Erick woke to the sounds of leaves rushing in the breeze. It was a good, normal sound, which preceded a good, normal morning routine. He decided to switch it up a bit by taking yet another swim before he left Yggdrasil, though, and he felt even better after that swim. And then he set out to the embassy to see about getting some breakfast. After a nice meal at the world diner’s market, Erick went to Tasar’s office, where he met Otaliya, and soon enough, Tasar.

Otaliya spoke of meetings with the Golds, who were apparently the merchant caste of wrought, who saw to it that everything got where it needed to go and that the economy of the Underworld was maintained. Erick wondered at the overlaps between the Golds’ market manipulations and how the economies of Earth worked, so he spoke of his own knowledge of all that, asking questions all the while. The answer was ‘broadly yes’, the Golds did oversee much of the economies of the world through various market forces, from trade tariffs to working with Mage Bank to keep gold coins at a relatively stable price, but there was no singular council that oversaw this economic action.

Each Geode had a different set of Golds —or ‘Merchants’, as they were usually called— who each oversaw their own surrounding cities to ensure that the economy worked smoothly. The various economies of each Geode would then interface through the rules laid down by the various Merchants of those Geodes. Outside of the Geodes, the price of bread was wildly different from coppers, to silver, to even gold in some of the far flung independent Underworld cities, but next to the Geodes the price of a loaf of bread was a standard silver coin.

“She means the cities around the Geodes when she talks of Geodes, Erick,” Tasar said, “Most people use one word to speak of both the Geode and the surroundings but this is simply untrue.”

“Quite right. Life inside of the Geodes is much different than outside.” Otaliya said, “Most people don’t know how much different. People think that the Golds oversee the economies inside the Geodes, too, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.” She added, “They’re probably the only people on the inquiry who will be on your side, fully, because the establishment of a true Gate Network is exactly the sort of thing they’d start glinting over.”

“And ‘glinting’ is a good thing?”

“Glinting is a very good thing.” Otaliya smiled. “I heard that the Inquisition might be glinting over you a bit, too.”

“Oh. No. Not yet, anyway.” Erick said, “Yesterday went well, but the depth of their problem with me is revealed and it’s… Large.”

Otaliya gave a flat look, a tiny hum of recognition, then said, “Probably best not to spread too much of that truth around. As long as the Inquisition isn’t coming after you, then the Sights are good. Let’s not spread any rumors that something bad is brewing.”

“Sounds good to me.” Erick looked over to Tasar. “I was thinking of going to Archmage’s Rest today to try and get on their good side.” He asked both of them. “Got any tips?”

Tasar scrunched her face a bit, unsure.

Otaliya readily said, “Tasar is too entrenched with the Rest, so she can’t give you a good answer. The people who can give you good answers are the EIPCs, though, so let’s go talk to them before you go.”

And so they did.

- - - -

Radigo, the human leader from his particular EIPC, said, “There is a lot of talk from a lot of common people about how you saved this person or that household from certain death. This talk originates mostly from the households of the barons you assisted, and has since spread to alehouses and warehouses alike. Baron Tulani of the Alchemists Coalition has been rather outspoken about how you prevented an outbreak of changeling vines in his land. This wave of goodwill has even reached the Merchants, and been magnified by their own words; they appreciate practically everything you’ve done, but especially for the caravan routes of the Main Roads level 5 and 7, where you killed that nest of Stone Leviathans.”

Erick nodded, while Otaliya smiled wide.

Loori, the dragonkin woman from a different EIPC, said, “In addition to the problems solved for the barons out there, this business with helping the Inquisition has waylaid more than a few fears of the deeply religious. In particular, the Church of the Forgotten Light actually has priests out in the open, talking up your accomplishments these days. They’re still on the Side Roads regarding your true status as the Savior of Light, but this is a very large first step. The Church of Sininindi is relieved to know that you are safe, and that ‘they never had any doubts’; I will leave the interpretation of this fact up to you. The Church of Atunir is with you, and they say they always have been.” She continued, “I will, of course, be updating you on this news, but from what I’m seeing, you might have gained another ‘yes’ out of the inquiry board’s Church seat.”

Erick nodded.

The incani, Walz, said, “We’ve been surreptitiously speaking to people about making the case for change, as you requested.” He gestured to his assistant, who began casting lightwards in the air; illustrations of graphs and maps of areas, with points of interest highlighted. He also handed over the very same illustrations to Erick on printed paper, saying, “Change is difficult, but if you want to continue on this route, you would do well to interface with the Heavies soon. They would undoubtedly have requests of you, to ingratiate you with them, and how they work. If you clear their requests then they should have no problem giving approval. We feel that those requests could happen along any of these possible lines, from fully clearing some of these larger caverns to…”

They spoke for hours.

Radigo, Loori, and Walz were each from a different EIPC, and they thus had doubled up on some of the footwork and information they presented to Erick. All of them had different areas of focus, though, which was why Erick had hired three of them, as Silverite suggested.

Raidigo was focused on the ability for Erick to make the economy much larger and more robust, opening up new markets everywhere. Loori was focused on working with the various churches and religious leaders, gauging the will of the populace through its priests. Walz was focused on graphs and information and facts, ensuring that everything was as orderly as it could be, for the wrought preferred order above all else and an inquiry was perhaps where that demand was most crystallized. Otaliya simply knew everyone that was mentioned or could be mentioned; what they did, what they wanted. Erick was surprised by the depth of the information presented to him, but perhaps Otaliya surprised him most of all. Everyone else came into the room with papers and assistants and they would occasionally stop to look at some information, to clarify some point, but Otaliya never had to reference anything or anyone. She just knew it all. If she had some [Telepathy] help, Erick couldn’t tell.

At the end of four hours of discussions and planning Erick had gained the names of several important people to meet and a reaffirmation of his main goal with this inquiry; to gain runic web clearance.

And so, Vibrant Falls was his next stop. He needed to link up with Archmage’s Rest and see about appeasing Riivo; the one person who absolutely had to say ‘yes’. The only problem was that while Riivo seemed pleasant enough, he had already told Erick that he was not getting clearance from Archmage’s Rest, due to Erick’s violation of the Core.

Walz said, “Once Riivo has decided on something, he generally sticks by his word, rarely ever overturning any past decisions. This is going to be a problem.”

That didn’t sound like the man Erick had met, though. He said, “Riivo seemed willing enough to change his mind about [Steadfast Ward] once I told him how I was going to use it with Yggdrasil, and not directly.”

The three EIPC people were surprised.

Tasar spoke up, “Riivo changes his mind all the time, but he also has a bit of a reputation. That reputation is not unearned.”

Otaliya said, “A single spell compared to runic web clearance is a rather incomparable situation. One is a simple defensive spell for a World Tree, so that the World Tree can withstand stronger attacks, while runic webs are dangerous for a whole host of other reasons. It will be difficult to get Riivo to change his mind on this, with such a change likely demanding much of you, personally, Erick.” She said, “I suggest you put forth some ideas of how necessary a runic web will be for eventual Gate Network security. That should be enough to change his mind, or at least open him up to talking.”

Erick nodded.

They spoke for a little while longer, shifting back and forth on topics, but after two more hours they had reached the natural end of the discussion, with all the gathered information given out, dissected, and understood. It was time to move on.

Otaliya went back to Tasar’s offices.

And Tasar went with her mother, because, “I will undoubtedly take Riivo’s side in any argument, so you’re better off going there on your own. You know the way there now, so good luck.”

And so, Erick was on his own again.

- - - -

Erick stepped off of the t-station onto the land in front of Archmage’s Rest. The building was the same as it was last time; a facsimile of the Grand Wizard’s Tower in the Core. The last time Erick had been here the entire place had been layered behind several illusions, which were attached to the building in some sort of semi-permanent runic web, for sure, though the runic web was obscured from mana sense. Now, the place stood fully revealed, and the false facade was gone.

Last time he had been here in the middle of the night, but this time he arrived mid day. Normally, it would be hard to tell the difference here in the Underworld, but Vibrant Falls was lit like a beam of sunlight falling from the heavens, bathing the entire cavern in sunlight. Erick had already seen the shift from night to day in this land before, but it was nice to see again. This place looked much better in the daytime.

In this ‘daylight’, Archmage’s Rest was bustling. A few people came and went from the t-station, but only wrought. And Erick, he supposed. The guards by the t-station were out in the open this time, though Erick didn’t pay them much mind and they didn’t hassle him in return. The majority of people visiting the Rest, though, flew in and out from the rest of Vibrant Fall’s cavern, on spellwork of various kinds, from platforms to more esoteric flying spells, to land on the edge of the cliff and follow the stone paths to the front door. Dozens of people walked in or out of the massive open doors per minute, and it wasn’t long till the first one noticed Erick. Many of them paused in recognition, and either sped up or slowed down, to get out of his way or to let him go first.

Erick followed the crowd inside, nodding in thanks as groups of mages bowed as he passed.

The foyer beyond the wide open door was a busy communal area, almost like a food court, with people sitting at tables and working at stuff, or talking to each other, or eating food procured from one of the many restaurants here and there. More than a few people stopped what they were doing as Erick walked in, but almost all of them resumed whatever just as quickly. Except for one.

A silver male orcol wrought stepped away from his station beside the door, asking, “Archmage Flatt? Is there something the Rest can help you with today?”

“Looking to make an appointment with Riivo, or something along those lines. Whatever is needed to talk to him for a little while.”

“Of course.” The man looked up and a telepathic tendril came off of his head. After a moment, he looked back to Erick, saying, “Seventh floor. He is out of the office right now, but he’ll be back momentarily. If you do not mind, there is one other who would like to speak with you, if you’re willing to wait.”

“Uh. Sure? Who?”

- - - -

Erick stepped up from the stairs onto the seventh floor, into the semi-private space where the general public was not allowed. Riivo had his offices on this floor as well as his meeting rooms. Riivo’s secretary, a silver incani woman, was at the top of the stairs waiting for Erick.

“Right this way, Archmage Flatt,” said the woman.

She led him to a comfortable meeting room with sturdy chairs, a nice table, and a few chalkboards.

Aisha, an iridescent silver human wrought woman, stood by the window, but at Erick’s entrance, she turned, with a gentle smile upon her face. The celesteel woman was one of the librarians for the archives and also a world-class prognosticator with a focus on the past.

“Hello, Erick.” Aisha said, “I’m glad you have returned.”

“Hello again, Aisha.” Erick moved into the room, asking, “I heard you wanted to see me?”

“I’d like to talk a bit about Wizards while you have the chance.” Aisha said, “Riivo should be back in an hour or so but he’s dealing with some bureaucrats out of Titanite so there’s no telling how long it could take; I’m not too good with [Future Sight].”

At the mention of Wizards Erick suddenly went on edge, especially because Aisha was a prognosticator and she was directly coming to him with this sort of information…

But he forced himself to relax just as fast, and said, “I would like to hear more, yes. Thank you for the offer. I’m more interested in how Wizards are capable of breaking anything and what makes that dangerous, more than actual examples, but I suppose examples would be good, too.”

Aisha nodded, then she took her seat, saying, “I would like to have this conversation telepathically.”

Erick took a seat, sending, ‘Sure.’

With a delighted smile, Aisha sent, ‘First thing: you should hide your throat with one of your Privacys or some other way because a truly trained prognosticator read subvocalizations, and even the speediest of thinkers still have them. I know I am not readable, for I have trained myself out of this, so I will not put a Privacy on my own throat.’

… Well that was a bit disturbing in its implications.

Erick cast a Privacy inside his neck and mouth.

Aisha nodded. ‘When encountering a Wizard you should know that they’re just people, but each one is sitting on a massive bomb that most don’t recognize as a bomb. The Wizard themselves might not recognize their power as a bomb, either, for the bomb is usually not ready to explode for a number of reasons. Primarily, it takes time for a Wizard to become a Wizard. Sometimes this ascension is directed and fast, taking only minutes or seconds to unlock due to an immediate physical or psychological stressor, and them already being primed to activate. In these cases you usually end up with a problem too large to contain at that point in time and evacuation or immediate execution of the Wizard is the best course of action, depending on what the Wizard was going for at the time.

‘Normally, though, the ascension of a Wizard is slow and methodical. Usually, a Wizard is someone who makes a little break here or there and they don’t realize that they’ve broken something they shouldn’t break.’ Aisha sent, ‘It is in these breaks that you will truly know a Wizard for a Wizard.

‘These breaks are all the same.

‘These breaks work on a concept, instead of an Element.

‘Concepts are very difficult to influence, with most of them being Banned as soon as they are discovered. Some are not, though. All of the Elements and Esoteric Elements are not Banned, but you can see how some of the Elements are more real than others.’ Aisha sent, ‘Indeed, while it is a mite blasphemous to say, some would argue that all the Elements are concepts, and that all of magic itself comes from Wizards creating those magics in the first place.’ Aisha went silent, waiting to continue.

For Erick was having a small crisis at the moment.

He had heard words similar to Aisha’s before, but not laid down in such an open way.

… And that was the problem.

He had heard all this before… So why didn’t he make this connection before now? Before it was directly spelled out for him? He had even taunted that dragon at Ooloraptoor with ‘changing his Element to Truth’, which was a conceptual change. He supposed the most ‘new’ information that Aisha gave him (by implication) was that the various forces of Veird, from gods to the wrought to Melemizargo and the Wizards of this world, actually ‘decided’ on which Elements they allowed to flourish in the Script, and which ones they Banned.

Nodding, Erick sent, ‘Okay. That makes sense. Continue, please.’

Aisha continued, ‘Fire is an Element, and this is normal. Things have fire and heat to them.

‘Book is a concept. Several pages of language stuck together in a binding? This is a concept. It’s one of the few I can point to and tell people that, yes, this is not natural.’

Erick sat there for a moment, thinking. He had accepted that ‘Book’ was an Element because, sure, why not. But no. Rozeta —probably Rozeta— had decided to let that one remain? Elemental Book never got Forgotten Campaigned because it was useful. How many of the others were useful?

All of them, probably.

Which ones did Melemizargo add to Veird? Destruction and Dark, perhaps?

No way to truly know right now.

Aisha waited.

Erick sent, ‘Okay. I sort of… Get that.’

Aisha sent, ‘With your creation of Particle Magic, this was one of the ways that we thought you were a Wizard, but when other people on opposite sides of Veird were able to make Particle Magic using your ideas we realized that you were not a Wizard, but simply a planar with new ideas that worked in this New Cosmology.

‘We have a theory here in the Rest that all you really did to ‘make’ Particle Magic, was use telekinesis and instinctual aura control. Further proof that all you did was expose a blind spot where mana meets matter is already being proven in Alchemy, the world over; a school of magic where you have never shown any true learning, or desire to learn.’ Aisha sent, ‘This was most solidly proven over in Songli, where, by clearing up some misconceptions and giving Intelligence to a few people, and then stepping away, you have blossomed the seed of basic alchemy into a whole new branch of Particle Alchemy.’

‘… I never heard it put that way, but… Okay.’ Erick asked, ‘Noticing a Wizard is as easy as seeing a magic that should not exist? How does that work?’

‘This is rather darned difficult unless you know all magic that should and can exist.’ Aisha shrugged. ‘But once you’ve cleared that barrier, the spellwork you showed when you captured a few of the major forces of Terror Peaks is more than sufficient to capture and contain all but the strongest of Wizards. If such a Wizard should come along, it would likely take all of the wrought to put them down, so please don’t go upsetting any possible Wizards to where such actions are necessary.’ Aisha sent, ‘I doubt you would, but the words needed to be sent.’

After a moment, Erick sent, ‘I would like some examples of Wizards, please.’

‘There was this pirate known as Hullbreaker a while back. He’s probably one of the most famous recent Wizards, simply because he evaded everyone due to the creation of Elemental Pirate.’

Erick blinked a bit.

He… Wasn’t sure what to think about that, other than it was a bit silly. ‘That’s a bit silly.’

‘Yes. It was silly. It’s probably why it took so long to capture and kill the man; he wasn’t doing anything too objectively evil with his power aside from doing various pirate-things, like stealing from other ships and raiding coasts and being a general nuisance. He was a killer, yes. Killed thousands. But he was also rather insane in a very specific, non-genocidal way. He was also so deep in his power that no one wanted to set him off by applying too much pressure.’ Aisha said, ‘We sent small teams to capture and contain the man but what usually happened was that our teams had to give up the chase, to stop whatever horrors Hullbreaker unleashed to throw those teams off. Hullbreaker’s favored tactic was to expose two dragons in the nearby populace and start a dragon fight, and then escape in the confusion. Oceanside eventually got the pirate. Not sure what happened past that point as Kirginatharp took the man and did what he normally does.’ Aisha sent, ‘I have an idea of what he does but I’m not privy to the truth, nor do I want to be.’

That reminded Erick— He asked, ‘Is Kirginatharp trying to rid himself of his Curse?’

‘Oh yes.’ Aisha said, ‘He’s tried a thousand times before, too. We try to help him with that when we can, but it’s near impossible. You know that the Dragon Essence Curse was laid down by Kirginatharp’s brother, yes?’

‘Idyrvamikor; I heard from a Shade. Wasn’t sure until now, though.’

‘Wizardry flows in their whole draconic family but it skipped Rozeta and Kirginatharp.’ Aisha sent, ‘It would take a Wizard of uncommon means to break the Dragon Essence Curse. The Dark could do it, but there is bad blood between grandson and grandfather for an uncountable number of reasons.’

Erick asked, ‘Do you know what it would take to break the Dragon Curse on a different dragon; not the Headmaster? Would breaking every single inheritor of the Dragon Curse from their Curse make curing the Headmaster easier?’ Erick asked, ‘What about the Black Curse? What is the Black Curse, anyway?’

Aisha smiled, then began, ‘This ties in to what Wizardry can do, and that is to create a new Element. What a Wizard does, is overrides the Dragon Essence inside a dragon with a new Element, thus curing them of their Curse. If every single dragon was cured then perhaps curing the Headmaster would be easier; I don’t believe so, though, since the Dragon Curse flows from him to everyone else. The Black Curse is a lot more difficult since that comes from the Dark, himself.’

Erick again recalled the conversation between him and that Shadow/Ooze dragon, Ordoonarati, where he threatened the man with ‘finding a Wizard to turn his Shadow/Ooze into Truth so that they could have an honest conversation’.

Erick admitted, ‘I have apparently taunted a dragon with finding a Wizard to cure their Curse in order to have a truthful conversation with them. I see now why that dragon suddenly turned helpful.’

Aisha smiled wide, laughing a little bit. ‘Dragons do want their cure very badly.’

‘So it’s some sort of Paradox magic, then?’

‘Not quite.’ Aisha sent, ‘Paradox is the easiest, and those Wizards can last the longest, but True Paradox Wizards can escape too easily, so dragons tend to try and break Wizards along the Paradox-Creation axis. Such a muddled Wizard Core usually breaks down quickly, but before the Wizard breaks, the dragon can usually attune themselves to one of the accepted Elements. Those ones are the three Elements of the three houses of Ar’Cosmos— And I realize I just touched on about seven different topics, each of which could take us an hour to discuss.’

‘I’ve heard about almost all of that before now, but the ‘houses of Ar’Cosmos’ is new.’ Erick sent, ‘I assumed you were going to go right into that explanation.’

‘Fae, Death, and Carnage.’ Aisha sent, ‘These are the three houses of Ar’Cosmos, and the three known and easily Paradoxable shifts of Dragon Essence. All three Elements are exceedingly dangerous, but those dragons remain inside their old Gate Network, and they don’t come to Veird, so there’s not much we can do against them.’ She added, ‘Your suggestion to find a Wizard to create Elemental Truth would be the birth of a new draconic house. Probably not possible without the use of a very strong Wizard, but this is something that any knowledgeable dragon would desire. This is what it means to ‘cure the Dragon Curse’; to add more monsters to the pile.’ Aisha asked, ‘Which of the three do you think is the worst?’

Erick’s answer was instant. ‘Fae.’ 

Aisha blinked a bit. ‘Everyone always guesses Death.’

‘I’ve heard of Death and Carnage before, and they are rather well warned-against, but they are known.’

Aisha smiled a little. ‘I suppose you would have known this much. Apologies. I sometimes forget how knowledgeable some mortals can be.’

‘I am unsure how Fae is worse than Death or Carnage, though. Working with Death will usually kill the user unless they’re already dead; it's the stuff of Necromancers and the like. Carnage usually causes temporary insanity, as it usually acts like a massive self-buff that wears off over time; the Orcol Rage is partially based on Carnage.’ Erick sent, ‘I thought all the fae were killed or died soon after the Sundering, though?’

Aisha sent, ‘We think one or two survived inside Ar’Cosmos. For instance, we’re pretty sure that the Illusion Dragon that attacked you at Holorulo is a member of the Fae family. Those illusions were too good to not be fae-based.’

Erick filed all that thought away for another day, then he sent, ‘The Dragon Stalkers seemed to think that the Mirage Dragon was a Wizard.’

‘… I don’t see how—’ Aisha sent, ‘Which Dragon Stalkers? Where were they from?’

‘An archivist named Ruddy from Oceanside and a local enforcer from Songli named Favia.’

Aisha frowned a little. ‘I don’t know either of them but that’s nothing new. If you would have said Fardali or Trikalo then I would have been surprised that they handed you wrong information, but the Dragon Stalkers probably didn’t send their best to talk to you about—’

Erick recognized where he had gone wrong in his mention of ‘Dragon Stalkers’. He sent, ‘They weren’t there to talk to me. They were there to talk to the new patriarch of Devouring Nightmare and I forced myself into that conversation. Sorry for the confusion.’

‘Oh. Then that makes sense. The Dragon Stalkers are both highly zealous and highly secretive, with a great many of their particular chapters acting as self-contained cells that aren’t allowed to openly interact with each other. It helps to obscure what the Dragon Stalkers actually know and are capable of doing. Oceanside should have sent a better archivist, but maybe he was a young man?’ Aisha sent, ‘There were probably some politics involved in what happened there; hard to say. But what is easy to say, is that misinformation is a powerful tool when it comes to evading and killing dragons, and the Dragon Stalkers are very good at that.’

Erick frowned, reorganizing his thoughts on the Dragon Stalkers; he didn’t want to work with a dishonest organization at all, but they were already in deep shit for what they did to Poi.

A group of Dragon Stalkers had killed Poi’s mother, orphaning Poi and his sister for a long time, before tracking them down again and killing Poi’s sister. They were hunting for Poi’s father, who was apparently a full dragon.

To be sure, Erick asked, ‘Do the Dragon Stalkers regularly murder innocents in their path to killing dragons?’

‘Oh yes.’ Aisha sent, ‘It’s one of the major problems that people have with them, but since the dragons themselves have the capability to cause major disasters wherever they are, most countries cover up Dragon Stalker crusades and the smaller murders.’

Erick felt his heart sink.

He was probably going to have to kill all the Dragon Stalkers, wasn’t he?

Erick moved along, asking, ‘What is the Black Curse, exactly?’

‘It’s a curse placed on the concept of mana-loaded metal, mostly present when you take adamantite —what you call ‘osmium’— and alloy it into adamantium. Adamantium naturally takes in mana and it used to be white at the very beginning of the New Cosmology, but now it’s black.’ Aisha sent, ‘Probably not curable, either, because the basic nature of mana-loaded adamantium was altered so that mana inside adamantium absorbs light instead of radiates light. This directional change was caused by the Dark, himself. It’s theorized that the Black Curse will be lifted when the Dark is cured of his insanity, but that’s more folklore than anything real. The Church of the Forgotten Light likes to preach this particular ideology.’ Aisha sent, ‘In a similar but different fashion, the Dragon Curse’s power is localized and spreads from Kirginatharp, affecting every dragon in this world. Fixing that Curse at its base might be as difficult as killing Kirginatharp, or curing him. It is unknown what effect either event will have on every other dragon in the world. The curse could spread to a new host, or it could begin to unravel.’

Erick had a lot of thoughts about that, but he moved on to the most pressing one. ‘It almost sounds like you’re saying killing Kirginatharp is a viable solution to the Dragon Curse.’

Aisha lost a bit of her brightness. ‘I did a lot of prognostication coming into this meeting but I’ve already gone off the rails. Obviously, I don’t want you to harm Kirginatharp, but at the same time, this world has a lot of problems, and the only real thing I know is that telling you the open and honest truth leads to a brighter outcome than telling you half-truths.’ She added, ‘For instance, I could tell you that killing every Wizard you find will make the world safer, and this is the simple truth, but it will also ruin any possible chance of us curing the Dark, opening up this New Cosmology for habitation, regaining a Gate Network, and a whole host of other things that we desperately want to happen, but which are dangerous to reach for. Perhaps, by telling you full truths, this Worldly Path will lead you to the best possible version of Veird.’ Aisha sent, ‘After all, it already seems you’re headed that way.’

In that moment, Erick recognized Aisha as a true believer.

He had already seen as much though this whole conversation, but it wasn’t till then that he truly understood just how much Aisha wanted him to succeed. It was a heady realization. She would likely be a strong ally…

And yet, Erick tried to stop his heart from beating so hard, and from breaking out in a sweat, but he was only partially successful, for the next question on his mind was dangerous.

So he framed his question with a bit of deniability.

‘… Do you think I’m a Wizard?’

With all the calm excitement she had displayed this entire conversation, Aisha stated, ‘Considering what you have done and where you’re headed, if you were a Wizard I’d still be on your side, but since you’re not, and since you’re never going to tell anyone that you are, then we never have to cross that particular cavern… Until you’re irrefutably outed by the creation of [Renew], anyway. But by that time you should be deeply enshrined in your power. All you have to do to avoid the bad end is to continue working alongside the Inquisition. Everyone else should leave you mostly alone. Except for the dragons, of course.’

Erick lightly breathed, pretending that everything was okay. Physically, he gave almost nothing away, but he knew that for anyone truly looking, he could be in trouble. Maybe he should have had this conversation under a full [Sealed Privacy Ward].

Aisha added, ‘If you were a Wizard then that was what I would tell you, but since you’re not, then you can ignore my ramblings.’

‘… Fair enough.’

Silence stretched.

Erick sent, ‘Thank you for the talk. Every day I learn more about magic, and every day I realize I know even less than the day before.’

Aisha nodded, smiling, sending, ‘It takes about a hundred years to learn most of the basics, but after that you’re mostly just learning about new people… Or that’s what I normally would say to a statement like yours. Now, I suppose we have Particle Magic to learn, and that’s going to take a while.’

Erick found himself smiling back, and even chuckling a little. ‘How long do you think that learning will take?’

Aisha smiled. ‘A very, very long time. So you better stick around to help us out like you did with Alchemy in Songli.’

‘I’ll try.’ Erick glanced to the door, and said, “Looks like Riivo is back.”

“Ah! I do so love it when I time these things right.” Aisha said, “It was very hard to do with you, you should know. Let me know if I can help in the future.”

“I will,” Erick said, and he probably would.

The two of them stood and left the conference room.

Aisha walked through the hallway, and down the descending stairs, passing Riivo who was on his way up. The two wrought nodded to each other, without stopping. And then Riivo came toward Erick, smiling wide, saying, “I’m glad to see you taking advantage of the Rest’s knowledge base. I heard all about what you did for some barons and for the Inquisition, too. I hope you will indulge us the same opportunity to use your skills.”

“That’s exactly why I came here.” Erick said, “In exchange, I’m hoping to get approval for runic webs wherever I wish to use them, and approval in the upcoming inquiry.”

The old iron man lost a bit of his mirth, hummed a bit, then said, “Let’s sit down for a talk.”

They moved back into the office, with Erick sitting back in his chair and Riivo taking the one that Aisha had occupied.

Riivo said, “The lockdown we have on runic webs is because they are a central protection to many wrought lands, so they have to be well-obscured from spying. A loose web is ripe for plucking; either for enemies to get webs of their own, or, once the methodologies are understood, to corrupt such defensive structures into killing all the people inside the space.

“This ease of destruction is almost the sole major reason we don’t allow runic webs to be spread around without our approval. People and cities have died before when they didn’t hide and secure their webs well enough. Entire cities turned into bombs, and then into ash on the wind.

“But since you want this responsibility, we can work on approving you for clearance.” Riivo said, “Here’s my offer: You can take Illusion Magic lessons from one of my people, help them with something they desire, and if your runic webs you create from those lessons turn out to be well-obscured, then I’ll potentially sign off on you getting runic web clearance.” He paused. “Probably not, though. I like you, Erick, but you’re a vigilante with the power of nations in your pocket. I would much prefer you prove that you can settle down somewhere and build something that will outlast your own life, first, because that’s what it means for me to sign off on such clearance. Someone, after you are gone, will come along and take over your runic webs you leave behind, and they’ll fail their bequeathed responsibility in any hundred of ways, and someone will learn of runes and become a Rune Master, who will then go on to spread runes to others, leaving trails of [Force Trap]s wherever they go.”

A simple demand, for simple reasons.

But once someone looked under the surface they were not simple reasons, at all. They were a bit angering, actually.

Erick understood the need to keep some magic secret. He was already agreeing to keep a lot of magics secret because the Inquisition asked him to keep them secret. The knowledge of Light and DNA were chief among the magics Erick was keeping under his hat.

But runic webs could make life a lot easier for a lot of people. The magical technology was out there; it just wasn’t used as widely and as well as it could be used. The wrought had power, and they decided how it was used; no one else.

Forget the fact that people had been killing each other with [Force Trap]s and [Fireball]s all this time, and could already do everything that Riivo was concerned about without using runes. Forget about the idea that runes could do a lot more good out there than they could do evil, and that if both sides of various conflicts had runes, then civilization could begin to work on actual countermeasures to the various attacks Riivo envisioned.

With the power of runic webs only usable by a few, and only immortals at that, this meant that there was never any true innovation with runic web security.

Riivo’s concerns over how cities had been destroyed by the corruption of their runic webs was valid, and Erick had already had questions about that, himself. But Enduring Forge was able to work their runic web so that any corruption placed into the web was known as it was happening. If more people knew about runes, then maybe enough innovation would happen with runic knowledge to ensure that a runic web could not be compromised.

But without everyone having access to runes, then that meant that everyone who wasn’t an authorized runic web creator was automatically labeled a ‘hacker’ and they got their runic webs stolen by Stratagold, or another Geode, even if that ‘hacker’ was on the path to making a truly robust runic web that would solve all of Riivo’s security concerns.

And another thing!

Runes were already out there, in the small items that Erick had given his people, and that Enduring Forge fashioned for others. Someone could learn runes from those. They could learn of the ideas of runic webs from visiting Enduring Forge or anywhere near a Geode. Other people could certainly make runic webs and break runic webs without getting authorization from a Geode, first. But without that authorization, those webs got stolen from their creators.

The fact was that most people were good, and they wanted defense from monsters, so if the world was better defended then wasn’t that a good thing? Most people would use a runic web to protect themselves and their property from monsters. That’s what the lands around Stratagold did, with all their runic webs with anti-[Stoneshape] in them.

… Erick looked at Riivo, and in that moment, he knew that this wasn’t about defense from monsters. Not in the eyes of Stratagold, anyway. They didn’t want stray runic webs out there, outside of their control because they didn’t want to have to go through those minefields when they had to capture/contain/kill various targets. Okay. Erick understood now.

… Or maybe that was a bad interpretation of motivations, but it was probably closer to the truth than any other—

Or.

Wait.

Erick was overthinking this way too much.

There was nothing overly sinister going on here. The people on the Surface and in the Underworld already protected themselves from monsters. Runic webs made certain defensive actions easier, while opening up vast weaknesses in other ways. Runic webs were a trade off.

Erick had plans to make runic webs very, very good, possibly shifting the balance of strength/weakness far toward the strength side of the equation. That was his plan with [Renew], after all. But without [Renew], all Riivo saw when he saw people using runic webs were glaring weaknesses in defense. And Riivo wanted Erick to see those glaring holes, too.

But also, Stratagold wanted controls on people, and runic webs were one of the ways they had to enact those controls. If someone wanted runic webs, they had to come to the table with Stratagold, or another Geode, and learn how to make a proper runic web, while also accepting Stratagold’s oversight.

All very sensible.

But also, Riivo wanted Erick, specifically, under his power. Riivo had showed as much since the initiation party the other day, and at the grand tour of the facilities, and when he helped Erick to learn of [Steadfast Ward]s.

All this man desired was calm control, and safe magic practices. Soft power, not hard; not unless he had to be.

… Which was fine? Sure. Whatever. Erick had already accepted this much when he decided to try and ally with Stratagold.

With his thoughts back on track over three seconds of thinking, Erick said, “I’ll take some Illusion Magic lessons. They’re not my preferred style, but nothing wrong with gaining some new information.” He added, “So you know, I will be trying to settle back down as soon as this Worldly Path is over. I honestly did not think it would get this large or take me this far, but it has, so I’m going to see it through to the good end. When I finally get [Gate] then it’ll be time to talk about linking cities. I expect to use some runic webs to ensure security around those physical gates, but I doubt whatever I learn in the next few days will be good enough for that system, so I’ll probably need your help on that.”

Riivo was patiently reserved while Erick spoke, but at Erick’s request for help the old iron man regained a bit of his natural mirth. With a small smile, Riivo said, “I look forward to that day, Erick.”

“And hey! Maybe we can one day revive a universe with populated worlds from here to the farthest reaches of the telescopes, and beyond.” Erick said, “Veird would make a good capital world.”

For a long, timeless moment, Riivo softly breathed in, then said, “One catastrophe at a time.”

But Erick needed to drive home the point. He stressed, “One catastrophe at a time, yes, but the goal should be highlighted even now, and the goal is to expand civilization beyond Veird. To reach enough worlds, to have enough people, that even major catastrophes are but blips in the grand scheme of things.” Erick added, “I had a discussion like this with Kromolok yesterday, and I think I failed to tell him that. You have reminded me that I need to do that.”

Riivo lost most of his outward expressions, except for the hopeful fire inside his eyes that was impossible to hide. He softly said, “I also have some lofty dreams for such a time and space, but only when the path forward proves stable will I step upon it.”

“I can’t make [Gate] yet, but I can at least prove my stability and reliability. I wouldn’t think I’d go about doing that by learning illusions, though,” Erick said with a smile, as he stood.

“Ah ha!” Riivo stood with Erick, saying, “All magic is connected to all other magic. You never know where you’ll end up when you go walking down unknown paths. Maybe you’ll even figure out how to make [Gate] today!”

Erick chuckled. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Riivo shrugged. “Maybe by speaking the words, I have set in motion what needs to happen to make [Gate] happen, but in a more rounded way than how you sang out your Particle Magic.”

Erick teased, “Are you trying to work some Fate Magic on me?”

“Not overtly.” Riivo said, “But there’s nothing wrong with wishing someone success, is there?”

Erick smiled a little. “So who’s the Illusion master?”

“Ah!” Riivo started walking, and Erick followed. “They’re a bit of a hermit, but...”

- - - -

Erick and Riivo stepped down through the open air of Vibrant Falls, with the eponymous waterfall bathing the world in glowing light, all the way. Down, down, down, to a level where the mists of the falls spread out in every direction, plunging the world into illuminated fog, and the rushing, raging falls crashed into a lower ocean, and all that water spread out into the vast under oceans of the Underworld.

In those misty depths, down one of the deeper-set daggers of stone carving out into the center of the cavern, there was a house. Theoretically, anyway. Erick had no idea where the house was, for he certainly didn’t see any structures. All he saw was moss-covered stone as far as his eyes could see, which was not very far down here in the fog. Ophiels, moving around like lanterns in the fog, fared little better.

Riivo seemed to know where he was going, though, for the old iron man just walked forward, the carpet of moss under him absorbing all sound. Erick followed—

“Oh. There’s no monsters here.” Erick said, “I just realized. Nothing dangerous at all. No rats or bats or snakes, either, though. But there are slimes.”

One small green slime plopped across the moss in front of them. Slimes were everywhere down here; they were practically ubiquitous monsters in this moisture-rich, plentiful food environment.

“Quite right.” Riivo glanced at the slime as it plopped along, saying, “Unless one is invited here by someone who already knows the way, then the passive enchantments in the area keep all other lifeforms away. Slimes do grow rather well in the lower levels of Vibrant Falls, though, but while they might be born here, if they should happen to fall out of the enchantment zone then they won’t be back.”

“How does an illusion keep people away?” Erick said, “I would have thought that to be Mind Magic.”

Archmage Kydyr’s house was still somewhere up ahead in the deeper fog.

“This particular use of illusion is a secret which you shall learn while you are here, but not from me, and showing is better than telling.” Riivo said, “Watch the path we walk. Orient yourself with your Ophiel in the air.”

Erick took stock of their area. They were upon a flattish jut of stone about twelve kilometers long that stuck out from the side of the cavern of Vibrant Falls. At their current position, they were three kilometers from the tip, which was itself about a kilometer from the falls. The flat area under Erick’s feet was about half a kilometer wide. In the distance, the base of the dagger connected to the cavern wall, were countless juts of stone stuck out from the side, forming a deep shadowed place, while the falls themselves were full of light. Shadowed and glowing fog filled the air. Thick stone formed the ground. And everywhere, there was moss.

They walked from the falls toward the wall while—

Wait.

Somehow, they had gotten turned around? When did that happen?

They were walking toward the falls again.

“We turned around?” Erick frowned a little. “I wouldn’t have noticed without Ophiel.”

Riivo smiled. “Usually it takes the second turn for a new person to understand what happened, but you caught it on the first. Watch what happens when we take the second.”

The two of them fell back to silence, or at least as silent as the rush of the falls…

The falls were quieter. Like they were somehow more distant and yet they were right there; same as they had been.

Riivo turned. Erick followed.

And suddenly, the air changed. Less foggy. More bright—

Riivo’s silent footfalls were suddenly audible as he stepped onto a wide, white tile. The tile was overgrown with too much moss, but it was a tile, for sure. Erick had paused to reorient himself, but he resumed following fast enough—

Another turn; the third. They were headed back toward the cavern wall, now.

And the tiles underfoot became cleaner.

Erick had an uncomfortable realization that he wasn’t sure how to put into a question, so he spoke the unvarnished thought, “This is almost like Ar’Cosmos.”

“Ah. Not quite. Illusions can accomplish much, but this place still exists whether you can see it or not.” Riivo said, “This path we walk is the key to actually gaining access to this place, though.”

Erick had some thoughts about just how wrong Riivo was, but he withheld those thoughts for now because Riivo stepped off to the left and Erick almost missed the turn. He had no idea how he had almost missed the turn, but he had.

Riivo enlightened him, saying, “Glad you kept up there. Most people fall off the first time. We’re close now.”

The tiles went from unkempt to manicured, showing off their white brightness while a short stone wall began on one side, and then a matching stone wall appeared on the other side. They were upon a garden path, and the air fully cleared of fog. Three more steps, and Riivo passed over a white tile with the rune for ‘reveal’ embedded in it in deep, black metal. Erick followed—

He stepped into a land of summer, with a massive apple tree growing on one side of a medium-sized cottage, while a vegetable-filled garden lay on the other side of the property. An ankle-high wall of white stones surrounded the whole place—

An incani man of about 65 appeared at the door of what had to be his house. His white skin and red eyes marked him as an incani from somewhere within Nelboor’s Underworld. His deep frown marked him as deeply unhappy. “What sad slop have you brought me this time, Riivo?”

Riivo strained to put on a happy face, like he was used to this man’s foibles yet those foibles were still tiring. He walked forward saying, “You should read some newspapers instead of books every once in a while, Kydyr! This is Erick Flatt, of Spur— of Earth, technically.”

“If I cared about current events I would allow you to send me that trash, but since I don’t, you don’t!” Kydyr stepped forward, meeting Riivo, and also Erick, on his front lawn, asking, “What’s the deal? If it’s not good enough then I don’t care who this young idiot may be.”

Riivo had briefed Erick a bit about Kydyr. The man was a recluse in the extreme. The only thing he cared about was reading stories about places he had never been. It had to be strictly feel-good fiction, too. Nothing real. Nothing dangerous. Archmage’s Rest sent Kydyr at least two books a week as part of the deals he had made with the Rest. That deal included Kydyr teaching lessons when demanded, though, and right now Riivo was demanding those lessons.

Riivo strongly said, “I want Erick to learn how to make a secure runic web. You can test his Illusion Magic knowledge without me, but you will allow him to prove that he is capable before you call it quits, Kydyr. I will not have you mucking about with this particular joint venture. I want Erick to become a firm part of Archmage’s Rest, and you are but one of the benefits of joining, so you better remain a benefit.” He stared at Kydyr...

And Kydyr scowled, breaking eye contact first. He spat, “Heard and understood.” He inclined his head at Erick. “What do I get out of it?”

Riivo was merely the facilitator so he stood to the side and remained silent.

Erick asked, “What do you want?”

With a happy, devious smile, Kydyr exclaimed, “I want Ripper’s Lot volume 23 and Fowled Egg number 14.”

Erick asked, “Some novels?”

Riivo spoke up, “They’re being edited, Kydyr. They might be ready next month.”

“Then maybe I’ll feel like teaching next month.” Kydyr sneered.

Riivo frowned.

“Maybe there is something physical I can get you?” Erick asked, “Perhaps some new vegetables for your garden? Stuff you’ve never had before? Or maybe I could tell you some stories from where I’m from? You probably don’t have any of those.”

Riivo glanced from Erick to Kydyr, waiting.

“Bah! Stories from— Where’d you say? ‘Arth’? Some new settlement by Spur? Bah.” Kydyr said, “That whole Crystal Forest is a broken civilization, kept that way by Ar’Kendrithyst. Ain’t never produced any good stories in centuries! That Librarian keeps it that way, and I hate that woman. Fucks up all authors everywhere, bending them to her whims! Now there… There’s an evil that needs deading... Heh.” Kydyr got another wicked smile, saying, “I got a bargained task for you: Go kill the Librarian and save all good authors everywhere! I’ll teach you anything you want if you can do that.”

Riivo blinked a bit, unsure how they had gotten here.

Erick had much the same reaction as Riivo, then he said, “Ah. She’s dead. I didn’t kill her myself, but yes. She’s dead.”

Kydyr frowned. He glanced from Erick to Riivo, then back to Erick. “Huh. You truly believe that, eh? You might do well with Illusion Magic. You’re probably not as young as you look, either, and that Silver Star on your chest looks to be real, too.” From one moment to the next, Kydyr changed. He was no longer an aging white-skinned red-eyed incani, but instead, he had shrunk into a floating metallic pixie, a decimeter tall. His body seemed made of rainbows, while wings barely beat and yet he remained aloft. “Or at least you’re good at hiding your hate; both are good for illusionwork.”

Erick studied the ‘pixie’. Kydyr wasn’t celesteel; he was too rainbow for that. Bismuth, maybe?

Which raised a new question.

Pixies were only about 300 or so years old. This fact that Kydyr was a wrought of a relatively ‘new’ species had Erick questioning when a ‘protean’ would pop out of the ‘wrought birthing vats’, or however they did it. Maybe one already had. Wasn’t that an odd thought. While Erick was thinking—

Riivo didn’t miss a beat, saying, “Archmage Kydyr. Normally, I wouldn’t want to intrude upon how you choose to interact with the world but you simply must get out of the apple tree sometime, and soon. Visit some places. Learn of the recent news spiraling the planet. But before you do that, you will teach Archmage Erick about Illusion Magic and primarily how to hide and secure a runic web.”

Kydyr scowled with his tiny face and relatively large eyes, as he looked to Erick, demanding, “Tell me what makes you so great. One sentence. Go.”

There were so many things to say to that.

Erick chose the one he thought would work best.

“I made a World Tree.”

Kydyr froze, then transformed into a human woman of rainbow metal, quickly sputtering, “Like a big tree means shit to me!” She turned straight to Riivo, shouting, “What the fuck, Riivo! You tell people about me, now!” She transformed into a male orcol made of rainbow metal, looking down on both of them, saying, “This is rude, is what it is!”

Erick wondered if any of these forms were real. He had said ‘World Tree’ because of the pixie form… but was that wrong?

Riivo held his tongue.

Erick went for it, assuming that Kydyr’s pixie form was ‘real’, or whatever, and said, “I made a World Tree and his name is Yggdrasil. He’s by Stratagold, as well as by Candlepoint in the Crystal Forest on Glaquin, and also beside Holorolu in Songli in Nelboor. He’s young and hasn’t separated from me, and he won’t for quite a while, but he is a World Tree.”

Riivo added, “Yggdrasil is in a cavern next to the embassy, at t-station ‘ygg’.”

Kydyr stared at both of them. In a flash, the rainbow wrought was once again a white-skinned, red-eyed incani man, but this time he was 24, and looking… Rather uncomfortably handsome. Square chin. Muscles. A nice… All the rest of him. Had he pegged Erick that fast? Maybe he had.

Kydyr said, “I’ll be checking up on this new information. I don’t appreciate lies.”

Erick burst a sudden laugh.

Riivo glanced at Erick.

Kydyr glanced at Erick, too.

Okay. So maybe there wasn’t supposed to be a joke there. Erick deadpanned, “Oh come on. An illusionist who doesn’t like lies?”

Kydyr tilted his head at Riivo. “You brought me a dullard.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Erick complained.

Riivo said, “I’m sure you two will get along, but before I go I will need to make sure that some sort of bargain has actually occurred.”

Kydyr waved the old iron man off, saying, “Yes! Yes! Fine fine. I’ll teach him. Dump off some raw platinum for a web later but go away now.”

“Good.” Riivo turned around and walked away. In seconds the old iron man had stepped down the tiled path, his form beginning to vanish into the swallowing mists that surrounded this land, but which did not pass the short stone wall all around. The old iron man’s words were mostly drowned out by the distant rush of falling water, “Good luck, Erick.”

And then he was gone.

Erick turned back to Kydyr.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Erick wasn’t sure he felt safe being around an illusion-focused Archmage, but Riivo seemed to feel the man was fine, if a bit odd.

So Erick went for it, asking, “Where do we start?”

Kydyr demanded, “Do you have [Illusionshape]?”

“[Mysticalshape].”

Kydyr narrowed his eyes. “Have you Remade up to there? Or did you make that from the bought [Lightshape] and [Shadowshape]?”

“The second.”

“… I can already tell you focused heavily on Light due to the auras at your back, but have you done much Shadow work?” Kydyr scowled, as if realizing a whole new problem. “Do you have a problem with Shadow? Being from Spur you probably do.”

“I’ve never gotten Shadow magic to work properly, actually, so you are right in a way, but wrong that I have a ‘problem’ with shadows.” Erick pushed back a bit, saying, “Being so aligned with Illusions, do you forget your own prejudices? Or do you invent new ones depending on who you’re confronting?”

“I make new prejudices all the time!” Kydyr said, “The best ways to make good illusions are to base your various personas on perceived cultural norms; it’s basically exploiting other people to reach a shortcut in the mana.”

“… I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Yeah. You seem like you’d be a shitty illusionist.”

“We’ll I’m certainly no liar who pretends to not know what’s going on in the world.” Erick said, “I know you know who I am.”

Kydyr frowned a bit, looked like he was about to deny everything, but then he reoriented. He pulled back, saying, “I know I gave no physical clues, so it was something I said. What was it— It was the bit about Spur, wasn’t it? With the Shadow Magics.”

Erick said, “No. The people back home don’t like Shadow Magic; this is true. No. The problem is that your reactions are too perfect and there’s no way that Riivo didn’t tell you we were coming and what to expect.”

“Now that’s a lie.” Kydyr said, “Riivo knows not to tell people what to expect all the way, for part of our agreement is for me to get some fun out of all this, too. So tell me how you knew! I know for a fact that my reactions are not too perfect! I played the part of a hermit archmage just fine! No. What’s more likely is that you’re lying to me about what gave me away. People’s complaints often reveal what they really care about, and you caring about me lying means that you are the liar! Not me.”

Erick frowned at the man.

Kydyr happily said, “Illusionists never lie! We just tell different Truths!”

“Oh.” Erick understood, now. “That’s what you meant when you said you weren’t a liar.”

Kydyr looked at Erick for a moment longer. Then he decided, “I guess if you made a World Tree you probably have some redeeming qualities.”

Erick smirked. “I have many redeeming qualities.”

“… Is the Librarian truly dead?”

Erick paused. “I only know of seven remaining Shades and six of them are Blessed into Empathy. If the Librarian survived then that is out of my purview.” He looked up and down Kydyr, asking, “So how deep does this lie go, and do you have a form that is more… whole?”

“What’s wrong with this one!”

“Okay. So. I’ll tell you what truly gave you away.” Erick said, “Every single one of your forms carried the same wrought arrogance that you’re untouchable, even though you don’t look wrought at all.”

“… Perhaps you’re a Mind Mage in disguise? Those bastards are always ruining my fun.” Kydyr asked, “Are you attempting to ruin my fun, mister Mind Mage?”

“I’m not a Mind Mage; you already know who I am.” Erick said, “The world is changing, Kydyr. I killed Ar’Kendrithyst. I invented new magics. I made a World Tree. I’m near the end of my Worldly Path and I’m going to make [Gate] the normal way, because I want to open up new worlds and expand civilization to other planets. After this Stratagold stuff my next stop is Oceanside because there’s some Quiet War shit going down there. Perhaps the Headmaster will ask me to help him enact his plan to destroy the moons of Hell and Celes, to end the Quiet War once and for all, to help permanently end yet another threat to civilization. Or maybe he’ll simply ask for my help to bring both sides to heel, like I did for all the Shadow Sects of Nelboor just by threatening them from afar. I won’t know until I get there.”

Kydyr’s skin was white but he paled all the same as Erick’s words hammered into his head like revelations from a god. And then some sort of dichotomy happened. Erick wasn’t sure what he was looking at, exactly, as he saw Kydyr’s eyes flicker to rainbow as his heart beat hard. He scowled. His face twitched. He huffed—

And then his incani disguise burst into rainbow motes of light, falling away to reveal rainbow metal in the shape of a human man. But not fully human. His hair was made of feathers and his eyes were twice as large as normal. He was an Owl Shifter. It might be his original form? Maybe another trick, though. Erick was pretty sure the pixie form was his original form, but this one seemed more solid.

And as Kydyr remained silent, lightly staring, thinking, Erick began to imagine that this form was his original. All his other forms had been free of magical signatures, but this one had magics running inside his chest and along the surface of his skin. Could be yet another trick, though.

Illusion magics were not Erick’s forte, at all. He only really knew how to see through most of them, and only thanks to mana sense and [True Sight], but according to those two senses everything he had seen here in Kydyr’s property had been real.

Erick broke the silence, saying, “I gotta say, your illusions are fantastic, but what happened there?”

“You destabilized my Hot Incani.” Kydyr said, “I’ll have to work for months to get that one right again.”

“If it makes you feel any better I thought he was very attractive.”

“… It does.” Kydyr sighed, then he exclaimed, “Ugh! I hate reality. Fuck you— Okay.” He brushed a hand through his feathered hair, then said, “I know who you are, Erick Flatt of Earth. This is as real of ‘me’ as you’re ever going to get to see, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t push too much further, and I won’t be forced to sneak out to Yggdrasil to see what you do under those Privacys.”

“… Fair enough.”

“Good.” With a deeply exhausted tone and fallen shoulders, Kydyr gestured to the left, to a small fire pit and its four surrounding stone chairs. They hadn’t been there till the man pointed them out. “Let’s sit and talk.”

Erick went along with Kydyr to the stone chairs. Kydyr took one, and Erick took the one to his left, two meters away. He wasn’t too worried at that moment, and he hadn’t been since they got here. Kydyr was an archmage, so he surely had more tricks than Illusion Magic, but the Illusion magic wasn’t a problem; Illusion excelled at two things, and neither of those things were outright damage.

… And yet, the Mirage Dragon had certainly turned the top of Devouring Nightmare’s main clan mountain into swiss cheese with her Illusion Magic, but no one had actually died to that attack. Though, apparently, that was ‘Fae Magic’, according to Aisha. Erick wondered where the split was.

Maybe Kydyr had spellwork of that level, too, but Erick wasn’t too scared of physical damage. His paranoia was completely focused on the threat of people discovering his Wizardry. At this juncture, the threat Stratagold represented was only a threat in the grand, fully unveiled sense; not on an individual basis.

And only if he fucked up any of these talks.

Kydyr asked, “What do you know of Illusion?”

“Illusion can do two things well: Hide or obscure, and be versatile. It is not good for damage. Any damage inflicted by an Illusion spell is only an eighth to a half as effective as a true spell.”

“… A measured response, and mostly true. Let me give you a high-level overview, and we can talk about specifics afterward.” Kydyr said, “Once a person begins to interact with an Illusion spell, either passively or because you’ve forced them to, Illusions tend to break down. I have read that Illusions used to be a lot stronger in the Old Cosmology, with some master Illusionists able to trap others behind worlds of fakery, but this is no longer the case, and this is for the best.”

Erick was a little bit surprised at that statement for multiple reasons, but only the first one came out of his mouth. “This is why Melemizargo thinks this world is fake.”

“Yes.” Kydyr said, “The Script stopped this grand use of this type of illusionwork, though, but it didn’t stop the lesser uses. They should have stripped out Elemental Illusion completely. It’s a shit magic, only worked by shit people, for shit uses, like killing people or worse: tricking them to think they’re eating full meals when they’re actually starving and dying of thirst.”

“… It’s kinda odd to hear an Illusion-based Archmage say this.”

“I got into Illusion Magic because I hate this shit. It’s my fool luck that I turned out to be good at this shit, so here I am, a hermit, because living out there is difficult. Illusions masters often find themselves fooling their way through life and leaving heartache and horror wherever they go, and when reality finally catches up to them they fold like castles of sand, or, people think they lie just because of their chosen focus!” Kydyr said, “I’m not a godsdamned liar, Erick. Not about the big stuff, the stuff that actually matters, and don’t you forget it.”

Erick nodded.

Kydyr stared at Erick for a moment, then continued, “Illusion Magics are terrible for defense. Shit for damage. Awful for practically every single scenario where subject A directly confronts subject B.

“But Illusions are very good for when subject A needs to get through a wall between them and subject B, and they don’t want to make a door the violent way. Or when subject A wants to trick subject B to walk off a cliff. Or when A is hiding from B. Illusions are fantastic for indirect confrontation.

“Illusions are the best for hiding objective reality behind a layer of Subjective Reality. You want to protect something? You put down Illusions as your first line of defense. If the enemy can’t see you they can’t hit you. If that defense should fall then everything else can be backed up with the swords or spells of others, but if you can hide the door, then that cuts down 90% of all intruders.

“And that’s the goal; less people attacking you.

“The first level of working in the school of Illusion Magic, therefore, is common misdirection. In the case of runic webs, if you want people to be aware that they are in a runic web area —which is good for letting people know that they are being watched and judged— you inscribe that web with some illusion magic that projects a false web outside, into the open, while you bury the real web into the wall, where it is unreachable. By having your web out in the open, and if you have inscribed it properly with other runic signatures, then you can catch those who try messing with that runic web while simultaneously ensuring that your actual runic web is secure.” Kydyr added, “In the other direction, if you simply want people to leave your runic web alone and not know they’re inside a runic space, then you hide the web itself beyond layers of Illusions, fooling mana senses and [True Sight]s, if you make it well enough.”

Erick sat back in his chair, thinking. In retrospect, what Kydyr was suggesting was obvious. Perhaps beyond obvious, and bordering on making Erick feel a bit of a fool. Obviously Illusion was very good at hiding things, but Erick had simply never gone this deep into that sort of magic. For his [Sealed Privacy Ward] Erick had simply manually hid himself, through the use of anti-[Scry], anti-Sight, and falsified light protections. But that sphere of changed magic still showed up to [True Sight] as an opaque sphere. What Kydyr was suggesting was that the proper use of Illusion would hide even that opaque sphere.

And so, Erick could only honestly say, “I like that a lot, but how do you trick [True Sight]?”

Kydyr smiled a little, a bit of his depression seeming to lighten. “Tricking [True Sight] is perhaps one of the hardest things to do because there’s not a single Open Script spell that gives a good base upon which to enact this different Reality, so we have to use several spells, all together. The good news is that replacing reality with Reality is all magic truly is, so once you know a few tricks, you can get pretty far with that replacement. Not all the way, of course, and the end result is fully dependent on your own skill, and Truth.

“This reliance on Truth is both a problem and a boon for illusionwork.

“A Force Mage can make true barriers that could last long after that Force Mage has left the area. A Water Mage might be able to make real water, instead of having their [Water Bolt]s splash and turn back into motes of mana. But the second a Force Mage or a Water Mage, or any other Mage, steps outside of their own Truth, every Subjective Reality they try to enact upon the world is less True; less real.

“So there is only one true way to turn Reality into reality; you have to have a knack for it. A desire for it. A yearning to be something other than what you are. This is hard for most people to achieve, and for you, it will likely be extremely difficult. Your Truth of Growth is anathema to a Truth of Deception.

“There are workarounds, though.

“What you do, is layer Force, light, shadow, and color, with enough skill that no one is able to tell the difference between Subjective Reality and objective reality. To gain this skill, you must study how the world works through mana sense, and you must mimic that falsity through pure skill, for the Elemental Illusion magic I teach you will only bridge maybe 5% to 25% of the gap between Real and real.” Kydyr said, “Once you get skilled enough, and to overly simplify the end goal: I will have you bury a runic web and then that runic web will copy the stone around itself, onto itself, but without actually hindering its own functions, simultaneously hiding itself from mana sense as well as allowing it to work as intended. This might be difficult for you. We will go over this method of true hiding, and the other way with decoys after we get true hiding down and workable. Obscuration and misdirection; both are needed to make a truly secure runic web, or any good illusionwork at all.”

Erick took that all in, and asked, “Where do we start?”

“The primary tools in an Illusionists arsenal is a damaging spell, and a suite of defensive measures.” Kydyr said, “Since I don’t care to teach for damage and you’re not here for that anyway, we will focus on the small actions of stabilized obscuration and misdirection, meaning illusionwork that doesn’t move. This demands [Invisible], [Conjure Item], [Force Wall], Mana Shaping, and wardlights. Elemental Illusion will be used at the very end; personal skill comes first.” Kydyr added, “I’m imagining we can skip quite a bit of that beginner illusionwork, but I’d like to get a gauge for your skill, anyway. To that end, we start with [Conjure Item]. Please make me a stone sculpture of a bird, a doll of a bird, and an anatomically correct model of a bird, limiting yourself to 250 base mana for each.” He gestured to the side.

Erick glanced to the side at three stone pedestals, each waist-high. They hadn’t been there before. Not too surprising, considering where they were and what Erick was trying to learn. But whatever.

Erick looked up [Conjure Item].

Conjure Item X, instant, 50 MP + Variable

Create an item of up to large size. Skill with mana manipulation determines final creation. Lasts until suffering 50 points of damage.

It was one of the Variable Cost Variable Effect spells available in the Open Script. Erick already had a lot of experience with the spell, mostly in the form of conjuring beds or other assorted useful items. Those items gradually took damage as they existed and rarely lasted more than 24 hours, but Erick had gotten pretty good at making items that were more than their appearances. Mattresses with foam cores that held up to the pressure of people sleeping on them. Cloth that felt and moved like real cloth. Pens and paper that worked, though whatever was written would need to be copied down before the conjuring degraded.

A simple stone bird would be easy.

Erick did so, conjuring out of the manasphere a small bird about the size of a raven, with two eyes in the normal locations, and two wings folded up on the body where they should be, while the bird itself stood tall on two legs, with the tail acting as a third leg so it wouldn’t fall over. The bird was white alabaster, and just a bit transparent. Other than that it was solid all the way through.

Ophiel cooed upon seeing the creation and then he transformed to match. His eyes were not contained to the normal locations where eyes should be, though, and he had three sets of wings to act as his tail, his wings, and his legs. And then he decided to hold that form for a while, for whatever reason.

… The stone bird was very much a conjuring. To [Magic Sight], mana sense, and [True Sight], the stone bird was a conjured item. Erick had gone pretty far with his 250 limit, though, so to all normal senses the stone bird seemed real… Except for perhaps one. A real one would have weighed in at 25 kilos or more. This thing only weighed half a kilo, at most.

“I assume adding weight is a part of illusionwork?” Erick added, “Either with Elemental Illusion or with [Gravity Ward]?”

Kydyr seemed to approve of the bird, glancing it over with a critical eye as he answered, “Elemental Illusion will give an item its proper weight, and also its expected warmth, or cold, or any other sense you can think to name. Continue.”

Erick conjured a bird doll on the second pillar. It was a fluffy thing that was the same shape as the stone bird, but made of fluffy white fabrics, bright red thread, and bouncy cotton on the inside. As Erick’s magic finished, the bird plopped onto the pedestal and sat there like a nesting dove. It was pretty cute, with its white cotton exterior and red accents. Ophiel fluffed up and trilled a bit, extending a wing and showing off his feathers. The conjured bird didn’t have feathers, so Ophiel was probably complaining a bit.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Kydyr said, “You didn’t make the feathers.”

“… No? Do you have bird dolls like that? Want me to redo it?”

“Never mind. Continue.”

Erick continued, probably because Kydyr didn’t need to see feathers on the doll when the next one would get all those same feathers, and more.

But creating all the anatomy of a true bird with only 250 mana was simply not doable. It was easy to tell the mana to ‘make this item all one item’, in the case of the stone bird, or ‘make this out of these twenty different items,’ like with the doll. But an anatomical bird has individual feathers, layers of skin, eyes of twenty parts, blood and muscle and bone, nervous systems capped off with a brain, lungs and all the other internal organs, and all the messiness of a digestive tract…

Bodies were complicated.

So Erick pared down his requirements, but he kept in mind what a mana sense would see. He decided could skimp on the nervous system and most of the digestive system and internal organs. He could put the shapes of those systems in there, but actual connections and otherwise were unnecessary. The eyes could be simplified. The feathers could be repeated patterns instead of actually different feathers, like they were in reality; that would save a great deal of complexity. Muscles could make the conjured bird hold its shape, but functionality was not necessary. The bird would blob onto the pedestal and sit there, like a dead thing.

Erick lined up his spellwork and cast. The fake bird plopped onto the third pedestal. It didn’t actually fall over, which was a bit of a surprise. It just stood there, like a bright white, fluffy-feathered pigeon, daring the world to make it move. If anyone actually tested the thing it would fall right over, though. Erick had technically failed the test, too.

He came clean, “That was technically 260 equivalent mana.”

The test was for 250 base mana birds, but Intelligence cut his costs down to 5%, so he had used 12 mana per each the stone bird and the doll, but on the third one he went over, spending 13. You couldn’t spend half a mana, after all.

Kydyr blinked a bit at the third bird, then dismissed Erick’s worries. “250 was a rough target. This is well made for your first try. This is a skill you should master, eventually, in case you have to leave a body lying around for whatever reason.”

Erick blinked. “There would be a reason to fake a body somewhere?”

“Sure.” Kydyr said, “You can erase these conjurings, now.”

Erick did so.

“For the next test, I want you to shape a [Force Wall] into the shape of a fully anatomically correct bird. Three times, if you please.”

Erick did so. Shaping Force to the correct anatomy was considerably easier than doing the same with [Conjure Item]. And now, there were three fully translucent birds, like three glass sculptures, where the previous three birds had been.

Ophiel seemed to approve of the new birds. He fluttered a bit. One of the Ophiel hanging in the air far outside of this space, keeping Erick apprised of everything in the surroundings, decided to try transforming into a ‘clear bird’. He had mild success through twisting around his sunform, but he failed to get even the broadest stroke correct. Erick took a moment to personally help Ophiel achieve the proper general shape of a real bird, but he kept most of his attention on his current surroundings.

Kydyr’s mouth opened a bit as he stared at Erick’s Force birds. He said, “Make a human out of Force.”

Erick did so.

Standing on the ground next to the firepit was now a human male of about two meters tall, of average build and musculature, nude, and with as much detail as Erick could pack into the thing. It cost him 25 mana.

Kydyr sat back in his chair, looking surprised. “Have you done illusionwork before?”

“Read about it. Never went for it.”

“I know you’re good for wardlights but I have to test your skill, anyway.” Kydyr said, “Make some wardlights of some people you know, then some wardlights of people you don’t know but have seen, and finally some people who you have never seen before. Three of each should be enough; nine total. Just the outsides; no organs or anything inside.”

Erick started casting.

Poi in his armor. Teressa in her [Conjured Armor]. Kiri in her normal clothes. Each came out pretty much perfectly, for Erick was very good at making wardlights.

The next three were fine, too. Intelligence and Perception carried a lot of weight as Erick cast light into the shapes of a common man from Songli, a soldier from Spur he had seen on the walls, and a shadeling from Candlepoint.

The last three were difficult, because Erick knew where everything was supposed to go, but every face he tried to make turned out to be someone he remembered. The first one was a farmer but dressed in clothes from Earth. The second came out better, as Erick realized he was taking images from people he knew and shifted toward blurring together all the women from an office building back home, and then he made that woman. The final guy was a teenager of dubious origins with a knife strapped to his waist.

Kydyr said, “Okay. So your skill is unquestioned. But they don’t look real. They look like lightwards. The lightsource is coming in from the top left on every single one.”

Erick looked to the people he conjured. “The light is coming in from the top left.” Erick gestured to the air over Kydyr’s house, saying, “There’s light up there, somewhere.”

“I mean…” Kydyr gestured to the lightward of the commoner from Songli, saying, “If I moved him around, then the light wouldn’t respond normally. Here.” He cast a ball of light into the air, which then moved around the space, casting light through the lightwards; The actual image presented didn’t change as the light moved around. “Do you see?”

“Yes. I see...” Erick frowned. “But this is just a lightward and all lightwards are like this. If you dropped this place into shadow then they would remain illuminated based on the initial conditions I took into account when I cast them. What you’re asking for is an illusionward.”

“No, I’m not asking for an illusionward.” Kydyr said, “The cultural norm is to make lightwards that illuminate their surroundings, or that fit into their surroundings, but the actual text and ability of [Ward] is stated thusly: ‘Special Ward: Eschew all other effects in order to shape, color, and illuminate a ward however you wish. Skill level at Mana Manipulation determines final outcome. Variable Cost.’ It’s not actually called ‘lightward’ at all.” Kydyr added, “And so, not to crit the [Strike] too hard, but you have been exposed to certain ways of thinking which limit how you use magic, like with Spur and its hatred of Shadow Magic. Most places hate Shadow Magic to a certain extent, so this is not a new problem for me to encounter. I almost always run into this problem when teaching new people. And now, we will work to correct it.”

Kydyr’s criticism seemed to be given in good faith, but…

Erick decided to take the lesson as it came. He shoved his complaints to the side, and said, “Okay. So. You want me to make a physical surface with light that will react to outside light sources as though it were physical.”

“I do.”

Erick ignored the impossibility of such a thing, asking “How do we do that?”

“I have you conjure black wardlights until you can make a wardlight that is actually black. From there, we shift to greyscale. The point is not to perfectly mimic the shapes and the physicality of anything. Flesh tones, in particular, are very difficult. But what we will work toward is getting you to make colors that can properly shift and change depending on all other light sources in the area; from [Fireball]s whizzing past to [Force Bolt]s splashing directly against your illusion.”

Erick conjured a thin pillar of pure black ward‘light’. It wasn’t as dark as his [Luminous Trap], but it was matte black. He asked, “Is this good?”

Kydyr sat a bit straighter. “Yes! That’s actually very good. Not many people can get true black. Do something greyscale now. Try to make it responsive to outside light.”

Erick conjured a dappled grey apple the size of his head in the air above the firepit…

And he already knew it was a failure.

Kydyr whipped a ball of light around the apple and the apple didn’t shift under the light, at all. He put the ball of light away, saying, “Try again.”

Half an hour later Erick was still stuck on making a lightward respond properly to outside light. He had dismissed all his other conjurings and was now focused completely on making a grey apple that hovered above the center of the firepit.

Kydyr, firmly back to his depressed self, called it off, saying, “Okay. This isn’t working. Let us attempt to diagnose the problem.” He conjured a tree stump to the side of the area. “Shoot that with a [Light Bolt].”

Erick did so; a Bolt of light smacked the stump and broke apart at the touch, sending motes of light all over the place, causing light to shift and play across everything like all these conjured items around Erick were real, when he knew they were illusions. Erick was a bit perturbed at Kydyr’s mastery of illusion, but he knew that was an irrational anger. Kydyr was a master; Erick was just starting.

“Good. Fine.” Kydyr said, “Didn’t expect any problems there, and I was right. [Shadow Bolt].”

Erick… Hesitated. He breathed. He pointed. He did not actually have [Shadow Bolt], and he had never managed to make the spell, so he tried Mana Altering for it right then and there. He cast.

A Bolt of utter blackness launched from him to strike the tree stump and sail right on through, into the ground beyond and bury itself into the garden soil where it promptly ate through a meter of dirt until finally stopping, ending. The tree stump cracked and shattered like the illusion it was. The soil of the garden slumped downward to fill the vacancy formed by the [Shadow Bolt].

And Erick still hadn’t actually managed to make [Shadow Bolt]. No blue box. No confirmation that he had made the spell right. And now that he saw Kydyr react…

Kydyr’s owl eyes were wide open. His feathery hair poofed up a bit. The bismuth wrought started smiling, then he started laughing.

Erick found no joy in his failure, as he said, “I have never managed to actually make a [Shadow Bolt]. Not a single Shadow spell, actually.”

Kydyr’s laugh died down to a chuckle, as he said, “You’re conflating Shadow with Destruction. That’s your problem.” He laughed again.

“What the fuck is shadow supposed to be?”

“Not Destruction!” Kydyr stopped laughing, but retained his smile as he said, “They’re close, but they are not the same.” He conjured another stump, then said, “Look.” A Bolt of shadow Shadow —obviously— sailed from his relaxed figure to strike the stump. “That is Elemental Shadow, and this is about as good a Bolt as you can make with the base spellwork.” He handed over a blue box.

Shadow Bolt, instant, long range, 15 mana

An ethereal bolt of shadow inexorably strikes a target for 4x WIL damage.

Kydyr said, “If this problem of yours is a problem, then there’s a way around that, too. Since you already have [Polymorph] you then need a Shadow-capable Familiar Form —I’d recommend a shadow slime— and then you can work on getting [Shadowalk] and experiencing Shadow from there. Or you can just buy the essence armor for the skill and skip the eating-monsters ordeal. With [Shadowalk] a part of you, you can learn what makes Shadow different from Destruction.”

Erick asked, “Can you channel Mana Altered for Shadow through your hand?”

“Yes!” Kydyr happily held out a hand and channeled shadows out of his rainbow palm. “Now this is very unorthodox, but I heard you can—”

Erick sighed at the guy.

Kydyr smiled, then said, “I’ll shut up.”

Erick listened.

It was the sound of something misty and hidden. A truth that had failed to launch. Something stuck...

In the middle…

Erick wanted to make the sound go one way or the other, but then that wouldn’t be ‘Shadow’. It was actually quite frustrating to listen to Elemental Shadow. It was like being stuck in a doorway, or in a traffic jam. He didn’t like it at all.

And yet, Erick tried to mimic that sound by holding up his hand and Mana Altering for the same.

A plume of white radiance shot from his palm, but that was wrong. That was Light.

Erick shifted the sound and the feeling and the Alter.

A plume of pure black shot from his palm, and that was wrong too. That was… Destruction? No. Not Destruction. It was something Other. It was what Erick expected Shadow to sound like, but this was apparently not ‘Shadow’.

Erick tried mixing the two sounds, of Light, and Other.

And that was Shadow. A shitty, in-between sound. An impurity.

He targeted the stump and cast. Wispy shadows Bolted from his hand and impacted the stump like so much splashing greyness. A blue box appeared.

Shadow Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of shadow unerringly strikes a target for 2x WIL damage.

Kydyr nodded sagely, saying, “I’m glad to see that you didn’t need to go the long route because that was surely a [Shadow Bolt]. And now, we can continue.”

Erick frowned. Something weird had just happened. Something explainable.

What was that Other sound?

… A mystery for another day; one to pursue when he was on his own, and not next to a wrought who was trying to teach him how to make reality appear as something it wasn’t.

Erick was pretty sure that this lesson wasn’t some sort of elaborate trap by Riivo, or other people, but Erick wasn’t going to be sharing any deep thoughts with Kydyr about Shadow and how it related to the Dark. Perhaps the man would simply tell Erick that his thoughts were academic, and that ‘Shadow’ was not ‘Dark’, and that no one could wield the ‘Dark’. But Erick wasn’t willing to broach that subject today.

So Erick continued with his ‘half-Light-half-Dark’ working of mana into ‘Shadow’, and hoped for the best.

They got back to making wardlights.

Twenty minutes and some repeating of the same information, but in different ways, Erick had managed something of a success. An apple hung in the air, larger than life and looking exactly like an apple should. Kydyr swung a glowball around the thing, and the shadows inside made the color on the outside act normal, with some light from the glowball seeping into the object and then diffusing back out, like normal objects normally worked.

He hadn’t actually put any Elemental Shadow into the working, but then again, he had never put any Elemental Light into his wardlights, either. This wardlight was truly just a Special Ward used in a way different from how almost all of Veird used that magic; different on how Erick usually used this magic, too.

Kydyr laughed, happy and proud, “There! You see! You got it! Just like I was saying. It’s all about the shadows on the inside that allow the light on the outside to be like it should; no need to use any Mana Altering, either! One can use Elemental Illusion to get to this point, but that is a shortcut. It is only through developing skill first, and then using Elemental Illusion second, can one truly reach the pinnacle of Illusion Magic.”

“I still don’t get Shadow.” Erick frowned, saying, “I understand that Shadow is a Primary Element, but all shadow is the void cast by a light source. Shadows aren’t real.”

Kydyr waved him off, saying, “Bah! This is a weak argument against the existence of Shadow. I can go out right now and find a shadow monster, kill it, harvest the Shadow Essence from it, and show that metaphysical object to you. Shadows are real; it is your own mindset that is working against you, causing you to have a problem with Shadows, conceptually. Most people do, and it’s only because of how much shadows are vilified out in the greater world.”

“Light makes sense, though.” Erick said, “Light is—” He stopped. He had been warned against sharing the secret of light, as wavelengths of electromagnetism and as discrete particles. “Light is real. Shadows are the voids cast by Light.”

Kydyr paused in thought, looking at nothing in particular for a short moment, then turned back to Erick, saying, “Now… I’m not one to assign emotions or feelings to the Elements, because that way lies madness and improper magic, but perhaps that is your problem?”

Erick looked to the man, waiting for more.

Kydyr continued, “Historically, people have seen Shadow as greedy, evil, selfish, hiding in plain sight and waiting to strike. All the monsters live in the shadows. All the death in the world comes from the shadows. The Dark God lives in the shadows, after all. But the Elements are just the Elements. It is only when a mage assigns emotions and feelings to them that they start having problems working in those elements.”

Erick frowned a little. “I’m not assigning an emotion to it. I’m just… Shadows as Void or Destruction or something like that makes sense. I don’t see how a void is supposed to be a thing, in and of itself.” He admitted, “But I suppose I have no problems with Elemental Mercy or Starlight or Lightning— Well. I do have some small problems with Elemental Lightning, since it has nothing to do with Light at all.”

“Ahhh. I see, now. The problem is you have a different framework.” Kydyr nodded, saying, “That framework excels in certain ways, and is bottlenecked in others. Every single archmage I have ever met is the same way, with all of them doing well in one area and terrible in another. This is what it means to have a Truth. But that's fine, because you at least seem able to work past this particular bottleneck. Maybe you’ll never get far with this skill, but it seems like you could eventually be ‘good enough’ to pass all of Riivo’s requirements for runic web clearance.” He shrugged. “So focus on the goal, and ignore the problems you’re having with the material.”

“… I suppose so.”

Erick stared at the latest, perfect apple he had created and felt conflicted; mostly because it was illusionwork without any actual Elemental Illusion (or any other magic to it at all) so this felt like half a lesson, at best. Physically, the ‘shadows’ were mostly solid black ‘backlights’ to make the surface ‘reflective lights’ act more real. What Erick had done was a complicated mess of surface effects and some deeper depth effects to prevent light from coming in the other side.

So physically Erick was progressing, but conceptually…

When he had gone truly far with lightwards with all the colors of the rainbow and a few wavelengths beyond, he had gotten the spell [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] out of that working. He had ‘succeeded’ with this working, and yet he did not get a new spell.

Erick was confused. That was the actual problem. He didn’t often get confused, but it was what it was. And yet, he was still making progress. The wardlights came easier now, as Kydyr asked Erick to make something, and then to the other archmage’s delight, Erick made a perfect recreation of a potted plant, or a spike of crystal, or a child in a crib, or anything else.

Erick was successful in constructing these strange wardlights, but less successful in silencing that voice in his head that told him that he was doing something wrong. That he was missing some great big piece to a great big puzzle.

Kydyr certainly seemed happy, though.

Another hour later, Erick had gone through a hundred more lightsculptures. Kydyr had shown him how to make people, and objects like chairs and doors, and how to lay a wardlight over himself to appear as someone else. That last lesson was just a primer, though, for layering a wardlight over oneself just produced a lightsculpture that didn’t move when you moved. Rigging such a disguise would come later, but maybe not even then, as rigging disguises was not the purpose of this lesson. So what would actually come later was learning how to properly obscure and misdirect, which did require Elemental Illusion.

“But that’s for tomorrow!” Kydyr happily said, “You’ve made more progress in a single afternoon than literally anyone I have ever seen, ever before. If I cared to teach people, I would only want to teach people like you. But I don’t! So~” He pulled a piece of paper out of the air as he added, “Here’s a list of books I want you to get for me, dear student. You will find them…”

The list was long, but the day was over.

Back at Yggdrasil, Erick sent Ophiel out to gather the books on the list. Erick was pleased to find that the various subcities of Stratagold were quite capable of filling the full list, but less pleased to find out that such a fulfillment would take about five to ten months, when the books were scheduled for publication.

Erick would have to report back to Kydyr tomorrow empty handed, which was fine. There was no way that guy didn’t know that he had sent Erick on a fool’s errand.

So instead of fretting over that, Erick went to a fresh [Sealed Privacy Ward] down at the water’s edge, switched over to his Other Self, and had a meal of mana. After that came a swim.

Actual dinner was taken at the embassy, alongside Otaliya and Tasar, at a nice restaurant at the world diner’s market. They spoke of politics and individuals that might appear on the inquiry board, if Erick should choose to take his inquiry sometime within the next three weeks. Three weeks seemed like too much time, though. Erick had goals outside of the Underworld, and he wanted to get back to those goals as soon as he could.

“I’m hoping for a single week with Kydyr. Maybe less.” Erick said, “Whatever it takes to clear Riivo’s demands, and then it’s Bright Tea and the inquiry, and then I’m moving on.”

Tasar shrugged, saying, “A week to learn how to hide a runic web seems too hopeful to me, but you’ve already proven yourself capable of learning quite quickly.”

“After you secure Riivo’s vote then it is time to take Bright Tea.” Otaliya said, “We’ve been talking to the Golds and they’re very interested in whatever sort of Gate Networks you create, but beyond that, they’re also interested in clearing the Crystal Forest of mimics. Reclaiming the land. That place used to be one of the most fertile lands of Glaquin, until Ar’Kendrithyst breached the surface. They’re interested in opening that land back up to habitation.”

That reminded him…

“I heard there used to be a Quest to kill the mimics.” Erick asked, “Was that true?”

“Oh yes.” Tasar said, “Defunct Quest now. The problem of the mimics has changed into a new biome, replete with life and cycles all their own. The Crystal Mimic Quest went away when that happened.”

Otaliya added, “When people started harvesting the mimics for [Polymorph] potions; that’s when the Quest went defunct. People wanted those potions. A lot of people.”

“That’s…” Tasar said, “Probably more true than what I said.”

“I don’t particularly care about maintaining that particular ecosystem.” Erick said, “The goal will eventually be to kill all the mimics and take the land back, and I might have enough power to do that myself, over a large timescale. Some help would be appreciated, though.”

Tasar nodded. “We’re eager for that, as well.”

“This is what the Golds want to see.” Otaliya said, “Actual, proven capability, and an actual problem that can be solved, will do a lot to get the Golds on your side. Riivo would be another pillar to support your inquiry. The Church of Rozeta is rather quiet, but we think Kromolok supports you— You should find out what he truly thinks at Bright Tea, or at least figure out which way the wind blows. And speaking of wind, I heard that Second Prince Sitnakov might be wishing to join you and Tasar on your Worldly Path.”

Erick almost spit his wine.

Tasar dropped her fork.

Otaliya kept right on going like nothing was wrong, saying, “If you allow him to come with you you will directly gain the support of the Heavies. If you move to block him, or simply refuse him, then he might move to block the Heavy vote.”

Erick sighed.

The rest of dinner was nice.

- - - -

Erick woke up well rested upon the boughs of Yggdrasil. A morning swim woke him right up, and then he was off for the day.

- - - -

Erick stood on one side of a fire pit at Kydyr’s house, while Kydyr stood on the other side. The man hadn’t cared about not getting his books today, for he knew it would have been a longshot for them to be published yet. The two of them got to work, with Kydyr testing Erick, to see that he had truly understood the lessons of yesterday.

An hour later, Erick had created hundreds of fantastical items that truly demonstrated his skill with [Conjure Item] and wardlight and [Force Wall].

Chairs with an exterior of pale skin, with wrinkles and hair and that caught the light with all the complexity of normal skin. Feathers of a thousand types growing from a constantly twisting torus. Trees with reflective gold skin that shined like magical metal; brilliant and yellow and glinting off of a thousand different surfaces at once.

For many of these lessons, Erick shaped [Force Wall]s to mimic the interior structures of those chairs, and those feathered donuts, and the gold trees. Veins and hair follicles, hearts with arteries, heartwoods alongside sapwoods with rough bark covering them all.

Creating the same items through [Conjure Item] required ten times as much mana as creating them through wardlights with an underlying [Force Wall], but the conjured items could actually bend and move like normal, though they couldn’t float midair like the wardlights with their [Force Wall] backings.

Tradeoffs were everywhere.

There were two branches of the path of Illusion Magic, here.

The [Conjure Item] spellwork they would be making today would be useful in certain areas where complexity and movement were necessary to maintain the illusion. Like with plush cushions, or anything that moved, really. The [Force Wall] and wardlight spellwork would be useful for all aspects where solidness and immutability were necessary, like with runic webs. Wardlights were only truly useful with the [Force Wall] variety, though.

“[Conjure Item] plus Illusion makes small, mobile items that are expensive to cast. [Force Wall] plus wardlights plus Illusion makes large, simple, immobile items.

“The trick is to make most of your illusions immobile so you can use the cheaper spellwork.” Kydyr ran his hand over the golden tree, with its [Force Wall] structure providing a false surface for him to touch. He smiled wide as his fingertips caught on flaking bark. The bark didn’t actually flake, though; it was Force, and therefore immutable until broken. He pulled away, saying, “Illusionary [Conjure Item]s are for small things that move, like for a bouquet of flowers, or for a plush toy.

“Another thing that Elemental Illusion can do is add scents and taste and otherwise. A [Illusionary Item] gong or an [Illusionary Force] gong can both actually ring like a real gong, instead of breaking under the vibrations. The first could cost a thousand mana, while the second costs 250, though.

“You can’t work on adding those odder effects until after you’ve made [Illusionary Item], though, and gotten a hang of using that spell to its fullest. So try to make [Illusionary Item], now; [Conjure Item] plus Mana Altering for Illusion plus [Shadowshape] and [Lightshape]. Try to recreate your success with [Mysticalshape] because you’re going to need to repeat that success a few times for other illusionwork.”

Kydyr stopped speaking, then he stepped away to give Erick room.

Erick stood upon a white tile in front of Kydyr’s house, with one Ophiel on his shoulder and another four flitting around the yard. Three of those four Ophiel came to him, to hold in the air around Erick as the Ophiel on his shoulder started to sing a tune of Illusion. It was a good sound, and it was completely understandable compared to all the nonsense shadowork they had done yesterday.

He held out one hand and channeled [Shadowshape] and heard that discordance of Shadow again, but just like as he had done when he made [Mysticalshape], he channeled [Lightshape] through his other hand and found the harmony between the two. [Lightshape] pulled sensibility out of [Shadowshape], creating the sounds of Reality Shaped into something real. He handed those sounds off to two hovering Ophiel, and then he listened to the sound of [Conjure Item].

It was the simple sound of an imaginary world; hollow, without substance, breaking at a touch. But with the other sounds...

Here now was a harmony.

Illusions made the imaginary more solid. More real.

Erick smiled as he fell into the moment, and the rest of the world dropped away. He added in a bit of Permanency thoughts right there—

And suddenly, everything sounded perfect.

Erick held in the moment, listening as his Ophiel sang all around him, experiencing the rising crescendo of sound and feeling and Reality, waiting until the perfect moment to cast, when everything aligned into the perfect moment—

The world darkened. Eyes flickered in the shadows. Kydyr yelled something unintelligible as vibrations flickered outward, and sparks flew from the ground. Magic-filled wires broke underneath, but Erick paid no mind to that. Kydyr couldn’t reach him, either. Nothing could stop the revelation to come. The instantiation of something real into a space that was false.

Erick cast.

A bird doll appeared.

And the world rearranged around that doll like a bomb exploding, shockwaves of unreality tearing at the veil of untruth all around him, ripping up the ground and shattering whatever runic web lay underneath. The house blasted apart. The apple tree shredded into wardlight and Force. The garden tore, dirt fountaining into the air. The vegetables had been real, apparently, but almost nothing else was.

And air rippled away from Kydyr. The owl shifter vanished in small pieces, his feathered hair going first, replaced by scales and curving horns. His body went next, rainbow metal clothes transforming into overcoats and long, long pants that twisted together, becoming a long and sinuous body made of pure rainbows, wrapped around a pile of books where the house had been. Arms became meters long, with long white claws. A tail slapped the white tiled ground, breaking stone like a living I-beam smashing down and then curling back around the books.

The summertime cottage and property vanished, almost completely, though the garden remained, tucked into a corner of the open floor plan.

Erick found himself in the largest room of a large stone mansion made of many such rooms, with the owner of the house on the other side, wrapped around a large pile of books, while neatly-stacked piles filled up the rest of the space. There were bookshelves and organization systems underneath all of the piles, but those systems had long been abandoned in favor of just more books, placed wherever they could fit. Neither Kydyr or Erick cared much about the books right now, though. Dragon Kydyr stared down at Erick with hateful eyes and an open mouth. His fangs were only about the size of Erick’s own forearm, but they were very visible.

So.

Kydyr was altogether not the largest dragon Erick had ever seen. Rather on the small side, actually.

He was possibly the angriest, though.