Chapter 196, 1/2

Chapter 196, 1/2

It took Candlepoint 3 hours to mostly-evacuate. Well over half of the population had left by the time the sun had fully risen above the horizon. By the time the sun shone directly overhead, even more people had evacuated. Candlepoint was a ghost town of shadelings, former shadelings, and the scant few others who had decided to stay in the face of Erick’s declaration of Wizardry.

The evacuation had gone smoothly, which was something of a surprise to a lot of people, but Erick had been there to end all of the nonsense that could have started, and now the city was calming down.

A lot of people had no idea what to do with themselves because their jobs at various stores were gone, for the people who ran those stores and all their goods were also gone. A lot of people, mostly those who still worked in city hall, had way too much to do, for all the abandoned homes in the city were up for grabs, and a great deal of people wanted stuff that had been left behind. A lot of people filed multiple claims against singular houses, which was obviously a lie in some way for there was no way that ten different people all had prior claim on one of the nicest houses in the city. But it was what it was. Erick almost helped with housing then and there, making multiple mansions for the taking, but there weren’t any actual housing issues. Just plain greed. Now that the city was down to a population count of 5,547 (only about a thousand more people than there were shadelings and former shadelings) from a former high of 21,000, there were more than enough houses to go around.

Mephistopheles and Justine handled those problems as would any mayor and vice mayor. They shoved people around to fix the broken bureaucracy of Candlepoint to make things happen as best they could, while Guard Captain Slip oversaw the keeping of law and order.

The Mind Mages from Spur helped pull out truth from those willing to accept a Mind Mage arbiter, but those Mind Mages kept away from the bigger events. Like politics.

For this day was shaping up to be a true political shit storm.

Poi was handling a lot of that, though. He answered questions from those demanding answers, from the Viridian Throne, to the Wasteland Kingdoms, to the Pearl Kingdom. Treehome called, too. Every single person Erick had ever interacted with, who he had left on good terms with, called, and Poi answered. But he was only one man, and so he called in more Mind Mage help from the rest of the Mind Mages, and Erick [Gate]ed in people from several different places around the world to assist in that untangling of truth.

The Mind Mages weren’t playing political favorites (they told Erick multiple times), but if he wanted the truth of what was happening here to get out there (which he did), then they could certainly ensure that truth flew slightly faster than horrible lies.

Some people, somewhere, were surely going to think that Erick was setting up ritual magic to cause another Sundering, but the Mind Mages could do nothing about those responses; they could just tell people what they saw happening here, on the ground.

Kirginatharp and Stratagold had small words for Erick, mostly along the lines of ‘what the fuck’ and ‘good luck’ and ‘please respond with your true plans at your earliest convenience’. Not a minute after receiving those missives, Erick decided to have Poi respond with those plans. With regard to the evacuation of Candlepoint, Erick was simply telling it like it was, and letting people make their own informed decisions.

To Stratagold, Erick added, ‘The first of the public Gates should be open by tomorrow, or earlier, upon the locations discussed. Candlepoint is ready for trade!’

Candlepoint wasn’t exactly ready for trade, so this was something of a small lie. But it would be the truth soon enough (Erick hoped). The part about having Gates up and running by tomorrow was an enthusiastic and hopeful estimate, but it would be a lie if Erick wasn’t able to deliver, and so, Erick got to work on making a Gate. A real, proper Gate, within which he could set a [Gate].

But first, he needed a Gate workshop.

- - - -

Erick knew he needed a lot more time to play around with [Gate], to learn how the spell truly functioned long before he attempted to stick it into a runic construct. But there was little time to be had.

The world was watching.

And so, Erick got to work. Upon another branch of Yggdrasil, separate from the one holding his house and higher up in the tree, Erick set down long lines of platinum. From there he inscribed them with scratches of a Benevolent knife, and began casting [Fairy Stronghold] onto the runic web. With Kiri and Teressa watching, Erick had made for himself a workshop unlike any other...

But it did look sort of like Redflame’s workshop, which was intended.

Erick’s new domain of creation was an air hangar that stretched along the flattest 150 meters of Yggdrasil’s branch, and extended left and right all the way to the edges of that branch, about 70 meters. At twenty meters high, it had cost Erick a lot of mana to conjure for even empty space cost mana when it came to [Fairy Stronghold], but Erick had mana to spare and a lot of efficiency multipliers.

And now he had a workshop of mostly-unbreakable solid white floors, nice overhead lighting, lots of windows in every direction to let in the natural lighting of Yggdrasil, and an in-born security system of [Fairy Stronghold] that would keep out all prying eyes and let him work in peace. There would be no [Prismatic Ward] in this space, though, for it was much too large, and so Fairy Moon could probably pop in whenever she wanted...

Erick did not doubt that Fairy Moon could pop into his house, either, even though that space was covered by his own [Prismatic Ward], which he had recast, himself. The dense air around his house in Spur had vanished due to that, since he could only have one Solid Ward active at any one time, but—

Erick was distracting himself again.

What was the point of worrying over Fairy Moon? There was no point. Erick moved on.

By the time he reached this point the sun was already headed back toward the horizon, to set in the west, though it would still be a few hours before it got there. It was time to work, and work fast. Erick briefly cursed himself again for not playing around with [Gate] while he could.

But he was here now, and so there would inevitably be some playing before the real work could commence.

Erick stood upon the white floor of his new workshop, and said to Kiri, “I’ll explain as I work, but I gotta get the first ones out as soon as possible, so I don’t have a lot of time to properly teach right now. There will be more time later, though.”

“You already said that,” Kiri said, smirking. “Where can I help?”

“Right! This is next.” Erick gestured to the left, opening a [Gate] to Yggdrasil down in Stratagold. Large blocks of metal, each one a meter square and five meters long, began to flow through the portal, trundled along by Ophiels in sunform. The transition from the gravity of the Underworld to the gravity of the Surface had each block ‘flinch’ a fraction as it came through, but Ophiel compensated. Soon, three large rectangles of metal rested to the side. “We’ve got normal steel, rustless steel, and prismsteel. All wrought quality. I can get the first two easily enough by paying for them, but the third one needs to go as far as I can make it go.”

Kiri glanced around for a brief moment, looking at Teressa, before looking back to Erick. It was just Erick, Teressa, and Kiri, right now. Jane was over with Poi, providing backup to Poi as Poi oversaw the last of the evacuation.

Kiri sent Erick, ‘We all know you have [Duplicate]. Teressa, Poi, Jane, and I. No one else as far as I know.’

Erick winced.

But Teressa nodded, and silently stared at Erick, probably trying to decipher his wincing.

Erick said, ‘I guess you do. But. Let’s keep the lie going, okay?’

Kiri said, “Make the prismsteel go as far as possible. Sure.”

Erick turned back to his work, “Now I’m going to make an arch out of rustless steel first, in the hope that that will allow me to keep costs down. It’ll still rust, though, and so I hope to be able to make a [Condense Oxygen] or [Anti Oxygen] runic structure to preempt such an occurrence. To start...”

Erick continued to explain as he used a precise cast of [Metalshape] to cleave off a half meter length of rustless steel from the full bar. From there, and to prevent beading and weakness from using [Metalshape], Erick used [Incandescent Aura] to heat up the metal to bright red, stopping just before the point where all the baked-in mana evaporated out of the metal.

The next part was harder, for the proper way to do this would be to use great big machines to roll out the steel into proper bars, but Erick didn’t have that. Eventually he would have that sort of stuff, like they had at Enduring Forge, but for now he used his sunform to crush and stretch the steel.

Benevolent lightning crashed around the red-hot steel, sparking and flashing and crunching inward. Gradually, Erick turned the glowing metal into a long bar, around 50 meters in length. Erick hadn’t really measured anything, and he knew he had lost some steel due to the method of forging, but a 100x100x50 centimeter block of steel becoming a 10x10x5000-ish centimeter length of steel seemed like a good length to go for, and Erick was pretty good with eyeing proper measurements these days. These arches needed to be big enough for someone to drive through—

Not ‘arches’ actually.

Erick decided that square openings were better to make use of the full space provided by a single [Gate]. This meant a steel square around 12 meters on a side. Erick cut this down to 10 meters on a side, though, and used the extra material to square the corners, and provide some structural stability. It cut down on the overall usable space of the [Gate], but it was still ten meters to a side. Big enough.

... Large enough that it needed structural support beyond the small supports up at the corners.

Erick hummed as he gazed up at the 10x10 meter square of steel he had propped vertical in the workshop. The top sagged. The sides bowed. It needed more reinforcement. He was happy to reaffirm that a well-applied [Incandescent Aura] was more than enough to produce really strong welds, which was a plus, but this was not working. This Gate needed a lot more than this.

“This is the proper size, but... I don’t like it,” Erick said.

“Why?” Kiri asked.

“Sagging.”

Kiri looked at the square as best she could. “It’s barely sagging?”

“Well. Yes.” Erick said, “But it’s still sagging... And this isn’t gonna work! Gotta cut it down some.”

And so he did. Ten sagging meters to a side became five-point-five meters to a side, doubling the strength but nearly quartering the available [Gate] surface area. It was fine. Erick shoved the interior corner bracers to the very edge of the Gate, too, ensuring that there was a good five meters of clearance in the center. This, then, was stable.

Erick made a second one as easily as he did the first, though it still took him twenty minutes to do that.

When he had two nearly-identical blank Gates, he got out his adamantium knife, and—

Instantly realized he hadn’t done nearly enough experimentation with [Gate] yet to be sure of anything.

It was time to do that. And so, Erick opened up a [Gate] on one end of the warehouse, taking up a good ten meters of space, and leading to the other end of the warehouse. Erick saw himself through the endless warehouse, and smiled. He waved, but he ended up waving at his turned body, for this was almost like a hall of mirrors ‘infinity mirror’ thing, but it was not like that at all.

Kiri rapidly turned from one [Gate] to the other, trying to catch sight of her front, or something. Erick wasn’t exactly sure. Kiri said, “Okay. That’s weird.”

Wide-eyed, Teressa said, “I can sense myself though it.” She whispered, “Oh that’s so weird.”

Erick smiled as he opened up another set of [Gate]s to the left of the main floor; one ten meters up, one at waist-level, both of them horizontal and facing each other. He added some Shaped [Force Walls] around the [Gate]s, linking them together, and then grabbed a hunk of scrap metal and blipped it into the tube. The hunk of metal rapidly fell into the bottom [Gate]—

—And appeared out the top [Gate], to continue falling.

The ball bearing rapidly picked up speed, and soon the force of the air in the tunnel was enough to affect its fall, brushing it to the side. The ball bearing struck the [Force Wall]s Erick had put up and began skipping through the tunnel, striking the walls every so often as it hit terminal velocity. And it just kept going. The air in the tunnel began to fall through as well, though that happenstance was not nearly as easy to witness as the falling metal.

Erick pulled out another bit of metal from the rustless steel block and began shaping it into smaller Gates for more tests while his current [Gate] experiments ran. He had always closed whichever [Gate]s he had opened before, but now, he just let these ones run. His spell didn’t actually have any limitations on duration, though.

Half an hour later, Erick had an assortment of rustless steel Gates to enchant, ranging from a meter across, to a flimsy thing ten meters across, and he had decided that they would all be useless for this first [Gate]. He didn’t have time to test [Condense Oxygen] runic web structures right now, but these forms had helped him to understand what he needed out of a proper Gate design.

He also had an open [Gate] down below, deep in the waters of the lake, which had an exit point outside of the windows of his workshop. It was a ten-meter wide [Gate], so it wasn’t no small thing like the ball bearing tunnel he had set up inside the workshop.

Water poured out of that hole, a roaring torrent of rushing white that didn’t sound like much here at the top, but down below, where it crashed back into the lake a kilometer below, it was the sound of utter destruction. Of pulverizing. Of weight crashing down.

Teressa stood by the window nearest the waterfall [Gate], watching the water fall down.

And because Erick had no real work for her yet, Kiri had gone over to watch the waterfall, too.

Erick joined them.

Kiri glanced his way, then turned back to the waterfall. “It’s so weird. The water comes out of the hole in the world, and it keeps coming. This has passed all known limits of the [Gate] you can buy in the Script. I feel like it shouldn’t work like this.” She added, “But it obviously does work like this.”

“I thought weight limits mattered,” Teressa said. “But they don’t.”

“Well. It’s only water.” Erick said, “I am aware how much water weighs, but I have a net of Force surrounding the intake [Gate], filtering out all the actual life that could go through the intake. So this is just weight testing; not ‘transporting creatures testing’.”

“I almost want to try plunging through that intake [Gate]. Jane would certainly be up for that.” Teressa asked, “If you’re interested in sending people through?”

Erick perked up. “Oh! She would. Wouldn’t she?” He glanced through Ophiel. “Ah. Poi is still organizing the exodus and the initial chaos, and Jane is still with him. A waterfall ride might be fun, though.” He turned his attention back to the mostly-quiet start of the waterfall right outside his window, saying, “But, I’ve already sent thousands of people through the other [Gate]s I have set up outside Candlepoint, and none of those have broken with all the thousands of people going through. Thousands is not the same as millions, though, which is what I expect to happen someday. This weight was just another test that I needed to run, to see where my limitations lay.”

Teressa paused, realizing that Erick was already on the case. “Huh. Yeah.”

Kiri postulated, “Maybe you’re only limited by someone actively breaking the [Gate]?”

“Maybe. I do need to ask around about how normal [Gate] functions, to see where my own [Gate] differs.” Erick scrunched his eyebrows together as he glanced around his workshop, saying, “Maybe these questions I’m testing have already been answered.”

He knew the broad strokes already, but these little nuances were piling up. They made him feel as though he hadn’t done nearly enough research into this whole thing.

Kiri shook her head. “I researched as much as I could while you were gone and all of these tests have already been answered by explorations of the Script-granted [Gate], but I’ve got nothing on self-made [Gate]s.”

Erick smiled brightly. “You did!”

“Don’t get too excited, now.” Kiri gestured to the ball bearing tunnel. “That should have cut out after maybe ten cycles.” She gestured to the very large [Gate] open at both ends of the warehouse. “That is way too large. The size of a normal [Gate], cast as large as it could be, is about 5 or 7 meters in diameter.” She gestured to the waterfall outside the window. “And that breaks everything I assumed I knew about [Gate]. Not to mention the ones you already have open at Candlepoint right now. People are still moving through those, too, and those don’t seem to be stressed at all; I’ve been watching.”

... And now Erick was a bit worried.

Perhaps the limitations on the Script [Gate] were to prevent a finite resource from running out?

He quickly opened a new [Gate] into Benevolence. A white lightning hole in reality led to a land of similar lightning... But it looked fine? Same size as before? A bit bigger, actually. Everything was slightly larger, in fact. Glancing inside, Erick noted that the stone fountain in the center of the land was about twice the size it had been last time he had looked, and the Yggdrasil inside the space was about 20 meters tall now; Yggdrasil had doubled in size. He was growing just fine.

And the space was naturally growing, too.

Kiri looked over Erick’s shoulder, asking, “Is that the [Gate Space]?”

“Yup!” Erick stepped away from the portal, closing it as he said, “That appears normal, so it’s not like I’m ‘draining’ some resource to keep these other portals open.” He looked outside again, and then back to his warehouse. He shut off the waterfall and the [Gate]s at the end of the building, but he left the ball bearing tunnel going. He refreshed the [Force Wall]s around that experiment, saying, “Keeping that one. As for making these Gates...” Erick shrugged. “Maybe all I need is some way to be alerted when a [Gate] actually breaks, and needs to be recast? Maybe I don’t need to care about the duration enhancing power of runes?”

Which made a lot of sense, actually.

Teressa offered, “Like what we saw with the Twisted Vision? It came back after being disturbed.”

Erick nodded, his thoughts already having gone that way. “I didn’t think it was that simple, but maybe it is? So how can blank metal do that...” Erick fell silent in thought.

And Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye, which had been watching all this time, began bouncing up and down in front of him.

Erick smiled. He and Yggdrasil had already had this small discussion before, but Erick hadn’t found a way to correctly inform Yggdrasil that what he wanted was not actually what he wanted at all. Perhaps today might be different? Erick tried, “I know you want to help, but I don’t want to make you into a teleportation service for everyone who asks. You don’t want to do that, either. It might be fun for a while, but long term, this is not a solution, not when there might eventually be thousands upon thousands of call requests every second, 24 hours a day, all year long.”

Yggdrasil paused his bouncing. Yeah. That didn’t seem like fun.

And then he resumed bouncing, and his voice came through the ground of the warehouse, “I still want to help. Use a branch!”

Before Erick could say anything else, a sudden branching spike of glowing wood erupted from the floor ten meters in front of Erick. Yggdrasil’s egress rapidly grew, and then twisted, forming right angles, becoming a 5x5 meter-thick square of white wood; the same shape as the Gates Erick had been making. Smaller branches curled up and out from the upper part of the main square, followed by flaming green leaves bursting out of those twigs, forming a scattered canopy with a faint rainbow crown glowing on top.

Erick lightly smiled.

Ah. This was going to be difficult, then? Or maybe Erick could use this, anyway. He had been wanting to experiment with wood from Yggdrasil, anyway, and now was as good a time as any.

Kiri and Teressa both stared at the floor, though. Both of them rapidly reassessed the danger of living on Yggdrasil, and then rapidly came to the conclusion that they were probably still safe.

“That’s wonderful, Yggdrasil.” Erick said, “I’ll see what I can do with it, but it might not look like this when I am done. I might need you to help in a different way, okay?”

“Okay!” Yggdrasil said, “I’ll help whatever!”

Erick reached over and touched the wooden square near where it still connected with the branch sticking out of the floor. “Can you break it here, Yggdrasil?”

“Yes!”

The white glows of Yggdrasil retreated from the square branch to end exactly where Erick pointed, and then, with a flicker of light, the branch snapped off right there. Erick supported the square with his sunform before it could fall more than a few centimeters. It didn’t weigh much; maybe only a few hundred kilos.

... And now he had a 5x5 meter square of meter-thick, rather light wood. Yggdrasil had pulled his light from the wood, though. It was still bright white wood with brilliant green leaves, but the crown of rainbows was gone, the wood was simply white without any light, and the leaves were no longer on emerald fire.

Erick pondered.

Strangely enough, Erick’s first instinct was to see if he could have Yggdrasil reflexively open up a [Gate]. Perhaps... Like how a doctor tested the reflexes of a knee by tapping the knee with a rubber mallet, perhaps knocking on a Gate made of Yggdrasil could open a [Gate] without active participation on Yggdrasil’s part.

Erick said, “I don’t want to hurt you by working on this bit of wood. Can you still feel this square now that it’s separated, Yggdrasil?”

“Nope!”

There went that idea. Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as having someone physically knock on a Gate and Yggdrasil reflexively opening the portal. Perhaps, though...

Erick had no intrinsic idea of where the [Gate]s were once he cast them, much like how he had no feeling for where all his currently-running spellwork still existed, across the globe. And yet, Erick was still connected, intrinsically, to all the magic he had running out there. He could still cancel every spellwork he had ever cast, just by willing all that magic to collapse.

Was it possible to train some sort of magic sense? In order to know when a particular magic that should be running, was not running anymore?

Perhaps Yggdrasil could gain that sort of sense, and if a [Gate] collapses, he could recast that [Gate].

Erick asked, “Can you tell where the [Gate]s I opened are?”

With a bit of wariness in his voice, Yggdrasil said, “... No?”

Erick smiled, and said, “I can’t tell where I put them either, so don’t worry about not being able to either, okay? I might need to work on a Magic Sense, or something like that, but I have never even heard of this sort of magic, so... I’m not sure.”

Kiri shrugged. She had never heard of a ‘Magic Sense’ either.

“Okay,” Yggdrasil said, a bit sadder. And then he excitedly tried, “But I can feel Benevolence everywhere! I can feel that! Flows like sticky air! I get spiderweb feelings.”

Erick was surprised, and happy.

But he was also suddenly, horrifically terrified of Yggdrasil getting spider feelings of any sort. How did he even know that phrase? Were there talking spiders inside a Yggdrasil somewhere, that Erick didn’t know about? Some spiders out there talked, after all—

Wait.

The Big Guy had likely heard Jane talking, or something.

Erick asked, “Has Jane ever visited you as a spider, and talked about being a spider? What it feels like to be a spider.”

He had learned a few things in that exchange.

Weight was apparently a problem. [Gate]s could not support the Gates they inhabited. But at least the [Gate] was very much attached to the Gate, and in the moving of the Gate, the [Gate] broke. This was good progress! Good information.

“Have you read anything about [Gate]s being able to be moved after they’re cast, Kiri?”

Kiri answered, “[Gate]s can’t be moved after they’re cast.”

Erick considered the Class Ability, Gatemaster. Perhaps that one would let him make [Gate]s that could move? That Ability read ‘Double the effective range of your gate space. Minor improvements to everything gate related’. Did ‘minor improvements’ mean mobile [Gate]s? Perhaps Erick did actually need that Class Ability.

Erick had a think.

Perhaps, this was fine? As is?

[Gate]s that popped when moved might actually be preferable to [Gate]s that remained intact, for mobile [Gate]s could lead to some unforeseen consequences, like someone dumping one half of the [Gate] underwater and making a flood come out the other side. That would be bad.

And yet... Slight movements with [Gate]s would occur all the time, mostly by accident, but especially if someone moved the land around the [Gate]s. So the Gates Erick made needed to be super stable?

Erick could do ‘stable’. People have been making things stable and unmovable ever since the invention of Force Magic, way back at the start of the Script, and Erick was no exception.

Technically there were ways to move Force after it had been emplaced, just as there were ways to move lightwards after being cast and locked to a location. That branch of magic was actually a constantly evolving competition between placers and movers, with the Shades and Cultists being the foremost authority on moving magic after it had been placed, and everyone else trying (and mostly failing) to make magic that could not be moved after being cast.

The Shades and Cultists of Melemizargo were the only ones open about taking down the magic of others, though.

Normal thieves and normal security mages in much of the world had long ago adopted those same sorts of magics, and on a much less life-and-death battlefield. Sometimes, the ‘battlefield’ was even inside research labs, with well documented and researched papers on the topic being published by the Arcanaeum Consortium every few years.

The methods used to move emplaced magic varied between Spatial Magics (the most prevalent and powerful by far) and pure manifestations of power, which mutated and moved emplaced spellwork (if it didn’t break that spellwork in that moving). Erick had seen many instances of the second occurrence, back when he was helping repair Songli from the Extreme Light bombs of Terror Peaks. In many locations, wardlights and other spellwork had been moved away from the epicenter of those blasts. This caused lightwards (if they had survived) and lightposts to be out of sync with each other.

Lightwards would be hanging out midair, a meter away from where they had been cast.

Erick had experienced this sort of movement of magic even more so, back when he watched Tasar blip objects around through her Spatial Domain, and when she taught him how to cast [Teleport Magic].

Now [Teleport Magic] could very much be used to move around a [Gate]...

The point to all these thoughts, Erick conceded, was that there was only so much he could do to prevent messing with his Gates.

Spatial Magic moved everything around at the command of the caster.

Pure power moved the very manasphere.

Erick could actually protect against Spatial Magic, though, by putting a [Spatial Denial] runic web into the Gate... And wasn’t that hilarious! He could Deny Spatial Magic, but his [Gate]s could still work normally—

Would that actually work, though? Erick thought it should work, but he hadn’t actually tried that particular experiment yet. So that’s what he did. With a quick cast, Erick filled half of the warehouse with [Spatial Denial], and then he cast a [Gate] inside—

And the [Gate] appeared. Both sides of the [Gate], too; the intake appeared in front of Erick, and the exit appeared to the right, exactly as Erick wished them to appear. [Gate] worked inside of a [Spatial Denial]!

Erick laughed.

And then he canceled that [Spatial Denial] and tried [Teleport Magic] upon one of the [Gate]s, aiming to move it one meter up into the air.

The [Gate] moved as commanded.

... A bit concerning, but that was fine.

Kiri’s eyes went wide. “Was that first one what I thought it was? A Denial with a [Gate] inside?”

“Yup!” Erick chuckled.

“And the second one was [Teleport Magic]?

“And the second one was [Teleport Magic]!”

“... Ignoring the security concerns of the second one for a moment.” Kiri asked, “Is [Gate] not actually Spatial Magic?”

“[Gate] is Spatial Magic.” Erick nodded. “But whereas normal Spatial Magic is all about choosing the place where an object/space exists, based upon imposing magical shenanigans onto that object/space’s Reality in the past, which has repercussions on the present, which is all we are actually able to affect...” Erick thought how best to summarize, and said, “[Gate] is shenanigans regarding the location of a Reality that is actually normal reality but of a different reality, which in effect links two different places in this reality together.”

Kiri looked at Erick. “... Okay.” And then she asked, “And all your Spatial Denial does is work on this reality, I take it?”

“Exactly right!” Erick smiled brightly, saying, “And of course the [Spatial Denial] I made only works on Spatial Magic cast in this reality; I wasn’t even aware that I needed to Deny other realities when I made that one... And now that I’m thinking of it, I don’t want to deny other realities, anyway.”

Erick felt a calm descend upon him as he gazed out at the mess he had made, for he knew exactly how to incorporate everything he had learned into making a proper Gate. It would be version 1, of course. Later versions would come and they would be better. But now Erick had a plan. Now, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

“Okay. This will be easier than I thought— I mean. Okay. I’m sure many different people are going to break these things many times and I’m going to need to remake them a dozen times till I get a version that is actually, mostly secure. But that will come later.”

And so, Erick ignored the rustless steel he had strung into squares, for that would come later. For now, he grabbed some of the platinum and hammered it into the same sort of shape as the rustless squares. Then, he took his knife and he started carving a rather simple runic web. This one included [Envelop Item], a spell Erick had rarely used, but which was perfect for encasing a working in Force, along with [Undertow’s Edge], the [Force Wall] version of Undertow which would create a continually-strengthening Force, based on the mana it Drained. [Spatial Denial] came next, along with [Renew] in order to make everything play nice with each other, and possibly make the Undertow spell support all the other spells inside the Gate. Erick placed a bunch of limiting runes and lines which would hopefully limit the ranges of the imbued spells. In the end, the Undertow should only extend into a roughly ten meter space around the actual Gate.

If this version didn’t work, then Erick would try again with the same style, but with perhaps some different structuring inscriptions. Theoretically, everything should play nice with each other and work how he told it to work, for runic webs were good like that, but this was all new magic. Erick had experience to draw upon, but not much experience. Not as much as an actual Runic Master.

Darabella would probably know exactly how to do this. Tasar and Riivo would, too. Erick could only put his best guess forward.

Erick made two runic webs, each as close to exactly the same as he could manage, and then he took those runic webs and Shaped Yggdrasil’s donated wood around them, forming a solid cover that could not be Shaped, and which would provide line-of-sight protection against Shaping of the metal inside. When he was done, he was left with two very similar squares of wood, both with a 5x5 meter square of open space inside, and around 7 meters wide. This last Shaping had ruined the runes Erick had placed on the Gates, of course, so he reinscribed those; a large circular [Renew] rune at the top center of the square, and the English words ‘Welcome all who wish to wander’ inscribed below.

With a sunform grip, Erick hoisted the Gates into the air, and kept them a good ten meters away from everyone else, and himself. With a twist of lightning threaded through a hole in the sides of both Gates, Erick touched upon the runic web inside.

The next version might be able to take in his Benevolent Lightning and start casting the runic spells inside all on their own. But that would make it very difficult for Erick to cancel the [Undertow’s Edge] if this experiment went wrong, for if he didn’t actually cast that spell himself, then he had no inherent canceling capability on that spell.

This way was safer.

Erick cast that first, most dangerous of spells upon the runic web inside one Gate, and then inside the other Gate. One right after the other, something stirred within the Gates, like a leviathan prowling through kendrithyst crystals. The Gates shook, vibrating a bit, and then they settled.

... He hadn’t even considered that they could have exploded, but perhaps he should have.

Gradually, Erick watched as [Undertow’s Edge] took hold of the air around the white wood, like an abyss shining behind a moon.

That abyss didn’t extend very far at all, only reaching about seven meters out from each Gate. Didn’t even reach the ground! Therefore it wasn’t anywhere near able to soak in Yggdrasil’s power. Erick smiled. Then he had two Ophiel float over and stand directly on top of the Gates.

The very second that Ophiel reached the abyss, that abyss began to soak him up. Ophiel had a lot of mana, but [Undertow’s Edge]’s Drain worked at a rate of twice Erick’s Willpower every second; around 450 mana per second.

Power thrummed into the Gates—

Suddenly, the Gates seemed to come awake with light and the abyss behind both white squares began to deepen. The Undertow soaked in mana and the runic web spread it out, [Renew] evening out everything, ensuring all the adjoining magic got as much power as it could handle. Force enveloped both Gates, and then deepened.

Into this power, into the primed, glowing wood of Yggdrasil, Erick cast [Gate].

A portal appeared, linking both Gates.

Just. Instantly. Appeared. No Benevolence escaped the glowing wood. No flowers or sparking lightning spread out. No mushrooms grew. The [Gate] held strong, the lightning ring hidden inside the glowing eternal stonewood, while the power inside the runic web began to seal everything under an [Envelop Item]. Erick let go with his own sunform, and the Gates did not fall. The [Undertow’s Edge] held both midair, and unmovable, while a spreading [Spatial Denial] would prevent the structure from ever being moved by easily acquired Spatial Magics—

“Ah.” Erick realized a weakness. “It’s actually weak to [Force Weaver].” He glanced through Ophiel to find Jane— “Oh good! Poi is done, too.” Erick rapidly opened a [Gate] directly from the warehouse to the kitchen at their house, where Poi and Jane were starting to make dinner. “Hey you two! Come see what I made! Won’t take long. I need to see if you can move this thing with [Force Weaver], Jane.”

Jane paused her washing of the potatoes.

Poi had been pulling fish out of the cold storage, but he put it back, then turned to Erick, paused, then said, “That’s tricky.”

Jane glanced over. “What?”

“Come see!” Erick said, “Come on come on come on.”

Jane dropped the potato, exclaiming, “Okay okay okay! It’s already so late, though. Dinner is going to be late, too.”

Jane and Poi joined Erick, Teressa, and Kiri in the warehouse.

Ahead of them floated two [Gate]s, inside their Gate-containers.

Erick gestured to both of them, saying, “[Force Weaver]. See if you can move them. You’ll experience a 450 mana per second Drain if you get too close, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

Jane moved in, paused as she entered the Drain range of the right Gate, and then she lifted her hand.

The Gate moved up, and the [Gate] therein popped like so much scattered magic. And then Jane let go. The Gate stabilized in the air, but now it was crooked, hovering at an angle and with streamers of white Force coming off of the glowing wood, hovering in the air like a scattered splash of glowing milk. That splash of milk continued to glow, and deepen the Abyss all around, for it was still the [Undertow’s Edge] and [Envelop Item], though they were now mangled together.

Jane’s [Force Weaver] was a hard counter to this spellwork.

Erick frowned. “I expected that, and yet, I did not.”

Jane stepped away from the Gates, getting out of the range of the Drain. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“It is a weakness I need to account for.” Erick tilted his head as he looked at the tilted Gate. “I need to include a [Force Denial]. Now that... That might be tricky, and especially since the Gate itself is constantly casting Force Magic itself.”

Kiri flinched. “That’s tricky.” With a bit of sarcasm, she added, “Might as well make a Void Song.”

“Force Magic is also hard to Deny; this is true.” Erick said, “Maybe I need to make a full-spectrum Denial, anyway. Something even more inclusive than [Prismatic Lullaby].”

“Or you could limit the Force spells to the inside of the Gate?” Jane offered. “I need Line of Sight to Weaver.”

“Wouldn’t work.” Erick said, “The Drain out here is still a part of the Force—” He paused. “Can you Weaver this Drain, by only touching the Abyss?”

Jane turned back to the tilted Gate. She wasn’t sure if she could.

She stepped forward once and reached out to the Drain hovering in the air. And then she ripped sideways. The Gate spun clockwise, rapidly turning almost a complete circle, splashing milky white Force outward from the entire structure. That floating Force held in the air like so much splashed paint. Some of it broke into broken mana. Most of it just stayed there, frozen in time, floating.

“Ah.” Jane said, “The Force spell is all over the place.”

“Yes.” Erick frowned. “If I put a theoretical [Deny Everything] outside of the effect of the Drain— Oh. I’m overthinking this again. I have a Domain already. I need to put my [Lodestar] into this thing— Well. [Domain of Light].” Erick looked up that spell, to see if it had changed—

It had.

Domain of Benevolent Light, instant, super long range, 5000 mana

Harken unto your own Truth of Benevolence. Let no one diminish your brilliance.

Undispellable. Uncorruptible.

Lasts 1 hour. Effects last longer.

He should still be able to put that into a runic web.

“Like. Duh,” Erick said to himself. “Yes. It needs a Domain in there. I really should have considered that earlier. That solves so many small issues.”

Kiri smiled. Teressa watched.

Jane and Poi went back to making dinner.

The sun had set hours ago, and Erick made Gate Version Two.

Jane came back, well before dinner was ready, and tested the strength of Erick’s new Domain-enhanced Gate. Jane put everything she could into her [Force Weaver], and yet, she could not Weave. Success! Or at least as much ‘success’ as could be had under the Script, where there was always some way to counter other magic.

Erick breathed deep, then exhaled. This was good.

Twin Gates hung in the air before him, both of them looking like squares of pure light, hovering above a land of light, yet hints abyss clung to the edges like a dark shadow. That shadow created darker lands to the left and right of the gate, forming a sort of tunnel that led to the hole in the world in the white wood.

Erick had constrained the [Undertow’s Edge] effect to the space around the actual entrance, so that people moving through the space wouldn’t actually have all of their resources stripped from them. Keeping the [Gate] stable was still important, though, so Erick made sure to carve some instructions to the side of each Gate, to make the people in both locations aware that while the space leading to the [Gate] was clear of the Drain, if they wanted the Gate to remain stable, then they needed to donate at least 3,000 mana per day to the Drain. More was fine. Less was not fine.

Technically, the Gate only needed 2880 mana per day, but a bit of extra leeway seemed good.

The backside had the full Drain guarding it, and thus it would drain about a thousand mana per second from anyone who was not defending themselves properly, or [Defend]ing themselves, in the case of most people.

Erick’s own Constitution, combined with [Unbreakable Form] for 500 absolute damage mitigation after all other defenses were taken into account, was enough to fully protect him from the Drain, apparently, which was a pleasant surprise to discover. This fact let him explore the backside of his [Gate] without issue...

Which was something he should have done before now, too.

Erick looked through the front of his left Gate, and saw the warehouse which lay in front of the right Gate. From there, he stepped left, into the Abyssal Drain, and went around back. The space on the opposite side of the [Gate] was little more than thick, white mist. Like touching near-solid fog. Erick stuck his hand into the fog and felt nothing particular about that mist at all. It wasn’t cloying, or wet, or warm or cold. It just was.

Back when Erick was working with Tenebrae, at the Twin Trees which held the [Gate] that led into the Twisted Vision of Ar’Cosmos, when Erick had touched the backside of that [Gate] it had disturbed the portal, breaking it apart. Once disturbed, that portal came back after a little while, without issue. Other peculiarities with that particular [Gate] allowed Erick to stand on the backside and look through the portal-space, to see the forest in front without issue, while anyone from the front side hadn’t been able to see Erick at all.

Here, in his warehouse, staring at the backside, Erick only saw a land of white fog.

What was going on here?

He probably could have experimented on this part a bit more stringently until now, but he just hadn’t thought of it. And now, here he was. So.

Erick sent an Ophiel into that fog.

Ophiel fluttered forward, into the thick mist, vanishing from sight almost instantly. One meter in. Two meters in. Four meters—

Like light unfurling in front of the [Gate], Ophiel appeared, ribbons of mist and gentle lightning flickering away from him, to fall back into the [Gate] behind and vanish like figments, to disappear into the portal.

Odd!

Erick tested it again.

And again, the same thing happened. After going a certain distance into the fog, that fog vanished from Ophiel’s form, pulling away, revealing that Ophiel had actually just been moving through a separate layer of reality, briefly, until enough distance was gained and Ophiel just popped back into this reality.

Kiri had a good suggestion. “It might not be distance based? It could be time based? Or saturation based?”

Erick had Ophiel flutter inside the backside of the portal, and just hover there, in the light. He didn’t go further in at all. Five seconds passed. Ten seconds passed. Twelve—

Fractured glows broke away from a heretofore invisible, intangible, unknowable Ophiel, hovering just on the other side of the [Gate]. Those glows washed away, falling back into the glowing square of the Gate like so much disturbed magic.

“I’m guessing saturation, though I will have to run more tests to be sure.” Erick said, “But it’s time for dinner, and then I have some meetings to take with Candlepoint. I told them I would meet them after sunset, but it’s way past sunset. I also need to... I’m not sure. Consider making a Gate that is open on both sides, and that you can go through both sides? A double Gate. Remove all possibility of someone going in the back.”

There was a lot of experimenting left to do! Too much, in too little time. For instance, Erick needed to know what happened when you shoved an antirhine knife into the backside of a [Gate]. Did it pop the [Gate] violently? Eliciting greenery from everything nearby? Or did something stranger happen?

While Erick wanted to get right on those important experiments because magic was fun! But there were a few facts holding him back from fully committing. First, he knew he’d be learning about how to work [Gate] for months, if not years. Added to that, there was the Class Ability Gatemaster to consider. What sort of ‘minor improvements all around’ could be lurking inside that Ability? Probably a lot! Enough that Erick wanted to know how to work [Gate] before he got that Ability, at the very least.

Mostly, though, the vagaries of Erick’s life demanded satisfactory answers to questions they had yet to ask, and that Erick would not know were questions until they showed up and tried to punch him in the face.

Or some other sort of attack.

Probably antirhine knives in the dark, or something. Or missiles. Probably missiles.

On the bright side, he wouldn’t have to go looking for antirhine if his assassins brought it to him.

“But that can come later.” Erick declared, “It’s time for dinner.”