black hole sucking in a sun. That power coiled around the Abyssal Star, eventually vanishing into the depths completely.

The four-headed hydra tried a different sort of attack. It slipped through the light, up, up, into the sky, riding the shadows and the light, bypassing the comparatively-invisible Ophiel still hanging out in the middle of the fight; ignored. The hydra [Illusionwalk]ed close to the hateful Star, trying to attack it directly with shorter-range starlight burts. That was a mistake. From one flickering illusion to the next, the hydra flailed as though realizing it had landed in the maw of a much larger monster. It tried to get away, but [Luminosity] ate at its attempts to [Illusionwalk]. The hydra suddenly ripped to bloody chunks as its [Illusionwalk] failed spectacularly.

Chunks of hydra rained down from the Abyssal Sky.

The five-headed hydra was the only one who went defensive. It tried to dive deep to get away from the hateful Star. This was a successful tactic, as the Abyssal Star could not reach past the surface of the toxic waters. There was no easy way to get to that particular hydra, but then Seven-Head took away Five-Head’s covers.

With six of its seven heads in the lake, drinking deep, Seven-Head drained the starlight in the waters, pulling from every direction, pulling power into itself, into its central maw. It released a great blast, twice as large as before.

The Abyssal Star merely drank the starlight deep. And now, it reached its shadowy tendrils down into the waters, beyond the surface, to attack Five-Head. Glittering lights Drained out of Five-Head, causing Five-Head to launch out of the waters again, to roar with brightness, and to flicker in place, to shoot its own beams upward, to fail exactly as Seven-Head had failed.

Erick had seen enough.

He had Ophiel call out to the monsters, to ask if they were people. For a full minute he tried to talk to them, but the hydras knew no words; they were not people.

Ophiel got the signal to end it, so he did.

Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Went the [Luminous Beam]s, cutting deep into necks and backs and tails. Starlight blood flowed into the marshy waters. Illusions, or something, tried to seal up the cracks in the wounds Ophiel had caused, for he had not outright killed the hydras! How strange.

The obvious solution was obvious.

Swipe!

Swipe!

Swipe!

Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe!

There.

Now the monsters were dead, and they weren’t getting back up…

But let’s gather all the shiny cores to make sure.

Annnnnd there! 16 grand cores!

Job done!

- - - -

Erick pulled back all the way back, bringing his new wealth through the [Gate], and back to Ooloraptoor. Sixteen grand cores floated along with Ophiel, each of them as bright and as dark as the night sky. Oliolo dismissed her [Gate] and followed Ophiel back to Erick, though the grand cores continued on to stand upon a platform near the yurt.

Once under the [Undertow Star], the grand cores seemed to glitter even more, as something happened between them and the Star above. The mana flow that usually went into the Star also seemed to twist around the grand cores, like eddies in a river. Whatever was happening there, nothing immediately worrying occurred, but Erick would keep an eye on the situation.

The cores didn’t have any parasites on them, either. Erick checked!

Wellowbye smiled a bright smile as he stood there, on the back of his chair. His wings flickered like he had too much joy to contain in his small body. “Th~ank—” His voice cracked, morphing from something deep, to that of an overactive child. And then he paused and regained himself. He spoke seriously, “Thank you, Archmage Flatt. We will transfer a suitable gold payment to your Mage Bank account, but I do not wish to offend, so if you could give me a number we will gladly pay it. You have saved thousands of souls from having to upend their entire lives, and we are grateful.”

Probably more than ‘thousands’. Even though Erick had not seen the main city that Wellowbye was trying to protect, he saw the devastation caused by the toxic hydra runoff, for there were many pixie settlements in the trees of the marsh. Some of the trees managed to look like a hundred dollhouses crammed into each other, like some sort of surrealist painting. But they had all been abandoned. Tiny broken doors swayed in the breeze, tiny carpets were rumpled to the sides of rooms, furniture had been tossed in the rush to evacuate, and windows lay broken.

Wherever Wellowbye came from, they had likely sent out many, many calls, out into the greater world, asking for help with the Starlight Illusion Hydras. For whatever reason, Wellowbye’s plea to Erick was the only one that had been answered by someone capable of killing the monsters. Was Messalina falling down on the job? Or was ‘monster clearing’ the job of a villager of Messalina’s who had been killed in the Red Dot attack?

It wasn’t like the pixies would ever go to the Headmaster, right?

“Don’t worry about payment. You and your neighbors have a lot of rebuilding to do.” Erick said, “I’m just glad I could help, Wellowbye.”

Wellowbye bowed. “Thank you, Archmage Flatt.”

Erick dismissed the Privacy surrounding them and bid farewell to the pixies. And then he told everyone else still waiting around that this area was going to be very uncomfortable for anyone who wasn’t approved personnel.

He dismissed the [Undertow Star] in the sky and cast a new one, Shaping it appropriately to his yurt, and to the area outside of his space, for 80 meters in every direction. He only clipped a few of the slowest people in the light of the spellwork.

- - - -

Inside the yurt, Erick smiled wide as he collapsed into his chair, saying, “That took a while! How about a late dinner, Poi, and then we can do everything we need to do with the Mind Mages and the mental monsters of Nelboor, ey?”

Poi sat down in his own chair, briefly pausing, before saying, “Yes. We can do that tonight.”

Nirzir glanced around, her nervous eyes landing on Jane and then Teressa. “Does this mean another late night of horror stories?”

“Nope.” Erick briefly enjoyed Nirzir’s young optimism before crushing it, “This means a very late night for me and Poi and many, many other people, all involved in real life horror stories. I’ll tell you about the most horrible of them as they’re happening, if you wish. Or you could go to sleep.”

Nirzir’s already white skin paled even further.

“Those aren’t the fun kind of stories, boss,” Teressa rolled her eyes.

“They are not,” Erick agreed.

Nirzir instantly scowled, asking Teressa, rather loudly, “You tell those for FUN?!”

“Well sure!” Teressa said, “But you gotta understand that the kinds of stories I tell are either fake or informative; instructional. Not real; fake.”

“I don’t understand the difference,” Nirzir said, pushing back, seeming to come briefly out of her shell.

Teressa huffed. “No one talks about how their army buddies were eaten by shadow leviathans, or how they’re investigating a family that was brutally murdered by—” She continued, “Those kinds of stories are not fun. They’re part of the job, and no one wants to hear the nit and the grit, and how everything is covered in shit and blood after a fight. Or how hard it is to lift your sword after you’ve lifted it a thousand times already, but you can’t stop, because if you stop then the monsters eat another friend.” Teressa tried not to glare, and she mostly succeeded.

Nirzir retreated into herself a little, saying, “Oh. That’s the difference, isn’t it.”

Teressa suddenly realized she had overstepped. She pulled back, saying, “I go for realism in my stories, but everything is heightened to near-unreality, and the monsters don’t eat kids, or any of that other bad stuff. Some people can enjoy soldier memoirs, but I am not one of those people.”

Nirzir nodded a little, then said, “Thank you for telling me.”

About half a minute passed with awkward silences filling the yurt.

Meanwhile, Jane was pulling out food from the cooler. Now that it was all set on the table, she bulldozed over everything that had just been said, declaring, “Dinner! Just gotta heat it up.”

Erick smiled at his daughter, saying, “Thank you,” as he applied some [Heat Ward]s to the food.

Erick said, “You know, Jane? The elders of Ooloraptoor were talking about how nice the engine would be, but I’m not going to give them that. Instead, I think I’m going to try and reinvent the electric motor. I think I can do it rather easily because I have all the pieces, but even more important than that, [Battery], [Magnetize], and [Metalshape] are already a part of the Script, so that means easy electrical generation for all.”

“I was wondering how far you were going to go with your engineering.” Jane asked, “What was all that fire about, though?”

“Normal Elemental Fire Magic usually burns metals— Or they oxidize them, I guess? Anyway. Normal fire spells are only useful for indirect heating, but I turned the Particle Spell [Incandescent] into an aura, so now I can directly heat metals without using Elemental Fire, to easily melt metals to liquid. I plan on using that, and a [Vacuum] spell I made, and the Condense line of spells I worked out a while ago, to figure out the exact metal content of the steel ingots Ooloraptoor gave me. Ah.” Erick said, “I might need to make a pressurize spell, too. Not sure. I’m still remembering steel phase diagrams, and all that. Anyway: From there, I’ll learn how to harden, temper, and mix metals to see what I can do with them. I’m figuring that I can do a lot! Or at least I’ll be able to make gears and the precision equipment needed to make a working DC engine that won’t break once I stress it.”

Jane smiled. “I think I still want a sword from the Adamantine Smiths, for now. Maybe I’ll swing one of yours around in a year or something.”

“Of course!” Erick said, laughing once. And then he paled. “That means you would rely on one of my swords to save your life. Uh.” Erick said, “I’m never giving you a sword, Jane. I’m never making weapons or armor.”

Jane just laughed; head back, deep laughter. Nirzir chuckled a bit, while Teressa smiled.

Poi, however, just breathed deep, smelling dinner and changing the topic, “Oh. That smells good.”

Teressa said, “Nirzir helped to cook it; it’s pretty great. You worked with a butcher today, didn’t you?”

“I did!” Nirzir sat up. She briefly smiled at Teressa, then she said to Erick, “I think the cooks meant to scare me when they introduced me to butchery, but it was only a bit worse than learning how to heal people.”

Teressa barked a laugh. Nirzir only smiled wider. Jane chuckled. For a brief moment, Erick recalled house parties back on Earth, where everyone was in a good mood and laughter came easy. This here, was almost that.

Erick said, “Ah! That reminds me: I promised to talk to you about that Undertow spell you made.”

Nirzir’s eyes seemed to sparkle.

Erick got up and went to the table to start on his dinner, as he said, “All you really need to know is about Permanency, I think. So I’ll start there.”

Nirzir got up from her seat and joined Erick at the table. Soon enough, Poi dragged himself out of his chair and joined them, too.

Erick spoke of his experiments with wardlights, how he put those lights in front of funneled mana in a dungeon, in an attempt to understand how the only ‘Permanency’ option in the Open Script functioned, and how to replicate those techniques into other magics. That part of the conversation didn’t take too long, for Nirzir seemed to easily pick up what he was putting down.

After that, the conversation moved on to talk of [Personal Ward]s and the ‘enchanting’ of oneself.

“The goal of a [Personal Ward] is to ensure that outside forces are unable to harmfully interact with the self.” Nirzir rhetorically asked, “But where is the line of ‘harm’ drawn? A Force sword swung by an assailant is easy enough of a concept to counter. What you do in that case, is deny the Force spells of others from interacting with your self through the various Voiding spellwork that we’ve gone over before— Well.” Her eyes held sudden worry. “That is what I would do. But I am very familiar with Void. I would never, ever, suggest this method to anyone else... Except for someone like you, Erick. … Maybe not even you, though. Void is dangerous.”

Erick nodded. “I understand.”

Nirzir paused, gauging Erick. After an unsure moment, she continued, “Denying various Elemental attacks is easy enough; you can combine 6 anti-songs into a [Personal Ward] rather simply. In fact, using Void as your base Element, you can counter almost all magics at once, though without specific focuses, then your counter fails when it comes up against Elemental Sun, or Elemental Blood, for instance. Any of the Esoteric Elements can only be halved using this method.

“So in that case, you need to focus your anti-song against those specific Esoteric Elements. It is hard to include so many anti-songs in a working, so focusing on the larger, more dangerous Esoteric Elements is a good idea. Blood. Destruction. Vile and Exalted, if you’re worried about demons or angels.

“But these defenses do nothing against the steel of a sword, or the carving fingers of a true martial master. In those cases, you must— Now this is the truly dangerous part. You must include imbuements of elemental sources into your own body, as one does when they use an Elemental Body. And you must have perfect control over those elements, too, or else a simple [Stoneshape] from an enemy could rip apart the solidness you have tried to imbue into your flesh.

“This is the most complicated part of making a perfect [Immaculate Defense], and I have barely scratched the surface of this third of the perfect [Personal Ward].

“For even if you do that all correctly, your spell might harm the natural processes of your own body. This is the final problem to overcome when creating the perfect [Immaculate Defense], for this is not the Old Cosmology; we need our hearts and brains and blood to live.” Nirzir said, “And that’s the basic overview. What do you think?”

Nirzir waited with hope in her eyes, wondering if she had done good enough. For what it was worth, Erick had never considered a thousand-vector, anti-magic, anti-physical, anti-damage [Personal Ward] as the proper solution to the problem of ‘having enemies’. It was a damned good solution, though! Complicated as all heck, though.

Nirzir had certainly given Erick a lot to think about.

Erick said, “There is a solution to all of this that you must have heard of already. Don’t you have a Domain?”

Nirzir frowned a little, then she paused. “Your Domains are a good enough defense? For you?”

Erick chuckled. “Ah! You got me, there. You can never have enough defenses.”

Nirzir brightened.

They spoke for a while longer, but soon enough dinner was over, and it was time to get back to work; the Mind Mages were ready.

And Erick found that he really enjoyed the work.

Sure, if you looked at all of Veird and all of the problems out there, there was so much work to do, that there would never be an end to it, not to mention the physical strain that such a workload put on the body. After a full 9 hours of hard mental effort against the problems of the petitioners, Poi was still chipper, but after what was to come in the night, Poi would certainly be flagging. Erick, himself, could do a few straight days of this before he collapsed, though he did not want to. But for now, for the amount of work he had put in front of him, thanks to the Mind Mages, Erick was more than capable of doing what needed to be done. He imagined that in the future he would need to assist the Mind Mages a few times a year, and for a few years in a row, but after that, they should have their own people capable of casting [Cascade Imaging].

So, for now, Erick enjoyed the work, for every single person he helped, every single threat he ended, was yet another light preserved, or lit; yet another small strengthening of civilization against the danger of monsters, and against the evils of the abuse of magic.

- - - -

That night and most of the next morning, more than three million blue targets appeared across the whole of Nelboor, and Mind Mages moved without care for borders, allegiances, or privacy, to erase those blue markers from the face of Veird.

Soon enough, it was over.

As Poi collapsed in his bed and Erick closed his own eyes for a few hours of sleep, before he got back to work with all the petitioners waiting outside, he realized that if he wanted to keep doing this then he needed a whole organization at his beck and call. He assumed that some of the shadelings (and probably a lot of other people, too) would be up for the opportunity to spread good out in the world, so that was a theoretical ‘organization’ that Erick could call his own, one day. Once Erick figured out [Gate], he could even help people all over the world, without needing to actually be in those places in person.

That thought led Erick to another: The Headmaster already did this, with his Elites. He even enlisted the help of Hell and Celes in order to have a ‘Gate Network’ necessary to enable such an organization. According to Jane, there was a cave on Oceanside where an angel and a demon had a ‘Quest Board’ that was populated with needs from around the world. When Hell or Celes saw a person in need, or a monster that needed to be killed, they’d put a quest upon the board. Their system worked much like the Class Ability, Quest Board, but there were no points put up as rewards; only a system of ‘contribution points’, or something, that allowed Elites to purchase magical equipment for fractions of the real cost. Erick was pretty sure the Elites still needed to pay money, though, in addition to the contribution points; they probably did.

And apparently magical equipment wasn’t the only thing on offer. Artifacts and learning and other options were possible, too, but Jane wasn’t privy to most of that, so Erick didn’t actually know.

… Hmm.

That whole system seemed like a good talking point to bring up with the Headmaster, the next time they met in a physical setting. How did the old dragon get the angels and demons to work together? Something to find out! And, hey! The old dragon had offered to speak of ending this Converter Angel threat before it came back to bite Erick in the ass, and that was good, too.

… Maybe after the trip to see the Adamantine Smiths.