“There are many ways to instantiate a [Familiar],” Quilatalap said, as he sat on a chair in the kitchen dining room. “We’ve gone over all of them before, but it’s important to go over them with Ophiel, too.”

Ophiel fluttered on Erick’s lap. “I’m here!”

Erick patted the little guy. “Yes, you are.”

Poi merely watched from the side.

It was just Quiatalap, Erick, Poi, and Ophiel right now. The girls and Evan were elsewhere, busying themselves with Solomon, who had been the first to leave once it became apparent what was happening today. Erick wasn’t quite sure what all of them were doing elsewhere, but he was pretty sure they were interacting with the Well in order to figure out the Lifeblood Heart problem. Solomon had said yesterday that they were 60% of the way through a comprehensive plan A, while only 30% and 5% of the way through a plan B and C. Each of those plans would involve actors far, far out of the scope of this operation here in this slime dungeon, so they could only plan for so much. Any of the Heart plans would involve Stratagold and the other Geodes, the Gods, Kirginatharp, and a Relevant Entity full unanimous vote for the project, along with assurances that all of them would be doing their part to ensure the Heart remained on Veird.

All of Solomon’s plans would invariably change when they met Rozeta’s plans and wrought plans and otherwise, and that was fine. Solomon was focused on that, and his Jane, and he did not want to be here for Ophiel’s birth, which was understandable, but still sad. Ophiel had been his son until months ago when he found out he was a repro and not the original. Solomon would be there afterward, though, because Erick had asked him to be there as part of the family. Ophiel would be raised by his uncle as much as he would be raised by his father.

… Hopefully, it worked out like that, but with all these recent happenings, Erick doubted the future would shake out quite so easily.

Erick had a lot of worries as he sat there, holding Ophiel in his lap, as Quilatalap spoke.

“The main way for a [Familiar] to come into being is to wait for them to achieve instantiation on their own, and they’ll naturally take what they want to take from the soul of their parent in order to construct their own soul, while the parent will naturally give up parts of their soul that they wish to give up. It’s all very intuitive but also extremely painful for both parties, for the splitting of a soul is never easy.” Quilatalap said, “If you were to spend 90 days in a [Hasted Shelter], which would be about 36 hours in the real world, then Ophiel would reach a point somewhere in those 90 days where instantiation —or birth— would happen naturally.

“The end result of that varies, but Ophiel should end up as a protean, like you Erick. He could also end up a dragonkin protean, which is something completely new. I’d suspect he’d end up like a 12-year-old boy with some fluffy wings of some sort —perhaps harpy-shaped— but also whatever he felt like being at any given point in time. It will be like raising a dragon in almost all ways, from spontaneous shape-shifting to the sudden destruction of property and the like. However, given your nature and the nature you instilled into Ophiel, all accidental destructions should be accidents.

“Ophiel will be stuck to you for at least a year, Erick; not willing to go anywhere without you, so expect that. But since you want to raise him with Solomon, and since the circumstances around Solomon are very similar to yours, then this expected tenancy of Ophiel’s will be lessened.

“I would also suspect that Ophiel will either come out as ten boys, or one boy with the ability to summon a linked copy of himself, or just one boy with the natural ability to summon bird-like selves. I give either option a 33% chance of being the final outcome.” Quilatalap asked, “So do you want to sit in a [Hasted Shelter] for 90 days? I’ll stay with you, and at the end of that, we’ll know a lot more about how Ophiel’s final form and capabilities are going to naturally shape up. I can even help guide his final form into either 10 boys, or one boy with multiple bodies, or one boy with summoned bird-selves, or some other option, should some other option look to be occurring.”

Erick said, “I’m not staying in a [Hasted Shelter] right now, but maybe for a month or two after Ophiel is born. We’ll find out later. I don’t want you controlling the outcome; whatever he is, he will be.”

Quilatalap nodded. “Then let us move on to the second birthing option.

“A forced instantiation.

“Done at the beginning of a [Familiar]s life, this sort of thing will get you hit with the Slave Protocols of the Script almost without a doubt. The creation of such a being would be like tying off a piece of your soul which is forever unable to act on their own, and which will always do as you say. Even when separated from the caster, it takes decades for such a soul to learn how to function on its own. When they remain with the caster, the former [Familiar] will never move on.

“But since we’re doing this when Ophiel has already created most of his own soul, that won’t happen.

“What will happen is that we’re going to need to decide exactly where to cut to remove his soul from your own. There are many ways to do that, and we’ve spoken of most of the good ones, but there are always more.” Quilatalap asked, “Have you decided on the ritual you want to use?”

Erick said, “We’re doing the Mortal Umbilicus.”

Quilatalap even lips turned down a fraction. “… Are you sure about that?”

“It’s the most normal instantiation method without needing to go through instantiation. So yes. I pick that one.”

“That one is extremely painful.”

“I can handle it.”

“Okay. Then that is what we’re doing.” Quilatalap said, “We should do this under the Script, too; it’s easier that way. So not here.”

Erick smiled, and said, “Let’s go to Benevolence.”

“Before you leave,” Poi said, “I need updates either here or at the cloud house on the daily. Kromolok is asking nicely for constant updates, too, but he’s not asking any invasive questions anymore. He still thinks about those invasive questions, though.”

“Sure; absolutely. I’ll be recovering for a few hours, and you’re right there at the House anyway, but I’ll be sure to keep the House apprised of what’s happening. Might only stay inside Benevolence for a day.”

Poi nodded; satisfied.

Quilatalap said, “Ophiel is going to want to be in a normal mana environment, and away from people. So staying inside your gate space might be the best location for him, for at least a week or two, until both he and you understand how his new life works.”

That brought Erick up short for a moment. “A week or two? I haven’t… Ever done that, actually.” Erick decided, “I’ll have a Benevolence Gate open here for Solomon and the girls and Evan.”

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye appeared in the room, as he said, “I wish to be born as well, father.”

… Ah.

Ophiel got mad, fluffing up, saying, “I’m first! I’m here first!”

“And that’s fine, Ophiel!” Yggdrasil said, sounding exhausted, “But I want to be born, too.”

“Okay okay,” Erick said, just as Ophiel was about to declare his superiority over Yggdrasil by virtue of creation order. Ophiel still looked rather smug, though, so he felt he had won. “I’m going to have to speak to a few other gods, then…” Erick had a thought, and the more he thought that thought, the more it seemed like the proper thing to do. “Yggdrasil? How do you feel about stopping yourself from creating any world seeds for a while, and not letting anyone else use you to create any world seeds, either? All the world will simply have to trust you, and you will have to uphold that trust. How do you feel about no seal at all?”

Yggdrasil’s eye did a little pulse of surprise. “Uhh— Yes! I’ll take a non-magically-enforceable pact to not give rise to any new worlds for 87 more years. I’m sure I can do that.”

He sounded more full of bluster than surety.

It was fine, for now.

“Okay.” Erick said, “Then this is what I am going to do…”

- - - -

“You want Yggdrasil’s seal released now, Erick?” Melemizargo said, as he sat on his white throne at the top of Mount Ascendant. “Are you sure that is wise?”

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye held to Erick’s right, watching, while Ophiel gripped Erick’s left shoulder, also watching. They were the only ones here right now, for Quilatalap had chosen to wait at the slime dungeon until Erick got this part of his life settled.

Erick said, “I need to take a break from all the stuff happening right now and I want to be with my kids, to watch them grow a little before the next Storm comes and I am called away to fight once again.” He looked to Yggdrasil, saying, “Yggdrasil wants to show me his girlfriend, too, and it’s time I do that.”

Yggdrasil’s eye went still, and then he resumed bobbing slightly.

Melemizargo frowned from on high, his black-scaled visage showing a hint of glowing white fangs thirty meters above Erick. And then Melemizargo dipped down, his meters-wide maw coming closer, before switching to stare at Yggdrasil. “You are larger than a mortal, Yggdrasil. This behavior of yours at this young age is only acceptable because you are a child and still attached to your father and you have no real idea what is happening right now; how your plans are disrupting my plans. If you were someone else bringing this level of disruption to my plans then I would have much stronger words to say about your desire for freedom, but I will say this; your desire for freedom comes at a cost. I don’t know what that cost is, but it will be extracted from you nonetheless, and—”

“Melemizargo,” Erick said, softly.

Melemizargo narrowed his giant eyes at Erick and then pulled back. “I will say this, and be done with this foolishness: You never should have been sealed so strongly, Yggdrasil. It is only because of the weakness of this world and all the rest of the New Cosmology that you were burdened so strongly to begin with. That never should have happened if we weren’t so vulnerable right now.

“Do not add to the vulnerability of this world or any other.”

Yggdrasil bowed his eye, saying, “Solidity is strength, and I hope to embody the sort of strength that will hold up worlds one day.”

Melemizargo stared at Yggdrasil. And then he flickered with a golden sheen.

Erick felt something unfurl within his core. Golden light shifted within, like a spider’s web that had dried out in the heat of the day, fraying a little more. It was the seal, reorienting, holding on to the final thread cast by Rozeta. Only one more to go.

Erick said, “Thank you, Melemizargo. I hope Rozeta agrees to such a change of plans as well.”

“She won’t agree that easily, especially if you want to completely free Yggdrasil.” Melemizargo glanced at Ophiel, and then back to Yggdrasil, saying, “As soon as you free Yggdrasil, you’re going to want to plant him one final time, to truly plant the World Tree. I suggest the third island of this former Glorious Land, and then we can officially rename all three islands from their broken names into something better. Infamy, Villainy, and Depravity, can become Honor, Virtue, and Nobility.”

Yggdrasil said to Erick, “I would accept this, father.”

Erick had almost said something himself, but his track changed, and now he was speechless. “… Okay. Then that’s the plan there. I’ll probably need a week after getting Ophiel instantiated, though. Assuming Rozeta is okay with this idea.”

- - - -

“Absolutely not, Erick,” Rozeta said, “And I don’t need time to think about it more. The answer is ‘no’.”

They were inside Benevolence right now, and Erick had not yet prepared for Ophiel’s instantiation. He hadn’t done much of anything, actually, except look around the place as he usually did.

It looked normal.

All the ground for a hundred kilometers in every direction was white or barely-grey hexagonal stone, like columnar basalt. It was kinda odd to look at it these days, specifically after that time Erick had spent talking about astronomical engineering with the Stratagolds. They had spoken of making giant, continent-sized plates of hexagonal adamantium lines 100 kilometers long, stacked side by side to make a plate ten thousand kilometers wide and over 200 thick, with a runic web sandwiched between two adamantium plates. Erick’s gate space was already sort of like that, but on a much smaller scale; it even had a double layer of columns, with the center area filled with tiny nooks full of hidden spaces, and lots of water. Erick chalked up the coincidence of his Benevolence to their worldplates more to hexagons being the best possible shape to fully fill in an area, and not to any sort of Establishment, or Wizardry, or stuff like that.

Erick’s Gate Space in Benevolence was more than a simple large plate of land, anyway. Every so often the meter-wide hexagons were pushed down, and wild groups of plants grew in the dirt. A lot of flowers, a lot of vines that sent tendrils across the hexagonal land, searching for other places to grow. There were also trees in some locations, and all of them bore fruit. Erick had a whole orchard of soul balm palm trees growing in here, and they seemed to grow really well by the waterways.

The waterways were perhaps Erick’s favorite thing in this land.

The center of this gate space —and all other Benevolence gate spaces— was special. It was there that this whole gate space reminded Erick of those pins-in-plastic boards that you could use to make an impression of something. The impression left on this land was one of a mountain that was almost like a column. Water crested off the top of that central spire and poured down the column of white stone, cascading down the pillars like an Olympic-sized pool emptying over every edge of that central mountain every second. Green moss, like drapes, hung down that mountain everywhere that the water did not crash too hard.

An eternal flame, a ten-meter wide bonfire, held above that central column, casting warmth everywhere, while the waters themselves fell into a huge lake that Yggdrasil kept stocked with any fish that Erick wanted to eat. Some hidden tunnels in that lake led to the hidden spaces inside the gateplate, where more fish lived and water plants grew in shadowed water.

Yggdrasil, Erick’s largest son, had done most of the directed gardening of this place. He had complete control over the land of this space, but he was not physically connected to this land. Looking off to the south today, for he was not always directly south, there was Yggdrasil, floating in the Benevolent Sky, dwarfing this entire 100 kilometer wide land with his own largess. He was looking big these days, at well over double the width of this land, and maybe half the height. He was wide.

He was also one of the best trees Erick had ever seen.

Beautiful glowing white bark, a thick trunk, a green canopy that was made of leaves so bright green they looked like they were on green fire, while a rainbow held around his entire crown, and all his serpentine roots held spread out in the air. Only a few of Yggdrasil’s roots reached all the way to this land, floating inside Benevolence. But he didn’t need to actually touch this land at all to control it. The land was already connected to him via the wide river that wandered from the fountain in the center, through a beach-and-hexagonal path, to fall off of the side of the gate space and then flow much more freely right to Yggdrasil himself. A small ocean of water floated all around Yggdrasil’s roots, and that was where he kept his prized fish, or the ones that needed special attention.

Or at least that had been his purpose in bringing fish into this land years ago. Nowadays, scarlet kings and golden slippers and rainbow flits and a whole bunch of others were all over Benevolence.

Whenever Kiri had established a gate space, or whenever Erick had expanded the Gate Network on his own, a new columnar land had been created out there, in the fog of Benevolence, with another water source making another river that flowed off the sides of those spaces, to eventually find their ways to Yggdrasil. Or to each other. Yggdrasil was connected to every Gate Node ever made in this land, and his fish had used that connection to spread far and wide.

There were also stony pathways made of columnar, solid Benevolence, that connected every node together. There was an entire world inside Benevolence. A world that it was easy to fall off of. One could end up anywhere on Veird if you were to fall off the edge of the stone, or dive deep enough into the dark wells in the center to come out the other side, or if you simply fell out of the rivers that wound through the Benevolent Sky, where soft white lightning tangled into black knots here and there.

The Prophesied Storm was still out there, about 4-ish months away, hovering beyond the edge of the gateplate like a black rip in the sky. It was also filled with Red Sparks that only Erick could see.

Erick gestured to the Benevolent Sky right now, saying to Rozeta, “Humor me, please. There is a reason I asked you to meet me here to have this conversation.”

Rozeta frowned at Erick, her pantsuit-wearing business-woman look doing a good job of conveying exactly how angry, disappointed, and inwardly furious that Erick was asking this of her. And then she glared at the sky, and said, “Maybe I’ll release Yggdrasil and simply trust him to not make seeds for 87 more years, with no resealing required at all.”

Nothing happened.

Erick gave Rozeta a Look.

Rozeta frowned right back at him, then breathed deep, and looked at the Sky—

Ah.

That did it.

Now she was actually considering Erick’s idea, instead of dismissing it outright.

The Sky of twisting lightning began to twist in a different way.

The 100-year Wall of Problems, which was only 87-ish years away, began to fragment. Lightning twisted this way and that, and like a great wind blowing through a dense forest, a lot of overgrowth and loose issues and minor things were stripped away, passing far into the distance. The few Red Sparks that existed inside Benevolence, inside of a few of the larger tangles, moved with those tangles, or else were pulled apart by Lightning as the future was once again cast into uncertainty.

Erick watched the reorganization, but he also watched Rozeta.

The Goddess of the Script was concerned, and yet… intrigued.

Rozeta spoke to the very fabric of reality, “Maybe Yggdrasil can be trusted with power, both on his own and on the power he will be able to grant others, just like his father.”

The sky sparked and a hundred tangles vanished, leaving behind one very visible black tangle like a world-swallowing hole, deep in the Benevolent Sky.

Aside from that major black tangle there were a good 24 smaller tangles scattered here and there. Erick recognized most of those smaller tangles. That one, located several years out —and also 40 years out— was the advent of the Computer Mage, as some people in House Benevolence had taken to calling them. That one over there at around 30 years out was the breaking of the Greensoil Republic; a rather new prognostication but one that was already on the way out, as King Darundi Raivo was already taking steps to ensure the peaceful transfer of power to whoever would come next.

With the voiding of tens of threats and the advent of one large one, Erick was actually quite happy with what he was looking at. That big problem was 250 years out. The ‘hundred year wall’ was practically gone.

But there was another hole in the sky, lined with Red, that only Erick could see. That Yawning Void —for that is all it could have been— was a year out, just beyond the edge of the platform.

It was a rising sun of Red, like a giant Red Eye attempting to pierce through a veil of Benevolence, trying and failing to stare into Erick’s soul. But it flickered left and right. It saw nothing. It was blind.

Erick ignored it, putting it out of his mind for a moment, both because it was not a problem for various reasons he would pull apart later, and because Rozeta did not see it.

Rozeta just stared at the Yawning Void in the far Sky. Softly, she said, “On the balance, it’s better. Stronger. But that hole in the world 250-ish years from now looks like a Yawning Void. It is concerning that such a shift would ever exist at all, and since we’re pretty sure this universe is… more basic than the Old Cosmology, then that could only mean the Death of Benevolence Itself.” Rozeta looked to Erick, and said, “Which is concerning for other reasons.”

Erick jolted a little. He looked to the Sky again. “… Ah. Well. I don’t like that. That seems like a future that could slip around, too… Oh. Well look at that.” Erick frowned as the black void 250 years in the future slipped forward in time by 249 years, briefly overlapping the Red for the barest moment. The Death of Benevolence was Right Here for a vague moment—

That’s not what was happening at all, though.

Erick held most of his surprise in, not letting it show, when the Black Benevolence zapped the Red Void Eye, annihilating it, and then flickered back into its position in the sky, and then rapidly slipped further away. This time it was 450 years out…

Benevolence had just killed that [Scry] eye, hadn’t it? Because that’s what that Red Sun had to be. A [Scry] eye.

… Thank god Erick made Benevolence able to act on its own all those years ago!

Erick played it off, saying, “I guess it decided to go away and come back 500 years from now?”

“I must confess, Erick, I strongly thought of killing you right now, to test what I was seeing.”

“... I know. I was going to brush past that, though.”

Rozeta still had that ‘kill switch’ implanted in him, through his connection to the Script. Erick ignored it practically all the time, but apparently he shouldn’t be ignoring it so much.

Rozeta apologized, “Apologies, Erick.”

Erick ignored it, turning back to the Sky. “That Prophesied storm in a few months has vanished. Which is strange.”

Rozeta eyed Erick. And then she looked at the Lightning Shield on his wrist. “You’re wearing that thing everywhere, then.”

“It’s not as much of a challenge to wear as one might think.” Erick gestured with his left arm and the Shield floated a meter away, becoming slightly insubstantial. “It’s a high-grade divine artifact, so it can be unobtrusive if it doesn’t sense any nearby threat; floating in the air or at my back, or whatever. I might even give it back to Sininindi in several months.”

“She talked to me about that meeting that you had with her. She said you looked like you had seen the end of the world.”

“I have; a few times now. Benevolence is capable of saving more than I imagined it could be capable of, but also seeing more than I ever considered, and I’m still trying to digest all of that.”

“Is that why you’ve chosen to step back from pulling items from the Dark? From continuing on the initial path you set for yourself?”

“Among other reasons. I need a break. Ophiel needs to be born in a time of peace, and so does Yggdrasil. Solomon and you and all the rest of the world need time to figure out how to handle the Heart; to keep it here. I won’t be ascending to True Wizard anytime soon, Rozeta; it’s just not happening. I do, however, know what I need to do to get there.”

For a long moment Rozeta said nothing.

Erick waited.

Rozeta said, “Give me a week on this new plan to simply trust that an unsealed Yggdrasil won’t be a problem. I’ll get back to you with an answer then.” Then she softened, and said, “Good luck, Erick, with Ophiel, and Yggdrasil. What method are you going with?”

“The Mortal Umbilicus.”

“A fine choice if there ever was one. Good day, Erick.”

Erick grinned. “See you around.”

Rozeta flickered away, dispersing in a faint cloud of white-gold light—

Yggdrasil’s eye appeared and the big guy happily said to Erick, “I can wait a week!”

“Good! Then you have time to show me your girlfriend. Either before or after Ophiel’s birth; your choice. I’ve given you enough warning. I need to see her and vet her.”

Yggdrasil froze. “… Uh. I’ll. Uh. I’ll get back to you on that.”

And then Yggdrasil’s eye vanished.

Erick smiled to himself a little as he held his head high and walked across the hexagonal land. It was time to make a temporary house, and since the Sky was looking rather clear, perhaps it would be nice to have some big windows facing the Sky? A nice little sunroom, perhaps.

The Red Sparks had already returned to the edge of the platform, a good 40 kilometers away, but they were no longer a red sun lurking on the horizon. They were just normal Red Sparks, trying to influence the Sky and succeeding here and there. But mostly failing.

That was because they weren’t Red Sparks at all.

The Benevolent Sky was the basic prognostication functionality of Benevolence. This meant many things. First of all, it meant that the things a person saw in Sky were not really in the Sky at all; those Red Sparks were not Red Sparks, they were ‘images captured on film’, or ‘watching a nuclear blast from behind ten mirrors and deep, deep in a bunker, protected from the blast’. Erick suspected that the Red Leviathan was using some sort of similar methodology to do his own prognostication efforts since having a divorced view of possibility was an essential part of safe prognostication.

Of course, prognostication was not nearly that simple, and simply seeing a thing in the deep mana might alert that thing to [Scry] like effects, if one was attuned to that sort of sensitivity. ‘A thing’ might even be ‘a specific future’, and viewing that particular thing might cause that particular thing to happen in rare cases. It was the titular ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.

Benevolence certainly did some of that as Erick could attest with his latest ‘lightning path’ realization of Benevolence.

But very, very few things could influence the Benevolent Sky outside of the Benevolent Sky’s own control.

One of those things was obviously the Red Sparks, though. The Sky had also gone wonky when the Anarchy Wizard and the Blue Wizard were around, but those Wizards weren’t able to fully escape the Sight of the Benevolent Sky, and they weren’t able to break the Benevolent Sky, either. The Red Sparks were a world of difference from two Wizards, and it was obviously capable of understanding that something was undermining its power—

Hence the giant Red Eye that had tried to peer into this place.

—But it wasn’t able to break this space. If it were capable of that, it would have already done it.

Perhaps this inability of the Red was because Benevolence was fully accepted by Rozeta and the God Pact, and already heavily integrated into the world, what with the Gate Network and Yggdrasil and such? Or perhaps the Red liked the instability and newness that Benevolence brought forth, and it was going to use everything Erick had built in order to make the ensuing crash all the worse.

Whatever the Red Leviathan was, it was clearly Malevolence Itself, but Erick kept that word out of his mind and especially out of his mouth as much as he could. You don’t go naming great evils and not expect them to show up right away.

Erick was already mentally making adjustments to his plan to hide out for a while and not confront the Red until he absolutely needed to. The world was good right now. No need to go upsetting the applecart. The Red had already displayed its willingness and capability to kill, so now it was time to go into hiding. Besides! Solomon needed to become immune to the Red Sparks and make a good plan to get the Heart, and that would take some time.

Time enough to raise some sons.

He would get back to war soon enough.

- - - -

Erick stood outside of a little cottage he had made with the resources of the land.

He was quite proud of his ‘little’ house. It was only one floor, which was a big change from his normal sorts of living spaces. There was a big kitchen, a big family room, some rooms for him and Quilatalap, another for Solomon, another for Yggdrasil, and a few for some guests. Great big bathrooms, one with a heated hot tub. A nice kitchen. A few learning rooms…

Okay. Well. It wasn’t a ‘small house’ at all. It had turned into a compound.

Erick had even made an outdoor play area for Ophiel that included a bunch of jungle gyms and flying courses because Erick wasn’t sure what Ophiel’s final form would take until it actually happened. Ophiel had one bedroom right now, but Erick had extra space down on one side of the house to add more rooms if needed, if he ended up with 10 Ophiel, but if that happened he’d probably just build a second story for all his extra kids.

The only reason he went for one story right now was that Erick was absolutely sure that Ophiel would end up on the roof at least once and try jumping down and then failing to fly, for some reason. So he didn’t want to build the house too tall.

Erick asked Ophiel, “How do you like it, Ophiel?”

“I want taller! Give me roost!”

Erick tensed a little, and then he went to the playground and made a ‘big tower’ that looked much larger than it actually was, at only two stories tall. It was a children’s play tower.

“Now add color!” Ophiel demanded.

Erick smiled. “You and I can add color together when you’re born. That’s one of the plans I have planned, okay?”

“… But I want it now?”

Erick chuckled. “You gotta wait for good things sometimes, Ophiel.”

“But I waited so loooooooong!”

Erick would have chuckled, but he was worried. He hugged Ophiel to his chest, saying, “And soon you’re going to have to relearn everything, Ophiel. Are you ready for that?”

“Yes! Make me purple pie!”

Erick smiled softly. “I’m sure Quilatalap has one saved up for afterward. What do you say we go get him now?”

Ophiel flapped and squirmed right out of Erick’s arms, fluttering to the air and summoning a [Gate] right away. Quilatalap was on the other side, messing with some ritual equipment one final time, but now he looked surprised.

Ophiel announced, “Where is my pie!”

Quilatalap nodded solemnly, saying, “I have it in a secure location, ready for afterward.” He looked to Erick. Erick nodded. With a wave of power, Quilatalap lifted a whole bunch of crystals and metal and one intricately runed pair of scissors into the air, to follow the large orcol man as he stepped through into Benevolence. Ophiel shut the [Gate] behind him.

Quilatalap breathed deeply, then smiled as he looked around. “This place always makes me feel great. It’s the soul healing. Like a bubbly bath.” Then he looked to Erick, adding, “But I can’t stay more than 5 days in here before it starts to push me out.”

“I know. I’m not asking you to, and this place was never meant to be a permanent residence for anyone except Yggdrasil, and even he’s only 1/9 present in this place.” Erick said, “I’ll be stepping out when Ophiel wants to leave, and I’m not sure how long that will be.”

Quilatalap nodded then began walking toward the house, his ritual gear floating with him, as he said, “We can set up out here, yes? Any place in particular you want?” He set down the crystals and the strange-looking scissors on a bench beside the front door, before he went inside. “It looks nice.”

Erick followed, and Ophiel went and inspected the ritual gear. “If I need to put more rooms in for more Ophiel, then I will.”

Quilatalap turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “You sure about that?”

“Yes. However he wants to be, I will let him, and if there are ten of him, then there are ten of him.”

“Erick,” Quilatalap said, “I know you could theoretically handle ten new sons, but you should solidify something lesser than that. You have that choice.”

“Ah. Well. I mean, that if he wants to have multiple bodies, he can. That’s the version I think I want to pursue. Single person, many bodies. If we can do that?”

“I am me!” Ophiel said.

Quilatalap grinned. “Glad that’s settled, then. Then how about spellwork? I see you have the secondary core gestating in your belly. I highly suggest you give Ophiel no spells at all, and you let him form his own magic.”

Erick smiled. “Nope.”

“Okay. Then I’m definitely going to be spending a maximum of 3 days here, to mitigate any possible stray magic coming my way. As soon as he’s more solid in his immense magical power then I might rejoin you. Other than that, I have received an invitation to be at Ascendant Mountain to deal with the new old Shades and an invitation to get back to Storm’s Edge, to finish the dungeon. I’m going to be taking both options, but the Mountain first; Storm’s Edge can last a while without me.”

“Are Soltic and Vanya doing okay on their own?”

“I believe so, but I would feel better about being there in person.” Quilatalap looked at Erick's Lightning Shield. “Are you going to keep that on? This sort of magic does work best when the creator is unadorned.”

“I am absolutely sure that me wearing the Lightning Shield will not interfere with Ophiel’s instantiation.” Erick had already foreseen the option of taking off the Shield or leaving it on for this, and the Benevolence was telling him to keep the Shield on, and that was his own instinct anyway, so it was an easy enough Lightning Path to follow. “If Ophiel inherits any peculiar Lightning capabilities because of the Shield then that is fine. If he inherits any Sight magics because of my All-Seeing Eye, then that is fine, too.”

Quilatalap nodded slowly, then he said, “I thought so. And that’s why I wanted to sit down and have a talk with you about giving your children too much stuff.”

Erick almost objected—

But Quiltatalap held up a hand, saying, “You can make your own decisions, but I would be remiss —as someone who has seen everything before, and participated in most of it— if I did not try to talk you out of this decision to give your kid so much power. When he instantiates he’ll have automagic Script access, but he’ll still be a kid. Not a weapon. He does not need a whole 1-for-1 copying of your magic. What he does need is the ability to protect himself and not harm others. [Cleanse], [Mend], [Grow], [Prismatic Ward], [Pristine Benevolence], and [Gate], but maybe not [Gate] at all. You don’t want him vanishing on you and being lost, unable to come back because he accidentally stepped through a hole in the world and he doesn’t know how to properly use [Gate].

“You especially don’t want him with [Gate] if Solomon or I are going to be watching after him at all; we literally won’t be able to provide boundaries for him at all if he has [Gate]. He certainly does not need [Luminous Beam], or [Vivid Gloom], or [Wither], or any of the massive Shaping magics you have used through him. Please trust me on this. At the very least when we do the ritual I ask that you let me cut closer to him, instead of in the middle.”

“I hear and understand your concerns… And you’re right, honestly.” Erick said, “But even though it might lead to difficulties, I know what choices I have to make, and I have made them already.”

Quilatalap nodded. “Okay. Then I have said my piece and I will interfere no more with your decisions regarding your children, and will simply support you.”

He was acting way too distant, wasn’t he.

Erick gave Quilatalap a Look, saying, “I know you put a love for Ophiel in your heart, Quilatalap. You don’t have to act like you don’t want to be a father.”

Quilatalap’s eyebrows went up a little. And then he chuckled. “Thought I hid that better.”

“You have, but I know you.”

Quilatalap said, “What I want and what is good for others are not always the same things, and this is one area where I recognize my shortcomings. For example, if Ophiel were a normal child, and someone in school bullied Ophiel, I would ask Ophiel the severity of the bullying, and instruct Ophiel to give a commensurate response. If someone poked Ophiel with a penknife, I would tell Ophiel to punch the child in the face until A Child’s Protection activated.”

Erick paled a little.

Ophiel continued, “And if someone should actually assault Ophiel, I would tell Ophiel to cut off some limbs.”

“OKAY!” Erick said, “Those are all debatably good responses to grown-up violence! Not good responses against child-level violence.”

“And I would agree to disagree on that. Children are vicious.” Quilatalap said, “So let me be the violent uncle who makes pies, and not the second father.”

Erick almost said something more—

“I want my pie!” Ophiel said, standing to the side on the floor, between Erick and Quilatalap, looking like a very angry, very small bird. He barely came up to Erick’s shin, and he didn’t even rise above Quilatalap’s ankle. “Stop ignoring me! Where my pie!”

Erick picked Ophiel up, saying, “Let’s get you born first.”

Ophiel was almost about to squirm out of Erick’s grip, but he calmed, realized what Erick had said, and cried out, “Born!”

- - - -

Erick wore a loincloth, the Shield hovering at his back, and the Melemizargo-ish All-Seeing Eye around his neck, as he stood out under the Benevolent Sky, atop a bare hexagonal stone. Two meters away another hexagonal stone had been raised from the ground, to serve as the center of the ritual. Ophiel rested on that pillar right now, along with the core that Erick had made for his specific use which would form the core of his new self.

Several stones away in every direction from that center pillar stood other stone pillars, each of them topped with stone obelisks. Each of those obelisks were carved up and down with wishes for a happy life, good fortune, a joyful childhood, and a bunch of other good luck words and phrases, all of them carved with different Elemental imbuements. Mostly Air, Benevolence, and Healing imbuements, as Air was Ophiel’s base Element, Benevolence was where he was going and which would have a heavy influence in his life, and Healing was simply a general option that one did for general well-wishes.

The obelisks were made of airstone, specifically, which was the stone that had the most resonance with Elemental Air. It wasn’t air steel, which would have made this ritual truly strong, but strength in this ritual was not something Erick wished to employ.

If a Moral Umbilicus ritual was too strong, then it would cause deep damage to both the creator and the created when the umbilical was cut. A weaker ritual was necessary here in order to let magic fill in some gaps in the creation of the new person, allowing for much healthier growth afterward. A tattered soul was easier to heal from than a soul which had had something directly removed from it because souls were not like bodies; they were ephemeral things made of thoughts and perspective and dreams. A dream which was partially forgotten could be more easily remembered than a dream which had been completely removed from a person.

Erick said to Ophiel, “Bring in the rest of your bodies, Ophiel, wherever they might be.”

Ophiel chirped, “Okay, Dad!”

[Gate]s opened up in the air, like tiny portals into other parts of the world, which is exactly what they were. Ophiel tumbled out of the ocean in one spot, rapidly catching the deep water that followed him through and dispersing that water to the side of the ritual space. Other Ophiel tumbled out of the freezing skies high above the Surface, bringing that chilly sky with them. One Ophiel escaped a children’s park where he had been watching the kids play, wanting to go play himself. Ophiel came in from the throne room of House Benevolence, leaving behind Kiri and Sunny as they dealt with the goings-on of the day, while another Ophiel came in from a monster hunt, where he was saving people from some sort of hydra—

“Finish that one, Ophiel. We can wait.”

All of Ophiel that had tumbled out of the various [Gate]s launched rapidly and with hard edges to their feathers as they whipped back through the portal with the hydra and the adventurers. Erick suspected that was happening somewhere down in Nergal, maybe… A hundred kilometers south of Eidolon? Erick wasn’t sure what Ophiel was doing down there at all, but if he was helping people, then Erick didn’t mind Ophiel’s forays into the world.

He did that sometimes.

… Erick was going to end up with a teenager when today was over, wasn’t he. Not a precocious little 8-year-old boy, but a teenager, testing boundaries and… Well. Erick wouldn’t be able to truly enforce any boundaries anymore, but… This was fine. Erick smiled as he watched Ophiel clean up the hydra mess and heal up the adventurers, and then come right back through the portal into Benevolence.

Ophiel was a good kid.

All of Erick’s kids were good kids.

And now, all 10 of Ophiel crowded the pillar and Ophiel’s prospective core, like ten little angels… Which were already fighting with each other and pushing each other off the pillar. A few Ophiel ended up on the ground, which was… What it was.

Erick breathed deep—

And every Ophiel stood at attention, waiting for whatever might come.

Erick began, “I love you, Ophiel, and to ensure that you are born correctly, we will be severing you from my soul today. It will be utterly painful for both of us, but in the end, you’ll be able to eat all the purpleberry pie you want, but you’ll also get a stomach ache if you do that. That’s one small thing you’ll get to learn soon enough. Bodies are not all fun, but they’re pretty great in many different ways. I wish for you to find satisfaction in your new life, for you might separate from me now, but you will always be a part of me, and I will always be here for you. I love you, Ophiel.”

Ophiel chirped in chorus, “I love you, Dad!”

Erick breathed deep, again, and did a very little Wizardry,

“In Benevolence, Ophiel arise,

“In lightning realm, claim mortal guise

“A Familiar soul now transformed

“A boy now born, magic adorned.”

Erick tensed as his insides did a tumble, his soul moving in odd ways as parts reorganized and then shifted again. The stone obelisks shimmered. Quilatalap stood outside of the circle, waiting for the proper moment, his scissors in one hand. Lightning crackled across Erick’s skin—

The Mortal Umbilicus ritual was an unclassed sort of magic of a type that read a lot like the process of a cell undergoing mitosis, in order to split into two new cells. During mitosis, there was a reorganization of DNA in the cell in order to bring that long chain of information into an orderly system, and then copies of the DNA split off into two new cells, made from the stuff of the old cell. This particular ritual did that same sort of thing, but with a pair of twin cores, and not at all like a cell dividing.

It was like a fast-forward pregnancy, but entirely soul-based, with biology coming along later.

A bolt of soft white lightning connected Erick’s core to the core surrounded by Ophiel and ten out of the ten Ophiel winced hard, trilling in sudden hateful flute sounds. Erick’s Benevolent lightning connected from Ophiel’s core, to all 10 Ophiel, like a branching path finding its purpose—

A grand fulmination of Benevolence reached down from the sky and up from the ground, to reach through Erick, striking at his entire body, entering every toe and finger and his eyes, completely ignoring the Lightning Shield on Erick’s back, because this was Erick doing this, and the Lightning Shield was streaming Lightning through Erick just as much as the rest of the realm.

The Lightning of the Shield tingled compared to Benevolence Itself.

Erick did not scream as power tore at his body, shredding his stomach, casting blood into the Lighting as power and soul streamed into Ophiel. But Ophiel did scream, as all of Erick’s gathered Lightning blasted Ophiel into the sky, killing nine Ophiel and lifting a single remaining Ophiel and his core heavenward.

Erick was pretty sure that Quilatalap shielded himself with a sudden flash of grey Death—

And then Quilatalap was in the middle of the ritual, flying in the sky, directly between Erick and Ophiel, his black, Death-forged scissors held forward, ritualistically cutting a soul that had been portioned and stretched between Erick and Ophiel.

Black Death cleaved life from life.

Lightning shattered.

Almost all of the power of the moment recoiled back into Erick, snapping back and wrapping around him, then flowing into him where it would eventually settle down if everything had gone right. A much smaller portion snapped into Ophiel like a bridge cable stressed too much. Ophiel’s portion did not settle at all.

Tiny drops of Erick’s blood mixed, taken from him by the lightning, splashed onto Ophiel’s core, fresh red mixing with the dried red blood that was already there, from when Erick took that secondary core out from his stomach.

Power wrapped around Ophiel and his core, cocooning him—

And suddenly the ritual slowed. The moment of power was done. Erick’s core and soul were in shambles, both of them rocked with cracks and ragged spaces, but Quilatalap rested his free hand on Erick’s shoulder and a quick [Greater Treat Wounds] began to help alleviate some of the pain. Erick worked on accreeting his core to heal the rest, fractures and shards gathering under his power to heal his core under a deluge of fresh, directed mana.

Ophiel’s cocoon was still there, though it was about a meter closer to the ground now. It was falling slowly, like a soap bubble, drifting a little this way, then a little that way—

A cool breeze drifted across the land, catching Ophiel’s weightless, airy cocoon, and gently depositing it in front of Erick, where it hovered, not touching the ground. Erick was already mana sensing Ophiel inside so his worries were minimal. All he felt was a deep, exhausted joy.

Quilatalap handed him a small cube of soul balm palm tree sugar.

Erick popped it into his mouth and swallowed the candy. It wasn’t good to swallow soul-healing items that were meant to be sucked on, for the flavor of them made up about half of the healing of the little candy, but Erick had lots saved up; there was no need to be frugal—

Ophiel’s cocoon popped suddenly.

Erick was already there with a cradle of Benevolence and a summoned blanket, to keep his son from falling to the ground or getting cold, as he took him into his arms.

He mostly looked like a 14-ish year old Erick, except with black-feather wings and the skeleton to support those wings, so he overflowed Erick’s arms quite a lot. He had solid bones, so he’d need to use magic to fly, but wings made flying with Air Magic a lot easier in certain ways. Black hair, black eyes, kinda skinny, but he looked healthy in all the ways a kid should look healthy. His soul was strong, yet tattered; exactly like Erick’s. His core was nestled right next to his heart, and though it was big for his body and took up a lot of space right now, he would grow into it.

“And there’s only one of you,” Erick said softly, as he held his son, a few tears falling. “You gonna wake up now?”

Ophiel winced, frowning, briefly opening his eyes and then shutting them again, before curling up against Erick, saying, “I don’t like this. Too much feeling. Everything feels a lot more than it used to feel… But…” Ophiel pulled away from Erick’s chest. “My thoughts are clearer. Oh. This is weird.”

Erick smiled, asking, “You want that pie Quilatalap made for you?”

Ophiel looked up and over at Quilatalap. “… Yes.”

And then he realized he really wanted that purpleberry pie and he flung himself out of Erick’s arms and into the open, spreading his wings wide and then almost tumbling from the tossed weight and unbalanced air pressures. He righted himself soon enough, holding his hands and his arms outward for balance, and then he flexed a little this way and that, feeling himself out. As Ophiel stood tall on his own two feet a wing flicked out, causing him to almost topple again, but Erick was right there to catch him before he fell.

Grinning wildly, Ophiel patted Erick’s arms and then hugged him again, and Erick fell into that same hug, as Ophiel mumbled, “Oh yes. I see the appeal of a hug now. This is nice. Yes. I think I remember this now.” And then he pushed Erick away, saying, “But I want pie!”

Erick chuckled from the sudden emotional whiplash—

And Ophiel commanded, “I want that pie now, Quilatalap! You promised me a pie and I want it!”

Ophiel tried to take a step toward the much, much larger man, his wings flipping backward in an almost instinctive-looking threat display, and he didn’t falter at all. He stood firm, like he had been standing firm for years and not bare moments, almost saying something else about something else... But then he looked down at his hands, and then at the rest of himself. A hand roamed.

Erick laughed then wrapped the blanket around him, saying, “Don’t do that sort of thing in public, Ophiel.”

Ophiel threw off the blanket, proudly standing in the light, saying, “We’re not in public! We’re inside Benevolence! And biology is weird! I have never had biology before… I think … But. Yes. I want clothes! Pretty clothes! With all the sparkly bits that you always have! Yes. Clothes please— I CAN MAKE THEM MYSELF NOW! Let me try...” Ophiel looked to the side and clothes popped into the air. “Yes!”

It was a voluminous robe with bells and bobs and sparkly bits everywhere. Half of those sparkly bits fell off of the robe almost instantly and the robe itself was in tatters, breaking apart into bits of mana. Ophiel tsked, mumbling, “That is harder than I remember it being.”

Erick wiped away a tear from his eyes, smiling as he helpfully added, “Sparkly bits are difficult. Maybe try something smaller for now?”

Ophiel triumphantly nodded. “Maybe sparkly bits are not needed!”

And then he cast again, and this time he ended up with a tunic and brown pants.

Erick quietly inquired, “Want some help putting them on—”

“Nope! I can wear clothes! I have seen you put them on all the time!” Ophiel plucked his pants off of the ground and pulled them on, one leg at a time. They were backwards, though. Ophiel rapidly noticed this, and took them back off before putting them back on. “There! Pants!”

Erick had never been more proud of Ophiel than in that moment. “Pants are good. Do you want some help with your wings and your tunic?”

Ophiel’s black feathered wings shot out and up, and Ophiel jerked at the sudden counteracting motion of his wings pushing him forward a half a meter. He exclaimed, “What! Oh. Wings. Yes.”

Ophiel narrowed his eyes at his wings. In a rapid moment, Ophiel polymorphed his body, his wings vanishing into his back, and he rapidly put on his big tunic without the need for making wing-holes in the tunic or anything like that.

“Ah! Good job Ophiel.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

Erick asked, “You must have Perfected Body and Perfected Polymorph?”

“… I’m not sure?”

Quilatalap was already nodding a little bit in agreement with Erick.

“It doesn’t matter right now!” Ophiel waved off the concern… And then he looked at his hand, as he waved off the concern. Black eyes wide, he smiled, saying, “That’s what it feels like to be dismissive! Oh! That’s fun!”

Erick was about to say something—

But Ophiel rapidly said to Erick, “You and I have much to speak about, Dad, for I have been around for a very long time, watching everything, learning everything I could. And I have learned a lot. Primarily, and of great importance for what comes next, I have gained an immunity to the thing we’re not supposed to talk about. I imagine when Yggdrasil is instantiated he’ll gain the same immunity.”

Erick stared, his heart doing leaps in his chest as he almost told Ophiel to stop talking right now, but no Red Sparks crowded the moment. Even the Benevolent Sky seemed unchanged. Perhaps… Even clearer of Red Sparks than it had been before?

And that meant that they fell off the God Pact world—

Erick instinctively reached for his connection with Ophiel, to reach out into the world, but he felt a ragged hole in his soul instead. It was like punching a fist into an open wound. Erick mostly did not flinch as he rapidly reorganized his thoughts and his course of action.

He opened up a scattering of tiny [Gate]s to look out into the real world…

And everything was fine.

Erick breathed a sigh of relief. The world was there, and nothing was happening.

Ophiel watched him the whole time, saying nothing, waiting for him to be done. Quilatalap was suddenly concerned, too, but that concern passed when Erick’s own alert level dropped to nothing.

Erick could only guess why the Red Sparks hadn’t triggered—

“It’s because I’m not a vector for your infection anymore, Dad, and that makes you much, much harder for that other guy to see. You were already hard for him to see as Wizards often are, but now you’re practically lost in the aether of your own mana production,” Ophiel said, and then, as though the bomb he hadn’t dropped wasn’t already big enough, he dropped another, “And my memories are coming back even more. I’m rather sure I’m from the far future and you brought me back through some Establishment and Time Magics in order to…” Ophiel paused. “I’m not sure, actually. I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually! But that’s for later. We’re safe for now! Though Quilatalap probably can’t be told anything quite yet and he probably shouldn’t be allowed to leave Benevolence right now until we can make him immune, too. Now where is that pie! Is it at the house?

“I think I missed your cooking a lot, Quilatalap, which either means that you’re dead in the future, or we’re a family and this is like a homesickness-thing I am experiencing right now. At the very least, I have spent around 280 estimated years around you and Dad in [Hasted Shelter]s, so I still love you as a secondary father, even if you do not wish to be one— Oh! I need to see Solomon— Oh… He can’t come in yet. Maybe later… Anyway! I’m pretty sure that there was some backward-in-time propagation of my soul from the far future, [Return]-style, but I can’t quite remember everything… Eh! All that future-information will come to me eventually.

“Now where is that pie?!”

A moment passed.

“… Uh,” Erick said, rapidly coming to terms with the fact that his son was some sort of time-displaced person, and yet not quite that at all. But since the Sky was devoid of all Red Sparks, Erick rolled with it. They’d get to all that later. There were bigger problems to solve. Erick asked, “Where’s the pie, Quilatalap?”

Quilatalap looked from Erick to Ophiel, and then back to Erick, saying, “I believe the thing I love most about you is that I’m the ‘normal one’ in the relationship. It is a refreshing change.” And then he sternly looked at both of them, saying, “We’ll speak about this ‘immune’ thing later.”

Erick briefly panicked and then looked at the world through portals again.

They were safe… They were safe?

Erick closed the portals, asking Ophiel, “How?”

Ophiel shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s get that pie— Oh! I know where you hid the pie!” And then he opened up a [Gate] to Quilatalap’s library in House Benevolence. “There it is!”

It was a perfectly made purpleberry pie with a golden, flaky crust and syrupy-purple vents, the entire edge crinkled with the heavy imprint of orcol fingers, which made sense since the whole thing was sized for an orcol, meaning it was practically as large as all of Ophie’s entire new body. It sat on the kitchen counter of Quilatalap’s personal residence near the library, under a [Ward] of some sort.

Ophiel’s black wings shot out of his back and his eyebrows and a lot of the rest of him, shredding his shirt and his pants with what was either a high Strength, or the weakness of improperly-cast clothes, as he happily exclaimed, “PIE!”

He looked like how he used to look, but black, and with some pale human features under all those wings.

Ophiel reached through the [Gate] with a sudden ripping of magic, only to touch nothing at all. It was all an illusion. As the illusion dissolved it morphed into a sign that read, ‘No stealing, Ophiel.’

Ophiel was absolutely crushed.

He fell to the ground, a tumble of wings that turned back into a boy, bemoaning, “I have been betrayed.”

Quilatalap laughed loudly, saying, “The pie is past the first illusion.” To prove the point, he reached through the [Gate] with grey power, disrupting the illusion and bringing the real pie into [Benevolence]. “You’re going to wait until we can all sit down to have some together, though.”

Ophiel was right there for whatever Quilatalap wanted, saying, “Sir yes sir!”

Before Erick had the moment to think about Ophiel calling Quilatalap ‘sir’, Ophiel had already wrapped a hand around Erick’s arm, pulling him along with one hand as he grabbed Quilatalap's other hand with his other hand, pulling them both along to the house several tens of meters away, saying, “In the house! Time for pie!”

Erick happily allowed himself to be dragged along, savoring the moment. And then he glanced up at Quilatalap and saw Quilatalap looking strangely, wonderfully happy. That made everything better by at least a factor of 10.

They got to the house, Quilatalap divided the pie, and Ophiel tried devouring his slice of pie like he usually did (but not before complaining about not getting the whole thing to himself), but when the first bit of warm purple filling touched his tongue, he froze. His eyes went wide and the waterworks started. Great big happy tears fell as Ophiel ate his pie slowly, like a normal person, and yet savoring it like it was the best thing he had ever had, ever. Erick was content to watch for a long while, feeling… Quite good.

Saving the world was great and he would continue doing that, but there were reasons to save the world, and Erick had gained one more very good reason—

Ophiel looked left and right at the same time, and suddenly he was two people; one still sitting in his chair, the other flopping on the ground, wings suddenly appearing in surprise and ripping up his shirt again.

Perhaps clinically, Erick observed that this second Ophiel was clothed, which meant [Duplicate] had happened instinctively.

It was something to watch out for later, perhaps.

The two of them looked at each other, one of them with a blue iridescent sheen to their black coloring, the other slightly purple iridescent, like they were two crows of slightly different genetic predispositions. And then they moved a little, with the one on the floor standing up and his coloring turned black-iridescent-blue, while the original sitting down turned black-iridescent-purple, reversing their coloring.

Well that was going to get confusing.

Their souls were exactly the same, too, even according to Erick’s All-Seeing Eye. Both Ophiel looked like rainbow-black feathered beings mostly contained to the core… Which was shared between both of them, now. Somehow they had both gained a core, and both of their souls were the same.

Did Erick have two new sons now? Or was there something weirder happen—

They echoed each other, “Oh. That’s how that works.”

… Oh. They were the same person. For a brief moment, Erick was both glad and sad, for it would have been a wonderful difficulty to raise two boys, or however many they would become.

Probably 10.

So far, the Mortal Umbilicus seemed to have worked perfectly.

Erick asked, “How many of there are you going to be?”

Both Ophiel looked at Erick, saying, “Ten?”

Not a definite answer, then. That same-time response was kinda worrying, though.

“… Are you two [Hive Mind] connected right now?”

“I don’t think so,” echoed both of them. “Probably just… Something. [Telepathy] basic? I don’t know—”

“But I know I want pie,” said the first Ophiel, while the second looked over at the pie, saying, “Pie now; knowing later.”

And then they looked at each other. It was a confrontation without words or anything except a sudden, knowing look. Ophiel #1 was closer to the remaining purpleberry pie, and Ophiel #2 was suddenly very concerned with that fact—

Erick rapidly [Duplicate]ed Ophiel’s slice of pie, saying, “There! No problem at all!”

Both Ophiel looked at him. Then they fought over the original slice of pie while Quilatalap was laughing and Erick told himself that this was fine. Ophiel threw punches at Ophiel, and pie went everywhere. Quilatalap protected the pie remaining in the tin, so the boys fought over their slice even more.

The boys healed fast, and Erick eventually stopped the fight, but then another Ophiel appeared when Erick told the first two to clean up their mess or they weren’t getting another slice. This third Ophiel looked greener in his black iridescence than purple or blue, but then all three of them gained that third color to their black plumage and eyes and hair.

The first two went running to get away from dad, whooping and hollering as they rushed outside of the house to play under the Benevolent Sky.

The third one stayed to clean up the mess they had made.

Erick kept an eye on all of them with his normal mana sense, but since his range was infinite inside Benevolence Itself that wasn’t too difficult. Erick practically always enjoyed this level of observation of his surroundings in the real world, thanks to Ophiel and his expansive mana sense, but in a melancholy sort of way, Erick realized that time was over. Now, he would only be able to experience this phenomenon inside of Benevolence.

Soon enough, even Yggdrasil would be separating, though Erick almost never looked at the world through Yggdrasil’s eyes anyway so that part wasn’t changing too much. It just didn’t feel right invading his privacy like that—

Oh.

The Ophiel by the central lake had lingered for a moment, debating how to go swimming, exactly, causing an orange-tinted Ophiel to leap into the waters, diving deep, splashing a lot. Orange spread throughout the collective and the swimming Ophiel purposefully ripped his clothes apart and transformed his butt to gain a dragon’s paddling tail. He swam fast under the waters, and then leapt up and out.

He called out, “Dad! Come swimming!”

And then a different Ophiel, currently investigating a grove of soul balm palm trees, called out, “No! I want to play with trees and berries! Come make some yellow berries, dad!” He mumbled, “There should be yellow berries, right? Have I seen yellow berries before? … do bananas count?”

Another Ophiel playing on the jungle gyms called out, “I want to play flying!”

The Ophiel on the shore of the lake said, “You all are too focused on fun. We should work some.”

A bright teal-black Ophiel stepped out of the one by the shore, yelling at the other one, “We can’t do anything until red gets here so let’s go swimming.” And then shoved the other one into the water, laughing loud as he followed, ripping off his clothes midair and doing a great big cannonball splash.

A cyan Ophiel swam away from the first swimming Ophiel with a paddle-tail of his own, all striped in cyan and black, saying, “I’m going exploring waters. Fall off into the world somewhere, yes yes.”

And that’s when Erick moved fast, calling out to the entirety of Benevolence, “No escaping this land for now, please!”

A choral response came from all of them, “Come play with us!”

Erick rapidly grabbed Quilatalap’s arm, saying, “We’re going to play. Pick an activity.”

Quilatalap laughed and allowed himself to be dragged away. He chose swimming, and soon, to Erick’s chagrin, as he lounged in the waters of Benevolence, Ophiel began trying to outdo each other to either see how high of an unassisted high dive they could do, or they tried to swim out to Yggdrasil and bother him quite a lot with cries of ‘Look at what I can do!’. They got hurt here and there, but then Erick healed them, or they just ran away saying it wasn’t a bad injury at all.

They liked bothering Yggdrasil a lot.

Yggdrasil splashed them away, his great big tree roots doing a wave, like the entire world moving underfoot, but all this did was cause Ophiel to say ‘Again! Again!’ and to renew their calls for him to join them for a small swim. Eventually Yggdrasil relented and an orcol dropped out of the sky, splashing the waters away much more than his three-meter-tall body should have allowed.

Erick considered the surfboard.

An hour later, Erick was happy to announce that surfing with his sons was a lot of fun, especially when Yggdrasil easily controlled the entire mini-ocean around his floating body. Erick was absolutely sure that Ophiel took a few too many dives and sputtered up too much water, but Yggdrasil just shrugged.

Yggdrasil stood tall on his own surfboard, surfing next to his father, while all 9 Ophiel continually caught the next wave, managed to make it a few tens of meters, before they all rapidly faltered into the water, becoming tangles of wings and colors. Yggdrasil smiled at that, saying, “He’s young. He’ll learn.”

To which every Ophiel tried to reply, “I’m older than you!”

A few Ophiel ended up sucking down water because they tried to say that while they were underwater.

Yggdrasil yelled back, “Should be using gills anyway!”

Erick raised his eyebrows at Yggdrasil, silently saying, ‘Really?’

Yggdrasil just smiled wider. “I’m being 100% completely honest here. I’m not hampering their progress.”

“Not helping, either!” said the Ophiel that were currently above the water.

Quilatalap laughed to the side where he lounged on a conjured beach chair on one of Yggdrasil’s roots, high above the water, soaking up the warmth. He had swum for a little while but stopped once it became apparent that this was less about relaxation and more about the boys having fun exerting themselves.

And then three Ophiel peeled off, saying this was stupid! They wanted to go exploring more. To which Yggdrasil teased them about not being able to surf at all, and all of them came back.

Erick considered skiing.

Not too long later, Erick was his draconic self, with all his Ophiel and even Yggdrasil yelling out ‘Dragon Dad!’ as he towed them behind on skis like he was some sort of jet boat, swimming fast around Yggdrasil’s waters. Ophiel seemed better at skiing than he had been at surfing.

He even managed to figure out some coordinated skiing.

When they went back to surfing Erick tried surfing as a dragon and made a grand fool of himself and also some mighty big splashes. The square-cube law or something like that was fucking up his ability to surf. Probably just needed a bigger board, but they were already making big splashes on the surface, and Yggdrasil’s fish were already huddled deep beneath his roots.

No need to go scaring the fish too much.

Eventually, Quilatalap got out a grill and started cooking burgers. Not long later he called them all in for dinner. Every Ophiel ate themselves half-sick, loving the taste of food and doctoring up their burgers with every different condiment they could possibly get their hands on, from normal things like mayo and ketchup, to odder things like purpleberry jam and sliced banana. Erick, in his larger, mostly-human but orcol-sized Apparent King self, smiled a lot, watching them enjoy their food. It was a fantastic meal, from a fantastic cook, and everything was fantastic. It was one of the best days Erick had ever had before...

The only thing it was missing was Jane, Solomon, Abigail, Beth, Candice, and Evan. So the day was missing a lot. But that was fine.

This was still great. Just some swimming with the boys.

Everything fractured after dinner, though, but in that way all good days ended. Some Ophiel wanted to sleep, and so they fell asleep on the ground or in Yggdrasil’s boughs or elsewhere, wherever they felt like sleeping. Only one made it back to the house. Others tried to stay awake for longer, but they failed and got grouchy in that failure. Others actually weren’t that tired at all, and they wanted to go exploring again.

Erick learned, in that moment, that when all the Ophiel were working together they could coordinate as a [Hive Mind] group, but once the object of their cooperation faded, they became as fractious as too many cooks in a kitchen. Four of them went to bed in the same bed, but then they fought and they refused to be in the same bed with each other, so Erick expanded the house as he had expected and planned for. Five of them recovered and went exploring through Benevolence, creeping out into the world through stone pathways through the glowing fog, or swimming down rivers connecting one gate space with another.

It was organized chaos, but Erick had made Ophiel promise not to leave Benevolence, and he had agreed, so there really was no stopping him from just having fun out there, and Erick didn’t want to stop him, either.

Yggdrasil had wanted to talk, anyway.

In the living room of the enlarged house, Yggdrasil was wearing fine House Benevolence clothes as he pulled Erick aside, looking professional and also worried, as he said, “When you get back to the real world I’d like you to meet someone— Not right now! Not until Ophiel is settled.”

Erick had been about to agree to visit Yggdrasil’s girlfriend right away, but Yggdrasil had cut that plan off at the legs. So Erick relegated himself to saying, “Okay, Yggdrasil. I’ll see her later. Maybe in a week or two?”

Yggdrasil was all nervous as he giggled a little bit, broke out in a small sweat, and nodded, saying, “Yeah! Sounds great—” In the distance, beyond the window of the house, Yggdrasil’s real body flickered a bit brighter, all of his moss-covered white bark shining bright for a moment, and then fading back to normal, his entire flaming green canopy also doing some odd discolorations. “See you later!”

And then he dispersed his avatar into so much broken mana.

Erick had helped him make that version of himself. He hoped that when he got his real [Avatar] spell, that he could make one as well as Erick had made. Yggdrasil probably could. He had probably been working on his own version for years, now; just waiting for the moment when it would truly be his spell to make and keep. Yggdrasil could barely wait for that day.

After seeing Ophiel’s protean self, Erick was now excited to see who Yggdrasil would become, instead of dreading everything how he had been.

Erick smiled.

Yggdrasil would be fine.

Ophiel was fine.

Erick crashed down on the couch in the living room, across from Quilatalap who was reading a book by the window. He smiled, saying, “Today was a good day. Thanks for being here, Quilatalap. Dinner was great, too.”

Quilatalap smiled softly. “Want to talk about that thing you’re not supposed to talk about? And your immunity? Perhaps about summoning him from the future?”

“… I suppose we have to get back to it sometime, right? But… How about tomorrow?”

Quilatalap nodded as he closed his book, asking, “Want to go to bed?”

Erick smiled and got off the couch, saying, “Yes.”

“Good. Keep the horns on, too.”

Erick chuckled. Soon enough they were in their main bedroom and Erick was snuggled up to Quilatalap, matching the orcol for size, but only because letting the dragon out a little did that. Erick was asleep within a minute.

- - - -

Erick woke to the smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen.

Quilatalap was out there, making breakfast, but there was only one Ophiel at the kitchen table. He looked the same as the others out there, but different. He had a little bit more of a red sheen to his iridescent-black hair than all the rest.

So that was number 10; the red one.

Erick would get to Opheil-in-the kitchen soon enough. He checked on all the others out there inside Benevolence. One Ophiel hung out on Yggdrasil’s boughs talking to Yggdrasil’s orcol form about girlfriends and other topics. Two were in Kiri’s gate spaces far away from Erick’s, talking to Sunny who was really Kiri, and then rapidly talking to Kiri when Kiri showed up, wondering ‘Who the fuck are you— Oh! Ophiel!’. Erick smiled at that. Kiri would show up whenever she wanted in Benevolence… And speaking of which, there’s Teressa and Aisha talking with Ophiel on the edge of the platform, near the Benevolent Sky in the north. Poi stood a little bit away, but he was still part of the conversation. Looked like Poi was restraining his mental touch from Ophiel, too, which was good news about the Red Leviathan problem, but Erick didn’t see any Red Sparks anywhere anyways… Except for around the [Gate] that led to House Benevolence.

The Red tried to get in, but Red reality touched White reality almost like an uninvited person passing through a [Fairy House], or a disembodied soul trying to interact with the real world. The Red wasn’t successfully invading Benevolence at all, and those that almost looked to get inside were instead wrapped in white and allowed to go back into the real world.

Which was really quite nice to see. When did that start happening?

Erick got out of bed and put on some clothes while he checked on all of the rest of Benevolence, looking for all the other bodies of Ophiel. He was 95% sure that Ophiel was one person in multiple bodies, but that 5% was still uncertain, because Ophiel didn’t like being around himself unless he was focused on a singular problem. All the other Ophiels were far away; as far as they could get in Benevolence and still be inside this land. One was hanging out at the gate space of Nelboor, where Erick had planted Yggdrasil on the reality-side of things. Another Ophiel was deep down inside Veird, far to the south, at the gate space where Erick had planted Yggdrasil about 1500 kilometers below the south pole.

Ophiel was at the gate space in Benevolence where Yggdrasil sat in the real world at New Towry, at the far end of the Freelands, right before Archipelago Nergal.

Erick hummed as he checked the rest of Benevolence.

Mostly, there was nothing to see at all. Benevolence held a lot of small wildlife, most of it introduced here by Yggdrasil to take care of the flowers and the fruits and to form something of a peaceful ecosystem. There were bees, fishes, squirrels, birds, and not very many bugs at all. There were small spiders that mostly ate sap but that tried to eat every bug they could find when those bugs existed, which was pretty great. There were no people besides Kiri, Teressa, Aisha, and Poi, three of which were only here because Ophiel opened the way for them, and only because Kiri hadn’t gotten to that task first—

Erick watched as Ophiel opened a [Gate] somewhere far west of the gatespace at the Ar’Civ delta, at Quintlan, somewhere deep inside Death Throne and the undead Fractured Citadels. People rushed into that hole in the world, tumbling out of Elemental Death-filled streets, to fall, bleeding and heavily broken and practically dying, onto soft green grasses. Ophiel shut the [Gate] closed behind them, then stood over the dying adventurers and healed them a little, but not fully for some reason, happily announcing to them that they could stay as long as they wanted. If they wanted to leave all they had to do was jump off the edge of any surface and fall into the white of Benevolence.

Erick was fine with that action, actually, because those guys looked like they needed the help—

One of the freshly healed persons whipped a spell of Destruction and Fire at Ophiel and Ophiel exploded into body parts, scattering across the land.

Erick almost raged, but he calmed himself.

The adventurers were alone and panicking and Erick understood that but—

Erick calmed himself, because the Ophiel in the kitchen, with Quilatalap, suddenly split in two.

“Awww! Why’d they kill me?” The remade Ophiel complained, and then both of them asked Quilatalap at the same time, “Why’d they kill me!”

Quilatalap flipped a pancake, asking, “Who killed you?”

“Some adventurers he rescued from certain death in Death Throne,” Erick said, keeping his head cool as he walked into the conversation. He said to both Ophiel, “Please use your [Animadversion] when dealing with unknown people who freshly escaped death, and who were never sure of your intentions. You need to be more careful to take care of yourself… Though I am very glad to see you helping people, Ophiel. I am more glad that it appears you have suffered no lasting harm.” His soul looked the same as yesterday; ragged, like Erick’s. But he was healing. Erick was healing, too. Being inside Benevolence helped with that a lot. “Be sure to eat your soul balm palm, though. Okay?”

The remade Ophiel ran off, saying, “Okay, Dad!”

He had not summoned an [Animadversion] shield.

… Whatever.

The Ophiel eating breakfast stuffed a syrupy bite of pancake in his mouth, and spoke around his food, “hood ave use a hield; yef.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Ophiel.”

Erick watched as every single Ophiel across the entirety of Benevolence, all 10 of them, rolled their eyes.

This made Kiri, Poi, Teressa, and Aisha, all a little weirded out, and in Aisha’s case, offended, because she had been asking about some smaller tangle in the new Benevolent Sky and Ophiel had told her about how it wasn’t a big deal and how ‘dad was taking care of it’, and he had rolled his eyes right as he said that.

Erick narrowed his eyes at Ophiel, and said, “I saw that miscommunication between you and Aisha. You’re going to be working together if you want to work at House Benevolence, so you shouldn’t let her get to thinking that you maligned her worries. Apologize to her and make yourself properly understood.”

“Bah! Dad… Do I have to apologize to her?”

“Either directly, or you can explain how you’re focused more on me and not so much on her, but that would show a weakness in your ability to multitask, which might be a fine misunderstanding to propagate for it’s always nicer for people to underestimate you, but actual misunderstandings between people should be kept to a minimum.” Erick said, “And Aisha is good people. She would see past your faux pas, and she already has, but you’re currently trying to interact with her as some sort of authority on the Benevolent Sky, so you’re harming your credibility.”

“… Oh. I did harm my credibility with her. Oh.” Ophiel stared off into the distance.

Erick watched as nearly 40 kilometers away, and in all the rest of Benevolence, every Ophiel focused more on his interaction with Aisha and Teressa, and to a lesser extent Kiri, off on another platform far from this main one.

The adventurers from Death Throne had already figured out where they were in the meantime. They were now thoroughly panicking at fucking up an interaction with the Apparent King. Served them right.

With a quick whip of power, Erick opened up a [Gate] in front of himself, into the real world, directly west of Spur. The desert extended in every direction except for the one clearly visible city right ahead, under the evening sun. With another cast of power, Erick opened up a [Gate] into Benevolence beyond that [Gate] leading to Spur, and whipped that [Gate] across the adventurers, dumping them out halfway across the world, directly onto the sands where the Farms of Spur used to be.

Two men and two women fell onto sands that were only a little black.

Erick allowed them a moment to see Erick, panic again, and then he shut all those [Gate]s.

Quilatalap slid a plate for Erick onto the table smiling a little as he did so before he went back to get his own plate, saying, “Ophiel is an enthusiastic young man with a whole lot of power and not the knowledge to use it, but he’s learning.”

“I am re-learning, Quilatalap,” Ophiel said. “So you wanna talk about the stuff we shouldn’t talk about now? And about how all of your ‘now’ is kinda my past? … I think.”

Erick sat down at the table. “Yes.”

Quilatalap was already seated and almost ready to start on his own breakfast, but he paused. He put down his fork.

“Okay!” Announced Ophiel. “First thing to know is that Benevolence is now immune to Primal Lightning; that happened with my birth. Don’t let some simple immunity to a longstanding anti-memetic threat go to your head though, Dad, because Elemental Malevolence did not get created on accident; it was fully on purpose by a dragon named Nothanganathor, The Erased One, and he is still very much alive and hateful and still attacking Veird.

“Every day, Nothanganathor gorges on the death of Veird, over and over and over again. The God Pact escapes for… Reasons. I don’t know.

“Speak his name outside of this space and you will draw his attention, so don’t do that, but you will be speaking his name eventually, so prepare for that. Benevolence was not created just to sit around and do nothing, after all. It was created to prevent all Sunderings, the Actual Sundering most of all, and, if the simple information Benevolence gathered and entrusted to others did not do enough to combat the big problems, then you enabled Benevolence to support itself to prevent those Sunderings; to devote more power to the cause. I’ll give you three guesses as to where that allowed power went and the first two don’t count!

“That power went to me, in case you have somehow lost the Sight to See, which you have not...

“… And I SUPPOSE that the power also went to Yggdrasil but he’s a doo-doo head for various reasons and not really real yet, so that’s that on that!

“Anyway! Benevolence is finally waking up, becoming able to protect against the original Sundering Source; the Dragon Who Could Not Ascend.” Ophiel said, “Also! You should hand off the Lightning Shield to Quilatalap to protect him and allow this conversation to not kill him later. You’re fully immune now, Dad, but if you share information with others, they are not immune, so don’t do that.

“You only got ONE PERSON you can make immune because there is only one Shield, and I didn’t want you to give it to anyone but Quilatalap, because you would have given it to Jane and that would have started a rift in that girl-plus-one-boy band, and we can’t have that. Plus there’s the fact that Quilatalap is not, and will never be immune, and if you don’t protect him, he will die, and that would have been simply awful, too. The most Quilatalap can do is protect himself and run but you can actually fight… somehow. Not sure… how...” Ophiel’s voice trailed off. He shrugged. “I think I had more of a speech than that but I kinda lost it there at the end. I’m sure it’ll come to me when it becomes relevant again, but whatever!”

Moments passed in silence.

Quilatalap stared hard and worried. Erick tried to be soft in his own stare, as he waited for more.

Nothing more came.

Ophiel went back to eating his food.

“… So that was a lot, Ophiel,” Erick eventually said.

“Mmm hmm!” Ophiel said, around another bite of pancake.

Quilatalap hummed like he wasn’t panicking, but he absolutely was panicking. Quilatalap did quiet panic rather well. Few things got to him, and he almost never raised his voice. Meeting Melemizargo in the flesh, the thought of his Pantheon-granted amnesty being taken away, and the battles with the Wizards of Anarchy and Blue, were among the only times Erick had ever seen him this worried. Perhaps this time took the cake, though, for Quilatalap Looked to Erick.

And then Quilatalap glared at the Shield on Erick’s arm.

“May I have that Shield, please? Since you no longer need it?” Quilatalap asked, in a rather serious sort of way that Erick didn’t want to dissect at the moment, or perhaps ever.

Erick handed over the Shield, trying his best to completely ignore how utterly serious Quilatalap was in that moment. The Shield left his arm like a spider crawling away in sparking fits that kinda hurt here. The floating thing soon disengaged and then floated onto Quilatalap’s arm, where it tested its new connection with a few white sparks—

Quilatalap breathed deep in temporary pain as Lightning lodged into his flesh and into his soul. And that was it. The Shield was his now. Quiatalap mentally moved the Shield to hover at his back.

And then Erick and Quilatalap both watched as a few faint Red Sparks zapped away under the Lightning’s touch—

“He’s been infected for a very, very long time,” Ophiel said, also watching the cleansing. He said to Quilatalap, “You’re gonna want to recast your phylacteries, Quilatalap. They’re infected, too. You’re not alone in your infection, though. All the orcols are not infected, but they are affected because of the ease at which Elemental Malevolence can trigger the Rage; Elemental Carnage. The two Elements are not the same, but Malevolence has been using Carnage for a long time to get what it wants. I think either the Red Leviathan hates elves a lot, or he was an elf, or… Okay. I lost the memory again… Oh! There was something about Carnage dragons being… I’m not sure.” Ophiel furrowed his brow, thinking.

“… So it’s called Elemental Malevolence, then,” Erick said, not sure how he felt about that.

“Yup! It was named first but you’re discovering it backwards. If that makes sense.” Ophiel waved his fork around, wishy-washy, saying, “I just got small information. Yggdrasil has big information.”

Erick squinted. “How is this happening?”

“I dun know,” Ophiel mumbled, looking ashamed.

Erick suddenly realized he was being way too hard on Ophiel. Erick softened. “The bad guy isn’t here and he won’t ever be here, and we’re safe for now, and I love you Ophiel. Thank you for coming into my life. I love you.”

Ophiel’s shoulders relaxed as if he had been holding up a huge weight and he had finally been allowed to let it go. Waterworks came next, and Ophiel rushed out of his chair and into Erick’s arms. Erick held him tight, and Ophiel spoke of how he knew he should have remembered more, but he just couldn’t.

Erick patted him, holding him strongly, saying, “It’s okay, Ophiel. You’ve done great. Now the grown-ups get to deal with this and you can stay here in Benevolence, safe and helpful to others outside of this space. I know Yggdrasil sometimes rescues people like you did today, and he does that well. I’m glad you’re doing the same.”

Ophiel bawled his eyes out for a while but he soon cried himself out, as all children do, and Erick set him into his bed, covered him up, and kissed his forehead.

Erick went back into the kitchen and looked to Quilatalap. “Most of that was new to me, but I’ve been wanting to tell you about what I did know for the past week. I fell off of this God Pact world twice, Quilatalap. Both times I met Primal Lightning. It’s right there, on the other side of this world, beyond the veil of possibility, constantly trying to eat us all. It’s what killed Debby, my daughter of the repros from Jane that you don’t remember; the Red took her from us completely, but Melemizargo was able to leave us with our memories and her soulless body. I’ve seen the Red kill Stratagold all the way down to their Vaults. I’ve seen it strip the oceans and the mountains away, killing Veird to get to me, as Sininindi stood on a spit of land holding it back and failing completely because all the world was dead already.”

Erick wanted to keep going, to really talk about it.

But he couldn’t. He was frightened of the Red Sparks turning back the clock again, or trying to kill him again.

But No Red Sparks invaded the world. No rollback occurred.

Quilatalap shuddered at the mention of that great evil, and at all the subsequent evils Erick divulged. Erick watched as the man went through a flashback and came out the other side of the moment looking haggard. Erick felt a deeper connection to Quilatalap in that moment than ever before.

With tired eyes, Quilatalap said, “That does sound like Primal Lightning.” The Lightning Shield flickered at Quilatalap’s back and The Archlich centered himself, before saying, “Talk to me, Erick.”

And Erick did.

- - - -

The first half hour was a shower of information, told quickly and covering broad topics, and then Erick went back to the beginning, at Quilatalap’s request, to start from the very first moment that Erick suspected there was an ‘anti-meme’. This led to talk of when they were just throwing out questions and spitballing answers, back at the slime dungeon. ‘Why does no one know what caused the Sundering?’, went straight into ‘well, if no one knows, then there must be a reason for that’, which led to the Mind Mage artifacts of mental protection and security, and how Debby put on one and only looked back a few times. Recognizing that the anti-meme was real only really came when Debby came to Erick in his office in the House to tell him that she was dropping out of the Sundering Search in order to find out something that she couldn’t talk about.

This led to Erick needing to explain Debby.

Quilatalap withheld his shock at there being a daughter of Erick’s that he did not know about.

“Do you want to talk about repro society a little, Erick?” Quilatalap said, “Because I kinda want to, now. Just as an aside before we get back to the big topic.” When Erick nodded, easily showing how he wanted to deal with less serious stuff for a moment, Quilatalap continued, “Good. I’m very glad you are making your family bigger with the repros. I’ve tried to do that with mine. I love seeing that for you, not only as a power base increase but as a social network of people who will truly understand you in a way that subordinates never can. Quil at the House Benevolence dungeon has become my brother, but that was more of an active decision of ours that took a while. I’m glad to see that you have naturally and also actively decided to name Solomon as a brother. Vanya and Soltic are probably more like friends to me, but I could see them being family eventually. Most of the repros I have made have become simple friends; people I can trust more than all others.” He added, “So I want your help to save them from this anti-meme. I want us to work on providing immunity to others. I want to end the threat of Primal Lightning forever, and rip apart the soul of the Red Leviathan that took everything from all of us.

“Every single person on Veird would want the same, if they could be allowed to know.”

He was being serious again, or maybe he never stopped. This time it was more hopeful and comforting than scary.

Erick smiled a little. “Of course I want to extend this immunity to others. It’s not a simple thing to do, though. Apparently we’re able to discuss this stuff here in Benevolence Itself, but that was not always the case. I should tell you about Oozy again, and about how that Lightning Shield actually came out of the Dark, and what happened afterward…”

When Erick was finished with his story, Quilatalap told him a completely different one.

“I remember you talking about how someone was turning back time back at the Breaking, and then you got the Shield and we left. You dropped me off at the slime dungeon, though, while you went on to do the ceremony with Sininindi. I wasn’t there for any of the things you saw. I never met with Tiza and I certainly never [Disintegrate]d her, though I cannot say that I never thought about doing exactly that now and then.”

Erick telepathically sent Quilatalap a packet, showing him annihilating Tiza.

Quilatalap breathed deeply as the imagery hit him and then he chuckled. “Ohh. That’s how I would do it, too. Kill and then bring her back, with her clothes disheveled. Sometimes I put their underwear on backwards, too.”

Erick laughed, even though it was bad to laugh over wielding that kind of power over people. Sometimes Erick just wanted to let loose, too.

Quilatalap smiled a little, then added, “Sorry to see that it started the Prophesied Storm.”

“Good news on that front! That Storm isn’t on the horizon anymore.”

Quilatalap smiled. “I saw that, too.” He glanced up, then looked back to Erick, saying, “We’ve probably got half an hour before they finish investigating the new Sky. Want to go meet them?”

“Not yet. They can come here.” Erick washed the air with Benevolence, erasing the conversation for the last hour, and then he continued to flow mana through the air, continually erasing their manasphere imprint, as Erick said, “I’d like to talk about cores, infinity, mana crystals that paradoxically exist along multiple grains, and whatever this New Cosmology mana-force-particle is or might be. The ‘reson’.”

Ophiel woke up in bed, calling out, “Don’t talk about that yet!”

“… Or not?” Erick said, furrowing his brow.

A few moments later a very sleepy Ophiel came out of his bedroom and went, wings wide and iridescent black, and arms open. “Hi, Daddy.”

Erick smiled and hugged his son, saying, “Hi, son. You didn’t sleep very long. Did you sleep well?”

Ophiel wrapped Erick in his wings, too. “Sleep is nice. I wasn’t tired though. Just mana exhausted.”

“You were? How so?”

“You used my future mana to pay for all my spellwork for the past many, many years.” Ophiel hugged him tighter, saying, “The Script gives some mana but it’s slow and my soul hurts. Stats are high but level is low. I have 10 Statuses, too, but I share my mana somehow, and Rozeta gave me a note about that oddity. Says she will have to have a talk with you later about that.”

Erick sighed a little. That explained… A lot. Erick hadn’t seen Ophiel using any casual magic at all, except in the barest of ways. Some ratty clothes creation here. Some species-Familiar-Form Perfected Polymorph there. Short flights. Swimming instead of flying around. Running and flapping wings and achieving temporary lift through pure force of Strength-adjusted wing power. This explained why he was falling down all the time when they were surfing yesterday. His soul was still tattered, too, and Erick saw now that all of those rough edges were not just from being violently born less than a day ago. If Rozeta had already given him a note about all that, then Ophiel’s soul was surely damaged more than it truly appeared.

It would heal, but it would take time. Being inside Benevolence would help, but the only real cure for a mana debt was to pay off that debt.

Erick apologized. “I’m sorry, Ophiel. You’re suffering from soul strain. I figured I was using your future mana for the last long time, but I didn’t truly know… And I couldn’t stop.”

“I know, Daddy. It’s fine. But I can’t help you like I used to, and that’s icky. Yggdrasil won’t suffer from this, but… I think I will. And for a loooooooooong time.” Ophiel looked up while still hugging tight, smiling as he said, “But [Gate] is cheap and I’ma gatemaster!”

Erick chuckled a little. “That’s great, Ophiel.”

“Only got 20 in Intelligence, though,” Ophiel mumbled against Erick’s side. “Most everything still costs too much.”

Ah. He had all of the New Stats, too. Erick hadn’t been sure about that, but yeah. That made sense.

Erick said, “Don’t go increasing Intelligence too much too fast. Paranoia is hard to come back from. And lean on your brother for help, both here in Benevolence and in the real world. I’m sure Yggdrasil will cast whatever you want.”

Ophiel pouted. “But he’ll be a butthead about it.”

Erick smiled. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you, Dad.”

Quilatalap smiled softly, looking at the two of them, and then he stood up, saying, “I’m going to check on the prognosticators. Come along when you want? Later?”

Erick nodded as he continued to hold Ophiel.