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Erick asked, “We’ll talk here?”

They were still in the First Wizard’s Library, which was almost fully trapped with paintbombs. The couches were rigged to pop and the few comfortable chairs had holes in the ceiling above, ready to open up and spill paint over whoever was bold enough to sit down.

Rozeta said, “No.”

Erick blinked. Suddenly, Rozeta, Ophiel, and Erick were in a different place, but thankfully it wasn’t a clouded land. They had only moved a floor up and over a ways, to a lounge with a sign hanging out front naming this place as ‘Koyabez’s Rest’. Pastries and drinks rested in baskets behind counters, waiting to be served to customers who would sit at nice little tables, while they sat around on nice large couches and drank various drinks from large cups.

It was a nice little room, without any traps at all.

Rozeta went behind the counter and grabbed herself a small basket to fill with an assortment of muffins. She came back around, moving to a table as she said, “Feel free to pick something. You don’t have to actually [Duplicate] what you grab since I’ll restore this place after you leave, but it’s a nice sentiment anyway.” She sat down and crossed her legs as she bit into a muffin.

… Erick had been a little bit worried about everything, but Rozeta was Rozeta; she treated fairly and with an eye toward growth. Erick didn’t have any true worries about her.

He had worries about himself.

Ah.

Yeah.

He was just hesitant about this Wizard thing.

Erick asked, “Which one of these drinks are like coffee? I feel I need some coffee.”

“The green pot on the third heater.” Rozeta gestured to a counter with heated containers full of liquid, and then she gestured again to some small jars on that same counter. “It used to be served with some sweet jelly stirrers, but sugar is a close enough approximation and that’s in the small— Yeah. You got it.”

Erick grabbed himself a large mug of green ‘tea’ and a small jar of sugar. Ophiel grabbed him a few sugar cookies from the baskets behind the counter, then flew over to the table and set them down.

Erick sat down across from Rozeta, asking, “How much of this stuff is exactly how it used to be?”

Rozeta nodded, then began, “That depends on your philosophy; your adherence to actuality, or your adherence to emotionalism.” She held up a muffin flat on her hand. It had a bite out of it. “In actuality, zero percent of what you see is how it used to be. This muffin is in zero ways exactly as it would have been back at the Conclave’s Wizards’ Tower.” She held the muffin and tilted it, looking at the bite she had taken from it, saying, “But emotionally… The taste and the feeling of consumption and the wholeness a person gets from the muffin is about 95% how it used to be.” She touched the bitten part, saying, “A part of it will always be missing. That’s translation for you.” She set down the muffin on her small plate and gestured at the jar of sugar Erick had brought over. “And some things don’t translate at all. We tried to get slime-sugar to take off; but it didn’t keep like it did back in the Old Cosmology. Bacteria and such— More than that, though, was that slime-sugar usually ended up spawning colonies of slimes in people’s houses, and half the time [Cleanse] targeted it, erasing it from existence.” She shrugged. “Cactus sugar can be dried out into solid white grains, though, and those keep indefinitely. It’s just one of the many, many ways that the Grand Translation forced us to change everything.”

Erick had sipped his tea and decided it needed more sugar. He had added some, and now it tasted passable; sort of like sweet grass water, or something like that. He sipped his sweet tea, thinking about slimes in the liquid, then asked, “What about physically? The shape of everything, I mean.”

“Shapewise we managed 99% or 100%, depending on who you ask,” Rozeta said. “If you ask a real curmudgeon who actually knows what they’re talking about? They’d say we managed to hit 25%, but there will always be dissenters.”

Erick refilled his tea and took another sip. He felt a nervous energy begin to settle into his chest, and then settle out into a normal wakefulness. Ophiels sat down around the room, watching with intent, but not saying a word. Erick had almost moved onto the next, most important subject, but he had noticed that he was apparently nervous enough to leak over into Ophiel. With a concentrated inward pull, Erick managed to calm himself down a bit more. Ophiel chirped a bit, discarding his hard edges and returning to his playful self; he was still on high alert, though, but at least it wasn’t directed at Rozeta.

Rozeta had a bite of her muffin. She noticed Ophiel, for sure, but she hadn’t let his edges bother her.

Erick had another sip of tea.

Then he dove right in, “Why are you sure I am a Wizard?”

Rozeta paused. Then she set down her muffin, and said, “I imagined we would begin the other way, but this is a good start, too, for reasons that will rapidly become apparent once explained.

“You exude Chaos, Erick, and just now you altered how I saw this conversation going. That Chaos is a big clue to you being a Wizard, but some people have a fair amount of natural Chaos without being Wizards. This is a degree of deniability you have benefited from for a while, mostly since you didn’t truly know about this aspect of yourself, so you never even thought to deny this small truth. For anyone looking closely, all they saw was you being you, and missing certain proper ways an actual Wizard would deny being a Wizard.

“You’ve never even directly wielded this Chaos to your benefit. It was just a thing that happened.

“Your Chaos energy is merely a clue, though.

“Another clue is that the mana loves you. But the mana loves everyone who tries to listen to it and is actually capable of understanding it, so this isn’t that special either. Some Wizards can’t hear the mana. Some barely passable magelings can hear the mana perfectly. In the end, this is just another clue.

“And so, we come to the largest of clues, which is not actually proof of Wizardry: your creation of Particle Magic. But then again, the Script is designed to be filled with all possible iterations of magic, to categorize and constrain as well as uplift everyone in ways you probably don’t even realize it does. One of the major ways it does this is that it allows people to make new magic, and then it gives that magic to everyone, as long as that magic is sufficiently different from what already exists and it’s not too powerful.” Rozeta said, “Though, in the end, this is just another clue toward your Wizardry.

“You’ve had it almost right all along.

“A Wizard is known by three things. The first two are the creation of a lot of extra mana that is perfectly aligned with themselves, and the possession of a core which does a lot of things with that mana. That’s complicated, though. The third thing a Wizard possesses is a Truth that lets them override all other influences.” Rozeta said, “This Truth enables a Wizard to overwrite their Reality onto reality.

“Before the Script, in the Old Cosmology, all Archmages would have had two of the three, with Truths and cores being rather universal.

“But they wouldn’t have the third thing. They wouldn’t create extra mana.” Rozeta looked at Erick, with eyes as white as the rest of her wrought-human body, saying, “You know that the Script is a manaminer. You know the basic functionality of a manaminer. The primary function, from which all others derive.”

She stopped talking.

Erick realized that Rozeta was letting him acclimate.

It wasn’t going very well.

His tongue felt heavy and his throat didn’t feel like vibrating to make noise, to counter her argument that he made extra mana, for how could he do that? He could barely breathe. Sweat poured out of him. Rozeta was perfectly calm and relaxed, nonjudgmental and patient. She picked up her muffin and took a bite.

Eventually, Erick sipped his tea again, and his mouth seemed to start working.

Erick said, “The Script… The manaminer takes the mana generation of every single living thing and has individual mana production manifest inside the Core, under control of the Script, instead of pouring out of the true origin point… Out of the living things that make that mana.”

“90% correct. A more true thing to say is that mana is generated by every living thing and also by everything that causes living things to do something, or to be a different way. A great artwork can often cause a great outpouring of new mana into Veird, both because it elicits a creative response in many different viewers, but also, because it elicits a response, the artwork itself also becomes a mana producer in its own right. Singular items of cultural significance are much more able to achieve this level of mana creation than mass produced items… Eh. It’s complicated, and we can leave that for another day.” Rozeta said, “I’m only telling you this to distract you from your obvious discomfort.”

Erick gave a nervous chuckle. “Yeah! There’s a fair bit of nervousness here!”

Rozeta casually ripped Erick’s life to shreds, saying, “I see how much mana certain people produce because I have access to that information. When you fell to Veird you produced 500 times as much mana as a normal person does in a single day. Now, that multiplier is up to 100,000. Sometimes twice or three times that, like when you were ending Terror Peaks.

“You’re a Wizard and you always have been.”

Ophiel twittered in the background.

Everything and nothing happened all at once.

And then Erick came back to himself.

“Ahhh…” Erick sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, letting his mind drift. He whispered, “Shit.”

Graciously, Rozeta said nothing for a while.

But she had places to be, so Rozeta started answering some of Erick’s questions, since he couldn’t ask them at the moment. “Mana production is unaffected by Stats or spells or fame or infamy, but it is affected by how well a person knows magic, how much magic they do, and the mana itself. You’ve both learned and done a lot. You might not have been much of an archmage when people first started calling you that, but you’re certainly an archmage now. As of right now, you’ve actually become the single largest contributor of new mana to the Script. You contribute as much as a city of people, and all by yourself.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of how Wizards used to make magic, and then they gain students and they give those students their mana, thus giving them their magic? You’ve already been giving your mana to everyone on Veird.” Rozeta said, “It’s been great for the spread of Particle Magic. The Script evens a lot of things out for a lot of people, but you made a huge splash when you released Particle Magic to the world, and a lot of people started accepting your mana into them over all others, allowing them to make more of the same mana; the same magic. And thus the cycle grows.

“[Renew] is going to be even bigger.” She added, “And with that particular spell, more than all the others, people in the know will recognize you for the Wizard you are.”

Erick’s eyes were involuntarily locked on the ceiling, as he asked, “There’s not some fame-backlash thing, making me only appear to gain mana production because people are treating me as an idea instead of as a person? Or… Or…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure where he was going with his words.

“Your question is like trying to cut a loaf of bread with a tub of water.” Rozeta said, “You think your question has merit, but there’s a fundamental misunderstanding. Short explanation: No; your fame does not make you a Wizard. If you would have become a hermit instead of what you did... If you had released your Particle Magic anonymously, and if you still kept up with your magical learning and experimentation —by some sheer stroke of pure luck since you would not have encountered the same resources as you did— you would still be at the same level of mana production as you are now.

“You make extra mana. You are a Wizard. There is no other explanation.” Rozeta added, “Believe me; I looked.”

Erick was starting to come down from his nervousness. Rozeta’s calming voice helped. He turned his head back toward the white goddess. He asked, “You said earlier— Why is [Renew] a problem? More than the other circumstantial evidence?”

Rozeta said, “Everyone makes mana, but everyone’s mana is different. This is why Wizards could create schools under them, because they were able to gift their mana and thus their magic to their students, in a self perpetuating cycle that would eventually ‘lock’ into place, and the school would expand since everyone was making the same sort of mana and magic. The mana produced by the people of Veird is no different.” Rozeta said, “But the mana of people isn’t mana that is good for the spellwork supplied by the Script… I’m going to skip over several years of learning here, and say that, broadly, this is how it goes: mana is created in the Core, then it’s ‘scrubbed’ of individual meaning, and then it’s given back to people to use for the spellwork installed by the Script.

“But it’s still their mana which is given back to them first, which still has some of their own minor truths. It’s near impossible to fully scrub mana of meaning, but the Script does manage to scrub out most individuality from the mana.

“Anyway.

“Because it’s not a perfect system, people cannot directly boost the magics of others without being very in-tune with the targeted magic, because it's the ‘cutting a loaf of bread with a tub of water’ problem, again. There are only a few things that can get past this problem.

“Strings of runes can translate ideas, though there is a lot of loss through that translation, as any immortal who lived through the Grand Translation could attest.

“Gods can bridge gaps between people rather easily because people wish for us to be able to do that, so we can.

“And Wizards can do the same thing without a god’s help.

“And that’s what you did. But you did it for everyone.” Rozeta said, “You made a spell that directly contradicts all known ways magic should work, and you made it so that it works well with the Script. Which I appreciate, by the way.” She added, “What happened when you made that magic was this: your mana inside the Core flashed into strange, Wizardly shapes, and now we’ve got a brand new rune to work with.” She held up her hand, spilling golden fire into the air to form a solid image. “This is the rune for [Renew], by the way.”

It was an arrow twisted into a circle, with the arrowhead and tail at the top, nearly touching and going in a clockwise direction. It was almost like the ‘on’ symbol for something electronic, but doubled at the top and bent toward the left.

“Ah.” Erick said, “That works.”

“It does.” Rozeta closed her hands and the rune vanished. “All the other spells you made were well within the workings of the Ancient Script we already had, but [Renew] required something more. It required Wizardry.”

After a moment, Erick asked, “What kind of Wizard am I?”

“I’m guessing Paradox, with a leaning toward Creation.” Rozeta said, “The trinity of Creation, Destruction, and Paradox is more of a convention than reality, for every individual Wizard’s Reality is their own, but in some ways there are Truths even Wizard’s can’t escape. Think of it like this: some parts of Creation are simply antithetical to Destruction, like white and black don’t mix without producing grey. But then, of course, you could go Paradox, which does both, but by going that way, you will likely never fully understand the white and the black.” She added, “But let’s stick to the surface level questions before we dive too deep into those depths. I had thought to lay everything out there and then talk of tangents, but I can see that your questions come first, so ask them.”

Erick asked, “Can I be a Wizard and still be connected to the Script?”

“You already are, but if you go down this path much further, then the answer is ‘no’, but also ‘yes’; this is my hope for you, actually, though it might not work out that way. We’ll see.”

After a moment of silence, Erick asked, “Can you… explain more?”

“Here’s what will happen: As soon as you choose to go down this route of Wizardry and you achieve the end-state of ‘being a full Wizard’, I cannot have any part of you directly interacting with the Script any longer. You will be removed from the Script. It’s a security issue. But, it’s more complicated than that… Which we will get into.

“Either way, Erick, you don’t have to go down this route unless you want to. [Renew] is Wizardry, yes, but it’s a small Wizardry. It’s forgivable. When you did that, it was very Paradoxical because it’s like the rune for [Renew] has always existed; none of the systems that should have been harmed by the inclusion of a new rune have been harmed by the inclusion of a new rune. The only actual problem is going to come about when the people of this world recognize that you’re a nascent Wizard, and they capture or coerce you into taking hold of your Wizardly power, and then they take advantage of your temporarily weakened state to force you to do what they want.” Rozeta said, “This is the usual end for Wizards.”

“And by ‘people’, you specifically mean dragons.”

“Dragons are the largest perpetrators of this offense; yes.” Rozeta said, “That Curse is a large bottleneck to their power and Wizardry can remove that curse, so they pursue Wizardry to unlock that bottleneck. Imagine living a life constantly under a yoke, and you will know what it means to be a dragon, and what it means to see a Wizard walking around like a key to your cage. Aside from physical and mental damage, the magical problem with that is the dragon will almost always ride a Wizard hard, shaping their Truth until it becomes the exact thing the dragon needs it to be, in order for the Wizard’s power to unlock the dragon’s shackles. Eventually, such harsh use breaks the Truth of the Wizard, and even if they get their mind and their body back, they remain magically broken forever.”

“Can you teach me to remove the Curse? Without breaking my Truth?”

Rozeta instantly said, “No. The Dragon Essence Curse is terrible in its effect, but overall, it is good for this world that the number of dragons who live here are not able to live openly. Veird cannot handle a true flight of true dragons. It would destroy this world.”

“… Ah.” Erick said, “That’s why you haven’t tried to remove the Curse already. Why no one has.”

“Mostly correct.” Rozeta said, “Kirginatharp hunts down all Wizards who look like they could possibly remove that yoke from dragon society.”

Erick corrected himself, “Why no one has been allowed to remove the Curse.”

“This is the more correct wording, yes.”

“… What if I Bless them first?”

Rozeta said, “I will make no decisions for you, Erick.”

“Okay. Then…” Erick asked, “What do you hope to get out of this conversation? You’re talking rather openly about a lot of stuff that you’ve never spoken about before. You’ve directly told me a bit about how the Script works, and at its Core, too. It’s all very… strange, compared to how you normally speak.”

Rozeta nodded. “This is strange. I am talking to you about secrets that should not be spoken aloud, or put out there in any way, shape, or form. But you are here in the Core, fully under my authority, and that allows me the ability to speak more openly. This will probably never happen again.”

Erick sipped his tea. He listened.

“This is also a test, of sorts.” Rozeta said, “I won’t do anything to you no matter your choices following this conversation, but I will enact safeguards which will likely have adverse effects on you if you break or look to break anything truly important.” She said, “The only thing I allow myself to care about is that this world remains stable, and steadily growing, which brings us to perhaps the most important tangent of this conversation.

“Currently, you are on a Path to bring about new worlds, exactly like the Old Wizards used to do. Most everyone of power on Veird is terrified of this for multiple, good reasons, almost all of which are due to the fear that Melemizargo will destroy everything left behind when he finally escapes this world.

“It’s a valid fear. But also, maybe not.

“The oldest of us who still retain a bit of their own rationality hold onto hope that Melemizargo can retake his old mantle of the God of Magic, in the way it is meant to be donned; that he can guide people further into the Welcoming Dark. But…

“This universe is not the Old Cosmology. There is no Welcoming Dark. It’s all endless void and scattered stars and dead planets and— Not even ‘dead’ planets, though. They’re planets Without Possibility. Worse than dead, because even in traditional death there is possibility for more to come.

“But there is no traditional death out there.

“Right now— If you were to have everything lined up perfectly, and the entire world behind you, and everything was set to open up a [Gate] to one of the other planets of this system, to establish a foothold and a nascent Script…

“This would be a monumentally bad idea. My father wants this to happen as soon as possible, but we cannot allow this, for multiple reasons. Let me lay some numbers on you to help you understand, at least the numerical problem.

“The Script requires… Let’s call it 100 units of mana to remain stable. These days, Veird produces 110 units of energy on a good year, and we do what we must to ensure that happens. This world used to produce ten thousand units a year, back at the beginning of the Script, back before Melemizargo went mad.” Rozeta wiped a momentarily sad look away, as she said, “Perhaps, if we had expanded into the rest of this New Cosmology faster… Perhaps if the few remaining Wizards who fell to Veird hadn’t have been murdered by well-meaning people, or driven into hiding only to be hunted down for answers by even more zealots… Perhaps if Melemizargo hadn't gone almost instantly crazy. Perhaps if we had more time. Perhaps if the Original Script hadn't been so damned difficult to—” She sighed. “Perhaps we could have expanded to new worlds in the beginning, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But that didn’t happen, and so we are here at this crossroads where the first to blink will likely die.”

Erick focused on a solution, asking, “What if a Wizard went back in time and prevented those issues?”

Rozeta waved a hand, saying, “Already been tried. Only the smallest Time Magics remain open to us, and only in the current day. Traveling back to the beginning is not something we can do, for not even Phagar can get through that broken tapestry anymore. We very much tried that, Erick. Too many times to count.”

Erick sat back in his seat, thinking.

Rozet said, “Anyway. Mana production has gone down a lot since the Sundering, and mostly because of the problems my father has caused. This year, we might make 109 units of energy because of the various destabilizing forces you have created. We expect a large upswing in the following decades, though, if everything remains as it is. I have no idea what [Renew] will do, but I’m expecting… I don’t know what I’m expecting—

“And there’s another problem, before we even get to the problem of opening new worlds!

“If Melemizargo wanted to destroy this world he could do that in a single moment. He only doesn’t because —and I assume— that some part of him has always remained sane, and destroying magic is already antithetical to him, for he is a Wizard of Creation. He has always sought to force this world to think that it was a prison, and that the people here must ‘break free of their chains’. A lot of the people of this world don’t understand that about Melemizargo, but since his actions often bring ruin, they are not necessarily wrong that he ‘wants to destroy the world’.

“But if he could go to a new world, he might do the antithetical thing, just out of spite. He’s still a dragon, Erick. And, he’s a Wizard.

“Anyway. We’re not opening new worlds with the amount of mana generation we have, and we’re not allowing Melemizargo to do any Creation Wizardry to solve any mana problems. We don’t accept his mana here in the Core, or anywhere else.

“And so, to bring it all together:

“The initial cost of creating a second Script around another world would be at least 100,000 units of energy, but Veird only produces 109, and 100 of those are used for maintenance.

“If you opened a Gate to a new world without proper protocols Veird would destroy itself in a flashing instant; all of our mana would flush out into space. Rocks fall. Everyone dies. And with everyone dead, recovering from that disaster is that much tougher. We’d have to sunder the souls of everyone who died and rebuild from there, letting the monsters take over everything and regenerating this world from slimes, because monsters also produce mana, Erick.”

Rozeta sat back and had another bite of her muffin while Erick thought. As his brain swirled and his mind hammered into itself looking for solutions to everything, all he could really think about was that all his problems were compounding to an insane degree—

“How about...” Erick said, “A small Script that grows over time. It doesn’t immediately take over a world, but it will, eventually. It’ll have to be a lot simpler than it is now. Don’t cover the whole planet at once.”

“It takes a hundred thousand units of power to make a Script.” Rozeta said, “I’m already taking into account the ‘growing’ aspect of a new one.”

“… Ah.” Erick said, “So I need to become a Creation Wizard, then.”

“Not necessarily.” Rozeta said, “The only option that doesn’t work is Destruction, and it’s probably better if you pick Paradox anyway, so that we can make this plan take a bit longer, to ensure that Melemizargo isn’t plotting to kill us all, and so that the population of Veird can climb higher.” She purposefully nodded to Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye on Erick’s shoulder, speaking to both of them now, “Yggdrasil should be able to gradually soak in excess units of energy and create Seeds of Life, which is what World Trees usually end up doing, anyway. As a Paradox Wizard, you can bless such seeds with the ability to hold a nascent-Script, and also to be able to [Gate] into lands without mana, which is what they would need to do to be able to survive on other, barren worlds. It would take many years for such seeds to mature, but it can be done.

“As a Creation Wizard, you would be able to make Yggdrasil instantly spawn Seeds of Life, but you’d have less ability to control the Script they carried; someone else would have to imbue that into them, and someone else would need to grant those seeds the ability to [Gate] to worlds without mana.” Rozeta said, “But you wouldn’t lack for offers. I would be first in line to do such imbuing, though that is another conversation entirely. Before all of that, you’d have to change how the world thinks of Wizards, or you’d have to hide, really, really well, which, for you, might be impossible due to the amount of extra mana you actually produce.”

“… Unless I go far into Paradox, and make it so that my excess mana remains invisible.”

Rozeta nodded, confirming Erick’s assumption, but then wrecking it a moment later, saying, “In that end-stage of Wizardry I wouldn’t allow you to remain a part of the Script. So if anyone asked to see any blue boxes then you couldn’t show any. You would need to reveal yourself long before then, or suffer all this backlash at that point in time.”

Erick’s brief moment of possible joy was crushed under brutal reality. “And there’s no way I could remain in the Script and be a full Wizard at the same time?”

“Absolutely not. It’s security, pure and simple. Every end-point of you becoming a full Wizard means you lose access to the Script.”

“What would happen to the magic I already have, without the Script to help me cast it?”

“It’s there, inside your soul. You might be able to use it like normal, too. It would require a whole new way of magic, though.”

“… Can you run through everything that will happen to me in choosing to become a Wizard?”

“Yes.” Rozeta began, “First, all of your magic breaks. But you’ve got your aura and your mana sense and you are a Wizard, so you can get back most of your smaller magics rather quickly. But the Script prevents higher tier magic from functioning, so the most mana you could ever spend on a spell is 500. All normal restrictions of the Script remain in place; Infinitesimal Ban, Propagation Ban, Dimensional Ban, Atomic Ban, and a few others you don’t know about and I hope no one ever gets close to ever knowing ever again. I thought Particle Magic was going to need to be Banned like Atomic was Banned, but I feel it’s been well integrated, so it will remain.

“Anyway.

“You lose your Health.

“Your Mana becomes the mana you produce, which hinges on the Wizardly Discipline you manifest. Pick Destruction or Paradox, and you’ll remain at 100,000 to 200,000 mana per day. Pick Creation and you could end up with endless mana. In such a case you might become too valuable to ever kill, so you would likely be hunted down and contained.

“You can only use your mana; you no longer have access to the mana of others, which is what the Script does for most people.

“Stat increases no longer work, so your rings are now useless. This is how it is for most monsters, anyway.

“Your Stats will drop precipitously until you can learn to fortify yourself in the ways that the Script now does.

“Abilities like Mana Altering no longer function for you; you have to do that on your own.

“Aurify, which allows two auras at once, is now removed. You get one aura, your base aura, which you can barely handle.

“[Greater Lightwalk] is both removed and also fully taints your aura, so you might not ever learn Mana Altering for anything other than light.

“[Lodestar] still works, and you might be able to use that in your aura work, but [Domain of Light] costs 5000 mana and you can only use 500, so you’re restricted to [Lodestar] aura, only.

“Intelligence, Clarity, all of the abilities that reduce mana costs are defunct. You now pay full costs for all spellwork until you can learn how to properly cast all of your spells.

“And you have to manually cast every single spell. Some spells with larger mana costs will take longer to cast, upwards of minutes, and must be done in ritual for the 500 mana cap still applies.”

Erick felt physically ill. He almost puked up his tea, but instead he sipped carefully while he listened.

Rozeta continued, “Ophiel would still be connected to you but there will be some growing pains there. You will find it extremely difficult to resummon him for multiple reasons, with mana cost being only one of those reasons. Every single Ophiel that dies is likely to stay dead for a long time, until you can make time to perform the rituals necessary to recast him.

“Yggdrasil will be similarly difficult to conjure. More so, probably, since you will need to build up a few million mana reserve for your ritual, or else you will die trying to cast him.

“On the plus side, you no longer have a Maximum Mana cap, though you still have a 500 mana per second cap on your throughput.”

For about two minutes the wall behind Rozeta was supremely interesting. Erick stared at that wall while Rozeta plucked a pink muffin from her basket and ate it. Then she stood up and went to make herself some milk tea.

As she stirred her tea, she asked, “Want a stronger drink, Erick? There’s a rum-equivalent here.” She pointed with her spoon to a crystal bottle of bright orange liquor, sitting with similar bottles of other colors. “It tastes a bit more like cinnamon than most stuff you have in your memories.”

Erick snapped out of it, eager to talk about something less important. “Yes. Also: Is that the cinnamon rum that Apogee was trying to make? Did his Worldly Path take him down here?”

Rozeta smiled a bit, then she started making him a drink, saying, “While I will talk openly about the Script down here, and about pretty much everything you want to discuss, I won’t talk to you about other people’s magic, or travels.” She handed him a crystal glass of orange liquor as she sat back down in her chair with her own new drink.

“Thank you.” Erick accepted the glass, but he did not take a sip. He held it in his hands as he asked, “What about… Instead of Wizardry, you make a Script for Yggdrasil that I can use, too? Something separate from your Script, that will allow me to maintain my power without the need to weaken myself, first?”

Rozeta said, “The Script denies all other mana miners; it has to in order to work like it needs to work. I will not break security in this way.”

Sudden exasperation flooded through Erick. “I get that you’re being helpful. I understand that you’re laying all these secrets of the Script out there… But I need something more. I can’t go back out there like this. I’m going to accidentally trigger some Wizardly thing and lose access when I can least afford it; I know I will.”

“I will help you in all the ways I can, but my father controls your Worldly Path, and I already asked him to give it to me. He won’t.”

“… Ah.”

Rozeta continued, “You are an uncommonly powerful Wizard, Erick. You can change your own Worldly Path if you want, and if you know how. To that end, let us discuss the options to this problem of you losing power when you finally become a Wizard.”

Erick was all ears.

Rozeta continued, “As stated, I cannot give Yggdrasil a manaminer of their own.

“But if you were a Paradox Wizard, you could simultaneously link to the Script, and be separate from the Script. You could have a core, and not have a core. You could exude mana, but also not.”

Erick’s eyes went wide, yet again. “But you just said you would remove me?”

“I did, and I will.” Rozeta said, “But I can also help you learn how to connect to a Script that doesn’t exist. The first step after becoming a Wizard will be to do what you already did with the Rune of Renew; create a ‘sandbox subsystem’ inside the Script. No one but me will be able to see it, and if I don’t like it, I can delete it myself. In this way, I will help you become a Wizard with no downsides unless you start breaking things, and then I’ll remove you from the Script and probably send paladins your way.” Rozeta said, “But I don’t want to do that, Erick.”

Erick stared a bit. “Okay? This seems… Odd. And difficult.”

“It will be extremely difficult, but I will be helping you along the way to ensure that I can pull the plug if needed.”

“What possible failure states am I looking at, here?”

“You might not be able to go all the way with it, and be stuck without Script assistance; this is the most reasonable failure. You might fuck up and die in the center of the process; this is the least possible outcome. You might interface incorrectly, opening up vulnerabilities all around; this is where I will have to kill you to prevent further corruption to the Script. Also a low possibility there, but not zero.”

Erick breathed out, whispering, “Ahhh.”

Rozeta said, “Even if you succeed, you will lock yourself into Paradox Wizardry. This means, once Yggdrasil is capable of creating Seeds, that it will take many years to create those Seeds. Some people will not like this, and they will look to sunder souls in order to speed up the process. I would occasionally send you Quests to stop such sundering, and I will expect you to respond with Light and Ash to prevent such events.”

Decision time.

Erick set down his untouched drink, saying, “I’m okay with Paradox. How do we proceed? Will it be possible for me to do this before the wrought squad show?”

“They’re four days away. It will be close, but you should be able to manage full Wizardry in that time, though I have barely begun to cover all the warnings.” Rozeta said, “Mainly, we have this: Monsters and cannibal humans and all sorts of creatures with cores become extremely angry with everyone who uses the Script because of two factors: they are forced to form their cores from ambient mana, and they recognize the Script tries to control them. This is always how it’s always been for monsters on worlds with manaminers, like Veird, because they can’t use their own mana to manifest a pure core.

“In order for you not to suffer this fate, you cannot form a core from ambient mana, at all. It will drive you insane.”

Erick startled. “So that’s…? That’s why monsters are so crazy?”

“One of the smallest reasons, but it’s enough of a foundation to build all the other reasons upon. Worlds shouldn’t have these many monsters on them, and the Shades made some nasty monsters, and that malevolence compounds...” Rozeta said, “We’re getting distracted again.”

“Right,” Erick said, but he knew he’d be wondering about monsters for a long time from now.

Rozeta said, “With that warning out of the way, this is how it is going to go:

“In order to begin to form your core, you must explore your soul and find the link to the Core. Then you must shut that link. Most people begin to exude excess mana at this point. You will veritably explode with the stuff. From there, you use your aura to condense your mana into your body. There are many ways to do this, from pressurizing your own mana till it phase-changes into something solid, and then continues to grow with your directed input of mana. You could instead build your core up with perfect piece after perfect piece, like a crystal growing from a seed.

“At this point, since you already had Script access at a sentient level of power, you will be cut from the Script, and you will be forced into wielding your own power for your own gains. You will have formed a small monster core.

“You will not have access to the full Wizardry power of a Wizard Core. You will be like a shadeling in a fugue, and like a shadeling, it is still possible for you to rejoin the Script, for the Script will continue to try to reconnect to you. When the Script does reconnect, your excess mana will once again manifest inside the Script and you will regain most of yourself, but you will now be on the limited Script of the monsters.

“You must break your connection to the Script again to begin to create a Wizard Core, but this time it will be much, much harder for you to break that connection. You will have to enact Wizardry in order to regain control over your own mana.

“Melemizargo does this Wizardry to his shadelings to create Shades, manifesting a Truth inside the shadeling in the process. Each one of those Shades has a convalescence of several days to weeks to regain themselves. From there, its more work to come into their full Shade power.” Rozeta said, “That central Truth is what makes them pseudo-Wizards. But they’re not true Wizards because none of them got there themselves, and none of them can take that final step to become a real Wizard.

“You should be able to take this final step, but it’s going to be difficult.

“You have to transform your entire self into a mana crystal, abandoning your body, but also retaining your current shape.” Rozeta said, “All Wizards must achieve this act of Paradox Wizardry in order to unlock their full power, because only when one is fully in tune with their own mana can they enact true Wizardry. As a side note, technically anyone can achieve this level of transformation if they’re slow enough and careful enough, but only Wizards produce enough mana on their own to sustain this transformation. All others must use mana from other sources thus tainting their Truth and risking insanity or worse, or they can only use their power once every century, or they have to be part of a very large collective with everyone producing the exact same mana. That last one is a lot tougher than you would think, and usually requires a Full Wizard of its own to get started.

“You have options, though. You can do this transformation slowly, changing each bone into crystal and each organ and then muscles and skin and what have you. Or you can do it all at once. I suggest the second path for expedience since I will be here to help you, but the first path is safer.

“Either way, the end result has several side effects, most of which you already see present in the Shades. Ageless immortality. Immunity to mind magics if you choose to close off your mind. The ability to assume a greater form, if you make your mana crystal form into such which many Shades do. Assorted other benefits.

“All this while, you will have lost the benefits of the Script and it will attempt to shut you down all the time, unless you go deep into Paradox. If you want access to Wizardry and the Script, then you must figure out how to Paradoxically go both ways.” Rozeta said, “And as I said before, I will help with this.”

Erick resisted the sudden urge to make a joke about already going both ways, but his sanity was already fraying, and he was in a time crunch. He appreciated the attempt at levity, though, which was probably exactly why Rozeta said her small joke.

“So.” Erick asked, “How does Paradox work?”

They spoke for a while.

- - - -

The muffin basket was devoid of muffins. Two bottles of liquor were almost completely empty, and a third was tried but decided against. The tea pot had been refilled and emptied several times, with a small pile of tea bags sitting in the trash nearby. More snacks had been had, with the refuse of all that scattered around their small area. Rozeta had come and gone several times, taking care of small problems here and there, and mostly whenever Erick got too emotional to continue. He was thankful for that.

By now, Erick had gotten over most of his panic.

But here, at the end of their discussion, Rozeta ratcheted it up one last time.

Rozeta said, “You can choose to forgo this opportunity to become a Wizard in the next three days, with the longer you wait meaning the less we can get through, but if you do choose to not accept my help, then you’ll forget quite a lot of our words here. I will erase everything you have learned about Wizards, because I cannot have you doing this out there where my father can get to you. I need that failsafe, Erick. I won’t let you go without it.”

Erick’s small bit of good humor vanished like water in the desert sun. “Ah.”

Rozeta said, “You’re free to choose your own path in life. I won’t force anything upon you. In some ways, it might be better for you to forget what I told you. It might be better for you to come into your true power later, when you’re more settled. It’s entirely possible that my father won’t try to influence your power to his own ends. If you choose to go this route, then the test of morality will be upon him, instead of you.

“In which case, and going by my father’s track record, such a choice will likely end in your death.

“That’s a choice you have to make; I will not make it for you. For what it’s worth, if you choose to become a Wizard now, I will work with you to spin the truth about Renew into something less damaging for you, but people will know you for what you are with that creation.”

Erick leaned back. “Ah. So many carrots and sticks. Highly motivating.”

“I’m offering nothing but carrots, Erick. The only ‘stick’ is that you won’t gain any of these carrots, and I will rescind the knowledge that I have already granted you here today; I will take back one carrot.” Rozeta said, “If you choose to say no, then I will put you right back where you were when you walked into the First Wizard’s Library, and you’ll be free to go along as if this conversation never happened.

“I must do this to ensure that either you pull me directly onto your Worldly Path in a good way, or else I remain a detour on your Path; gone and mostly unremarked.

“For Fate can ensnare even gods, Erick.” Rozeta asked, “Why do you think the demons and the angels haven’t interfered with you yet? It’s certainly not because they’re afraid of you, specifically. They’re afraid of the Fate surrounding you, when combined with how much devotion you’ve already paid to Koyabez. If they met you in any other setting than a peace talk, then either one of them would surely suffer massive losses trying to go up against Melemizargo’s Fate Magic.”

The conversation was moving down another detour that Erick wanted to explore a lot more than solving the current problem of becoming a Wizard…

But Erick stayed on track, saying, “I need an hour to think about it all.”

Rozeta nodded then stood up, saying, “Of course. Take your time, but please make a decision that is good for the world, and for all the worlds yet to come. The longer you take to decide to accept my help, the less help I can give you, before other people show up and break the sanctity of this communion.”

The Goddess of the Script vanished between moments, leaving Erick to his thoughts.

Erick got up, stood there for a solid minute, thinking about nothing in particular.

Then cleaned up the room, and then he went for a walk. His feet took him where he felt like going. Ophiel didn’t try to trip any traps this time. The little guy just floated along, wary, watching Erick in almost the exact same way that Yggdrasil watched; almost sadly.

- - - -

Erick found himself at the entrance to a stairwell at the second-to-highest floor of the Wizards’ Tower. Without hesitation, he followed the stairs upward. Inside the closed stairwell, Erick circled a central space that was inaccessible by normal means. With his mana sense, he saw gears and pipes and timing mechanisms made out of more white metal, but while there was no degradation on the system, it did not move, at all.

There had been no traps around here which is why Erick chose to go this way; it was almost like a path had been laid out for him, or probably for anyone that came here. Or maybe the mechanism was one large trap, though there were no blades or goo packets or anything like that stuffed inside these walls. Just more and more gears and axles and belts and chains.

He passed a landing that led out into the roof of the Grand Wizard’s Tower, where small gardens grew and small seating areas allowed people to sit in the sun, or under shade, to discuss whatever topics they wished. A snack stand nestled against the tower, where dozens of cakes and pies and cookies and drinks waited to be served by people who didn’t exist, to customers with similar existence deficiencies. There were a few traps out there on the roof, but none were serious; just more goo packets attached to physical tripwires and pressure plates.

Erick continued up the stairwell, toward his target: the orrery.

- - - -

It was both more impressive than Erick thought it would be, and less.

The room containing the orrery was massive and made of white metal. The domed roof was clear crystal, providing adequate lighting for the entire space. Maps of the Old Cosmology and ten thousand smaller plaques held to the interior walls of the space, fully encircling the orrery like ten thousand scales of a fish, or, more likely, a dragon. All of the scales had words on them, but some were large enough to have maps. There was an organization there, between plaques and maps, but Erick would get to that later.

The central structure of the room dominated his attention.

The orrery itself was a thing of a million moving parts, forever stilled by the lack of magic. A plaque on a pedestal between the stairwell and the orrery explained this much, breaking the immersion of this land like the people would show up at any moment. This larger plaque outright told all visitors to this space that when the Old Cosmology died, it took everything with it, including the magic that would have made this representation of this section of the Old Cosmology come alive at the touch of visiting or working Wizards.

Erick imagined a working orrery would have been grand.

A million jumbled circles and spheres of colored metal and tiny lights, like dust cast in bright sunlight, held suspended itself over the central thirty meters of the orrery like an octopus of a thousand bodies with uncountable arms. Near invisible wires connected the pieces together, and those wires were the first obviously lethal trap of this place. They reminded him of [Hermetic Shredder]. There was no doubt in his mind that to touch this sculpture would likely cost him the offending finger.

There was very little rhyme or reason to it all at first glance, but as Erick studied the massive structure, and as he read the plaque before it all, he saw the individual motes of dust were each individual planes; whole worlds. A few of the larger bits of dust here and there were Node Worlds, but even those worlds were little more than the heads of brightly colored pins.

That was Erick’s first impression. As he looked, he saw individual galaxies of hundreds of connected planes, held aloft and to their neighbors on near-invisible strings. As he studied, he realized that the jumbled cosmology was only as it might have been at one small, frozen point in time, like ever-moving neurons in an oceanic brain. This whole thing was supposed to move, and yet, it could not. Not anymore. Everything in the connected axles and gears, both downstairs and up here, was all for show.

If that galaxy cluster moved as it should, then it would hit that galaxy cluster, which would cause that whole arm of the thing to break off and then who knew how chaos would unfold. Certainly not Erick.

This was a showpiece. Perhaps a final map of the Old Cosmology; one final image captured right before Primal Lightning shot through the whole thing, breaking it all.

… And, according to another plaque, this map was not representative of the entire Old Cosmology, either. This was just the part that the survivors were able to recreate from memory, and from maps left over after the Sundering.

For a long moment, Erick just stared, viewing it all, taking it all in, feeling the ethereal weight of a trillion, trillion, trillion lost lives.

Of a killed universe.

It was enough to drive anyone insane. No wonder there were mass suicides even after the Grand Translation. No wonder Melemizargo was the way he was. No wonder…

Erick took it all in.

Minutes passed in silence. And then Erick breathed deep. He blinked a bit, wiping away tears. Then he turned to the maps around the room, to understand it all from a more logical perspective.

As he studied those maps, he saw that they were not like the maps below, down there in the remade tower of a long dead Wizard conclave. These maps up here in the orrery were written by specific people, detailing where their specific worlds were back in the Old Cosmology, and a small part of their story of how they got to Veird during the Sundering.

Erick picked one at random.

The one he picked, like all the rest, had coordinates which matched with the orrery.

—

The world of Rorilo was created by Wizard Polikia 75,000 years before the Sundering. It had been a Node World located about 12,500 world-hops away from Veird, though, on a good year, they were only 8,000wh away. Calling it a ‘good year’, when the Sundering came right in the middle of it seems deeply wrong. But it was a good year. I and my friends survived because we stole a yacht from the schoolyard, were stupid enough to try and sail the Eddies at this time of year, and lucky enough to get pushed the right direction at the last moment. The nine of us were the sole survivors of our ancient, wonderful, prosperous and peaceful world of Roliro. Everyone else died. 25 billion souls, lost to the Sundering.

—

The next plaque was much the same, but of a different world in a different part of the Old Cosmology.

12 billion dead on that one.

2 billion dead on the next one.

3 million here. 1.2 trillion there.

A thousand here. Back to 219 billion there.

Uncountable lost when the Radiant Depths died, erasing the Celestial Heavens as Primal Lightning ripped through. Estimations of ‘trillions upon trillions lost’.

Uncountable lost when the Abyssal Rift broke, erasing the Demonic Worlds and killing… Some large number with way too many numbers for Erick to desire to read, or to try and comprehend.

.

.

.

Erick went back to the orrery. He now saw several spaces that one could walk into the center of the orrery, avoiding all of the suspended cosmology and the cutting wires, to reach the middle, where one small, silver world lay. He took a step onto the orrery, and walked toward that central space, passing by now-dead worlds like some specter of death, feeling a heaviness in his chest with every passing step. This path was laid for people to walk, and so Erick walked it, to the center. To see. To feel.

The look down upon that central world, which was, of course, Veird.

It didn’t look like a central world until Erick stood here, in the middle. Most of the dust-like worlds existed in circular flows with other worlds that were only tangentially connected to Veird. Sharp turns and strange fractures abounded. But in every system there was at least one break from that flow, and oftentimes several. Eventually, Erick saw how the whole orrery gradually pointed toward this central location, to Veird.

Erick stared down at a silver jewel of a planet. It was so very, very tiny.

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye moved from his shoulder to stare at the representation of Veird alongside him. Ophiel was already silently holding in the air all around, more eyes than wings at the moment, too, staring at everything, trying to comprehend it all. The Ophiel still on Erick’s shoulder was tiny and shaking with some unknown-to-him emotion.

Erick patted Ophiel, and the little guy warmed up a bit, cooing gently, giving sound to the otherwise dead silent room. He spoke to Yggdrasil, and to Ophiel, “How much of this do you understand, Yggdrasil? Ophiel? How much do you understand about what happened here, or in that room with Rozeta?”

Ophiel was a nearly blank slate; he chirped at his name, but he did not respond beyond that.

A bit sad, Yggdrasil spoke to Erick’s mind, ‘I don’t understand.’

“That’s okay.” Erick hoped his words would get through, but he wasn’t delusional, as he said, “You can’t tell anyone I’m a Wizard. Do you understand that?”

‘Why?’

“This room is why. Because people believe that Wizards were responsible for killing their entire Old Cosmology.” Erick gestured at the dust-mote worlds all around him, his sight lingering on the countless few that were slightly larger than the rest. “Every single speck of stuff here used to be an entire world, and the Old Wizards might have killed everything you see here, but no one really knows.”

‘… Oh.’ Yggdrasil’s eye swept across the field of mote-sized gravestones, each representing millions or billions of lives, though Erick suspected it would be a while yet before Yggdrasil actually understood that. ‘I want to visit them.’

Erick smiled softly as he looked away, gazing across the expanse. “They’re gone; no one can visit any of these worlds anymore. But maybe we can visit new worlds later. Like the ones out in the night sky that you can see sometimes, if you look close, and if they’re in the right position overhead. Would you like that?”

‘Yes. I want that.’

“There are a lot of things we have to do before we get to that point, Yggdrasil.”

‘What need?’

“The primary thing, right now, is that you can’t tell anyone I’m a Wizard. It’s a secret. An important one that you need to keep. I need you to understand this, Yggdrasil. Not even Poi can know I’m a Wizard.” Though he would, but Erick kept the idea simple for Yggdrasil. Erick said, “No one can know I’m a Wizard.”

‘Because they killed the Old Cosmology?’

Erick smiled. “Yes.”

‘I understand.’ Yggdrasil asked, ‘Are you going to kill the New Cosmology?’

“No. I’m hoping to expand into the New Cosmology, to make more worlds habitable for people, and you can help me with that.”

‘Okay.’ Yggdrasil asked, ‘What kind of Wizard?’

“What kind of Wizard am I going to be? I’m going to choose Paradox, of course.”

‘Creation sound good.’

“I’m sure I’ll be able to do a bit of that, too. But not as much.”

‘Your aura feels Creation.’

Erick smiled. He made a little joke, “I suppose it’s rather Paradoxical to go a different way, eh?”

‘...Oh! I understand!’ Yggdrasil gave a small, tinkling laugh that echoed in Erick’s mind like children playing at a park.

Erick chuckled along with the laughter, feeling Yggdrasil’s mirth through their connection. This spilled over into Ophiel, who chimed in with his own trilling calls. Ophiel didn’t really understand humor, but he was mimicking rather well these days and that was a step in the right direction.

It felt wrong to laugh in this room full of gravestones, but sometimes humor was all a person had, and Erick had been laughing at danger and death his entire life.

- - - -

Back in the little cafe under Koyabez’s name, Erick sat down across from Rozeta.

The Goddess of the Script had been waiting for him the second he crossed into line of sight, but she had not been there before that. She looked as put-together as ever, in her white-wrought human body, with her white pantsuit and hair up in a bun. She looked ready to receive known news, for she was probably looking at him the entire time that he was up there in that mausoleum to the Old Cosmology.

Erick had a few important concerns to get through before he agreed to her plan.

Sitting across from her, Erick asked, “Am I the first to make it to this point?”

“No, but also yes.” Rozeta said, “There have been two Wizards to get here before you. The first was about 50 years after the Sundering, when the first generations of new mortals were learning about the Sundering from their grandparents. We had entered a small period of calm. To make history wildly inaccurate, but also short, this Wizard was of that new generation. They were not trustworthy, but I have worked with such people before, and I will continue to do so in the future, for the stability of the Script, and for the good of us all. I gave this person assistance in becoming a Wizard, and then Phagar and I had to send paladins and Death Priests after them after they started mucking about with Time, under Melemizargo’s guidance. That person was just one of the many reasons that those early years are lost to us.

“I did not trust so easily after that.

“The second person was a human Wizard I identified when she was four years old. Everything about her told me that she would be a monumental force for good. Good family. Good upbringing. Good future prospects. As the years went on, she blossomed into a young woman of good social skills and standing, who did her best to foster good in all parts of her life. She married and had a family, and she raised good kids, all while steadily learning magic, to figure out ways to better find and eliminate mental monster threats. She was a Mind Mage.” Rozeta said, “She was supposed to be a force for true good, and she was, until her Worldly Path finally brought her down here, to me. She managed to get in with the password, given to her by priests in Stratagold for she already had good connections there through their embassy, and she was a true believer.

“And then I told her that she was a Wizard. The embodiment of the thing she hated most, for she had been raised on stories and historical accounts of the horrors of the Old Wizards. This news broke her, but she spent a year in this land, coming to grips and reading the truth about Wizardry. This power was not just a tool to destroy, but instead it a tool of Pure Magic. Of Creation, just as much as any other option.

“She came around to the idea of becoming her own end to her Worldly Path. She saw the future stretch out before her, and she knew that she could continue to be a force for good. She, like you, did not want to be separate from the Script, though.

“I helped her become a Paradox Wizard.

“I sent her on her way, but it wasn’t long til the power went to her head, and it took a lot less time than it should have. But, in retrospect, the signs of her true self were always there. How she relished money over the relationships between business partners. How she was rude to people who couldn’t offer her anything. Shunning responsibility. Controlling. All very minor incidents that certainly wouldn’t mark someone as ‘evil’, even in aggregate.

“But as a Wizard, she had real power.

“The first morals to go were the morals that kept her from reaching for more power, like most Mind Mages. Her ascension to ‘archmage’ took months. From there, she began experimenting on condemned people, moving on to cultists and hunters and the exiled. Her morals further wore away, and she participated in wars based on ideology. She sought to do good, but in her zeal, she lost sight of the small things; she lost sight of limits she should not cross. In a year everything about her had changed. The final step came when Melemizargo tempted her to forgo war and to just Paradox herself into the winner’s seat of her conquest.

“All of her actions up to that point were forgivable, but when she ‘won’ her war, she did it by Paradoxing millions of lives away, and also taking for herself the mana generation of everyone she killed, making that mana generation her own. Even in the Old Cosmology this was taboo, but she did it anyway. We tried talking, but she refused to repent, to undo what she had done, and so we did the only thing we could.

“We gods fought a Wizard, and we won, though it eventually required a Forgotten Campaign to End her.” Rozeta paused. She said, “We don’t expect that from you for multiple reasons. So, in this way, you are not the first to get to this point, but you are the first that we expect to actually go the distance.”

Erick took it all in, and decided that, while it was a story of death and loss, it was nothing too unexpected—

Ah? Wait?

Erick connected a few dots, and asked, “Is that Fallopolis’s mother you’re talking about?”

“Yes,” Rozeta said, without reservation. “If you feel like telling that Shade what she has sought to learn all this time, go ahead. I wouldn’t trust her, though, even if you did bless both of you with a minor blessing of truth.”

Erick nodded. He moved on, “Earlier, you said that everyone shares mana under the Script. This allows normal people to have the abilities of mages, to cast thousands of spells per day, or exceedingly large magics with high mana costs.” Erick continued, “But you also said that people can’t share mana until they work to make such a thing possible.”

Rozeta smirked a little, and said, “It’s a Paradox, isn’t it.” She lost her smirk, and explained, “Manaminers were originally made by Wizards, but they’re machines of a million moving parts. What you did with [Renew] was to refine what other Wizards had made long before you came along. It’s a mirror for what my father does sometimes, like with these New Stats. I don’t like those, by the way; Makes everything a lot more complicated than it has to be— We could talk for hours about that, too, but for now:

“So you know: [Renew] looks to be unexpectedly great. I’ve already set up some experimental [Renew] protocols on an Experimental Script, which, if implemented on the wider Script, would eliminate ten-thousand spell creation errors per hour, or, introduce catastrophic vulnerabilities through bouncy-mana primary system attacks.” Rozeta didn’t seem worried about what she was saying, but Erick felt a spike of guilt and it showed. “Don’t worry about it, Erick. With [Renew], you might solve twice as many problems as you’ve created with Particle Magic. I’ll likely have to change some parts of it though, before it makes it to the Open Script.”

Erick did feel better about that. And then he focused on his questions, “So? Then… Are you a Wizard, too?”

“All dragons are minor wizards and I am no different.”

“Okay… What’s the difference, there? Just a matter of self-mana production?”

“Yes… But also no. Mostly ‘yes’. I will focus on the ‘yes’, right now.” Rozeta said, “Here are some numbers: our baseline for mana production is an average female human of no particular lineage or upbringing, age 25 level 15. Over the course of a year, on average, a person will produce 10 mana per day. This is actually ten times higher than it used to be back in the Old Cosmology, and this is entirely due to the Script encouraging people to experiment with magic and increase their familiarity with mana, to decrease their fear and also to increase their capability. Gaining levels also increased mana production, but this is a much smaller increase than actually learning how to make magic oneself.

“Wizards are outliers who produce 5000 to 10,000 mana per day. For comparison, you produce about 100,000-200,000 mana per day.

“Dragons produce 500 mana per day. Fifty times the average, but not too noticeable.

“We can also innately create cores and remain in control, unlike most monsters… Unless we go too far. But that is another discussion entirely, and is completely related to Dragon Essence, so you shouldn’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to worry about that, either, so, yes, I can do some Wizardry by using the mana I produce, but that power pales in comparison to the powers of a god.” Rozeta said, “We’ll leave that conversation there, and move on to your next question.”

Erick nodded, then he asked, “So. Here’s a complicated question about [Renew]. What happens when a person who is a monster uses it on themselves? Or on a rad? Is this a worry I should have? Once I have a core, myself, or if other monsters gain access to this spell?”

“Not a large worry; no.” Rozeta said, “To begin with: Aside from your own predicament, someone using [Renew] on a monster’s rad is much more likely to happen than a monster ever getting [Renew], for the spell will be in the Open Script, and not the Monster Script, and no one will ever be able to [Remake] this spellwork.

“Even if the spell doesn’t produce unknown security problems, no one is ever Remaking [Renew], just so that I never have to deal with a strangely-made [Renew] that does cause security problems.

“Anyway. Using [Renew], and with Clarity for half costs, two points of Experience are gained for every individual mana channeled, which is in line with current cycling techniques. If someone Favorites [Renew], then they gain 4 Experience per mana spent. For a person with Scion of Focus, and remaining mostly baseline, means that, with all bonuses, and running all day, their 144,000 mana becomes about 570,000 Experience.

“It would take a monstrous person a year to reach level 30, or 15,000 years to reach level 50.

“Shadelings can already reach level 50 through normal mana cycling, in which how they were made by Melemizargo allows them to cycle thousands of mana per second, all while remaining themselves… If they’re allowed to be. Not all shadelings are allowed to be themselves. The ones in Candlepoint are themselves, though my father does have a back door to turning them all back into fake people at any moment he chooses.”

Erick’s stomach dropped. “Oh holy shit.”

Rozeta waved him off. “Don’t worry too much about the smaller acts of power my father could wield, and chooses not to. He could already destroy this world several times over if he wanted.”

Erick breathed out, staring at the floor, his mind whirling.

Rozeta waited.

Eventually, Erick raised his head again. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Rozeta continued, “About [Renew]: All [Renew] will do for a monster that acquires it is allow said monster to not worry about killing other monsters to take those other rads, to restore their own rad.” Rozeta shrugged, seeming a bit happy. “Maybe I should give all the monsters [Renew], just to stop a lot of their natural reasons for aggression against each other. After all, I only have three main goals: Trying to maximize mana production, maintaining the security on the Script, and remaining neutral unless either of the first two goals are threatened.”

“Ah.” And that word meant so much. There seemed to be a lot of that happening right here. Erick moved on, asking, “What about if I use it on myself?”

Rozeta said, “You’re going to need to do this, because as soon as you gain a core of any type, you’re going to need to learn how to feed it to prevent catastrophic soul destruction. It would be best if you fed yourself, instead of eating other cores; that way could lead to insanity.”

Erick felt cold for a moment, and then he resigned himself. Resolute, he said, “This is a big change.”

“It will be; yes. So are you ready to begi—” Rozeta glanced to the right. She frowned.

“Another issue to take care of?”

She had gone off and come back several times already.

This time seemed different, though.

Rozeta’s frown deepened. She narrowed her suddenly angry eyes at an unseen, far distance, then she came back to the moment. “We should have had 4 days to get this done, but Fate does as Fate does, and my father still controls your Worldly Path. He shouldn’t know about what we’re discussing, but he probably figured out I would try to pull something like this. On the plus side, this event is good news about his sanity being real.” As Erick stared, uncomprehending, Rozeta looked him straight in the eyes, and said, “Melemizargo cleared the mana stream tunnels between the wrought from Stratagold and the guardian gate. The envoy from Stratagold will be here in hours, instead of days. I don’t have time to guide you to becoming a Wizard right now, so you have to choose: I erase these memories and none of this happens, or we change some plans.”

Dread.

First came bargaining. “You can’t delay them?”

“No. My father moved every single monster that was in front of them, to behind them.”

Erick steeled himself, asking, “What are the changes?”

“Archmages often create life. This life can slot into existing systems. All you have to do is make a people and assume its mantle as progenitor. In this way, you will become a monster, first, but with eligibility to gain personhood at my discretion. The minotaurs you rescued from Last Shadow’s Feast are already in the pipeline to become a people, though that would take several more years of good behavior.” Rozeta said, “This was to be the backup plan if you failed at proper Wizardry. It’s the slowest method, but it has very few complications.”

“… I feel like you’re skipping over about a hundred smaller steps.”

“This is correct.”

“… Please give me a few more steps, so I can at least see the staircase you want to push me down.”

Rozeta said, “Your designation as ‘Human-question-mark’ is already like a boulder at the top of a mountain; you’re going to need to pick a direction to roll, and hope you don’t go off course. I will help you fall correctly. In this way, we can lock your Wizardry to a new race that you, alone, are a part of. In this way, I will gain my ‘plug’ to pull if you look to be going evil.”

“… What sort of bad end would that be?”

“I would prefer to keep my threats unknown, Erick. I do apologize for how this looks, but my own track record should speak for me, too. I have never stopped you or anyone else from doing anything they wanted to do, as long as it didn’t endanger Veird itself.”

“… Okay. Okay. Sure… Okay.” Erick blinked several times as his mind went nearly blank, but neurons still fired in the background and ideas still floated to the surface. “Elementassi,” he said, quick as it came to him. “Practically huma—”

“Locked, thanks to what the Old Demons did to create incani.” Rozeta offered, “Minotaur are new, but you could be one of them? Centaur? Fae? Or at least your idea of fae. Doppelganger, perhaps? With innate [Polymorph]? I could make it so you could change faces and go incognito whenever you wished, like the dragons do. Or? How about a werewolf— Ah.” She deadpanned a joke, “WereWizard?”

Erick rapidly said, “This is a bit much. Could we have one of those timeouts?”

“My father compromises those too easily, otherwise this whole conversation would have been inside one of those.” Rozeta asked, “How about vampire? Without the vulnerabilities and propagating species-by-bite, obviously.”

“I don’t want to be a vampire.”

“Dryad? With Yggdrasil as your home-tree?” Rozeta said, “Though I can obviously change that to something less restrictive.”

“… Not that one, either.”

Rozeta boiled it down for him, “Literally any idea you have a connection to, I can make happen, and we can hide your Wizardry in that race, though you will have to be the one to make that whole race not go homicidal when they monsterize, which is what will happen almost instantly, when this is done. But know that what my father did for the shadelings, I can help you do for yourself.” Rozeta looked at him, saying, “But you need to make a choice. I cannot have my father be the one to create your Gate. I will not allow him that much power over the fate of everything.”

“Right. Right. Right.” Erick said, “But as a Wizard I have to deal with all the other dragons of the world, and the people of the world hating Wizards, and my soul being locked away inside a rad while the rest of me goes crazy, and the Script fucks me over instead of helps, and—”

“And about a hundred other problems, most of which you barely understand. But you will.” Rozeta said, “Paradox Wizardry would solve all of your physical problems. I urge you not to solve other-people problems with Wizardry.”

“… You’re sure you can’t order the incoming wrought to stay away for a few months?”

“I’ve known some of these people for 1300 years, Erick. If I told them to wait they would know something is happening and they would come here even faster and investigate you even harder, because despite how much power I have, I will not physically stop anyone from making the decisions they make. I will not harm people over ideology, or anything like that, and this includes you, and them.” Rozeta said, “You have about 54 minutes before they reach the cloudgate. They’re moving faster than I expected.”

Erick mentally ran through a thousand scenarios, sussing out the repercussions of the choices made here, and now. Mostly, he ran right into the first ultimatum Rozeta had given him.

He had two options. He could forget everything he learned here, or he could take the first step forward down an inevitable path with a civic-minded goddess guiding him. He had already been prepared to accept her offer, but now…

“Lightling,” Erick blurted, hoping for success.

Rozeta said, “Already exists. Everything you can think of that is attached to Veird has been done before.”

“… Ah.” Erick verbally thought through some ideas, “Medi… Uh. Mendicant. No. Ascetic— Very no. Uh. Astral— Etheric Human?”

“Less of a chance of working properly than you might think.” Rozeta said, “Variant humans are already accounted for in the monstrous Script, since that is what usually happens when a person turns into a monster. Becoming an actual new species would be best.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

Rozeta lost all mirth. “I apologize. This is difficult for you and I see that, but...” She added, “It would be better if you enjoyed this, too, for magic always works better that way. Or. You could look at it this way: Would you rather my father have a hand in this change? It’s a miracle of Wizardry that you didn’t become a shadeling when you took on the curse inside those New Stats.” Rozeta said, “Just so you know: That was your own Wizardry, already working to keep you safe when you should have died, or had something horrible happen to you.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay— Protean.” Erick spoke the word before his brain caught up to his mouth, but he didn’t take it back. It felt right, almost. He added, “A human, but able to [Polymorph] like dragons do, or however that works.”

Rozeta gave a small, content smile. “We have the word ‘shapeshifter’ but not specifically ‘Protean’. You’re even rather Chaotic, too, so I can see where you got your inspiration. This works well.” Her eyes seemed to grow larger, without changing size at all, and Erick realized there would be no more delay. This was happening right now. Clouds drifted out from the corners of the room to suddenly flow around his feet. Rozeta spoke from on high, “You’re going to have to do the heavy lifting, but I’ll guide your change.”

The Goddess of the Script stared down at Erick, perspective shifting till he was an ant and she was a serpentine white dragon that filled a cloudy sky. In that moment, he felt their entire several hour conversation had not been nearly long enough, and yet, it could have been shortened considerably. Maybe ‘Hi. I’m a Wizard?’ And then she’d say, ‘Yes you are. Let’s make that work.’ And then this would happen.

It was rather infuriating, actually.

- - - -

He was mad, for sure.

Angry at circumstances and forced actions and what the world demanded of him so that he and his loved ones didn’t die to any of a thousand unknown threats, or several well-known threats. He was angry, and he always had been, though it rarely showed. He saw that part of himself in Jane, for sure; that same bone-deep frustration that forced him to do what needed to be done to ensure good outcomes. Jane was young, though, so her anger was rightfully directed into direct, physical action. Erick’s own anger had transformed long ago into helping people wherever he could, making him into the man he was before he came to Veird.

Coming to Veird had transformed him, calling that deep anger back from the depths of his soul, making him, in his darkest moments, want to eradicate all his enemies from the face of the world. To sweep them away with unbridled power, with light and lightning, with physical destruction and complete obliteration.

And yet, he still believed in the power of talk, and understanding. He had seen compassion work too many times as a social worker to discount the power of empathy. The power of helping others had helped him first, after all, when an agent of the state came to him a year after Jane fell into his lap.

With a crying baby in the crib, twelve dollars in the bank, and a gun in his right hand, Erick had considered robbing a bank, or their neighbors, or dealing drugs. The drug option was the best one, but robbing a convenience store a few states away was faster, and rent was due soon. He had a baby now, and he needed money. He had fallen in with a bad crowd in college, but after Jane he had gotten away from most of that, but now he knew where the money was, and that’s all that mattered. Giving up Jane was never an option; he was going to make this work, even if he had to kill someone to do it.

It was the darkest part of his life.

And yet, in that dark, a social worker had rescued him and Jane with job placements and daycare assistance and too many small acts of mercy to recount. He didn’t have to sell drugs. He didn’t have to rob anyone. He didn’t need to kill. All he had needed was a helping hand to cross a canyon, to get to the other side where stability awaited.

Erick had remained mad at the world, though.

At the rich and the powerful, at the toil of his own life, and at what others had to do to survive. At what he almost had to do. But once he had turned the corner, that anger had transformed into growth, and that growth made all the difference in the lives of so many people; and none more than his own. If that social worker hadn't helped him… If he had gone to the gangs… He would have been a very different man, today.

If that other man had fallen to Veird with Jane at his side those first days and everything else would have been different. That other man certainly wouldn’t have ever qualified for a Silver Star from Koyabez. Erick hadn’t killed anyone back on Earth, but he was no stranger to blood on his fists.

He probably would have accepted Phagar’s offer a lot more readily.

Kill everyone who slighted him? Murder those fucks who stuck a knife in his back in that alleyway, who then assaulted the sewerhouse trying to kill him and his daughter? Go hunting with his daughter in the Crystal Forest, looking for Levels, and power? Yeah. He would have done that. It would have seemed like the only way to ensure his and Jane’s survival.

But someone had helped him long ago, and changed everything.

Rozeta’s voice called out from the depths of the clouds, “Growth and change. Anger and empathy. Not two sides of the same coin, but instead, a river that shifts on a boulder, finding a new track through the desert. You would have been a different person except for that helping hand given in honest aid, and this different person would have come into his Wizardry on his own long before now.

“This is a new turning point. This is a new helping hand.” Rozeta reached down from the heavens, inviting him forward. “Take my hand, Erick.”

Erick and Rozeta spoke together, “Become the monster, and the man.”

Erick reached forward...

- - - -

Erick stood upon a mirror that stretched out to every horizon. Clouds held in the far distance while a nebulous light glowed all around.

He looked down.

Another Erick looked up. He was the same, and yet different. Same roughness to his face. Same white eyes. But he smirked, while Original Erick did not. He had blood on his hands, and on the hems of his pants and sleeves, while Erick was clean. Erick was just a man, but the other man was the Wizard.

The Wizard leaned down, reaching to the glass floor, toward Erick. With a gentle ripple his hand came out of the ground.

Erick grabbed the Wizard’s hand and helped him out of the ground with a yank, disturbing the mirrored land with a single ripple. Erick set the man down again, causing the Wizard to give a rather undignified yelp, grabbing and cradling his own hand, smiling all the while even though he was obviously in a bit of pain.

“Strong grip there, buddy!”

“Ach. Uh.” Erick said, “I didn’t think you’d be—”

“Nah! It’s fine.” The Wizard shook his hand out, then flexed it a few times as he said, “So you got to keep all the Stats, eh? I’ve glanced through four thousand universes and the only ones that kept their Stats were the ones brainwashed by dragons or the god-touched, and you ain’t neither of them.” With an infectious grin, the Wizard asked, “How the fuck you manage that?”

“Rozeta is helping me to link to you.” Erick said, “The cat is about to escape the bag about my Wizardry.”

The Wizard briefly looked distraught, but then he hummed, saying, “I guess you’re perfect, then.” He frowned a bit more. “But of course you’re the perfect one. That makes me the fake; the lost timeline.”

“Ah. One of those Paradox things, eh?”

The Wizard shrugged, giving a smile. “Yup! This was always the danger of attempting this sort of Wizardry, but I was out of options. They’re beating down the doors right now and I’m practically out of mana. Paladins of Rozeta, actually. Didn’t like me mucking about with bringing... Actually. I probably shouldn’t say. I can already tell how this is going to go. I’ll fail to exist if I leave this space.” The Wizard laughed. “Ah! That whore. I guess she got me in the end! Didn’t even see it coming.”

Erick felt a twist on his insides, like heartburn, but he hadn’t experienced that sensation in nearly a year, so it was obviously a lot more important than that. Mana sense failed him, though; this space was ephemeral, and probably wouldn’t last past this single conversation.

Erick asked, “How was Veird on your Path?”

“Utter shitshow!” The Wizard said, “You probably won’t get any of my memories… Or maybe you will? Rozeta’s a decent sort as long as you don’t go upsetting the applecart.” He winked. “But that’s exactly what I did. All I wanted was to—” He clutched his chest. “Ah. Shouldn’t say that either, eh?” He looked up at the clouds and shouted at the sky, “Fuck you! This is my death and I’m gonna give it some meaning.” He looked back to Erick. “You could tell me how your time went, though. Probably no restrictions there. I’d like to know what version of myself I’ve been saddled with.”

Erick said, “Invented Particle Magic—”

A nod. “Normal.”

“—Killed many Shades—”

A smirk. “Didn’t manage that.”

“—Ar’Kendrithyst is empty of Shades, actually. They’re calling it ‘Last Shadow’s Feast’—”

The Wizard frowned, saying, “Hold on.”

“—Invented a spell that [Renew]s spellwork—”

The Wizard laughed. “OH yeah. You’re a Wizard.”

“—And I’m practically at the end of the Worldly Path.”

The Wizard cackled, throwing his head back and laughing at the world. And then he looked to Erick. “I’m good with this. So? What’s the plan? Do you know how Wizardry works?” He answered his own question, “Short rundown: Wizardry is informing the universe that your dick is the biggest, therefore you make the rules.”

Erick chuckled. “Rozeta didn’t explain quite in that way.”

“Course she didn’t! Firstly: Every Wizard is different. Secondly: I don’t got time to go into all the other shit.” The Wizard said, “You’ll figure it all out.” The Wizard’s joy faded into the background. His face fell. “Say… Did Jane— Uh—” He wiped his difficult emotions away, and spoke with hope in his voice, “What’s up with Jane these days?”

Erick felt a stab in his chest. He grabbed his right side. Pain blossomed beside his heart.

At the same time the Wizard mirrored Erick’s grab, touching his own left side of his chest, grasping the space over his heart.

Wounds appeared under both of their hands, flowing red through both of their fingers as blood soaked through their tunics.

Erick breathed, then looked the Wizard in the eyes. They shared the same white eyes with black pupils, though Erick only now noticed that the Wizard still looked 49, with grey in his hair and in his day-old beard. But Erick, himself, had gained a Blessing from Rozeta nearly a year ago. Erick looked something like 30. Looking in mirrors still freaked him out a bit when a stranger’s face stared back at him.

He hadn’t even noticed till now that the Wizard was truly his old self, but flipped. A true mirror version. Like how he used to be, and was no longer.

The Wizard tilted his head a bit as he stared at Erick, gaining his own sight to see the strangeness likely standing before him. He said, “At least I’ll be hot again. Say. Are—” He stopped.

Seemingly sharing the same thoughts, but in opposite directions, Erick and the Wizard both glanced down at the actual mirror in the room.

All that was down there was Darkness.

“Ah,” the Wizard said.

“Ah,” Erick said.

They looked at each other.

“What about Jane?” The Wizard asked.

Erick said, “Jane is fine as of a few days ago. She’s in Spur dealing with something, though they won’t tell me what.”

The Wizard breathed out, his mouth opening into a wide smile. “Ahhhh.” Tears flowed. “Okay. This is good. I’m happy with this. Even if I won’t be seeing her again… I will.”

Erick asked, “I’ll love her enough for the both of us.”

“I know you will, ‘cause that’s what I’d do if I were the real one.”

“Does this happen often?” Erick asked, “Meeting other selves?”

“In the shallow Paradox? No. Never.” The Wizard said, “But I’ve burned everything to make this work, to drag both of us into this meeting; we’re in the Deep Paradox, Erick. Truly deep, where you never know if you’re in control or not, and, it turns out, I lost the dice roll. You can’t tell, but my heart and my core burst when I came in here. I was real to me, but you’re the Truth in this place.”

Erick’s heart thumped in pain as cold waves of unsettling emotions spread out from his chest. He looked at the Wizard with understanding that likely fell far short of truth. Erick said, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

The Wizard smiled. His teeth were red; a match for the blood on his hands, and on his hems. Blood dripped as his tears turned crimson. “I know you are.”

Erick stood strong. He nodded.

The Wizard responded in kind, though he was dying with every passing moment.

Resolute, the Wizard and the not-yet Wizard took a step toward the other, each holding out a bloody right hand. They met in the middle, red mixing with red as they spoke in unison,

“I’m ready.”

- - - -

Erick woke to pain, his mana sense and [Greater Lightwalk] flickering on almost instinctively.

He almost passed right back out from weakness, but he held onto consciousness like a man on the edge of a cliff.

A few things stuck out immediately. The bedroom all around him was made of white stone and the bed looked familiar, while a rainbow crystal window above the actual window told him that he was inside the king’s castle, somewhere. Outside the window, Yggdrasil stood like a green and rainbow mountain sitting on a convex ocean that curled up. Beyond Yggdrasil lay the rest of the Outer Core.

Rozeta was in the room with Erick, standing to the side of his bed like a nurse, a queen, and a goddess all rolled into one, which she was.

Ophiels chirped on various perches around the room.

But the most concerning thing was the jagged pearl of a core sitting in his chest, next to his heart, where his heart would have been if it had been mirrored onto his right side. His lungs had been altered to fit the new thing inside of him. Right now, it was the size of a thumbnail and faceted like a broken, minor rad worth only 3 gold at the Mage’s Guild, but scar tissue surrounded it, and ethereal vein-like structures led outward, mirroring Erick’s own vasculature like a shadow of the real thing. The fake veins weren’t even real, except they were, somehow.

As for his soul...

His soul was completely trapped inside of a tiny, new core. His body was soul-dead, like a shadeling’s, or a monster’s, or anything else with a rad—

Rozeta said, “Calm down, Erick. It’s a temporary thing. I wanted to speak to you before I allowed your messages to start rolling in, to let you know that many of them are automated and that you shouldn’t be too concerned. The procedure was a complete success.”

Blue boxes started rolling across his vision.

- -

You are suffering from the beginning stages of monsterfication.

Seek help soon, or lose yourself to the mana.

- -

- -

You are entering the end stages of monsterfication.

You are about to lose yourself to the mana.

- -

- -

You have lost yourself to the mana.

Reinitializing.

- -

- -

Unknown Entity detected!

We see you!

Initializing mana integration…

ERROR.

Unknown species detected.

Higher priority requested.

Higher priority obtained.

Reorienting scan…

You are an unknown monster.

Beginning New Monster registration.

Designation: <Protean>

Welcome to Veird, <Protean>!

It appears you are derived from the <UNKNOWN> species.

As a monster you likely will not be able to understand this notification, but if you can, then here are some words for you.

The Open Script is closed to you. All selected options you had in your previous life are gone. Personalized magic might be available to you based on your species. Or not.

Cultivate your mana to stave off insanity. Do this by focusing your mana inward and feeding on your own mana. This should be instinctual.

There is no need to attack other people to sustain your existence.

There is still hope to rid yourself of this affliction.

You are issued a Quest.

Good luck.

- -

- -

Special Quest!

Return to <UNKNOWN>

- -

- -

Error!

Quest deleted. Insufficient authorization.

- -

His Status appeared next, and it looked nothing like how it usually looked. Erick’s stomach dropped a little. Jane had shown off her Familiar Form boxes often enough for him to recognize the same shape to this new blue box. It was almost like his own Light Slime box, but different.

--

Protean

Body:

Greater Lightwalk

Lodestar

Luminous Beam

Perfected Polymorph

Perfected Body

All:

Paradox Shift

--

He willed his desire to see his normal Status, and like a sluggish flow, it gradually materialized.

Ah.

So that was why he felt like shit.

--

Erick Flatt

Protean, age 0

Level 0, Class: Particle Mage

Exp: 0/100

Class: 10/10

Points: 0

HP

100/100

300 per day

MP

11/200

300 per day

Strength / 10 / +0 / [10]

Vitality / 10 / +0 / [10]

Dexterity / 10 / +0 / [10]

Constitution / 10 / +0 / [10]

Perception / 10 / +0 / [10]

Willpower / 20 / +0 / [20]

Focus / 20 / +0 / [20]

Intelligence /10 / +0 / [10]

- -

As he read his new predicament he bottomed out at 0 mana, and felt even worse.

Rozeta pulled Erick out of his thoughts. “Try [Paradox Shift].”

Her words vibrated with power, and Erick felt himself activate his ability without even trying.

The world shifted.

Things made more sense.

The rad in his chest vanished and he was himself, as he had been hours ago. He was much, much stronger, with Strength in the 80’s and the Vitality to match and full mana and—

Rozeta started, “This is perhaps the perfect outcome for starting slow. Some bonuses I managed to sneak into there that would otherwise not exist include Perfected Body, the ‘Greater’ to your [Lightwalk], [Luminous Beam], [Lodestar], as well as the previously discussed [Perfected Polymorph]. For that last one, all you need to do is think of a person you want to be, or perhaps choose someone you’re familiar with. In your case, DNA should be enough to trigger that ability, though your Perfected Body will be doing a great deal of lifting in that case and you might not get the perfect result. Experiment some, and you should be fine.

“You’re starting from scratch as a ‘monster’, or rather, in the generalized path of a shadeling, or a cannibal that comes back to themselves, though in all of those cases such a thing is a very rare occurrence.

“You’ll have noticed a fair bit of problems, though. All of the ones we previously discussed are present, including a few more. Stat Rings don’t work for monsters. You’ve lost all of the extra points you gained from all sources of extra points, from spell creation to Quest completion, but you still have all of the same spells you had before so it’s not that rough of a change. All your multiplier abilities are gone, though; you’ll have to reacquire those. Your soul is inside your core and thus most guards will be able to pick you out of a crowd which is especially true for someone like your woman, Teressa. You can’t level from the expenditure of mana; only from cycling or killing things. As with all things, figuring out how to work your magic properly will stop these problems.

“You’ll have to cycle mana and [Renew] yourself in this form every day or else you might experience problems. Don’t let that happen.

“Etcetera.

“This is all a temporary fix to acclimate you to being a Wizard. When that happens you’ll be able to be both of yourselves at the same time, choosing the best of both sides, and cutting away the rest. You’ll likely be able to manage small things before that large shift, though. Try working to make your Stat rings work in both forms, or to make yourself not require core-upkeep. Prune your problems and learn what it means to be a Paradox Wizard, first hand, before you grow too much and are permanently removed from the Script. That should be a while away, though.” Rozeta said, “I have high hopes for you, Erick.”

As Rozeta spoke, Erick shifted back to his other form briefly, felt absolutely gutted all over again, and then Shifted back. And then he Shifted again, and started noting the problems that Rozeta noted. Every boosting ability from Strong to Scion of Focus was gone, but all of his spells seemed there in both forms, though he had no resources to cast the vast majority of them as this Other Self.

Blessing of Rozeta was still present. So that was nice.

When she spoke of cycling, Erick tried that, doing exactly the same as the shadelings he spoke to had done; he took his mana, which was already somehow in his core, and he pushed it around. For such a simple act it felt wonderful. Like breaking up a clogged drain. The facets of his tiny core began to shift and expand as he cycled his pitiful 5 mana around and around. By the time Rozeta was nearly finished speaking, Erick had gained one level due to experience gained from cycling. He stopped there and Shifted back to huma—

Ah. Still ‘protean’ in his normal form. That was kinda a kick in the pants. No more ‘humanity’.

And there were other unexpected results of this change. As he looked at his hands and saw them without blemish and as perfect mirrors of each other, it was apparent that Perfected Form carried over into both forms, as well. He’d be finding side effects of this… Event, for months, perhaps. But on yet another plus side: Maybe he should look into getting that [Bloody Personal Ward] like Jane was talking, since Perfected Form made him basically immune to most of the long term problems of Blood Magic.

Gods, he hoped Jane was okay.

And that reminded him—

“I saw someone in the vision.” Erick said, “Another me. And Melemizargo was down there, too.”

Rozeta’s smile vanished. After a moment, she said, “Don’t worry too much about that. You’re the real one.”

“… That’s what he said, too.”

“You’re going to be doing a lot of Script manipulation in the future so please try to keep it small and manageable until you grow enough to handle the deeper stuff.” Rozeta added, “You’re still at least three iterations from being able to wield your full power; going to a grand core, then fortifying yourself until you’re completely a mana crystal, and then becoming a full fledged Wizard that—” She glanced to the side, then she turned back to Erick. “Don’t let anyone know you’re a Wizard.” She stepped away, turning into gold fire halfway through her movement, her voice becoming a whisper, “I cleaned the manasphere to remove our conversations, but they’ll find out you have [Duplicate] if they look, and they will. Good luck. Please don’t kill them. I already asked them to give you the same courtesy.”

Erick went still for a moment as he took stock of his situation.

Then he breathed, got off the bed, and blipped over to Yggdrasil’s upper branches.

- - - -

A world of rainbows, white light, and fiery green leaves greeted him.

“Welcome back, Father,” Yggdrasil said.

Erick leaned down and patted Yggdrasil white bark, saying, “Hello again, Yggdrasil. I hope I wasn’t gone too long.”

“You look different.”

Erick looked at himself with his mana sense. He was different, of that there was no doubt. Cleaner lines, all blemishes erased. He was already pretty good looking, especially with all the other little bonuses that physical Stats did to a body, but this latest change had thrown him into Hollywood star categories. Perfected Form was pretty great.

If it wasn’t for the attached Wizardry and the required body horror where his soul was completely trapped inside a rad in his other chest, and with the secondary circulatory system, then he’d probably be happier about this.

Erick sent, ‘I feel different, too, but I’m still myself.’

‘Yes. I have other bodies.’ Yggdrasil asked, ‘I tell no one about Wizards?’

Erick felt his heart drop and soar in equal measure, sad of the words he had to tell Yggdrasil, but also happy that Yggdrasil understood already. ‘I’m sorry to ask you to lie to people, either through direct lying, or through omission. You should be allowed to enjoy your life more, and lies make it so much more difficult than it has to be.’

‘Why difficult?’

‘Because lies will always be found out, breaking trust in their passing, and once trust is broken it’s very hard to get back.’ Erick cast a [Cascade Imaging] into the air above them, searching for people as he sent, ‘Trust is what makes much of society function, Yggdrasil.’

‘Trust is important?’

‘Yes. I trust you not to hurt me, and I hope you trust me not to hurt you. In this way, we can work and live and grow together.’ Erick watched his Imaging resolve piece by piece as he sent, ‘It’s like how I trust Jane and she trusts me. I can lower my defenses around her, and she does the same. I don’t have that same level of trust with people like whoever is coming here right now, so I’m going to keep all of my defenses up, and active. But I won’t attack them until they attack me. I hope that my trust in this small way is repaid with similar trust that they won’t attack either, or at least we’ll talk before that happens.’

‘I understand.’

The map had populated enough. Three blue dots held at a distance about four or five thousand kilometers away; well out of visual sight and into the deeper blue parts of the sky where the inner surface of the Outer Core started to vanish behind so much air and clouds. They weren’t moving.

Probably because they could see Yggdrasil from this distance. In this unmoving, unchanging world, which these people probably knew every meter of, a very large tree in the ocean next to a very large city probably stood out like a pimple on prom night.

Erick spoke, “Looks like they’re hanging back… Did they not expect you, Yggdrasil? I would have expected you if I were them. If they decide to attack I want you to defend; not attack. Understood?”

“Okay, Father.”

Ophiel hopped around in the light, mimicking Yggdrasil's response with his own chirp chirp.

“And don’t try to restrain them with your [Lodestar]. They probably have a Domain popper amongst them. They’d have to if they planned on coming through those tunnels.” Erick frowned a little as he shifted his sight between the blue dots on the map, and to an Ophiel hovering outside of Yggdrasil’s branches, with eyes on that particular curve of the Outer Core. “Hmm.”

Erick cast a [True Viewing Screen] on the location. He had targeted close enough. He saw.

Cloudgate in the center of a rocky land, looking perfectly normal. The wrought had walked through the thing with the password, after all, so this was expected.

Three wrought to the side of the cloudgate, atop rocky ground. They weren’t attacking, or gearing up to attack, because they were injured. Seriously injured.

One was a black human-shaped woman with a green sheen to her, missing an arm and a leg and bleeding drops of black metal from each severance. Erick instantly recognized her as Tasar the summoner, the archmage he had met back at Oceanside who had invented [Condense Oxygen], which was both a wrought-killing or saving spell, depending on how it was used. Probably didn’t work on any of the higher-order metals, though, like Tasar, with her adamantium, but she was mixed with something else to have that green sheen, so maybe it did? Who knew.

Tasar did not look good. She was sprawled on the ground, unconscious and slightly liquefying from any of a hundred small wounds, and all of her major ones, and yet she gripped a black staff in her remaining arm like it would somehow keep her alive.

A white-metal horned wrought stood over her, shoving desperate magics to the woman, trying to stop her degradation. Everywhere he poured white light, Tasar regained some of her solidity.

The white man was missing his left hand and one of his horns.

To the side lay the third person, who seemed like he should have been the one to receive all of the Healer’s ministrations, but that wasn’t happening. He was an orcol-shaped black adamantium man with a rent going halfway through his metal flesh, leading from his right shoulder to his left thigh. That was just one claw mark, though, likely inflicted by Melemizargo himself. But Melemizargo had multiple claws to a paw, and those other claws had sheared off the wrought’s left arm at the bicep, and half-clipped through his right thigh.

Erick took notice of their entire situation in a fraction of a second. As another second passed, he scoped out the rest of the area around them. He found no immediate threats, hidden or otherwise. With a thought, Erick sent a fully-protected Ophiel to them, lightstepping as fast as the little guy could go.

“How can I help?” Erick asked, from a few meters away from the white wrought man.

The white man glanced at Ophiel then instantly returned to his work, trying to hold Tasar together as he said, “Unless you have adamantium then you cannot help.”

“I have a few inscription knives here.” Erick asked, “Want them?”

“Yes. All of the magical ones.” The man tried not to panic as the left side of Tasar’s chest crumpled inward, turning liquid all at once, spreading black across the rocks. “Please. Hurry.”

With Ophiel’s help, Erick rapidly copied his formation knife inside a [Prismatic Ward]. In three flashing seconds, he had three hundred wrought-quality adamantium knives. In the fourth second, Ophiel lightstepped the lot of them to the three wrought, dumping them onto the ground beside Tasar.

The white wrought stared at the new pile, had a realization, and then stuffed that down as he moved to the knives, saying, “[Mending Aura] localized on Sitnakov, please. He’s the other one. I have to prep this metal for Tasar and then we all need [Mending Aura], but not before the metal is integrated into Tasar or an indistinct [Mend] will kill her.”

Erick did as asked, hovering Ophiel over to the wrought with rents through his entire body and opening up a [Mending Aura] atop the man. The man’s eyes remained closed but he winced hard, his body gradually flowing together in fits and spurts of barely-moving black metal.

While Erick did that, the white wrought cast a net of magic over the adamantium knives, shifting their harsh lines and hard edges into putty, molding the metal in a way that shouldn’t be possible with adamantium. The stump of his one forearm continued to hold the floating ball of metal in a net of magic, while dexterous fingers peeled off streamers of the stuff, guiding them into the cavity of Tasar’s chest.

“Eat, Tasar.” The white wrought said, “Eat, please. I need you to be present and—” A smile broke across his face as the streamers of metal began soaking into Tasar, forming organs, heart first. “Yes. Just like that. You’re going to be okay.”

Erick had no idea that wrought had organs. From what he was seeing inside Sitnakov’s chest, the man didn’t seem to have organs. Sitnakov was already looking better, though, but there was a long way to go, and it wasn’t long before Erick had to switch out Ophiels so that another, full Ophiel could continue with the [Mending Aura]; that spell cost 572 mana per second.

The white wrought continued to administer ‘feeding’ Tasar’s insides metal, repairing organs as he said, “I need more adamantium. Enough to heal the two of them. If you have any holyite, I’d take that, too, but this is a much lower priority.”

Erick began working on the first request while he spoke through Ophiel, “I have no holyite, but you got extra, right? I could copy some of your own white stuff?”

The man gave a small laugh. “Yes. Of course.” He tilted his head a bit, saying, “I got the horn wound. Take some blood from that.”

A separate Ophiel quickly danced in toward the man and used his sunform to scoop out a bit of the white metal from the broken horn. Erick pulled that bit of metal back toward him, back at Yggdrasil, while he dropped another load of magical daggers on the rocky land beside the healer.

“What’s your name?” Erick said, “I know Tasar from before. I don’t know Sitnakov.”

“Kromolok. High Priest of Rozeta.”

With another cast of net-like magic, Kromolok grabbed the new daggers and added them to the hovering orb of metal. His ministrations on Tasar were already paying off. The woman’s caved-in side was nearly repaired, with new adamantium becoming organs, then bone, then flesh and skin. The bleeding wounds all over her body were already ‘clotting’, or whatever it was wrought bodies did to stop the bleeding. Erick wasn’t even aware that wrought could bleed.

Lots of new information today.

Kromolok continued, “Rozeta told us that kindness would work better than anger, that you didn’t know what you were doing when you came down here. Of the danger you brought to the world when you breached the guardians.”

“I’m aware now.” Erick said, “So as soon as you’re all healed up we can leave, unless there are other problems you have with me.”

Kromolok sighed, his relief obvious, but he was not fully relieved, at all. “Will you consent to a mind wipe?”

“Absolutely not,” Erick said, in his most polite tone. “I have learned quite a few things down here, and they’re going to stay with me forever.”

Kromolok nodded, his gentle joy that no one was going to die replaced by something stronger. Something more resolute. “Sitnakov will wish to speak with you about a great many things.” Without looking at the downed man, Kromolok said, “You can stop [Mend]ing him now. The worst of the damage is repaired and any more [Mend]s will only cause more problems later.”

Erick had exhausted seven Ophiel [Mending Aura]ing Sitnakov, but he also resummoned those Ophiel and sent them back out. Not once had he let his guard down, either. Sitnakov’s chest was back to mostly-wholeness, but he was still missing an entire arm and the rest of his assorted wounds were still half there.

Erick asked, “Is Sitnakov going to wake up, soon?”

“I would prefer Tasar to be awake before him, but don’t tell anyone I said that and I won’t tell anyone you have [Duplicate].” Kromolok said, “I need four more piles of adamantium like the previous one, please.”

Erick dropped off a small pile of fully magical holyite next to Kromolok. The aluminum gleamed white in the light of the Inner Core above, but it also shifted with an essence of divine fire. Then he got to work on more knives as he said, “They’re going to understand where this metal came from, anyway, so your promise for a promise is a weak offer.”

“Ah. So you’re dropping pretenses? Then I will do the same.” Kromolok asked, “What is your goal in finding a Wizard?”

“I would prefer not to have anything to do with Wizardry but apparently the Worldly Path ends with Wizardry from Melemizargo, and I would prefer to avoid that.”

“I would like to break you off your Path.” Kromolok strung wires of adamantium into the stump of Tasar’s missing arm, rebuilding it as he said, “A [Teleport] network can do almost everything a [Gate] network can do and it doesn’t require Wizardry, or the Dark.”

“… Feel free to explain further.”

Kromolok nodded, continuing to repair Tasar as he said, “A series of Teleport Stations can replicate [Gate]’s ability to go anywhere on Veird. There are even special Darkness-repelling runeworks that allow t-stations to function in the Underworld. Every Geode has these sorts of stations. We are considering allowing this magic out into the rest of the world if you agree to step off of the Worldly Path.”

A blossom of cold anger flowed out from the center of Erick’s chest, invading the rest of him like a chilly wind. “Ah. So you have kept this from the rest of the world for some reason? You’ve denied civilization the ability to connect to each other up till now? Till someone forced this action from you?”

“Yes.” Kromolok said, “You can have the headache of keeping the Dark-touched mortals in line for we want nothing to do with them unless they start breaking things.”

Erick’s anger cooled, replaced by solidity. “Fair enough.” He dumped another load of knives two meters away from Kromolok, giving the man what appeared to be enough to heal everyone, as he said, “But I still want [Gate].”

Kromolok frowned as he finished creating the metal bones of Tasar’s arm, and started to flow more adamantium onto that skeleton, like shaping putty around sticks. Erick wasn’t even aware that wrought had skeletons. In fact, he was pretty sure healthy ones didn’t. Kromolok netted himself some more knives, turning them into more raw material as he said, “The alternative of going through the Dark to acquire [Gate] is to find another Wizard, and the Dark won’t let you. Your Path will take you down dangerous roads, killing millions of people. You need to end this whole thing, right now, and pick another way—”

Sitnakov grumbled, “Dammit, Krom. You’re not... talk... for…” His voice trailed off.

His wounds began to leak metal, with the half-healed rent across his chest turning goopy.

Kromolok frowned at the large orcol-like man. With a twist of his remaining hand he tied off his healing of Tasar, leaving her with many small wounds and an arm that was mostly skeletal. With a flick of his severed wrist, Kromolok grabbed up some more adamantium into a hovering ball of black, then he moved over toward Sitnakov and began to heal away the fresh bleed, saying, “If you would have dodged better, you could have been the one to speak first.”

Sitnakov’s eyes shot open. His chest expanded as he drew breath, but then sudden, wracking coughs stole all the words he was trying to say.

Kromolok seemed to know what the larger man was about, though, as he said, “If you would have kept it together then you could have been the one to speak, but you didn’t, so I went first. Do not complain about this.” Sitnakov relaxed, his breathing evening out as Kromolok’s healing took hold; the floating ball of metal turning into threads that became bones and muscles. The healer said, “He’s denied my path, though, so you’re up next.”

Sitnakov grumbled at that—

He jerked a tiny bit, his eyes going wide as he looked down and saw the ball of metal above Kromolok’s stump of a forearm. “Where did you…” He tilted his head and took in the sight of Tasar, who was slightly breathing, Ophiel, who hovered above, and then the piles of adamantium knives that had yet to become new flesh. “[Duplicate]. Damned priests and... secrets.”

“Actually, that’s me.” Erick said, “By the way, I didn’t think wrought had bones. Or organs or blood. Learn something new every day.”

Without looking Ophiel’s way, Kromolok said, “I would have kept this secret, Erick.”

“And I would prefer not to have secrets at all, especially once people start moving around here and seeing what I’ve been touching while I’ve been in this apparently holy land of yours.” Erick said, “I’d prefer to be upfront about everyone’s reasons for anger.”

Sitnakov laughed loudly, but that laugh quickly turned into gurgling, and coughing, but laughter kept coming.

Kromolok slapped Sitnakov on the chest with his free hand. “Stop moving. Stop it.”

Sitnakov killed his laughter, though he had to go through some small chuckles before it fully vanished. When he could, he tried to act professional, even if remained sprawled on the ground, bleeding from hundreds of wounds. He asked, “Did Kromolok introduce himself?”

“Nope. You were all bleeding out, so I worked—” Erick noticed Tasar started bleeding again, but it was internal. “Tasar is bleeding in her chest again. The organs reappeared and the bleeding started and this is all very weird.”

Kromolok instantly said, “Do not move, Sitnakov. Stay there. I mean it.” And then he detached his repairing magics from the man and moved back to Tasar. He squinted a bit, then he said, “Ah. She’s… Hmm.” He started running adamantium into her chest, fixing internal injuries as he could.

Sitnakov glanced at the two other wrought, then he turned to face Ophiel, hovering overhead. “I’m Sintakov Stratagold, of Heavy Adamantium. I come offering you methods toward [Gate] that you may or may not be able to grasp, along with our libraries of magical lore. In return, we ask you to step off the Worldly Path. We require no other necessities from you. We have other offers that you might like more, or less, but either one works for the needs of Stratagold. High Inquisitor Priest Kromolok, of True Holyite, wishes you off the Path and also to remove your memories of your time in this land. Such a removal would be painless, of course. Geode Guardian Archmage Tasar, of Green Adamantium, wishes—”

Tasar grumbled, her thick voice barely a whisper, but more than loud enough to be heard among the otherwise silent lands, “I can speak for myself, Sitnakov.”

“Then please do,” Sitnakov said, still laying down. “And actually speak; don’t whisper.”

“You shouldn’t speak, yet,” Kromolok said, “Let me work.”

Tasar’s remaining good hand clutched her black staff, hard. Erick only now noticed that it wasn’t a metal staff; it was black crystal. Tasar winced hard at her own movements, then she relaxed, and spoke clearly, asking, “How far are on your Path, Archmage Flatt?”

Kromolok tsk’d, but gave no other complaints as he healed Tasar.

“Two or three steps from the end, not including the end.” Erick said, “Things ramped up rather damned fast when I came here. Did a lot. Learned a lot about myself, and my goals.”

Tasar asked, “What other steps do you think you have? Before [Gate]?”

“Finally got aura control, so now I gotta learn to Remake some magic and skills, like Clarity and Meditation and Mana Altering. I want to make my own Particle Mage Class Ability, too. After that, I might need to visit some dragons in Ar’Cosmos to learn more about [Gate]. I think I’ll be done by then, but then I have to put everything together and get a Wizard to ‘anoint’ it, or whatever it is they do.” Erick said, “Still not sure what makes a Wizard a Wizard, even after plundering the Grand Wizard’s Tower for everything I could find.”

Sitnakov winced. “That close, huh.”

Tasar said, “I humbly ask you to visit Oceanside before continuing with any other steps. Kirginatharp holds in wait Angelic and Demonic forces, hoping to use your Worldly Path to force them into some sort of long-term ceasefire.” She added, “While we are there, I can teach you all about Remaking all known Basic Tier magic, every skill, how to make a Class Ability, as well as much of what the dragons in Ar’Cosmos know of [Gate].”

Kromolok frowned as he treated Tasar.

Erick felt good about that offer, actually. “What do you want in return, Tasar?”

“For you and I to pursue a Wizard that is not the Darkness in order to end your Worldly Path, and also for you to teach me how to make a [Familiar] that has their own mana.” Tasar said, “I have tried the methods you explained to your apprentice and that other girl, but the methods now held at the Magisterium of the Wasteland Kingdoms do not work for me. I want personal teaching.”

Kromolok’s frown deepened. “Greedy girl.”

The orcol wrought had a decidedly stronger reaction. He spoke with a deep heaviness to his voice, “Tasar.”

“You all aren’t offering him enough!” Tasar said, “I already explained to you—”

“Line up with me and we’ll elevate you to Heavy,” Sitnakov said.

Tasar went stock still. Slowly, she turned her head and locked eyes with Sitnakov. Kromolok stared at the orcol-shaped man, too, his healing of Tasar still happening, but slower.

Sitnakov said, “I can ensure it happens.”

Tasar weakly said, “He won’t pick your option, for he knows not what you actually offer.” She looked up to Ophiel, her voice slightly stronger, “My offer shines true, Archmage Flatt. Let us go to Oceanside together.”

Sitnakov spoke, “You making a mistake, Tasar.”

“And I will make that mistake on my own terms, evading the weight of the Heavies as I always have.” Tasar added, softer, “At least one more time.”

Sitnakov kept his face impassive, if a bit sad.

Erick sighed, and turned Ophiel toward Sitnakov, “What is the actual offer, Sitnakov Stratagold?”

Erick did not miss that the man’s last name was in line with his city.

Now it was Tasar’s turn to deflate a bit.

Sitnakov happily said, “As the rulers of Stratagold, the largest city in the entire world, with the strongest armies and the most learned archmages, we have more to offer than you can possibly imagine. As a start: Ar’Kendrithyst’s reclamation is going well, and it might even succeed with enough time and resources dedicated to the cause, and we can make that happen. We have the resources to do that. We can help you turn the Crystal Forest back to actual forest, too.

“We can also set up Teleport Stations between a revived Kendrithyst and Stratagold, and while they are not [Gate]s, they can still enable quick and easy transportation between cities. With such a Teleport Station network, you will be able to easily reach all the way across the world. And I know what you’re thinking. Probably ‘Why not set up these systems before now’? And the answer is that the Shades were too powerful on the Surface, but now they’re gone, so we’re eager to retake what was lost to us so long ago.” He said, “And, of course, we offer to throw open our libraries to you, along with specialized teaching from other archmages like yourself, all in the hopes to enable you to make [Gate] without the Darkness. We don’t even mind helping you hunt down a stray Wizard or two, though that is not something we can guarantee, you understand.

“And one last thing: We don’t normally treat with mortals because we cannot stand to watch people we love die, so we’d also work with you to get you immortality through any number of methods which you should be able to cast, given your previous accomplishments.”

Tasar breathed out, possibly feeling that her offer was thoroughly trounced, and that she should have thrown in with Sitnakov, after all. Erick wasn’t sure he was reading that correctly, but it was close.

Kromolok’s reaction was much more controlled. He didn’t give anything away, and that right there was giving away a truth, too. Sitnakov’s offer was real.

Erick said, “Compelling.” And it was. Truly, it was. But…

Hunting down wizards, eh? Tasar’s offer wasn’t better in that respect, but Erick felt more comfortable about palling around with an obviously-outcast archmage, than with a prince of Stratagold.

And then Sitnakov went and removed all choice.

With a politician’s smile, Sitnakov added, “Or, we will lean on you with the full force of Stratagold, forcing you off the Path, and breaking your small part of the world in the process, including you and whoever else we have to kill to ensure our point has been made.”

Tasar sighed.

Kromolok sighed, too.

“Ah.” Erick’s anger spiked, but he kept it under control as he calmly asked, “And what is the point you are trying to make?”

“Infiltrating the Core is bad enough, but succeeding in the Worldly Path is something we cannot allow.” Sitnakov sat up, sky-blue power flowing across his body, grabbing the piles of adamantium that Kromolok had yet to touch and liquefying them in that same instant. Black metal flowed into his remaining wounds, and into the stump of his arm, replacing what had been lost in three short seconds. Sitnakov gave a sharp grin as he got to his feet, saying. “Almost as bad as archmage who has [Duplicate]. Can’t let you ruin the world with that spell, either.”

Erick hummed, then said, “I see. I see. Well. I’m still going after [Gate].” He happily added, “Try and stop me.”

Sitnakov laughed loud, his dark eyes gleaming with joy as he said, “Sounds good to me!”