Chapter 261, 1/2

Chapter 261, 1/2

The sky of the Celestial Observatory was a blue blackness, filled with stars. The world itself was divided between mountain tops and valleys, with layers of illuminated clouds separating mountains made of crystal spires, and valleys filled with greenery and sparkling blue water. The air was cool, but not cold, though Erick didn’t really get cold anymore.

Not as a human-shaped protean person, and especially not as a giant black dragon.

With wings spread wide, Erick surveyed the land. This was not where Yggdrasil had dropped him the first time; that kilometers-wide bridge between the two crystal-spire mountains was nowhere to be seen. Of course there were other big bridges between the mountain lands out there. The crystal spire cities above the clouds were all connected by bridges, like they were all islands in an illuminated sea of clouds.

Erick flew above those clouds, feeling kinda great, as he checked his Lightning Path.

There was lots to do here.

As opposed to Erick’s time at Da’luwe, where all his Path generally pointed at the various problems of Da’luwe, since the world outside the city was pretty hostile to life and thus there wasn’t much he could do out in the Endless, there was life everywhere here, in this land of peaks and valleys. Down there, in the green lands, people toiled in fields and lived simple, rural lives. The places Erick flew over seemed to be firmly stuck in the 1400’s, if he were going by Earth-standards, though some places looked a lot more primitive than that. Cows helped men and women plow fields while kids played with hoops and sticks as grandmothers and fathers knitted scarves or whittled wood into cooking utensils. The buildings looked made out of wood and plaster and thatch while the roads were dirt in most places, and gravel by the nicer houses.

It was so weird to see, and yet not that weird at all. The more Erick saw of Margleknot the more he knew how stratified the whole place was. There was the Dragon District, where people invented reality whole cloth, and then places like this and like Da’luwe, where some people lived so far below others that they were practically caricatures of ancient pasts.

The people that lived above the clouds were somewhere between those extremes.

Erick soared through the eternal night sky and cast his gaze far and deep.

In those crystal spire mountaintops Erick saw what appeared to be places like Ar’Kendrithyst, with spires and sky bridges and people living openly, using little ‘smartphones’, or whatever they called them. Some restaurants used machines to flip vegetable-and-egg cakes on griddles and serve them to customers. Men and women spoke at board meetings to investors. Nannies and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and fathers and mothers and all sorts of people walked from this place to that place with two kids in tow and a baby in a basket on their back, or with their girlfriend, or boyfriend, or just friends.

Watchtowers here and there spotted Erick, and so did a whole bunch of completely normal places.

Most people simply freaked out for a moment at the big black dragon flying far away, and then they continued about their day. One guy at a tower that stuck out pretty far from the other towers pissed himself, but that, and some ribbing from the other guys on duty, were all that happened there. That guy would probably recover from the loss of pride eventually.

Erick smirked a little as friends laughed at friends, as he kept flying, breathing in the cool air and feeling pretty great.

The Celestial Observatory was a land divided, though, and the ‘why’ of that was a pretty big explanation. He already knew a little bit of that reasoning, according to one of the conversations he had had with Eldawae, back in Da’luwe.

- -

City Eldawae, who was named as such for Reasons, had scowled when asked about the Good lands of Margleknot, saying, “All the truly Good places are gone and have been for a while. Paradise Rises was the truest bastion of Good in the universe over 6,400 years ago. Morbion saw to the destruction of that place personally, and it only took him a millennium to do it! Of course they should have seen it coming, though, so it was kind of their own fault. Morbion acted as a sort of ally of Good back then, killing off the most Evil lands out there. That’s how he started getting Contracts in on the Celestial Observatory and other places; they saw him as an ally of convenience now and then, and so that is what he became.”

Other Eldawae, named himself that way because they both were still trying to figure out new names, continued, “When Morbion eventually turned on Paradise Rises he turned with the full force of Balance at his back. Paradise Rises never stood a chance. From there they went after The Good Lands, Heartshearth, and many others. All the while the Celestial Observatory was getting worked on by Wraithborne’s lawyers due to the survivors of those other Good lands flooding that place. That’s what really did the Celestial Observatory in. Wraithborne conquered that place through infection of Contracts. Some of those Contracts could even be passed down to kids!”

City Eldawae said, “Now when the Prismatic Wilderness fell to Wraithborne... that’s when the Balance started to shift back against Wraithborne.”

“Quite right.” Other Eldawae said, “The fall of the Wilderness is when Wraithborne began its Reformation, adjusting from a land of complete war and domination and Evil, to something less overt. The lawyers came out in force with Contracts that forced more Contracts.”

“Morbion forced the Celestial Observatory into what it is today,” City Eldawae cursed, “A land of middling Good filled with systemic problems which would require war to fix, but no one wants to go to war because that would cut supply lines and end the easy life for a great many people.” Eldawae waved a wing. “And sunder a bunch of souls, too, as generationally-tied Contracts activated all across that part of Margleknot.”

- -

Both Eldawaes were not friends, exactly, and they both had rather dim views of the Good lands out there and they were not afraid to be acerbic about it, but they were both people who had stopped lying to Erick a while ago, in the month that Erick had spent at Layer 1 in and around Da’luwe. That solidly spoken nature and spending some time among the real people of Margleknot had helped Erick to learn a whole bunch of little things that he hadn’t known before that break.

Erick saw one of those facts now, as he soared through the starry sky, and viewed the horizon of Margleknot.

Margleknot was what Veird and FENRIR might one day be, in the very, very distant future; a giant dyson sphere surrounding a sun, but a whole lot more complicated than that.

Looking down at the Celestial Observatory, Erick imagined Margleknot’s original sun inside the sphere underneath, far, far inside, along with a bunch of other suns gathered and created by the various Fathers and Mothers of Margleknot, and all the other strong powers of this Fractal Universe. The entire interior space of that dyson sphere was many, many astronomical units across. No one but Margleknot really knew the full distance between one place and the next. The entire interior space was under Margleknot’s full control, and things such as ‘distance’ only really mattered when Margleknot made them matter. One could simply look up at the sky and see other lands, which should be impossible in any normal sort of space.

Inside the sphere, if Erick would have kept traveling across the Endless desert to reach the next grey pillar rising up from the next Wraithborne town, he would have stumbled into a land of forest and trees and simply left the Endless behind, without realizing he had left it behind. That’s how it was traveling in there. To get back to the Endless, he would have had to fly for many days back in that direction, and when he finally, suddenly found the Endless, he would have found himself a week away from the forested places.

Traveling out here, though, outside of the sphere, was a lot simpler and straightforward. The land below had such an imperceptible curve that it looked like all the crystal mountaintops simply stretched on forever. The Celestial Observatory was technically a land of 350,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers, and more than ten times that when it came to actual living space, which was all up and down those mountains.

The Celestial Observatory was the entire outer surface of Margleknot, which was why it had been so easy for Wraithborne to infect with Evil. There were simply too many entry points into this land.

Except that wasn’t the whole story, either.

A lot of the outer surface of Margleknot was used for a lot of different peoples; in a way similar to how the inside was all spatially managed, the outside was also cut up into pieces. The Observatory didn’t actually comprise 350,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers. It was more like only .5% of that big number.

Still a pretty big freaking number.

Trillions of people lived within quadrillions of square kilometers, so it wasn’t that populated. Technically. This was still one of the more populated, low-power places, though. The lands where the big powers existed was far, far away from here. And yet, if one moved right, the powerful places were just a skip over the next horizon.

The ‘next horizon’ being both multi-planetary and spatially-managed in distance, of course.

Erick could turn to lightning and fly where he needed to go, but he was pretty sure that it would take decades, because Eldawae’s estimates of the land’s size were rather guesstimates. Margleknot grew and shifted all the time, after all.

Knowing all of that, it was pretty easy to understand why Yggdrasil was happy to have Veird expand onto a dyson sphere.

Knowing that, it was easy to see why whatever legality and rights of ownership surrounding Veird was a Big Fucking Deal that Erick wasn’t truly prepared for. Not really.

And so, he needed allies, and the Celestial Observatory needed to be freed from Wraithborne’s grip.

And that wasn’t even the whole story of the Celestial Observatory. The main story of this spatially-managed and divided land was even deeper than that, with secrets and powers that Erick had barely read about in Yggdrasil’s Guidebook, but which he kinda wanted to test out.

The Celestial Observatory was not just a land that viewed the sky, it was also a land that viewed the other lands. The true ‘Observatory’ were the crystal mountains above the illuminated clouds. The land below was not the Observatory at all. Not really.

There were two, maybe 2.5 ways to travel through this place.

The main way to travel was kinda difficult. Eldawae had explained how to navigate and move through this land, but Erick wasn’t quite seeing it yet, and he didn’t want to simply ask Yggdrasil for the quick navigation solution.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Ñôv€l--B1n.

Apparently, if he flew for a while, aiming toward a specific person, the land would change around him and he would end up at that person, or near them. That was the simple, overworld-sort-of-travel. It was sort of like how the Black Crystal District that surrounded the Dragon District worked.

And then there was a more difficult way which involved dipping below the clouds, for the lands down there were not connected directly to the mountaintops all around. They were other worlds. Other places that could use some help. Other lands in other galaxies around other stars and other layers that needed help from those on the Good Mountaintops of the Celestial Observatory. That was, in actuality, the main way in which the Celestial Observatory worked.

One could look down from the mountaintops and always see a land of Good people in need of assistance.

This was a rather supreme land of Good, and when people weren’t watching the lands below, those lands changed into other lands that needed help.

Erick could literally spend an entire immortal life flitting down through the clouds and up again, helping people who could use it, or who deserved it. They were ‘random’ lands down there, though by some metric they were not that random at all. Those lands belonged to people who had some distant connection to Margleknot, and who prayed to any sort of iteration of Margleknot, or to the Good gods who held court here.

Every single valley was an open invitation for people to come and help.

Most valleys had watchers, though, and that was the rub.

Those watchers maintained vigilant views on the lands below, and so those lands below remained below, visible and open for any to come and visit, as long as some Good person existed down there, desiring help of any form at all. If the watchers stopped watching, or if the valleys emptied of good people, then the lands would change and a new source of need would open up.

And so, people above the valleys watched the valleys and kept them from switching to new places that needed help, thus they ‘fulfilled their duty’ of keeping the lands around them safe and Good.

It was kinda insidious, and Wraithborne was to blame for a lot of this current culture of the Observatory.

And yet, to find a valley that truly needed help, all Erick had to do was fuzz his vision and his senses, and fly for a while, seeking to right a great wrong. And then he’d be above a valley that needed help. According to what he had heard, he would then find himself above a plagued land, or a land at war, or even something as simple as a woman needing help giving birth who had no one to help her.

It was a siren’s call to help.

A lure.

A demand on every part of Erick’s everything, now that he knew what this place truly was, thanks to Eldawae.

Erick wanted to give in to that siren’s call. To drop down into other worlds and gift them power and prosperity and peace. But that would be stepping out of Margleknot. The way back would remain, of course, but time would shift in the transfer between worlds, and there was no telling how much time would pass on Veird between now and after Erick solved whatever problem there was to solve in whatever valley he managed to enter.

And so, like many of the crystal mountains all around, Erick inured himself to the small problems and good lives he saw that could be made better.

Erick sighed out, releasing his gaze upon the world, shutting his senses and then closing his eyes. He was aiming to find some specific people. Not just anyone who needed help, but those who could help him.

He felt the wind flicker and a chill pass, and then he opened his eyes... And he wasn’t much further from where he started. Hmm. So. Maybe he needed to travel for longer? Eldawae had said that sometimes it took a great deal of blind flying before the world shifted, if you had a great deal of distance to go to get where you wanted to be. Erick was rather certain that ‘where he wanted to be’ was ‘wherever Moonarcher and Darkcaller and Crystalmaster were’.

- - - -

Erick sat down with Lionshard on the balcony of Erick’s house, overlooking the lake. There were more fish in there than before. A lot more biodiversity.

Lionshard ate another tri-berry tart, grinning as he did so, saying, “These little things are delicious.”

“I’m glad I got some seeds from Da’luwe.” Erick said, “I like them, too.”

“To me, the lazulibob and perinom flavors are well-trod paths, but this cupberry is something that truly brings them both together, and which I had forgotten about.”

“I taste strawberry, purpleberry, and blackberry,” Erick said.

“They’re mildly addictive, you know, causing you to be more easily influenced. That’s how these sorts of memory-foods work.”

Erick chuckled. “I had not known that, but it makes sense why Eldawae only offered them that one time, and then when I proved my power they stopped being on offer.” He added, “Sorry about that. I did not know.”

Lionshard smiled. “No worries. When you get as strong as we are then you can enjoy the dangerous things in life. And speaking of dangerous things... Are you truly going to tackle Wraithborne?”

“... Well. Not directly.” Erick said, “I don’t want to get into that war. When I made Benevolence I spoke of the ‘good of all and every individual’, but I certainly didn’t mean ‘good’ as in ‘Good’. The whole concept of Good and Evil as physical things that you can measure and account for is... Disheartening, to say the least. I do not like it, and I would rather offer a different approach to power. My hope is that I can build an extension of my organization on Veird up here; a House Benevolence. An organization that can more easily bring Benevolence to the masses.” Erick gestured to the stars still gathered around the front gate of his property. “I went through a thousand of those before I found your friendly letter, and invited you over. They all want a lot more help than what I can give them, and there are a lot of people out there who want me to bring fire and lightning against all Evil in Margleknot. And I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Lionshard asked, prompting the question that Erick had been thinking about a lot. “The fire and lightning, that is.”

“Because even if I killed Morbion and his Primes and all of that then Wraithborne would simply fall inward, collapsing hard, which would lead to the deaths of trillions.”

“Ah,” Lionshard said, “But we have the Waiting Room, and it is doubtful you could kill Morbion in a satisfactory way. Even reincarnating him into a better form would simply allow that Evil to be free in Margleknot, and I highly doubt he doesn’t have specific protections against you by now.”

“I think I could still kill him if I needed to... Maybe.” Erick said, “But I don’t want to. I want him to come to the decision that being Not-Evil is better than being Evil... but then we come to the problem of Evil, and that’s the sticking point. Can Elemental Evil ever be not-Evil?” Erick looked to him. “I’d like to have that conversation now, if you’re willing.”

Lionshard nodded, and then he began, “Good and Evil are large topics, with many wide-ranging problems. But to summarize the issue of having literal good and evil in the universe, we begin at the base.

“Where does Evil start? It starts with thinking of everyone as another thing to be used.

“Where does Good start? It starts with thinking of everyone as someone.

“Evil excels at using people to one’s own positive ends. It is theft and murder and all acts of taking.

“Good excels at using yourself to the positive ends of others. It is gifts and creation and all acts of giving that empower others.

“Neither Good nor Evil are capable of existing on their own. Evil ends up with the world empty and the user upon a throne of dust and nothing. Good ends up in a world where everyone is mediocre without any real goals of their own except to make others happy.

“This is what is meant by the Balance. This is why Good and Evil fuel each other, for there is not a single thriving civilization out there that is not Balanced in some way. The only reason Wraithborne is so successful is because it is a lesser Great Evil.

“Margleknot is not currently Balanced.

“This is why the Celestial Observatory is how it is. It is a land of Good that is no longer able to be Good how it was meant to be, and yet, it is better than how it was before. You saw the place. You saw how there are mountaintops with people living decent lives and valleys where people live in the mud and stone. The Celestial Observatory has not always been like that; a land of plenty and a land of nothing. Many would say it is better how it is today.” Lionshard asked, “Did you go down below the clouds?”

“... I really, really wanted to. If I would have seen something horrendous I might have.”

Lionshard nodded. “The odds of you seeing something horrendous are very large in that land, but it is a good thing you did not go below the clouds. You might have come back above the clouds and a week or a year could have passed.”

“I think I could have handled a week.” Erick said, “But the people in the mountains send people down into those lands below all the time, don’t they? Those lands below certainly didn’t look like they were that far away, time-wise. How does that work?”

“Distance is time, and the Observatory does a lot of Fate Magic to figure out which places they’re looking at which needs help the most, and the timetables required to help those places, but the help they give is no longer absolutely needed, like it used to be.” Lionshard said, “It’s all very complicated, and it’s a lot less fervent today than it used to be. Used to be you had ascetic monks in the mountains, divining truth and time in what they saw below, and then intervening right at the right times to avert great Evils, or establish great Goods. Now you have a lot larger of a civilization, looking over a whole lot more lands.

“This increase in population is the direct result of Wraithborne’s influence. It is more Balanced these days, with a lot less Good, and so the people in the mountains don’t need to give as much, and so they have more.

“But since the Observatory is Balanced, there is no great counter to Wraithborne’s expansive, grand Evils.

“For Wraithborne is Evil at its core. But it is a softer Evil. One that spreads and infects and draws back to the source and tries to limit its own growth and depravity. It has accepted some basic Goods into its existence, like the idea that if other people are allowed to be selfish, then they can grow powerful, and other, similarly powerful Evils make decent allies-of-convenience against the masses and individuals.” Lionshard stopped explaining as he asked, “Now tell me: Where do you think Benevolence fits into such a strategy of Good versus Evil?”

Erick didn’t have to think for very long. “Benevolence is about having the power to help other people.” He added, “It’s longer than that, but you’ve already read the specific words in my dossier. I once heard a god call it ‘Elemental Altruism, but more self-empowering in order to give any excess power to others, instead of self-effacing’.” Erick asked, “I would have thought Elemental Good wasn’t so much like Elemental Altruism, though. Surely it’s not ‘Good’ to give away every part of oneself to others?”

Lionshard nodded, then said, “Altruism is rather more of a ‘pure’ sort of Good.” Lionshard asked, “But tell me this, now: You’re the strongest person on your world. Would you be okay with someone else being just as strong? Or stronger?”

Erick chuckled. “Sure. I’m fine with that? How is that a question?”

“Just feeling you out. Because yes, I have read your full dossier, Erick, and you have often said that no one should have the sort of power you wield. So my question is a valid one. You don’t believe people should be stronger than you, because you believe that you have the right to choose what happens to others, and that is where Benevolence leads you.” Lionshard said, “That is where you have led yourself.”

Erick frowned a little. “... I can see that point, but at the same time I do make good decisions for the prosperity of all and every individual, so this is a power I am fine with wielding, and I am fine with other Benevolent powers out there.”

Lionshard smiled a little. “Good. I doubted that you would be broken by a little bit of logical fallacy talk, but these things are important to discuss when going up against the big problems of the universe that have clear parallels with your own existence. You are clearly Good, but in some ways you are selfish, and as long as you acknowledge that, then you can stay out of the Good and Evil war.” Lionshard said, “Just like how Nothanganathor stayed out of that war with Malevolence, for Malevolence is very ‘good’ at killing corruption, and therefore Malevolence is in great use across much of Margleknot. If you thread that same needle then you can stay out of that war with Benevolence, too, and likely right some of the Balance back to Good through indirect means.”

Erick looked at Lionshard. “I thought Malevolence was on the side of Evil?”

“Not directly. It is similar to how Benevolence is not directly on the side of Good.”

Erick had to stop and think about that for a moment. “... Huh.” He asked, “Do you think my idea of Wraithborne turning not-Evil has merit? That they might actually do such a thing?”

“There are as many paths to power as there are drops of infinity in this fractal universe.” Lionshard said, “Evil might turn less-Evil if given enough incentive. Just as the Enclave has asked you to prove your power to prove your worth to them, in order to bring Balance, there are Evil lands out there which are looking to escape the Balance through you and yours, which is another way to make the Enclave happy. Not every Evil wants to remain Evil, especially if the alternative is a vast amount of power and a life that is easier to live, without paladins and otherwise crashing down doors now and again.” Lionshard said, “I think that is where you will be making the most headway with your goals; offer power and redemption in the same gift, and see your influence multiply.”

Erick really needed to reestablish House Benevolence up here in Margleknot—

“Ask the question I know you have wanted to ask me for a long time.” Lionshard said, “Now is the time for it, Erick.”

Erick felt a weight of a large moment upon his shoulders, for yes, now was a good time to bring up a question that Erick had held in his back pocket for a while. Erick asked, “Would you like to become a member of House Benevolence?”

“Nope! But I will be an ally you can count upon.” Lionshard rapidly added, “That you can count upon. No others. I’m not meeting anyone else but you.”

Erick paused. And then he laughed. “I’ll take it!”

“Now let us discuss how you can access the Waiting Room so you can find some true members of your House expansion.”

Erick smiled. “I would like that. Thank you.”

Lionshard smiled, then began, “To access the Waiting Room...”

Accessing the Waiting Room to find souls to bring back to life was both easy, and tough.

There were two main ways to do it, and then one more third way which was more dangerous.

The most dangerous way involved killing yourself and then finding the Waiting Room while still having enough personal power in your Margleknot Bank account to resurrect yourself and others. This was the most dangerous way because it involved one’s own death, and then ‘physically’ inhabiting the absolute madhouse of the Waiting Room.

The more normal way to access the Waiting Room involved either:

A) Projecting one’s living soul into the Waiting Room and trying to see through the cacophony of souls to find the ones you were looking for, and then spending either the resons to bring them back, or using your own spellwork to do the same. A variation on this method is what Wraithborne did. They used a trio of people to search the Waiting Room for souls; a diver, an anchor up above holding the diver secure, and a contractor who would facilitate the resurrection of the found soul. Wraithborne’s method almost 100% guaranteed that the person projecting into the Waiting Room wouldn’t die themselves. Trying this method on one’s own usually ended up in a suicide.

Or B) Asking a god to do all the parts of diver, anchor, and dealer for you, with you in the driver’s seat.

After thanking Lionshard and sending him away, Erick brought out the little black book he had ‘received’ from the paladin in the Celestial Observatory.

First, it was a primer on how to reach the Waiting Room and then came a whole bunch of stuff about how to find the souls you wanted to find. After that primer came the names and small dossiers of the 87 people who were Erick’s targets for reincarnation. Or they were the targets the book wanted him to bring back.

The black book was rather suspect, but from what Erick was seeing, it was a good list, and the small instructions in the book for how to bring them all back matched the instructions that Lionshard had given him in a general sort of way. And so, Erick put the book away in his house, and made plans for what came next.

Erick chose to go for option B, to enlist the help of a god to access the Waiting Room, because he needed to check out some gods anyway.

This resulted in a trip to the Mortal Lands of Margleknot and a change of attire from the truly nice-looking glowthread, to something more subdued and made of cotton. Erick missed his glowthread already.