Chapter 247, 1/2, Debby?Jane

Chapter 247, 1/2, Debby?Jane

Debby left her father’s office in House Benevolence and walked down the white, eternal stonewood hallway like a woman without a future, because that’s the sort of future she had right now. Nothing. Her family wouldn’t remember her once she started poking around at this Red Static thing too much. Once she got deep enough into this anti-meme mystery shit—

Debby tried to keep her anger in check as she thought about what came next.

No one would know what she did if she failed.

Something worse might happen than memory wipes and other magics if she succeeded.

But she would try to succeed, no matter what it cost her.

Debby had no way to know how this would play out, but it felt like it would play out poorly. All she had were the 76 experiments she had done with her family and with others in the last 3 weeks, 4 days, 7 hours and 38 minutes, since she started wearing the Bracelet of Memory full time. It had been a trial.

All those arguments half-started and half-finished with her sisters, only to watch them go side-eyed and dismissive, and sometimes walking away from conversations halfway through, like they didn’t even know Debby had been talking to them, which is exactly what had happened. They didn’t know. The Red Static intervened and stole that from them.

All those arguments with her father showed that he seemed to be the only one capable of understanding her without needing to be told the whole story, but even he wasn’t immune to this Red Static. All of those talks with Fallopolis and Goldie and even Fairy Moon... Talking with the first two had ended the same way, which Debby didn’t want to deal with Melemizargo talking to her again, not this very moment. Talking with Fairy Moon had caused the fairy to rage, to try and kill Debby, so Debby needed to tell Fairy Moon a whole lot more, abandoning the experiment just so that the anti-meme could erase Fairy Moon’s memory of Debby for her, to end that threat before it could get worse. It had worked.

But Debby didn’t do experiments with powerful people anymore.

She had tried talking to the gods three separate times. Rozeta, Phagar, and then Melemizargo one final time. Melemizargo wasn’t someone she wanted to deal with at the moment. As for Rozeta, Rozeta’s blue boxes and the visit to a Registrar had seemed like a win, but then she walked out of the office, on a mission to talk to her father, but her father had had no idea what she was talking about, and a revisit to the Registrar had been an exact same repeat of the previous conversation; all hopes and sounds-like-this-could-work, and then nothing, like she simply hadn’t spoken to Rozeta at all. Phagar’s people and his church were simply empty every time Debby came around, the divinity in the air seeming non-existent. She pursued Phagar until a replica of herself stepped out of the air, and told her that he would not help her kill herself. Debby had explained that she wasn’t there for that, and that she wasn’t that much of a battle junkie, and every attempt at talking about the Red Sparks hit a wall of misunderstanding. Phagar just didn’t hear what he wasn’t capable of hearing.

And so Debby had abandoned those pursuits.

Debby knew what she needed to do, and she would, but not right now—

—Oh gods. Why was she thinking about everything again? She knew why. The Bracelet made her think of everything all the time—

—because everything was going to go away or change, and she wasn’t ready for that right now. Her home in Adventurer City, which wasn’t really hers anyway. The people she knew down there, and everywhere else; Sitnakov, and Priest Andri, her friends at Adventurer city, Hizogard, Danaro, Lyrical...

Sure, she wasn’t the original Jane, and she had decided that if she should wake up and not be Jane that she would get over that loss of history, but this time was different. This time she wouldn’t be able to pretend to have a connection to her previous life. This time was different.

Because all of that would vanish.

Debby had done tests. She knew what she had signed up for when she went into her father’s office and finally succeeded in telling him something. For the last three weeks, since before they had spoken about Avandrasolaro and then through the angel’s [Reincarnation] and subsequent installment at the island next to Dungeon Island, Debby had worn the Bracelet of Memory. Because of this Mind Magic artifact, she could remember what no one else could. She could see the Red Static. She could—

—Couldn’t get away from the static. She couldn’t get away from her own thoughts. She used to be a person of action, but now she was a thinker, locked to the past, thinking about the salad she had four years, five months, three days, seven hours, twenty four minutes, three seconds ago, with that guy who had the zit on his left ear and—

—ask people about it.

And sometimes people forgot who she was until enough evidence piled up about who she was and—

Zolan was in the hallway, her father’s Castellan of House Benevolence, and he looked at Debby like she was a person out of place. Because that’s what he was seeing, no doubt. The Red Crackles, like floating snow, floated around the Bracelet around Debby’s arm, and around her head, attaching her to everyone who saw her or thought of her or—

—Focus, Debby. Focus. Here. In this moment. Focus.

The Red Crackles lingered upon Zolan.

They were everywhere.

They increased when Debby pursued the truth, and decreased when she stayed away, and she had pursued the truth rather strongly back there.

“Pardon me, young lady, but I don’t believe that you shou—” Zolan was working some magic internally, no doubt. Book Magic, probably. It was one of the few things that could counter the Red Snow, but that took a lot of time and failed anyway most of the time. And yep, Zolan fired up his memory banks like a proper Book Mage and looked at Debby again. “Ah. Apologies, Debby. I must have thought you were someone else.”

To play along with the misattribution of Zolan’s forgetfulness was to disperse the Red Snow upon the man, and clear up his life, to allow him to remember more of what he should remember.

To say something like ‘you got some anti-meme magic on you, eh?’ would instantly antagonize that anti-memory magic, causing even more memory and time loss, among other problems. Debby was rather sure that she had caused her father to miss a good ten days of existence in the last 3 weeks, ever since she tried to get him to understand. That was one of the reasons she had to leave. She was ruining his and everyone else's lives, even without them knowing.

So Debby said, “It’s the red hair, I’m sure. I’m thinking of changing it to something else.”

Zolan accepted Debby’s allowance of the social faux pas. “A change is good sometimes.” He wasn’t even aware that the Red Static around him was vanishing with every word, as he asked, “Do you know which resource your father is going after next? I would like to plan around that, if I could.”

“I think it’s the Life Seed for Tiktik and Fangorl, but don’t quote me on that.” Debby said, “Something about helping the wild parts of Quintlan be healthier, with fewer slimes and such. Trying to restore proper ecosystems.”

Zolan went, “Ah! Well that is as good a choice as any...”

Zolan said a few more small words and Debby reciprocated, as one does with people who are not quite friends, but who are very much still important people who you plan on seeing again and again, here and there, if fate would allow.

—Fate might not allow—

The Red lingered slightly, but it would vanish in the next few hours, or however long it took. The only reason it was there at all was because Debby couldn’t help but mentally notice the Red in the corners of her eyes, and in her mana sense. Once she moved on, that Red Static would vanish completely, to fade back into the background, unseen and unfelt until it recognized the information it had to censor. It was always active around her now, though.

Like she was an infection the red snow was trying to fight off.

If she didn’t poke at the Static, then the infection-response lessened—

—and she wasn’t so backed up in memory—

—But she was going to poke at the red static pretty hard.

Debby moved on, and wondered how long it would take for people here to forget her. Three days? She had pursued this Red lead for one day and came back to find no one had remembered her until she reminded them, and then their memories kicked in. She had done that twice more, but the fourth time she had done that she had stayed away for a day and a half, looking for red static answers, and it had taken her a full hour to remind people who she was.

Her father had always been first, and then, like light spreading, others remembered her...

Debby stepped out of the hallways of her father’s offices, into the main hallways of House Benevolence. The place was looking rather great these days. People were everywhere, going about important business. There were transportation deals between men in suits and magitech industry talks between mages wearing robes. Women talked with other women at a table down on the main food court floor, with a platter of 8-Star food between and—

—an assortment of books fighting each other for space on the table, as the women spoke of authors they wanted to commission and stories they loved. It was a book club that was actually quite famous in certain circles of the world, and which Jane-Debby had heard about some other time and now she was looking at them and Remembering—

—for they determined who was the next big author in the industry.

Debby sighed a little as her brain practically overheated as she remembered every single book that was on that table, and how she had read three of them. A headache loomed, and Debby knew she shouldn’t have walked this way to get out of House Benevolence, but she had wanted to walk this way. To see, once more.

The Bracelet of Memory did exactly as Poi said it did, but it was worse than ‘not being able to forget’. That was such a simple way to describe what this thing did to her that in its simpleness, it was wro—

—Jane-Debby sat upon a couch in her offices of Adventurer City, thumbing through the book in her hands, feeling excited for the next page, making herself not use her mana sense and Book Magic to read the whole damned thing at once—

Debby was simultaneously there, in the past, and here, in the present, making her way through House Benevolence’s main atrium. She was also in 1831 other parts of her life, remembering all the faces around her as she saw them and the creases in coats and the way that old guy over there was hobbling because he had an old scar acting up and there was [Reincarnation] paperwork in his coat—

Debby breathed.

She remembered everything.

She was simultaneously scattered across 1907 timelines now, with only this timeline here moving under her own power. Everything else was a memory. Nothing was able to be affected, except her feet in front of each other. She moved as best she could.

Debby put one foot in front of the other, told a concerned guard that she was fine, and then told that same guard that same statement another 47 times in her memory as she walked out of House Benevolence...

And then her mind reached a breaking point, as it always did—

—Scattering. Breaking. Harming and healing. Cracks faded and wholeness returned, but cracks reappeared, ready to open up once aga—

—She cackled a laugh, and memory faded. Timelines set aside until she needed to pick them up again, blood freely flowing from her nose, eyes, ears, and all the rest of her body. Blood seeped up from her very skin, like sweat. Her internals were riddled with red static, but it was passing, and Debby remained.

She was not dead yet, and a bit of total body trauma would not kill her. Her core was intact. Red Static invaded her soul, trying to tear her apart from the inside because she knew too much and it could attack her through that knowledge, but she remained. A little bit of soul trauma was nothing right now. She wiped away the blood and [Cleanse] and Healing Magic took care of the rest.

Red static retreated, soaking into her brain and into the flesh of her wrist, but the Bracelet remained, ensuring none of that power soaked too deeply. It was present, but it was not affecting her.

Another thread of thought picked up, though.

Mind Mages couldn’t read her thoughts right now, which was a bit of a problem.

Debby stood under the sun once again. The congested pathways of House Benevolence were absolutely filled with people and some of them were Mind Mages, if those tendrils coming off of their heads were any indication. Debby watched as a Mind Mage woman walked by, guiding her child by the hand into House Benevolence, talking about ‘going to see daddy at the bakery’. Both the woman and little boy had tendrils coming off of their head, and both of them touched Debby, because Mind Mages did that instinctively. They certainly didn’t mean anything by it.

Like a connected circuit, both mother and boy touched Debby’s mind, and Red spread.

You’d think getting such an obvious mental attack would set them off, but it was the opposite. Both mother and child instantly yanked their tendrils back, both of them acting a bit dazed, the woman faltering and the boy almost stumbling, but then the infection settled down. They were past Debby. They went about their business like nothing happened at all, not even acknowledging that Debby existed.

Which was a problem sometimes.

Mind Mages instinctively ignored Debby when she was deep in the Red. Poi completely ignored her until her Static level was very low, and then suddenly she became a visible, recognizable person again, and Poi recalled all he knew of her, like she had always been there. Once, he had forgotten to make dinner for 9, but then he remembered and Erick solved the problem with [Duplicate], so there was no problem at all.

Luckily, Mind Mages weren’t prone to altering the surface of the world as her father was sometimes, otherwise Debby might have found herself in dangerous situations. There was a reason [Invisibility] was outlawed in most societies, and not just because it could easily be abused. It only took one person running out into a busy road while invisible to make everyone realize the other reason why [Invisibility] was bad. Debby had learned that lesson herself, but not through this Static mess or through [Invisibility], but through [Polymorph], back when she was calling herself Jane—

Debby moved on.

As soon as she got away from the Mind Mages and this anti-meme was allowed to settle down, it would settle down. And then Debby could get on with the search once again.

Debby walked down the street toward the Gate Network, thinking about what came next.

For all purposes, ‘Debby’ would vanish to the world—

—Godsdammit. Stop overthinking—

The ground under her feet would not vanish, though. The walls of House Benevolence would remain. The sky above, with its crisscrossing lines of light and dense node network would remain. The world would go on.

But Debby would become a piece removed.

Hopefully this Worldly Path she was on would actually help her with this Quest. It was Fate Magic, right? All the others were on the Worldly Path, too, because Jane had originally thought that Fate could only help this situation, and now there were 6 ‘Janes’ on the Worldly Path, and all of them had begun to differentiate—

—Abigail was probably on the Path to become a mother; a part of Jane which wanted children and love, above all else. But how could she find love when her father was the practical king of the world? Suitors and boyfriends would always be suspect.

Beth was on the Path of exploration; a part of Jane which Jane had mostly abandoned, because what else was there left to explore on Veird except for nuances of space and time. Apparently Beth didn’t feel that way, because she loved delving perhaps more than any of the rest of them. There were always new places to explore in the Dark.

Candice was on the Path of murder; a part of Jane which Jane had tempered and held in check. But Candice was not Jane, and Candice loved ripping and tearing and giving into that impetus to annihilate for the good of them all. At least she was capable of directing herself properly. Debby looked at Candice these days like she was a little bit crazy for her antics, like when she tried to slurp down the insides of a monster while she clung hard to the monster’s back, her fangs deep inside the thrashing beast.

Emily was on the Path of governance; a part of Jane that wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. All the rest of Jane’s parts had been embarrassed that Emily was willing to actually go that way, for following their father was like accepting his help... But Debby also wanted a dick, and that was weird, too, so she could do what she wanted, just like the rest of them.

Jane was on the Path of Balance, or whatever that meant. She would go back to Adventurer City after this was over, if she survived. Whatever the case, all of them had made a pact behind her back to make sure that Jane survived this, if only to keep their father not-insane and happy—

Debby was on the Path toward Magic, and she loved it. But it had brought her here. It had brought this Bracelet onto her wrist. It had brought this Static to her eyes and to her thoughts. She remembered too much. She saw too much. She remembered nothing, under a tide of time.

She did what she had to do.

Debby walked into the international Gate checkpoint, and spied upon the world.

Ten Gates lay before her, beyond a line that was moving fast, for this close to House Benevolence they had the absolute best of the best guarding and sorting this traffic. Debby had her little Delver’s Badge under her shirt, and the people on duty mana sensed that, and so the ground under her feet turned green with wardlight, just like it turned green under all the others walking by—

One guy’s feet turned red. Some guards asked him to step out of line and he walked out of line just fine, but looking dejected. His papers weren’t good enough, or something.

Debby continued forward, her eyes open toward the Gates ahead.

She did not head back to Dungeon Island.

She went elsewhere.

- - - -

She had to get away from it all before she took the next step of her Path, and so she had chosen here.

A desolate mountaintop on an island in Archipelago Nergal, 10,000 kilometers removed from House Benevolence.

It was a normal sort of place, rocky and green, while all the land beyond the mountain was tropical forest and deep, white beaches. There were monsters, of course. Most of the big ones were inside the dungeons of the island, while the smaller, more opportunistic monsters crawled here and there, trying to eat each other. They didn’t come up the mountain, though. Stone elementals crushed everything up here, while Air elementals tossed living things off of cliffs, to have them fall to their deaths.

Debby had cleared out a small part of the mountain top for herself. It was just her, the sun overhead, and the shadows among the rocks. She called out to those shadows.

“Hello, Melemizargo. I’d like to talk now.”

The shadows whirled and stood up. The Dragon God of Magic was not a dragon right now; he was just a shadow of himself, floating in the air like a particularly short winged lizard. He still gave off an air of menace.

“Hello, Debby. Ready to be a Paladin, like you always wanted?”

His tone was light. His words were not.

“I would ask you, please, to lay out the terms once again.”

Debby recalled perfectly the terms, but she was in 758 different times and spaces right now, and her mind could only hold so much. She was struggling.

“Prudent.”

Melemizargo’s word echoed in the sky—

And suddenly Debby was only here, only now, grounded in this time and this place.

Melemizargo’s shadow took on a deeper quality as the blue sky above turned dimmer, the sun vanishing behind nothing at all. Shadows prowled the land, and Melemizargo’s shadow became more than that. He was still not fully in this place, but he was closer.

“The terms are thus: I grant you the power to See, and you use your own power to Change The World How I Desire Until I Am Done With You. My primary Desire is in the form of a Quest for you to find the causes of the Red Static, and then report them to me. If that Quest should bring you back to Erick Flatt and Ascendant Mountain and the Sundering Search, then so be it, but I am not sure it will.

“If you choose to do this, I will charge you with Fate Most Demanding. I will gift unto you the power to be Unseen and Unknown and Untouched by all Magic and Masteries aside from those you choose for yourself, or those you fail to use my protection adequately against. You will never againgain a reprieve from the pain of that Bracelet, for it will foreverbecome a part of you. But you will gain power to stabilize yourself when you are wearing it, as I am stabilizing you right now.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

“I will See through your eyes at my whim.

“I will hear what you hear. Sense what you sense. Know what you know.

“You will strike with the power of My Claws.

“You will mold possibilities with the power of My Words.

“The Script will be lost to you, but don’t expect Rozeta to come calling, for you are already half-Unknown to her and all others through the machinations of this Red Static. You will become isolated until the time that you find out what is causing this Red Static, or else you will die trying to discover the cause.

“I will demand things of you, Debby, but nothing that you wouldn’t be comfortable with doing if I explained my reasonings well enough. However! I will not always explain myself, and you must follow through regardless. Failure in my demands might be catastrophic.”

Melemizargo stood resplendent and Dark, his body half shadow and all menace, hanging in the sky in front of Debby like a dream of impending death sized to the mountain underneath Debby’s feet. He leaned down, his white fangs shining in the Dark, like his eyes, like his claws, like the white-inferno tunnel leading down into that endless maw.

“If you disobey enough, or at times when I most deem it necessary, I will take control of you myself, and you will become a watcher of your life until I decide you have learned your lesson.” He pulled back, and his voice was softer, “I do not desire to hurt you, but you must understand that this is a serious issue, Debby Flatt. The Red Static must either be eliminated or solved for. Either outcome is good enough. Do that, and your Quest will be over. If you should succeed, I will leave you with all the power I will grant you, and none of the restrictions.”

Debby hadn’t been able to think clearly whenever she wore the Bracelet, but she thought clearly now.

“I have questions.”

“I have patience for some questions.”

“Are you causing the Red Static?”

“No, I am not,” Melemizargo said, narrowing his eyes and moving closer. “Don’t be impertinent.” He backed up a fraction, but Debby still felt his hot breath upon her face as he said, “To answer a few other of your questions before you get rudeabout them:

“I am not going to ask you to harm the people you love or anyone else that doesn’t deserve it. I am not going to ask you to sabotage anything that does not deserve it. I and the people I have influence over are not going to destroy this world or any other... Unless it needs it, but certainly not without finding homes and security for all these people and other living things that exist here before such destruction should occur.” He stared again. “And that is the extent of my promises to you. Keep in mind, Debby, that I wish this to be a fruitful joining, and that I value your father’s presence much too much to put you into too much danger. But the danger you get into yourself is not something I will be able to fully protect against.

“Make your choice.”

Debby had choices; many of them, in fact.

She made what she thought was the best one.

Debby took a knee, bowed her head, and said the words that Melemizargo had asked her to say the last time she had been in this position, “I pledge my life and my soul to the Dark. May my loyalty be rewarded, and may I walk forever in your welcoming shadow.”

It had been maybe an hour till sunset when she had said that question, when she had asserted that a god was behind the Sparks.

And now, Jane looked west, and the sun was higher in the sky, and Red Static clung to absolutely everything in the immediate area.

She had gone back in time. Maybe an hour this time?

Not too surprising.

This always happened when she poked too hard at the anti-meme. It was only due to the Bracelet that she was able to retain any information at all about the aborted future. Ever since she put on the Bracelet, she was fully cognizant of everything in her immediate area, and that included nearby aborted timelines. Now, with her mind clear, though, Jane thought about that a bit more, and also about what an Atomic Wizard War would really look like. She concluded that ‘REMEMBER’ was pretty damned Deep Magic.

So far, Jane knew of only one absolute trigger and a few lesser triggers for the Red Sparks’ worldwide [Return]... For it had to be worldwide, right? Or maybe just against everyone in the local area of the Spark event. Jane wasn’t sure about that part, actually.

One: ‘A god is doing this’. This caused an instant [Area Return].

Two: ‘Rift Magic and other dimensions are involved’. This did not cause an [Area Return] unless it was stated in a bunch of different ways and with a bent toward learning about how to fight the anti-meme. Her father just talking about basic Rift Magic and Rift Magic being studied in schools and what [Gate] and Fairy and the Dark actually were did not cause Red Spark events at all. All of that moreover fed into—

Three: Anyone talking too much about the anti-meme in a way that might actually reveal the anti-meme. Jane had not identified the exact vectors of what was ‘off limits’ aside from god-involvement and Rift Magic, so all her other experiments were under this Number Three until otherwise proven separate.

From previous tests, Jane knew that Red Static would stick around in the immediate [Area Return] area, ensuring that whatever had caused the localized area [Return] would not encroach upon the Red Sparks again.

The Red Static would actually alter probability and even thought patterns to drive people away from talking about it.

Really quite infuriating.

Her father was making good progress in uncovering the anti-meme on his own, though. For whatever reasons, he would talk about shit and Red Sparks would gather, and he’d go on different tangents and the Red Sparks would fall away, and then he’d go back to talking about stuff close to the Red Sparks again. It was the only way that any of them had even thought to bring up the possibility that there was an anti-meme in the first place.

So... Good job, dad.

... Jane suddenly had another question. She stepped away from the Static-covered mountainside, heading west to get out of the area of effect. She avoided a few larger stone elementals and once again stood in the sun, in a stony land free of Static.

“Benevolence is causing the Red Static.”

A pattering of Red filled the air, but no more than what would normally happen when one referenced the Red Static phenomenon.

Which was good.

But ultimately didn’t tell Jane much of anything at all. None of these experiments did; not really. Jane had ‘crossed off’ many different major forces on Veird, and yet she hadn’t really done anything at all. Every triggering event could be a smoke screen; misleading positives.

Maybe a god wasn’t involved at all. Maybe Rift Magic was just a red herring.

The only things Jane truly knew for sure were:

To speak of it causes it to happen. Which means something very, very large, and able to hear everything that happens with regard to its domain of power.

It causes people to not recognize it.

It didn’t matter where she did these experiments, for all places produced the same results. Inside a no-Script place or inside the Dark or even inside Fairy; there were no changes in results anywhere. There were a few places that Jane had never been, though, but she doubted Rozeta would allow her in the Core of Veird now that she was a Paladin of Melemizargo, so that experimental space was right out. She could see about making a space-trip past the Script, to try her luck actually past the Script with that ship that’s hidden somewhere by the Inquisitors of Rozeta.

That sort of poking around might go bad real fast, though.

Anyway.

Less absolutely-true facts were thus:

It probably had a worldwide domain of power, as evident by the anti-Rift Magic talk; it didn’t want people breaching its domain. It probably had a space like Benevolence or Fairy that existed alongside the reality of Veird, and it attacked from there.

And the Script and its people were not responsible for the Red Static.

There is some physical/atomic connection linking the Red Static, this New Cosmology, and maybe the Sundering all together.

“But the Sundering was Primal Lightning,” Jane said, looking at the sky, and seeing no Red Static. She added, “Primal Lightning is not Red Static.”

Red Static gathered like it normally did; soft and ephemeral and not really there at all.

Jane tried, “Primal Lightning is Red Static.”

Red Static flowed in small bits and pieces.

“... Now that one feels like a red herring, too,” Jane mumbled.

And then she turned to air and light and began stepping across the world, leaving behind the place of her transformation and acceptance of Darkness. Ah... Man. Her father would be absolutely pissed if he knew what she had done. All of her other selves would be angry at her, too, because accepting Melemizargo’s offer was a last ditch effort that they were saving for the apocalypse. This was sort of like the apocalypse, though, and Jane felt it was a good use of that offer, which is why she had chosen to accept this offer right now.

... What would Solomon say? The same thing? Anger all around? Probably. Solomon was trying to be different from ‘Erick’, but he was faking it too; he was her father, through and through, just like ‘Debby’ was still ‘Jane’, but of a different color.

- - - -

Jane hopped across islands, heading through the Archipelago to the east, avoiding major settlements and node networks and magical protections on her way to her goal, the Gate Network connection at Storm’s Edge. She had come through Storm’s Edge to get to the remote island where she had become Melemizargo’s Paladin, and she would return through Storm’s Edge in order to start her search anew, at House Benevolence, and Candlepoint. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to start at House Benevolence, but it made sense to start at the center of Veird’s Gate Network. Maybe someone suspicious, or something, would walk through the Gates to get where they needed to go, for all the world went through her father’s Gate Network.

Turned out she didn’t have to go all the way back there to start her search.

Turned out her suspicions about Fate were spot on.

Here, at Storm’s Edge, a clue walked through the Local Area Gate Network, into the city of Sininindi, right as Jane was getting ready to leave.

He was shaped like a skinny man with red hair and freckles, with dirt on his clothes and mud on his boots. That was what he looked like to everyone else; completely unremarkable, even if his hair color did stand out a little. But to Jane, who could See, Red Static held in the man’s eyes and in the air around him like a cloud. He was a focal point of the Red Sparks.

Fate had obviously intervened to make this happen...

Or maybe there were lots of people like this Red Guy? Jane sure as shit hoped not. The Red Guy didn’t seem menacing, but all those angry Red jolts around him certainly did. The guy himself seemed no more anxious than anyone else traveling through the Gates for the first time.

Jane backed up, out of line, and Melemizargo’s power wrapped around her even before she knew she needed that power. She became Unseen, Unheard, Unknown. None of the detection magics prevalent near the gatehouse caught her as she vanished from all normal senses, which allowed her to slip away from the line and focus on the Red Man. But there was a problem.

Jane did not vanish from the recent memories of the people she had been around. Guards readily noticed the sudden vacancy in line and called out about ‘who was pulling shit now!’ and muttering curses about the Storm Prophecy and increased security. People in armor and priests in robes swarmed to where Jane had been standing, to poke around at that space and to ask questions of people in front and behind of Jane’s spot. Those people could only say that Jane had been there, and now she was gone; they didn’t see her leave.

Melemizargo’s Shadow had also disturbed the entire manasphere in order for Jane to make her escape, which was not her intention, but which happened anyway. Melemizargo had done that, for sure, to make sure no one could see her in the recent memory of the manasphere; he was looking over her shoulder right now, his claws resting upon her. That major disturbance was probably why the guards were swarming so hard, actually; they couldn’t even check the recent past to see who had disturbed the line.

Jane, meanwhile, stood to the side, completely unnoticed by anyone, though they were surely looking.

Everyone muttered about the Storm Prophecy, with a few glancing toward the posters on the walls that spoke of that fated issue. Those posters had a start-date maybe 40 days away at the earliest, or 100 days at the latest. The numbers were in the air, though, so the guards were on the ground in force.

They stopped every single person coming out and going into the gatehouse.

But the Red Spark guy, who seemed incredibly suspicious to Jane, got through the sudden blockade because of those very same Sparks. The suspect fumbled his words at the guard accosting him, causing the guard to get more angry. Out came the manacles, but just as a threat for the moment. Tears encroached in Spark Guy’s eyes, while Sparks flickered off of him the whole time, soaking into the guard—

And the guard blinked a bit, dropped his voice, and told Spark Guy to get going. Just like that! Dismissed. As the Spark guy nervously adjusted his backpack and hoisted his luggage in his right hand, that guard went right onto the next single person in line, but when that second person rapidly devolved to sobbing under the guard’s sudden tirade, the guard got even more angry. A probably-innocent bystander got sucked into the system, wrapped in manacles and set aside for questioning. They were not the only ones to fall victim to Jane’s sudden vanishing in line.

... Ah. And here came the major Priests and Priestesses of Sininindi. That one right there was Tiza Nindi, the owl shifter Grand Priestess of Sininindi who hated Erick. She flickered with golden lightning and tendrils of the same, and Jane suddenly knew that she had to escape while she could.

To touch that golden light was to touch Sininindi herself.

Spark Guy got going, too, rapidly leaving the scene as fast as probably-mortal feet could carry him, all the while spilling Red Sparks everywhere he walked, into every person. The gatehouse and everyone looking his way got a lot of Sparks, but there was no end to that cloud, and with the still-full power of the anti-meme, Spark Guy entered the streets of Storm’s Edge.

Why had he been running so fast? Had he seen Sininindi’s power reaching for him, too? Had he noticed how his Red touched the gold, and the gold got a little lost?

Who knew!

Red Guy hurried away from the gatehouse, and Jane followed.

At first the street urchins eyed Red Guy as an easy pocket to pick, the overpriced vendors demanded he buy something, and the street women called out to him, wanting him to spend some of his money at their fine establishments. All normal stuff. But then his Sparks touched those people and they ignored him. Urchins wondered why they were in the middle of the street, prowling, when they should have been at the sides waiting for the next mark. The vendors were shaking cucumbers at thin air. Ladies of the evening were lifting their skirts at nothing.

One Mind Mage walking through the streets, minding his own business, noticed how people suddenly unnoticed Spark Guy, and that was all it took for the Red Sparks to latch onto that Mind Mage like a swarm of toothers spotting a cow that had fallen into the water. That touch of Red was worse for the Mind Mage than it was for everyone else, which was... sort of normal for the anti-meme and Mind Mages. Jane felt there wasn’t that much ferocity in the Red against the Mind Mages Jane had infected herself.

Hmm.

The Red Sparks absolutely swarmed the Mind Mage and the guy lost track of everything he was doing.

Red Guy kept right on rushing through town, trying to get away from the oddness he left behind, because yes, he had noticed what he was doing, and that scared him. Perhaps he wasn’t doing it on purpose?

Perhaps.

Jane considered Melemizargo’s decree. And then, with a casual flick of solid shadows, Jane stopped the urchins from picking the pockets of the dazed Mind Mage just long enough for the Mind Mage to recover, and to see what the urchins were trying to do to him. Those urchins were all well fed; they weren’t stealing to survive. They were just brats, trying to steal from whoever they could. Jane did not feel bad at all for letting them get caught.

Jane left that drama behind as she hurriedly caught up to the Spark Guy, shadowing him down golden-hour streets as he tried not to run, but he clearly wanted to. Running would probably draw too much attention? Maybe. He seemed to be heading north? North east, anyway.

Where was he going?

Jane tracked the man north, then east, then north again.

All the while Spark Guy exuded his red infection across the world, and people ignored him, as though he were a Moon Reacher walking through their midst—

Jane shivered at that old, buried memory. For a moment she was cast back in time. She was that young girl in the four-poster bed deep underground, near the Forest of Glaquin, where she had been staying for days while she had been hunting flame slimes in her waking hours. She recalled seeing fuzzy silver boulders and trees and feeling wind at her back when she went in and out of her base, never knowing how close she had come to death. And then those long arms and tiny hands reached into her room, deep, deep underground, to grab at her—

Jane stepped away from the Red trail for a moment, shadows wrapping tight around her as she hid in a dark alley and all the world closed in.

She breathed.

After a moment she was ready to pursue the guy again. It wasn’t hard to find his trail; he left Red Sparks wherever he went and that power lingered. Jane adroitly avoided stepping in the red, weaving her shadowy form through the spaces between the not-snow. In two minutes she had caught up to the guy.

This guy was not a Moon Reacher. Obviously he wasn’t. He also wasn’t using a Moon Reacher’s [Mind Fog] ability, or else the Mind Mage from earlier would have caught on to the guy and stopped him hard, so he wasn’t a Polymage either. Jane wasn’t too sure what the guy was, except that if she hadn’t seen the Red Sparks all around him, she would have thought him a perfectly normal guy. A bit gangly, a bit awkward, a bit wide-eyed tourist, too. But normal—

The guy passed through the northern wall of Storm’s Edge, through extensive detection magic, pinging it hard but the Red Sparks surrounding him pinged harder, passing into the detection magics that surrounded the city, and then rapidly flowing through those magics like drops of light momentarily stretched out into lines. That power was certainly aiming for whoever was monitoring those magics. The guards on the wall didn’t care that the guy went through, and whoever was monitoring the area didn’t care, either.

They certainly watched all the other people go in and out of the city. This was the pilgrim path to the Blue Temple, and to Everbless’s Cove, and there were a lot of people going and coming from that direction, even now, at this twilight hour. Each person walked through those detection magics and sent off a tiny ping through that power.

... And Jane had to go through, too.

Jane knew that those detection magics were highly tuned to shadow because of all the recent problems. Storm’s edge had even reinstated the old anti-Cult laws, and anyone found using certain magics like Jane’s [Greater Shadowalk] were instantly considered a Cultist and captured or killed on sight. ‘Killed’ was the more realistic interpretation of those laws, though. From what Jane recalled, she knew that House Benevolence’s lawyers and Storm’s Edge’s lawyers were still ‘in talks’ about all that overreach, but that wasn’t going to go anywhere; the Church of Sininindi wasn’t willing to talk at all, and those were the people who maintained the defenses around this land. Whoever was behind those detection magics the Sparks Guy had just walked through had to be at the Lighthouse of Storm’s Edge, watching for shadows to make their move anywhere at all in the city.

... Jane could obviously just switch to [Greater Lightwalk], but that felt... Wrong. Less safe, actually. Perhaps Jane could simply trust the shadows surrounding her? Shades were known to go anywhere they wanted, after all, and maybe Paladins of the Dark could do the... same...

A gentle weight gripped her shoulders.

So this was what it meant to be a Paladin of Melemizargo, eh? She could violate any sanctum she wanted, no matter if they were tuned to her current powers.

“Yes.”

Jane walked through the detection magics of the wall of Storm’s Edge and they did not notice her passing. No ripple of power went out through the sheets of power invisibly encircling the entire city. Nothing pinged.

Jane took a moment and continued to Look at those surrounding magics for a little while, to make sure she was truly in the clear. And she was.

She probably could have managed that before this whole Paladin-of-the-Dark junk, but it would have taken an expenditure of [Prismatic Domain] and that probably would have been noticed. She certainly couldn’t have done that with just her normal [Greater Shadowalk].

Under a purple, twilight sky, Jane followed the Spark Guy across the pilgrim’s trail. Her mark and the other pilgrims came and went all along the actual trail, with most hurrying to get back to town before the sun fully set. A lot of people seemed to have been out here just to catch sight of the sunset, which had been pretty nice, all things considered.

Jane stepped on the long shadows of blades of grass, not actually stepping on the trail itself, because when she looked at the trail she saw golden light. It was a path laid by prayers to Sininindi, and to step upon it would probably be to come under Sininindi’s gaze. Jane wasn’t sure if that would be a bad thing or not, considering how the goddess of Storm and Sea and her father had been getting along rather well recently, but the church of Sininindi and her father were not on good terms at all. Jane didn’t want to take the chance, so the grassy path was her path of choice.

She wasn’t sure how —exactly— she was Seeing all of this divinity or Knowing what it all meant without needing to be told. Logical deduction was the major component, yes. But there was more than that. Melemizargo was probably to blame for her ‘Insight’ into what she was Seeing.

But who was to blame for the Spark Guy?

Jane followed until the sky was dark, and the pilgrim path was lit with light from unknown sources, and Spark Guy was the only one still on the path, making his way toward the Blue Temple and Everbless’s Cove—

Tendrils of gold began to fill the air, like streamers of lightning laid out across the world.

Melemizargo’s claws tensed on Jane’s shoulders.

Jane Knew she could continue her pursuit if she avoided all of Sininindi’s power, but that would become impossible within another ten minutes when they actually got in sight of Everbless. The twilight sky to the north was already filled with golden lightning and golden clouds. How much of that was real, though, and how much was it Melemizargo’s Sight? As soon as Jane had that thought she felt a tension inside of her that she didn’t know existed. Instantly, she knew it as Melemizargo’s Sight, and she had been walking around with her ‘third eye’ wide open.

She shut that eye now.

The light of the Pilgrim’s Path vanished into the night. Jane was suddenly alone in the world. Melemizargo had stepped away, like how he stepped away when Inquisitors came calling, looking for Cultists and finding none, because the Cultists could cut themselves off from Melemizargo’s power whenever they wanted. Well that was certainly a question no one had asked, but which Jane was thankful for knowing.

Anyway.

The sky ahead was not filled with gold, but instead with normal thunderheads raising high into the sky, sparking white and blue here and there—

Jane opened her Sight again, and everything returned to different types of glows. She had been nowhere near Sininindi’s power, and she still wasn’t. Spark Guy was different.

Jane watched Spark Guy walk ahead, down the illuminated path, spilling Red Sparks into the air. A thread of divine power, like soft lightning, hung in the air, purposefully drawing him forward. For a moment, Jane thought that Sininindi was behind everything, but three seconds passed, and Spark Guy drew closer to the ‘come hither’ divinity. Just like it had happened back at the gatehouse, and just as those Red Sparks spilled into the divine path laid by countless pilgrims, Red Sparks flowed from him straight into Sininindi’s power, corrupting the divine lightning.

But unlike all other observers of the man, Sininindi’s call was not dissuaded, and the Red Sparks did not grow in ferocity or density. Instead, the man seemed to walk easier, and the Red Sparks seemed to have little effect on the thread of divinity.

... That was enough information gathering for now. Jane wasn’t going to confront anyone on the level of a divine. Not when she could do a lot more information gathering as she was. Melemizargo’s claws let up off of her shoulders, and she backtracked fast, back to the gatehouse, back to her original plan of searching for leads at Candlepoint, the center of the Gate Network.

She had a lead now. Now, she just needed to find out who the Red Guy was, and what connection they had to Sininindi.

She also had to figure out why she felt she knew the guy...

“But I can’t place him,” Jane said to the Dark. “I think I met him... recently?”

“The Bracelet is rather well made but we’re up against High Wizardry, and you will need assistance and time to fully Remember and See; to fully integrate with the Bracelet. Currently, the best sort of help is best delivered to yourself by your own investigations. Just like how you realized your father is slowly fighting off the infection, you are now fighting off the infection, too. That takes time, and good decisions.”

Jane softly said, “My father has been fighting it off for a long time, hasn’t he.”

“Yes, and he has fallen to it several times over in the past. I believeit never got any solid hits on him for many different reasons, but all of those reasons are theoretical and unprovable at my current level of power. Aside from gods and the entire world taking a very strong view of him, which solidified his presence a great deal and made him rather Unforgettable to the mana itself, Erick has always been on a Path of some sort, and Fate is stronger than this anti-meme. But the anti-meme did win at least once that I know of: That whole [Onward] business. That miscast of Wizardry was surely this anti-meme interfering with his spellwork, taking him off of the board for a long while.”

Jane had to stop in her tracks when she heard that explanation.

In a normal alleyway of the streets of Storm’s Edge, Jane asked Melemizargo, “Has it ever killed anyone? Have we forgotten people?”

“Yes. Absolutely. When required and when people are at their lowest, and they are therefore rather forgettable by all of the world, sometimes the Red takes them. Like a predator eating the slowest, sickest of prey. The homeless, mostly, but people do care about even those who have lost their path, so those people fall prey less than you would think. The victims of cut supply lines are a big issue, for when no one remembers you, you are easy to disappear. The Mind Mages have several memetic threats enclosed in areas that they are forced to keep separate from the world, and so they fall prey to the Red Sparks a lot, and they misattribute their losses to what they are guarding.

“When you see a splash of Red in an area where people shouldhave been, and yet there is no one, that is where someone either triggered the Red, or they were eaten.

“Only one person a day, though. Maybe two. Not many. You’d never see it unless you looked at the world from my sort of scale.

“But at the same time, the Red doesn’t like to make itself known in that way. I think it only eats what it needs to eat. It derives much more pleasure from its other main form of torture.

“The Red steers people toward committing acts of horror against each other. Not all horrors, not by a [Long Bolt]. Only the ones that truly matter, that can cause destruction and misery on a massive scale, or which are easily done with a twist of delay here or there. That, it does most perfectly. That, I think it enjoys. There was more than one reason why I allowed my Shades to be purged, Jane. All of them were quite infected, and through them I was infected as well.

“I’m better now, and so is my Clergy.”

Jane breathed deep. She glanced at the sky filled with darkness and clouds, where faint golden glows held far, far above.

“It’s going after Sininindi, isn’t it.”

Red Sparks filled the air like bugs crawling out of the very fabric of space and time.

Jane let them wash over her and leave her behind, their search coming up empty. Melemizargo said nothing, for he Watched over her shoulders the entire time.

When the storm passed, Jane hightailed it back through Storm’s Edge, to the gatehouse. She did spare moments here and there among the streets, though, to search for red spots that should not be there, worrying that someone might have been lost to the world and never found again.

But there were no red areas; no lingering infections except the ones she had already made.