Chapter 178, 1/2

Chapter 178, 1/2

With his senses unencumbered by illusions, and with Kydyr seemingly content to not instantly attack, Erick took in the magnificence of the dragon’s house and the dragon himself. Or rather, what was left of that magnificence after it was covered by a hoard of books. An obscene number of books filled every available space, most of them piled upon defunct organization systems like shelves and wooden boxes. The next room over was a dining room and kitchen space that was filled with books; tomes of all sorts layered upon the table and chair, and spilled out of the sinks. They piled in the cooling boxes, all of which looked as though they had not been used for their original purposes in a long time. Bedrooms were filled with books. The library —both the one on the first floor and the two on the second floor— were absolutely chock full from floor to ceiling, with absolutely no place to stand in any of them. Bathrooms had their plumbing pinched off so that water couldn’t come up from the cistern down below and ruin the literature.

This place was clearly meant for non-metal, fleshy-habitation, even though Kydyr was a bismuth wrought. With these few clues Erick understood that Kydyr had owned this house for a long, long time, but his transition to dragon was a rather recent occurrence. ‘Recent’, meaning sometime in the last few hundred years, or something like that.

Everything Erick saw hinted at a complete shut-in who was deeply incapable of interacting with the outside world like he had in the past. But Kydyr had always been a bit of a shut-in, focused on defense and avoiding battle, and interaction.

The walls of the mansion were a meter thick and unadorned, like the walls of a bunker, and lined with multitudes of runic webs, like a Faraday cage stuck inside concrete. The wardlights up above were utilitarian things, strung around the edges of the space and lighting up the center, but nothing more than that. The plumbing in the bathrooms and the kitchen, before it had been sealed off, went down into a sealed cistern where it looked like it could get recycled on the daily, but there was no water system for taking in more outside water. There were no windows. There wasn’t even a front door. If there had been a front door then it was long gone.

But all that just informed Erick who Kydyr was, now that the illusions were gone. Why had they broken, though? Because of a single conjured bird? It had to be, for that conjured bird lay tipped on its side, in a space filled with concentric circles of broken tile. At least two piles of books had been shoved to the side in the casting, which had also somehow broken the Faraday cage of runic webs located below the tile, and for three meters in every direction. It was a small break, but somehow that break had propagated across the entirety of the web. Many tangled nodes inside the web were gone, like the centimeter-thick platinum rods had somehow burned away without leaving residue, or melted platinum.

Erick had no idea how his spellwork had done that, but all signs pointed to this being his fault.

Dragon Kydyr certainly seemed to think so. The bismuth dragon curled tightly around one of the larger piles of books, bunching and stressing as his tail flicked at the ground, breaking more tiles. His white claws tore at the ground as he snarled.

Erick hadn’t known that wrought could be dragons, but there were many ways to explain what he was seeing. Dragon Essence was easily transferred and grown, as it almost had done inside Jane. The other answer was that Kydyr was a natural born dragon, though Erick suspected this was not the case. There were likely other answers, but Erick didn’t know them, and whatever the truth was would have to wait to be answered.

“What did you DO!” Dragon Kydyr shouted, heat and wind billowing out of his open maw with every angry word, flowing directly over Erick. His breath smelled like metal.

Erick gestured to the bird doll on the ground between them, saying, “I made the doll with feathers this time.” He glanced at the blue box that hovered in his field of view. “And I think I got the good version of the spell; [Fairy Item].”

Fairy Item, instant, medium range, 250 + Variable

Instantiate a non-magical item of up to medium size into reality. Unreal control. Lasts until you decide otherwise.

Kydyr jerked back, his body curling inward, sending books tumbling to the ground as his mouth did a jumble. He had ten different things he wanted to say and had no idea which was best, or what question he wanted to ask first.

In that confusion, Erick checked out his created item with a few Sights from his Ophiel. The bird looked completely non-magical; mundane in every way. Surprising, but not too surprising. He had gone deep into the mana to pull his magic out of it, and looking back on the previous day, when he'd met Aisha, her mention of Elemental Fae made a lot more sense.

Had he been trying for Elemental Fae? Not exactly. Not purposely.

But that’s what had happened.

Erick said to Kydyr, “Aisha just told me that Elemental Fae was a thing, too; one of the houses of Ar’Cosmos, even. I didn’t realize this was an option until halfway through the cast.” He frowned at Kydyr, and tried to lighten the mood, “You didn’t even think this was possible either, did you? Not telling me about this and then letting me go ahead and do it? That’s pretty reckless of you.”

Kydyr centered himself around a whole new plume of anger, saying, “Reckless! Of me!?”

“Yeah.” Erick said, “Spatial Magic comes with a bunch of warnings. What the shit was this, Kydyr? How did I break your runic web?”

Kydyr’s voice vibrated the house, “YOU’RE THE ONE USING FAE MAGIC! YOU SHOULD KNOW!”

Okay. Maybe this was too serious to make fun of.The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

Erick asked, “Fae Magic breaks things?”

Kydyr froze. Then he erupted again, “Gods Above! Get into the kitchen and stay there while I fix my web.” He advanced on Erick, saying, “MOVE.”

Erick stepped lively toward the kitchen with Ophiel fluttering to catch up.

Kydyr whipped his tail around and smashed it down onto the [Fairy Item] bird. The air clanged. The ground broke. The bird just expanded out on both sides of the tail, like a water balloon, and when Kydyr’s tail bounced upward, the bird bounced away. Kydyr scowled, then slapped the thing at the kitchen entrance, saying, “And take your blasted bird with you!”

Erick caught the bird and kept walking right on toward the kitchen.

Once inside the kitchen, where there was absolutely nowhere to sit and very little room to walk, he—

He almost cast [Fairy Item] again to conjure a chair. This seemed like a bad idea, though, considering what had just happened. He almost called out to Kydyr to ask if it was okay to use the spell again, but this too seemed like a bad idea. The dragon man was very angry. So Erick just stood there with his conjured bird in his hand, watching the master of the house fume and stomp.

Kydyr tore at the floor of the main room, expertly carving down to where the runic web lay, and no deeper. The problematic space extended from Erick’s casting point to three meters in every direction, with most of the runic web there completely obliterated. The problem was much larger than just that one area, though. Erick glanced around the whole of the house and saw breaks in the web here and there, at least one every three meters, and sometimes a lot more than that. At least a thousand breaks, all over the place, with smaller twistings here and there in the rest of the web. It might be an easier fix than expected, though, for the runes inside the metal were different from the usual complexity Erick saw in other places. Almost the whole web was inscribed with a simple repeating pattern of... Spells Erick didn’t know yet.

A few of the runic letters and orders were simple to understand, forming the spell [Concealment], if Erick was reading that right; it was a combination of what should form [Mystical Item] and the rather standard rune for [Invisibility], linked together with scratches in the platinum. Some other spell formed another large chunk of repeating runic letters upon the web, which seemed to be [Mystical Ward]... And some other combination of runic lines. Maybe it looped back into the runes for [Concealment]? Anyway, the runic web was complicated, and yet simple, and that meant that this wasn’t the whole system. There was something missing...

Ah.

The burned out parts. Erick suspected they were some sort of Fae Magic runes—

Kydyr shouted, “I need platinum! Erick! Go get me some! NOW.”

Erick called back, “You mean you don’t have [Duplicate] like all the other ancient wrought? I don’t want to call you a liar, Kydyr... But.”

“... Blast you.”

Kydyr conjured a small rainbow [Ward] and then he started copying bits of platinum inside that obviously-Restful space, making magical platinum to use in the web. With some [Telekinesis] or other such spells, Kydyr began magically laying down new lines of platinum, to repair the broken web. Once the web was whole, a white talon on his left hand lit with rainbow brilliance. Erick wondered why he had white talons while all the rest of him was rainbow bismuth. An affectation, perhaps—

“Dismiss that bird!” Kydyr leveled a glare toward the kitchen.

“Tell me why.”

“Fae Magic interferes with Fae Magic under the Script.”

Erick dismissed the bird. “Okay. We can continue the lesson when you’re less panicked.”

Kydyr started huffing with small laughter, talking about how yes, they would be continuing the lesson, just you wait, as he dipped his glowing-rainbow talon into the platinum, inscribing runes into the fresh metal. Despite, at his scale, resembling a human calligrapher working on a trail of rice grains, Kydyr’s talon swept through the runic web like he was a CNC milling machine; expertly, and with no wasted movement, even with the tight confines of the medium.

Just like Erick had guessed, Kydyr was inscribing some new rune that he hadn’t ever seen before, but from context clues, he expected it to be the rune for ‘Fae’ or maybe ‘Fairy’. The exact size of that rune matched the exact size of the smallest burned-out parts of the rest of the rest of the runic web, too, so that solved what had happened there.

Erick’s Fae spell had destroyed Kydyr’s Fae spell. Why, though? Was Erick’s spell more powerful than Kydyr’s? He didn’t believe so. There was something else happening there, and Erick hoped it wasn’t his Wizardry.

He’d find out, anyway.

Three minutes later, Kydyr had fixed most of the destruction Erick’s first cast of Fae Magic had caused. He cast a spell into the Fae runes—

The house blinked away and a sparse field of moss returned—

The book-filled house came back. The runic web sparked and broke.

“Blast it all!” Kydyr shouted, “Erick! Find me the largest breaks!”

Erick did so, taking less than a second to move two sunform Ophiel back into the house, and then ten more seconds to highlight with magenta lightwards where the largest breaks were inside the walls.

Kydyr raised his face, the whiskers beside his maw flicking out as he scowled at the air all around him. “Blast it all. That’s a lot. Dig down to the webs, Erick; prep the spaces.”

Easy enough to do. Sunform Ophiels began hammering into the walls, chipping away at thick stone to get to the broken webs underneath; despite the main function of the runic web being gone, it still had various Shaping protections, along with anti-[Scry] and other anti-detection spells. While he did that, Kydyr started moving around the house like a 20 meter long rainbow snake, prowling from magenta lightward to lightward, finding problems and filling them in with new platinum and a quick runic inscription.

Fifteen minutes later. Kydyr fixed the tenth break, adding in more Fae Magic to the runic web—

The house flickered invisible and the field of grassy moss returned, but Erick could already tell that some intrinsic part of the runic web was missing; his feet were firmly planted upon invisible stone, about a meter above the actual ground. He tapped the invisible floor with his foot, testing the [Concealment] spell; or at least he was pretty sure it was [Concealment]. The rest of the house was the same, with every single inanimate object invisible, yet not intangible. Erick moved his foot to the side and touched a stack of books. Some invisible thing fell over.

Kydyr was already aware of the problem, yet he was upstairs. His front half was inside a bedroom on the second floor, while his long body curled down the hallway. The bismuth dragon held there ‘midair’, mumbling to himself and looking like he had fucked up somewhere.

“Need some help?” Erick asked.

Kydyr shouted back at him, “NO. Stay there. Don’t knock over my books. I have a system!”

“Because there’s a system to the books,” Erick deadpanned.

“THERE IS!”

“I’m sorry for this,” Erick said, honestly. “I’ll make it up to you, as long as I actually caused this.”

Kydyr whipped his head toward Erick, scowling. But his scowl turned into a simple frown, and his hatred left him, like a weight too heavy to maintain. He turned back to the wall he had been working on and pressed a rainbow talon into the runic web, severing—

Suddenly, the house returned. Visual sight on Kydyr vanished, except for the tip of his tail still sticking out into the main room ahead. Erick still had him in his mana sense, though.

Kydyr moved toward the next break in the web.

Erick waited for the dragon to speak.

He had to wait a few minutes.

As Kydyr fixed a particularly large break, yet with 221 remaining, he said, “If I had thought you capable of Fae Magic I would have said something. This is my own damned fault. You’re on the Path, and—” He huffed. “Apparently Aisha spoke to you about Fae Magic right before you came here, but even that is just the crit to the [Strike]. Going after [Gate] means you probably know all about Ar’Cosmos, or at least you’ve been made aware of that location. And now you know of the Houses of Ar’Cosmos. Death, Carnage, and bah— Fae! Fucking Fae.” Kydyr huffed loudly, then went silent as he focused on repairing the runic webs that Erick had dug out.

Erick picked up the books he had knocked over and placed them back how they were.

Kydyr watched him as he did this; not overtly, but he had stopped working while Erick’s hands were on the books. After Erick removed his hands, Kydyr resumed his work.

Erick decided to get the sensitive questions out of the way, first. “Are you a born dragon, or were you poisoned by Dragon Essence and you couldn’t get rid of it?”

“Neither.” Kydyr turned his head to stare at Erick through the walls, snipping, “Are you still human with a question mark? Or did you finally fall in some direction?”

“I fell in a direction.” Erick said, “Rozeta helped.”

Kydyr froze, staring heavily at nothing. And then he turned and went to the next runic break, moving like a snake weaving through the air even though his feet were firmly planted on the stone floor.

After fixing another two spots, Kydyr started on the third, saying, “I purposefully went and gained Dragon Essence in a failed bid by Stratagold to infiltrate Ar’Cosmos and take it down from the inside. We got most of the way, but... Fae Magic cast by a true fae inside their own place of power is almost as potent as Wizardry. Fae can’t do nearly as much as a Wizard, mind you, but they can do certain things very well, and one of those things is cruel and unusual punishment through illusions made real; Fae Magic. The Matriarch of House Fairy discovered us halfway through the plan and took great fun in dismantling our entire operation. She twisted our Dragon Essence, Sealing it, leaving us with these bodies, but weak to any other dragon. It’s a common punishment which almost always results in the afflicted dying, because the whole house goes on a Hunt when someone is Sealed.” Kydyr said, “I’m the only one of my team left, and only because I managed to make it back to Veird, proper, and Fae Magic breaks other Fae Magic here on Veird... This isn’t how Fae Magic works inside Ar’Cosmos. I had thought I had prepared well enough to counter her, but... All magic works differently in there, and there is no true preparation to be had against True Fae.”

Erick listened, and focused on one of the many things Kydyr had just revealed, asking, “The Script fully goes away inside Ar’Cosmos, yes?”

“Correct. Unless you can manually cast I would not brave that land, especially since you’ve touched upon Fae Magic. If you’re lucky you won’t meet the actual leader of House Fairy, but the current Matriarch, Illustrious Moon, is almost as dangerous. The actual leader pretends to be whoever she has to be to lure men to their deaths, but her name is... You can’t say her name, for she might hear. So I will lay down a clue, and you can guess. Her name is the name of the House she holds dear, and those three things in the sky that oppress with—” Kydyr stopped. “Ah...” He glanced around. “That was almost too much. I started rhyming there. Uh. Don’t— Hmmm.”

There was a lot to unpack in that bit of occurrence right there, too, from the fact that rhyming was a warning sign of attracting the attention of higher powers, to the fact that Kydyr called Hell, Celes, and the Silver Star straight up ‘oppressors’...

Erick picked out the important part, for now. Don’t say ‘Fairy Moon’. Lesson learned.

Kydyr continued, “The stronger you are, the easier it is to attract the attention of the fae, so don’t... Don’t do that.” Kydyr took a deep breath, then continued, “But you’ll likely have to go to Ar’Cosmos to finish [Gate]. Most people end up there somewhere near the end of their path, though they often hear about the place rather early.”

“Is there a way to detect when you’re exposed to Fae Magic?”

“Yes.” Kydyr said, “It’s rather simple, too. Don’t do it now, for I won’t have you testing my web yet, but when you’re outside, make a small bracelet or something and then wear it. If it breaks then you’ll know someone cast Fae Magic nearby. My runic web should have been able to withstand your spellwork, but the act of a stranger casting Fae Magic inside the web was... Apparently an unexpected vulnerability.”

Erick considered his new spell, then asked, “Is there a way to do this runic web thing without Fae Magic? I’m pretty sure I do not want to have this sort of catastrophe happen every time someone casts this specific kind of magic near my future Network.”

Kydyr frowned as he continued to enact repairs all around. “Keep the spell. I can teach you to safeguard against this particular problem...” He scowled. “This would be a lot more convincing if the evidence of my failure wasn’t all around.” On his way to the next break, he said, “What happened here is something I should have expected, and it ties deeply into what Illusion and Fae Magic— How all magic used to be, actually. I will explain the nuances between Illusion Magic and Fae Magic, and start at the beginning.

“Before the Script, certain magics were excellent against other certain magics, like using Water against Fire magics, or using Stone in pretty much all of your static, point defenses. Solid Stone Magic used to be as strong as adamantium is today. This is not the case anymore.

“Now, under the Script, all magic interacts with other magic based on pretty normal, balanced rules. The damage number listed inside the blue box of [Force Bolt] will produce a Bolt that takes off exactly that much ‘health’ from a [Force Wall], or from your own Health. Physical spells like your own Particle Magic act as physical damage, which is closer to using a sword against a defense, and is therefore, usually, stronger than using other types of magic. Physical things are not mana, so therefore they are not fully governed by the Script.

“Pre-Script, illusion-versus-viewer worked based on interaction and disbelief. This remains the same, mostly, but now all illusionwork under the Script usually has some sort of Health-number to represent the level of interaction an illusion can withstand. This is to say nothing of someone just looking at a poorly-made illusion and going ‘Yeah, that’s not real’; that can still happen if you make a shitty illusion. Back before the Script, though, you used to be able to simply disbelieve magic, and therefore it would not work on you. Illusion, in particular, was very weak to this sort of defense... From what I’ve read.

“Pre-Script, Elemental Fae stood above illusionwork as the pinnacle of false reality. It was simply the best way to fool others, and even other practitioners of Fae Magic, though it operated in arcane and sometimes odd directions; soft power rules like hospitality, for instance. It still does, actually, but not nearly as much as it used to. You could not simply disbelieve Fae Magic in the Old Cosmology. If you didn’t operate around its self-imposed rules, you quite often simply died. Or worse. Pre-Script, Fae Magic always won out over illusions, too. An illusionist going up against a fae was asking to be killed.

Word Magic seemed perfect for a Paradox Wizard, but, at the same time, Kydyr was right. Word Magic would likely get Banned and Forgotten as soon as it was created. Or, at least the rest of Veird would try to Ban it, and then they would try to erase Erick from existence, causing... A lot of bad things.

Erick decided that ‘Word Magic’ was probably a very bad idea.

And also, someone else had probably already made Word Magic, and it was already Banned. There was no way that some bookish Wizard wouldn’t have thought to make this magic before now.

Maybe Kydyr didn’t even know about that...

“It probably already got Banned, anyway,” Erick tested.

Kydyr shrugged. “Maybe. The Geodes are very fond of killing anything that has the potential to break the world.”

Erick nodded. Leaving aside its availability, ‘Word Magic’ was probably superfluous and very much too dangerous. Maybe all you actually needed to make a [Gate] was a Wizard to break the Script rules on Fae Magic, and then to make a true tunnel into a private world through ancient Fae spellwork.

Which would probably run directly against the Dimensional Ban, but...

Fae Magic obviously wasn’t Dimensional Magic; if it were, then no one could make Fae Spells.

... Whatever.

Erick moved on.

Making the three spells described on the chalkboard was easy enough; Erick just limited himself to stopping well before he reached perfection. Apparently, this was good enough to achieve perfect illusionwork, anyway.

Illusionary Force, instant, close range, 250 mana + Variable

Conjure a solid illusion of up to large size. Absorbs 500 damage before breaking. Lasts 1 hour.

Concealment, instant, close range, 500 mana

An object of up to medium size is made invisible to all but the truest of sight. Physical interaction can break the illusion. Lasts 1 hour. When cast on a person the spell lasts 10 minutes.

Intangibility, instant, close range, 250 mana

An object of up to medium size is made intangible. Extensive physical interaction can break the illusion. Lasts 1 hour. When cast on a person the spell lasts 1 minute.

When Erick was done with the last one, he said to Kydyr, “So that’s [Intangibility], too. Not [Intangible Object].”

Kydyr sighed, saying, “You should have stuck to [Conceal Object] and [Intangible Object].”

“I certainly could have made them worse than I did; yes.”

Kydyr leveled a gaze at Erick, saying, “Don’t use that spell yourself. The spell description doesn’t say this, but you effectively have 0 Health while intangible, and while this is fine for objects, it's deadly for people. It’s like you’re walking around in [Lightwalk] while the entire world has [Lightshape]; incredibly dangerous and I wish you would have left it alone.”

“[Intangibility] has fewer runes to it than [Intangible Object], though, so this is easier to enchant.”

“... Aye. I suppose that is true.” Kydyr dismissed the current chalkboards, then summoned more. These ones were full of runework instead of spellwork. The details in design, how the runes fit together, and how the connecting divots swirled and combined, were all different, too. All of them looked normal enough, though. Erick understood what each design did before Kydyr explained, but Kydyr explained anyway, saying, “The first one is a runic web that you will finish, and then cover —likely with stone— to only ever touch it in order to provide power for the runes. People will not notice this runic web if you do it right, though they will know it is there by the denial of certain spells, like [Stoneshape]. The second board shows a runic web which is also buried in a wall, but this one projects a fake runic web onto the surface of the wall, and also obscures the actual runes on that false web; for when you want people to know they are inside a runic web. The third is how we add breakers to the web to allow spellwork to flow between individual webs, but these breakers will shatter if unwanted magics are shoved into the web, thus preventing untoward spellwork from infecting your entire runic web. Much of these [Illusionary Force] runes can be replaced for [Illusionary Item] runes, depending on the robustness you desire from your system, and your constraints for mana.” Kydyr gestured to a meter-cubed block of platinum that hadn’t been there before now. “There’s our raw material.” He asked, “Any questions before we start?”

“You use [Illusionary Force] for the breaker-system on the boards.” Erick said, “But when you were remaking the breakers for this house, you used [Fairy Item] and another spell I suspect is [Fairy House].”

The man was an adequate teacher, but he was holding back a lot in his lessons, either due to security reasons, or because he didn’t think Erick could handle it, or for whatever other reason there could be.

Kydyr gave a little smile, saying, “You can work on fairy webs and all other obscure runic web creation on your own time, outside of my house. But, yes. You are correct. Much of the Illusionary spells are interchangeable with Fairy spells, though until you know what you’re doing and how Fae Magic interacts with the rest of the world and with other Fae Magic, you should refrain from using Elemental Fae. Fae Magic is simply unnecessary for most runic security.” He continued, “But setting aside Fae Magic, my assignment is not to get you fully versed in every single possible iteration of runic web security, but to teach you the basics, and how those basics all interact with each other. It takes a normal Runic-Class person about a year to achieve adequate runic web security, which includes anti-[Stoneshape] and a plethora of other spells, with each spell adding complexity and therefore difficulty. For you? Who already has a Class that is not Runic at all? Well... One day of proper runic web learning is not nearly enough, but it will have to be enough.”

“... Understood.”

Kydyr nodded, then flicked a finger toward the platinum cube. A bubble of white gold expanded from the top, rapidly becoming a wire-frame octahedron about a meter across. With another flick of the same finger, Kydyr gained a short, white talon. It looked like his dragon talon, but smaller. He said, “Since you already know some of the deeper truth then there’s no need to keep up all of my appearances.”

Erick took out the adamantium dagger he had in a holster at his hip, and then he got to work.

- - - -

Seven hours later, and after stopping for several breaks where Ophiel delivered food from Archmage’s Rest, Erick had made several runic webs of passing quality. The first was simply intangible and invisible; it sat in the open air like a part of the air itself. If Erick hadn’t have marked it with a lightward he would have lost track of the thing. The second web was doubled, with the original web hanging in the air on [Force Wall] holders, while an illusionary copy of itself hovered one meter to the left. The third had a false-image hovering next to its invisible and intangible self. The fourth had all of what the third contained, and a break-system, where the corruption of one half would not affect the other half. Five more runic webs were iterations on the themes of the fourth so that Kydyr was sure that Erick wasn’t just extremely lucky.

It was not luck to make these many rather perfect runic webs this fast...

Though Erick did privately admit to himself that there were a lot of New Stats backing him up.

Kydyr sat back on a chair, smiling slightly as he looked up at Erick’s many successes. “I kept waiting for you to fuck up. But... You didn’t. This is work fit for a ready-to-graduate apprentice. You take any of these last two to any runic web office in Stratagold and you would get approved for runic work—” He added, “If you were a wrought and already a part of the system. And you had a Runic Class.” He smiled wider, saying, “That’s how I got into this. That’s where I started with my magic. Illusions and a dream of protection from the Dark. You know?... This is nice. I...” He laughed. “You ruined me for other students, Erick.” He held up a bottle of what he called ‘fizzy water’, saying, “And this fizzy water is wonderful, too!”

Erick sat in his own chair, smiling lightly as he sipped his own soda. He had made their drinks from [Harmless Frozen Particles] and some berry beverages from Archmage’s Rest. He said, “I still have a lot of way to go, though.”

“Oh yes!” Kydyr said, “This is simply the start. You can put practically anything into a runic web as long as you know the proper runes for it, and how they all go together.” He took a mildly serious tone as he said, “Your Class is going to limit you a lot, but you should have unlocked the Class Ability Minor Shifting Runes for achieving this level of spellwork. That Class Ability is no Shifting Runes and it’s certainly no Greater Shifting Runes, but any Shifting Ability is better than none.”

“I heard some people put solid metal down into their runes because they don’t like Shifting Runes at all.”

Kydyr tilted his head back and forth a few times, weighing Erick’s words. “This makes security easier and prevents a lot of burnout, but it’s dead simple to re-etch runes into a material. It’s a lot harder to put solid runes into metal. Like. A lot. The only places that do that...” He frowned. He said, “I won’t say who works in solid runes, but I will tell you that solid runes are much better for durability than etched runes. I can’t help you with those, though.”

Erick nodded as he stared up at his runic webs, hanging in the air in front of him and Kydyr.

He realized he was hungry again, but not for food; he needed a meal of [Renew] in his Other Form. But as soon as he left here, Erick doubted he would ever see Kydyr ever again. So he asked, “Since your request was to kill the Librarian or for books that won’t be out in months: Do you have something else you wish for a trade? For these lessons?”

Kydyr went silent, and thoughtful. And then he asked, “Do you think your cavern with Yggdrasil will ever have a proper day/night cycle? Or is it just bright light all the time?”

Erick saw where this was going, and it was great! But he had to lay down some rules, and some expectations. “Yggdrasil will keep his home how he wants, but if you want, you can live nearby. There’s a nice waterfall at the entrance to the place and there’s lots of mist there, too, and shadows. I’ll be happy to have you—”

“No, no... No.” Kydyr waved Erick off, saying, “It was a flight of fancy. I know where I’m moving after you leave.”

Erick stressed, “If you want to live near Yggdrasil, I welcome you to set up a home in the cavern. I’m sorry for disturbing your house and outing you to the world, so the least I can do is make sure your next home is as secure as it can be.”

Kydyr breathed in, looking inordinately happy yet hiding almost all of it, then he said, “No... No. Thank you, but no. Breaking my house was... Not your fault. I made a mistake in the runic web. I think I overloaded it, and it hadn’t actually been tested against other Elemental Fae in... Years upon years.” He turned to Erick, and said, “Thanks for coming and providing me with a good student, but you should get going.”

... Unexpected.

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

But...

This was Kydyr’s decision? So. Sure?

It was time to get going, anyway. So.

Erick stood from his chair and bowed a bit, saying, “Thank you for the lessons, Kydyr.”

“Don’t you dare bow to me. Ha! Imagine. Savior of Light bowing— No.”

Erick straightened up, unsure.

“Thanks for killing Ar’Kendrithyst and everything else, Erick.” Kydyr strongly said, “And good luck with [Gate]! I’d tell you to stay away from the fae if you can help it... Though knowing you, and considering what you said about the Worldly Path, that might prove an impossibility.”

“I have a strong feeling that the Headmaster will ask me to go to Ar’Cosmos.” Erick said, “I just hope it won’t be some dragon killing expedition because I’m going to have to refuse that.”

Kydyr went silent and part of his emotional illusion vanished, ever so briefly, revealing a deep chasm of melancholy. And then he replaced his cover, repairing his mask of fake stoicism, saying, “Don’t feel bad about killing dragons, Erick. Most don’t deserve your mercy.”

“... Why not?”

Erick had asked with regard to all of dragonkind, but Kydyr’s warning and Erick’s words held more meaning than that. This was personal for Kydyr.

The kindly, tired owl shifter who was not what he appeared to be, said, “Because dragons have all done horrible things to innocent people.”

Erick had nothing to say to that.

He just spent one more moment looking at Kydyr, wondering...

And then he nodded, turned, and walked away, down the tile pathway to where moss grew over white stone. Erick continued beyond, to the edge of the mist. Ophiel twittered on one shoulder as Erick stepped past the edge of the house and cold mist engulfed them—

And suddenly Erick stood upon the soft, mossy ground. Kydyr’s [Fairy House] home was somewhere far behind him, both intangible and concealed in the mists. Erick could have stepped backward and yet he would have remained outside Kydyr’s property. [Fairy House] was a great spell, and Kydyr’s runic web was well-made, combining a dozen different magics into one coherent, unbreakable obscuration. It was even immune to [Cascade Imaging], for Erick had checked with that spell, casting the Imaging on the other side of the cavern, searching for himself while he was inside this space. That map had given him zero results—

Out of the mists came Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye, rejoining Erick, to alight upon his other shoulder.

Time to go back.

- - - -

Erick sat upon a crook in Yggdrasil’s branches, staring out at the bright cavern all around. His stomach was full with a good meal from the food court in the embassy, while his Other Form’s core was similarly satiated by [Renew]. He felt good. And yet...

He was worried.

He sent an Ophiel to check on Kydyr—

Erick breathed out, ragged and painful, as he took in what he saw, absorbing a hundred small clues in less than a second. He moved through those clues slowly, though, to try and see if his initial impression could be wrong. Kydyr was rather great at illusions, after all.

It was an hour past sunset on the surface, but while Yggdrasil’s cavern was full of light all the time, Vibrant Falls was mostly dim. The deep mists at the lower levels, where Kydyr’s house had been, could have hidden the full truth, but, no. Erick was not that delusional. He was just trying to make excuses for what he saw.

The house was gone. All that remained was a crater nearly a kilometer across. This much was understandable, for Kydyr had said that he was moving. It was eminently feasible that he could blip his entire house to a new location.

Except.

Smaller craters dotted the rest of the land, like someone had sprinkled the mossy rock with beams of random disintegration, or, more actually, that someone had done something similar to what Erick had seen the Mirage Dragon do to the top of First Devouring Nightmare mountain. Some sort of [Illusion Breath], or, considering what Erick had heard earlier, [Fae Breath], had turned the land into swiss cheese.

The house took a full blast, but the nature of [Fae Breath] left clues among the broken ground. Damp books piled like snow drifts not too far from the blast site, tangled webs of platinum glittered in broken rock walls, rubble made of tiles lay like chips of white among the darkness. An open plumbing system spilled water into the bottom of the crater where even more books floated, or sunk. Mostly sunk. The ones with wooden covers floated, but barely.

Kydyr’s dragon head, resting atop a bed of broken books, had been locked inside a floating box of Force, hovering in the center of the crater.

Erick took a moment to compose himself, breathing, centering his mind. And then he sent a telepathic communication to Kromolok—

A woman’s voice responded, ‘Greetings, Archmage Flatt. What is the nature of the inquiry?’

‘Ah. I didn’t expect—’ Erick ignored that his telepathic signal had been intercepted, because of course it had —Poi did this very same thing for him all the time— and sent, ‘I believe that someone attacked and killed Archmage Kydyr. I am already on my way to Archmage’s Rest to inform them of what I see and I want Kromolok to be involved if he can.’

The woman’s tone turned fully calm, as she sent, ‘Understood. Raising priority of request. Raised. Inquisitor Kromolok has been informed. We are starting to move on our end. Someone will be there— Inquisitor Kromolok will be at Archmage’s rest in three minutes and he asks that you not get involved.’

Erick went still.

The woman continued, ‘If you wish to remain informed of the investigation then—’

‘No.’ Erick sent, ‘I am involved. Kydyr acted like I would never see him again but I didn’t think he meant it this way. He knew... He knew this was going to happen and I’m involved.’

‘... Understood. Inquisitor Kromolok will meet you at Archmage’s Rest. Thank you. Please do not attend the site on your own.’

Erick ended the call.