Chapter 268, 1/2

Chapter 268, 1/2

Erick instantly put up a [Hasted Shelter] around the vast swath of his gate space inside Benevolence Itself, encompassing all of his family and a good hundred kilometers out, his Authority over the space feeling rather absolute in that expression of power. He wasn’t sure when the war would start, but he was going to take some time and reconnect with everyone he loved...

Most everyone.

Kiri was absent. As were everyone else from the House. Zolan and Mox. Burhendurur, Aisha, Volaro, Raingorl. Poi’s sister and Teressa’s husband were absent, too.

Yggdrasil grew over there, but his avatar wasn’t here. He was probably busy, though.

Ahhh... This was mostly everyone, and that was good enough.

Erick hugged Ophiel more, and Ophiel talked of everything that had happened, and Erick only knew some of it because Yggdrasil had only spoken of some of it—

“Wait. That part.” Erick asked, “About Oozy Stormcaller? What’s that? I told Melemizargo about him before all of this stuff. What happened to him now?”

Orange Ophiel excitedly said, “He’s the Avatar of Nothanganathor!”

Blue Ophiel said, “One of his avatars.”

“The main one,” Jane said, silencing all other talk. “He’s also gone. Everbless vanished, too, and we haven’t been able to find either of them and we’re pretty sure they’re not on Veird anymore. They’re probably on Fenrir. Our expeditions to that place have been difficult, to say the least. We have schedules of people leaving, but we have only fragments of memory of sending anyone, with Yggdrasil telling us not to send anyone again. We don’t send people out there anymore.”

So that was terrifying.

Kinda expected. Still terrifying.

Erick had one hand around his back, holding up Purple Ophiel who was currently hanging onto Erick’s neck with his arms, while his other arm was weighed down by Green and Yellow Ophiel. Erick made a decision. Then he said, “Nothanganathor hasn’t been allowed to kill Veird, because he wants to stay in the good graces of Margleknot... And I see most of those words are a surprise, so I guess Yggdrasil hasn’t been able to tell you all much?” Erick rapidly moved on, “So we’re fighting a defensive war. Protecting the ways in, disallowing certain magics, etcetera. I believe that Yggdrasil and myself can protect one Veird. As soon as we have more people from here that can protect more, then we’ll be protecting more. As soon as we can strike back, we’re striking back. Nothanganathor is a mastermind planner, but it’s taken him almost 12,000 years to get to this point, so we might have a little bit of time.

“Nothanganthor gave me a week's time frame before he starts doing shit, but I don’t believe that at all.”

“A much more likely scenario is that he will strike within hours, while I am deep in a get-together with this family. So we’re going to do this, but it’s going to be fast.”

Everyone recognized the need for that. Ophiel gradually slipped away from Erick to stand strong.

And then Erick smiled, ruffled Ophiel’s hair, hugged him fast, and then said to everyone, “Hugs first, though! And I got power ups for everyone! Those powerups are kinda scattered all over, but we’ll get to them soon enough.”

And then Erick went right to Quilatalap, to look the big guy in the eyes, to feel his heart beat hard and see Quilatalap’s eyes light up wonderfully as they got closer together. Erick wrapped Quilatalap in his arms, and Quilatalap chuckled as he hugged Erick back.

He was warm.

After a long moment, Quilatalap said, “Welcome back, Erick. I missed you.”

“It’s good—” Erick choked up for a moment. “It’s good to be back.” He pulled back and kissed Quilatalap on the lips. They would be doing a lot more than that later but this was good enough for now. “Love you. I missed you, too. I heard I was gone for a year and change?”

“It’s been about 2 years now. There have been some Time Magics on this side of the equation, but I heard there were some on your end, too?” Quilatalap said, “It’s been pretty crazy. Not too crazy that I didn’t have time to make a bunch of food, waiting for today. I made practically everything you can think of, and in great quantities, too.”

Erick smiled wide. “I’ve got a lot of surprises for you, later, too.”

“I look forward to them,” Quilatalap said, smirking.

Jane cleared her throat.

Erick rapidly turned to his family, and to Jane, rushing to them to hug them and talk and catch up.

Soon, food came out and Solomon spoke of warfronts and Quiet/Forever Wars and Erick mentioned a few things about valkyries. Every single Jane-derived person and the original all scoffed at that, and then Solomon started talking about how Erick had really leaned in to the whole ‘Norse shtick’, hadn’t he.

“Ha! I even sacrificed my ‘eye’ —that All Seeing Eye— when I Ascended, so yeah.” Erick laughed over a plate of mashed potatoes and so much great gravy. “Kinda!”

“And Nothanganathor is the wyrm that eats the universe,” Jane said, frowning a little over her plate of meat.

Destiny waved her knife around and strongly said, “If he tries to eat Veird it means we’ll be that much closer to his heart.” And then she made a stabbing motion with the butter blade.

Erick chuckled, and so did some others, but the Janes were serious. Poi and Teressa were serious, too.

Erick stated, “Nothanganathor will not win this war. We will not roll over and die. We will exterminate him here, and everywhere else— Ah. I just realized. Poi. I can’t [Telepathy] you without running the risk of a few possible weirdities, right now, so did you pick up anything from Yggdrasil? He should have been limited in communications while I was gone, but now he should be fully open? Maybe regarding the information I distributed to everyone, and also the minds of the valkyries?”

Everyone looked to Poi.

Poi looked like he had some small thoughts that he had been waiting to share for a long time, and now it was time to share them. Poi said, “Your information is being curated by Ascendant Prime. Preliminary information was supposed to go out 30 minutes after your arrival, but we’re in a [Hasted Shelter] and last I heard there was a lot more information than anyone expected. So we haven’t gotten any of the big stuff. Yggdrasil has been drip feeding us major points for the last two years, but we’re absolutely sure that he used some Time Magic when he divulged information that he shouldn’t have divulged, in order to go back in time and erase ever having given us that information. He was limited, and it wasn’t by his own choice. He was being controlled by someone far beyond himself.”

Yes; Yggdrasil had been controlling himself...

The people here didn’t see it that way, though. Everyone at the very large table, out under the Benevolent Sky, was pretty worried about all of that; about the implications Poi was suggesting. Except for Ophiel.

Red Ophiel said, “Yggdrasil is just a doodoo head! He didn’t mean anything malicious about it!”

Not everyone believed Ophiel at all. A few of his selves didn’t quite believe what he was saying, either; or maybe those faces were simply the faces of self doubt. Probably self doubt, now that Erick was really looking.

Shit.

Was it really that bad while Erick had been gone?

Erick said, “We did a ritual to prevent Nothanganathor from Erasing people, like how he Erased Debby, and Yggdrasil was a part of that. Did he really lose so much trust for you all to think this way, and yet he was still trusted by Rozeta, Melemizargo, and Fairy Moon?”

After saying that, everyone was slightly less worried about Yggdrasil.

Poi said, “Facts remain facts. He used Time Magic to subvert events.”

Jane clarified, “He sent ten thousand troops to die against an incursion in the upper levels, with Nothor Beasts raging unchecked in the back lines. 32,000 people died by the end of that event— that we know of. It was a massacre. Every altercation with the Red is a massacre of unknown proportions, as some people simply never exist; eaten by the Red Sparks.”

Before Erick got really worried—

Solomon clarified, “Yggdrasil gave us good information. We failed to act on that information correctly, only realizing what he meant after the events happened.”

Destiny looked to Jane, saying, “Those troops did their job. They stopped the Claw from forming.”

“And it could have been a lot easier if—” Jane cut herself off.

Silence.

Erick wasn’t sure what a Claw was, but he could guess easily enough. He could also tell this was an old argument. To be sure of what he was seeing, though, he asked, “So Yggdrasil told you to defend a spot, and you defended it, but not as well as it could have been defended?”

Poi said, “Yes. He could have told us about certain obvious elements in the backlines that are painfully obvious in retrospect... And we think he did. And then he undid that telling... Or Phagar did. We’re not sure. Honestly, Erick. It’s been... Difficult.”

Solomon said, “Strained.”

Teressa said, “The Benevolent Sky is all fucked up, Erick.”

Teressa’s daughter, Lenitha, repeated after her mother, “Sky’s fucked up!”

Teressa nodded, softly saying, “That’s a powerful word, now, Lenitha. Don’t go saying it unless you really mean it.”

“I know, mommy!”

Evan said, “The House is having trouble, with the minotaur schism and the assassinations. The Overseers survived, but Zolan was crippled. He’s still recovering his memories.”

Destiny said, “Those fuckers at Death’s Throne turned Red briefly, too, before we exploded that part of the world. Quintlan has a great big hole in the center of it now, and so does the upper layer, and all the way down to the close Underworld.”

Quilatalap said, “They deserved it for abandoning this world for promises of another. I apologize for not annihilating them with you sooner.”

Silence. Nobody quite knew what to say to Quilatalap’s apology.

Quilatalap had had a strained relationship with everyone here, hadn’t he? Ah, shit.

And then Candice said, “You were busy with the Red Beasts. Quilatalap. We all had shit on our plate.”

That seemed to heal some bridges.

Jane still looked like she had a bridge on fire, though.

Erick made a decision. He said, “It sounds to me like Yggdrasil did what he could in order to play both sides of the coin because he needed to do that to allow for the victories we will have going forward, and that a lot happened that I am not aware of. Yggdrasil won’t be playing any sides anymore. He’s here, and he’s fully for the defense of Veird, just like me, just like everyone here.

“Things are complicated up there. Things are complicated down here, too. I really want to hear about whatever happened at Quintlan and all the rest, but first: I’m going to start at the beginning. I’m going to tell you everything that happened, and you can ask questions, but I will be as brief as I can.” With great aura control, Erick cast some lightward images on both sides of the table, so no one needed to turn around to see what he was saying. He began, “So I started on Fenrir, which I learned later took me a year and a half to land upon for some reason, and now it’s 2 years since I left, which is some more lost time somehow, but continuing... So [Duplicate] is really useful for being out in the middle of nothing, and then came mana production and collection...”

Erick rapidly moved through his Ascension, talking in mostly broad strokes about how he went with an infinitely dense core. That was primarily for Destiny and Solomon’s use, and both of them looked highly interested in that, but Quilatalap was fascinated, too. Erick decided he’d be telling them all about that in more detail later.

For now, Erick moved on to the first ‘fight’ with Nothanganathor—

Jane interrupted, “Dad. Do the one display and we’ll turn the table or something. I feel like I’m missing a lot if I don’t watch both, or that one of them is going to turn into an actual threat. We’ve had stuff like that happen before.”

Erick paused. He looked around. “Really? I mean... I can see it on your faces. I just didn’t expect— Ah. It’s a fae-like name-calling thing, isn't it.”

Solomon said, “Displays of the wyrm have a way of turning real.”

Candice suddenly asked, “Is he a fae, dad? We’ve had debates about that.”

“No. He is not fae.” Erick said, “The scale of power goes ‘mortal-ascended-fae’, in that order. Gods are outside of the scale, and mostly weak because they don’t take direct action. I’m at the high-end of Ascended. Wizards are at the high-end of mortals.” Erick said, “Tell me about this image-attack.”

Some unsure relief passed through the group as most of them reoriented themselves on the new power scale.

And then Jane said, “The white Void Wall around Eralis in the Songli Highlands came to Red life after you left. It tried to eat Rozeta’s temple and Nirzir. Nirzir fought it off, but not without Phagar’s direct help. Eralis had been a bastion of protection before that. Now it’s a population crisis. Most people have moved away.” She added, “Phagar appointed Nirzir as his Champion after that. Phagar’s been a big help for the truly dangerous things.”

Erick breathed deep. “Oh. Shit.” Erick had a lot of complicated emotions about that. “Congrats to her, then. Um.” Erick got up from the table and said, “Let’s move some things around. Nothanganathor isn’t here though. My Authority in this place is rather absolute. He’s not here.”

Jane said, “Ophiel rescues a lot of people from the Red Sparks from this place. It’s a great temporary shelter.” She got up. “Still rather not have displays of the Red Wyrm on both sides.”

Erick nodded. They reorganized the table, and soon they were all watching one lightshow display in front of them, and Erick paid special attention to see if Nothanganathor was counter-scrying through his magic. He didn’t seem to be, but Erick stopped showing the man’s true leviathan face after Jane’s request.

Erick continued with the story.

Soon, Erick was at the part where he did the Margleknot Emergency Response Communication Yorddle, and what that all meant, while handing out notes on Layers and the Universe to everyone. He didn’t have any paper so he had to make some of that himself in the moment, so simply used some resons to conjure paper from thin air, taking it from some universe that wasn’t using it.

Which brought Red Sparks into the space.

Erick ruthlessly crushed the Red, saying, “Well fuck you too, Nothanganathor. So that’s a trap there. Don’t use resons without specifically targeting a universe that doesn’t have his influence. Like this.” Erick raised his hand and pulled some paper out of the air, and this time the paper was perfectly normal and clear of influence... it had also cost a good 25 resons to do that. “So that should have cost 1 reson, since I was plucking from side realities in this Layer, but it cost 25, which means that other side realities are pretty far away from this slice of reality.”

Destiny nodded as Erick spoke, and then said, “Wizardry has gotten harder.”

“I’m surprised you could do that at all,” Solomon said. “Without inviting the Red in.”

Jane asked, “You’ve quantified Wizardry?”

Erick said, “No. That wasn’t Wizardry—” Destiny was about to argue, and she’d be right to argue, but Erick looked to her and rapidly added, “It was close, but it wasn’t Wizardry. They’re the same thing, but different. Maybe resonwork is Small Wizardry? I’m not sure. What I did was pull from side realities with resons. Grand Wizardry is more an expression of Authority, I would say. Resons are merely the magic of the Fractal Universe—” Erick panicked as he realized something.

The valkyries would have used some resons naturally, just to do stuff that they normally did. They knew it would be harder to do that sort of thing here, and a lot of them weren’t very good at that magic yet, but resons were the innate magic of this universe, and so people in-the-know about all that would use resons when they wanted to do stuff.

And Erick’s valkyries were in-the-know.

“I need to check on—” Erick rapidly stepped away from the table and opened a portal to the valkyrie center, saying, “—the valkyries... which are fine.”

Through a distortion of time, there was Aloethag, all orcolish, and Phagar, looking like Erick, sitting in a fractal waiting area, in front of the valkyrie center. They were having tea with each other on a nice white table, along with a few others. There was Nirzir and some orcols from Treehome, along with Shivraa.

Phagar, Aloethag, and Nirzir were the only ones moving at a normal speed. Everyone else was slowed down to 1/60th time. This was because Erick was viewing them at an increased time rate, and when someone viewed the God of Time with Time, then Phagar easily looked back at whoever was looking at him. All gods did that, of course, but Phagar did this more than all the rest.

Champion Nirzir seemed able to do this, too. She rapidly turned around when Erick opened the portal. She smiled and said, “Erick!”

Phagar interrupted, “We’ve caught all the problems that could have happened here with this resonwork magic. It’s a problem we’ve been working on for two years now, and we expected your people to try it, so we were ready for it. Take your time with your family.”

Erick sighed in relief. He smiled, and said, “Hello, Nirzir. Hello, Aloethag, Phagar. Thanks for watching out for this. I wasn’t aware that resonwork would be trapped.”

Phagar said, “You’ve got some time to fix that. We hope you have a truly good solution, because we haven’t been able to find one. As for the war: We expect Claws to descend in 6 real hours, which means it could happen between 4 and 8 hours from now, or 10 days at your current rate of time alteration. The timeframe of arrival gets smaller and smaller as we get closer and closer, which is why I can only give you an estimation. We’d like you there to combat a few of them. See what you can do. But until then, take some time with your family. You got about a week at your current rate of acceleration.”

Erick felt supreme relief. “Thank you. We won’t take all that time.”

Phagar nodded.

Aloethag asked, “I’m—”

Sumtir, the God of Righteous War, appeared on the other side of the portal, in the tea-time meeting, saying, “I love everything about the valkyries. They will be fantastic warriors. They are Propagation, though, so they are disallowed. However you manage to make it work, my generals will want to be a part of this magic.”

The God of Righteous War was adamant in his suggestion/demand.

Erick had no problem saying, “Of course.”

Aloethag said, “I want to help with this magic, Erick. With as much Carnage and Blood that is inside this magic, I can easily connect it to the Red Dream. This spell will never go wayward if you do this.” Aloethag added, “But I want the spell pledged to me.”

“Sorry, Aloethag,” Erick said, feeling glad that he could be completely honest here, “The spell is already pledged to the defense of the universe under the Fractal, and they already cleared up all those sorts of issues.” He said to everyone, “It won’t be allowed here on Veird, where my Siphon seems artificially minimized, but it’ll work well outside of Veird, which is where it needs to work. We’ll talk more about that later. I’m catching up with my family. Thank you for ensuring that the stuff I brought with me isn’t a problem. I foresaw many issues, but not the reson issue.”

Sumtir and Aloethag looked like they both had more words to have over that proclamation—

But Phagar moved on, saying, “The side-slices of Veird are all infected minimally. It started a while ago, and we believed it was to corrupt all attempts at Small Wizardry. We didn’t have the words to understand what was happening until today. Think of a fix, if you can, Erick.”

Erick said, “Let’s put that on the docket as the next thing to fix, to make the ways in harder.”

Phagar nodded. “We have some good news: there have been many attempted ‘Erasures’ but all of them were thwarted. The people still got damaged heavily by Nothor Beasts and other workings of Malevolence, but Rozeta patched-in some Child Protections for anyone who was affected. [Greater Treat Wounds] on everyone suffering from a Malevolence attack was enough to end that secondary threat.” He added, “You could work for years to fix things and still not be done, so go be with your family for now, Erick. We’ve got this.”

Erick was a little nervous, but not overmuch. He nodded. He closed the portal. He turned back to his family, and sat back down, saying, “I wasn’t aware resonwork was trapped. We’ll be fixing that soon.”

Solomon asked, “How would you fix that?”

Erick cast some imagery into the air, and began, “At first thought, I’ll be making Benevolence mana-dungeons and then attaching them to this spell called [Spellsurge Weave] along with [Benevolent Cleanse], and...”

The magic talk didn’t last too long, because Erick could see that Jane, Poi, and Evan wanted to get back to the tactical information regarding Margleknot.

So Erick got back to the story.

- - - -

Eventually, Erick spoke of his first meeting with Nothanganathor and the following events with the Fae Council, in complete detail.

Solomon sat back in his chair, saying, “Fuck. I’m even more angry now. The fucker really did tank your entire Wraithborne anti-Contract strategy, didn’t he?”

Erick said, “Wraithborne might be speaking to Tir Geal now that I’m not there, but yeah.”

Erick continued, speaking of fallouts and otherwise.

Eventually, he was done.

Dinner was long done by then, which was a good thing. Erick had ruined all of Quilatalap’s great meal with his terrible news and debriefing, but he would make it up to the man later as much as he could. He would find a way to make up for the Shadow-betrothal-thing, too.

Erick waited.

Jane steeled herself. “Yes. It’s time.”

And that opened the floodgates. Relief flooded Erick—

And Abigail softly nodded. “Yup. Okay.”

Beth said, “Yeah.”

Evan said, “Yeah.”

Candice smiled a little. “Thank the fucking gods because holy shit yes I want to be a dragon.”

Erick snorted in a sudden laugh. For a brief moment, Erick was thrilled. His kids finally wanted the power that he wanted to give them... And then he realized that things must be really bad for them to actually want the power now. They had talked about some of how bad it was... but not really. Erick had seen some of the world... but not really.

Erick left that conversation for later.

Gifts for now.

Evan asked, “Can you do a western dragon? Or just the eastern style? I don’t want to be an eastern-dragon.”

Erick paused. “... Uh? You know. I never guided it that way. The dragons that happened in Tir Geal and the Endless desert all turned out either western or a little weird; probably because that’s the kinda dragon they imagined when they imagined ‘dragon’. Or maybe it was a genetic thing. Or something else. I only know 90% of how this magic works.” Erick thought for a second, then said, “I can probably force a certain form with some reson work... I’m not going to experiment on you.

“Also, the Dragon Curse is still active in the world, and that’s probably making every dragon into a leviathan-shape. We break that and we break the leviathan shape.”

Candice had been waiting for her father to finish before she said, “I don’t care about the shape. I want to be a dragon—” She glared at Evan a little. “Because the power is necessary for what is to come.”

Evan pulled back his objection, “You’re right.” He said to Erick, “Let’s do this thing. We can do the spiders later.”

Erick smiled a little.

And soon, 5 of Erick’s kids were dragons.

Every single one ended up as a western dragon of a different color, each of them maybe 25 meters long, and each of them loving it. They rapidly turned back into their normal forms, hugged their father, and then rapidly began talking with each other about strategy in the war now that they could bring more power to bear on the enemy.

Erick wanted to spend some more time with them in that conversation, but they all told Erick that Teressa wanted to talk with him.

Jane said, “The Benevolent Sky is all kinds of fucked up, changing at a moment’s notice and with each battle, but it’s thanks to Teressa and the Benevolent Sky and Kiri that we’re able to fight back in a real, tangible way. You should talk to Teressa.”

- - - -

Erick walked over to Teressa, who was sitting on a bench and looking at the Benevolent Sky beyond the edge of the Hasted Shelter. The Sky was kinda wonky right now, with white lightning everywhere and black tangles also everywhere. Erick had spent a few minutes looking at it earlier, but when he saw an attack going down at House Benevolence, he had thought hard about ending that attack, and then the prognostication of the attack had evaporated; it never happened.

The Sky was kinda unreliable right now.

Still useful for general, on-demand strategy, when forces were lined up and moving and could not change course, but not very useful for true prognostication. Such was the nature of a Wizard War.

Teressa’s little girl, Lenitha, didn’t care about any of that. Lenitha was out of her mother’s back basket and gathering flowers in a nearby field. Lenitha was something like 18 months old, but she was already out there, playing with flowers, and she had been saying words all day long. Orcols were already fast to develop, but Lenitha was above and beyond advanced.

Teressa turned as Erick got close and smiled in a wonderful sort of way. “Welcome back, Erick.”

Erick said, “I’m glad to be back. I hope my reinforcements are going to be enough.” Erick sat down on the bench next to her. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough go of it.”

Teressa chuckled. And then she sighed, tried to smile some, and then she looked away, back to the Sky.

She dropped a bomb.

“I don’t know Lenitha’s father. He was taken by the Red.”

Erick stilled. “His name is Dariok.”

‘Was’ Dariok.

Oh.

Shit.

Teressa chuckled, and then that chuckle turned dark and sad, and she whispered between the quiet sobs, “Please don’t let Lenitha see me cry. Illusions, or some— thank you.”

Erick made it look like the two of them were talking about the Sky as he put an arm around Teressa and guessed at some events that had happened while he was away. He held Teressa, and Teressa sobbed.

After a minute, when the crying slowed, Erick asked, “A Nothor Beast?”

“Or the Claw attack last month,” Teressa said, head in her hands, sobbing out some final cries. She tried to breathe deep and she eventually got herself together. She sat up straight. “Thanks, Erick.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for... for any of that.”

Teressa shook her head. “Tell me about Dar—” Tears fell freely. She touched her face, feeling those tears fall, though she wasn’t sobbing anymore. The tears still came. “That’s his name, alright. He could have died to a Nothor Beast. He could have died to a Claw Event. I’m not sure. The Red didn’t take everything of him... but it took a lot. Was I close to him?”

Erick grabbed a piece of paper out of Possibility, made it into a few sheets of paper, then rapidly wrote down everything he had ever known about Dariok. And then he sealed the papers into an envelope and sealed it in Privacy magics. It had taken a single second to do all that. Teressa’s brilliant emerald eyes shimmered with lightning, Seeing what Erick had done, and then she shut the lightning off, her breath stilling. She didn’t want to Look. Not yet. She could have... But no.

Erick handed her the envelope, saying, “I can tell you some small words, but here’s all I know of him along with several pictures taken from my memories of you two. Your wedding was beautiful, and so was your courtship.”

Teressa took the fat envelope, sobbing briefly. She held the envelope to her chest.

“Tell me a story, please.”

Erick began, “Dariok and you almost met 10 years ago, at the Orrery of Rozeta, for you were both down there for the Benevolent Essence Program. He was there to learn about Prognostication and Benevolence, for he had lost his whole tribe to a Deathsoul Shroom event when he was a kid and he wanted to be sure that something like that never happened again. He went for the Prognostication stuff long ago, and going to the Benevolent Essence Program was just a step further toward that, and you were just getting into it at that point, though you were our lead Prognosticator already. You were still a Juggernaut at that time. He was a Scribe with Warrior tendencies.

“You two actually met a year later, here at the House.” Erick said, “I didn’t know it at the time, but he would eventually marry you not too long later, and then move into the cloud castle house. He was great at the grill...”

Erick spoke about Dariok, keeping his own sadness at bay, because Teressa needed him now. She had been struggling with understanding how she had had a kid and probably a few empty rooms at the cloud castle.

A half-empty closet. Two sinks in the bathroom, with only one occupied. A whole trophy room for Dariok’s hunting trophies, that was probably gone right now, or at least empty.

Erick had really liked the guy.

Teressa’s pain tore her up, but soon Lenitha came over and Erick dispelled the illusions while Teressa cleaned herself. With a steady smile, she grabbed Lenitha —who started giggling at being picked up so high— and happily said, “You haven’t truly met Erick yet, have you, little Lenitha!”

Lenitha said, “He talked a long time at dinner!” She settled onto the crook of Teressa’s arm, saying, “Hello, Wizard!”

Erick smiled brightly, saying, “Hello, Lenitha! I left when you were still in your mother’s belly. You grew up fast.”

“You were away too long!” Lenitha said, putting as much scolding into her tiny words and as much furrowing into her brow as the little girl could. “Everyone says! Why no one tell you at dinner!” She looked at Teressa. “Mom! Why not you yell! You said you would!”

Teressa had so many conflicted emotions in that moment. She decided to say, “You’re dropping words again, Lenitha. It’s ‘Why didn’t you yell at him’, and I didn’t yell because we only speak loud in true anger, okay?”

Erick chuckled, putting on a good show of not hurting inside, just like Teressa was doing, because that’s what you did for kids when you could.

- - - -

Erick didn’t sugarcoat anything with Ophiel as he held the red version of his son tight, saying, “I missed you so much and I want to be here more, but there’s a war on. I’m so sorry for leaving like I did. Are you okay? Talk to me about anything and everything while you can, while we can be here and be safe and happy.”

Red, Yellow, Orange, and Cyan were with him, here in a grove away from the others. Ophiel’s other bodies were elsewhere, as Erick guessed they usually were. Erick didn’t get to spend much time with Ophiel after he was born; not nearly enough time at all.

Red softly spoke against Erick’s chest, “It’s been scary, but we survived.” Cyan said, “I missed you!” Orange said, “Yggdrasil has been a jerk!” Yellow added, “He wouldn’t tell me everything all the time! Terrible brother!” Red pulled away, because Cyan was softly saying it was his turn, and then Erick was hugging Cyan as Red said, “I know that Yggdrasil had ‘ ‘ ‘responsibilities ’ ’ ’. Still not happy about that. Never gonna be.’ Yellow added, “It was so annoying!” Orange said, “He did it for the good of everyone but I can still be mad at him.” Red asked, “Right? Can I be mad?”

Erick hugged Yellow as he said, “Yes, you can certainly still be mad. You can be mad at me, too. I’m very sorry I had to go away for that long.”

All four of Ophiel went a little still. Then Cyan mumbled, “We’re just a little mad.” Purple stepped out of Cyan, saying, “Just a little!”

Purple had shown up out of nowhere, and now there were 5 Ophiel around Erick. Erick was pretty sure that Purple had died trying to do something or save someone somewhere else, and now he was here.

Ophiel was still doing that.

Purple clambered to hug Erick next and Yellow made way.

Erick hugged Purple, saying, “I’ll try to make it up to you, Ophiel. I really will.” Erick hugged Purple a bit tighter, and all of them liked that. “Can you tell me about the war?”

Red said, “It’s been bad.” Purple climbed off, saying, “I stopped a Nothor Beast eruption in Minotown. I died—” Purple rapidly realized he had fucked up by mentioning that. They all did. Purple rapidly added, “But I got my full mana production back a year ago! That’s good news!” Happily, Yellow said, “I can do a lot more!”

Erick smiled and focused on the good. “That’s great! I thought it was going to take a long time.”

“I healed faster inside Benevolence Itself,” Red said. Yellow added, “Rozeta helped.” And then Cyan looked away. All of them looked away, and they stilled. Cyan looked back. “You told Teressa about Dariok.”

Erick had briefly worried that something horrible was happening.

Just some horror with his loved ones, though.

Erick softly nodded, as a bunch of leaps of logic came to him. At least Ophiel had known of Dariok, so there were ways to prevent Erasure from affecting everything aside from that Establishment ritual that they had done half a day ago. Perhaps sometimes the Erasures were just badly done? Could a person be brought back from that?

How had Ophiel survived that Erasure intact?

Oh.

Ophiel had survived a lot of Erasures.

Dariok was just one Erasure that Ophiel had been privy to knowing.

How many people did Ophiel know, which were no longer here?

Erick picked up Cyan because Cyan looked like he wanted to be picked up, and held him, saying, “You’ve been very brave. You’ve been picking up all these broken pieces of lives and memories and holding onto them as best you could, not knowing how to tell people what they had lost. Some people have held on in small ways to those who were Erased, but you held on in all the ways. That must have been tough.”

Every Ophiel went wide-eyed and then their eyes filled with tears. Erick held on to his son for a while, and they held onto him in turn.

Eventually, stories came out.

Of Dariok, who had lived with Erick and who had been Teressa’s husband for years.

Of Guildmaster Mog of Spur, whom Erick had first met when she bull rushed Bulgan and kicked that bastard out of Spur’s Adventurer’s Guild. She was Erased, and no one knew she should have existed.

Of the entire city of Pearl, of the Sovereign Cities, falling to a Descending Claw of Red. Everyone thought there were just 3 Sovereign Cities now; or 4, because some people still thought of North and South Curio as separate places.

Of others, in other lands.

The animation of Rozeta’s Wall in Eralis in the Songli Highlands had been bad. Half of that city had been Erased. Most of the damage was done to the population itself, with the Claw only striking back at defenders when those defenders proved able to fight.

But mostly, Nothanganathor went after the people. He assassinated targets of opportunity when he could, but mostly he went after the people.

The lands around Stratagold had fallen to a Descending Claw, too, but the city itself had been mostly spared. It had been cracked open like an egg, though.

Ophiel wasn’t sobbing anymore. He was just explaining, as he said, “Stratagold knew something was wrong, dad. They knew their city shouldn’t have a hole in it, but they acted like it should. I spent hours talking to them all, telling them that they had been attacked. Rozeta had to come in and tell them, too. At first the gods told people what they had lost, but... Not anymore. It’s too painful for everyone.”

Ophiel wasn’t talking across multiple bodies anymore. Most of him had vanished off into the rest of Benevolence Itself. Just Red was talking with Erick right now, the two of them sitting on a bench.

Erick stared out at the Benevolent Sky, beyond the [Hasted Shelter]. It was white and full of lightning with ten thousand black tangles here and there. It hadn’t been that bad before Erick had left. Now it was bad.

“Nothanganathor is killing people most of all, to make this entire world non-viable,” Erick said, softly, with quiet horror in his voice. “How bad is it, Ophiel?”

“We got a lot of people when the Merge of Worlds happened. Minotaurs; a few million. They’re great guys. Mostly the angels and demons got bodies and... They’re kinda problems, but they’re making mana and... But... of the 550 million we had, we’ve got 232 million people left,” Ophiel said, frustrated. “4.5 billion right now, but... most of those are the dead come back to life.”

From an estimated 550 million to 232 million. Half the living world, gone, and dead civilizations returned.

Gods.

This was a horror.

Erick held Ophiel as Ophiel cried again, sobbing about how stupid angels and stupid demons kept going to war while Claws descended, or when Leviathans rose. He spoke of how Avandrasolaro was helping with all that, but he was fighting a losing battle.

When Ophiel stopped crying, Erick sat in silence with him, just holding him.

He gazed upon many things at that moment. Through Benevolence Itself, Erick looked upon all of Ophiel as almost all of them were taking breaks now, three of them sleeping, crashed out after the emotional turmoil, but Blue still watched the Benevolent Sky, plotting courses to his next actions. There were so many actions to take.

Erick saw Jane, who was talking strategy with Candice, both of them clearly leaders of some sort in the world’s collective army. They called themselves the Blue Corps, and their sign was a solid blue circle on the right arms of their jackets. They even had little yellow chevrons and other markings of rank, which looked very Earth-like, honestly. Abigail, Bethany, and Evan were there, also talking strategy. They were less highly-ranked than Jane and Candice, according to their markings, but they were still ranked high. They were using this time to digest everything that Erick had given them, because there had been a lot to digest. Evan seemed to have developed some sort of Book Magic to help organize, and that’s what he was doing; he had some sort of role in the House according to the insignia he wore. Abigail seemed to be low ranked in the Blue Corps; maybe logistics? Bethany had some ‘first strike’ insignia; she was probably the first into any battlefield. Candice and Jane seemed to be ‘heavy hitters’, whatever that meant.

And now they were all dragons.

Solomon, Destiny, Quilatalap, and Poi were all talking about Soul Magic and ‘Universal Marks’. Enchanter’s Guile, the gold fae fox that rested on Solomon’s arm when not in fox form, sat to the side, listening, and occasionally talking. He and Quilatalap seemed to be getting along, so that was great. Guile hadn’t wanted to show when Erick had been around, though... And now that Erick was Looking, Guile noted that and excused himself. He retreated back to Solomon’s arm. There was a short delay of concern over that, but Quilatalap rapidly pulled the conversation back to topic.

Erick turned his Sight away so that Guile could rejoin them.

Teressa was still with her daughter, Lenitha. Teressa had not yet cracked the seal on the information packet about Dariock. That packet was in her jacket, and her hand was over the pocket that held it. Lenitha was having fun picking flowers and showing them to her mom, and Teressa didn’t want to interrupt that.

Erick held on to Ophiel, and said, “We’re going to solve some of those problems soon, Ophiel. I’m going to strengthen the doors and plug the holes.” He asked, “Can you go over the categories of monsters, now? What kinda threats are we looking at.”

Red sniffled, then said, “The Beasts are easy when you can see them. Mostly you can’t... Normal people can’t. You can. I can. Yggdrasil can. Gods can only be in so many places, it seems. Phagar is doing the most help. Melemizargo is... having trouble.” Red said, “Nothanganathor is trying to eat Melemizargo’s worshipers out from under him the most. Ascended Mountain is a wasteland. The shadelings all moved to Candlepoint. It’s been tough there, too.”

Erick nodded. “That was one of Nothanganathor’s main ways to fight Melemizargo; kill the worshipers.”

Ophiel breathed deep and seemed better as he said, “Then there are the Claws. When enough Beasts gather they form Claws. Big things. Mostly invisible monsters that rip through population centers and Erase everyone they kill. They’re like... 50 meters tall and super fast. They’re as strong as the Ancients that Melemizargo used to empower.

“And then there are the Leviathans.

“We’ve only had one Leviathan-level threat and it came from Eralis’s former Void Wall. It ate half the city before we killed it.” Ophiel frowned, saying, “That one only existed because three-or-four Claws had been circling the area, eating and eliminating outlying lands and the Clans weren’t fighting them properly. The Claws got all of Clan Star Song and half of Void Song before the Claws made their appearance. They carved the Void Wall into Nothanganathor’s likeness, making it an avatar of him... And then the leviathan ate half the city.”

It was another pair of gut punches among gut punches.

Erick asked, “Patriarch Xue Star Song? Grand Elder Lingxing Void Song?”

Ophiel sniffled, his eyes going dim. “Xue is gone. Jane remembers him but... Lingxing is... not all there anymore.” He hugged Erick from the side, his wings wrapping around Erick as much as they could, along with his arms. “I miss them, dad.”

Erick held Ophiel, asking, “How are people able to survive at all?”

“The dungeons.” Ophiel said, “It wasn’t a well-done system before, but now it is. People evacuate to the dungeons fast in a Red alert. Jane and Candice formed the Blue Corps and they got help from Melemizargo to do that and they’re doing that. The Shades are doing that, too...” Ophiel said, “There are a few more Shades, dad.”

Erick huffed out a quick, almost exhausted laugh. “Who?”

“Al, from Spur,” Ophiel quickly said, to get it all out there as fast as he could. “The Red took Mog but it also took Savral; Al’s son.” Softer, “A pair of Claws tried to Erase Spur... they got kinda far.” Even softer, and looking away, “I forgot to say about Savral earlier... There’s been a lot.”

Erick took a moment.

And then he stood up, controlling his rage, though the sky roiled with more lightning anyway. Erick calmly said, “I need to talk to some gods now, Ophiel. I love you so much. You did a great job while I was gone, and now I’m going to pick up where you left off, Okay? I’ll be back soon.”

Ophiel hugged him once more. “Okay.”

Erick held the hug until Ophiel let go himself. It took a few minutes, but it was minutes that Erick was more than willing to spare.