Chapter 220, 1/2, Start of Book 8

Chapter 220, 1/2, Start of Book 8

Elemental Benevolence is arguably Wizard Flatt’s greatest gift to our universe, but it is not without its flaws. One of the largest flaws of Benevolence has been proven time and time again, and is best understood through two facts:

1) The murder of hundreds of people, or fewer, occurs outside of all but the most Benevolent of Sights.

2) When it comes to the progression of civilization, there is very little which Benevolence itself will not do to ensure the best outcome for all, and every individual. Including blinding itself.

- - - -

“Father?” whispered Yggdrasil, the World Tree, his unsure voice full of quiet concern, “I wish to be my own person.”

Ah, Erick thought, as he sat upon the tallest branches of his largest son, watching the world all around, through the countless senses of 20 different bodies, and across uncountable kilometers.

Through those senses, he killed four hydras that rampaged across the northern coasts of Nergal and an ooze outbreak out of the side of a mountain in Nelboor, both of which were problems too far from civilization to matter, but they would matter, eventually, and his Benevolent Sight had drawn his attention that way. So he fixed those problems while he could. While he was doing that, he also oversaw the repair of several small parts of his Gate Network over in the Greensoil Republic.

And then he turned his attentions back to Yggdrasil, his thoughts tracing down to one large fact.

Back at Yggdrasil’s creation, Erick knew that he was going to be making a great big protective [Familiar], but due to the nature of that creation, the [Familiar] that would become Yggdrasil would grow as fast as an exploding bomb. At the time, Erick didn’t know exactly what the fallout of that explosion would look like, but the gods who had helped make Yggdrasil had known, and Erick had eventually gained that perspective himself.

One day in the future Yggdrasil would open new worlds.

He would seed new planets.

Civilization would take root across the universe, under the ever-expanding branches of the World Tree.

And so, a seal of divine fire had been placed on the largest of Erick’s sons.

A hundred years. That was the timeline for all of Veird to prepare for the opening of new worlds. For Melemizargo to prove to everyone that he wouldn’t destroy everything when another option for living became available. For civilization to adapt to the possibility of life under a different sort of Script. For new Scripts to be proposed, and then either shot down, or elevated.

I suppose it’s 90 years early, but... Here we are again at the turning of another age, unprepared and yet we will plow ahead anyway.

There was no way that Erick would allow his fully sapient son to be crushed by a seal that was little more than slavery at this point. Even though it was early. Even though it was dangerous. Erick had been ready to say ‘yes’ to Yggdrasil asking for the removal of his seal for the last few years.

“Okay, Yggdrasil. I will see about making that happen.” Erick asked, “Do you mind waiting till I can get everything set up properly? It might take months or maybe a year, but I honestly don’t know about that.”

Yggdrasil startled, his flaming green leaves and his white-branched canopy and even his crown of rainbow light overhead, all flickering in complete surprise. And then he swelled with light, and his voice was that of a happy young adult, “Really? You mean it!”

“Of course I mean it. You are your own person, Yggdrasil. I will be sad to see you go, but I know that all children must leave the nest someday.” Erick smiled a little. “I look forward to seeing you grow as big and as strong as you can, but know that I will always be here for you, Yggdrasil. Always. You can always come to me with problems or thoughts, and I will always cherish our talks, and your presence in my life, and I hope you will feel the same about me.”

The sky suddenly rained, warm and bright, as Yggdrasil turned absolutely radiant.

Erick lay down on the soft bed of moss underneath his stretched out body, his tail curling around the branch underneath as he wrapped his dark wings and scaled neck around the branch in front of him. He spoke with Benevolence in his white-fire maw, “I love you, Yggdrasil.”

“I love you too, father.”

Erick pulled back, and tears of white flowed down his draconic face, causing rainbow flowers to bloom wherever they touched his mossy bed here, at the top of Yggdrasil. His voice cracked, “You— You’re going to have to give me some time to make sure this works right, okay? The gods put a seal on you when you were born, and I’m probably going to have to unwind that seal softly, so nothing breaks. I cannot and will not Wizardry it away.”

“Of course! I understand!”

Erick smiled. And then he flickered, transforming from black dragon to human-sized and human-shaped. That same flicker put his clothes back on, and then he just breathed for a little bit, as he looked up and all around. Yggdrasil was growing up strong—

Ophiel alighted on Erick’s shoulder. He was a little white crow these days, with four wings and a bird-appropriate amount of other appendages. Still had more than the normal amount of eyes, though. His voice was considerably more childlike than Yggdrasil’s.

He chirped, “Where go?”

“We’re going to find out how to get your big brother unsealed,” Erick said, as he patted the little guy.

“Can I unseal?!”

Erick chuckled. “When you’re older it’ll happen naturally.”

“Okay!”

Erick grinned, then looked up. “You know, Yggdrasil, a lot of people are going to be asking you a lot of uncomfortable questions about this. They’re all going to be worried about Melemizargo having some sort of influence on you. Has he? Has he talked to you about this, and tried to make you make this decision?”

Yggdrasil softly said, “We’ve spoken, but if he has a plot to make me ask this of you, then it is too deep for me to suss out—” He rapidly added, “I already looked at the Benevolent Sky before I asked this of you. Minutes ago, I did this. It... It looks clear.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Erick asked, “Why do you want this to happen now?”

“... I just... I just do.”

It was a final statement. And yet, it was not good enough.

“I’ll be on your side on this decision, Yggdrasil. I’ll always be on your side, because I am your father. Please tell me why you want this to happen now.”

“... I...” Yggdrasil rapidly said, “I want to make an [Avatar] and not have you there with me all the time.”

Well. That was surprising. Erick had given Yggdrasil all the space he could ever want, but he could understand Yggdrasil’s desire for privacy. The big guy was probably telling a white lie, too, but that was also fine.

Erick said, “Perfectly understandable. I trust you with all the power I have given you, and I trust you to be on your own. I’ll make this happen, but it might take a while. Months. Maybe more.”

“That’s fine!” Yggdrasil calmed, saying, “I can wait... some.” He whispered, “But not 90 more years. Never that. I would like less than a year, please.”

“I’ll try to make that happen.”

- - - -

The sky was blue and endless, its perfection accented by soft white clouds that lingered here and there, some fluffy, some wispy. Erick’s feet barely sank into the cloud underfoot, which was barely big enough for him to stand upon. He could move the cloud around at his whim, but he didn’t need to. The person he was seeking floated ahead, her serpentine white body stretching across the infinite world within the Core of Veird.

Rozeta briefly turned away from the blue screens around her head, her eyes briefly going wide as she took in Erick’s small form. And then she stilled, her entire body freezing briefly. “Ah,” she uttered, her voice endless and solid. “He wants to be free.”

“Yes. Is it too early?”

“It is absolutely too early.” Rozeta frowned. In one flashing instant she was no longer her sky-spanning self. She stepped onto a larger cloud directly in front of Erick, looking much like a white human wrought in a pantsuit. “The unsealing of Yggdrasil will result in several rapid events. The seeding of new worlds, the danger of my father running rampant, Wizardry being unleashed by you and that other Wizard down in Nergal in order to stem the destruction of everything, or to create something new. And that’s not even getting to the confusion of settling a new Script on another world. You’re not ready. I’m not ready. No one is ready for that.”

“I agree.” Erick said, “But I’m not chaining Yggdrasil to myself for the next 90 years. He will grow resentful and hateful of every single one of us who keeps him down, and he will be right to have those feelings. This will cause damage later, and in a much more long term way.”

“Yes, it will. Absolutely. But whenever Yggdrasil is released, he will still seed new worlds even without our assistance. It is okay if it takes him a thousand years to get over the first hundred imprisoned years of his life.”

“Then how about we shift the seal so it prevents seeding?”The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñøv€l-B1n.

Rozeta scoffed. “Any random Wizard of any flavor could undo the seal when the seal is only on Yggdrasil, and only restricting one part of him. Right now, the first main hurdle to undoing the seal involves going through you, and that will not happen unless you allow it to happen.” With perhaps too much anger in her voice, Rozeta asked, “Would you allow that to happen? Even when you shouldn’t?”

“I’m looking for solutions to make everyone happy, that’s why I came here.”

Rozeta frowned a little, her sudden worry and anger not really leaving, but they did take a back seat to all the rest of her thoughts.

Erick added, “And I might be able to become a Full Wizard once Yggdrasil isn’t a part of me.”

Rozeta sighed, exhausted, but she was happy for the change of topic. “There are so many possible reasons why you can’t become a Full Wizard... This could be connected to that. Having an extra soul in your body? Sure. Ophiel isn’t a problem, for [Familiar]s have never been a problem for Wizards ascending to true power, but the divine seal on Yggdrasil could be making that real ascension a problem. Wizards are complicated and, quite frankly, impossible to truly understand. I still think your problem is merely mental, and hinging on anything from your unwillingness to make yourself a true power, to your distaste for truly selecting who you want to be.” She added, “You still have yet to combine your double forms into a singular entity. In my opinion, that is the reason you cannot ascend... But you have tried, and failed... somehow...”

Rozeta, Goddess of the Script, went silent, thinking, her eyes flickering briefly to the left, and then back to Erick, then off into infinity, as she took care of many different things happening outside of sight.

Erick waited.

Rozeta turned back to Erick. “Okay. I can allow this freeing of Yggdrasil to happen. BUT! I have some conditions for you to clear before I condone this action. The largest one is this: The seal will shift onto Yggdrasil, restricting his ability to produce seeds for 90 years. If he wants to simply have an avatar body so he can play around with people-sized friends, then that is one thing, but he won’t be making world tree seeds. When someone tries to break this seal, I need you to be able to [Return] to before the breaking, and to prevent it. This final requirement demands you ascend to Full Wizard... Which means you need to figure out how to do that, Erick. Whatever it takes, except for Big Wizardry. I need you to be a true Paradox Wizard.” Her exhaustion left her as the enormity of the change hit home, and Rozeta simply said, “It’s likely all connected, anyway, so this is probably how this was always going to happen.”

Erick had problems becoming a Full Wizard. Full crystallization wasn’t a problem, but he had done that, and then transformed back into a person, and then the full crystallization was simply gone, like it had never happened at all. Rozeta didn’t know what was going on, and Melemizargo had spoken of some possibilities, but Wizards often encountered this problem, and it was usually up to them to figure it out. Melemizargo blamed the Script interference, of course, and Rozeta had gone silent at that accusation.

Later, she had spoken to Erick about how the Script could, theoretically, be holding him back, and also how he shouldn’t use Big Wizardry to solve that problem. Pull the problem apart piece by piece, as he had when he gave himself some Class Abilities from other Classes, she had said. Erick had tried a few more times to become a Full Wizard and had a few more conversations with Rozeta about the whole ordeal, but he had never actually been able to fully claim his Full Paradox Wizard powers.

No flying through time and space, however far he wished to go, among other things. Not yet.

Erick said, “Thank you, Rozeta. I’ll chip away at that crystallization problem after Yggdrasil is released.”

“It will be easier to do all that when you don’t have an extra, sealed soul inside of you...” Rozeta sighed. “Removing the seal is going to be a lot of work. It was made by four gods and then by you. You will have to get Sininindi, Atunir, Melemizargo, and then myself, to assist you with this undoing of the seal. My part will be easy, but I will be the last one to remove my part of the seal. In order for me to do that, you must promise me that you will ascend to Full Wizard once Yggdrasil has been separated from you. Instantly, if you could, and then I want you to be ready with True Time Magic in case this all goes belly up. Gods are limited in what they can do, but Wizards are not.”

“Easily agreed; I promise. The Time Magic is already mostly done. I’ll even be able to truly use it once I’m fully immune to paradoxes.”

“I also want you to make a dungeon slime copy of yourself, before this all happens, in case I need a backup of you.”

Erick was suddenly less sure of himself and his decisions. “Really?”

“Yes. You are at the center of this world right now, and I need a backup of you in case this unsealing ends with you dead.”

“... That’s a possibility?”

“We’re talking Wizardry here, Erick. Many things are possible. I know you’ve been reluctant to make a copy of yourself, but the simple fact is that you’re too valuable to risk on this endeavor without many different assurances of safety. I would prefer if you stayed in your tower and never left, organizing the world from afar and ensuring your Gate Network remains stable, but we both know Kiri is ascending to that role soon. Now is the time for you to make a backup, if not for the world, then for her, so she has someone who can guide her while you’re off doing these quests.”

“... All fair points. Okay. I’ll... I’ll do that.”

With sudden exasperation hidden behind so much strength, Rozeta said, “Tell me I can trust you to wield this power prudently.”

Erick gave a small smile, then he stood firm. “I always have the interests of every person in mind whenever I do anything.”

“I know. I just needed to hear it again.” The Goddess responsible for holding the world together took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

The Wizard who could break everything waited.

And then, in an easier, friendly tone, Rozeta began, “So! To start with, after you make a repro who can backup all the magic you’ve got strung across the world, even though you’re prepping Kiri for Gatemaster, you’re going to want to go to Sininindi at the Storm Temple down in Archipelago Nergal...”

They spoke for a while, and not that long at all.

By the time they were done, Erick came to a conclusion, “I’m going to need to take a large break from being the Apparent King, aren’t I.”

Rozeta shrugged. “As long as you don’t make it as big of a vacation as your Worldly Path, then everything should go well enough. The problem is going to be getting my father to agree to not do anything untoward in the following years... One of many problems, I suppose. I’ll talk to all of them and make sure they’re on board with this.”

“I’ll start setting things up on my end, then, and await your full response.”

“It shouldn’t take long to gain preliminary assurances one way or the other. Maybe a week. Depending on what they say you’re going to either have to give Yggdrasil the bad news, or prepare for a sabbatical. I’m guessing the latter.”

There was one final question to ask before Erick moved on.

“There isn’t some Wizard out there fucking with Yggdrasil, right? Or some other force?”

“Not to my knowledge.” Rozeta said, “That was one of the first things I checked for, but it appears Yggdrasil simply wants to be released from the seal, himself.”

“... I am suddenly reminded of another concern. How long do I have till Ophiel is matured?”

“He’s about six months to a year away, I would say.”

All of those thoughts flickered through Erick’s head as he smiled and accepted one of the beers. They had all come a long way in the last decade, and now, the world was changing again.

Erick sat down on one of his favorite chairs to watch the sun set in the distance. “It’s been a normal day, except for all the changes.”

“Feels like yesterday we moved off of the branches and into this cloud castle.” Poi popped open his own beer and sat down next to Erick, in his own chair. “But it’s been years already.”

“Almost seven... Almost seven years since he first told me he didn’t want people on his branches anymore. I was expecting to have a house on that branch forevermore, but... The castle is better.”

Erick did still have a private home on Yggdrasil, for just him, and a few treasures he had collected over the years. But Yggdrasil was a fully sapient person. Years ago, the big guy had gone uncharacteristically quiet, Erick had asked what was wrong, and then he had made plans to move off of Yggdrasil, and into this house here.

It was a nice ‘house’. Tenebrae had even helped Erick to make it work, though by the time Erick started working on this place and talking to the cloud giants to get a seed cloud from them, Tenebrae’s help had been superfluous. Erick had only asked him for his input so that Erick could offer him help regaining some of his own magic that he was having trouble with. The old archmage might have been reincarnated into a young man’s body, but he was still too ornery to accept help from others. And so, Erick got a cloud castle out of the deal, along with a bunch of secrets of cloud giants that he actually did not know, and Tenebrae and his wife, Palodia, got some powerleveling to 90.

Erick smiled a little bit at that memory.

Tenebrae and so many, many others complained how monsters inside dungeons did not give experience, but that was Melemizargo’s unsaid decree. Almost every dungeon system had a secondary experience system that either capped-out after imparting its learning experience, or gave the delver gains that did not transfer to Veird. The only thing that actually transferred was basic mana production, some basic material items, and learning opportunities, but only when the delver did the dungeon correctly.

Technically, Melemizargo would only allow a dungeon to actually operate as the dungeon master wanted them to operate, if he approved of the dungeon in the first place. Practically, though, Erick only knew of a few situations where a dungeon was specifically disallowed. The major disallowed dungeon was where a dungeon held no danger, and instead had an overabundance of items.

One particularly fun dungeon down at Weald had a basic Script interface, but instead of experience, the dungeon gave the delver 10 Stat points for every slime they killed. Of course, the Stats were only useful inside that dungeon, and there were almost no slimes inside at all; one had to go hunting for slimes. The dungeon looked like Weald, with buildings and beds and potted plants and all sorts of normal stuff, but there were no people, and every other thing was actually a mimic, filled with teeth and tongues and an all-devouring hunger...

So many things had changed these last 13 years since Erick and Jane had fallen to Veird.

Erick was the Apparent King of a population of 20 million people, here at the heart of the Gate Network, where Yggdrasil reached 30 kilometers into the sky and all the Crystal Forest had been transformed into green lands. Directly below Erick’s cloud castle, which was made of several castles with a few towers and an orrery thrown in for good measure, House Benevolence oversaw the Gate District, which was home to a thousand Gates, each leading off to distant lands. The sky was a scarce hexagonal grid of a Node Network, which kept the whole thing running well, feeding mana to every magic that supported this land, protecting everything within 200 kilometers of Yggdrasil from all sorts of dangers.

Erick was proud of it all, but especially of everything taken together, and of course, of [Renew] which made it all possible.

[Renew] had changed the world. With that one spell, Erick had shifted the entire dynamic of international and personal danger on Veird from one of ‘who can strike first and wipe out the enemy’, to one of polite war, if at all. There were still problems, of course. The Quiet War and the Forever War were always a problem, but the actual effects of those wars had been mitigated to something far, far less dangerous. Even first strikes through the Gate Network itself were something of a true anomaly these days.

Erick had done that. Him and his House, and his people.

Looking back on it, the Teleport Exodus had been truly good for the world.

Erick gazed across the western sky, at the green land stretching out into the far distance, and at the mountains a bit to the north, and the Wall of the Wasteland Kingdoms, which was little more than a dark line on the horizon. A glance at the north, and Erick saw greenery that stretched all the way to that horizon, too.

The Crystal Forest had been pushed back. The only place where Crystal Mimics existed anymore was on a thousand-kilometer wide wildlife preserve around Kendrithyst, which included Kal’Duresh, New Brightwater, Spur, and the rebuilt human city of Frontier, which had been built on the eastern side of Kendrithyst. All five of those cities still benefited greatly from the mimics, and though Erick had pushed to eradicate Veird’s major source of [Polymorph] potions, he had been pushed back even harder. The mimics were universally level 30-ish, and they were easy to kill. Erick himself had benefited from killing those things back in the day, so who was he to deny others the right to gain those levels?

Erick had let that argument go years ago. Face stealers weren’t much of a problem these days, anyway, because Erick had personally overseen the removal of those sorts of communities over the years.

All four cities around the geode of Kendrithyst were practically metropolises now. Kendrithyst itself was only a quarter of a metropolis, though. Queen Anhelia’s reign had brought that land up to a million people strong, most of them wrought, but dungeons of all kinds were strewn throughout the other three-quarters of the Not-Dead City, and they suffered dungeon breaks more than most.

They liked it that way, though.

Erick took in the sunset as he sipped his beer, silently thinking about everything, and how it was all changing again.

“It’s not another Wizard?” Poi asked.

“Doubtful.” Erick gazed across the world. “Yggdrasil is growing up and I think he has a girlfriend, or boyfriend... Or... Something. Someone.”

And soon, Erick was going to lose the ability to see through Yggdrasil, to check on all the other parts of the world that he couldn’t see with Ophiel... And Ophiel was going to become his own person, too. Both of those events were liable to happen at the same time, and that was terrifying in a whole host of ways. Erick was going to go from having eyes all across the world, and in several different nearby locations at once, to only having his own eyes and his singular, 500-meter-range mana sense... Along with whatever Benevolence triggers Erick might sense now and then.

He wasn’t getting one of those Benevolence triggers now, though. All day long, Erick had been feeling nothing more than the weight of the changing of an age upon him, which was distinctly different from a Benevolence marker. Those were usually much more pointed. His current malaise was definitely tied to the uncertainty of the current situation; not to any specific danger... Or at least that’s what he was telling himself.

Ophiel, wide-eyed this whole time and sitting on the railing in front of Erick and Poi, piped up. “He has a girlfriend!”

Shock suddenly rippled through Erick, leaving worry in its wake—

Yggdrasil’s angry [Scry] eye appeared beyond the railing and his voice came with it, “Ophiel!”

“No fighting!” Erick said strongly. While Ophiel grinned with his many eyes and Yggdrasil’s eye turned dimmer, Erick continued, “Ophiel. You shouldn’t have said that to me. I wanted to respect Yggdrasil’s choice not to tell me yet.”

Ophiel turned sad, drooping a little, as Yggdrasil’s eye brightened wide.

Erick continued, “Please don’t tattle on each other unless it’s an emergency, and a girlfriend is not an emergency. That said: Yggdrasil. I am happy that you have found a girlfriend. I want to see her before the seal is passed on to you. You’ve got several months to tell me who she is.”

Yggdrasil’s eye turned a little dim. “Yes, Father.”

“I am very glad that she’s a girlfriend and not a Wizard or something like that.” Erick said, “It was wrong of Ophiel to tell me about it, but he was looking out for the world, as must we all.”

Ophiel fluffed up a little bit.

And Yggdrasil sighed a little. “I know. I just wanted more time to tell you about her. I wasn’t even sure if this was going to happen.”

“You deserve to grow and prosper as you desire, Yggdrasil.” Erick said, “I’ll be there to help you as long as I can, which is hopefully for many, many more years to come.”

Yggdrasil’s eye nodded, and then vanished back into nothing.

Erick sipped his beer, and then turned to Poi. “You want to come with me on an incognito trip around the world again?”

“Nope!” Poi laughed a little. “I’m not going out there with you and Quilatalap, even if it seems Quilatalap will be dropped off at the first stop. Someone has to stay behind to tell you to come back to base when everything falls apart. Despite what you might think, Kiri is still years away from being ready to take over your duties.”

“Bah!” Erick chuckled. “She’ll be fine. The best way to learn a job is on the job, and she’s been the Overseer of Gate Expansion for years now. She can be Gatemaster easily enough. She’s not some 19 year-old girl anymore, and you’ll be here as Overseer of Mind Magic, anyway, helping her... Unless you actually do want to go with me around the world again?”

Poi smiled softly. “Maybe when it’s not a working vacation.”

“I’ll hold you to that!”

“Are you going to tell the others?” Poi stated, “You’re telling us, of course. But as for the kingdom itself: are you thinking of slinking off into the night, and letting the kingdom resolve itself?”

“... I wasn’t honestly thinking of the second one. But.” Erick asked, “It could be a good stress test? The kingdom runs well enough without me there to hold their hands all the time, and I’ve been asked to be incognito by both Sininindi and Atunir. I don’t think Melemizargo cares, but I’ll be doing that on my own, anyway.”

Poi briefly leveled a disbelieving stare at Erick, then he turned back toward the sunset. “I fully expect us to need to call you back halfway through this endeavor.”

“... Yeah. Probably.”

Erick stared out at the sunset.

There was just so much left to do at the House. The democracy debacle over in the Cities was still unfolding. The Gate expansions to the next layer of the Underworld. Kiri would be fine, in a general sort of way, since she had basically been doing the job of Gatemaster for the last few years, but she needed someone to step up and take her place as the Overseer of Gate Expansion...

“Who do you think Kiri will pick for her Overseer of Gate Expansion?”

“I don’t know, but probably Vixo Juliz.”

“Her secretary?”

Poi shrugged. “I’m just glad that this isn’t nearly as much of an emergency as I thought it was when all the world saw Yggdrasil flickering brightly.”

Erick smiled a little. “Me, too.”

The two old friends watched the sun set upon the western horizon, sipping their beers in companionable silence, and a bit more small talk. Erick finished off his beer as the sun finally passed beyond the edge of the world.

And then Erick said, “I’m going to make it a clean break, Poi, as much as I can. It’d be too easy to step back into this life and keep solving problems. I’d be king forever, and I’d like that. We’re doing a lot of good. Every day, new babies are born, mothers and fathers make new houses in the monster-free land, cities arise where there once was war. And yet, there is no way for those new people to reach upward, with me at the top. Everything in this world moves through my Gate Network. I could end this utopia with a flick of intent, canceling every single [Gate] out there, and I hate that.” Staring out into the twilight sky, Erick said, “Other people hate that, too. I know everyone at the House tries to shield me from that hate, with Zolan vetting every single meeting before it happens and all the other Overseers doing the same... But I know I have too much power. No one should have this much power, even if they do good things with it. I have to give it up to the next generation.”

“I respectfully disagree, and those naysayers can go fuck themselves.”

Erick laughed. Poi did not, which made Erick laugh all over again, ending in a soft smile.

Poi said, “Also, we don’t shield you from anything. We just don’t allow it inside the House.”

Erick gave a noncommittal grumble and a shrug.

After a silent moment, Poi asked, “When Ophiel and Yggdrasil separate, are you going to make another [Familiar] that won’t? Like with Archmage Tenebrae’s [Summon Rocky]?”

“Maybe not for a long time...” Erick had a thought. “But if Kiri’s Sunny is on the same timeline as Ophiel, then maybe I’ll help her to make something like [Summon Rocky].”

Poi said, “I don’t think that will be a problem for a while; years, maybe. Sunny is not nearly as advanced as Ophiel.”

Ophiel spoke up, “I’m advanced!”

Erick smiled. “Yes you are, Ophiel.”

“Sun set!” Ophiel fluffed out, asking, “Dinner time?”

Erick got out of his chair, saying, “I suppose it is.”

- - - -

Ophiel led the way into the dining room, fluttering forward and heading straight for his perch beside Erick’s chair, squeaking about how excited he was for his vegetables. The little guy loved his peas and carrots, and Erick marveled at that fact for what had to be the twentieth time, or more. Jane had hated her vegetables. But of course, Erick hadn’t been able to cook nearly as well as Rizala, or Teressa, or Poi, back then, when he was trying to make whatever dinner he could make in the brief time he had to make that dinner. Oftentimes Jane had needed to eat with the sitter...

Time moved so fast, didn’t it.

Erick banished those melancholy thoughts, breathed deep, and said, “It’s smells wonderful, Rizala.”

Poi’s sister, Rizala, walked out of the archway that led to the kitchen, carrying a turkey. She looked tired yet happy, and also very, very pregnant. Her dress ballooned outward, her blue scales seeming to glitter cerulean in the light of the dining room—

Her husband, Variol, came rushing out of the kitchen behind Rizala, softly saying, “I can carry that—”

“Bah!” Rizala said, as she playfully kept the turkey out of her husband’s hands. “I cooked it! I can serve it, too.”

She slipped the turkey onto the table and then looked to Erick, pretending as though she couldn’t read his mind just as easily as Poi already had. The only one in the room who didn’t know what was happening was Rizala’s husband.

Variol stepped backward, away from his wife, looking chastised and embarrassed, only half of which was due to failing to help his wife with dinner as much as he could. He had likely tried to do everything for her, though, and was embarrassed that she hadn’t allowed him to help more. He was also certainly afraid of disappointing Erick. Though the pink incani man had moved into the castle last year, he was still very much unable to truly function around the Apparent King.

Erick had stopped teasing the guy about that months ago. He almost decided to tease him again, in that moment, but... No. Erick said to Rizala, “It looks delicious.”

Turkey, potatoes, veggies. Butter, bread, gravy. It wasn’t a full ‘christmas dinner’, but it was most of the way there, and it looked divine. Rizala loved these big spreads, and Erick loved when she cooked. Now that she was on maternity leave, she was cooking every day, making enough for...

It didn’t look like enough for everyone?

Oh.

Erick instantly understood.

“It’s only us four tonight,” Rizala said, confirming Erick’s suspicions. “Teressa and Dariok said they’d be stuck at The Orrery tonight, overlooking some interesting Prognostication events that came across their Vision. Kiri is simply going to be late with something or other; she wouldn’t say what, exactly. They all said not to wait.”

Erick’s plans to tell everyone about Yggdrasil went on hold; he’d just be explaining to Variol, and Erick would rather wait for everyone to get the information all at once. He smiled anyway. “They will have missed a great meal. It all looks great.”

Rizala smiled wide. “It’ll taste even better!”

And it did.