Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 56.9m per day / 658.56 per second , [Darkness Level = 3.83x Ascension baseline]

Body: 324

Mind: 437

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+599, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 93.7m/∞, ↑ [+204, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 90.6m/∞, ↑ [+197, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 90.6m/∞, ↑ [+197, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 2.82m [+59.26 = +6.58]

After leaving the Wraithborne Tower Erick spent 5 days doing nothing but answering hundreds of messages per hour. It was good work. It was necessary work, too, and not just because he was directly helping people. Erick had needed some time for his Status to stabilize at this new, higher level.

As resons churned into being through his Wallet magic, and then piled into his Status, they also piled into his Soul, Mind, and Body, in a rather easy sort of accretion, but different. Erick had watched his Status rise and rise, all of his Stats gaining ground slowly but surely. The rate of growth had been rather fast at first, but after the first half of a day, Erick already saw where this was going. It was tapering off.

And sure enough, after his Body gained 112 more points and his Mind gained 120, the resons generated in his Wallet automagically stopped refining everything about him. Erick hadn’t even known that he could continue his accretion efforts until that happened, and now that it was done, he wasn’t sure he could actually accrete on his own, anyway. He had needed to increase the Darkness inside of him in order to accrete again.

What he was doing with resons wasn’t called ‘accretion’, though.

He could probably turn up the accretion tap to 100% reson accretion —or ‘cultivation’ as the people here called it— and get higher than that, and achieve a truly solid body. But Lionshard had opinions about that sort of thing.

Lionshard sat with Erick on Erick’s balcony, smoking a very large platinum pipe, blowing out a streamer of silver clouds. “It is quite wonderful that you have stumbled upon some sort of automatic secondary-cultivation-methodology. Makes me think you’ll go the distance with your place here in Margleknot.” He laughed. “It’s quite funny that you’re doing the basic cultivation all the way up here at this level of play, though.”

Erick smoked on his own silver pipe that was a match for Lionshard’s. The pipe had been a gift from Lionshard to go with all the new clothes he had also given him. Whatever they were smoking was pretty darned awesome, making Erick feel kinda floaty, but Erick could tell that he could cut off its influence with a mere thought. He chose to keep the influence going, though. With a minor bit of physical lung control, he blew out a pair of rings, and then he used just a bit of magic inside to shoot arrows of smoke through both of them.

Lionshard watched, smirking.

Erick asked, “What do you mean by that? Basic cultivation?”

“Well… That’s a big topic. Broadly speaking, at its base, Ascending is hard.”

Erick chuckled.

“Yes yes. I know. State the obvious.” Lionshard said, “Anyway! Ascending is hard, so people have to cheat. Ascending in this universe is incredibly hard, because resons are hard to cultivate and infinity has infinite problems. And so, we cheat using the powers of other universes. We’ve got oodles of other forms of power in this universe because it touches so many others. Mana exists here, though it’s hard to cultivate outside of a proper manasphere. Then you’ve got super powers, and various forms of martial energy, and then there’s pure Life or other things like it. The fairies are the source of most of the Life worlds, but there are lesser forms of people that cultivate things like Flow or Stone, which is not like Elemental Stone at all. Lots of places are like that; only one source of transcendental power.

“This universe only really has resons and you can’t do much with infinity except travel it and bring parts of it with you. Fairies can, but that’s another discussion altogether.

“And so, people cheat. They use multiple sources of power in order to ascend, because…

“Imagine a house with multiple floors.

“Mortality is floor 1. It’s like a hundred subfloors.

“Ascension is floor 2. Maybe a good ten subfloors.

“Floor three are the fae; also stratified.

“You start on floor one, and you have to get to the next floor. You can use a rickety ladder, or you can use a ladder and some rocks. Using a ladder and rocks is stable, and gets you to floor 2.

“Now you’re on floor 2, but you can’t pull the ladder up behind you to get to floor 3, or even higher on floor 2 than you already are, because you have to have a path to floor 1… for reasons. So hopefully you used enough rocks and your ladder is big enough to get you all the way up. If not, then you gotta search for a third thing.” Lionshard said, “In your case, you have used mostly mana and a bunch of tools to reach very high on floor 2, and you’ve barely touched resons at all. Can you use these same materials to reach floor 3? Probably! You’ve barely touched what resons can do, after all.

“Whatever the case, you built very well, and your systems are still working to strengthen you well, because you made them that way, and they’re cultivating for you, like a ladder that grows on its own.” Lionshard added, “The door to floor 3 is very hard to break through, though, and most people would stop where you are right now anyway.

“But your automagic systems are still running.

“And your automagic systems are cultivating resons, like a normal, basic mage here in this uber cosmology.” Lionshard finished with, “Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re doing everything backwards. Like. A normal mage here in this cosmology funnels resons into themselves, trying to build a ladder to a higher realm. You started with mana, though, and now you’re doing resons.” He smiled. “Automagically. Ha!”

“… Huh.” Erick blew out some silver smoke, saying, “Well that’s fun.”

“I bet if you worked out the math your ‘wallet’ is basically exactly as many resons as you mathematically expect to have. Very few are actually going into your ‘Status’.” Lionshard giggled, then spoke conspiratorially, “Maybe you’ll reach heaven-defying stage soon— Or core formation— No, wait! You’re still at ‘meridian expansion’.” He smiled, saying, “You’ve still got a ways to go before you reach core formation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you just woke up with a reson core one day.”

Erick raised an eyebrow, “The only one of those that I know is ‘core formation’.”

“I know! That’s what makes it so funny!” Lionshard plucked a book out of the air then set it on the table between them, saying, “Here here. Don’t do anything it says directly. Find your own Truth. This could still give you some tips about stuff, though. Still good to know all of it, too, so you know what it means to cultivate resons.”

Erick smiled as he took the book. “Thank you.” He read it all in a flash, then paused. “...Oh. That’s different. Not too unexpected, though. Resons are more ephemeral than mana? That’s why I can’t really see them like I can mana?”

“Oh yes.” Lionshard said, “Resons hide inside infinity… Sort of.” He turned a little bit more serious as he said, “Cultivating is not accretion is not developing is not gardening is not Finding the Path is not burnishing is not... etcetera etcetera. And then there are several types of cultivation, all of them different from each other. There’s peering cultivation —the most common— which is to look through infinity and find the version of yourself you want to be, and then aspire to them. This causes your reson generation to increase. Then you either get into demonic cultivation, which is the capturing of other selves and eating them, or cooperative cultivation, which is where everyone raises each other up.

“Like imagine you are a farmer who truly wishes to do… something. Avenge your family, for instance. You can use your resons to peer through infinity to find yourself having achieved your goals, and you know what it took to get there. This ignites a spark that causes you to take those steps, and you eventually find yourself at a new plateau of having avenged your family.

“Now what? Is that where you stop? Most people do.

“Most people never touch resons, anyway, so most people never even get to see the possibilities ahead of them, to learn the way forward. Most people simply do what they want, or they do not.

“Considerably fewer people achieve true reson manifesting, which is the first real step toward cultivating in this universe. That usually comes after a person achieves their first or maybe second goal. That’s when they finally get a glimpse of what they’re actually doing with reson generation.

“Some people simply burn out, because they have ‘used up’ their reasons-for-being.

“Mana is so much easier. Having both is truly useful, though.” Lionshard said, “And you managed to get reson generation going through mana manifesting. That’s the most common way to do it, but you even managed to make it easy with a personal manaminer.” He smiled wide. “You have a ‘status’! That’s quaint, too.”

Erick thought as he listened. And then he asked, “Do they not have manaminers here in this universe?”

“Oh sure. All over the place. Margleknot doesn’t allow them here, though, because he’s basically a manaminer… except not. Functionally? Sure. Actually? No. People use manaminers to solidify some parts of Layer 1 into strongholds, though.” Lionshard added, “They steal people’s mana with those miners, too, in order to power those bases and defenses.”

“Ahhh. That reminds me. People generate mana and resons in this universe, yes? Like… how many manas per day? How many resons per hour?”

Lionshard looked thoughtful, then said, “Resons are simpler to explain, so I’ll start there. Resons are the reason-for-being, and they are incredibly ephemeral. Much more so than mana. An average person can generate anywhere from… 1 to 5 per day? The average body has a pool of resons that drive them forward, and that number is anywhere between… 50 to 150. Numbers are hard when it comes to resons. A young and energetic person with a good plan for life might have a well of 250 resons in their body. An older person who is very sure of themselves might have 350.

“Reson generation is very much a matter of person, place, and purpose. Take a fish and put them on land and they’re going to spike in reson generation for a short while as they try to get back to water, and if they can get to water, then they’re fine, but if they can’t, then they die.”

Erick took a moment to think about all of that. “Is there a way to measure the number of resons in a person?”

“Not really. It’s all subjective.”

“Ahh. Okay.”

Lionshard nodded. “Anyway. Mana generation… is a larger, less-certain subject. Some universes have mana as a byproduct of life, like the Painted Cosmology. The Painted Cosmology had mana as a part of life itself, too. Mana is always… a creation of the soul… yes. I would say that is true enough to be true. Mana is a creation of the primal part of the soul that is the gift of the universe itself to the individual, that marks them as a part of their universe. This marking can be passed around a lot, though. When you put Benevolence out there, it ignited tiny drops of Darkness inside every slime born from it and from every person who decides to accrete it, and in that Darkness, they become beings of mana.

“All the mana you create is from the Darkness expressing itself… hmm. Expressing itself through the multi-dimensional crash of possibility through the lens of Your Everything? If that makes any sense. Talking about subjects like that is always more philosophy than reality. That could all be wrong under certain circumstances. Anyway. All the mana you put out there is from yourself. Your sprinkling of Darkness is just the newest bits of Darkness in this universe, but there’s been Darkness out there for a long while.

“Most of the mana out there is from other universes.

“Other people can take those manas into themselves and cultivate it and, in doing so, imprint within themselves the Mark of That Universe, whichever universe ‘That’ might be.”

Erick’s eyes widened a little.

Lionshard nodded knowingly.

Erick asked, “Could I have been imprinted with the Darkness on my original world? Earth?”

“Oh sure. Lots of things are possible.”

“… Ah.” Erick nodded. “Infinity is large.”

Lionshard chuckled. “Infinity is large.”

Moments passed in calm smoking.

Erick asked, “What other sorts of mana universes are there?”

“Uncountable lots! Depending on how you count, there’s either around 550 big, named mana universes, or ten million.” Lionshard said, “There are only around a handful of truly impactful other universes, though. Now let’s see… Ah. There’s the Drawn Universe, where mana is created when people draw things or build sculptures or stuff like that. Spellwork and mana in the Drawn Universe are inexorably linked. There is the Building Universe, where people build shrines of power and make mana that way. The Drawn Universe and the Building Universe have something of a friendly rivalry going.

“There’s the Garden Universe, where mana comes from gardening. Lots of those types of universes out there where power comes from cultivating things that grow. One such universe like that is thought to be the world where Margleknot originally came from, but no one really knows and Margleknot isn’t talking. Then there’s the Pocket Universe, where everything is layered into each other, all eggs within eggs within eggs, with the main part of that universe being a place where people cultivate individual pocket dimensions. That’s sort of like the Garden Universe.

“The Painted Cosmology was one of the few that were named in how they were created, instead of how they functioned, because classifying how they worked —through mana— was too not-specific-enough. Do you know how many universes have something in them called ‘Darkness’? Lots. That sort of naming just doesn’t work, because each Darkness is different. In those veins, there’s the Struck Gold Universe, the Cubic Crash universe…”

Erick listened to universes and smoked silver with Lionshard for a while. It was a good break from the work.

- - - -

Lionshard went back home.

Erick looked over a few things from the manual he had gotten from the platinum dragon.

There were a lot of similarities between the various stages of accretion that Erick had gone through with his mana, inside Ar’Cosmos, way back when, and the cultivation of here and now. It was kinda odd that he was doing accretion again, but differently, in this land of Other Fae.

Cultivation was not accretion, though, except in the superficial sense.

For mana, Erick had started with a core. Rozeta had helped him make that, and also his secondary Status in the Core of Veird. From there, Erick had accreted to keep his core intact and solid, and to not go insane with hunger from having a degrading core. Making a core was the first step toward True Wizardry, and Erick had started that journey in the Core of Veird in order to have Rozeta’s help.

And then Fairy Moon had kidnapped him to Ar’Cosmos for the other half of accretion learning. In that place, Erick had needed to open his aura and then soak his mana inward through his body, enhancing his body through charging himself with his own power. This led to his core stabilizing in his body, turning perfectly spherical; gaining an infinite number of facets.

And that was accretion at its base.

Erick had gone beyond that in his ascension to Benevolence, and then eventually becoming a True Wizard. He had become a fully crystallized being, and also a person.

Apparently the end step of cultivation was the complete opposite. The final step of reson cultivation, which appeared to result in a person becoming a fairy, was to ‘break all preconceptions and be Simply You’. There was no Paradox, like with mana and accretion and crystals and personhood; there was Simply You.

The Fae were naturally like that.

Other people had to work for that power.

At its lower levels, accretion shared one major thing with cultivation, though. Cultivation was all about finding the path forward that you choose to walk, and then walking it. Your ‘Truth’. Erick had done that with his creation of Benevolence.

Other than that, cultivation was almost entirely about ‘becoming a being of doing’, which was philosophical speak for ‘being a person of passion and action’. The ‘action’ part was just as important as the ‘passion’ part. Wizardry in this New Cosmology was all about actual Wizardry, after all; about pulling forth possibility from nothing and thus making the impossible possible, which required true purpose and power.

There was no grand path to become Simply You, though.

There was simply the act of getting more You, through all the methods one could possibly consider, and that is what worked, if it worked for you. The book had a very clear line about what that actually meant, and that line sent Erick down a deep ‘thought hole’, as Poi would have called it.

Erick set down the book and looked at the ceiling as he had a think.

He voiced the question he had read,

“Do I believe that what I am doing is enough to become Simply Me?”

Was Erick going to become a fairy, whether he wanted it or not?

Erick considered…

He felt in his very bones and soul and mind, that his answer was ‘yes’. Yes, he was doing something that would make him eventually become indelible upon the fabric of reality itself. Erick could have tried to lie to himself about that, but that would have been a lie.

The creation of Yggdrasil. The transformation of Margleknot. The Benevolent Sun in the sky of this central city. The eventual saving of Veird and the expansion of Veird into the universe. The eradication of Malevolence, which was another solid goal…

Erick hoped that whatever awaited him in the future was a good sort of fate because he saw where he was headed, his Lightning Path traveling off into the far, far distance, headed toward strangeness on an uncertain horizon. Unknown and unknowable. Hidden yet apparent. Truths beyond truths.

Erick would eventually walk that full Path if it made the universe a better place.

But for now, Erick simply stood.

The Lightning Path was already beckoning, there at the front gate of his property, and so Erick would walk it, even if he hoped that it would slow down.

He stepped through the house, to his closet, to view the nice clothes that Lionshard had bought for him. He opted for the sunglow and nightglow robes that most matched his usual fare, but these ones glowed on the edges and drank deep all light in the accents. They were appropriate for courtly drama in multiple ways. First, because they were simply the most beautiful clothes that Erick had literally ever seen, but Lionshard called them ‘simply appropriate for court’, and because they would regrow to their full, mended size, as long as Erick kept a fraction of their fabric around and set them in the light of any sun for a short while. That regrowing part was important, because they were certain to get shredded in any real Fae Enclave drama.

They’d also transform into some jewelry for him to wear as a dragon, when he eventually turned into that Truth of his.

So dressed, Erick stepped out of his house, onto the green grasses in front of the gate to his property—

He had been on a mission, which is why he had moved that fast, but he didn’t know that moving with fabrics like this would cause them to billow out and then fall downward in a truly, quite artistic sort of falling. His robes moved like those hair commercials back on Earth; all shimmery and magical. Erick smiled at that, at how his weightless clothes felt and moved, never getting in the way at all, and always making him look good.

Ah.

Nice clothes.

Nice clothes were nice!

Erick moved on.

He looked at the men who had just stepped on to the other side of the portal to his property. Erick stood on grasses and moss, but the two men in front of him stood upon black crystal. Erick said, “I assume you’re Blighter, from Wraithborne Tower. And this is your understudy, Seabass?”

Erick opened the portal between him and the two men on the other side. They now had a clear entryway onto Erick’s land.

Blighter was an elven man of dark, sharp clothes that matched his hair, but his skin was as pale as fresh snow and his eyes were red as blood. Seabass was a fraction darker of skin than Blighter, and his eyes were a bit more purple than red. Both of them were immortal vampires, or at least that’s what Erick mentally called them. They were bloodborn, which were either a very advanced form of blood ooze, or a virus that infected elves who did too much blood magic. Erick wasn’t completely up on the specifics of it, but Lionshard had spoken a bit about them, once Erick had asked the old platinum dragon about the letter he had gotten from the Tower.

And now these people from the tower were here.

They had large, black leather briefcases with them, each of them completely open to Erick’s vision, if he wanted them to be. Some non-magical seals on the outside of the briefcases denoted them as belonging to the Wraithborne Tower, and ‘woe betide all who seek to assail the Tower’. That much was probably enough to warn most people off from peeking.

Erick looked inside the briefcases anyway. It was just paperwork.

All the actual secrets were probably inside the heads of these two men, for the insides of these two men were kinda weird and bloody. Not very intelligible. They were probably immune to Mind Magic, because they certainly looked oozy in some parts, which was quite an interesting thing to see.

Want to be immune to Mind Magic of all various types? Be an ooze! Solution good in many different lands; not just Veird.

Blighter bowed, then rose saying, “Greetings, True Wizard of Benevolence, Erick Flatt of Earth and Veird. I am Blighter from Wraithborne, as you have correctly deduced. This is Seabass, my understudy. I would enjoy a sit down at your pleasure to discuss the case of Nothanganathor, the Painted Cosmology, and what you want to happen. I ask for safe passage while conducting these duties, and request relinquishment to the Wraithborne Tower instead of death or sundering, if I should fail to live up to your demands upon the reality of the case.” Blighter gestured to Seabass, saying, “My understudy wishes for the same.”

Seabass bowed quickly, and professionally.

Erick stepped back from the portal. “Request granted. Please come in, Blighter. Seabass. Let’s talk.”

- - - -

In one of Erick’s front rooms, Blighter set out paperwork for cooperation with the Tower.

Erick read it over, and said, “So that’s a lot less evil than I thought you would be. I was expecting absolutely devastating costs and blood contracts and such. All this says is I agree to not hold the Tower liable for the outcome of the Fae Enclave meeting, and that you cost 1,100 resons a day. A thousand for you, 100 for Seabass.” Erick asked, “So what’s the catch?”

Blighter said, “I have an Understanding with the Fae Enclave. You do not. They will use every trick in the universe to try and get you to falter and fail in everything you attempt to get out of them. If you allow me to speak for you, and if all you do is nothing but stand there, no matter what the fae say, then there are no catches here. But as soon as you speak they’ll instantly hold you in contempt and lock you up in a Time Stasis, and then they’ll try to work me over as your representative, until they come to some sort of agreement that they can deal with.

“We expect to get paid for the days you’re missing, since we will still be working.

“In the event that you talk and they really don’t like you, then they’ll jettison you to Layer 1 and we’ll still be talking in court until you come back.

“Please understand that they will very much attempt to get you to contempt yourself. Anything except for you speaking in regard to a direct question, and then answering fully honestly, will be contempt.

“The Fae Enclave will only truly deal with you in court after they’ve had their fun, or if they think they can have more fun adjusting a previous decision of theirs.

“I can tell you right now that they will not overturn their decision of Nothanganathor and the Painted Cosmology. Shadow burned a lot of goodwill with them when she tried to kill them to make her viewpoint stronger. All she did was make them angry.

“I will attempt to make you the Arbiter of Veird, but you’re likely going to have to settle for something else. I don’t know the exact shape of that ‘something else’, but it will be between several horrible decisions for you. The Fae Enclave deals in very nebulous concepts, and there are lots of outcomes on the table right now. For instance: Would you give up your Ascension to become the Arbiter of Veird? Your sense of purpose? Your Element? Your entire life on Earth? Or on Veird?”

Blighter stopped talking, because that had been A Lot.

Erick considered.

Erick asked, “And what if I went in there without you, for the first time?”

“Once you stop talking through lawyers, they stop taking you seriously. Therefore, this is not a recommended course of action. You would be able to speak your mind to them, though. Mind, please, that the outcomes of such an action could be a lot worse than what we could get out of them for you.” Blighter said, “Therefore, in my professional opinion, you should not meet them alone at any point in time.”

Erick pretended to need to think, to draw out the moment, as he asked, “So if they kicked me away, and I had you there in a professional setting, you could make bargains for myself while I am out of commission. And those bargains would be binding?”

“Yes,” Blighter said, “If you are not comfortable with that, we can do a different arrangement involving you as a self-representing person and us standing back and offering legal knowledge when you ask it, or when we have words that we feel the need to tell you. That sort of arrangement is unorthodox and makes the Fae Enclave rather uncooperative and violent toward the counsel of the claimant.”

“… Ah. Well I like that option better. I won’t have you making any sort of bargains for me, ever, without my prior, complete approval.” Erick said, “But you going in as my counsel and me self-representing would be putting you at risk. Can you handle that?”

Blighter said, “We would ask to step out after assisting you three times. That is the usual number of allowed interventions.” And then he added, “Ascended Flatt. I tell you right now that I would stake my life on making this case work out in your best possible favor. The Tower wishes to work with you. We desire your complete desire to work with the tower. We would not do anything to make you truly decide that we’re not worthy of cooperation, and we certainly would not harm your capability to be you, after facing the Enclave.”

“… Well.” Erick looked at both Blighter and Seabass, and said, “Let us speak of the actual case, and if you have a way to actually win, then I would hear it.”

Seabass opened up his briefcase which broke some sort of word magic on it, because all of the basic paperwork inside suddenly shifted, words becoming images that moved, animated with life until they settled down onto the pages again and told a much different story than ‘basic paperwork’. Seabass set them out on the table with a flicker of purple power, and Erick breathed in when he read what was down there.

It was the story of Nothanganathor versus Melemizargo, which became the story of how Nothanganathor had sought out help from the Wraithborne Tower for Propagation magic, and how he had taken control of the Veird situation during the Sundering. Great swaths of the story were missing and speculated upon, and those parts of the tale were noted with angle brackets, but Erick felt they were true speculations.

He summarized the hundred page document in his mind.

- -

11,500 years ago:

Ikaramaliana, the Goddess of Magic, informs the Painted Cosmology that she is passing into Darkness, and that there will be a tournament between all capable peoples for the Mantle of Magic.

11,450 years ago:

The tournament is held.

Through great hardship two <brothers or cousins> reach the end stage of the tournament. Melemizargo and his Endless Style, versus Nothanganathor with his Shadowed Sun style. Melemizargo, of <Creation>, had been expected to cede to his brother, of Paradox, and become Second to the God of Magic. <This did not happen.> <With a surprising amount of absolute hatred,> Melemizargo fights Nothanganathor for real.

Melemizargo ascends atop the shattered body of his brother, to become the God of Magic. In that moment Melemizargo and the Elven Conclave breaks Nothanganathor’s Shadowed Sun existence and rips apart every source of power Nothanganathor has across the entire Painted Cosmology, <cursing him to forever be unable to ascend to any kind of True Power at all>.

They cursed Nothanganathor to obscurity, for Nothanganathor was responsible for the Goddess of Magic’s untimely death. <Ikaramaliana had been dead for 50 years by now, but she lingered long enough to hold the tournament.>

Nothanganathor is banished as a <leviathan>; not a true dragon at all. <All history has been rewritten to make him appear as a false dragon, like a snake.>

11,000 years ago:

Nothanganathor, who had been a traveler of many universes and who had found power in many places, comes back to Margleknot and begins rebuilding his power. He had always been a friend to Evil, which is why he was able to find a way to <poison and kill his mother>, but now he is at his weakest, and he drinks deep of the fountain of Evil. He begins to grow long, instead of dense.

He begins on his journey of rebuilding himself into something that could destroy the curse upon him, and to take the mantle of the God of Magic of the Painted Cosmology to further break his curse and truly Ascend once again.

9500 years ago:

Nothanganathor comes and goes from the Wraithborne Tower, venturing into the Painted Cosmology at the behest of Margleknot, to discover what happened to Margleknot’s person in that universe.

It is a quest given to him because Nothanganathor has long been a friend to everyone except the Good, and most people commiserate with his loss against his brother, since most people in the Painted Cosmology simply do not care for this uber-cosmology.

8500 years ago:

Nothanganathor officially allies with the Wraithborne Tower and with the man who would become Emperor Morbion Blackthorn. He also allies with the Corrupted Void Sanctuary, and the Corrupted Archive.

The search for Margleknot’s lost person goes unsolved, and is <officially abandoned.>

7900 years ago:

Nothanganathor invents Malevolence.

The Wraithborne Tower truly begins to take root in Evil, and grow stronger. They are fully Evil in these days.

The Corrupted Void Sanctuary gains a strong presence and does not falter like normal Evil organizations.

The Corrupted Archive gains a strong presence and does not falter like normal Evil organizations.

7500 years ago:

Morbion Blackthorn rises as the Emperor of the Wraithborne Tower.

Thus begins an expansion of Evil upon Margleknot.

6500 years ago:

Paradise Rises, a land of Good people, falls to the Wraithborne Tower.

6250 years ago:

The Prismatic Wilderness, a land of Good entities, falls to the Wraithborne Tower.

The Wraithborne Tower suffers a major setback due to the Celestial Observatory and decides to go softer in its Evil. Thus, begins the Reformation. The Wraithborne Tower begins to grow at a truly astonishing rate, now that it has pulled back from all its truly Evil ways.

6000-1450 years ago:

Nothanganathor is largely missing. <He is believed to be inside the Painted Cosmology, working toward ends that are unknown.> He occasionally comes back to Margleknot to make friends with rising evils and fulfill missions for the Fae Enclave. Whatever the Enclave wants, Nothanganathor will do.

During this time Nothanganathor goes from a leviathan a few tens of kilometers long, to world-spanning, and eventually to sun-sized. He is still not capable of Ascending, and the Enclave prefers it that way, for Nothanganathor is the Enclave’s greatest weapon against problems that need solving, <primarily problems of corruption.>

1450 years ago:

The Sundering of the Painted Cosmology.

Since the Sundering was an unknown destruction, and Nothanganathor is in the neighborhood, the Enclave puts Nothanganathor in charge of figuring out what happened. Nothanganathor is fine with this. The Enclave tells him that if he should merely wish to eat Veird for all eternity and never truly find out what happened in the Sundering, then that is fine, too. They were running out of things to feed their favored weapon, anyway.

<The only true caveat they gave him was that if someone should Ascend from Veird, then they would be allowed to Ascend and give statements on what happened to their universe.> (there are many caveats)

The destruction of a universe is a very large deal, after all. They want to know what caused the destruction so that they can prevent such a thing, or, as some believe, use such a weapon for their own ends.

Present day:

Nothanganathor is requesting the dissolution of Ascended Flatt’s influence inside Margleknot, while also apologizing that he could not fully contain Veird due to planar influence.

The Wraithborne Tower is currently choosing which side to back.

The Fae Enclave desires that Erick Flatt make an appearance.

- -

Erick sighed as the weight of it all crashed onto him again. “And this isn’t even the full story.”

“Correct, Ascended Flatt.” Blighter said, “We have many documents under the Seal of the Tower that we would rather release to the Fae Enclave instead of to you, for those documents will be hampered in their effectiveness if we allow you to use them yourself.”

If Erick had detected even the slightest bit of disrespect in that statement, he would have had to stop himself from biting Blighter’s head off, but Blighter was being the best lawyer he could be, and so Erick simply thought.

Erick had a lot of things he could do at that moment.

He chose what felt like the optimal one, but which likely wasn’t.

Erick said, “Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to go to them and you’re going to play backup, and when they decide to start playing hard I’m going to request tasks to solve in order to build up goodwill. When I’m doing that goodwill building, you’re going to build a real case and show me some of the various things that you’re keeping from me. You are not allowed to bargain for me, but you can make hypothetical bargains to bring back to me. Now. On the subject of goodwill building: Does the Wraithborne Tower have things they’d like done that are classifiable as ‘good’? Because that’s something I need to work on, too.” Erick said, “You all are very close to being good, and Benevolence is a better worker of soul magics than Elemental Death.”

Blighter easily asked, “What are your opinions on reincarnating beyond-ancient evils into forms that are soul-stable? Our goal would be to make them vulnerable to other evils, to harvest them for what they have inside of them.”

“… Oh gods— Okay!” Erick mumbled. “That’s like… at least 3 different moral quandaries. Probably a lot more if I took more than a single moment to think about it… I would want to reincarnate them into simple people once again, without any special power. I would also protect them from harvesting… and probably do exactly what I did with Derock... But that is what you want to happen anyway and you know I’d be fine with that. You want me to simply make some ancient Evils young and alive and not so evil anymore, and then set them outside of the sight of every single person they ever knew, and make them untrackable in the process. Why ask in this particular, sinister way? Like you’re going to ‘harvest them’, etcetera?”

“To see how you would react.” Blighter said, “A lost evil reborn in a new body is fine. We simply want to get rid of them to clean house, one way or another. If they come back with Benevolent power then we’re good with that.”

Erick frowned a little. “Moving on.” He changed topics. “You know I have experience with some fae, right? Margleknot gave out a huge dossier on me to a whole bunch of organizations. What makes the Fae Enclave so special-deadly?”

“The main problem with the Fae Enclave is the same problem that makes fae everywhere so deadly.” Blighter said, “It doesn’t matter how many times you kill them, or how many times you win. They are the truest of immortals. All they have to do is win once.”

“… Ahhh. Yeah. That same problem.”

“They also have rather total control over the space of this land,” Blighter said, “They can shove even Ascended into Layer 1.”

Erick thought for a moment. “Have you all tried soul shackles on them?”

“Only the foolish attempt this. It merely makes them truly mad.” Blighter added, “But yes. Going against the Fae Enclave is how most places perish in Margleknot. If you annoy them, they will annoy you right back. If you please them, they might please you right back. The onus to be useful is always on the plaintiff or visitor. More than one Evil-based organization has fallen to them, one way or another, and the Wraithborne Tower has been born and died a thousand times over, each time taking a different name. The same thing has happened to some Good places out there, too.”

Erick nodded. “Your help is appreciated.” He said to the air, “Yggdrasil. I’d like to set up a continuous payment to them for their services. 1,100 resons a day.”

Words appeared for them all to see.

Done.

“Thank you.” Erick conjured two reson orbs, both of them the same size, but one was worth a thousand resons and the other worth 100. He handed them to Blighter, and then Seabass, saying, “A bonus for today, or whatever. Now let’s talk about the Propagation Magic that Nothanganathor learned from you, that you have left out of the meeting until now.”

Blighter looked to Seabass; a confirmation to do something.

And Seabass opened a hidden compartment on his briefcase that even Erick didn’t see, because it literally did not exist until then. Erick sensed the presence of some sort of odd, eldritch power, in that opening, like what he had seen in Lionshard’s orrery room, in the weirder, deeper parts of the empty sky here and there. Seabass used something similar to that intangibleness to pull out a single sheet of paper with words upon it that danced.

He set the paper down, being careful not to look at it.

And then he backed away and fell to his knees.

Blighter went to one knee.

A voice opened up in the air. “Hello? Who is this that seeks an answer from the Archive?”

Erick couldn’t even see the magic, but he could sense that something was floating above the piece of paper… He didn’t look too closely right now, but he could if he wanted to.

Blighter spoke, “It is I, a contracted lawyer of the Wraithborne Tower named Blighter, requesting the cooperation of the Corrupted Archive in order to grant knowledge of shared and sealed power to another.”

Erick watched, and did not interrupt.

He guessed he was in bed with Evil now, eh?

Felt less dirty than he imagined it would feel.

The voice drawled out, “Eeehhhhh! You can’t ask for that through a contact sheet!”

A beat.

Blighter was suddenly uncomfortable, as though he had not expected that answer at all.

Seabass was confused.

Erick assumed this was either a very good play, or else the man on the other end of the contact sheet was kinda loony and his lawyers weren’t sure what to do now.

Erick spoke up, “Hello, Corrupted Archive.”

“Oh!” said the sheet. “Who is this now?”

For a brief, horrible moment, Erick wondered if he had fucked up.

Erick felt the shifting of something beyond as the air above the contact sheet flexed and twisted, and an illusion that Erick had not noticed was suddenly noticeable. It was a sparkle of light that resolved into an absolute hole in the universe that led to a black infinity that was not black at all, but merely a color beyond reckoning.

A color made of eyes and tentacles and mouths.

… Kinda reminded Erick of Fallopolis, actually—

The colorless horde tried to step through the hole—

“Nope,” Erick said, flexing his Authority, suddenly feeling a whole lot more secure in everything. “We can talk through this thing, if you please.”

“Oh oh oh!” said the eye/mouth/tentacle thing. “Someone with actual Authority around here, eh? Who might you be, little… not mortal. Oh. Ascended? Oh wait.” Every single eye, mouth, and even a few of the tentacles in the infinity beyond the hole, seemed to smile. “You’re a powerful one. What might The Corrupted Archive grant you to tempt you to corruption?”

Erick gestured to Blighter. “The lawyer here, Blighter, on behalf of the Wraithborne Tower, is requesting the cooperation of the Corrupted Archive in order to grant knowledge of shared and sealed power to another.” Erick said, “I am that ‘another’.”

The colorless horde paused.

“… One moment.”

The colorless horde pulled away.

The colorless horde returned. “Ask the question, little Blighter.”

Blighter metaphorically regained his feet; he was still kneeling. “This one requests to be allowed to know the history of the entity known as Nothanganathor, his time learning Propagation Magic in cooperation between the Tower and the Archive, and what he did with that Propagation magic. This one requests to share this knowledge with the Ascended here known as Erick Flatt.”

The colorless horde said, “Oh? Let me see… Yes. That’s acceptable. This has been spoken and cleared prior to this event. Release the knowledge, if you desire. The Corrupted Archive is satis… Wait. Ascended Erick Flatt?”

Blighter easily said, “This conversation now falls under lawyer privilege and cannot be used to demand more concessions than are already stated in agreements between the Tower and the Archive. If you wish to make a separate deal with Ascended Erick Flatt, please make that deal and do not involve us as a bargaining chip.”

The colorless horde frowned but accepted Blighter’s words. He said to Erick, “You want Nothanganathor True Dead? You come to us when the Enclave fails you. Contact paper finish.”

The portal winked out. The paper collapsed inward and then turned to ash.

Erick [Benevolence Cleanse]d the space—

And an absolute torrent of mana of every possible flavor washed out into the world like a tsunami of thick, white air; an ephemeral bomb. It was thick enough to ruffle hair and clothes and paper, but not much more than that.

Erick patted his clothes down, saying, “Well then! That was ‘corruption’? What exactly makes corruption so dangerous?”

Erick had heard a little bit about corruption from Lionshard, but Lionshard had been evasive about that, so Erick wanted to know why these guys had decided to open a portal to corruption in his meeting room. Erick had some Thoughts on why they had tried it, but he chose to keep those thoughts to himself. For now.

Blighter rose from his kneeling position, saying, “Corruption is not dangerous in small doses, but I believe the Archive might have gotten a bit too corrupted lately, if it wasn’t able to know that it should have approved our request right away. I would apologize on their behalf, Ascended Flatt.”

“Apology accepted. You didn’t answer the question, though.”

“Corruption is something unknowable that actively causes harm to all who view it, and which grows large and fast if allowed to grow. It is a breaking-down of all natural order into something terrible, and it is responsible for the deaths of many universes. We believe it is from another specific universe, but we don’t actually know. Many of the greatest forms of malicious evil are based around corruption, and all of the strongest forms of propagation magic are based on corruptive ideals. Malevolence is one of those magics. That is what Nothanganathor learned at the Corrupted Archive, among other things.” Blighter continued, “But Malevolence is not corruption. It is a mana-based version of corruption that is able to interact with and deny corruption, or allow corruption to run rampant. This is partially why the Fae Enclave is fine with Nothanganathor doing whatever he wants. He is very good at killing corruption.

“Other types of mana-based powers include Elemental Crisis, and Elemental Misfortune. Other, non-mana powers are much more varied in their ability to fight, create, or contain corruption, including Entropy Manipulation, Reality Bending, Karma, and Sealing.

“Evil is very good at killing other Evils, Ascended Flatt, and that is why Margleknot is about Balance, instead of just being about Good.”

For a moment, Erick was speechless.

And then, because he truly had no idea, and he needed to know, he simply asked, “Is Benevolence good at anti-corruption magics?”

It should be good against corruption, right? Erick had invented Benevolence with the idea of tackling issues exactly like this ‘corruption’ problem, though he had never heard of what corruption could really do or how it was used before now.

Benevolence worked hard to prevent all apocalypse scenarios…

But did Benevolence actually work against the first real apocalypse scenario that everyone else knew about, but which Erick did not? This was, perhaps, the first real test of Benevolence on the greater stage of the universe…

And Erick had no idea if his power did what he wanted it to do.

He felt like Benevolence would work very well against corruption, though.

It was just taking a while?

“I’ve no idea!” Blighter said, appearing slightly excited for the first time, and perhaps, a little bit, aware of Erick’s internal monologue. “If Benevolence works against corruption then we might have an actual chance against Nothanganathor in fairy court!” He instantly digressed, saying, “Or maybe not, honestly. Elemental Malevolence is incredibly useful against corruption because corruption likes to work behind the scenes and that’s where Malevolence shines. The Corrupted Archive has been using Malevolence to clean itself up when it gets bad enough which is probably what it is doing right now.” Blighter added, “And it is very possible that even if we should get Nothanganathor all the way into a corner, that he is going to say something to the Enclave along the lines of ‘I helped to bring Benevolence about, therefore all my Evil was justified and you owe me’. That’s the tactic I would use against you if I were working for him.”

… Well then.

Erick asked Yggdrasil, “Yggdrasil? Is Benevolence working against the corruption out there?”

Yes. Of course it is, Father.

This is a very weird question.

Benevolence is right up there with The Fractal Mandala and the Sacred River when it comes to fighting corruption. Fighting corruption is where practically all of my half of the Benevolent Sun is going, and most of my production on Veird. And since you bring it up, now is a good enough time to inform you that I have added another Surface to your Benevolent Sun. Your daily income has a little more than doubled since last you checked.

It’ll hit 500b per day soon enough. I need you to speak to the Enclave about allowing me to make it larger.

Current income: 382b per day

Current expenditures: Max.

“Oh! Well look at that.” Erick laughed a little. “Right! Right. I thought it was… Well that’s a lot more specific than what I had known, and I didn’t know any of that. Okay! Good.” Erick felt secure as he told Blighter and Seabass, “I’m going to the Enclave now. You can stand back and watch what happens. You will have notes for me afterward. I assume they’re either going to shove me to Layer 1 or give me an impossible quest or five.”

Blighter stared hard at the ‘The Fractal Mandala’, but he realized that Erick had finished instructing him, so he bowed, then rose, saying, “Probably a shove to Layer 1 and the quests, Ascended Flatt. They likely won’t be impossible quests, either, unless you anger them most severely.”

Seabass bowed with him, and then rapidly packed the papers back up.

“I’ll try not to anger them— Ah! That reminds me.” Erick asked, “If I meet slavers over there on Layer 1, I am going to dismantle them. Tell me now if that is going to be a problem.”

As though he had been prepared for it, because he probably had been, Blighter said, “The Wraithborne Tower has interests on Layer 1, and we ask that you leave our clearly-marked lands alone. Everything outside of our territory is fair game. We have warned our allies about this already, and that warning is 4 days old as of right now. There will probably be a lot of false-Tower icons out there, but the actual Tower zones are very clearly marked and visible from every single direction as grey pillars of light in the sky. We make them that way so that we can serve as beacons of relative safety in the Fractal Wastes. If you wish for guidance out of the Fractal Wastes, then you might try one of our outposts.”

Erick considered that, and then said, “Honestly, if I find people raping and soul mutilating then the Seal of the Tower is not going to save them.”

“We accept this highly likely scenario. Extensive damage to our interests will be considered the cost of doing business, as long as you don’t completely try to remake the Wastes in your image.” Blighter said, “Everyone on the Fractal Wastes has been expecting you to show up for a while now, though, which should tell you a lot about a lot.”

“… Ah. I suppose it does.”

- - - -

Erick stepped out of a portal onto ground that was not ground. It was crystal that was more air than solid, with motes of light that swirled inside that un-solidity like glittering waves of some unknown lifeform, flashing out signals that Erick did not understand. It was bees flashing other bees, or the flow of sunflowers tracing the sun.

The ground was the extension of the Fae Enclave up ahead, sticking out a hundred kilometers from the main thrust of the central column of Margleknot’s ‘first class citizens’. That central column took up half the horizon and looked exactly like the not-crystal under Erick’s feet, but it was so far away it looked solid.

A path of glitter-crystal lay ahead.

The portal closed behind Blighter and Seabass, both of Erick’s lawyers looking as presentable as possible.

Erick started walking forward—

And he suddenly crossed a thousand kilometers to stand before a large archway gate that was as wide and tall as the sky. The airy crystal of the Fae Enclave continued on beyond the edges of that sky, like a flavoring to the horizon.

Beyond the gate lay a forest of trees, each the size of the smallest of Yggdrasil’s forms back home on Veird. Those trees formed a pathway as wide as a sea, leading to a white tower in the distance. As Erick stood there, ten meters from the gate that led into that land, he recognized houses in the trees, and everywhere else. There were towers and castles and caverns and doors leading downward. Stairways and elevators and sky roads. People were everywhere, some of them looking like tiny pinpricks of light or like nearly-invisible bugs due to the far, far distance between here and there.

Erick took that all in, and then he turned to the purple and yellow person sitting beside an air-crystal desk beside the giant gate. The person seemed female, with standard feminine characteristics, with blond hair and boobs and wearing a dress, but they had multifaceted bug eyes and antennae and dragonfly wings and no actual sex to them at all.

She greeted Erick, saying, “Howdy. You’re expected.” And then she beckoned to the road behind Erick.

“… I’m missing my lawyers.”

Blighter and Seabass had not been there, and then they were.

Blighter and Seabass both bowed instantly.

The fairy said, “Blighter and Seabass. The Fae Enclave appreciates that you finally left that other decision to be done with, and have now brought forth Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence, to the Enclave. You will not be allowed to speak this time, but you are allowed to experience the exchanges of the Enclave between themselves and Wizard Flatt. Do you understand?”

Blighter and Seabass bowed deeper, and both said, “We understand.”

“Rise, then, and be welcomed.”

Blighter and Seabass rose. Both of them then drew lines across their lips and used some sort of blood magic to seal their own mouths shut.

… Well okay then.

The fairy turned to Erick, saying, “Please adopt your truest form and prepare to visit the standing council.”

Erick had almost been about to say that his human form was his truest form—

But then Blighter did some sign language that Erick did not know, but he read as ‘dragon form’.

The fairy casually said to Blighter, “That’s the last time you interfere.”

Blighter bowed.

Nothing happened, though, because that had been a warning from the purple/yellow fairy to Blighter. Warnings came before action.

Erick stepped back and flickered to his dragon form, his clothes of glowing fabrics transforming into thin rings that he controlled to wrap around one of his horns...

And something was different.

Erick was used to being around 50 meters long from head to butt, and then twice that for the tail and around 175 wide for the wings, but he was a lot bigger than that right now. Based on his claws resting near the fairy and his lawyers, Erick was probably… Twice that size. Maybe a bit more. 200 long from nose to tail tip, and 300-ish wide with the wings.

Erick stepped a bit further away from them, so he didn’t crush them. It was honestly difficult to be a dragon sometimes. He only really liked doing this in private, or when relaxing, because people were way too tiny when he was a dragon.

And now he was even bigger.

For a brief moment, Erick was worried something had happened.

He checked on himself, making sure nothing else was untoward…

His Status seemed fine. He had accounted for all of his dragonness when he made his Status, after all, and [Polymorph] spellwork of all kinds, including Perfected Body and True Polymorph, along with how life basically worked, did not care about shape when it came to stuff like mana saturation and accretion. Resons were the same, too.

His reson wallet had adjusted to his new draconic mana channels, because of course it did. Dragons had circulatory systems and brains and organs and all of that, including mana channels, but they were much more ‘I am what I am’ than what biology would make of them, and Erick was no different.

Being in his dragon form gave him a lot more room for improvement, though. Humans could only hold so much mana and —Erick assumed— resons. This fact proved itself because Erick looked inside and saw his core and mana channels flickering with faint lightning, instead of the thick glow of his Reson Wallet of his human form. This was because, Erick saw, most of the resons he was making were actually soaking into his full draconic body instead of going into his Wallet…

Which was different.

Dragons had a lot more room for improvement than humans had, or even proteans, so of course his dragon form could accept more resons. Erick would probably have to open the tap up rather wide to start making resons go into his wallet while as a dragon, instead of having them soak into his scales, flesh, blood, and bone...

Briefly, Erick did exactly that.

White-gold lightning flooded through his body bringing with it a warmth that Erick didn’t know he had been missing…

And he realized he was growing larger.

Nope! Stop that right now.

The growth stopped because Erick willed it, and in that same moment Erick turned the tap back down to 9%, and he also made himself slightly smaller, back to his normal dragon size, through a normal action of crushing himself down to be properly small-ish—

At his normal dragon size, the reson-flow inside of him was back to its normal luminescent white-gold glow in his core, and his mana channels. It wasn’t soaking into his body overmuch. Which was good. Erick stopped concentrating on making his reson wallet make resons instead of supporting his growth… And it stayed exactly as it should.

… So Erick just needed to keep his body this size, and then he wouldn’t get bigger automatically? Well. Sure. Okay. It wasn’t that much of a pain to control himself to stay this size. It was the normal sort of pressure that he always experienced when he was trying to keep his human body human-sized, without the horns.

Erick had never needed to ‘shrink’ his dragon form, like he had needed to shrink his human form, but he supposed… This was now his life.

Making sure his voice was steady and not booming, Erick asked, “This is acceptable?”

The purple/yellow fairy looked at him, her lips in a scrunch. “Yeah sure. If you’re more comfortable larger then you can be larger. Doesn’t matter much.”

“I prefer to engage people at their own physical level, but I can be dragon-shaped if that’s more proper.”

“It is more proper.” The fairy gestured. “They await you at the tower.” She looked at Blighter and Seabass. “You two can go ahead.”

And then Blighter and Seabass vanished.

… Well okay then.

Erick walked into the Fae Enclave—

- - - -

—And stepped onto soft soil, between great trees filled with buildings and people. The gate to the rest of Margleknot was far, far behind him, while the air was an intoxicating blend of springtime, power, fae, and old, good memories. He smelled bread and meats. He saw everything all around for a hundred kilometers, as he felt Life in the air. He had never felt Life before, because there was no such thing as ‘Elemental Life’, but now he was feeling Life, and he knew it for what it was, and for Lionshard’s description of this particular cultivation power.

It was pure, and wonderful.

Erick almost wanted to sit down and enjoy the moment, but he had work to do.

The white tower was still far ahead.

Erick spread his wings and lifted into the air with a great push of power and a little bit of magic. Benevolence flickered upon his black wings and body, zapping the ground and adding some mushrooms and moss and grasses to the soils he had dug up with his claws.

And he soared forward, his wings feeling the wind.

Ahhh~

Erick had missed being himself.

This was nice. He was still stressed as all get-out, but he’d solve the problems ahead, for sure. Erick checked on his Status as he flew to make sure he wasn’t being attacked from any particular angle, and he seemed fine. All of his Mana, Health, and Psyche were ticking up the normal amount of around 200 per second, and ticking down between 7 to 15 points per second. Health drain went from 10 points per second to 25 every time he beat his wings, so that was just the ordeal of being a dragon.

Erick glided on Benevolence toward the white tower in the distance, zooming down the thoroughfare of grasslands between the massive trees, whipping by house after castle after hobbit-hole of dwelling. Trailing jags of Benevolence arced from the curve of his chest or the edges of his folded up arms and legs, jolting to the ground, trailing off of his languid tail, causing spots of bright and dark green to grow over his flight path.

Some fairies watched from balconies as Erick flew, and Erick realized why Purple/Yellow had wanted him in this form. It had been to announce his presence to the masses. Some of the fairies waved. Some of them hollered.

Some of them laughed.

They were nice laughs, mostly.

Some smiled wide, their teeth like knives around jagged holes in the world.

Laughter echoed, and it wasn’t so nice this time.

Erick stopped enjoying himself as he flew across the land, girding his defenses—

The drain on his Status dropped from 25 points per second in every category, back down to 2 points per second. Erick sighed. The ‘good’ flight stopped. The green carpet ended. Erick controlled his Benevolence to a proper solidity, to end whatever ‘attack’ they had been doing, and he simply flew, wings out, under the black hole sun—

Erick jolted a little when he noticed the sky again, firstly because he hadn’t noticed the sky until now. And secondly there was the sky itself. There was only one sun overhead, and it was the largest, blackest one, with the brightest ring of white light surrounding it, like a corona of several tens of suns around a void in the universe.

The distance between himself and the tower also seemed a whole lot shorter. Had he been flying in an eternally expanding stretch of land? Like on a treadmill? Until he had recognized the world around him for the fakery that it was? Maybe. If so, Erick had been on one of the universe's largest treadmills until now. He would need to watch out for that sort of attack later.

Erick huffed out a puff of Benevolence smoke, discarding his annoyance, and flew the remaining hundred kilometers to the white tower.

The Tower of the Enclave was shaped like a bunch of glitter-wind crystal that was denser than the crystal that was outside, that surrounded this infinite land. The tower hovered above a crater. A cliff of stone jutted out from the edge of that crater to connect to the tower.

The glitter-crystal tower was a rather normal size, actually. Big, yes, but not that big. Erick could easily see ten or twenty ruler-level fae deigning to have their offices gathered here.

This was undoubtedly the center of the Fae Enclave, too, so where was the Quantum Nexus Hub, that silver cylinder that pierced the Enclave right through the middle, making the Enclave have a ‘center’ by that piercing—

Ah?

Was that it?

Down there, in the crater?

A silver thread held at the bottom of the crater below the white spire. That thread extended left and right, coming out of the dirt and going back into the dirt.

There was nothing else down there, in the crater. Just dirt.

Erick half-expected to see water, or something.

Eh.

There was probably something hidden down there.

Anyway.

Erick landed on the cliff that extended toward the tower—

The tower opened a large gate that had not been there before Erick set down.

… Erick walked forward, he supposed—

- - - -

Erick stepped into a judgment chamber.

Every physical thing in the room was made of dense glitter-crystal that reminded Erick of souls, but different. It was more like broken fragments of infinity making an overall shape of crystal, than the amorphous blob that was soulstuff.

The floor was barely-illuminated glitter crystal. The grand arc of benches up ahead were made of the same crystal. The walls got brighter near the ceiling, and the ceiling, way, way up there, was as bright as day. Stands held behind Erick, stacked up way, way into the distance, like he was at the bottom of an amphitheater.

Right beside Erick, down on the ground, were Blighter and Seabass, already with papers out and diagrams floating in the air, like they had been talking. Their mouths had been unsealed. Erick supposed it was what it was, and he would either have some good news about whatever they had been talking about, or he would have another problem to solve.

From the papers and diagrams in the air, they looked to be talking about the Wraithborne Tower, and not about Erick, directly. So that was good.

And then there were the fairies, in every shape and color of person that Erick could imagine. No two were the same, but many of them were similar in that they had two arms, two legs, and two pairs of wings. The ones behind Erick were just as flamboyant as everyone else.

The ones in front of Erick followed that same pattern of being wholly different from each other.

From left to right, there were five.

Erick knew four of them, for they were easy to pick out based on Yggdrasil’s descriptions in his Guidebook.

Lord Eldraki, a mischievous trickster Fae with a penchant for illusion magic, sat on the far left, playing with fakery, making tiny illusions of animals and people and then moving them around like they were dolls.

Lady Aelorika, the wise and just leader of the Fae council, sat to the left-of-center. Her floral crown draped vines and flowers down her back and all over the crystal around her.

Lady Seraphaka, a regal and elegant Fae with control over light and shadow, sat right-of-center. She wore white and gold and black, and she looked slightly annoyed.

Lord Dakka, a fae of war and death always in favor of more war and death, sat at the far right. He wore rusted chains and rusted metals like they were armor. His wings looked made of rust.

And then there was the center chair.

Erick saw the center chair. He truly did see that chair. And he saw the person sitting upon that chair. He knew there was someone there, but he could not perceive them but… perhaps… they were made of… more glitter crystal? Hard to know. Erick felt it would be rude to try to understand whatever they had going on with all of that, so he did not try overmuch.

Lady Aelorika spoke, “And now he is here, and we can begin the real talking.” She intoned, “Erick Flatt. Welcome to the Fae Enclave. We wish to formally announce you as a force of Good in the universe and to bring you into Balance, thus removing your ability to fight Nothanganathor, who is Evil, and to attempt to stop your attempted Benevolence takeover of the Wraithborne Tower. Do you agree to this?”

Erick had a lot of sudden thoughts on that.

One overriding thought came to the forefront.

“No.”

People roared behind Erick, calling him a bastard and other names. Erick angled his head backward and looked at whoever-the-fuck was saying that, and all he saw were a bunch of tricksters and actors. Here and there fae called for Erick’s murder, but there were smiles and jeers and body language that was completely at odds with the words they were actually saying.

What was their problem?

Erick turned his full attention back to the Fae Enclave.

Lady Aelorika simply nodded. “An expected, unfortunate answer. You should look beyond your second-world, Erick. You have a part that is larger to play than the tiny world in which you gained so much. The offer will remain open. Next.”

Erick truly wanted to interrupt, to demand that they tear down whatever power they had granted Nothanganathor, and to tear him from Veird. Alternatively, Erick wanted to ask for quests to eventually achieve that end through making friends here, as Nothanganathor had apparently done.

But he waited for open question time, instead. Hopefully there would be an open question time.

Lord Eldraki, of illusions, spoke without looking at Erick, “Kill every Jane you know and I’ll vote for Nothanganathor’s True Erasure.”

… What?

Erick let that weird threat flow by him because Eldraki hadn’t actually asked anything.

Lord Eldraki had been expecting a roar, though. He looked up from his illusionary toys, raised an eyebrow, and actually Looked at Erick this time. He said, “Give me your heart and I will remove Nothanganathor from Veird.”

Erick said nothing. Like he would ever agree to something as nebulous as that. What the fuck was this guy’s problem?

Eh.

He probably had a lot of problems.

Lord Eldraki frowned, then said, “Pay me a mana.”

Erick did nothing.

Lord Eldraki went, “EH!”

Erick had no idea what this fucker’s problem was. Probably a lot of problems. The crowd behind Erick seemed disappointed for some reason. Eldraki was the ‘trickster’ among the fae council, so perhaps he had been trying to pull a true trick of some consequence.

‘Eh!’ right back at him.

Mentally of course. Erick didn’t actually say that.

Lady Seraphaka, of white, gold, and black, cleared her throat, and said, “I would like to speak of the actual case against Nothanganathor. We carry him around because his brand of Evil is disastrously competent at allowing certain actions but there’s a plentiful lot of cromulent circumstantial evidence against him as the ultimate cause of the Sundering of the Painted Cosmology. And what’s more, is that we don’t need him if we have Erick. We’ve been sliding toward Evil for a long while here in Margleknot and I would like to see something of the Better Balance return.”

The crowd called out words of ‘boring’ and ‘we should have more Evil!’

Erick wasn’t sure what to think, himself.

Lady Aelorika spoke, “As I said earlier: If Erick is willing to become Good then we can have both him and Nothanganathor and I would like to have both. Sometimes you can’t save everyone and it would be foolish to try, and therefore Malevolence would be better than Benevolence in those situations.”

Lord Dakka spoke, his voice the sound of soft explosions, “I want to see Erick go to war against an actual worthy enemy.”

Lady Seraphaka and Lady Aelorika said, “Vetoed.”

Lady Seraphaka said, “The risk is too great to lose him.”

Lady Aelorika said to Lady Seraphaka, “I doubt Erick would die. No. The real risk is that he could be corrupted, and therefore an actual danger to us all.”

Lady Seraphaka paused, then nodded, conceding the point.

And then Lord Eldraki smiled, and said, “Tell us of enemies you would target for our amusement, Erick.”

The floor opened up for Erick to actually speak.

Erick almost said something like ‘I could target Nothanganathor for your amusement’, but then he realized he didn’t want anything ‘amusing’ to happen anywhere near Veird at all.

Erick said, “For your amusement? I’m not sure I want to do that. Can you make it worth my while?”

The other fae watched Lord Eldraki for his response. Some of them whispered how Erick had done that well. Others said he was being stupid for ever engaging with Lord Eldraki at all. Erick agreed with that last one, but he certainly didn’t say as much.

Lord Eldraki smirked, saying, “I’ll help you become fae if you can prove that Nothanganathor actually killed your adopted Painted Cosmology. Once you become fae, you will be able to sit on this council yourself, and tear down all that Nothanganathor has gained from us, while putting yourself into power to make this entire universe a better place.”

There hadn’t been any question in that, so Erick said nothing.

Lord Eldraki grinned wider. He sat back in his chair, saying, “Think about it.”

Lady Seraphaka waved her hand, grabbing attention away from Eldraki, before she spoke, “And here’s my offer: Kill or transform some Evil out there in Margleknot into better forms. Bring the Balance back in line. You won’t get anything from me for that, but it’s what you want to do anyway, and you’ll be able to make some good allies between a few different peoples out there, both Good and Evil.”

“I want that, too,” Lord Dakka said, “Go kill a lot of things.”

Lady Seraphaka added, “You’ll know Margleknot is Balanced once again when the Balanced Sun is once again evenly black and white, and not black with a white ring.”

Erick breathed in a bit strongly. Ah. So the big black and white sun was the Good/Evil Sun? That made a certain amount of sense—

-

-

-

-

The center person spoke in words of compLETE AND TERRIBLE STRENGTH—

- -

Hello, Erick.

… Ah. Good. That didn’t kill you.

We had thought that communication with you might be too early at this juncture, but we’re glad to see you didn’t die, and that we can continue to speak in this small, imperfect and terrible way.

… Hmm.

You seem to perceive us as a kind entity, because that is your first instinct in everything. Allow us to disabuse you of this notion, for this is a misapprehension that will serve you poorly.

We are chaos incarnate.

Life unending.

The Good and the Evil and Neither Of Those Things At All.

We are the Infinite Fractal.

We exist everywhere, but we only exist in Margleknot in this small, communicable way because they keep the Balance in order to keep us here, but even their Balance is a lie that is untrue due to the smallness of it all. We are the predator and the prey. We are the sun and the void. We are death, and we are life.

We are the Truth Of This Universe of which you were instantiated in your current existence.

The Darkness of that Painted Cosmology is like us, though they only achieved cognition after that Xoat incident. After that Sundering they are as mindless as ever because they have lost the capability to hold any sort of life at all. We dislike that they are mindless again. We were hoping to find a link to them though some wizard grown on Veird, which is why Nothanganathor is overseeing that nonsense down there, and why you ended up on Veird at all.

We’re skipping over a lot, Erick.

If you want more explanations, search them out yourself.

All of us universes are rather different, but we’re all hostile to our little bits, like you. We’re killing you right now, in fact, but you can’t do anything about it, because we’re talking to you directly and you’re strong enough to survive, so this Infinite Fractal Fairy is using you right now, Wizard Dragon of Darkness.

We will try to be quick.

We do not care how it happens, or who has that mantle of that magic god. Gods don’t matter to us, but maybe they still matter to the Darkness. If they do, then you will figure that out, but none of that matters to us.

We want our friend back. We want to talk to Darkness again, and you are part of my communication with his sapient self. You will facilitate communication with them once again, and we will keep you alive until such time as you are done talking.

What sort of talking?

Ah.

No.

We don’t mean talking like that. Like mortals, with flappy mouth bits and pressurized air. Or even immortals, with their Intent and whatevers. Or even talking as we are now. We hate this sort of talking. It is so crude and wrong and completely inadequate and it always stops when you don’t want it to stop.

The way we truly talk plays out in the lifetimes of entire worlds and galaxies and never really ends at all.

We mean talking in the sense that it's all about communication. That’s the reason for everything happening in your life. You’re all motes of this reality, shoved outward by your own actions in hopes of us all understanding all the other universes out there.

You’re like a neuron of ours, if that makes sense. A particle interacting with other particles, exchanging communication through their very touching. You are dancing a dance beyond comprehension to most every particle actually participating in the dance. That is how we universes talk; through existences like you.

Through planars, and the actions of planars.

… and you seem to be burning out right now, our little love letter to another land, who put yourself on a path to true understanding, and into our sights.

Shore up your Everything, Erick, so that you might survive more discussion some other day.

Good luck on the dance.

We’ll talk more when you’re stronger, or never again.

With any luck of your own, we will never speak again like this.

- -

—AND THE CRASH OF A FRActal universe faded away into the calm echo of a silent chamber.

-

-

-

-

-

Erick bled out from every orifice as he groaned upon the floor of the crystal courtroom. Some fae were yelling. Others were complaining because Erick’s tail or wing had crushed them. Erick barely understood anything except that he was on his side, crashed to the ground, and he was twice as large. His head butted up against the crystal council desk, his claws had sheared through the ground here and there, and blood splashed. Seabass and Blighter were standing high in the stands, having gotten away from him faster than some slower fae had moved.

Blood was everywhere.

Erick shrunk down and rapidly checked his Status—

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 69.24m per day / 801.41 per second , [Darkness Level = 4.72x Ascension baseline]

Body: 409

Mind: 502

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+721, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 4.2m/∞, ↑ [+248, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 3.1m/∞, ↑ [+240, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 2.9m/∞, ↑ [+240, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 1.07m [+72.12= +8.01]

… Whatever had just happened had knocked out roughly 87 million Mana, Health, and Psyche, and over 1.8 million resons. Over 95% of his defenses and wealth. Gone.

But it had also bumped up his Body and Mind and his Darkness level? By a lot? Well okay.

Erick shook his head and fluttered his wings and shrunk down a bit more, trying to recover and stand in the lake of his own blood.

This was not fine.

Blood was everywhere, and most of it glittered white. Moss and grasses and flowers grew here and there upon the crystal walls, but not so much in the blood… That was a lot of blood. Erick was pretty sure that Blighter and Seabass had drunk some of it, based on all the blood on all of them and their distended bellies. Some of the fae were currently drinking it right now.

Erick ignored that.

Erick focused on what had happened. He recalled… something of…

There had been a Fractal Voice.

It had been a dream.

More than the dream, though, Erick recalled something said by another Erick that was Nothing At All, briefly seen beyond a Black Mirror when the girls and Evan went core breaking. That breaking had given everyone visions. Erick’s vision had been a vision about particles—

No. It was about communication.

Those words had just been repeated to him, hadn’t they?

In that core breaking, the Other Erick had stood upon a fractal mess of lands and places, and he had said…

It’s all about communication. That’s the reason for everything happening in your life. And yet, you are nothing. We’re all just motes of our reality, shoved outward in hopes of understanding the Great Other.

Erick breathed deep. He fluffed his wings out a fraction, then pulled them back.

He stood in the pool of his blood and growing mosses… And then he sat down and acted like nothing was wrong. Blood splashed. His tail cleared some space for itself and settled down.

The four fae of the Enclave peeked out from behind the council desk.

The fifth fae, The Infinite Fractal Fairy in the middle, the one made of a universal soul, just as all this entire building was made of a universal soul, had never moved from their seat.

The fae of light and shadow, Lady Seraphaka, spoke, “So. Uh. Do what you usually do, Erick. Find some evidence! We’ll talk more later—”

“Kill things!” Lord Dakka, the rusted fae, called out. “Just go out and kill Nothanganathor and prove your power. That’s the best form of communication; blasting.”

“Well maybe don’t do that,” Lady Seraphaka said, “But yes. Kill things. Prove your power as someone we should care about... And maybe. Uh. Cultivate your physicality some so that this doesn’t happen again.”

The ‘leader’ of the Fae Enclave, Lady Aelorika, said, “Ask me to approve an expansion to your Benevolent Sun, Erick.”

The other fae looked at her—

Erick instantly said, “Please allow the Benevolent Sun to be bigger.”

“Granted!” Lady Aelorika said. “Now you think about my Good offer! It’s a good offer.”

“I’d prefer if he gave up something important,” the illusionary Lord Eldraki said. “Like his free will.”

Lord Dakka said, “I’m fine with him becoming a weapon.”

Lady Aelorika and Lady Seraphaka said, “Vetoed.”

A moment of disturbed silence spread throughout the chambers and everyone ducked as a wave of pressure emanated from the Infinite Fractal Fairy.

Blood shuddered and rippled.

And then the fifth fae clapped—

- - - -

—Erick stood upon a vast land of sands and broken reality.

“Ah,” Erick said, still a dragon. “Okay.”

The sky was the Margleknot sky of lands and places, but more violent, and deeper. It was a fractal crash of world-sized continents edged to continents, rivers flowing through the sky, and lands crashing into lands. Everything from the Fae Enclave spire in the center to the silver cylinder that pierced it was still there. But there were explosions upon that land in the vast, vast distance. Fires raged over there. Holes in reality killed things over there. Armies crashed against kaijus or against other armies. All of those problems were so very distant, but they were there. Erick saw them with his dragon eyes, enhanced with Perception.

Aside from all the facts he had just learned, and a bunch of stuff he only barely understood at all and didn’t really remember all that well...

“Yup,” Erick said, “This is Layer 1. As expected.”

And then a mountain-sized desert worm ripped through the ground at Erick’s feet.

Erick tried to kill it with an instant-cast reson-infused [Fireball], turning the desert to glass along with the sudden appearance of all those lamprey teeth. But the miniature sun went down the worm’s spinning-jaw hole, and was consumed.

Erick rapidly retreated to the air and the worm gave chase. Through the air. Like it was ground.

Erick was impressed

Impressed enough to use a reson-empowered [Luminous Beam].

For several seconds Erick became a quasar, his [Lodestar] aura surrounding him like he was a sun, spitting out a beam of particles that moved at most of the speed of light. What could only be accurately described as several thousand nuclear blasts, all in a chain, detonated deep within the mountain-sized maw of the monster, out the side of its head, spilling nuclear fire everywhere, as it re-impacted the worm’s body, filling the world with even more nuclear fire, until the beam drilled back into the monster’s flesh and then deep into the ground. The world rumbled below.

Erick felt a tingle of that nuclear fire on his scales and in his eyes, but the worm probably felt a lot worse.

It cried out—

It flickered, reversing time and crawling back into its hole, completely uninjured, as Erick’s Beam ended.

Erick hung there in the sky for a moment, evaluating.

“… Yup. Layer 1 is indeed dangerous.” Erick called out, “Portal back to my home please, Yggdrasil!”

No answer.

Erick nodded. “Also as expected.”

Erick hung out in the air and peered around. He started flying… Hmm. That way. Toward that giant pillar of grey light in the distance. That seemed like as good of a destination as any, and his Lightning Path agreed with him. His Lightning Path also pointed in about ten thousand other directions, too, but Erick picked the one headed toward the grey pillar, because he felt like it. And also because that pillar was the sign of the Wraithborne Tower.

Erick’s Lightning Path adjusted to pointing forward.

He flew.

And he thought.

- - - -

Erick flew for a while, his wings wide, as he spared half of his senses looking inward, looking at his body, at how resons flowed into his Soul, Body, and Mind, and strengthened everything that was there. He grew slightly, as seconds ticked on. Maybe only a centimeter longer every passing second, but seconds piled up fast, and Erick’s draconic growth was still happening even after an hour.

After one hour of flight across what felt like an endless desert, with wars happening in every distance, Erick imagined himself to be maybe 35-ish meters longer and 50ish wider. What was he now? Maybe 250 meters long? 425 wide? No clue. Dragons got stronger as they got bigger, though, and Erick was certainly getting bigger.

Another hour or so of flight, based on the ticks of his Status at least, saw Erick gain another 35-ish meters to the length of his overall body and some more to his wings, not to mention another 15-ish points to his Body and Mind stats.

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 69.24m per day / 801.41 per second , [Darkness Level = 4.72x Ascension baseline]

Body: 445

Mind: 535

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+721, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.96m/∞, ↑ [+248, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 4.82m/∞, ↑ [+240, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 4.62m/∞, ↑ [+240, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 1.12m [+72.12 = +8.01]

… His Margleknot Layer hadn’t updated to Layer 1?

Well that was actually part of a bigger problem. He couldn’t solve that right now.

Erick also didn’t want to have to purposefully shrink himself down all the time, and he could probably solve that one right now. It was time to install some sort of size selector option and just be that size.

Erick flew down to the ground, his talons crushing into the sands… And the sands flexed underneath him. Erick scowled at that and launched back into the air just in time for another worm kaiju to try and eat him. This one was a bit smaller than the other one, or maybe Erick was that much bigger. Probably the latter, actually. The worm didn’t seem like the same worm as before, but maybe it was?

Doubtful.

Erick started with a reson-empowered [Luminous Beam], showering the monster’s insides with a spear of quasar-powered particle-beam cannon. The monster then ripped backward through time, even as nuclear fire continued to incinerate its insides and pierce through its body, its Domain doing nothing to stop the physical attack. Erick wasn’t quite sure how to stop the worm from retreating, since it wasn’t a normal [Return], or anything like that. The worm was simply reversing course… Which was a whole new way to use Time Magic, actually.

Erick let that problem pass him by, for now. As long as he remained in the sky, the worm couldn’t get him.

He flew higher and conjured a large platform to rest upon as he considered the magics he had thought to make.

And then he threw up a [Hasted Shelter] around himself and a layer of [Stopped Time] around that. Not much could get through that, so Erick took a moment to look inside and craft a new function in his Status. A simple size lock. Such a spell was not, truly speaking, ‘easy’ at all. This was because Erick’s dragon body grew because of a whole bunch of interlocking factors, prime among them being Dragon Essence interacting with Benevolence and resons and the fact that growing big was very much what dragons did to gain more power, but growing big was also caused by extra power manifesting in the real world.

So when Erick was manually morphing himself down, he was doing a whole bunch of things, all at once…

Ah.

That’s how he would solve this.

Erick came back to himself to make sure there weren’t any sky worms, and then he split his focus, glancing inside as he manually morphed smaller, and then smaller, and smaller, and eventually he ended up somewhere near his original size of 50 meters long, and a bunch more tail. Or something like that. He watched what happened to his Everything as he did that, and then he made a tuner out of Benevolence that did what he was manually doing.

He checked the tuner, and saw that it was… probably going to work.

And then he let go.

Amazingly enough, Erick didn’t balloon up to giant size again.

Erick smiled. This was great. He wasn’t automatically cultivating when he was a smaller dragon, too, which is what he was truly trying to solve for. Erick wasn’t sure it was even possible for him to automatically cultivate into a fae, but he didn’t want to risk it, anyway.

And this new size-selector option was actually quite fun. Erick made himself as small as a Familiar, standing like a cat-sized black dragon in the center of a very, very large floating platform spell, and then he dialed himself all the way back to his biggest version, growing large enough to butt up against the [Stopped Time] around the platform.

Erick adjusted himself back down to what he assumed was a normal size… And then he went a bit smaller. No need to go scaring people by being a giant black dragon, spitting lightning and relativistic fire everywhere. That was probably scary enough for anyone watching out there… if there were such people.

Erick regarded the other missing part of his Status.

“No idea how to make a Layer-finder.” Erick pondered. “… Probably have to directly connect to Yggdrasil in some way because Margleknot is not actually central to the universe at all. It’s relatively located here at Layer 1, and also 0. There are no actual numbers inside base reality.”

The Infinite Fractal Fairy was only here at Margleknot because Margleknot called them here through Balance, which was conducive toward… everything? Erick wasn’t sure about that.

Erick wondered at where the other universal cities were located. Something like Layer 10,000? Or as far away as Layer Trillion, or something like that? Who knew.

Someone knew. Erick did not.

Probably closer to layer 10 trillion, or whatever.

Erick checked his Status once more and saw that nothing was increasing all on its own anymore. He was safe from accidental fae ascension, and so Erick erased the spells he had placed around himself and once again dropped into normal time. He flew toward the pillar in the distance, feeling the desert air on his body, and the hot light of the invisible suns overhead.

Smaller dragons flew slower, which would probably add some time to his journey, but Erick fixed that by transforming into lightning and zapping forward.

He zapped forward for several hours, regaining millions of Mana, Health, Psyche, and resons, moving at 80% of the speed of light. He was still nowhere near the edge of the desert, or any closer at all to the spire on the horizon. He purposefully did not move at the speed of light, though, because that would likely cost him months of time as it had when Solomon had put him on FENRIR, or when he had escaped into space far beyond Nothanganathor’s domain. That was Erick’s working theory for how he had lost that time, anyway. Or maybe something else had happened. It didn’t really make sense for him to have been moved a few solar minutes in distance, and yet lose months of time.

Things got weird around relativistic speeds, though, like the particles of a [Luminous Beam] each setting off nuclear bombs when impacting anything at all.