Ar'Kendrithyst

“The Sovereign Cities have been called that since the time of the Sundering,” Kirginatharp said, “Though tracing the actual history of the Cities is more like tracing a dotted line done in a hundred different colors, each color calling itself the Sovereign Cities, but each actually being a different people and culture entirely.”

“I don’t need to know the whole history.” Erick said, “I need to know if this current batch of warmongers is going to fall upon me and mine like zealots, and what that means, exactly.”

The Wizard of Benevolence and the Second to Rozeta met in one of the nicer rooms of House Benevolence. The sun held high in the sky, and it wouldn’t be moving for a while, since the (arguably) most powerful mortal dragons in the world were inside a [Hasted Shelter].

The declaration of war from the Sovereign Cities had arrived a few hours ago. And now, Erick was talking with one of the few people who had a deep history with the Cities, who was able to give a clear and precise judgment upon the whole lot of people over there, two mountain ranges west and a bit north of Candlepoint.

Kirginatharp said, “You do need to know the whole history, though, if you are to navigate this horror that has landed on your lap.”

“Now that right there. That is something I’m eager to know. Why am I dealing with this shit storm? Why hasn’t anyone else turned the Sovereign Cities into a wasteland? They’re mostly human, so shouldn’t the Quiet War have turned them into a crater long before now? Especially with the Wasteland Kingdoms so close?”

Kirginatharp looked at Erick and frowned.

Erick frowned right back at him, saying, “Don’t give me that look. It’s utterly ridiculous that the Cities have been allowed to exist at all.”

Kirginatharp sighed, as though he had experienced this conversation a thousand times already. “What would you have me do, Erick? Impose my will upon the world? Ensure nothing bad ever happens to anyone else, ever again? I am just one man, trying to do the best I can. I am not a god. I am certainly not a well-disposed Wizard. And even if I were any of those things, it would be wrong of me to impose my will on those who cannot stop me.”

“What about when ‘those who cannot stop you’ are the same people who have declared war on you? Threatening to kill everyone you love and have tried to help, and to burn down Oceanside in the process?”

Kirginatharp frowned a little, then said, “They tried to do that to me, too.” With golden eyes, Kirginatharp said, “This is a story I don’t want you spreading around, so I would have your confidence before I divulge this tale.”

“I will not tell anyone what you tell me unless I deem this information crucial to saving lives—” Before Kirginatharp could complain, Erick added, “— and even then, I won’t tell anyone unless it is absolutely necessary.”

Kirginatharp seemed fine with that arrangement. He began, “My current stance with the Cities began out of old arrangements that need not be repeated, but which, about 300 years ago, ended up thusly:

“Every single bargain of trade I had enacted with every single ruling house, clan, parliament, and individual power of the Cities, had lapsed, because, for the hundred years prior to that, none of the inheritors of those bargains were willing to do the reforms I required of them in order to reinstate those bargains. At that time, the final bargain of trade held by the Cities was held by Pearl. And then Pearl closed its Oceanside-approved arcanaeum, killing three teachers in the process, and severed that final tie.

“All the Cities, of course, demanded that I continue to fend off all the major monsters, while also throwing rotten vegetables at all my Elites, and openly singing horrible songs of how I consorted with—” Kirginatharp’s calm facade cracked, as his eyes glowed gold and his years fell away, revealing the furious Second to Rozeta for a brief moment— And then he calmed himself again. “They sang awful songs about me, personally. They are likely doing the same against you, right now, as we speak. Burning effigies, too.

“When I told them what was required for them to regain their bargains of trade, which I had been telling all of them for the last hundred years, they all refused, demanding that I kowtow to them, and that they didn’t need me, and that my magic was evil, and how it was useless, and that I was demanding too much of them, and… So on and so forth. They are an absolutely infuriating people to deal with, Erick.

“And so, they thought that, because I would not kowtow, and because I would not bend in my requirements, that I was at war with them. So they sent me a formal letter of war like the one you got.” Kirginatharp said, “My requirements to reinstate my bargains of trade were rather simple. One, have one open and publicly accessible registrar per hundred thousand people, which is the bare minimum, by the way. A much better number is 1 registrar per 10,000 people. For a place like Oceanside, that number is 1 per 1,000 people. Two, an Arcanaeum Consortium place of learning must be established in every major city, or at least one in whatever city wishes to reenact the bargain. And Three, to cease killing people who have Matriculated outside of noble control.”

“… All very reasonable. Which means it didn’t work.”

“It worked for a while, actually!” Kirginatharp smiled a fraction, and then he lost that smile. “The bargains were restored, and while my Elites killed major threats to the land, the Cities ‘tried’ to enact my requests. They did not actually try at all, of course. This all came to a head 3 years after that agreement, as all three of my bargains were mutilated in different ways.

“Of the first part: Getting the registrars would take time, so I gave them 5 years to enact that full transformation, but by the end of the first year, I required them to have at least 1 open registrar in every major city. Three years into the new bargains, they had yet to meet the first year requirements, but what was worse is how those small measures of compliance were followed.

“Every single open registrar, of which there were only 4, had their offices in the main town squares. Killtree, Charme, Curio North, and Pearl had complied, while Curio South said that since North Curio was part of South Curio, that they were also complying, but without really needing to actually comply.

“The Curios pull a lot of shit like that, by the way. They pretend to be a single city when it suits them, like with requirements to receive international aid, and two cities when it suits them, like for how much aid should be given. Watch out for that when you deal with them.

“That failure to properly comply with registrar demands was not even the worst part, though! People were able to Matriculate, but if those people weren’t signed up for an army at the same time, or operating under a noble, then those people were usually found executed by noble command, with their bodies spread everywhere across their former homes, and their heads on spikes inside the Executioner Halls, where the nobility displays the heads of those who break the law.”

Erick’s mood darkened. It was already rather dark, but it got worse.

Kirginatharp mirrored Erick’s mood, and continued, “Of my second requirement: The arcanaeums I demanded be built were built, but only the nobles were taught. A few commoners qualified to attend classes, because I locked down that shit as soon as I found out what they were doing. But it wasn’t till year 3 that I discovered that several of my teachers had been face stolen in response to my demand to teach the commoners, and that those impostors were teaching the commoners in ways that would get them killed. Telling the kids to play around with [Cleanse] was a favored tactic.” Kirginatharp said, “By these two mutilations of my bargains, they had automatically failed the third requirement, which was to stop killing people who Matriculate outside of noble control.”

Erick sighed. “What was your response to all that?”

“I murdered every single person responsible, Erick.”

Like a wave of cooling relief on a hot summer day, Erick felt better.

He felt better about everything.

Because he knew, in that moment, that he would need to do a lot of killing himself.

“It was a complicated campaign, of course,” Kirginatharp continued, “A few of my Elites helped me to locate the greatest perpetrators of evil in those lands and I removed those people from power. In some cases I went ten people deep, pulling out the decayed nobility by their roots. It was a thing I am still proud of to this day, because the aftermath of that murdering was like trimming a horribly overgrown tree.

“The level of corruption in those governments dropped to a level not seen in a hundred years. I managed to enact my bargains of trade with some different nobility… But, in my zeal, I went too far. The Shades realized what I was doing over there. Two years after I began cleaning the Cities up, and though there would be many, many more years of that necessary, the Shades gave me an ultimatum, as they usually did. If I left the Cities to their own devices, they would allow whatever I had done already to continue. If I fought them on this, then they would fight me.

“I chose to leave the Cities alone.

“Two years of cleanup had to be enough.

“15 years later, everything I had tried to do was undone, and though I know the Shades were partially responsible, the Shades were not wholly to blame. Violence rarely is the proper way to solve governmental issues, and while I knew this long before then, it is a lesson I have had to learn many, many times.

“At that time, I learned this lesson in this way: I occasionally looked in on the important meetings of the Cities, and when world events conspired to put the Cities anywhere near those events, I paid special attention to those places. I even looked in on some of the smaller, unimportant happenings within the Cities, like decisions of how much [Cleanse] they would allow a city to use in their sewers.

“And though the Shades were involved in one of those —which I know of, for certain— the Shades were not involved in all of them.

“Sometimes the people of the Cities made the right choices; they chose compassion, etcetera.

“But all too often, the people of the Sovereign Cities made the wrong choice. That example about [Cleanse] in the sewers? They voted on ‘none’, because to allow the open use of [Cleanse] meant that the sewermaster would be making money off of the rads they collected— Which I believe they should, of course. But now that the sewermaster could not make a living at his job, with no incentive to stay, the sewermaster quit, and that place had oozes within the month. A hundred people died, Erick. All because a handful of nobles in power voted for violence.” Kirginatharp breathed, centering himself before he got angry again. He continued, “My Elites cleaned up that mess and then pressured the people on the ‘no [Cleanse]’ side of that vote to vote the other way, tilting the vote back in favor of the sewermaster being able to do his job. That guy went back to work and was found guilty of falsified crimes, so he was executed by Charme and his head collected for the Executioner’s Hall.

“The whole reason that group of nobles had voted to disallow the collection of rads through [Cleanse] was because one of them was moving in to take over the sewermaster’s job. Once that person had gotten that job, there would then be a re-vote. [Cleanse] would be allowed again, and that person would then be collecting all those rads themselves. There had been bribes all around in order to make that happen.

“And a hundred people died in the interim.”

Erick’s rage almost blinded him. He shuddered. “… Ahh. That’s pretty… bad.” Erick had a lot more words than that, but he could not string them together at the moment.

Kirginatharp sat silently, too.

“There is a face stealer problem over there.” Erick asked, “How do you think they would respond if I offered them my anti-face-stealer services?”

“They would find reasons for all their enemies to be guilty and none of their friends to be guilty, and they might be right, or they might be face stealers themselves. In my opinion, that is a quagmire that you do not want to step into.” Kirginatharp said, “If you find a noble that has murdered people for their own gain, then simply murder them right back. It is the only way to be sure.”

Erick nodded once, taking that information in, and then he asked, “How about the Dragon Stalkers? How do they fit into this?”

“Ah. Well. That’s a much larger conversation that we need to have some other day.” Kirginatharp glanced around, then turned back to Erick. “Or we could stay in this [Hasted Shelter] for a few hours?”

“I’m fine with hours, but let’s keep to the strategic level; no need to go into tactics or individuals right now, unless they are necessary to know.”

Kirginatharp nodded once. “The Dragon Stalkers were originally a group of zealots conceived in the Sovereign Cities over a thousand years ago, who murdered both parents of dragonkin children, and then the children themselves. They were proponents of the Sovereign Ethnostate; a fully human Veird— almost all of the Cities are human. The Stalkers changed over time to eventually include every race of people, including dragonkin themselves, for dragons are a large problem the world over, due to the Curse. But without the Curse, then dragons would rule the world.

“The Stalkers hate me, because I am a dragon, but they work with me to keep the world clear of dragons.

“They hate you, too, perhaps even more than me and for a grab bag of reasons, but mostly because everything is changing, and our old solutions to old problems now have new solutions. They’ll probably have a schism in their ‘faith’ in the next ten years if everything you’re doing actually works, for a lot of them have recently taken up a new option: They’re calling for every dragon you Benevolence to be cursed with infertility, thus ensuring that no new eggs and no new dragons are born to spread more wyrms and more dragons into the world.

“Which brings me to another problem. Perhaps you should consider this sort of cursing; we don’t need more wyrms in the world. I would like it if there wasn’t even a wyrm season at all next year.” Kirginatharp asked, “Unless your Benevolence Dragons breed true?”

Erick wasn’t sure how to even begin to reply. “… There are so many things you just said which are… Baffling to me— Infertility? Really? But…” Erick frowned.

Kirginatharp said, “Perhaps we should avoid that nest of concern for now. The war with the Cities is more pressing.”

Erick blinked a bit, then asked, “So killing every noble in charge and running through the nation, executing every face stealer I find… Is the proper solution, if I can keep it up and continue to ensure that the Cities transforms into a better sort of place.”

“Theoretically, yes, and since you don’t have the Shades and Melemizargo trying to tear down everything you build, it might actually work. It will take time, though. If you are the biggest power over there, and if you make them listen to you, they will reluctantly do so. You won’t get through to the current generation, or the next generation, but perhaps, with 60 years of direct oversight, that land will change.”

“Well that’s not happening. So how about I [Blessing of Empathy] all the nobility?”

Kirginatharp instantly said, “They will be violently replaced within a month. Some sooner.”

“And if I continue to Bless whoever is in charge?”

Kirginatharp breathed in a bit, taking his time to think. He looked upon Erick with golden eyes. He said, “It might be the best solution, but there are concerns. Several immediate concerns. Many more long term concerns that might not happen.

“Firstly, the people you initially Bless will be executed by others hoping to become nobility through murder. This will be difficult for you to overcome, but if you set aside your concerns for human life, if you don’t care about losing some of the Blessed nobility as they are executed when you’re not looking, then you can Bless most of the nobility.

“This will mean open war, though.

“Which brings me to the second major concern. If open war happens then the Cities will attack Candlepoint and the Gate District and every part of everything you love and care for. You will lose people. But maybe not. Quilatalap is here —which is something I still think you are foolish for pursuing— so he can [True Resurrection] people for you. You and I will not be having that debate, for I am telling you now that every single person he resurrects will have their bank accounts frozen and they will be expunged from their old lives. You can make them new lives if you wish, but they will not be getting their old lives back; in this, I have already decided.”

So that was the line Kirginatharp was not willing to cross.

This was…

This was fine.

“… Reluctantly accepted.”

Kirginatharp eyed Erick for a moment. “Thank you, Erick, for accepting that.

“Along that same concern, though: Since we are allies, I will be devoting forces to your cause, should war happen and should you accept those forces on your lands. Hopefully with enough Elites then there will be fewer deaths. I expect Stratagold and Ar’Cosmos to do the same. Perhaps the people you have here in Weald will be enough? I don’t know about that, though.”

Erick felt a twinge of relief. “I accept your offer of Elites. I would ask them to defend this land while I go and make war, then, if open war should happen. Thank you.”

Kirginatharp smiled a little. “I have enough Elites to do both, Erick.”

Erick nodded.

Kirginatharp continued, “The third major concern ties into the retaliation of the Cities: they have Elites, too, and their kings and their queen all have Domain magic. That magic is the only reason why they are the royalty over there, for it was only through their own personal power that they managed to ascend to real power. But they have others who encroach on their power all the time. I estimate that there are about 20 Domain holders over there. Most of them are archwarriors, though Queen Pearl is a mage.

“Queen Pearl, mage, Exalted Domain, follower of her family’s Exalted Angelic Path.

“King Xaro, warrior of South Curio, Air Domain, follower of the Thieving Hand.

“King Sook, warrior of North Curio, Ocean Domain, follower of the Crushing Depths.

“King Charme, warrior, Blood Domain, Father of Princes, and a former Prince himself.

“King Killtree, warrior, Force Domain, the Unmoving Shield and Unyielding Sword.

“The Curios are the only ones who are currently in a pattern of ‘crushing real threats to their rule’, since the Curios are constantly trying to kill each other and reunite North and South Curio as one Sovereign City. The other three were in a holding pattern of ‘crushing upstarts’. They would have stayed that way had the Dicer Rebellion not happened.

“Now, every City is on edge, and likely fully prepared for war. Especially so since they are united in their hatred of you, Erick.

“That declaration of war was real.

“They are ready for you to try something. Anything at all, and they probably have a response for it.” Kirginatharp said, “While the culture of that place produces terrible people all the time, the people who actually rise to the top of that cesspool are the ones best able to live in their self-made world of horrors. No matter how you respond to this declaration, someone is going to die, somewhere, because that is how these people operate, and that is what war means.” Kirginatharp added, “Or perhaps they’ll do a polite war and surprise everyone.”

Erick felt both beyond furious and utterly exhausted, with at least a hundred more questions in him. “Why, if they have Domains, do they even need other people to come in and kill Ancient Unicorns, like Jane did? Why do they need your help for bargains of trade at all?”

“Because the rulers do not help their fellow man until their fellow man is one of theirs, and simply living in the same City as one of their royalty does not make one a citizen of that City. Sometimes, in unicorn season, those monsters can get all the way to Killtree proper before their king deigns to lift a finger. In part, this is due to their culture of independence, in another part, this is due to the desire of nobles to see other nobles fall, and thus increase their own power. Every time the unicorns make it all the way to Killtree proper, it means that some nobles on the northern side of Killtree have died, which clears the northern lands of Killtree for other nobles to try and rise up in the emptiness.

“In another small way, fighting unicorns is very difficult for many people, even those with a Domain, and Kings of Killtree have died to underhanded tactics from other Sovereign Cities when they have been proactive with unicorn hunts. So they don’t do that anymore. Anyone who does, dies.”

Erick burst out, “How have they not imploded already?! How can they maintain a population?! What the FUCK?!”

Kirginatharp nodded knowingly, calmly saying, “They have imploded, many, many times before.”

“… And yet they keep coming back the same way?” Erick asked, “Have they no regard for the lessons of history?”

“They do not.”

Erick leaned back in his chair, his head flopping back as he stared at the ceiling. For a long moment, that was all he did. And then he turned to face Kirginatharp again. “Thank you for coming here and talking, Kirginatharp. I have… so many more questions, and your experience is invaluable. Do you want a Gate to Oceanside? I can have one ready for you within ten minutes of this conversation ending— Which might not be for another few hours, depending on how much time you’re willing to spend talking.”

Kirginatharp smiled. “I have been waiting what seems like a long time to simply talk with you, Erick, about this and that and anything else you want to discuss. I’m sorry that it took a war to make this happen, but we’re here now. So let’s talk about anything and everything. How about we start with Last Shadow’s Feast? I never got a chance to really discuss all of that with you, in private.” He added, “And then we can talk about what it means now that you’re hosting this Shadow’s Feast.”

Erick chuckled. “It wouldn’t be a day on Veird without ten concurrent crises.”

“Then it’s rather wonderful you have Time Magic now,” Kirginatharp said, grinning.

Erick sighed and smiled, then asked if Kirginatharp wanted anything to eat, or anything for the space. The Second to Rozeta asked after some desserts and teas, and when Erick canceled the [Hasted Shelter] to grab those things, Kirginatharp also grabbed a teapot that was surrounded by a permanent purple lightmask. Erick laughed as he looked down at the teapot. It was the same one with the same lightmask that Erick had made, back when he had made the Light Essence dungeon at Oceanside, so that Kirginatharp could make all the All Stat rings that he wanted.

“How is this teapot working out for you, anyway?” Erick asked.

“All my Elites now have All Stat rings; every one of them with over a hundred in everything! It’s been quite wonderful for survivability and general ease of monster slaying.” Kirginatharp smiled. “But the number of incidents which require an Elite response are quite reduced, thanks to your own efforts with monster eradication.”

Erick laughed. “That’s not a problem, is it? Am I depriving you of money from monster kills?”

Kirginatharp waved a hand. “I have more than enough of every physical thing I would ever need or want. And so do my people. No; your magic has not been a problem at all. Your magic has kept thousands of people alive who would have otherwise died, either through preserving the lives of my Elites, or through allowing them not to have to make resource-based decisions in the field, they could save everyone.”

Erick smiled brightly. “I’m glad.”

The two of them spoke for hours, about this or that, or about history. Kirginatharp was a wellspring of information regarding everything that Erick was now facing; from war, to problems of magic and the proliferation of secrets, to problems of societies and how to deal with them. They spoke of law and order. Justice and the needs of Veird, and of individuals. They spoke of war crimes, and otherwise.

A lot of it was praise for a lot of the decisions Erick had made already. Kirginatharp had nothing but good things to say about Last Shadow’s Feast, now that they weren’t all joking about orgies, and it was just the two of them. The previous conversation about that had been with Kromolok and Riivo, and back then Kirginatharp had held his tongue in certain ways. Now, though, the viciousness of the Second of Rozeta came out, and Kirginatharp spoke of his open hatred for all things Dark, and how Erick’s [Blessing of Empathy] was the best thing Kirginatharp had ever seen done to the Shades.

“It was catharsis unbridled, Erick,” Kirginatharp said, with a great big sigh. “I loved watching you watch them fall to their knees in horrible realization of what they had done…” And then his smile waned. “But it was still a war crime. No less than what they deserved, all of them… But… When it comes to the Cities… I don’t know. Ruthlessness has its place. And yet...”

Erick picked up what he was putting down. “Yeah. I know. It would be wrong to soul-fuck every single noble of the Sovereign Cities. But what the fuck else can I do? I can’t have real peace talks with them; they’re just going to diatribe at me. And I won’t have a repeat of Terror Peaks… I’m still not happy with how that ended up. I don’t think I ever will be. I killed… I killed so many people, Kirginatharp.”

“Look at it this way: by killing those killers, you saved more lives. Songli is soft, Erick. It’s not their fault that they were targeted so harshly, and so thoroughly, but Terror Peaks was a society at the forefront of martial might. Similarly, the nobility of the Cities is stronger, but not by much, while Candlepoint is much, much more fragile than Songli, simply due to age and coordination, and the fact that you don’t have an army of Elites yourself.”

“I didn’t want a standing army.”

Kirginatharp smiled softly. “Which is a good thing. I’m also glad that you aren’t so keen on this soul-fucking option, too. You’re a good man, Erick. It’s a shame that powerful people can’t be as good as they want to be, or else they get killed.”

“… Yeah.”

“So I’ll accompany you to your peace talks, if you end up having real peace talks. Maybe not the first one, though, because then they’ll just focus on me and that won’t be productive for you, at all.”

Erick smiled. “I’ll take that offer.”

Kirginatharp grinned. And then he put that grin away, saying, “You have other allies that will not go named that you could take in my stead. One of which I am rather sure would be thrilled with the opportunity to commit ‘Justice’ in your name.”

Erick lost his smile. “… No. I’m not trusting her with this— But…” He frowned a little.

“Think about your options, Erick.” Kirginatharp said, “Whatever you pick, I suggest you do not go alone, and certainly not in person.”

“Well, yeah.”

They spoke for a few hours more.

But eventually it was time to get back to the real world.

Erick ended the [Hasted Shelter] and within ten minutes, like he had promised, he had installed a Gate to Oceanside on Financial road, just to the left of Candlepoint’s Gate.

On his side of the world was a land of flat orange stone and scattered buildings and lots and lots of Platform traffic, moving around under the midday sun. On the other side of the Gate was a land of hundred-meter tall, cream-colored stone towers, lit up at night. A few late night graduate students flew back and forth between those towers, following lines of light laid in the air, while a few Elites in cream-colored armor waited in the courtyard where Erick had planted the Gate.

Kirginatharp departed to Oceanside, traveling from day to night, then he turned back to Erick, saying, “I’ll have those Elites report to Burhendurur in your morning. Good day, Erick. It was a pleasure.”

Erick grinned, saying, “Thanks for the help. See you later, Kirginatharp.”

The Headmaster and the Wizard both turned to their respective people, waiting on the sides of the Gate for the go-ahead. This was, after all, the opening of a new Gate all the way to Oceanside, the premier learning center of the entire world, and a hub of trade. This was a big deal. A lot of things were a big deal right now, but the people who would be using this Gate didn’t really care about the war with the Sovereign Cities. They just wanted to trade all the way with Stratagold, as did most people.

And so, vendors and tourists had come out of the woodwork as fast as this monumental news could spread, and as fast as Zolan and Oceanside could coordinate all of it.

And now, the Wizard and the Headmaster, operating on ceremony, said to each other, “Let the trading commence.”

Erick and Kirginatharp nodded to each other and simultaneously vanished from the field in flashes of light. The guards of both sides of the Gate took over from there, and soon, trade flowed. It was a rather subdued opening compared to the ones that had happened for Portal and Weald and Gambler’s Rest, but it was a lot more than the ceremony which had happened for Candlepoint. For Candlepoint, Erick had just placed the Gate, and word eventually got around that there was no need to blip to the Gate District; you could take the Gate.

- - - -

Back in his office, Erick looked down at his Gate District, and wondered if he needed to put more interconnecting Gates at Candlepoint, and Weald. Those places were getting rather darned big! They could use multiple Gates, connecting from multiple sides of those cities.

… OR...

Erick smiled a little.

Maybe he needed a monorail. A tram system! Ohh. Yeah. That could be fun!

Eh. No.

War first.

Erick went into seclusion for a dozen minutes, meaning a dozen hours, in order to sort out all the thoughts that Kirginatharp had given him and then to come up with his own comprehensive plans. And then he slept on it. When he came out of seclusion he knew what he was going to do.

Mostly.

The first thing he did was call up Fairy Moon.

That conversation lasted a good ten minutes, in real time, and that was more than enough. Afterward, Erick wasn’t sure if it had been the right call to involve the fae, but Fairy Moon wasn’t able to commit to the sort of war that Erick wanted to wage with the Sovereign Cities, anyway, since Ar’Cosmos was taking up all of her time. But she did offer some help.

Erick had declined her offer. “If I want to summarily execute every noble, I will let you know.”

Fairy Moon had shrugged. “A proper purging of undesirable un-nobles makes manifest room and reason for a change of civilization. But I’ve never had luck with slaying those particular Sovereigns to produce a desired destiny. Good luck!”

And then she had vanished.

Erick went around doing a few more preparations on his end, using [Cascade Imaging] and checking the lands on the other sides of every Gate for signs of trouble, but he saw no immediate concerns and there wasn’t much more to do to prepare.

Kirginatharp, Zolan, and others, had convinced Erick that he should at least attempt peace talks. And he needed to let others attempt the same. That meant giving Oceanside, Stratagold, and Portal (surprisingly, but not really that surprisingly since they were an ally) the opportunity to try for peace, on Erick’s behalf. Those talks were apparently happening right now, and Erick was not involved in those.

Erick would eventually try for peace, too. Tomorrow.

It was going to be a pretty fucking weak attempt, though, and done at a far distance.

- - - -

Before Erick knew it, night had fallen. The Greater Candlepoint Area was on high alert. An hour to the west, though, the land was awash in the reds and golds of sunset, and the distant deepening purples of twilight.

And Erick wanted to know a little bit about what his allies were talking about with the royals.

Ophiels flew high in the skies of the Sovereign Cities, lighting up the evening with stars that cascaded invisible light all across the land. [Cascade Imaging] showed the general locations of Erick’s targets well enough. The Kings and Queen of the Cities were publicly known figures. And yet, Erick only got a ping on the Queen of Pearl, who was named that same name, but who was technically Queen Pearl the Fifth. No one actually called her that, though.

And so, because he knew where Queen Pearl was, Erick went to Pearl, first.

Queen Pearl was in the middle of a heated discussion in a tower to the side of her main castle, sitting across a large meeting table from a representative from Oceanside. Guards stood strong on both sides of the room.

Erick watched with his mana sense from an invisible Ophiel, a hundred meters above the meeting. Mana sense didn’t allow for things like color or even sound, really, but lip reading and throat reading —for everyone down there seemed to be using [Telepathy] at the moment— was good enough.

Queen Pearl was a middle-aged human woman surrounded by floating daggers, marking herself as an agent of the angels. Her colors were white and gold. She was shouting about how terrible Candlepoint was, and how war was absolutely necessary, and how Oceanside had no right to interfere in the workings of the Sovereign City of Pearl. If they kept this up, then Oceanside would get a letter of war, too. Of course Pearl wasn’t saying all of that at that very second. Erick had mana sensed through time a bit to uncover all of that had happened over the last 30 minutes. As for this particular moment, Pearl was reciting something that she had said a few times already.

Queen Pearl scowled. “So Oceanside has fallen to the Wizard.”

The man from Oceanside, who Erick knew as an Elite he had seen somewhere before, but he had honestly never gotten the man’s name, spoke with a calming tone that he had needed to use several times already, “Oceanside has not fallen to Erick Flatt, Queen Pearl. As I have said already, Wizard Flatt has allied with us, alongside with Stratagold, and almost every single god of the Pantheon, among others. Since Wizard Flatt’s ascension to power Melemizargo has not appointed another Ancient, nor has he sent wave upon wave of monsters at every city in the Underworld, as he usually does. Nor has—”

“Shut up,” Pearl said, “I’m tired of hearing your ignorant words. The Wizard has duped you, and everyone else. Expect a letter of war in the morning. Our trade with you has ended. No more pearls, no more Healing items, no more trade. Get out of my kingdom.”

The man rose from his seat, bowed, and then left.

And Queen Pearl looked up at the roof of her room, saying, “I know you’re there, Wizard. Have you come to surrender?”

Erick decided to leave.

And since it appeared that Pearl was cutting ties with Oceanside, and Oceanside seemed to be fine with that happening…

Erick had Ophiel take a detour into the city of Pearl. He didn’t want to do that too much, for he knew that if he did then...

Erick gazed down at the Sovereign City, and knew disgust.

A quarter of the land was filled with light and stone buildings and decorative crenelations atop cathedrals, and mansions layered and layered with defensive magics. The streets were clean and well lit. The guards were stationed in their little guard houses, and carriages of nobles trundled off to play houses, and bordellos, and otherwise, and bars were filled with people and bands, and the harbor was active with trade and sailors and everything moving all at once, under bright lights and the watchful eyes of harsh guard captains. Everything looked perfectly normal, mostly. On the surface, Pearl was almost like Spur, or Candlepoint, or any other normal city.

But then there was the other 75% of Pearl.

Dark roads. Public lights only present at every intersection. Wooden houses, with candles made of dirty tallow which left great trails of black smoke that marred ceilings with permanent shadows; for [Cleanse] had not been used in these places in a very long time. The greatest sources of light were the private lights atop the stone towers that stood up from the slums every so often. Those towers were only upon the major roads that led out into the distance, to other points of light out in the twilight out there, to other small cities lit with light, surrounded with their own sorts of permanent slums, hidden in perpetual darkness.

People were out and about in those dark places, too, but they did not wear nice clothes. They wore roughspun things. Some of the smallest kids were simply naked, playing in the mud, or getting whipped for misbehaving by drunk fathers, or mothers. Most people did not have shoes.

Erick witnessed no less than seven muggings, staggered minutes from one another, and kilometers apart. This was the time for muggings, apparently—

And there was a murder.

Erick couldn’t ignore that one.

He couldn’t ignore any of what he had seen, not now that he had seen it.

He swept in with Ophiel and rescued the murder/mugging victim, taking him far outside of the city in a single [Teleport Other]. He was an old man in rags who had been trying to buy bread with gold coins. The man did not look like he should have gold anywhere in his life at all, and so that was why he was mugged and stabbed four times in the gut, and once in the back. Erick did a rapid series of healing spells on the old man, who was completely out of it. Even when he was healed, he was still suffering from some sort of dementia, or something. Erick tried some more powerful healing, [Regeneration]. And that did it. The man’s eyes unclouded; cognizance returned.

And there, on the dark plains outside of Pearl, Erick interviewed the old man while he continued righting wrongs in Pearl.

A house was on fire, and the woman who owned it was pleading with the fire brigade, asking them to stop the fire and [Mend] the house, but the woman hadn’t paid her fire tax, and so the fire brigade was telling everyone else in the area that ‘See! This is what happens when you don’t pay!’. Erick was having none of that, though. Ophiel swept in, invisibly, ripped the fire out of the house with [Fireshape], and repaired the whole place to full with a few seconds of [Mending Aura].

The woman praised the angels for their help.

Erick blipped away the fireman who tried to restart the fire.

Erick did thirty-five small rescues like that, from putting out fires, to setting piles and piles of whiteroot inside the mostly-empty store rooms, to grabbing a nice, plain soup from the food court of House Benevolence and copying that a thousand times over, to set out bowls of warm soup inside houses that needed the food. Erick managed to find out a lot about how the Cities operated in that time, and he managed to answer his question about ‘how do they maintain population with this much death happening everywhere’. The answer was simple; every single mother seemed to have anywhere from 4 to 7 kids. There were a lot of children, everywhere. In that same way, there were a lot of kids and parents that needed a lot of help, which they got in the form of whiteroot deposited into their store rooms. A lot of whiteroot.

Erick would have given out potatoes, but those were rather new since Erick himself had invented them, and potatoes needed to be cooked to be eaten. Whiteroot had been a part of Veird for the last thousand years, and could be eaten raw if absolutely necessary.

He did a hundred larger actions, too, which mainly included the stopping of crimes, from murder, to torture, to other violent actions by the powerful against the powerless, or by the weak against the weak. Sometimes, he rescued the victims, when the crimes looked to be crimes of passion, like between two commoners, like with the mugging/murder of the old man from earlier. Sometimes, he captured the perpetrators, which happened in three separate situations of noble-on-commoner crime, with one of those situations being a woman torturing a man with knives as the man was tied up in a chair. The tortured man would have died if not for the woman’s Healing Magics, but Erick took over that Healing, rescuing the man as he captured the woman.

What happened to most of those people was the same thing that happened to the first old man whom Erick had rescued from that mugging.

The old man couldn’t remember most of his life, only that he was hungry and he had been trying to buy bread. And then he looked at himself. His new clothes. His healed body. And then he got mad, starting to tell Erick off. The man, very adamantly, ‘was not going to pay for these clothes! And I’m not paying for this unwanted healing, either!’. He ‘didn’t need some invisible voice to help him’ and ‘all the gods could get fucked’, too, ‘especially the angels!’.

Erick let the man rant for a moment, but when the man tried to get away and brush Erick off, Erick stopped him. He had an important question for the man. This same sort of question had eventually gone out to every other person Erick had helped in this way, over the course of the two hours Erick had spent in Pearl’s main city.

“I healed you, for free. You’re free to do whatever you want. You’re 50, so you likely have a good 30 years left in you if you continue down the same path you were on. Or maybe far, far less time than that if you get murdered over a few gold coins. What are you going to do with your life now?”

“I’m gonna find that fucker who tried to knife me and make sure he doesn’t see the light of another day.” The old man turned around as he spoke, trying to find the source of Erick’s voice. “It’s the best thing for all of us if that boy is dead tomorrow! I know who did it, too! It was Arli’s boy! Troublemaker needs to die.”

Erick frowned, because that was the old man’s real, true answer.

And so, Erick [Reincarnation]ed the old man, picking the best possible future for the newly-young man, and for everyone else. Erick left the guy sleeping in a [Fairy Stronghold] on the side of the road, in the darkening twilight. A small pile of silver coins and a small dagger in a belt sat upon a table that was set in front of the door, blocking the way out. The newly-young and hopefully good man would not possibly miss those small boons on his way out of the space. As a final touch, Erick [Blessing of Empathy]ed the guy while he slept, and put a full-length mirror into the room.

When the man woke, he would be level 0, Matriculated into the Script, and with 20s in every Stat. He would be smart enough to evade authorities about that fact, for it would get him killed if people found out he was Matriculated. He would also want to help others in small ways. Everything else about the guy was rather normal. He was not the most handsome guy around, but Erick had taken the old man’s base self and remade him slightly nicer. He was still nothing special in any physical way, though, because that would get him noticed and killed.

The whole thing was, perhaps…

An ethically dubious thing to do.

But since the old guy was going to die anyway if Erick had not been there, then…

This was fine?

This was fine.

Erick almost continued on into the noble part of Pearl, but decided against it. The rich and powerful would be the people to actually try and go to war against him. Commoners who weren’t even Matriculated into the Script could do nothing against him, and they all needed his help, anyway; even if they didn’t want his assistance. ‘Want’ didn’t even register as a concern. These people ‘wanted’ to live in independent squalor. They ‘wanted’ to murder those who wronged them. They didn’t ‘want’ help.

Because that was what Erick was doing. Helping. Unilaterally. There was no way that any sane person would fault him for stepping in on any of these situations… Probably.

… Fuck it.

Let’s remake some of the world into a better place.

[Blessing of Empathy] was already proven to work, for it worked on Cultists and Terror Peaks people and even the Shades… Or at least it worked well on Cultists and Terror Peaks.

It would work well here.

Still, though, Erick did not stick around in Pearl too much. He needed to move on. But there was one more thing to do here.

- - - -

The Executioner’s Hall of Pearl was one of the most well-protected public places of the city.

It was still a public place.

The Royal Road of Pearl, as they called these things here, stretched from the harbor to the palace in a straight, wide thoroughfare, about 30 meters across. Trade houses and businesses of all sorts lined that road, eventually giving way to the really nice parts of town, where mansions lay beyond tree-lined barriers, and everyone was stupid rich. Executioner’s Hall was an area taking up the last hundred meters of that road, located on the left side, in the open air. Anyone getting off a ship with an appointment at the palace would see this spectacle of inhumanity right before they arrived.

Gleaming swords, five meters tall, lined that side of the road, gently floating half a meter above the ground. There were about 40 swords. Those swords functioned like shish kabobs, each of them holding between five to ten heads apiece. All in all, there were 309 heads. Hovering lightwards displayed the names of the heads, and their crimes.

Erick ended up reading some of the stories of those ‘criminals’. And then he ignored them, since even if they were true, he didn’t care. This was horror. This should not happen in a developed society.

The whole hall of swords was located under [Weather Ward]s, other [Ward]s of all types, and under the watchful eyes of the royalty of Pearl.

And one more.

An angel floated behind the swords.

She was a woman of pale skin and gold hair, with gold eyes. A halo of gold surrounded her head, with a larger halo around her entire body. She wore what looked to be a dress of feathers, but they were not feathers at all. They were daggers. Thousand of daggers, forming several layers of ‘garment’.

Erick had Ophiel appear in the center of the road, about 15 meters away from the Executioner’s Hall.

The angel noticed long before everyone else.

Erick spoke first. “Cease this display of horror right now, or I will End it for you.”

The angel’s voice was terribly angelic. “I am not contracted to you, Erick Flatt. I cannot end this display without the direct order of Queen Pearl the Fifth.”

With his Ophiel high in the sky, Erick followed through with his threat. He ended the display of heads with a coordinated sweep of [Luminous Beam], carving through [Ward]s like he was breaking glass. Magic scattered and fled. Five seconds later, the dance of carving light ended.

A few swords were slag. Most were completely gone. The heads were vaporized. A scattered of black soot was the only real remainder of what had once been the Executioner’s Hall of Pearl.

Everything and everyone else was unharmed.

Erick asked the angel, “What happens now?”

The angel serenely explained, “I am contracted to kill you and the ten people closest to you, but there is time allowed for banter and we both know I cannot fulfill this particular end of my contract. And so, since we Angels don’t wish to anger you any further, and since we desire your help with ending the Demonic Threat, I will simply cancel my contract, and in doing so, die. If you will allow it, I will speak further.”

Erick paused. “… Tell me why the angels have contracted with the Cities, or at least your own circumstances. I know your people have seen the horrors that I have seen.” Ophiel gestured to where the slagged swords lay on the ground, to where the heads had been held for all to see. “You even participate in these horrors. Explain yourselves.”

The angel nodded. “We are not blind to the faults of mortals, and yet mortal flesh is nothing compared to the eternity that comes afterward for those of the True Faith. And so, we must help those who try to reach for that True Faith, no matter how they fail in other ways. This assistance is more true here, in Pearl, than in all the other Sovereign Cities, for right across those mountains to the east lay the Wasteland Kingdoms. The incani over there would kill the humans of this land if they had the chance, or if these lands were richer.

“After you have finished remaking this land into the image you desire, if you remain in power you will see that I speak the Truth. Perhaps you might even see that the cruelty of mortals is a measure of protection against the true cruelty of demons and their kind. If Ar’Kendrithyst were still around, I would add that the cruelty of mortals is also protection against the Dark.” The angel bowed again. “Good day, Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence. May you have better thoughts on angels from now on, for we are not your enemies, and we never were. And as a final word: You are turning people Empathetic through Soul Magic in an attempt to make the world better. We did the same to turn people away from the demons, and toward the light of Celes. Our goals would align, if you would see that they could.”

And then the angel died as magic usually died; a shattering that started here and there and spread rapidly, like the breaking of glass. In a sudden flash the angel turned to light and glinting fire. Her thousand-dagger dress fell to the ground like heaps of snow, and then turned to a billowing of golden magic all at once.

The guards stared at where the angel had hovered.

No one said another word.

Ophiel left.

Erick had spent two hours in Pearl and that might have been too much. He had four other cities to visit.

- - - -

Ten minutes after leaving Pearl, Poi reported that the Queen had a message for him.

Erick reluctantly said, “… Summarize it, if you would.”

Poi said, “Ahem. ‘Is that all you’re going to do? Kill my angel? That’s pretty fucking weak, dark-sucker, demon-consort, traitor of humanity.’ There was more to it than that, but it is unnecessary to repeat the whole thing.”

Erick was briefly stunned. “Did Pearl… Did she not see everything else I did?”

“I and the other Mind Mages that Ascendant Prime have dedicated to this cause are rather sure that she heard about you solving fires out in the slums and other such actions, but she doesn’t care.” Poi softly added, “And we didn’t actually tell you that, sir, if you understand.”

“… Yeah, yeah. Tell Ascendant Prime I’m thankful for his and everyone else’s help, too. It’s going to make defending the Greater Candlepoint Area a lot easier.”

Poi struggled with something for a moment, and then he blurted out, “If you don’t actually attack the royalty or the nobles directly— I am not telling you this, but in our opinion which you have not heard... The royalty over there is not going to do anything to you, or to us, unless you attack them directly— I mean. Besides whatever other plans they got planned. Which we still don’t know about.” Poi strongly added, “And I do mean that. We really don’t know what they’re thinking.”

Erick waved a hand. “It’s fine, Poi. I understand the Mind Mage reluctance to get involved. If you get involved, it means possibly subjecting yourself to total annihilation due to well-founded fears. I understand that very well.”

“… I know you do, sir. I’m sorry we can’t help you more.”

“Don’t worry about it.”