Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick woke and the world was as he left it. The sky was clear. The white city nearby was completely uninhabited. The waters far, far below had a pod of whales swimming around the large arches of Yggdrasil’s surface-breaching roots.

He crushed his panic down and away.

“Good day, Father,” Yggdrasil said. “Nothing happened while you slept.”

Ophiel chirped in agreement as he fluttered down from the headrest of the bed, onto Erick’s chest like a playful cat. Erick patted the little guy, saying, “Good morning, Ophiel.” He looked up and smiled. “Good morning, Yggdrasil.” He got up, saying, “Let’s go find some breakfast. Yggdrasil? I’m going to the city right over there. You want to [Scry] me? I’ll be back soon.”

Yggdrasil’s branches creaked a bit while his leaves shimmered to dim green. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ll be right over there.” Erick dressed himself as he said, “Be back soon, too. I want to experiment with a runic web, and I want you to help with that, but I need to find some supplies first.”

“… Okay.”

Erick smiled brightly, feeling a flush of warmth all over. He had hoped that Yggdrasil would be better after some time together, and that proved to be true. After the talk of yesterday, Erick had worried that he had erred, deeply, in how he interacted with his largest summon. Leaving Jane behind with the sitters while he had gone to work had been tough, but necessary, but Jane didn’t have the capability to simply [Teleport Other] him, to keep him near her at all times. Life would have been very different if that had been a possibility.

Raising Yggdrasil right was going to be tough, and happen a lot sooner than he expected it to happen. But…

Erick absolutely loved the idea of having another ‘kid’. Ophiel was great, but it’d be a hundred years before he turned barely sentient, and longer still till he was sapient. Yggdrasil, though, was already there. And since Yggdrasil was going to live forever, that was another impetus to look into [Immortality], because maybe Jane could find her own way to that spellwork, too—

Oh.

Wait.

Jane would simply [Polymorph] her way to immortality, wouldn’t she? She already had her solution to the problem of death. Erick was the one lagging behind.

With a small laugh at realizing what he should have realized a long time ago, Erick stepped off of Yggdrasil’s branch, into the light, feeling supremely giddy. He might need to resume his search for [Immortality] after this Worldly Path, for the future was looking bright! Unfathomably bright, indeed.

- - - -

Erick found the king’s dining hall in the center of the white castle. The walls were gilded wood. The ceiling was a fresco of a long lost universe. Candles flickered and orbs of light held in the air above, while down below, a thousand different foods were laid out, eternally waiting for people who were long gone. This whole land was a mausoleum to a forgotten place and time…

But the food still tasted great. Copies of the food, anyway. Erick wasn’t about to eat the originals.

Plates of gold and silver and platinum hovered all around him as he filled them up with breads and meats and vegetables. Glazed maybe-ham. Not-pheasant under glass. Racks of sorta-lamb. Asparagus-adjacents in lots of butter, with not-broccoli pilaf. Sugary gels that resembled slimes, with ‘cores’ of candy. Drinks that fizzed and gravies that shimmered like white gold.

Erick copied some of the fine white-pearl jewelry he saw, too, alongside their precious metal inserts. He even found some odd metals he couldn’t name, in the shapes of replica artifacts with surely large significance. When he was done, Erick and Ophiel escaped the white palace with enough loot to make a seasoned adventuring team blush with envy, and enough food to feed maybe two hungry orcols. But he hadn’t stolen a single thing.

He also didn’t erase the manasphere in his passing, either.

Let the incoming wrought see exactly what he had done to their holy land; let them see he had taken nothing and everything. He was kinda excited, wondering what their reaction would be. Maybe they would focus more on [Renew] upturning every single magic school the world over, or how Yggdrasil was planted in the Core, or how Rozeta had probably talked to them all and told them to behave.

Erick took a glance at the wizard’s tower, but he left that alone, again. That place was much less a priority once Erick understood the language, and realized that none of it would be useful for him. Magic simply did not work on Veird like how it used to work back in the Old Cosmology.

He also didn’t want to go there because of its obvious connections to Wizards, but he would probably have to… Soon. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.

Thoughts about magic held heavy in his mind as he inspected his loot, back atop Yggdrasil’s upper branches. Of particular note was a massive white metal and many-jeweled scepter. It was shaped like something a king would use to show they were the boss, and according to some of the paintings that littered the white palace, that was exactly its purpose. The king used this scepter in place of a crown— Well. Not this scepter. This scepter was a copy of the original that Erick left untouched, in the throne room. That original —which was also copy of the original scepter that was lost to the Old Cosmology— remained laid across the throne, like it was set there to prevent people from sitting on that massive white metal chair. The throne remained behind, though this copied scepter came with him.

Erick suspected that the throne and this scepter were made out of the same materials, anyway, so this was fine. Whatever this scepter was made out of weighed in at thirty kilos of solidness. The rainbow of gems that inlaid its surface probably weighed less than a quarter kilo. If not for those gems, it could probably serve as a good mace.

Erick swung it around a few times, testing weight and balance, as he told Yggdrasil and Ophiel, “I could make it into some sort of unbreakable weapon with some [Flying Striker Rune]s, but honestly, I’m thinking I should make it some sort of [Undertow Renew] scepter. Something that could be stuck into a central node of a runic web and—” Erick stopped.

He stared at nothing as a large thought suddenly dominated his mind.

Erick whispered, “I don’t know the runes for [Renew].” After a moment, he added, “I don’t know the runes for [Undertow], either.” Erick set down the scepter and then he set down himself, laying down on Yggdrasil’s bark, spread eagle and staring upward.

After a moment, Yggdrasil asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking.”

“… Talk to me?”

Erick gladly did so, “Ancient Script is very precise, but it’s also specifically made to rhyme. I had been doing all my major spell creation in Ecks, while sometimes adding in English words as needed. I did my [Renew] creation in Ancient Script, too, except I used the English word for [Renew] because both Ecks and Ancient Script don’t have a great word for that concept, and because I had to create a new concept. That’s what I did when I spoke that spell into existence. I created a concept and attached specific moldable meaning to that concept. I created magic.” Erick breathed. He said, “But I’m not sure what that means for making runework for [Renew], because I don’t know how that translation works. Do I simply write [Renew] into platinum and—” Erick stopped himself. He got back up to his feet, saying, “I’ll have to experiment. I was going to, anyway. Might as well start now.”

He went over to some of the loot he gathered and studied the coins, the rings and the broaches, the bars of precious metals and even the white scepter, once again. And then he dismissed all of that and went to his backpack. He grabbed the sliver of the platinum he had taken from that elemental, which he knew to be pure, and then he started copying it.

Yggdrasil asked, “How would you make the runes for something you don’t understand?”

Erick paused a bit. That was a very coherent thought coming out of Yggdrasil— Ah. Yggdrasil was parroting Erick’s own question back at him to try and understand the question himself.

Erick started talking while he worked, [Duplicate]ing slivers of platinum till he had a good ball of them, then [Metalshape]ing them together, then copying that ball. “I have no idea, Yggdrasil. I’m going to try a few things that might work out, but they probably won’t. My first idea is to write down [Renew] in English, and hope to the gods that doesn’t work, because ‘[Renew]’ in English doesn’t fit with any existing rune structure.

“The second idea is to try and combine some of the words I used in the spell’s creation to make a new word. That’s how most of Ancient Script is, with most high-concept words being mashes of smaller words. It’s like how the Mandarin word for ‘computer’ is ‘lightning brain’ in English, but as one word, or how the Ecks word for ‘book shelf’ would be ‘knowledge repository’ in English. In this way, [Call Lightning] became its own set of runes using Ancient Script notation, so I can only guess that [Renew] will follow the same example.

“Third idea is to try creating my own rune for [Renew]. Probably won’t work, because the Script makes the runes, and [Call Lightning] didn’t get its own rune. But then again, I made the spell, and the Script solidified it to work with the rest of its magic, so maybe it’s special.

“The fourth idea is probably the only thing that would work, though.” Erick said, “I’m going to have to get Darabella or someone else with Greater Shifting Runes to lay down some testing runes in some adamantium, and I’m gonna have to constantly infuse those runes with [Renew] until the true runes for [Renew] appear to me.”

Erick was slightly straining now under the weight of his cubic meter block of platinum. While it was under [Metalshape], it was pretty much weightless, but as he let that spellwork relax…

Without his [Lodestar] supporting the strength of his [Greater Lightwalk], his telekinetic hold upon the metal would have already fractured, for a single cubic meter of platinum had to weigh in at something like 21 metric tons. And it was definitely that heavy. Erick slowly set down the cubic meter of white gold and relaxed as Yggdrasil took all of the weight, effortlessly. Something about that surprised even Erick, though it truly shouldn’t have. Yggdrasil’s main component to his body was eternal stonewood, and thus he was much lighter and stronger than normal wood, or even concrete, but he still had to weigh as much as a small mountain.

With a scoop of Shaping power, Erick took some platinum off the top of the block. Since he had copied the metal inside his [Prismatic Ward], it was perfectly primed to accept runes and other magics. It was Prismsteel, as Grosgrena called it. Useful for multi-elemental spellwork. Super rare, too, because [Prismatic Ward] was also rare, so the uses of this particular metal were not well known to most people.

But Enduring Forge’s books on prismsteel were exhaustive. Though Erick had not read most of them, he had read enough to know that prismsteel was good enough for almost all applications.

He smiled as he cast a [Particle Vacuum] into the air, and a [Condense Platinum] into the center of that. It didn’t take long for that space to empty of contaminants. At that point he stuck the platinum clump into the space and had an Ophiel turn on a low-grade [Incandescent Aura], heating up his clump of platinum, but keeping it below the melting point. As long as a phase change didn’t occur, the magic remained inside the metal; the prismsteel remained prismsteel.

With the red hot platinum, Erick began smashing his clump of metal with all of his force, deforming it with an aching groan. Heat and vacuum and smashing light removed small impurities like so much sparking char, though the prismatic platinum remained in the center, completely at peace with its location.

Squeezing and smashing, Erick gradually began to work out the kinks and interior spherical oddities that had slipped into the metal’s structure when he used [Metalshape]. He probably should have done this before he ended up with a cubic meter of platinum, but it had grown so fast, and oh well.

Soon, his prismsteel was at the pliable stage, and that was good enough. Erick worked his light into the center of the metal and expanded outward, forming a bubble of platinum first, and then physically pushing and prodding it into a tetrahedron, ensuring that every strut and every corner was solid, and secure.

It was the start of a minor runic web; a testing space to see how runes flowed magic from one point to another. Erick had made a few of these days ago— over 33 days ago, actually. But those ones had been made out of normal steel, and were not very durable, or conducive to magic. He hadn’t wanted to display his [Duplicate] in front of anyone up there, either, but down here? Eh. Fuck it.

Ophiel turned off his [Incandescent Aura]. Erick surrounded the wireframe runic web with hard light, and canceled the vacuum. Gradually, he relaxed his hold on the atmosphere, letting air back into the space, onto the platinum. With a gentle touch of [Frozen Mist Aura], the platinum gradually cooled enough to touch, and Erick fully released his lightgrip. Each corner of the prototyping runic web held a flat space to carve runes, but other than that, it was nothing special.

Erick copied the runic web a few times. He set those copies aside and grabbed his adamantium knife out of his bag. With a deep breath and a bit of focus, light streamed into his knife and Erick got to work, inscribing the runes for lightward upon three of the four corners. This first web was just a tester to ensure he had done everything right, after all.

When he was done, he imbued the metal with a lightward—

And, working exactly like it should, Erick’s 10 mana lightward, which produced an effective 200 mana spell, soaked into the platinum web and spread out to three of the four tetrahedron points like liquid illumination. Light clung to prismsteel, which acted almost like a fluorescent bulb, but since the fourth node of the web wasn’t runed the light barely extended up the paths toward that fourth point. Other than that, the light spread rather evenly. It was kinda hard to tell in the full light of the Outer Core, but Erick guesstimated that his 200 mana lightward had been split into thirds.

Erick went ahead and runed ‘lightward’ into the fourth node.

As soon as he finished carving the final slash, imbuing the final bit of meaning into his runes, the runic web dimmed to half strength and the number of lit runic paths doubled, from three, to six. The entire tetrahedron of platinum bars and nodes was lit with a cloying lightward.

“Perfect.” Erick held up the lit runic web, eyeing it for any defects at all. He found none. “Looks good.”

Yggdrasil asked, “What did you do?”

Erick smiled, and then happily explained as he picked up another runic web, and went through the whole process again, explaining it to Yggdrasil as he did.

His next runic web was different.

‘Lightward’ went to a single node, but on the other three nodes Erick tried three different ideas for [Renew]. One node gained ‘[Renew]’, written in English; putting that word into the metal felt weird, and he probably did it wrong, but this was all an experiment and there was nothing to do for the weirdness of it all but try. The second node gained ‘mold mana to spell’, which was about the direct translation of what [Renew] meant, but it was not at all as elegant a rune series as some spells. [Force Bolt] was literally two singular runes, ‘force’ and ‘bolt’, and both of those runes were deeply ingrained into the Script as their own individual glyphs. Carving that second node felt all sorts of wrong, though, so it was probably a failure, too.

The third runic attempt was one of Erick’s own creation, combining and overlapping the simple rune for ‘[Rejuvenation]’, which was the most basic Healing Magic rune, and the rune for ‘mana’. It ended up as a circle with a wave in the center, which also felt all sorts of wrong, but it certainly looked nice and thematic.

None of them worked.

Erick imbued a lightward into that rune, and then he held his hand against each [Renew] attempt, trying to will [Renew] into the metal exactly how he knew it should go, but each time he ended up with a handful of white rain, and the runic web remained unimbued. The lightward didn’t get stronger, at all. The English ‘[Renew]’ failed utterly, but the other two weren’t any better.

He frowned.

“Ah. Well.” Erick guessed, “I’m fluent in Ancient Script, but I certainly don’t use it all the time. Maybe the word I want is already in there, somewhere, and I just haven’t heard it? Maybe I simply haven’t come across the concept yet.” He looked up at Yggdrasil. “Want to call up Poi again? I need to ask him to find me something.”

“Okay.”

Erick nodded, and dove back into Yggdrasil’s consciousness. The world became an ephemeral ocean and flames once again, but with two ghostly pathways leading out from this land of unchanging day. Erick went with Yggdrasil down the correct path—

He hit a block.

Erick had no idea what he was looking at, so he pulled back. Once again sitting on Yggdrasil’s branches, Erick steadied himself, and tried to get through to Poi again. This time he paid special attention to the pathway—

He hit a grate; not a true block. It was hard to understand the grate for what it was, for the land was as solid as the sky and nothing stayed in one place for long at all. Even Yggdrasil’s pathway shifted left and right, appearing and vanishing out of this surrealist landscape like a road in the desert that only appeared when the wind blew away the dunes. And yet, even that imagery wasn’t true, for Yggdrasil had no trouble at all navigating this land, like some great whale of a thousand tails, hovering above and behind Erick, free to swim or fly or crawl as he desired.

Erick only had the one path ahead of him, and the dunes blocked his travel.

With the mental approximation of a frown, and the ethereal idea of grabbing hold of a shovel, Erick stuck his hands into the sand to clear them away—

He came back to himself to see his hands broken, with bone poking out of flesh and blood highlighting and hiding his new wounds. Pain had yet to manifest, but it came on quick enough. Calmly, Erick used his sunform to move his hands back into something approximating their original shape, and he cast [Greater Treat Wounds]. Wounds began to close—

A blue box appeared.

Scripted message:

Please do not try to breach Core Protections again. This is your only warning.

Another blue box appeared.

I left your telepathic connection open like I said I would. You got a message out.

Inform me when you wish to leave and I will show you the way to Yggdrasil’s new lair. Do not test Core Protections again.

~Rozeta

Erick frowned. “Fair, I suppose.” He [Cleanse]d his blood away as he thought. There were ways around this new limitation, some of them very obvious, so he took one, telling Yggdrasil, “If anyone asks, Yggdrasil, could you tell them I’m okay, and that I’ll be back when I can?”

Yggdrasil said, “I tell people this.”

“Thank you.” Erick asked, “Are you having any trouble with people since yesterday, when we went out together?”

“No trouble. Not anymore.”

“Good.” Erick turned back to his work, and wondered, “So. If I can’t continue making a runic web with [Renew], and [Gate] is blocked, then… What am I here for— Oh.” He looked at his skin, and at his [Personal Ward]. With the stability of the manasphere all around and the lack of threats, he might be able to drop his defenses and actually work on his aura control. Even if he couldn’t get much further with his [Gate] goals, getting aura control out of this trip would be a fantastic outcome, too. A glance outward showed that there were no people here, either— “Actually. Let’s Scan for people again.”

A [Cascade Imaging] went out, searching for ‘people’, its radio waves easily bouncing across the thousands upon thousands of kilometers of the ‘bowl’ of this inner world. Ten minutes later the results appeared on the map. Only one ‘person’ was found, and that person was located exactly where Erick expected them to appear; a single blue dot appeared in the center of the Imaging, representing Erick himself.

With that cleared out of the way, Erick remembered another way to check for people; The Quest Board. If there were Quests it meant that there was someone submitting Quests in the Inner Core—

There were Quests. None of them were new. All of them looked ancient. Only three of them, though. Erick’s eyes went a bit wide as he read, for he was already on two of these three quests, and he hadn’t even known.

Special Quest!

Find a way back to the Old Cosmology, without endangering current civilization.

Poster: Rozeta, Dragon Goddess of the Script. All Relevant Entities of the Script.

Reward: Worlds upon worlds.

Note: One of the Ultimate Quests. You cannot accept this Quest or show it to others. You are automatically on this Quest even without knowing, in the hopes that one day it will be fulfilled.

Special Quest!

Cure Melemizargo of his insanity, without endangering current civilization.

Poster: Rozeta, Dragon Goddess of the Script. All Relevant Entities of the Script.

Reward: To be determined.

Note: One of the Ultimate Quests. You cannot accept this Quest or show it to others. You are automatically on this Quest even without knowing, in the hopes that one day it will be fulfilled.

Special Quest!

Expand civilization to the worlds of this New Cosmology, without endangering current civilization.

Poster: Rozeta, Dragon Goddess of the Script. All Relevant Entities of the Script.

Reward: Worlds upon worlds.

Note: One of the Ultimate Quests. You cannot accept this Quest or show it to others. You are automatically on this Quest even without knowing, in the hopes that one day it will be fulfilled.

“Huh,” Erick said.

The wind blew across the land.

Hopefully, Erick hadn’t already violated that ‘without endangering current civilization’ part. No way to truly tell, though. The first Quest was right out; no way to do that, and Erick didn’t want to, anyway. The second was… Erick was getting there? Maybe? Whatever. Erick was actually working on the third quest, though.

He thought for a bit. Mostly, his thoughts were half baked, but they included ideas about Fate, alongside questions of whether Fate could be imbued into Quests. The Script supposedly locked most Fate Magic away from people, but the Worldly Path was a giant ritual of Fate that doused the Walker of the Path in deepest Fate. It made sense, then, that Rozeta and others might be able to take some Fate and bind it to other ‘Ultimate Quest’s, and then place everyone on those quests in the hope that Fate might one day solve these Quests for them…

Ah.

Hmm.

Erick activated his Minor Entity status and voiced his question to the local goddess, “Rozeta? Did this Quest drag Jane and I to this world?”

A blue box appeared.

Can’t talk now. Answer is no. Longer answer is still no, but also maybe. Philosophical.

Talk more later.

Erick blinked a bit, dispensing with unneeded emotions.

He’d get a better answer from her later, maybe.

For a while though, he just thought.

- - - -

Eventually, Erick decided to get on with the aura control lessons. He searched for people again, and finding none, he continued. Yggdrasil was set to watch over him, but he told the big guy not to interfere unless necessary. Ophiel got the same message. And then Erick stripped down to his pants. White light flickered across his body as his [Personal Ward] turned off. His rings came off, and he also decided to shave his face and cut his hair back into the proper shapes, as he did sometimes. He turned off all of his spells and briefly felt vulnerable, but he checked on his [Cascade Imaging] again, flickering the Scan through all iterations of different types of people, and through all the standard protective spells that someone might be wearing like a [Personal Ward]. Erick was still the only person that showed in the Imaging. His spellwork was still the only spellwork active nearby.

He breathed a bit, relaxing.

First came some light stretching, which was practically unneeded since Dexterity had him covered, but it still felt good to touch his toes, and then kiss his own knees. A twist of his arms had him curled backward, forming a bridge with his body. He hadn’t done that since before college. It brought another smile to his face.

And then he sat down, and started going through his aura control exercises.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Bring hands in.

Push hands out.

Repeat.

Repeat.

- - - -

Erick surfaces from a trance, to float above an ocean of nothing that slowly recedes in all directions. His eyes cannot open, for his eyelids are impossible weights, but his mana sense is active, and dilated. He sees the shifting world around him. He watches that world resolve into something approaching reality, but it is likely more Reality than real.

He is on his back again, on a cloud of stone, and yet ‘stone’ does not cover the barest bit of the being at his back, made of love and connection. The stone is comfortable, and slightly green around the edges. It yields as Erick relaxes, and Erick floats above the stone. Feathered eyes float with him. They watch and protect.

And Erick sees Reality and reality, and the Truth of it all.

He sees the Truth of himself.

It is exactly what he expects.

- - - -

Erick surfaced, slowly, and methodically.

His heart rate increased. His eyes began to move under his control. Ideas flooded, incomprehensible. That’s where he found himself stuck for a bit, for his Truth was cloudy once again. He still knew it, but it was like knowing what happened in a dream.

Laying back upon the unyielding branches of his largest [Familiar], deep in the Core of Veird, Erick opened his eyes and saw the world in a new light.

Several new lights.

For he had a new ‘eye’ opened.

He raised a hand into his line of sight. Under the brightness of the Core, he could barely tell that his skin was flushed with brightness, like he was some sort of wrought fluorescing under blacklight. But it was. Like the bark of Yggdrasil beneath him, Erick glowed with luminosity that gently extended into the air around him, filtering into the world on wispy white glows.

It was not the power of [Greater Lightwalk]. Erick understood that much instantly. For one, he wasn’t running that spell. For another, the light in the air around him was practically a mist that ebbed and flowed around him like a fog, and it felt so very much different than anything he had ever felt before.

[Greater Lightwalk] was a pressure, a control, a flipped switch that allowed Erick to operate differently from his physical self. With his lightform, he could move through the sky with barely a thought. But he couldn’t feel the world through that lightform; not like he could when he was a physical person.

Elemental Bodies had no nerve endings, or brain, or hormones telling the user to feel certain ways about certain sights, or events. One could still feel fear, or hope, or joy, but those feelings were purely intellectual events; they were like ingrained pathways in the person wielding an Elemental Body that were triggered by ingrained responses to stimuli.

But this glow… This was different. It was a lot less controllable, for one.

This was probably because Erick’s [Greater Lightwalk] was, in truth, an ‘aura’ enabled through elemental essence unlocking the ability and the Script handling how that ability worked. The Script made [Greater Lightwalk] inherently strong, and Erick had grown used to understanding how to wield that strength well.

This aura that clung to him now was barely mobile. Erick had no idea how to move it. It was his aura, for sure. Of that there was no doubt. But it was odd. It was weak. Unlocked auras had no Script assistance, so this much was normal. So far, most things about this were normal.

What wasn’t normal was that Erick’s aura was rather bright. Erick held up his arm, and the fog of his light moved with him. He pushed his arm forward and the fog trailed with his movement—

Erick sent a concentrated command through his new aura, attempting to move it like he would his lightform. Power rippled through the foggy light and it solidified around his body. But that was all it did. Less wisping, more solidity. Erick relaxed, and the gathered light began to fog away, like so much tattered cloth.

Oddities compounded as Erick concentrated on his new aura and felt the mana inside it all.

Like a flubbing child, Erick began to play with the building blocks of magic, pushing and pulling and twisting, but with considerably less control than he normally had. Using aura was like starting all over again, learning how to control his power with hands that were numb, and barely regaining feeling with the passage of time.

The differences between lightform and aura continued to manifest as Erick realized he also couldn’t adjust his sight to different locations in his aura, or even to simply view the full world all around him. He had grown used to seeing the world from every possible angle, but at least the light didn’t block his own sight. With a bit of testing and understanding, Erick gauged that his new aura was simultaneously there, and yet not; like he was seeing it with a third eye; not with his normal two. He wasn’t ‘seeing’ his aura with his mana sense, either. This was some sort of new sense that he had unlocked, that was specifically a part of himself and his aura. It still felt ‘sleepy’, too.

And thinking of mana sense, Erick’s mana sense had lapsed, so he turned that back on and viewed himself—

His skin glittered, his eyes radiated light fully and completely, like a Shade’s.

“Ah. Damn.” Erick frowned. He shut off his aura, closing his ‘third eye’. The light went away, pulling out from his eyes to reveal his white irises and his black pupils. “At least it turns off.”

Well!

This was his aura, and it probably did all the normal things auras normally did. Erick didn’t particularly understand why there was so much light in his aura, but it made sense. His ‘Truth’, if you wanted to call it that, was that everything could be made better, and that all one had to do was try, and that he was here to help those better things happen. Nothing groundbreaking.

But with an aura made of light… There were some uncomfortable allusions in his aura toward his Shade-given title of ‘Fire of the Age’. The idea of all that was uncomfortable for Erick, though, because if Erick was the ‘Fire of the Age’, then that meant that Veird had been fucked up for so long that any true, actual advancement of technology and ideas was enough to warrant him a place of philosophical power.

And wasn’t that just sad.

Ahhh.

Anyway! His aura was full of light, and this was fine. Now, to practice.

- - - -

Sweat dripped down Erick’s chin, falling onto the glowing white bark of Yggdrasil below to join all the rest of the drops of sweat. A cool wind blew across the world but it didn’t touch Erick. It did, however, disturb his aura control, feathering the edges of his oozy, clinging aura, ripping it out of his control for the thousandth time. The length of aura he was trying to extend from his hand to a meter away suddenly became too hard to control, and then the wind caught the length of aura just right, breaking off a meter long section, causing it to dissipate into the air like so much scattered lightward.

Sudden exhaustion claimed Erick, his heart stalling out ever so briefly as cold shot up through his spine and across his shoulders. His aura settled back to ‘base-state’ as Erick couldn’t hold it open any longer. Oozy light flowed back to his skin, away from the stretched-out hand as his arm fell down to his side. He almost collapsed to the ground, but he was stronger than that.

With a deep breath, Erick closed off his aura, closing his third eye, and relaxed, taking count of all the ways he had succeeded in the last hour, and all the ways he had failed. Holding his aura open didn’t require mana, but it did require the activation of a sense that seemed to weaken his mana recovery. When he did flow mana into his aura —which was almost like channeling, but only in that both events expelled mana into the manasphere— Erick could move that mana around, creating spells. Theoretically, anyway. He hadn’t managed yet to manually cast any spell, but he was close. With some more practice and more ability to control his aura, he could begin Remaking a lot of magic.

His first task, once he could manually cast spells, was to Remake all of the Shaping spells and regain the 7 points he had spent to purchase all of the basic Shaping spells, and [Metalshape]. There were some worries regarding how his aura seemed naturally Light-aspected, and how he might have trouble shifting the mana into the proper Elements in order to Remake six of the seven Shaping spells he had bought, but he also needed to Remake the Skill, Mana Altering, which would also give him another point. In the process of manually learning how to Alter to different Elements, Erick expected to be able to solve his non-[Lightshape] (potential) issues.

Mana Shaping and Aurify should come along in due time, as well.

But for now, Erick still needed to learn precision. After a few hours at it, his aura was starting to feel less like a nerve-dead limb, and more like an old, stiff injury that never quite healed right…

So? Progress?

Yes. Progress.

There was an oddity, though, besides the Light-aspect.

Awakening one’s aura was the first step, and that awakening usually birthed an aura that barely reached beyond one’s skin; that barely moved when stressed to move. Erick’s aura was probably the size of himself, added to himself; so twice his body size. It was rather large even by normal aura standards. His aura teacher, Singer Kaffi, had an aura that naturally lay upon her skin with a depth of two centimeters. Teressa’s aura was only a centimeter deep, but she was an orcol so she naturally had a lot more space to work with— Though Erick had already found out that thinning your aura felt horrible, so maybe Teressa wasn’t that much better off than anyone else. Poi’s aura was rather large but it was always locked to his tendrils of thought, since that’s how he telepathically communicated with everyone. Erick hadn’t actually known that Poi had great aura control until they went to Songli, but that man kept his capabilities very hush hush, so Erick had never wanted to pry, to understand how Poi had gotten such a great aura. Lots of practice and natural Mind Mage aptitude, no doubt, honed to a great degree ever since he was young.

Erick’s aura was at least a decimeter deep, which was probably a match for Poi.

Which was odd.

Kaffi had once suggested that something like this might happen, but even she would likely be surprised at this outcome. Perhaps Erick had unlocked his aura a while ago, but because his aura was trapped inside his [Personal Ward] all the time, he had been incapable of recognizing, using, or understanding his aura.

… But then again, Kaffi had also said that such an ‘unknown boost effect’ would be small, and that he would still have to grow his aura to a respectable level before he would be able to use it for spellcraft.

And yet, his aura was already a match for that of a Mind Mage, who had been using his aura for all his adult life?

Ah. Whatever. A mystery for tomorrow, or next year, or something.

Erick continued to practice.

- - - -

Sleep. Talk to Yggdrasil. Explore a bit.

Don’t go into the Wizard’s Tower, yet.

Aura control.

Sleep.

- - - -

Erick had moved on from stretching exercises, to a size-building workout.

He steadied himself. He closed his normal eyes while fully opening his aura and his mana sense. With a concentrated flow of mana into his aura, Erick’s white, misty light rippled.

And then, the edge of his aura grew like a gently expanding ooze. It doubled in size, but then slowed as a now-familiar pressure built inside his head. Gentle, at first, then demanding. His aura grew a bit more, expanding outward, rippling hard as even the gentlest of winds began to rip at the edges, but Erick focused just as hard, and those edges solidified. His heart thumped as he focused. Blood trickled out of his nose, flowing into the sweat upon his face, then becoming yet another drop of red on his pants. Erick leaned forward a fraction, trying to control his aura with his body but already knowing that it didn’t work like that; curling up into a ball never made pain go away, and it never helped do what needed to be done.

A second drop of blood landed amongst all the others already fallen to Yggdrasil’s glowing white bark—

It was too much.

Erick relaxed his mana and let his aura go, breathing hard as his light popped like a balloon and sparkles of broken white magic flowed into the air all around him. He had put a lot of his mana into that expansion attempt, so that mana had partially manifested as magic.

… This was enough. He was done, for now. He had stopped to eat and do his business and take breaks, but he had spent the entire day doing this. Maybe more than 12 hours, actually. He had no idea what time it was. Without the 24 hour duration of his [Personal Ward] to go on, time was yet another lost constant down here in the Core, like gravity. Ah! Whatever.

Erick had accomplished a fuck ton down here in the Core. [Renew], and aura control. Even if his aura control wasn’t perfect, he had unlocked the ability and he was close to being able to use it, and that’s what mattered. He could leave right now and he would have accomplished more than enough for his time spent down here.

[Gate] wasn’t possible, after all.

Erick breathed deep and laid back on Yggdrasil’s branch, staring up at the sky, feeling exhausted. Blood and sweat marred his entire body, and he needed a good [Cleanse], but he could do that later. For now, he rested.

Ophiel watched from a nearby perch, twittering at him.

Yggdrasil spoke for the first time in ten hours, or more, “It felt nice.”

Erick tried to decipher what Yggdrasil had meant, since he hadn’t mentioned anything feeling nice in all the other hours Erick spent working on his aura, atop his branch. The puzzle was too deep, though, so Erick simply asked, “What did it feel like?”

“Like… Helping grow.” Yggdrasil asked, “Why did you stop?”

Erick’s aura helped to grow? That was kinda… A really nice thing to hear, actually. It held with Erick’s Truth, too, so it made sense.

“It was painful to hold it in that long.”

“I know of pain.” Yggdrasil said, “Not great.”

Erick nodded in agreement. “Pain is not great.”

Ophiel jumped off his perch and landed beside Erick, chirping. Erick patted the little guy with one hand while he patted Yggdrasil’s branch with the other. Ophiel cooed while Yggdrasil’s light-filled bark turned just a bit brighter.

And Erick thought. Mostly about Yggdrasil’s comment of ‘helping grow’. Maybe he’d have a rather easy time remaking [Grow], as soon as he got that far along the Remaking path. How much could he actually regain from Remaking all the stuff he spent points on, anyway? He checked his Status and he started counting.

… Something like 29 points from Remaking spells, 6 points from Remaking Mana-based skills like Mana Altering and Meditation, 7 points from Remaking skills like [Strike] and [Defend], and 3 from Remaking Health-based skills like Strong. Once he did all that, not only would he regain all those points, he wouldn’t be restricted by the Script Second when casting those smaller magics.

The Script was created with the intent of limiting how much magic a person could do, though, so Erick would probably still be limited. Probably a good idea not to test those limits too much, either.

He’d certainly try to do [Call Lightning] and [Luminous Beam] through aura control, though. Those were still basic spells.

[Gate] was supposed to be a basic spell, too.

- - - -

In a land of clouds, but not that at all, Rozeta sat atop several not-clouds, watching. Far down below, Erick plucked copies of food from replicas of imperial courts that no longer existed. He mosied through libraries long gone. He copied replicas of treasures that were themselves replicas, and poor ones at that. Nothing down there was magical at all.

And then he went and made [Renew].

Rozeta sighed, her voice a murmur amongst the clouds that vibrated her small part of the universe with an unknown feeling. She had no idea how she felt about him actually managing to make [Renew]. Theoretically, he shouldn’t have been able to do that, but he was a Wizard, so that was that.

“I guess that’s the official changing of the age.” Rozeta sarcastically said, “Mark it on the calendars! Mid Summer, 1437; yet another day that changed history. Yet another working of Erick Flatt with unknown implications for everything.” She frowned, and the world frowned with her. A grumble flowed from her again, and this time it was deeper, edging away from ambivalence, toward an expression of unpleasantness. She turned away from Erick as he unlocked his aura. Maybe she should have a deeper talk with him before the warriors from Stratagold showed… But they were still pretty slow in getting to him. She had time. She had time to figure out [Renew], too. “One year till everyone has that spell… And then what?”

Rozeta glanced toward the future.

Most importantly, and most obviously, the future still existed. This was good. The far future still existed, too, but that was less reliable. She never trusted anything past a certain timeframe, and according to current events, the theoretically ‘trustable timeframe’ was rather small. Years, perhaps. Maybe only a single year. It was simplicity itself to see a hundred years hence, but that wasn’t reliable, so it didn’t matter. It used to be reliable, though.

Before Erick and Jane came along the trusted timeframe was measured in centuries. Sure, no one was thinking about expanding into other worlds, and Melemizargo was fully insane, and the last new magic made was over a thousand years ago...

The trusted timeframe had been measured in centuries. And that sort of pissed Rozeta off. Sure, she liked Erick, but still...

Now, the stable future was measured in years, and a powerful Wizard had thrown everything into chaos.

And he wasn’t done with his chaos, either. Where would he go next? To Oceanside? Would Kirginatharp recognize him as a Wizard this time? He should just stay away from Erick, like all the other smart people on Veird. Or maybe the demon and angel representatives would try something, instead. So far, both of those sides had recognized that a powerful Wizard was not to be trifled with—

Rozeta checked on something.

While she did her checking she solved a thousand small problems before they became big ones. She solved a thousand more problems on her way back, returning to the largest current problem to stability on Veird.

A problem she wasn’t sure how to handle.

—Neither the angels nor the demons knew Erick was a Wizard. Both sides had thoughts going in that direction— A lot of people had thoughts going in that direction. But like Erick had told people time and time again, he had no ‘leaking mana’ and no core…

Rozeta already knew him to be a Wizard, but she was the only one who had absolute proof. Everyone else just had guesses. Even Melemizargo only had guesses. A lot of people had a lot of good guesses and Rozeta had let them think what they wanted to think, but only she already had undeniable proof.

But with the creation of [Renew], all doubts would be dispelled, even if people didn’t have the proof she did. Erick was a Wizard, even without the standardized signs, even without Rozeta’s certainty. He had really fucked himself over by actually succeeding with [Renew] but he didn’t know that yet. He would learn, though, and soon.

Rozeta grumbled again, vibrating the world as she tossed and turned and continued to watch scenes of Erick play with his aura, and talk about magic to Yggdrasil, and explore more of that replica city. He even managed to find the Prince’s Bordello, and it was kinda cute how his face turned red upon seeing all the toys sitting around, waiting to be used. He walked away from that playpen, thoroughly embarrassed, while Rozeta had a good chuckle.

And then she sighed again.

Rozeta knew what she had to do to ensure that Erick wasn’t murdered by the entire world after being found out as a Wizard, but she didn’t want to, because that would be impinging on her father’s domain, and she didn’t want to deal with her father. Not now. Probably not ever.

A day passed.

Rozeta answered a million prayers. She fixed a thousand small problems, and some a bit larger. [Cleanse]s went out to some of the more toxic parts of Veird to ensure that those problems didn’t grow too out-of-hand. Particle Magic was to blame for those problems, because of course it was. Toxic byproducts and all that.

She reprimanded some people who prayed to her, asking for forgiveness for using magic so wrong that they accidentally killed someone they loved. Those people got Quests to learn magic properly, but some accepted the removal of the offensive magic from their souls. Lots of Particle Magic gone wrong there, too.

No large problems, though; nothing that required her to give a Quest to some of her paladins beyond the normal Ultimate Quests they already had. Back when Erick had first introduced Particle Magic she had handed out yet another Ultimate Quest dictating that people find and categorize and organize a proper School of Magic around Particle Magic. Kirginatharp was nearly there, so he’d probably get it first. +50 points to him, then, as was usual.

Erick hadn’t done much with Particle Magic besides give it to the world, which was probably for the best, but all that new magic certainly mucked with the trusted timeline, not to mention it created a bunch of new problems for Rozeta to fix.

Ahh…

She was mucking about, diverting herself to smaller, solvable issues, instead of solving the problem sitting before her.

Once again glancing down at Erick, who was once again playing with his aura, Rozeta turned away from the Wizard…

She gathered up a line of time, making it hers and separating it from the rest. And then she gazed at the Darkness in the corner of her sight.

“Dad.” Rozeta said, “I need to talk to you about Erick’s Worldly Path.”

Her father’s presence moved into her temporary world, Darkness transforming into something lesser, into her father Melemizargo. Rozeta had been prepared for a great many starts to this conversation, but she had not been prepared for the grin upon the old black dragon’s insufferable face, or the happy tone of his stupid voice, “Yes, my daughter?”

“I changed my mind. I don’t like your face and this was a mistake.” Rozeta said, “You can leave.”

Melemizargo’s face dropped. “What! You can’t call me up and—”

“I can, and I did.” Rozeta said, “I briefly forgot how much damage you’ve done. Maybe we can talk after another year of good behavior.”

Melemizargo did not leave. Instead, he tried, “… We can talk business?”

Rozeta shoved down her emotional responses, divorcing herself a bit more from her body. They could, and probably should, talk business. Rozeta became a bit more the Goddess of the Script. She looked upon her father, upon the Darkness, upon Magic Itself, and—

She almost spoke as his necessary jailer and caretaker.

But Rozeta pulled back from that always-disastrous edge, and tried to speak as an equal, “I cannot have you or one of your minions be the Wizard who crystallizes Erick’s [Gate].”

Melemizargo’s countenance deepened as he fully became his divine self. Darkness unfurled, and for a long moment he stared at Rozeta with eyes so bright that if she wasn’t herself a god, and if her father was not so diminished from his former self, that she would have flinched from his gaze.

She did not flinch.

The Darkness said, “I have guided Wizards to [Gate] for ten thousand years.”

And so began the debates. Moments became years. Months became minutes. Words were like warriors cast out from two gods like warring generals, fighting fights on all fronts. Time passed, and it also did not. Any being less than a full god would only have understood the barest bits, and they went something like this:

“Correction: 1450 years ago, you guided Wizards to [Gate] for ten thousand years. Ever since the Sundering you have guided Wizards to their deaths. You wanted them to break the world and bring us back to the Old Cosmology, but the Old Cosmology no longer exists, so we had to stop them before you killed us all.”

Melemizargo glared.

But he did not refute Rozeta’s words.

She would take the win.

Rozeta continued, “Even if the guidance of this one doesn’t end in ruin—”

“I have regained much of my mind, daughter, but your notion is heard and understood.” Melemizargo said, “Tell me your true thoughts: What do you desire from this conversation? How would you raise this Wizard to greatness?”

Rozeta said, “To start: Pull your Shades from his Path. Songli was a disaster.”

Melemizargo narrowed his eyes. “Songli is—”

“A current disaster, still unfolding. Supply chains cut. Important people dead. Lesser bureaucrats and managers raised to power unearned, for there was no one else to occupy those positions—”

“Runework has passed into the hands of Songli, under the auspices of a girl who can use it well, and ensure that it gets used well in the future.” Melemizargo said, “That girl also has Undertow which is an inspired piece of work that I took joy in seeing. I did not expect that, and neither did you. And now we have [Renew]! Songli is poised to do everything it could never do before; to sweep across Nelboor and establish a true empire worthy of a world. Do not tell me that four and a half million souls was not a good bargain. You have done much worse, for much smaller gains.”

“The problem, father, is that I cannot trust your endgame. You have appeared to regain yourself several times before, but each time you backslide into the deep depths. I swore off being duped by you a millennia ago.” Rozeta said, “I don’t know if you’re you, or if you’re simply a shadow of yourself, goaded into temporary perfection.”

Melemizargo backed off, chastised. “This time is different.”

“I do not know that. No one does. Not even you.” Rozeta said, “And Erick is literally a twitch of Fate away from—”

A warning bell chimed and Rozeta felt her scales shiver. She devoted the tiniest part of herself over to see if she should be worried about the chime…

All of Rozeta focused for a moment on Erick, then she promptly ignored the warning and turned back to her father. She would get to the nascent Wizard later.

She said, “He’s going to need guidance on Wizardry and I am going to give it to him.”

Melemizargo scoffed, “Not once have you managed to protect a Wizard from your own son! How could I possibly leave this important event in your hands?”

“As I leave Kirginatharp to his own ends, you must leave me to mine. Besides, you put on a brave face, father, but I know the man who raised me is not all there behind that mask.” Rozeta tried not to speak her demand with as much force as she desired, but some of that force came out anyway, “Relinquish control of Erick’s Worldly Path to me. You are unfit to guide this particular Wizard, in this particular situation, to these particular goals.”

Melemizargo flinched. Rozeta almost took back her words, but she could not. They had needed to be said, and Melemizargo had needed to hear them. He was not healed, and he would not be healed for a long time, if ever. But Rozeta’s truths did not deter him.

The Darkness stood resolute. “No. Never.” Melemizargo said, “I’ve done this many times before. I may not be at my best, but I can still get this done, daughter.”

Rozeta stared at her father. He was as stubborn as always. Even in his full insanity, he had always been this way. But at least he had entertained her ideas for a moment. Maybe he was back, a bit? Hard to know until twenty years had passed without incident. And even then…

Rozeta said, “You may take your leave, father.”

Melemizargo faltered, but he was as proud as she was, especially when speaking in his godly role. He inclined his head, and then he faded backward, into the Dark.

Rozeta looked away from where her father had been, returning to all the recent messages and warnings blaring at her in their own tiny, near-silent ways. She frowned—

She glanced back at the Darkness in the corners of her perception, and the Darkness was still gone.

With a great sigh that moved the clouds and sent a wind rushing through the world, Rozeta undid her imperfect moment in time —Melemizargo had disturbed it, and he didn’t even notice— and she checked on her messages.

And. Yup.

Of course Erick had decided to start exploring the Grand Wizard’s Tower right when she was talking to her father. Fate Magic was locked beyond an Infinity of anti-magic protocols, but that hardly ever mattered when it came to mana’s most insidious of magics, or Wizards. The next few hours would determine if this particular twist of Fate was good for the world, or bad; Rozeta had no way of truly knowing.

If there was one thing truly different between her and her father, it was this. Rozeta did not enjoy the truly unknown; not anymore, not since the Sundering. Small unknowns were interesting, yes. How everything all fit together was the most interesting thing in the universe. But…

Melemizargo fully loved change.

It was a large difference.

- - - -

The Wizard’s Tower, for it had to be that with all capital letters, was a grand thing that Erick had bypassed when he first saw it, for it would have surely taken him hours upon hours to go through the whole place. Maybe even a full week. But now, as he stood atop the white bridge leading to the Wizard Island, he was prepared for that week.

He was done with everything else he could possibly do here in the Outer Core; aside from spending a lifetime exploring the place, which was simply not feasible. All of his personal goals, from [Gate], to figuring out a [Renew] runic web, would have to happen outside of this place. Mastering his newfound aura would take time, too, because beyond Remaking many of the spells he bought, he would need to visit the Orrery in Nergal to learn how to Remake things like Strong, which multiplied his base Health by 3. Erick wasn’t even sure where to begin to Remake that skill.

There was also the matter of creating some Class Abilities for Particle Mage. Erick only had one idea for a Class Ability in mind right now. He wanted to be able to ‘see’ items like how a Smith could Metal Sense items, to understand the physical makeup of them down to the atomic structure. He wasn’t sure how far he could go or how useful he could make such a Class Ability, but he would need some guidance in how to do that, anyway. Thus, the Orrery.

And Erick was hesitating again.

He recognized this personal failing, and yet...

Anyone would hesitate at seeing this sort of gateway before them. The entrance to the Wizard’s Tower island reminded Erick of the archway sitting before the Armory in Ar’Kendrithyst; it was too grand, by half.

Erick stood in the center of a white stone bridge that arched across the strait between the kingdom’s castle and this Wizards’ island. Where the bridge touched back down and the white road led onward, ten meter tall white stone wizards flanked the passageway. One man, one woman, both were dressed in fine robes that looked like they could flutter in the breeze at any moment. But unenchanted stone couldn’t flutter. They were solid stone, through and through. The male wizard on the left held a massive, open grimoire in his right hand, with a dozen bookmarks cascading from the well-read pages, while his left arm held aloft a staff of power that arced halfway over the road, and touched the matching staff of the female wizard. The woman was mostly a mirror for the man, but she did not hold a book in her other hand; instead, she held a stone orb the size of her own head.

To the left and the right beyond those initial wizards were dozens more. Statues upon statues, spreading out along the coast like a wall made of stone people. Each statue was unique, and many races of the Old Cosmology were present. Orcs, elves, dwarves, elementassi, alvani, more than a few humans, and more than a few dragonkin; Erick recognized many of them based on drawings and paintings he had seen before, but he only picked the few alvani out of the crowd because of the large bladed weapons hovering at their backs.

Each statue had some individualized magical item in one lowered hand, from orbs to books to [Familiar]s, while in their raised hands they held a staff or a wand. From those staves or wands poured stone spellwork that twisted in the air behind them, forming a wall of lacy latticework and an art piece at the same time. That stonecraft flowed together, the left and right parts of the sculptural ‘wall’ meeting in the middle, where the first two wizards joined their staves, forming the archway that crossed the road that Erick had to walk under to get to the Wizard’s Island.

And so, he walked.

With mana sense wide open, taking it all in, Erick stepped through the archway and into the front yard of the Wizard’s Tower. This area was filled with rose gardens and fruit trees, and smelled wonderful. It took Erick a good ten minutes to walk through the park, and the walk helped to settle his nerves before he came to the actual tower that took up most of the island.

The building was sort of like what Erick expected a ‘Tower of Babel’ to look like in the beginning stages of its construction. Immense. Ringed with windows and at least thirty stories tall and wide, almost like a few Colosseums of Rome stacked atop each other, but back when it was a fully formed building, back before time made mockery of that ancient structure. Time seemed to have little meaning in this place, though.

There were few side buildings—

Ah.

Wait. This Wizard’s Tower was familiar, wasn’t it?

In a flashing instant, Erick recognized where he had seen this style of building before. This was what Oceanside’s towers looked like, except larger, and more imposing. This place was thicker, for sure, but it was a bit shorter. The color of the stone was white, which was another difference. Oceanside was cream colored.

And… As Erick gazed upon the building, he realized that any resemblance to Oceanside’s student-filled, flying-people organization was purely superficial. Oceanside had traffic lanes in the air; this place had one major, open entrance at the front, and another entrance at the orrery at top. This place was meant for scholars, and seriousness. Not students. People who had already made it to the top of their fields. A place of organization.

A place for Wizards.

The frame around the main entrance was made of even more stone Wizards; a whole organized hierarchy of them, each made of stone and each holding one hand up toward the apex of the door, casting spells at a white metal orb that had been laid into the keystone. Their other hands each held a differently-shaped slab of stone that Erick assumed was a plane of existence that each Wizard had created, and contributed to the cause.

That’s what Wizards did, after all. They made worlds.

The mirrors to Erick’s own [Gate] plans were only one of the very uncomfortable things about this place.

Anyway. Some of the Wizards’ planes were larger than others, and all were of different shapes, but all were decorated like miniaturized worlds, with mountains and waterfalls and gems stuck into metal holders that held those gems above their planes. Those gems represented sunlights or starlights, for sure.

The door to the tower was solid silver, and it was already open.

Erick went in.

The first floor held a large central space, open in the middle of the tower, with a ceiling that stretched up through a few floors. It was a food court, almost, for this place was surrounded by little eateries and larger cafeterias. There were dozens of places to sit and talk with people, either at small gathering spots with comfortable couches, or at dining tables, or at standing tables.

Erick’s eyes and mana sense touched upon many small things here and there, but his eyes were drawn past the small shops and food places, to the center of the space. There stood something that might have been a Wizard. The sight of it worried Erick, but he would be inspecting that stone sculpture soon enough.

Signs were posted in discreet locations everywhere, letting visitors know where things and places were located. Those signs were lies, though, for with his mana sense, Erick saw the real signs underneath the fake ones. The false signs were just one part of how this Wizard’s Tower was different from most other places.

Mostly, there were all these little traps laid all over the place. There had been no traps by the entrance, probably to lure incomers with a false sense of security, but everywhere else…

There were traps.

The traps seemed to be harmless enough, and mostly involved physical trips which unleashed bright liquids onto visitors, from capsules dropped from on high, to hydraulic squirts from small holes in the walls. They were easy enough to avoid, anyway, and so, Erick avoided them.

Step around that tile there. Don’t touch that chair. That couch is rigged to explode, so stay away from that. Whatever you do, don’t sit on that couch…

Erick adroitly avoided the various small traps as he drew closer to the central Wizard’s statue, to read what was on the white metal plate sitting before the massive stone creation. The most obvious and disturbing thing about the sculpture was that this statue was in an obvious place of honor, but it wasn’t finished. The other statues were perfectly carved in the shapes of specific people, but this one had a face that was half there, with stone that was only partially chipped away. The hands were uncarved gestures up and down. The robe had some flow to it, but it was blocky. A [Familiar] of some shape and make stood on the shoulder, but the creature was more a curl of indistinct stone, than anything truly understandable.

Maybe it was a slime [Familiar]? Possibly.

According to the white metal epitaph sitting in front of the statue, the ‘Unformed Wizard’ as he was called, was ‘a reminder of all those who failed to make it to the ranks of the Wizards.’

But according to the real message hidden inside the statue’s chest, more than ten meters from Erick’s position on the ground, the statue had a real dedication; ‘Xoat, the first Wizard, from which came the entire universe. We follow in his footsteps, ever onward into the Welcoming Dark.’ The last words had been scratched out by a furious, internal hand, but the words themselves remained legible enough.

And what’s more, ‘Xoat’s’ stone foundation extended behind him, creating ample space for another, larger sculpture, but there was nothing there. A broken pedestal stood next to that extra space; whatever had been written there was also no longer present, either. Erick had a few guesses about what historically accompanied Xoat, but he’d probably only need one guess to get it right. The implications of all this were rather clear.

Erick turned his attention back to the blocky sculpture. He leaned back. He stared. He wondered at the First Wizard who may or may not have been his own previous reincarnation, if Rozeta’s evasive answers, the Shade’s adoration, and Melemizargo’s apparent lucidity were to be believed.

… And he found it all very inconclusive.

He did rediscover that he didn’t want to think about any of that, though. Erick turned left, and went on his way, leaving behind the impressionist sculpture of Xoat and the blank space where the Darkness would have gone.

Up a staircase, around the central opening to another staircase, past offices and business rooms, Erick went.

He passed by planning spaces with stone mockups of a world yet to come, and map rooms filled with universe-showing atlases and maps. Another room detailed several galactic locations, including the Radiant Depths, the Verdant Expanse, and the Abyssal Spiral. A child’s daycare center had toys that were worlds, and children’s books about Wizards being the good guys; Erick briefly stopped in there just to see if he was reading all that correctly, and he was.

Erick followed the real signs toward the First Wizard’s Library. The fake signs, laid atop the real ones, told him he was headed toward the ‘Senile Wizard’s Lounge’, which was probably a joke of some sort. Wizards were jokesters as much as they made worlds, apparently.

He avoided lots of small traps along the way. He almost went into the map room, too, but the whole thing was a trap. Ophiel...

Well.

Ophiel had triggered a trap early on, and he seemed to be having fun with all that.

Ophiel had bumped into a trap on the wall, possibly on purpose to see what it did. Cloying pink goo had burst from the wall, covering that Ophiel, and now that Ophiel was very easy to tell apart from all the rest because he was bright, bright pink. [Cleanse] didn’t seem to get rid of the dye, either, as the dye seemed to settle into Ophiel’s feathers. Ophiel had tried to [Cleanse] away the color over and over, again, trying to erase the markings of his own misadventure.

[Cleanse] seemed to work on the spilled droplets of pink that got everywhere, so that was great. But [Cleanse] was useless on Ophiel’s conjured self. Erick wasn’t quite sure how that worked —some sort of mana-tainting alchemical potion? That didn’t read as magical to Erick’s many senses? Sure? Why not— and he didn’t really feel like exploring that oddity right now.

Ophiel was fine. He seemed a bit happy to be bright pink, too.

And so, well before Erick made it to his target library, every single Ophiel except for the one on his shoulder was a different color, each of them flapping and chirping and playing around like bright, garishly neon parrots, each of them scoping out which color of goo they wanted to be splashed with next. So far, pink, green, and blue seemed to be his favorite colors. The various red, orange, yellow, and black traps were left behind, mostly untouched.

It brought a bit of a smile to Erick’s face to see Ophiel having fun, but he wasn’t here to play around.

He found his target.

The ‘Senile Wizard’s Lounge’ was a normal enough library/tea shop/couch room. Erick carefully cracked open the door, avoided the accompanying splash of red dye, and then fully opened the room. He moved in, stepped around a few goo-trap-tripping tiles, and saw his actual targets; the books on the shelves. Wizard humor was everywhere, though.

The first shelf out of the five shelves inside the grand, yet cozy space, was labeled ‘So you think you might be a Wizard’. The one next to that was labeled, ‘You’re probably not, but these are some warning signs.’ The third shelf read, ‘Developing bodies; mana shards and you’. The fourth, ‘Practicing safe discipline’. The fifth, ‘No, you’re not Xoat, but you could be something greater'.

The normal names on the shelves were all about caring for old folks, from ‘Advanced body issues’ to ‘Age-related dementia’ and ‘Restorative alchemy’.

About every third book was actually a goo-trap, too, so that was fun. The couches looked comfortable and inviting, but they all had cushions that would burst with color if touched. Only the uncomfortable chair by the window, with its back angled to press into the back of a sitter, was clean of traps. There was a joke there, too, for sure.

Erick went to the first shelf and reached—

“Erick,” Rozeta said, from across the room. “I see you’re exploring.”

Erick turned. “Hello, Rozeta.”

Rozeta glanced to the various bodies of Ophiel as the little guy turned to light and surrounded Erick, going on alert. Turning to light didn’t seem to disrupt the alchemical paint, though, which followed Ophiel into his sunform, transforming each one into a splash of multiple colors.

Rozeta said, “I see someone is setting off every trap they can.”

“He’s cleaning up every mess he makes, too.”

“I see that.” Rozeta looked to Erick. “Let’s talk.”

Erick thumbed at the bookshelves. “I feel like you’re interrupting me because you see an opportunity to stop me from getting answers about Wizardry.”

“I’m here for the exact opposite reason, actually.” Rozeta said, “You can still read the books after I’m finished, but far too many Wizards have killed themselves with words they have learned from books. So I will tell you what you need to know, then you may ask what you want to know, and we can move on from there as you or I see fit.”

“Oh.” Erick paused. He said, “Okay. That works, too.”