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There were no nightmares.

Ezekiel woke up an hour before the sun rose. He relieved Paul from his watch, sending the man back to bed to get a few more hours of sleep. Ezekiel became the only one on guard duty for a little while, and this was fine. Maybe in a few days, or after no one was worried about treachery, they’d all get to sleep at the same time. As it was, Ezekiel needed a lot less sleep than other people, so he took the lion’s share of the watch.

He went about getting ready for the rest of the day.

When Tiffany got up, Paul wasn’t far behind. After Julia checked in and Ezekiel could finally relax again, it was time to head to the Void Temple. He checked his Status, and saw that he could bring up the screen. Everything worked. He wasn’t in a dream.

- - - -

Once again inside the large stone amphitheater, Ezekiel sat beside Kaffi, as she unrolled yet another scroll. No books today. Just scrolls. Some of them were assorted, but the majority of them were bound in red leather with gold-leaf caps.

Kaffi left the red leather ones to the side, for now, and picked up a green leather scroll, saying, “We’ll do a few more assorted aura awakening techniques and then we’ll move on to the red scrolls, which are all based upon what you told me yesterday. I need to ensure that we haven’t missed something obvious, though.” She unfurled the green scroll, and started reading, “For this one, you must gather your aura spell into a shell around yourself, but keep it away from yourself. Imagine your aura spell as a thick-walled sphere that is not touching your body. But, since aura must connect to the body, trace where the connections remain the strongest. You must push away your spherical aura with all your might, for only in the smallest connections are you able to find out where your true aura originates.” She turned the scroll to him, and showed the pictures.

It seemed easy enough.

Ezekiel did as he was instructed, gathering his [Normalize Aura] into a shell against his skin, which he then pushed away, like a bubble expanding. Ten thousand tendrils of power connected him to the bubble. The large bubble. This was not going to work, was it?

Ezekiel pushed the spell hard, away from himself, minimizing—

Nope. He would need to use a smaller spell. His [Normalize Aura] was already threatening to go far beyond the walls of the amphitheater.

Kaffi noticed, her eyes wandering upward, then back to Ezekiel. “A smaller aura?”

Ezekiel turned off [Normalize Aura], and turned on [Lodestar], and did the same.

He became the center of one of those plasma ball toys that Julia absolutely needed when she was a kid, and then discarded a year later, except done in bright white instead of purple and blue. This spell seemed to work. His Domain flared wide, away from his skin, trailing tendrils from the bubble of radiance back to him, sitting in the center. He pushed.

The Domain swept across Kaffi, then out into the room, soaking into the air and the stone and turning both brilliant. And then a darkness crept into the center, near Ezekiel’s skin; the absence of the Domain. That absence became more pronounced as moments passed, and lingering light faded.

Soon, the only tendrils that connected him to his expanded aura came from the center of his chest directly over his heart, from the top of his head, and from his hands.

He could have pushed his aura further away, but he was beginning to feel a tension. A spring pulled tight. A muscle getting ready to snap. Ezekiel relaxed himself, and his aura, then turned his Domain off.

“Head, heart, hands,” Ezekiel said.

Kaffi quickly unrolled a second scroll and read a few lines before quickly discarding that one in favor of a different scroll. This one, she read more, then she smiled a little and lifted her head. “This is good. Now we know where your aura will originate from; your heart, your mind, and your hands. Most people don’t have a set starting point for their aura, but you do!” She set that scroll aside and picked up a red leather scroll. She unfurled it, and, finding her place, she read aloud, “With your mana sense active, concentrate on the beat of your heart, and the flow of your soul. Attempt to see where your soul moves while your extended spell aura is active. Flick your spell aura on and off as needed to begin to understand how to move your natural aura.” She said to him, “Try it with your light Domain.”

Ezekiel did so, flexing his [Lodestar] active and inactive, attempting to see how his control existed when the Script wasn’t assisting him. Mostly, all he saw was his Shroud directly below his skin moving like a thick fog, while his actual soul, existing in the same space as his Shroud, was as solid as ever.

After a while of this, Kaffi called it, saying, “Time.”

Ezekiel relaxed. He flicked his [Cleanse Aura] through the space, erasing the sweat from his body. He said, “That one seemed promising.”

“Hard to tell with your [Personal Ward] active. But yes; I agree.” Kaffi picked up one of two red scrolls she had sitting in front of her, saying, “I have higher hopes now for these two, than I do for the rest, but we will go through them as needed.”

Ezekiel was fine to keep going, but he had questions. “Before we do that: What is the link between the Shroud, the Soul, and the Aura?”

Kaffi paused, thinking. And then she said, “We call them the Outer Soul, the Inner Soul, and the Aura, around here. Functionally, both Outer and Inner souls are the same, and they exist in the same space, but one is the skin of the soul and the other is the meat. To damage the meat, one needs to get through the skin. Some theorize that the Outer Soul is false, and that all we really have is the Inner Soul. The Outer Soul might be like Health is to the body; a shielding force, and a resource, but as to what you could spend that resource on, I have no idea.” Kaffi said, “As for the link to the Aura, the Soul is the expression of our true self in the mana, and through our true self, we can influence the mana around us.

“The Script automates this functionality with every Aurified spell, but if we awaken our auras on our own, we are able to control some of what is out there, without needing to fully rely on the Script. Still can’t do much more than Basic Tier spellwork. But with a working Aura, you can do anything that you could do with a Greater Elemental Body. This was how they cast spells in the Old Cosmology.

“But mostly, Soul work is far, far outside of my expertise.” Kaffi said, “I fear telling you anything beyond the basics, for it is likely wrong, and you shouldn’t believe me about any of that. In particular, my theory that the Outer Soul is a resource is rather odd, and likely wrong. It’s likely more like Health that you cannot spend.

“I only truly know three things about the soul.

“One of them is that I am not able to control my soul; to move it to do anything.

“But I can control my aura, and my body, and my mind, and when my soul has been damaged, these three expressions of myself have suffered. Gaps in the aura. Sores on the skin. Blank spots in the memory.

“And I also know that there is no need to control the soul, or to work from that deep a resource, in order to control and expand the aura.” Kaffi waved a hand, saying, “I don’t do soulwork. You’d have to talk to necromancers to understand more of that.”

Ezekiel nodded, then said, “Thank you.”

Kaffi nodded in return, and unfurled a red leather scroll, saying, “Now for this one, you must…”

They spent two more hours on aura work. There were no breakthroughs.

When it was over, Kaffi invited Ezekiel to lunch again, but Lingxing was not available today. Ezekiel smiled at that, for if he had been invited to another meeting luncheon, he would have said no. But free food? Sure!

Lunch in the VIP space of the fifth floor cafeteria was great, though they were the only ones there in that room and it felt kinda empty. Sitting at his table, with Tiffany and Paul on the other side, Ezekiel had a lot of time to consider the problems he currently faced. None of them were truly pressing any more, which was nice. Even the Converter Angel seemed to be taking her sweet time on the moon, Celes, and the Shades seemed similarly silent.

Things seemed to be calming down, but circumstances could turn horrible at a moment’s notice. With that in mind, and thinking of the thousands of terrible things that he had already seen, what would Hangzi’s ‘true terror’ look like?

- - - -

Hangzi declared, “I have decided not to subject you to the horrors of the Devouring Nightmare. I’ve got too much work to do and not enough time to do it! Rejoice, Scion Phoenix.”

And then the Scion of Devouring Nightmare shut the door in Ezekiel’s face.

… Ezekiel knocked on the door again.

Hangzi whipped it open. “What!”

“You can do it right here, can’t you? Your aunt suggested that you could. I’m curious what form your terror actually takes.”

Was it some sound that triggered the amygdala? That would be rather terrifying, and there was no real way to defend against that. Or maybe it was a [Soul Burn] attack; soul attacks were supposed to make the recipient feel terrified.

Hangzi narrowed his eyes, then said, “Subjecting a warrior to the Nightmare is an easy variable to account for. You? No one knows what any given mage would do inside the Nightmare. Therefore, I will not be held responsible for the collateral damage that always comes about from subjecting a mage to our High Clan’s namesake. It is one of the first things my Clan teaches our disciples, and I will not flaunt that law.” He added, “Now let me work in peace. Don’t you have some wounds to inflict upon yourself? Learn some healing spells?”

Hangzi shut the door again.

Ezekiel stared at the door for a moment longer, then walked away.

- - - -

Ezekiel knocked on the door.

It opened inward.

Xue stood on the other side, saying, “Greetings, Scion Ezekiel.” He stepped aside, and into his room, saying, “Please come in.”

Ezekiel nodded, walking in, saying, “Thank you for the time and education, Loremaster Xue.”

The room was divided into unequal portions, with the larger section being empty. The smaller part held an office space, bookshelves, and other assorted living space objects, including a lounge, a large mirror, a table, and a tea set. While Paul and Tiffany took their places beside the door, Ezekiel watched Xue walk to the lounge area. Ezekiel followed him.

Xue sat down and gestured to the tea, asking, “Care for a cup while we discuss the lesson plan?”

Ezekiel sat, saying, “I would like some tea. Thank you for the hospitality.”

Xue deftly prepared the tea, and set it to heating in a [Ward], as he asked, “Have you had much experience with healing, yet?”

“I have not.” Ezekiel said, “I am finding it mentally difficult to purposely injure myself.”

Xue smirked. “Would you prefer someone else to injure you?”

“Probably not.”

The tea started bubbling, so Xue poured, and slid a cup to Ezekiel. Then he took his own cup and sipped.

Ezekiel sipped his tea, then set down the cup.

Xue asked, “Would you prefer to injure someone else?”

“Absolutely not.” Ezekiel said, “When I chose this path, I knew it would require injuries to heal, and I assumed I would be able to do it, but I did not think it would be this difficult to do. Difficult mentally, I mean.”

“You could injure me, if you wish.” Xue said, “It’s not an imposition to suffer minor wounds. I offer myself for this. The pain is not intolerable.”

Ezekiel frowned.

“Maybe not, then.” Xue said, “I never suffered from this problem you are facing, but I know that I will never affect as much as you have, or will. I humbly suggest you resign yourself to causing harm now, for there is no way to learn how to heal the injured without having injured subjects in the first place, and you will need this magic more than most going forward.”

Ezekiel was not comfortable with that fact of life. Xue was correct, of course. If he had his own healing magics, Ezekiel could not only heal himself the next time he does so, he could also heal others. He knew this, logically.

Logic and emotion rarely mixed well.

But at the same time, Ezekiel just needed to ‘get over it’, didn’t he?

Xue shrugged, adding, “Or we can move on to injuring and healing rats.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Then follow me.”

Xue stood, and Ezekiel followed.

- - - -

The Rat Room was located near the outside of the clan mountain, facing north. Sun shone through large windows, lighting up a room of solid stone that held comfortable carpets everywhere and walls that were honeycomb cubby holes. Little highways arced across the whole room, suspended in the air, linking space to space, but leaving plenty of room for attendants to see to the needs of the residents of this small paradise.

Happy rats, squeaking out of shredded-paper homes. Playful rats, tussling with each other, playing in the sunlight. Racing rats, chasing each other across the highways of their miniature city. They seemed full of joy, and that was good.

Ezekiel watched the rats from behind a one-way mirror, as initiates saw to the needs of the animals. Feeding them, playing with them, [Cleanse]ing up after them. Adding new shredded paper to a large pile for the rats to take what they needed, when the [Cleanse]s took out half of the rat homes, and the rats needed more building material. Ezekiel was surprised.

He was surprised in a happy way. They were taking care of the rats. Most of them were even neutered. This was a maintained resource, and seeing the rats run to the caretakers inside the space, looking for treats and to play, did more for Ezekiel’s estimation of Star Song than anything else he had seen in the last few days. This was especially true after hearing the warnings of the Rat Master.

The Rat Master was a stern older man with a big white beard and long hair, named Toix, who said, “You will be given a rat that is already sedated, along with enough potion to keep him or her under for an hour, as well as an emergency healing potion. I will be monitoring your first experiment to ensure that you know what you’re doing, but past that, Loremaster Xue has already vouched for you, so next time you can come on your own and get what you need. We know that occasionally the rats die due to student failure, but if you don’t do everything you can to ensure that doesn’t happen, then I will do what is necessary to ban you from this resource.” Toix said, “Happy, healthy rats are easier to work with than caged, stressed animals, and you will ensure that they stay happy and as healthy as you can make them.” He glanced at Xue, and a darkness passed over his face, then he looked to Ezekiel, and said, “We’re losing a lot more rats than usual. Do ensure that you are not abusive to our Healing Magic helpers.”

“I would never want to harm for the purpose of harming, Master Toix,” Ezekiel said.

Toix narrowed his eyes at Ezekiel, but said nothing. He led them to a smaller room on the side. In moments, a door opened between the main rat room and this side room. A young woman brought out a sleeping rat on a tray with the rat in the main box and two small potions in two slots of the tray. She set the specimen down on a table in front of Toix.

He was a beautiful specimen of white and gold fur, at twenty centimeters long, with the tail twice again that length. He was on his back, belly up, with the back half of his body sitting in a layer of blue potion. The tray was designed to hold the rat’s head out of the potion, but to keep him partially submerged in it at the same time.

Toix said, “Blue is for sleep and numbing. Keep the rat in a layer of potion that deep, and he won’t wake up, or feel a thing. Red is for healing, in case you make a mistake. If you make a horrific mistake, grab one of the rat keepers on duty, and they’ll be able to heal your mistake.” He asked, “Do you need tools?”

“No,” Ezekiel said, psyching himself up for what he was about to do.

“Fine.” Toix said, “Don’t harm too deeply. Go ahead. I’m watching.”

With his lightform active, Ezekiel…

Got to it.

A little slice against the abdomen….

… Nothing? Okay. A little deeper. Hmm. Hard skin. Slice a little strong—

Toix said, “I appreciate the restraint, but a sharper knife causes less pain than a dull one, and these rats all have a great deal more Health and Vitality than normal rats.”

… Ezekiel honed his lightform to a sunbeam edge.

Red spilled out from a shallow, half-centimeter deep wound. Ezekiel gasped as he breathed in, and then he focused. He applied [Healing Word] to the wound. Nothing. Ah. He forgot to shape the spell first.

… And he forgot to hold the wound together.

Right.

White light held skin and the barest bit of muscle together, while keeping hair out of the wound. Magenta [Healing Word] sunk into the sleeping, numbed rat, directly shaped to the sliver of flesh that had been parted.

Something shifted inside the wound as magenta light soaked in. Cells regrew. The rat healed. A tiny scar appeared, and Ezekiel let go of the holding light, releasing the wound. Then he went back in with his light and checked. Yes? The wound was gone? Okay? Was it actually gone, though? It was.

Ezekiel stepped back. “Is that… It?”

Toix bent down, inspecting. Xue held back; a small smile on his face. Toix cast a [Cleanse] upon the wound, only, and half of the scar came undone. Ah. Cancers.

Ezekiel paled.

Toix said, “Small cancers are hard to see. Keep going until that doesn’t happen. Don’t [Cleanse] the whole rat, either; just the wound you cause. The potion we use to keep them asleep and numbed is technically a poison, and every time you [Cleanse], some of the potion vanishes from the rat and more soaks into his skin, keeping the rat under and dropping the level of potion in the tray.” He pointed at the blue liquid at the bottom of the tray, that the rat rested in. “Observe how the level has dropped, slightly.” He picked up the blue bottle, and poured a little into the tray. “Keep it at about that level. There’s a mark. Keep it there.”

Ezekiel had already seen all of that, but he said, “I see. Thank you for your instruction.”

Toix stepped back.

Ezekiel stepped and looked down at the rat.

With magenta [Healing Word]s in his lightform, he got to work.

Thirty minutes later, there were still mistakes. Cancers still bloomed. He caused a dozen different small stomach wounds, but each one held the same problem; they wouldn’t heal correctly. Ezekiel added blue potion to the rat’s bath, keeping it under, but he could tell the rat was having problems. It breathed harder, for one. Its little chest went up and down hard whenever Ezekiel inflicted a wound, or tried to heal it.

Ezekiel was pretty sure his problem was his magenta mana altering.

Ezekiel stepped away from the rat, saying, “Please assist in the final healing, Master Toix. I cannot seem to get it right. I need to study more before I come back here.”

Toix had been silently staring and brooding as he watched Ezekiel injure his rat, but at Ezekiel’s declaration, he raised his head, and then nodded, approvingly. He said, “I doubt you need to study, for I’ve seen disciples with much less skill enter these halls and come out as master Healers. You only need more practice. Come back some other time and we’ll get you a new rat.” He reached over and tapped the rat twice; the first spell healed all of the rat’s wounds, and the second returned a brilliant shine to the rat’s coat and body. He picked up the tray and said, “This one can get some pampering and rest before he’s released back in the main room.”

Ezekiel bowed, saying, “Thank you, Rat Master Toix.”

Toix waved him off, and took the tray with the rat into another room.

- - - -

As they walked through the hallway, side by side, back to Xue’s office, Ezekiel said, “That was enlightening. Is that how you learned your specialty?”

Xue wore heavy black and red robes, while Ezekiel wore a similar style in magenta and white. The disciples around them all wore greys, while professors and Elders wore other styles. It was rather easy to tell who was higher class than everyone else.

Xue said, “Somewhat. I was a similar special case as yourself. I awoke my aura at a young age, and thus the normal Healing Quests were unnecessary. But let us continue this conversation back in my office.”

There were a few people in the hallway eyeing them, openly, and a few trying not to eye them, so Ezekiel went along with Xue’s request. Xue was acting a little squirrelly, though. It was an odd look on the man.

A minute later, they were back in Xue’s office, and sitting on the couch where they had taken tea.

“You were doing well with the rat. You simply need to do more, to get a proper feel for it.” Xue asked, “But you talked of needing to study more?”

“A lie.” Ezekiel said, “I know the problem. If I am allowed access to the rats on my own, I will likely overcome that problem.”

Xue said, “Your current value to Star Song is inestimable and there is little chance that you are going to abuse the rats, therefore you will have access to the Rat Room whenever you wish. Rat Master Toix is not happy with our current rate of rat consumption for the chelation experimentation, but the lives of people are worth more than a million rats, and this truth includes whatever gains you will reap on your own.” He added, “Give me a time, and I can make it happen.”

“Thank you. Then… I would like some time in the Rat Room, after our session is over.”

Xue nodded. “It will be done.”

Ezekiel asked, “As for injuring and healing myself… I think I am ready for that, but I am loathe to drop my defenses. Do you have any insight into solving this problem?”

“Yes.” Xue said, “An antirhine-core knife. It won’t break your [Personal Ward], but it will weaken it and also open a hole in your defense, allowing you to cut yourself without dropping your defenses. I have extra, if you wish.”

Ezekiel smiled, saying, “I would like that. I accept. Thank you.”

Xue lifted a hand toward the set of drawers under the large mirror on the wall. A small one near the bottom opened, revealing a thick-walled glass jar filled with clear liquid and a dozen stiletto knives, each of them black and weighty. Ezekiel had noticed them before now, due to their partial absence in his mana sense, but he did not think they would actually be used for cutting oneself without breaking a [Personal Ward]. Upon thinking about it for more than the barest second, though, of course such knives would be useful for someone who needed to break their skin all the time to work with Blood Magic.

But from what they looked like to his mana sense, Ezekiel had considered that the knives were actually weapons, and not tools. They looked rather specifically breakable; as though they could be stabbed into a person and then broken off, leaving behind an antimagical wound.

They probably could do that, too.

The whole jar of knives came floating out, and onto the table between them.

Xue reached forward, uncapping the jar, releasing the scent of alcohol into the air. He plucked out a knife with his hands and set it in front of Ezekiel, saying, “A small gift. I haven’t needed to use one in a long while, but they have all sorts of uses.”

Sure they did.

The center of the knife blade was anti-magic, but the grip was not. Ezekiel picked the knife up by the grip and tested its weight. They were heavy, but it would be child’s play to pick them up the non-lead end with [Telekinesis] and swing them around, or to use them in combat. He set the knife down in front of him.

Ezekiel said, “Thank you.”

“I have more if you lose that one.” Xue said, “They’re not overly expensive or difficult to make, but they are rather cumbersome.” He picked up one of the other blades out of the jar, sending scatters of alcohol onto the table. He exposed his opposing forearm, saying, “They’re sharp, though.”

He sliced through his forearm. Ezekiel’s eyes went wide as vibrant red blood gushed out of the laceration like Xue had opened up the neck of a suspended cow, and not his own comparatively puny arm. In a pair of beating seconds, a red orb the size of a basketball hung above the table and Xue’s arm stopped bleeding. He had healed the wound shut with the barest bit of magic.

The red orb hung there for a moment.

Xue gave Ezekiel a questioning look.

Ezekiel returned his own questioning look.

A tension passed, unremarked by Ezekiel.

Xue turned the orb to broken black dust that swirled away into the mana. A quick [Cleanse] from the Blood Mage cleaned up the blackened blood that was real.

Xue said, “There is some discomfort, but pain isn’t a real problem once you can heal away that pain the moment after it happens. You will end up with many scars while you are learning, but they’re only flesh wounds, and soon enough you will be able to remove those scars yourself.” He said, “But for now, if you will permit, I wish to go back to what you were saying earlier, about ‘you know what your problem is’ with healing the rats.” He asked, “Do you wish to enact a [Privacy Ward] for this conversation? Because I do not think the problem you think you have is the actual problem.”

Ezekiel considered, then cast a [Sealed Privacy Ward] into the room. The spell was disrupted around the small knives, but not enough to prevent the casting, or to break the spell. Ezekiel was sure that some duration was gone, but that might have been the full extent of the disruption. He clipped Paul and Tiffany in the spell, but they were at the very far edge of it.

Erick asked, “It’s not the magenta color altering?”

Xue said, “I am sure that is a small part of it, but we have many disciples in Star Song who try to get away from their base mana color, and they can learn Healing Magic almost as well as any other.” He continued, “No; I think the problem you have is nuanced in a different way. I would not presume to speak of what an Archmage might know, but I do know a fair bit about this school of magic; Do you know of Elemental Healing?”

Erick said, “Yes. Elemental Healing is the pure Element that creates and reinforces life. It is closely linked to Elemental Blood, and also Elemental Mercy.”

“Do you know of Healing Magic, as it relates to Elemental Healing?”

“… I read some, but I am sure I am wrong. Please start at the top.”

Xue nodded, then said, “This particular story starts long, long ago, back in the Old Cosmology. It is a short story, but it is vital to understanding how Elemental Healing and Healing Magic are different.

“Elemental Healing brings forth raw life from the combination of Water and Light, but people back then were combinations of all the Elements. Back then, to expose a person to raw Healing was to turn them into abominations. Even today, the same result holds true, though most of those exposures are easily caught by [Cleanse] and ended before they have a chance to take a person over from the inside out, breaking down the natural barriers to core formation and thus turning a person into a monster of the worst kind.

“Back then, the solution was the same as it was almost here, on Veird, after the Sundering.

“Back then, Gods granted Healing to their followers, and through Divine Might, those spells would take Elemental Healing and filter it through a person, allowing that person to restore what had been lost. Healing Magic is exceedingly difficult, you understand.

“These days, Gods still grant healing, but because of certain forces, that healing is filtered through the Script and granted to anyone who wants it strongly enough.

“When you use the Healing Magic in the Script, what you are doing is taking those perfect, God-made spells and casting them perfectly each time. Most people will Quest for these spells. But you and I? We have to have literally godly levels of control, focus, understanding, and skill, if we are to mutate one of our Goddess-given Healing Spells into another, in order to Remake the rest of Healing Magic. Luckily, this is not as truly impossible as it sounds, for we have already been granted a starting point by those very gods.” Xue said, “All of the healing spells contain the marks of divine hands upon them. What you must do is find that guidance in your starter healing spell, and mold it into the other healing spells. For me, this Remaking was a spiritual journey of finding those markings and applying them in other directions; in understanding the small pieces of power that Rozeta and the Relevant Entities of the Script have left for us to combat the Darkness.” He asked, “Do you now understand why I did not consider a simple color altering to be a problem?”

“Huh. I think so.” Erick said, “According to you, most of the work has already been done for us. I only need to find those markings in the mana and shift them into the other healing spells.”

“Correct.”

Erick asked, “Is that why you specialize in rune work enchanting?”

Erick had taken a small moment to look around the room before now, but at the mention of ‘divine markings’, a few scattered clues fell into place. Runework enchanting. Blood Magic. Core dust into the blood. A vast majority of books which were all written in Ancient Script.

… The various active [Ward]s in the room.

All of it was runework Blood Magic.

Erick added, “Because that is your Truth? That markings make the magic?”

Xue grinned, then said, “That is my Truth, because it is True. This world was founded on language and life; in the Ancient Script, and in the Wrought, and in the bodies of all who live here.”

Erick asked, “But you can’t simply write down a spell and have it work, can you? I’ve tried; in core dust and in metal rods and otherwise.”

“Blood and magic are the ways in which the world communes with itself.” Xue said, “Not to be rude, but you’ve only been here for a year, and it took me fifteen to get to my current capabilities, and I still have a long way to go. If you wish to truly pursue enchanting it will take you a long time in a calm neighborhood, and even then, some people are not great at enchanting in the normal ways. It was only last year that I became able to make a 50-charge rod of [Greater Treat Wounds], and even then, I cannot make more than one a year.”

“Now that’s an interesting problem.” Erick asked, “Why not more than one per year? And why do they cost a quarter million gold? I’ve bought a few, and that price seems astronomical.”

Xue nodded, saying, “This is a multilayered problem, but the basic problem is that it takes fantastic materials in order to hold and stabilize the magic that goes into a rod of [Greater Treat Wounds].

“Getting into the depths: You could buy a lesser rod of [Greater Treat Wounds] for a great deal less gold, maybe as little as 10,000, but such a rod would only have 4 or 5 charges, and it wouldn’t be able to be recharged, and you run the risk of it breaking after every use. These lesser enchanted objects are common, for many people don’t understand what is needed to make a true magical item.

“A real magical item is heavily linked to the Script, which upholds the world. Poor connections to that underlying Truth result in poor items. Good connections result in 50 charges in an item, and the ability to be recharged, at least a little. This is why only items that have 50 charges are able to be sold, and why items are only sold if they have 50 charges; it is an indication that they are quality items that they won’t fail on you.

“Or rather, they’re basic quality. As in the most basic application of enchanting theory and implementation.

“As for why I can only make one a year?” Xue smiled, and said, “This is because I make high quality. I cannot make artifacts, but the rods I make are able to be used hundreds of times before they need a rest in a mana condensing formation. Each one should last thousands of uses, and retain their workings for twenty years. This is what it means to make a magical item that truly connects to the Script.”

Erick sat back and had a small, happy laugh. “How much does one of those cost?”

Xue shrugged as he smiled, saying, “They’re not for sale. But I can teach you some of this power. Although, if your Truth is not compatible with my own way of working, then you might need to make adjustments.”

“Probably.”

Erick thought back to what he heard from the Shades, primarily Lapis, and from Quilatalap, back during Shadow’s Feast. They had all spoken of artifact enchanting as the working of soul magic to imbue an item with a soul, and then having that soul cast the spells you tell them to cast, based upon the shape of the soul’s container.

Most people made magical items more like how Xue made them, though.

But Xue, and Elder Arilitilo, were special in their own way.

Erick said, “I’ve never had much luck with runes or Ancient Script, but I can certainly see the usefulness of never needing to gather cores.” He asked, “So when you condense mana into your blood, to make core dust blood, I imagine you simply pressurize the mana?”

“Ah, no.” Xue said, “I want to speak of this, but not until you can heal yourself. I have heard of how you yanked a full core out of your chest in front of a hundred staring orcols, and then smashed it under your foot, only to wait a minute before allowing your retainer to heal yourself. I do not wish to accidentally be the cause of another such incident.”

Erick chuckled. “Ah. That’s not exactly what happened. It wasn’t that bad. It was just tiny shards that were around the diaphragm. Easy enough to remove with some light tugging. Anyway.” He stood, “You are right. I need to learn those healing spells, and there is only one way to do that.”

Xue stood with him, saying, “The sooner you remake [Treat Wounds], the sooner I can teach you about core refinement, and the sooner Elder Arilitilo can teach you the nuances of esoteric Blood Magic, and normal combat.”

Ezekiel took his new knife in his hand, and he took down the [Seale— He paused. The privacy remained active.

He asked, “So. Warzi? What’s going on there?”

Xue paused as though considering a hundred different, smaller things. “This is a compound problem.” Then he said, “The boy’s condition is well documented and true, but solving such an issue is difficult. All simple and known ways to block mana sense also block normal sight. From my understanding, Devouring Nightmare has scoured the world looking for an answer to the boy’s problem, but they have not found an answer that they are willing to accept. For a time, the boy wore antirhine thread clothing, but even that failed as his condition progressed. It was an untenable solution, anyway, for many of the same reasons that Elixir’d people are not allowed into sensitive areas, but also for the fact that A Child’s Protection would fail when he wore those clothes.” He said, “But the privacy spell you displayed when you interviewed the alchemists and which you have surrounded us with right now, allows for perfect outward vision. If you wish assistance in translating this spell or a lesser spell of the same nature into an object in order to solve Young Master Warzi’s issue, then we can move such magic item creation to the forefront of my lesson plan.” Xue added, “After you learn proper Healing Magic, of course.”

“Thank you for the offer. I will think about it.” Ezekiel said, “But I need to get back to the Rat Room, and then I will be cutting myself some. Thank you for your assistance.”

Xue looked at Ezekiel, and something seemed to crush in the man. A weight became too much to bear.

Ezekiel had wondered if anything was going to happen. It looked like it was.

Xue said, “Taking into account what my new Intelligence is allowing me to grasp, I have a feeling that you will be able to grasp all of this lesson plan soon enough, and then I will have to actually teach you something, instead of simply watching as you cut up rats.”

Xue had almost said what he wanted to say, but then he deflected halfway through.

Erick knew it.

Xue knew that Erick knew it.

But instead of violence, Xue had gone in a different direction.

Erick had warned them of almost all of the problems of Intelligence before he had granted them the New Stat, but now, there was need of another warning of the far more insidious nature of Intelligence. Something that wasn’t a problem unless you made it a problem, and Xue had certainly done that.

Intelligence bred paranoia, and Xue was soaking in it.

The signs had been there when Erick first saw Xue, an hour ago, now.

Xue had been quiet for a teacher. Much less exuberant than Elder Ari had been yesterday. That quietness betrayed his thoughts in small ways. It betrayed his worry, and his pain, and his inner thoughts. Was Erick was going to murder him and everyone else at the slightest provocation? What about all of the other problems around him, besides his archmage problems? What about all the things he saw out there? Erick had only guessed at the last part, but from the viewing mirror and its prominence in front of the couches, as well as from the various things he had heard and seen elsewhere, Xue likely spent a lot of time looking at people, and tracking them down.

Xue was paranoid.

And he was losing it.

He had brought out lead-core knives that could easily be controlled to be thrown, and the aura was invisible, so Erick had every bit of confidence that Xue had his aura on all of the knives except for the one he gave Erick.

Was that blood charm on Erick’s wrist capable of truly deflecting his most powerful spells? Maybe not. Not with Intelligence multiplying Xue’s magic capabilities into higher heights. Not with the spells currently emplaced in Xue’s office; his locus of power, filled with spells ready and waiting to activate. They were small spells, and separately they were nothing, but together, and at Xue’s command…

Could he overcome Erick Flatt?

Xue wasn’t sure. His earlier blood orb had been a test to see how he would react, to see if Erick noticed the power Xue commanded. Erick did notice. He noticed a lot. But he did not react, and now Xue was trying a different tactic. Violence was not going to work.

Xue was asking for help, but he didn’t know how.

“Xue.”

The man flinched on the inside; his heart skipped a beat. His blood swirled with power. He did not move, or speak. He waited.

Erick said, “All these new thoughts can drown you if you let them. Intelligence is not doing this to you. You are doing this to you. You are seeing shadows that aren’t there. My own experience with Intelligence has also led me to bouts of paranoia, but at that same time, Intelligence has allowed me to see beyond the paranoia. To see that you are experiencing what I have experienced. To see that you are asking for help, and that I am capable of giving you this help. What is your current Intelligence at?”

Xue gave a small, shaky breath. He said, “It’s at 50.”

“A high base number. Do you know how to make a cursed item, to lower Stats? You might be able to temporarily reduce that number.”

Xue blinked twice, as though realizing a path forward, then deciding to walk it. “I can.” He added, “But I can see you have not chosen this route.”

“You’re right. I have not chosen this path, but I have considered it a few times. I opted not to take this route, because I cannot allow myself to be weak in the face of the threats I face. It’s not paranoia if they truly are out to get you. But… Most of the time, no one is out to get you. I certainly am not out to get you. Even the spells you have imbued into this space, ready to go off at a moment's notice, are more for your own safety, and less to actually try to kill me.”

Xue stared, realizing he had been seen through. And yet he relaxed. It was the same thing Erick had seen most prominently once with a client, long ago back on Earth, when that woman received the bad news that the pain in her gut was the cancer she thought it was. She had gone from nervous wreck to relaxed as though she was sipping a mojito on a beach at sunset. It was an emotion of acceptance, and pain; the relieving of a tight tension.

Erick continued, “This New Stat opens the eyes to the world around you, but it also invents problems that do not need to exist. Not everything you see is a shadow waiting to pounce. Back on Earth, there was a saying: Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance. And here’s another: Always interpret the actions of the opposition in the most rational and honest way possible.” He added, “Sometimes, the shadows are shadows, and you must defend yourself, but most of the time, people are just people; without subterfuge or malice.”

“Ha.” Xue said, “Your world was peaceful.”

“Extremely, and yet, it was also dangerous in subtler ways.” Erick said, “Here, the worst case scenario is extreme and deadly violence to you and all you hold dear; there, the bad outcomes came about from offending a co-worker or a boss, and thus losing what you’ve worked for. Violence existed, and it was just as deadly, but the vast majority of situations did not have violence as their natural outcome.” He said, “But the daily situations? The normal circumstance of peaceful life? That is the same.”

“Peaceful?” Xue said, “This is not peaceful.”

“It can be.” Erick said, “Nothing happened today, and I have no designs to make anything happen to anyone here. But you are correct. What you almost did was not peaceful, and yet, I never pressed the issue of all the spells and danger around me, and you never pressed back.” Erick said, “I’m still learning which parts of my previous life are useful, and which parts need to be reevaluated or discarded. Most of what I was has been preserved, but a great deal more has been added on top.” Erick said, “For instance: murdering billions of monsters at once! Never imagined that I would need to do that.”

Xue nodded, silently.

“But paranoia isn’t useful. Don’t hop at shadows, or else you will make them real by your hopping.”

Xue breathed out, silent.

Ezekiel tore down the [Sealed Privacy Ward] around them and held his lead-core knife, as he said, “I’m reasonably sure that another private session would be useless tomorrow, as I’m going to need a few days to figure out the rest of these healing spells. So no lessons tomorrow, if you don’t mind. If I have questions, can I reach you here?”

Xue’s fear had faded while Ezekiel talked, and now it was small enough to fully hide behind a professional facade. Xue said, “If not here, then you may leave a message with the initiate outside. Elder Arilitilo told me that you already know where to find her, so I assume she could also answer whatever questions you have.”

Ezekiel held up the knife, saying, “Thank you for the knife.”

Xue nodded.

Ezekiel left the room.

When he passed an open area connected to the outside, he had an Odin hold the knife by its non-lead handle, and fly it up to the balcony outside the room. With a few seconds to recast some of the dense airs inside, he had Odin set the knife down.

Then he went to see a man about some rats.

As they walked, Ezekiel sent to Tiffany and Paul, ‘That could have gone either way, but I’m pretty sure that if he saw telepathic messages from you to me, then that could have gone very wrong. Thanks for not messaging me.’

Tiffany sent, ‘Paul said not to when I reported the spellwork in the room.’

‘Xue was on the edge.’ Paul said, ‘Anything would have set him off.’

‘Did you nudge him, Paul?’ Tiffany asked.

‘No.’ Paul sent, ‘Stopping a random Young Master in a bar is one thing. Stopping a Loremaster? Here? When he was already paranoid? I would have taken him down had he done anything, but I would not have nudged him. Defusing that situation was all Ezekiel.’

- - - -

Xue sat in his chair and sipped his tea. It was good tea.

He had considered serving the blacknight tea to Archmage Erick Flatt, which would have killed him rather quickly, as blacknight killed all humans rather quickly and thoroughly. But he was Archmage Erick Flatt, and Poi Fulisade, his MIND MAGE guard, would have seen through that and then Teressa Rednail, an absolute tank of a woman, would stomp his face in, especially with that Blood Charm on her finger. He wouldn’t have been able to do a thing to any of them.

Even if he had succeeded in the impossible, then his entire Clan would have turned on him.

These were the thoughts swirling through Xue’s mind. He had quite a few variations on the theme, but all of them ended the same way; with his death and destruction.

… He was being paranoid.

Archmage Erick Flatt had been correct about this aspect of Intelligence, but according to the small conversations he had taken with the Alchemists in the Potion House, and Riri, and Arilitilo, only he seemed to be experiencing this side effect. Only he had ignored Archmage Erick Flatt’s advice, and had pumped almost all of his extra points into Intelligence. 32 points! He only had 3 floating points left.

None of the others had said how many points they put into Intelligence, but he had a feeling that most did not go over 25. All of them were benefiting, though.

Riri was restructuring her entire operation. For a short while, she predicted that the income of Star Song would dip, but she projected anywhere from 125% to 250% increase in gross income.

Arilitilo was going over all of her teaching materials. She was planning on writing a book on Healing Magic and a secondary one on Blood Magic. She might even get points from Rozeta for such a publication.

The Alchemists were in constant conference, and though they had not solved Tadashi’s anti-Elixir, they were close. They had also torn apart a library-full of alchemy texts, and reorganized them by Particle Magic effects and True Magic effects. The depths of that unrealized dichotomy were already sending waves through many of the clans participating in the realization of Tadashi’s creation.

And here was Xue.

Paranoid out of his mind.

Paranoid enough to think that Archmage Erick Flatt wanted to kill him.

The depth of his paranoia was unknowable, for why would Archmage Erick Flatt ever want to kill him? Why? It made no sense. And yet… This was what Xue thought.

Xue was also smart enough to know that Archmage Erick Flatt had seen absolutely every way in which he had set up an attack, and yet Archmage Erick Flatt had still walked into firing range of them all. Archmage Erick Flatt did not care about Xue’s meager skills, or spells. He did not see Xue as a threat.

For Xue was not a threat—

No. That wasn’t correct.

That was the paranoia speaking.

Archmage Erick Flatt had seen through Xue, understanding the man’s paranoia in a way that Xue himself hadn’t really understood, because Xue himself had not wanted to understand his weakness in that way. Archmage Erick Flatt was not trying to weaken Xue before he murdered him, either.

Archmage Erick Flatt’s entire existence was public knowledge, if you knew which public to ask, and Archmage Erick Flatt had never killed to silence opposition, or to silence people below him. Archmage Erick Flatt would not try to silence Xue, just because the man was being paranoid.

Ah.

His thoughts were flowing in ever-deepening circles. Again.

… He set down his cold cup of tea, then got up and went to the working side of his office. He opened a specific drawer in his apothecary cabinet, and pulled out a small box with an old object he barely used anymore. A silver ring with a bloodstone diamond set into the band. It wouldn’t hold the curse forever, but it would hold the curse for several days, and he had lots of bloodstones.

He pricked a finger with the focused power of another finger. Blood flowed, in tiny drops. In seconds, the curse was complete. The jewel glinted with the denial of power. He slipped the ring onto his finger.

The effect was instantaneous. The cursed item latched onto his finger, soaking into his aura and his body; it could not be removed except through extreme force, or divine intervention—

Or through one of Erick’s rings.

—and the world went… dim.

It was as though he had taken a shot of distilled rice wine. Color seemed to return. Weights fell away. He breathed easier. He cast a [Cleanse], and the world seemed nicer. Negative 31 to Intelligence. He overshot the mark by several points…

But this was fine.

The shadows didn’t seem to move around him anymore, like they were alive. Like they were watching him.

Xue didn’t know how Erick had done it; living with a high Intelligence all this time. Xue had enemies, for sure. He had been an Enforcer years ago, and he still did some enforcing when it came to those who created new Particle spells that harmed the world and the people of Eralis. But he certainly did not have the whole world watching him. He certainly did not speak to Melemizargo on a semi-regular basis, or have talks with Rozeta and all the other gods and—

Oh holiest of divine shits.

Xue had actually planned on attacking that man!

Fuck! Why did he think that was a good idea?

Xue groaned into his hands, as he laid down on the solid floor, and gently beat his head on the ground. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. And then he sat up, and calmed. He considered what were the real ways in which Erick would ever want to hurt him.

Right now, the whole world might not be watching Star Song, but all the major players were.

… And Erick had been rather vocal about his views, hadn’t he?

Star Song certainly did not qualify as tyrannical. They fully adhered to the Compact of Songli, struck all those years ago. Xue truly had nothing to fear from Erick, did he? Star Song had nothing to fear from the man, either. They killed criminals and agents of shadow all the damned time, but those were functions of a working government, and Erick had even helped to kill all those murderers and otherwise in Treehome, and all the Hunters of the Crystal Forest.

Hmm. There might be a problem with conscripting people for war…

Was that correct? Would that be something that Erick didn’t like?

… Maybe?

Nah. It was necessary to defend oneself from—

Ah. Shit.

Xue looked at his finger, and the ring thereupon.

He had made a mistake.

Terror Peak was banging at the gates. Soon, there would be an attack. Those bandits who had taken Tadashi had been from Terror Peak, or at least some of them had been. Erick might not be out to get him, but others were. Sometimes, the malice was real, and the danger was, too.

Xue made a decision.

Xue sliced off his finger, discarding the cursed ring with the discarded digit. The curse lingered for the barest bit, but then it began to fade. As his Intelligence returned to previous levels, and his finger regrew, the paranoia returned, but this time, Xue had a better target for his worries.

For as the archmage had said, ‘It wasn’t paranoia if they were out to get you.’

Some of those people were preparing right now, no doubt.

- - - -

Rat Master Toix left Ezekiel in a side room with a sleeping rat and plenty of potion. He warned Ezekiel to switch to a different rat after half an hour, but other than that, Toix left the room, allowing Ezekiel to do as he wanted.

Erick cast a [Sealed Privacy Ward] into the space, making it even more private, and then he discarded all magenta affectations. He flared the mana projection of [Healing Word] in one hand, producing a cacophony of divine sounds and an accompanying staccato beat. He stopped the channel, then he restarted the white flare in his lightform, hovering the spell in front of him like a white glow in the world.

Tiffany and Paul watched; one on the door, the other with eyes on Erick.

Erick stretched the spell like putty, pulling it left and right and through itself. He quickly discarded the staccato sound, leaving behind a holy sound of Healing and direction. Erick didn’t understand the direction yet, but he would. With practice. He let that flare go. He focused on the task at hand. These were all happy, fat rats, and Erick was not going to cause unnecessary pain, but he was going to learn this Healing Magic as fast and as properly as he could.

With a separate swipe of his lightform, a red line appeared on the white rat’s thick stomach. Erick didn’t cut too deep, but he did get past the epidermis, the dermis, and into the fat beneath. This would be fatal without treatment, but the rat would get treatment, and soon.

Erick held that wound shut with his light, joining it together as seamlessly as he could, holding severed blood vessels to each other and everything else in its place, to prepare for the magic to come.

He hummed a [Healing Word] to a purity of Healing and guidance, and held that spell into his light, directly into the wound. White light glowed, then faded. The directed healing was done in a flashing second. Erick released his lightform from the rat and cast a controlled [Cleanse] over the space.

The wound partially separated, just as it had before.

… Hmm.

Erick inspected the wound, and found nothing too obvious. What was the problem, here?

… He let the wound remain open, not holding the sides together, and cast his directed [Healing Word] again.

The wound scarred over.

A [Cleanse] removed half of the scar.

He was obviously doing something wrong. Something that neither Ari nor Xue concerned themselves enough to speak on, and which wasn’t covered in the books they had given him. He didn’t think they were lying to him, but neither of them were telling him the full story, either, because the full story was massive.

… But Xue did mention that Healing Magic was difficult and only possible through the gifts of the gods, and the Script. Maybe this was true.

Honestly, it was a little presumptuous of him to think he could do this in two days, with little training beforehand. And yet, it made sense that he could. This was just repairing the body to what it had been before it was damag—

Ah.

Time Magic, repairing damage? Made sense for [Treat Wounds], as that often reversed wound damage. But…

Time Magic made no sense for spells like [Regeneration], which actually sucked up the body’s resources in order to regenerate lost flesh. No. There was no Time Magic here. Besides.

Looking back…

Though Erick had only found out about it after the fact, Rats had had some soul problems, which caused his body to heal incorrectly, and caused his eyesight problems.

If Time Magic was the only thing involved in this healing, then Rats’ healing issues would not be solved by [Greater Treat Wounds], for the body healed itself according to the soul, and if all healing magic did was restore the flesh through time-based actions, based on the blueprint of the soul, then Rats would have not been able to survive through his soul problems. Healing Magic would have killed him, not healed him.

So Healing Magic was not linked to the soul, and it was therefore not linked to Time Magic or to any previous incarnation of the body. If Time Magic was involved here, then wouldn’t constant healing reverse the effects of aging? It did not, therefore Healing Magic wasn’t Time Magic.

… Erick wasn’t 100% on that, but it felt right.

He continued.

So what was Healing Magic actually doing? Xue had said it best that Healing Magic was the restoration of the body through the application of Elemental Healing, through the controlled power of the gods, who could accurately heal like no other. And Elemental Healing was life force…

Maybe…

He needed to get rid of all of the broken and damaged body parts? The cells that were broken in the initial strike that wounded the rat? That made some sense. Imbuing broken DNA with life force seemed like a surefire way to cause cancers, which was what he was seeing.

Maybe this was the real reason why [Inflict Wounds] was a natural occurrence of learning proper Healing Magic? Maybe he needed to erase the broken body parts from the equation, before he could restore what had been lost… Except.

Except [Treat Wounds] was not ‘powering up’ the cells to the sides of the wound into healing over the wound, was it?

Well.

Actually.

Maybe that’s exactly what he was doing.

He had already considered that this was exactly what he was doing, but—

If that were the case, then resources would be taken from the body in order to cause this healing. Oh. Wait. Right.

Resources were not taken from the body to repair this damage because the spell provided the mana which provided the material to restore the body to full.

… Except in the cases where resources were taken from the body, as was the case in [Regeneration].

And [Greater Treat Wounds] was the absorption of [Regeneration] into [Treat Wounds], but [Greater Treat Wounds] didn’t take resources from the body.

Was there a [Greater Regeneration] that took greater resources from the body, in order to restore the body? That seemed like it would kill a person if their injury was great enough. Was that why Erick had never heard of such a spell before?

It was all kinda odd, now wasn’t it?

Anyway.

Let’s try it with an understanding of [Inflict Wounds] and [Treat Wounds] at the same time. Or. In a more simple way: Only [Treat Wounds] the cells and flesh which is not going to turn cancerous. Just… Simply don’t heal which can heal wrong? Hmm.

Barely three seconds had passed while Erick thought through his few complicated thoughts.

He tried to heal the rat again, but slightly differently. This time he held the rat’s wound mostly closed, allowing for a tiny scar, and more importantly, for the cells in the area to grow and rearrange themselves as needed upon a scaffold of light.

He cast, and the rat’s scattered wound closed, knitting together into bumpy flesh. Erick tensed. And then he cast [Cleanse].

The [Cleanse] did not disturb the scar.

Success?

He succeeded in healing over the wound. But...

… No blue box.

Something was wrong.

The problem likely lay in that there was scar tissue at all. Normally, healing magic caused little scarring, and even caused scars to fade. Ari had even made a scarred wound on her forearm before erasing that with her [Inflict Wo—

Ah. [Inflict Wounds] was a part of the process, here. Right. Ari had mentioned that he would pick up [Inflict Wounds] somewhere along his journey into Healing Magic.

[Inflict Wounds] was still an aspect of Healing Magic, though? Eh. It had to be an application of Elemental Healing tied to Destruction. The Healing part would be to target the living tissue, and the Destruction would be to invert that power.

Hmm. Or…

He didn’t want to [Inflict Wounds] on a rat. With his modifiers, the rat would probably explode into red mist. He did not need to do that. What he could do, though, was incorporate some Destruction intent into his [Healing Word] and cast that spell ten times in a row, to both destroy every bit of scar tissue that forms, as it forms, and also to heal what remains to perfection.

Yes.

A perfect plan.

Erick harmonized a tiny sound of Mana Altering for Destruction into his directed [Healing Word], and held that gathering of power in his lightform. He almost applied the magic to the wound, but then he felt the need to speak, to further direct the mana. And so he did,

“Cull the broken, heal the hurt; with power spoken, death avert.”

Five bursts of white light coalesced into the body of the white rat. Flesh repaired in a flashing instant; perfect and without scar.

… That worked? He cast a [Cleanse] on the wound, and nothing appeared; it was a good healing. The blue liquid surrounding the rat dropped a bit, but this was an easy fix. Erick reached over and grabbed the blue bottle to refill the bowl—

A drop of red splashed onto the counter. Erick sniffed and rubbed his nose, coming away with a bloody hand for his efforts.

As he cast a [Cleanse] again, four blue boxes appeared.

--

Special Quest Complete!

You have remade a Basic Spell.

Since you do not already have Inflict Wounds, here you go:

--

Inflict Wounds 1, instant, touch, 50 mana

Cause 5x WIL damage in a target, and possibly inflicting a wound. Decreases target’s natural healing for a while.

--

Special Quest Complete!

You have remade a Basic Spell.

Since you do not already have Treat Wounds, here you go:

--

Treat Wounds 1, instant, touch, 100 mana

Heal the injuries of the target. Increase the natural healing of the target for a while. Increases Health Regeneration. Effect breaks if damage is incurred.

--

“Success! It wor— Oh.” Erick was almost thrilled, but then he read [Inflict Wounds] again and looked down at the rat, eyes wide. “You would have exploded. Good thing I didn’t do that.” He asked Poi and Teressa, “Any idea how much damage [Greater Inflict Wounds] does?”

Teressa said, “Something like 20 times Willpower? That spell will fuck you up.”

“This is correct.” Poi said, “Your [Sanguine Charm] would partially protect us from such a spell, but not fully. Healing Magic is not technically Blood Magic.”

Erick turned back toward the sleeping rat, saying, “I’ll need to make [Greater Inflict Wounds] on a monster, then. Wonder if I have to level [Inflict Wounds] first, tho… Eh.” He stared at the rat, and at the long, curling tail, wondering if he should cut off the tip and make the next spell. But... He mumbled, “All Healing Magic is attainable through all other Healing Magics… but what’s the difference between [Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration]? They seem almost the same. But they’re not. A lot of this healing feels the same… like its all just different sides of the same expression of magic— Well. They are, actually. So that makes sense.”

He considered Remaking the next spell, [Regeneration], with [Healing Word].

This seemed like a bad idea. Or at least a sub-optimal one.

Erick held a hand out, and channeled mana through [Treat Wounds].

Then he channeled mana through [Healing Word]. And… Yup! [Treat Wounds] was much closer to his idea of [Regeneration]. Even if the spell was still only at level 1… That shouldn’t matter, right? Right. He cut his channeling of [Healing Word], and focused entirely on [Treat Wounds].

The spell was a gentle, watery glow, that shimmered across his hand, like he had stuck his arm into the light beneath the surface of the edge of the ocean. It carried with it the sound of waves and renewal, and also of constant wear and tear being replaced by the new. It was methodical. Unending. And yet helpful; never harmful. Purposefully helpful, even.

It was the sound of the Mana Ocean, guided into perfect cause.

It was the sound of a beach eroding and renewing at the same time.

It would not be hard to shift that sound into one that would replace lost sand, and renew a missing beach completely to full—

That would be cancerous, though.

No. He needed to guide the renewal of the beach better than that. To find the flow in the waters of life and to bring forth only that which should be there.

So you needed to follow the coastline.

But not the soul.

Ah. You needed to follow the design laid down in the DNA. Souls could go into any body, but DNA was only present in that body…

Oh. So Rats’ soul wasn’t originally in that body, was it? Was that the problem, there?

But back to the problem.

To regenerate lost flesh, you also needed to provide the scaffold for the body to regenerate upon, and to strangle that which was not perfect. This was control on a deep level. This was precise.

Erick snipped off the tip of the rat’s tail. Crimson blood swirled into the water as he moved the two-centimeter section of flesh and bone away, giving his magic room to work.

He cast, as he spoke,

“A bit of flesh has gone away, but here we have a little spell, with power to pull that which’s strayed; an empowerment of new-made cells.”

A few things happened in quick succession.

First, the rat began to deflate a little, as the tip of its tail scabbed over with new flesh, and then grew back to full length.

Second, a pair of blue boxes appeared.

--

Special Quest Complete!

You have remade a Basic Spell.

Since you do not already have Regeneration, here you go:

--

Regeneration 1, instant, touch, 100 mana

Enable the regrowth of the target’s lost body parts. Massively increases Health Regeneration. Effect breaks if damage is incurred.

--

And finally:

Blood began to flow from Erick’s nose, mouth, and his pants started to feel uncomfortably wet. Before he lost consciousness, he hit himself with [Treat Wounds], before falling to a knee, into Poi and Teressa’s concerned embrace. He blinked out blood, focusing on his mana sense, but he barely had a chance to look at himself before he fell unconscious.

His soul had been damaged. A minor explosion had occurred over his heart, and a few bits of his soul were outside of his body, briefly. His soul had rapidly flowed back inside, but now there was a trench where before there had been smooth, white soul.

Was that too much experimentation, too fast?

Ah…

Sleep is good.

- - - -

Ezekiel woke not three seconds later, coming to on the floor. The rat was still on the table above. Odin was hopping on his chest, hitting him with [Treat Wounds]. Paul sat on his knees, right beside him, going from terribly concerned to relieved as Ezekiel looked up.

Above Paul, was Tiffany, and she was still in the concerned phase.

“You fucked up your insides, a lot.” Tiffany frowned at him, saying, “And your soul.”

Uh.

Shit.

Ezekiel checked.

Yup! He hadn’t been seeing things before. There was now a rent in the Shroud of his soul, exposing the ‘meat’ below, along with a crack in that meat.

He realized what he had done and he was slightly embarrassed by it. This was a multilayered problem—they were always multilayered, weren’t they? Whatever the case, he wouldn’t be doing any more magic today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. He would have to beg off tomorrow’s meeting with Kaffi, too.

“Yeah.” Ezekiel groaned. “I fucked up my body and harmed my soul.” He added, “Got cocky.”

Paul sighed out, “Yes.”

Tiffany frowned. “It looks like normal spell creation soul damage, but… Worse, somehow.”

Ezekiel sat up. “I think you got it in one, Tiffany.” He tried to stand, and Tiffany and Paul helped him succeed. “Thank you.” He breathed out and hit himself with another [Treat Wounds], leveling the skill and also… Huh. Odd. He cast the spell again. The rent in his soul filled in at the same time. Maybe he could still make that meeting with Kaffi, actually, if his soul healed with each cast of his new spell. He said, “I tried to force a spell that wasn’t level 10 to make a new spell. Something didn’t like that.” He gestured at the rat, and said, “Let’s clean up and get back up to the room. I’ll explain up there.”

What he had seen had large implications, and he wasn’t sure of all of them, but he knew a few.

“We can talk a little right now.” Tiffany guessed, “When you make a spell, it makes a thing in the soul, and that thing is where you cast from, and as it levels to 10, it becomes settled, and thus you’re able to build upon it. But stressing your unsettled [Treat Wounds] into making a spell was too much stress, and since spell creation already demands a break in the soul in order to grow, you did the equivalent of building on sand, and hurt yourself in the process.”

Ezekiel smiled wide. “Yup! I didn’t understand how spell creation actually worked until just now, and the spotting of my own failure state.” He added, “You’re much better at this [Soul Sight] than I am.” He looked to the sleeping rat and its whole tail, saying, “Thank you for your assistance, mister rat.”

Paul gestured to the extra rat tail piece, and said, “Get rid of that.”

“Ah. Good thinking, Paul,” Ezekiel said.

With a tap of light, the bit of bloody rat tail was [Teleport Object]’d far away.

The rat went back to the handlers.

Ezekiel thanked Rat Master Toix for his assistance in gaining both [Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration], but that he was done for the day. He would have to resume his work tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Toix smiled wide, then patted the stomach of the sleeping rat, calling him a good boy.

As Ezekiel walked away, he heard Toix whisper to the little guy about how much good food he was going to get tonight, yes he was, yes he was!

- - - -

Ezekiel laid back in his chair, in his room on the fifth floor of the Southern House. He set aside Xue’s journal for a moment, and looked to the window. The view beyond of beauty and power, with multitudes of houses sitting atop forested and cultured mountains, which were full of even more houses, and teaching rooms, and libraries, and armories, and all sorts of other kinds of places. Ezekiel’s room was about 400 meters above the white road of the Alluvial District, so it was rather high, but it was the same height as much of the nicer housing out there, and below the even nicer places. He wasn’t at the top of the world right now. But.

It was pretty.

Ezekiel returned to his reading, but he didn’t pick up Xue’s journal. He picked up Elder Arilitilo’s.

He read for a while, then set that journal aside, then picked up Loremaster Riri’s literature on the enchanting of spider silk. After a while with that one, he set it back down, and went back to the Doctoring books. By the time he read through all of them a third time, the sun was an hour away from setting.

And Ezekiel had a problem.

Remaking [Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration] had been odd. Different than how he had Remade all the other spells he had ever Remade, and it wasn’t just the burst bit of his soul that made him think this. It was that ethereal ‘guiding-hand’ he had heard in the sounds of [Treat Wounds], and [Healing Word]. It was unnatural.

That guiding hand bothered him.

Not because he didn’t appreciate the help making healing spells…

Okay. Actually. Yes. That was it.

He did not appreciate sidestepping the understanding of true magic. Ezekiel wanted to Remake his healing spells without outside help, or at least through the application of his own knowledge onto an arcane set of physics that may or may not be about communicating with a force larger than Reality itself.

He was being contrarian, he knew.

The problem was not that he was calling out to the mana and that the mana responded.

The problem, which was kinda hard to articulate, was that the ‘guiding hand’ did not sound divine.

Ezekiel knew what Divinity sounded like. Divinity sounded like Phagar, or Rozeta.

This sound in [Healing Word] didn’t sound like Melemizargo, either.

It sounded sort of like… chains? Not in the rattling, linked-pieces-of-metal sense. But in the containing sense.

Yes.

That was it.

Ah.

It was the Script. He was hearing the Script in all of his Healing Magic. That was it.

The sound of mana was a pure sound. It could get jumbled, too, but mostly, it was pure. The Sound of the Script was complicated and constraining. A boundary and a channel carved into the mana, to let the mana flow in specific directions. With Healing Magic, this boundary and guide was very present.

How to confirm this hypothesis, though?

Let us consider the facts thus far; old information.

The Script contains and holds the mana on Veird, and ensures that everyone has access to spellwork, even if most people cannot get high into the tiers. Almost everything about the blue boxes is an attempt to impart to the user what is beyond true understanding; to grant them magics that they can not gain themselves, or to constrain their magic to understood phenomena. But the Script is not magic. It is an overlay.

It is an assistant and a jailer.

Ah.

The Script is a yoke, to ensure nothing too bad happens, for rampant use of magic killed the Old Cosmology. Even if the Wizards had nothing to do with the Sundering, the mana (or it was a magic? Same difference, really.) still went on a rampage and killed everyone, erasing existence itself.

The mana left on Veird is the scraps of the Old Cosmology, yoked into usable form.

Where does magic come from, though?

Mana is created from the soul, but magic… also comes from the soul. When a person gains a new spell, that spell becomes a part of their very being; their soul.

Ezekiel looked at himself with [Soul Sight], and cast a [Cleanse].

He didn’t see anything ‘flex’ in his soul when he cast. But maybe he wasn’t meant to? Maybe that particular part of [Soul Sight] and mana sense was hidden from him?

It seemed… Right, to think that the soul held the magic of a person. Ezekiel had considered that Tenebrae used some sort of [Soul Sight] and [Identification] spell in order to ‘read’ Ezekiel’s Status, based upon what was inside of his soul. But he had no proof that that was what Tenebrae had done, except for the man’s ornery nature seeming to get more ornery, when Ezekiel guessed in that direction.

Thinking it over...

… All of that seemed correct.

So the Script did not control the mana itself, but it did assist Ezekiel in (re)making his two new spells.

But had called out to the mana, or to the Script, in order to make that happen?

He was pretty sure that he had called out to the mana, for sure.

So, taking all of that into account... Had he damaged himself today, not because of any ‘building on shaky foundations’, as Tiffany had theorized, but because he had gone against the shackles of the Script? The Script demanded that a person level a spell to X before they made new spells with it. But his [Treat Wounds] was very much not level X. Had he gained [Regeneration] only because he had forced the issue, through the mana, and the Script had made allowances for the ‘bucking bronco’ that is the mana? But he had been harmed in the process, because the Script didn’t like that?

Where does the body and soul damage come from, exactly, when he makes a new spell?

He mumbled, “The damage has to come from the Script, right?”

Back when Ezekiel was trying to figure out the [Teleport Lock] of the Shades, he guessed that it was not a denial spell of any sort, but instead it was a spell that would ensure a fight. In this way, a Shade’s [Teleport Lock] was more of a lateral attack, and not a straight-up denial. Hard denials are difficult to do under the Script. But a lateral attack is easy.

For instance, when killing a monster with 1000 Health, it is easier to kill the monster by sticking a steel sword through the monster’s brain and getting a critical, than it is to throw a 1000-damage [Force Bolt] at the monster’s flanks and accomplish nothing.

And yes, it was ‘lateral thinking’ to strike at the weak point instead of at the strong point.

When Ezekiel asked the Interfaith Church of Spur and the gods therein about how [Teleport Lock] worked, regarding his own ideas about how to tear down that part of Melemizargo’s power, he was promptly told that to create such a spell would not only be an act of Wizardry, but it would also go directly against Melemizargo’s interests, and the Dark God would give a response. He was also told that Rozeta would still help him make such a spell, but that he might not survive the creation. It would be like [Zone of Peace] all over again, which was another act of violence that Ezekiel didn’t quite understand yet, but he had been told that he had tried to control the Script, and the Script didn’t like that.

Anyway.

Rozeta had sent him a note telling him to come to the Orrery in the Splinter Mountains if he wished to know more about the Script, and why a person is damaged whenever they make new magic.

But Ezekiel was guessing that there was no real secret to this damage.

When a person created new Basic Magic, they became trapped between the free use of mana, and the constraining power of the Script. Going too far out of line with either force would have a disastrous effect on the person in the middle, which often resulted in damage, based upon how much struggle happened between the involved forces.

None of this was truly new information, but with recent events, Ezekiel had cause to go over some old thoughts and to reorganize them into something new, and more informative.

In particular, this ‘guiding hand’ in the mana that helped him to make [Treat Wounds] and [Rejuvenation] was very much not the ‘helping force’ that he spoke to when he made [Call Lightning].

[Call Lightning] came from the Script organizing what the mana had helped Ezekiel to make.

But [Treat Wounds], and all other modern Healing Magic, came from the Script enforcing a specific action of the mana.

Which meant the healing spells he currently knew were not his own, at all. Ezekiel had followed a road laid down in the Script, instead of finding his way through the mana. Remaking [Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration] had been a trick of the system. Not even Tricking Magic was such an obvious trick.

Oddly enough, the only spell he made today that he felt he had made himself was [Inflict Wounds], for that was destruction, and destruction was easy.

Considering that all healing spells used to be divinely granted magics… could he have ever made them himself?

… Maybe not.

Ezekiel didn’t like that.

He didn’t like that, because… Of reasons.

And now he was being contrarian again. So what if the Script helped him to make magic? This was fine, right? The only actual problem would come when Yggdrasil opened up new worlds to new Scripts. If there wasn’t some overarching compatibility with each new ‘Script’ that populated the universe, then Healing Magic would never again exist. All other magic would be easy enough to remake… Maybe.

But not Healing Magic.

And there was another problem.

Ezekiel said, “It means that if there’s ever a space where the Script does not exist, then the magic that has been made might still exist, for it seems to become a part of the soul, but how would anyone gain any new magic? Through learning aura control? That would have to be it, right? But is that even how magic creation actually works? Is all my spellwork actually a function of the Script?” He added, “I want the magic I have made to actually be mine. But is it? Is this [Treat Wounds] actually mine, now, since it is a part of my soul, but I used the Script to do it, and that was an obviously incorrect method? The true way to make this magic would have been to use pure Elemental Healing, and control.” He murmured, “But I didn’t do that.”

Ezekiel let his mind wander.

… He realized rather quickly why he didn’t like this aspect of Healing Magic.

People got [Gate] through a Quest, and thus failed to ever get it on their own, just as most people got Healing Magic through the Healing Quests, and even if they Remade the spell on their own, they were still using the Script-assist to make [Treat Wounds], and all the rest.

Yes.

That was why he was mad.

And he was mad.

He was not mad because he had arcane assistance. A helping hand from the mana itself was fine and wonderful. He was mad because the Script assistance killed his ability to understand what he was actually doing.

And yet, at the same time, Healing Magic was incredibly complicated. Not even Healers in the Old Cosmology made their own healing spells; they got their Healing Magic from the gods, too.

It’s not like you could just increase cell production; that would age a person. Healing Magic did not age a person. And it wasn’t time magic, either. And it wasn’t like [Mend], where the spell looked into the history of the item and manifested that history into the current reality.

In a broken item, [Mend] ‘deleted’ the broken mass of the item as a side effect of restoring the main structure; this was why you needed to mutate [Mend] very far in order to make [Duplicate]. But Healing Magic didn’t care about what flesh had been flung where. Healing Magic made new flesh.

Ezekiel thought of Healing Magic, and of experiments he could do with Elemental Healing, and of stuff he had researched back when he was living on Earth. He had a lot of experience with googling and youtubing and researching how he was going to die one day; the most likely answer was cancer, and of any of three dozen different varieties.

As his thoughts wore on, he considered how to solve those various issues through true, real applications of Elemental Healing.

And he thought of [Immortality].

He thought of how no one had reinvented that magic, exactly, because the body worked differently here, in this universe, than it did in the Old Cosmology. Or maybe something else was going on there. Some people had certainly side-stepped the issue, like Quilatilap. Soul Magic was a lateral attack that worked against the problem of natural death.

Maybe real, [Flesh and Blood Immortality] didn’t exist, yet. Phagar had spoken like it didn’t. But were those words an act, or a real display of reality?

If [Immortality] did not exist, was one of the reasons for that failure of reinvention, because of the Script helping with all Healing Magic?

Was this ‘assistance’ on purpose? Did the gods want to keep the populace unable to rise above?

Or was this assistance the act of people (and gods) desperate to hold their world together and to keep everyone alive?

‘Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance’. And probably fear, too.

Ezekiel was drawn to the idea that this problem of Healing Magic was simply a solution that they had, that worked. But he could easily see how someone could consider this just another part of how the Script constrains real magic.

Hmm.

A more logical explanation for the current state of Healing Magics was that Healing Magic was damned fucking difficult, and if the Script didn’t help with healing, then that entire line of spells simply would not exist.

Look at [Cleanse]! That spell was literally a gift from the gods. It targeted and turned-to-mana everything from cancer to toxins to the filth inside sewerhouses, the world over. That was some major magical assistance, as evident by when anyone tried to get that ‘targeting’ onto a different substance; they usually ended up poofing themselves into mana instead of achieving success.

Anyway.

Back to Healing Magic and [Immortality].

Ezekiel considered all the various individual magics that would need to go into an [Immortality] spell, and his mind quickly went down a hundred different paths.

When he came out of his fugue, the sun was setting outside, and he knew a few of the parts of [Immortality] which would need to be created before [Immortality] could be achieved.

There would have to be some sort of [Telomeres Restoration] spell. That sort of magic would likely come from [Restoration], because that spell targeted the whole body to restore general vibrancy. Maybe restoring the telomeres was already a part of that magic? Maybe.

Some sort of [Mutation Mitigation] would be necessary to remove mutated cells before they could become a problem. There might be a problem with mental growth past a certain point, if consciousness and mental change was linked to mutations in the brain...

Ezekiel did not know how DNA worked in the brain, or even how consciousness truly existed. But! Tiffany’s head got removed once, and she was fine afterward, right? Maybe not directly afterward. It took her a few days, but she was fine. Maybe Ezekiel was overthinking this problem. Maybe mutations in the brain didn’t matter? They probably didn’t. Undead didn’t have mental problems, did they?

(And that right there was a large reason to research necromancy and true summoning with angels and demons, to find out what was going on there with souls and bodies and how memories and learning happened when under the influence of mana instead of biology. The Fractured Citadels in Quintlan and Quilatilap’s necromantic legacy were sort-of on the itinerary, but not really. With this latest concern, maybe that undead place was firmly back on Ezekiel’s Worldly Path.)

There’d have to be some sort of [Stem Cell Restoration], too. Such a spell might overlap with [Telomeres Restoration], but it was good to have multiple failure points in a spell such as [Immortality]. But thinking on it a bit further…

A [Stem Cell Restoration] spell might be all that was needed for [Immortality], along with [Cleanse] to get rid of cancers, of course. He’d need to cast the spell like, what? Once a month? Maybe less. All other Healing Magic, and Blood Magic, could make up for the rest.

But if [Cleanse] was ever taken away, or if the Script just didn’t exist in the worlds to come, he would need a workaround for that functionality. A variation of [Inflict Wounds], perhaps? That automatically targeted all cancerous cells?

Whoa man, that would be a complicated spell.

Maybe, instead, he could work from the front end, and make [Stem Cell Restoration] even better? Something that would boost the immune system to enough strength so that it could overcome and kill cancer all on its own? Identifying the cancer would be the hard part, but [Cascade Imaging] can target DNA, which means mana can target DNA.

And wasn’t that an interesting tangent.

The mana made up for a lot of mistakes, but the clearer a person was with their crafting, and the closer that crafting was to reality, the less mana it took to bridge the gap into usability.

But was that the mana that did that? Or was that the Script?

It was the mana.

Back when he made [Zone of Peace], Rozeta had even said that the mana loved him, and when he asked it to do something that it was not allowed to do, it tried to control the Script. Rozeta did not say that it was the Script that harmed him, but looking back on it, that was exactly what had happened.

Mana could do a lot when the Script wasn’t involved.

But if the Script wasn’t involved… What happened, then? Did spells still get imbued into the soul? Why did he need to raise a Basic Tier spell from level 1 to level X? Was leveling a spell the act of solidifying the spell in the soul? Or was it something else?

What was Experience?

Monsters could ‘cycle’ their mana in order to raise their level. All the shadelings at Candlepoint could easily reach level 55 and gain a Class in this way. Dragons did this, too, but if they failed in the process they became raging wyrms, let loose on the world as the failures of dragonkind.

Ezekiel’s mind wandered.

He also leveled [Regeneration] and [Treat Wounds] to level X by casting from one Odin to another, outside of the pagoda. His soul healed as he leveled them; he watched as the rift over his heart healed, and his Shroud came back, mostly. He might have gotten more questions than answers out of his time spent thinking, but he did get one answer, for sure.

Leveling a spell from 1 to X ‘settled’ that spell into the soul, making it a permanent part of the self.

A few minutes later, Paul entered the room, saying, “Scion Hangzi has invited us to dinner.”

Ezekiel asked him, “Do you care to know if the magic you’ve bought in the Script is real, or fake?”

“Of course it’s real. It’s a part of your soul.”

“But then wouldn’t the resurrected people of Candlepoint still have those same spells in their soul? All of them lost [Cleanse].”

Paul sighed a little, as he said, “I have no idea how [Reincarnation] works. That’s Dark Magic, sir.”

“Fair enough.” Ezekiel added, “And dinner with him is fine.”

Paul asked, “You’re not going to goad Hangzi into something again, are you? You dodged the wyrm once, but I doubt you can dodge a second time.”

Ezekiel chuckled. “Oh, Paul. That guy was being a total asshole, and I was as polite as I should have been! Sometimes little brats need to be told they ain’t shit, and then that telling needs to be backed up with force.” Ezekiel got up from his chair, amending himself, “But I suppose it’s different when we’re talking about brats who will become patriarchs.”

Paul grinned, saying, “Slightly different.”

Tiffany called out from the other room, “Slightly more important to knock them down, you mean!”

“She gets it!” Ezekiel said. “They got all these sayings about ‘don’t wake the dragon’ around here, but by the way some people act, you think they never spotted a dragon.”

Paul deadpanned at him, “Do you really believe that High Clan Devouring Nightmare’s Scion has never met a dragon.”

Ezekiel flinched. “Ah. Maybe he has. I am pretty sure I’ve met at least two, and only one of them was the Headmaster.”

Paul looked at him. He said, “Melemizargo. Rozeta. Headmaster.”

“Okay okay.” Ezekiel said, “Four, then.”

Tiffany came into the room, excited and smiling. “Hey, Boss! If that ‘True Terror’ thing comes up again, I can take it. I want to see what it’s about.”

“… If the topic comes up? Maybe!”

- - - -

On the fifth floor of the Southern House, Ezekiel settled into the provided chair at Hangzi’s table. Yorza sat to his right, Hangzi sat across from him, and Warzi sat to the left. Exactly the same as before.

The dinner itself looked to be a reprise of last night’s opulent meal, with the same number of dishes as before, but with a few variations. The boneless fried chicken tossed in sweet sauce was still there, and it sat closer to Ezekiel tonight. Ezekiel smiled, happy that the servers had noticed that he ate quite a lot of that particular dish, so of course that meal remained, and its size had been increased.

The living octopus babies in saltwater were gone; good riddance.

Ezekiel was less glad that Hangzi seemed to be waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce. They had made small talk up till the serving of the food, but as Ezekiel dished out some rice and fried sweet sauce chicken to himself, and the servers dished out the first course to the plates of High Clan Devouring Nightmare, Hangzi sat back. He was ready.

Hangzi said, “I understand you have sold your daughter for 20 points.”

Ezekiel almost laughed in the man’s face, again. Instead, he went diplomatic.

“I understand that you have no idea where my own lines lie, so you are trying to figure them out, crossing them as you are wont to see what reaction you cause.” Ezekiel drizzled some sweet sauce over his rice, happily adding, “This is a line you should not cross.”

“Perhaps you misunderstand. I am not threatening you, or her.” Hangzi said, “According to what I am hearing, you could have gotten a lot more for her services.”

Ezekiel looked to the man. Then he turned toward Warzi, but kept his eyes on Hangzi. “I have a nifty little spell I can cast over all of us, allowing us to see outward, and others inward, but which blocks mana sense. It’ll block all of our senses except for sight, actually. Would you like to see it in action?”

Ezekiel wasn’t threatening anyone, but what he had said did sound a certain way.

Warzi dropped his food. His helpers cleaned it up for him.

And silence held in the air for a long moment. Yorza went stock still. Hangzi lightly glared.

Ezekiel nodded, then said, “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Yorza spoke up, “Do the spell.”

Ezekiel compiled before anyone could say otherwise. The air flickered magenta, and then a layered, surrounding [Sealed Privacy Ward] enclosed around the table, its occupants, and a few meters in every direction. Warzi’s helpers were inside the spell, but other than the six of them, the world beyond was behind a double layer of now-invisible magic. Everyone could see in, and out, but sounds failed to cross the barrier, and mana sense ended at the spellwork. Warzi could still sense everything inside the space, as could Ezekiel, but this small area was much smaller than the usual 100 to 150 meter range that Ezekiel thought Warzi had.

Ezekiel still had all of his range, though; even his range outside of the space, for he had done a trick. He had shaped the spell so that it cut through his legs. With a piece of himself outside of the barrier, his mana sense was able to sense both sides. It was an odd feeling, for sure, in that the part of himself that was directly inside the [Sealed Privacy Ward] felt numb to his mana sense. But his feet were outside, and that allowed him to see whatever he wanted. Mostly. His range was smaller, but...

This was fine.

Yorza ignored Ezekiel and Hangzi, as she looked to Warzi. Everyone looked to Warzi. Including those who were outside of the bubble. The bubble itself was invisible, but that which laid on both sides was not.

Warzi glanced around, as though coming out of the rain. He un-hunched his shoulders. He breathed deeper. He blinked, and took in the sight of his food, and then the sight of the rest of the room. He laughed once, then again, quickly giggling in joy.

Then he started crying.

Yorza [Blink]ed and was suddenly at Warzi’s side, holding the boy as the boy crawled at her, into her arms. She spoke calming words into Warzi’s ears as the boy cried on her shoulder. She smiled, and waved a hand down at the nearby table of soldiers.

The soldiers relaxed. Or at least they sat back down, properly.

The moment matured, and soon Warzi was laughing in Yorza’s arms. She set him back down and he went to the invisible wall. He touched the spell, his hand vanishing in the between-space, before his finger reached out—

He yanked his hand back like he had been burned; his smile briefly fading.

And then everything was great again. He laughed as he got back in his chair, where he instantly started eating again. This time, he didn’t drop a single bite.

Dinner resumed.

Yorza asked, “How much for this spell? How long does it last?”

“You don’t want this one.” Ezekiel said, “I’m working on something easier to enchant. I’ll see about getting you that one.”

With stronger steel in her voice than before, Yorza asked, “How much? We can offer you points—”

“No we cannot.” Hangzi’s light glare had returned in full force, as he said to Ezekiel, “Points are only awarded for meritorious service toward life and the pursuit of the betterment of us all. Though I love him dearly, Warzi’s condition does not count.”

Yorza hissed at Hangzi, “It does count! It would be in support of the realm!”

With measured calm, Hangzi said, “We’re gearing up for war, Yorza. We are not giving points to someone who could very well be an enemy. We will not make the same mistake Star Song has made.”

“This is not a convincing act.” Ezekiel almost wanted to bring up how Warzi was eyeing the two of them like they were aliens, or how both of them were perfectly in sync with each other, but he didn’t need to. He especially didn’t want to throw the kid under the bus. He asked, “Do people actually fall for this concerted speech, speaking openly in front of the— Ah. Of course they do. You wouldn’t act like this unless it worked. Which means I’m now on some other path of well-understood noble manipulation, aren’t I? I’m not sure I like that either. But at least it’s honest. At least Star Song started off on the honest path with me. You two have needed to be overly goaded before we got here.”

And they still weren’t at full, open honesty. That was fine with Ezekiel.

Before Hangzi or Yorza could speak, Ezekiel was surprised, but not by the older people in the room.

In a way that maybe only Ezekiel could see, Warzi subvocalized, with only his throat and tongue moving, “They’re always like this. Everyone is always plotting around me. It’s so easy to see through, too.”

Ezekiel did not betray that the kid ‘spoke to him’, nor did he react to the level of vitriol in the kid’s ‘voice’; he continued to watch Hangzi and Yorza.

Yorza said, “25 points; in defense of the realm. It is allowed, and this qualifies. It qualifies in exactly how Julia qualified. Warzi will someday become a fulcrum for the defense of Songli but he cannot get there as he is. Right now, he is a scared child. Right now, he needs help.”

Hangzi turned his glare toward Yorza, who purposefully did not look his way. He turned back to Ezekiel and said, “My aunt means well, but she has overstepped herself. Is there some monetary need that we can solve for you, Scion Phoenix? Perhaps your recent debt of 5000 gold to Clan Void Song?”

Ezekiel almost told the man that his debt was 50,000 gold, but that would reveal that he was an archmage in training, and not some random Scion from the mountains.

Hangzi continued, “Though I am sure with your talents you could easily acquire this yourself, so if you have some other desire, let it be known.”

Ezekiel understood something new about Hangzi, at that moment.

There was only one thing Ezekiel wanted. He wanted to know if Clan Devouring Nightmare was good people, or if they were tyrants. So far, Hangzi hadn’t done much of anything besides being an uppity twit, and that was forgivable. All people in power needed to control the powers under them, to mitigate the powers at their own level, and to fight against those above them, otherwise they would lose power themselves.

And there were multiple ways to fight against the powers above oneself.

One of those methods was to make friends out of those higher powers.

This was the preferred method of the Highlands, and of most of civilization on Veird. After all, there was one higher power that everyone fought against; the Darkness. Because of that, there was a good reason to make friends instead of enemies.

Ezekiel didn’t see one important fact about Hangzi in the beginning, but he saw it now.

Hangzi wanted to become friends with Clan Phoenix.

Not fake friends, either. Actual friends.

Whereas the people of Star Song had come to Ezekiel, knowing who he was and what they could get out of him, and Ezekiel responded in kind, here was Hangzi, not knowing any of that, and he was coming at Ezekiel looking to make actual friends.

But Hangzi didn’t know how to become friends without using the other person. He had never known anything other than transactional friendship; using others for what they can give you, and being used in return. For someone in Hangzi’s position life itself was surely a stressful situation, and to treat any friendship as ‘real’ would be setting himself up for a heavy emotional blow later on in life. Such an event had likely occurred at least once already; more, if Hangzi was unlucky.

Ezekiel did not frown, upon seeing how sad that all was.

He also wasn’t sure, now, how to proceed. He had had a plan, and now that plan was gone.

Ezekiel said, “I’m not sure what I would want in return for this magic, but once I do know, I will—”

The guards behind Hangzi flinched, hard. They all looked to the east. They had all started to receive telepathic messages. The room outside of the privacy bubble began to move.

Then Yorza noticed, and Hangzi a fraction of a second later.

In a smooth motion, Ezekiel canceled the [Sealed Privacy Ward] around them, and recast the same structure, but only two meters across, with the anchoring point being one of Warzi’s extra knives.

Sounds returned. Black armored guards stood up behind Hangzi. Warzi startled, but he quickly relaxed; his bubble was smaller, but it was still there.

Yorza wanted to say something to Ezekiel, but she did not; she recognized something was happening, and then she recognized that Warzi was fine, but behind a second bubble. She almost said something else about that, but she halted herself there, as well. Hangzi remained silent as telepathic lines of intent were suddenly able to reach him, like heat mirages on the desert.

The room was completely silent, as Hangzi’s attention went elsewhere.

And then, as suddenly as the telepathic messages started rolling in, Hangzi had heard enough.

In a smooth motion, Hangzi stood, speaking, “We have received an official declaration of war from Terror Peaks. Their armies march at our western front and assassins prowl our streets, hunting for weakness. If we do not respond to the challenge in one hour, they will rape and pillage our people and our land.” He declared. “Woe unto them, for not even death will save them from the nightmare they have unleashed!” He said to Ezekiel, “We shall continue this discussion later, for tonight, everyone shall witness the truth of Terror as it is unleashed upon pretenders to the throne. You may watch from afar, if you wish.”

Ezekiel tensed.

He had forgotten that—

Well. No. He hadn’t forgotten anything. He had certainly pushed out of his mind, though, that some actions which might seem like malice, actually were malice. War was one of these things. Somewhat. Malice was involved, but war was more than malice. War was about nations on trajectories, meeting each other like tectonic plates; inevitable and harsh.

Of course, Veird didn’t have tectonic plates, but still—

Individuals could be bargained with. Smaller groups could be cowed into quiet. Even large forces could be forced to submit, if the forces applying the submission were strong enough and the reason for fighting weak enough. Ezekiel had done this exact thing all on his own, back at the Commune of Treehome, when fighting erupted between the orcols and those who had become shadelings. That battle had started, and Ezekiel had ended it before too many had died.

But from everything he had seen, there would be no easy answer when it came to war in Nelboor.

Especially not with the tectonic shift of one side freeing itself from the Elixir, and the other still weighed down by anti-magic.

… He could try to stop a war, though!

He asked, “Is war the only possible outcome from this declaration?”

“I see that Silver Star upon your chest, Ezekiel.” Hangzi said, “The sentiment is appreciated. It is honored. It is people like you who allowed us to create the Highlands out of this war torn land. But to run from wars like this one is to run forever, and the Highlands will never abandon its people to the evil that lies outside our borders. Watch us fight this opening battle, Scion Phoenix. You, whose Clan does not fight people, and who speaks of peace, watch and see what kind of evil lives beyond the Highlands.” He turned to his men, who stood in rapt attention, listening, some praying. Hangzi rapidly gestured across his people, saying, “Remain and protect. Come with me. [Teleport] us. We leave now.”

Events proceeded rapidly.

While Hangzi spoke, lights began to brighten the sunset sky outside. Spotlights. Floodlights. Several clan mountains flickered with power as Domains spread across them like flickering fires, or whistling breezes, or bright lights. The light in the air around Ezekiel seemed to dim, without dimming, while lightwards gained glints on their edges, like far away stars trapped in ethereal nebulae. It was the Domain of Star Song, for sure.

Ezekiel’s own [Lodestar] and [Greater Lightwalk] held at his back; pressured inward, but not broken, like someone had tested him, and then backed off.

Hangzi and half of his entourage had already left; one of the mages among them casting a large enough [Teleport] to move everyone at once, to another location.

A warning siren roared outside, shaking the skies.

Across the bridge, beyond the white stone Void Wall, the very air turned dense, as power flooded out from the Void Temple in the center of the city, to strike the walls and then roll over them, expanding across the land, swallowing the delta and Redflood and Darzallia and all the other smaller cities around Eralis. The whole Choir must be singing.

Ezekiel gasped as the Void Song touched upon him like a far away band, playing a midnight tune.

Yorza gathered a crying Warzi into one arm, and slipped the knife he had [Ward]ed into the sash at her side. She tried to say something, but she couldn’t speak through the privacy. She was nervous, and uncoordinated, but she was moving faster with each passing second. She handed the knife and the boy off to one of his servants, then stepped outside of the bubble.

Ezekiel spoke first, “I can cast another bubble that will make you invisible to all of those who look inside. These spells last 24 hours.”

Yorza did a double take, for Ezekiel had guessed her questions and answered her the way she wanted. She said, “Yes. Do it.”

An Odin had already invaded one of the rooms downstairs. Ezekiel cast a [Sealed Privacy Ward] through his [Familiar], and then said, “It is done. Your bedroom looked the most defensible; it is there.”

Yorza paused on her way down the stairs. She gazed at Ezekiel; it was a look of need, forlorn and desperate, but unwilling to voice her true concern. Instead, she said, “The rules of hospitality demand you contribute to the defense in the case of attack. This qualifies.”

Yorza, Warzi, and the rest of the black armored people of Devouring Nightmare rushed down the stairs. They found the invisible space, and hunkered down.

Ezekiel already knew his debt of hospitality. Yorza didn’t need to remind him, but if it made her feel more secure to do so, then more power to her. He might not attack, but he would certainly defend.

Soon enough, Ezekiel was in his room, surrounded by dense air and other protections, while Tiffany had grabbed up much of the food, and ate, watching the world around her. Paul sat to the side, watching him.

It wasn’t hard to find the location of the battlefield. Through Odin, Ezekiel overheard the staff and the people of Star Song speaking of what to expect, and of where the war would arrive.

- - - -

A trio of magenta glows watched from high in the sunset sky.

They were not the only ones up there. A butterfly made of wind, a cat made of fire, a long wolf made of lightning, and more. They all watched what was happening down below. None of them crowded each other, and even more [Familiar]s were completely invisible. But broadly, there were two sides, with a large gulf of empty space between them.

Just like it was on the empty plains below.

To the east, on the side of Eralis and in the deepening night, stood thousands of men and women in white. Most of them did not stand together; their formations, of ten or twenty or five, were spread wide and far, covering a dozen kilometers. One group stood out from the rest. In the center stood a regiment of a hundred men and women, lined up twenty long and five deep.

On the other side of the field, stood the forward forces of Terror Peak, while the sun set behind them, beyond the Tribulations.

A mirrored regiment to Songli’s 100 soldiers stood there, dressed in reds. Others, also dressed in reds, were scattered around that main force, yet another mirror to Songli’s scattered forces, except much less in number.

This was obviously a dance that both sides understood well, but glancing toward the defenses of Eralis, and of all the [Ward]s that were constantly arising with each passing moment, and to hear the increasing volume of a siren warning people to get inside and prepare…

This would soon blossom into a true war, and the people of Eralis had a lot to lose.

In a flash of [Teleport] magics, the main 200 soldiers were joined by more. A few more soldiers, on both sides. A man in red armor on Terror Peak’s side, along with his small entourage.

And Scion Hangzi Devouring Nightmare, on Songli’s side, along with a few of his people. They were all in white armor.

Ezekiel overheard the red man’s name from the other people on the ground, all around. He was Scion Raidu Terror Peak. He was human. Slowly, both scions and one of their attendants walked toward each other. Ezekiel strained Odin’s hearing, listening, as the two Scions met in the middle, between their small armies.

Raidu sneered, “Hangzi. Now first in line! Good for you. I’ll send your head back to your weeping mother, too, just as I sent her the head of your former sister. Is that brat Warzi next? He’s staying with you right now, isn’t he. I could end two children of Devouring Nightmare tonight! Maybe I will!”

Ezekiel found himself suddenly rooting for Hangzi.

“No attempt at peace?” Hangzi was calm under fire. “What would it take to get this to go away?”

Raidu’s eyes narrowed as he seemed to take in his opponent a second time. He had expected vitriol. He had expected a rebuttal. Not a side-step. Raidu pursued his obviously weak quarry, saying, “The knowledge of your chelation treatments. The dissolution of the Songli Highlands. The reparations of twenty million gold. Your family and you chained in my dungeons, so that we may cut off your limbs and feed them to you until you grow tired of living.”

He wasn’t being hyperbolic for effect.

He meant what he said.

“With all your tools of torture, you still couldn’t get that alchemist to talk, could you?” Hangzi said, “Or did you send an underling when you should have gone yourself? I heard that your forces were destroyed from the inside out, once some random Scion happened upon them.” Hangzi laughed, saying, “Some rube from the mountains! Doesn’t even fight people! Has a damned Silver Star! And your people went running, fractured and scared and killing each other instead of driving away a single random nobody from some barely-known Clan!”

Raidu glared. He softly said, “You’re going to die today, and I am going to shit upon your corpse.”

Hangzi said, “Your branch family should have been culled three hundred years ago before you betrayed the Highlands. Tonight, we rectify that problem.” In an offhand manner, he said, “Retaliations to civilian populations will be met with extreme force.”

Raidu spat, “The time for posturing is over, Hangzi. If you could have taken us, you would have done so, but in partaking of Particle Magic, you have forced our hands in ways you could never force us otherwise. We will not allow the Highlands leniency now that they have been corrupted by Melemizargo, and his pet Wizard. Tonight, everyone in Eralis dies, and we purge the world of your Dark Power.”

Hangzi’s face contorted in disbelief. He opened his mouth to reply.

But he didn’t get a chance.

Ezekiel saw what had happened, after the fact. Hangzi had thought this would be a normal war. A war fought outside of the cities. A war of boasting and constrained power. It was none of those things.

The sky opened up with lancing beams of exploding green power that scattered across the battlefield like dancing lasers, as fast as an eyeblink. The beams skipped across the hundred warriors of Songli. Some managed to deflect the power of the beams, but explosions followed in the trails of the beams, and there was no deflecting those.

Raidu slipped across Hangzi, like a phantom.

Hangzi deflected, but barely. An arm went flying. Half of Hangzi’s neck vanished, and all of his jaw. He turned to shadow and flowed away.

The Scion of Terror Peak ended his attack amidst Hangzi’s group, already slashing at Hangzi’s people.

Songli’s retort was of song, bright and shining and devoid of everything. Power swept the field, bursting enemy soldiers into dust, then scattering them further on the Void.

Spells and swords came out, as the remains of the original 200 soldiers filled the battlefield with fire and death.

Hangzi reappeared, whole and bloody, a dozen meters to the left of where he had been. He sang a single note, and a concussive wave exploded from him, to sweep across the remaining enemy soldiers. Enemy soldiers died to their own swords.

It took a single minute of back and forth attacks and deflections, each swipe of spellwork or sword reaping lives, each explosion a brightness in the growing dark, but in the end, Hangzi and three random Songli Soldiers were alive.

Raidu was alone.

It was a victory for Songli.

The scattered clumps of clansmen had never taken the field. They had all watched the other side, to ensure that the other side never took the field, either.

With his spotless armor, and having never been struck, Raidu said, “This isn’t over.”

“Bring better tank-grown soldiers if you wish to battle again.” Blooded and dirty, with half of his armor gone, Hangzi said, “But step into Songli without breaking our defenses first, and you’ll be Elixir’d like you Elixir’d our alchemist.”

Raidu said, “You have bargained with Darkness. The result is your death.”

“You have seen our forces. We have beaten you. Further provocation will result in mutual annihilation.”

Raidu glared, and then blipped away in white light.

Terror Peaks vacated the field.