Ar'Kendrithyst

“You’re here so soon! I’m so delighted! Come on in, come on in. My home is your home.”

Erick walked past a doorway that hadn’t been there until just now, freshly delineating the space between Erick’s lake property and Lionshard’s regal-looking property, with its small hedges and fountains and white castle in the distance. Lionshard stood beside a fountain, smiling brightly, looking pleased as a cat with the chicken. Some gardeners were working on the hedges. Some other people were clipping down branches from the trees to shape them better.

“Thank you for the invitation,” Erick said, looking at all the people, and then at Lionshard— and then at the sky. It was a dual-sun sky, with one sun bright silver and the other gold. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a gold or silver sun.”

Lionshard smiled, saying, “They’re from my home world. One is Fate, the other Choice.”

Erick looked to the suns again. He said, “The one back on Veird is Malevolence, but I didn’t know that until recently.”

Lionshard nodded. “Unless I am deceived, you appear to have discovered a whole bunch of new stuff since last we spoke. I do hope you stay in Margleknot for a long while, before you go back. Or at least you come back as quickly as possible. We could use a man like you around this place.”

Erick chuckled lightly, some of his nerves fading. “Thank you for making this conversation happen quickly. I wasn’t quite sure if it was proper or not to just go for the information requests, or if we needed to spend a few hours talking about the weather first.”

Lionshard nodded. “Let’s at least move to the tea room, and then we can talk about everything you wish to know. Usually I like to walk places, but I can step places, too, in the interest of haste, for I am rather sure you wish to be hasty?”

“Please.”

Lionshard nodded, and stepped to the door of his castle, moving a kilometer in a flash.

Erick joined him.

The great platinum doors opened and Erick walked with Lionshard to a nice room in the suns, overlooking the gardens. A servant walked by and delivered tea and cookies to a table and Lionshard sat down and sipped the tea first. Erick joined him. The tea was brown, but also gold.

It tasted literally divine.

Erick’s eyes went wide. “Fantastic tea?”

Lionshard chuckled. “It is quite good. It’s sunglow tea, and I have played a very small trick on you. Most people can’t enjoy this tea because it would burn them up with power, but True Wizards with entire worlds worshiping them have the capability to become gods, and to test for that, we have this tea. It’s either explosive or bad or delicious or truly the best thing ever, depending on how close you are to godhood, which is why I have done this test; godhood is not great.” He added, “It’s obviously not truly delicious to you; you would know if it was.”

Erick looked at the tea again. He sipped it again. “Pretty good. I give it an 8 out of 10.” He set the tea down, saying, “It seems that you know everything about me, now.”

“Not everything, but I did look you up a lot after I left. I am glad we got to have our first conversation untainted by knowledge, but there’s a lot of knowledge here now, and so we must as we must.”

“So what’s this godhood test about? Veird, or…? Not Veird, then.” Erick scrunched his face. “Yggdra— Margleknot?”

Lionshard said, “A deep set of truths, first.

“Gods are rather powerful, but limited at the same time. A god can do practically anything that their believers can believe they can do and a whole lot more within specific Portfolios. Gods arise from collective belief given solid form. They affect the universe to stabilize the universe around them.

“Ascended arise from individuals, and are therefore able to act on their own.

“Margleknot turns every power that touches him into resons, into foundational strength.

“This includes divinity.

“Margleknot is like a god, but not actually a god. Margleknot is technically Ascended. In practice, he is the best of both powers. He can act outside of what people believe of him. That’s what world trees do.

“Margleknot, because of his base ability to turn everything into solid resons, will never become a god.

“People like you and I need to be careful, or else we might become gods and have the weight of a universe telling us who we ought to be. This is the Curse of Power. It has other names, but that’s one of the big ones.

“It’s easy enough to forgo godhood for most people. Just put on a different set of horns every time you go out into the world to do good. Or never actually show yourself to people, properly. I choose the second path.

“This business with Abarial, located on Layer 172,287,913, if you would do the work to reconnect it yourself, has the capability to change you into a god whether you wish for it or not. This would strip you of all your individuality and you would be making choices based on the ideas of you that people have in their heads.

“Or at least you would be subject to that, if you were a normal Ascended.

“While you are here in this city, Margleknot siphons off all of your divinity from you, turning it into resons. It’s the same sort of system he has for all us Old Dragons here in this district. We can all hide out indefinitely while our homeworlds and layers either move on, forgetting about us, and the Curse of Power goes away, or simply gets stronger and we are practically confined to this land.” Lionshard said, “This siphon of your proto-divinity vanishes if you step out of Margleknot, or Veird, in your case.

“If you helped Abarial, as yourself, then you become even more subject to this Curse of Power. But if you worked the backpowers, and no one knows that you helped them at all, then you can avoid the Curse of Power altogether, and you can remain yourself. Whatever way you choose to move forward, since your reveal as the Father of Margleknot, leaving the power of Margleknot is probably going to have you brushing up against godhood rather fast, so just stay within the first thousand layers of this universe and you’ll probably be good. If you help Abarial as yourself, then you won’t be able to step past the first 500 layers of this universe, and since you’d already be at layer 172 million plus, then you would ascend to godhood rather fast.

“Save several places like the Abarial nexus and you become a god as soon as you step out of the Old Dragon District; you can’t even visit the main city.”

Erick thought.

Lionshard sipped his tea.

Erick said, “Okay. That sounds like good advice. How do I work the backpowers? I don’t want to become a god.”

Lionshard grinned wide. “I’m glad you asked! The first lesson is this: We Ascended help each other without telling the mortals about our community help. So if I help you, you never tell anyone I helped you.”

“… Sure. I can do that— Okay. This is weird. I am usually a very open person.”

“I know. I read your biography.”

“… I have a biography?”

“Would you like to read it?”

“… Yes.”

Lionshard pulled an expensive-looking tome out of the air, handing it over, saying, “Here you go. I have my own copies. I’m sure a lot of other people have lesser ideas of who you are, too, though they didn’t get that knowledge from me.”

The tome was platinum-bound with beaten metal that read ‘Erick Flatt, True Wizard of Benevolence, True Father of Margleknot/Yggdrasil’ in fancy script. The inside pages were thin as light, and strong as steel—

“That one updates in real time based on edited observations of Margleknot. I ask you to keep it in your private collection here in the Old Dragon District, in your deepest vaults.” Lionshard stood. “But for now, would you like to see how to change the universe for the better without leaving your house?”

Erick suddenly laughed, the idea of being a hermit and helping the universe anyway kinda hilarious, and then he stood, saying, “I already planned on making a Benevolence Dungeon for Yggdrasil here in Margleknot. I assume, since you’re head of mana mining operations here in Margleknot, that your suggestions would fall along some path like that?”

“Oh yes. Resons make the universe,” Lionshard said, nodding. “But let’s go see what that actually means.”

- - - -

The orrery was a massive room of stone walls with a dome ceiling that was absolutely filled with glowing lights and twirling flows. It reminded Erick a lot of the orrery inside the Wizard’s Tower inside the Core Lands of Veird, but different. The core orrery was a gravestone made of solid metal. This here was a place of magic and mana and things that didn’t feel like mana at all. There was power here, and only parts of it contained particles at all. Half of the room was awash in not-particles, and not-mana, and Erick’s eyes felt like they should have hurt to gaze upon the unknowable thing he was now staring at.

And then Erick looked to the side, where Lionshard was looking at him, softly grinning and looking quite relieved.

Lionshard said, “A lot of people can’t handle looking at this. I knew you could, though. Sometimes people try to break in here, and sometimes they actually get here, trying to see That Which They Are Not Meant To See, and I find them exploded on the ground from Forbidden Knowledge. Sometimes they survive only partially dead. I do what healing I can and send them on their way. You should know that this is not the heart of Margleknot, but some people consider it as such. I am not one of those people.”

“… I’m not sure which part of that is more worrisome. People can break into your home?”

“People can do anything, Erick. They can even get where they shouldn’t get.”

“Ha. Fair.”

“I advise you, when you make your defensive systems of your home, to add in some resurrection magic like I have here, or make it a lot harder to get into your house. Margleknot is personally looking over your house right now so invasions shouldn’t be an issue, but he’s busy.”

“Good advice.”

Lionshard nodded, then gestured to the map, saying, “Now then… The nexus world of Abarial, located on Layer 172,287,913, is not on this orrery at all. It never will be. It’s simply not important enough. A few billion lives that far from the countless people here in the center is simply too distant of a problem for this map. So we have to set the stage to make it important.”

Lionshard spread his hands at the map, and the whole thing shifted, blossoming outward until the entire thing was beyond the edges of the room and out of sight. In a flashing instant, there was nothing.

The room looked completely empty. It was a void, both in mana sense, and in a particle sense.

Lionshard said, “This leads the way to Abarial. Now, we just need to connect it to the power of Margleknot, which means we direct a flow of power in that direction. It’s as simple as that. Now, how to pay for that power is another question entirely. That is the question that needs real answering.”

Erick nodded. “I’ll be paying for it with my Benevolence monster dungeon, soon as I get it up and running. Can Yggdrasil really not make dungeons himself?”

Lionshard nodded. “Yes. By ancient decree, Yggdrasil is allowed to siphon from people and the things people make for him, but he is not allowed to grow his own power base. People contribute to him, and he stabilizes everything in return. He can bend a lot of rules in a lot of ways, but the base rule must be respected.”

“Do I need to come back here and ask you to hook up the tower to this land later?”

“A small message is telling enough. Mostly it’s all automagic, anyway.” Lionshard said, “Imbuing of power into specific directions in the universe is not a fast thing, but when the people of Margleknot actually try to make things happen out there, it is very easy for us to make things happen. You will be throwing money into the void, though. What you’re doing is helping people, but you’re not getting anything out of it if you do it this way.”

“That’s fine. I’m good with that, if it helps people to live.”

Lionshard nodded. “While I am unsure of what Benevolence can do at scale, I am rather sure that the cost of saving Abarial, which seems like a simple re-hooking of connection, would be measured in the billions of resons. There’s an opportunity cost for helping them, instead of helping yourself, and there are literally infinity problems out there, Erick.”

Erick said, “I will help people at personal cost; this is fine. My own home is stable for now. I have time to learn and to grow and to help a whole lot of people along the way.”

Lionshard smiled softly. “This issue might take several years to solve in a satisfactory way, or shorter, but I have no doubt that you can solve it. When you wish to help more people who request your help, let me know. If you wish to take tasks from me regarding places that need help, I can give you that work, too. The work is literally never-ending, and there is always good to be done.”

Erick felt warmth in his heart at that. He looked at the empty map, and then he asked, “Can you zoom back out?”

Lionshard glanced at the map, and it was back to its full picture.

Erick asked, “What sort of tasks— Ah. I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead of myself. Let’s scale back, please. What is a reson? I feel like you all might actually know that. I am not actually sure what they are, myself.” He held up a finger and a tiny dot of Benevolence appeared. “Like this is one mana of Benevolence. Are resons similarly quantifiable?”

Lionshard laughed. “A strange question! I am surprised you don’t already have an answer of your own. But as for an answer that is from me? A reson is a drop of multivariable Fate; not a simple directed Fate. A Fate can only go one way, toward one thing, affecting cause and effect and possibility all along the way toward a goal. But a multivariable Fate can become anything at all. Personally, a reson is a confluence of Fate and Choice. Your answer will be different.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “A drop of… Prismatic mana?”

“Ah? Hmm.” Lionshard paused, then said, “I suppose, if that is how you would want to name it, then yes. That could work— Well. It’s more than that. I know of the manas. Prismatic mana is one part of a reson. If you go wide enough with mana possibility then you can make a reson. Mana is possibility. Resons are undiluted possibility. A refinement, maybe? … Sure.” He gestured to the bit of Benevolence hovering above Erick’s finger, and said, “That is about a hundredth the power of a reson.”

… Erick got a crazy idea.

“Do you have any magic that can turn mana into resons?”

“Yes. Very complicated systems. Margleknot has the best efficiency, though. Most people just donate straight to him. Margleknot is about a 10 mana to 1 reson system. The most efficient magics a person can cast are at a 50 to 1 basis, and that’s not even taking into account when a person uses actual resons for actual magic. That sort of creation is an instant instantiation of resons that have already collected within a person’s everything, only to come out and be used in the moment of activation. That’s where the name ‘resons’ comes from, you know; as in ‘Margleknot’s resin’, or the ‘sap of a world tree’. Thick and slow but powerful stuff.”

Erick nodded, and then he changed his words slightly as he asked again, “Do you have a stable magic, in a contained space, that uses a well of power to make resons?”

And the very fact that Lionshard didn’t seem to know what Erick was getting at told him a lot. Maybe Yggdrasil hadn’t written about [Renew] in the ‘Book of Erick’ that Lionshard had handed him?

Lionshard raised an eyebrow, saying, “Sure? I can try one of those magics— Let’s step into the hallway out there… Unless we should go further?”

Erick said, “The hallway should be fine. Maybe a bit further would be good.”

Lionshard led the way to a side room, far down the hallway and with several bookshelves and a nice reading nook by the window. He lifted a hand and cast a spell into the air, making a platinum sphere of power that slowly turned gold at the bottom.

Lionshard said, “I threw a good thousand mana at this. It takes about an hour for the Fate inside to turn to amber— Ah. Amber is what I used to call resons…” He looked at the spell, and said, “I haven’t cast this in a very long time.” He looked at it for a moment longer, then gestured toward it. “Your go.”

Erick flooded the thing with [Renew], Benevolence slipping into the Fate Magic and transforming from silver to gold, becoming like thick honey, to fall off the bottom of the platinum sphere like tiny crystals—

“Oh! It’s that [Renew] spell.” Lionshard said, “Yes, we have that here. I thought you were going to do something else.”

Erick had a moment.

Then he laughed. “Bah!” Erick stopped the [Renew]. “I thought I had a trick there!”

“Oh, it's a good trick. Don’t get that wrong.” Lionshard said, “But you’re using my base spell to make the resons and the efficiency there is still around 50 to 1. Fate Magic is decent for this sort of conversion. Fate can do a whole lot, after all. Benevolence, however, seems great for this sort of conversion. If you studied this magic you might be able to get down to Margleknot-levels of conversion; 10-to-1... 20-to-1 might be more realistic.”

“I suppose I didn’t just break the reson-economy, then.”

“Not yet, anyway.” Lionshard smirked. “You know? It is rather hard to read your future. I find it rather delightful— On you, that is. Not being able to read the future of good people is fun. On others I would be appalled.”

“Ha! I never really got into the future-reading thing for similar reasons— Say. I have a wild question, since you read my biography. Do you know what would happen if I were to shoot backward in time to where I fell to Veird with my daughter?”

Lionshard nodded. “In a non-god-world, you could simply do that, but you would be creating another infinity and that infinity would be the one you would live within. For a god-world like Veird, you would end up in your original slice of reality and change everything from then on; gods make the reality solid, after all. In that case a lesser version of you might simply cease to exist, because of paradoxes, and the gods don’t like paradoxes, so you would erase yourself, or the gods would erase you first. However, as an ascended you’re immune to that sort of godly control, so your old self would still exist and the gods will complain and fight you, but you would likely… Well. Likely be forced to either abandon that world or make some pacts with those gods, or fight them to the death. Could go any sort of way.

“If you actively chose to slide into a different slice of infinity at the beginning, then you’d leave the gods behind.” Lionshard said, “That’s for your specific world of Veird, here in this cosmology— Ah! ‘Universe’. I meant ‘universe’... Or multiverse, if you want to call it that. Everyone has so many different names for these things, I swear.”

Erick smiled. “That’s really good news.”

Erick had known the God Pact world was special.

Lionshard nodded. “As for getting to Veird, you have a few different ways. Yggdrasil will get you there in a flash, if I understand the situation right. Otherwise, crossing through layers is how you get from one part of the universe to another without needing to cross the intervening distance; it’s like using your Benevolence gate space, but easier and everyone can do it if you know how.

“It takes about a hundred resons to cross through layers, if you understand my meaning.”

… All of that was incredible news, for sure, but Erick wasn’t sure he did understand what Lionshard was getting at, exactly.

A backdoor to Veird? Reachable under his own power? One that didn’t go through Yggdrasil?

Ah.

A path that Yggdrasil could say that he had no knowledge of Erick doing.

That was it.

Erick wasn’t going back yet, though. Not without an army behind him and the weight of law or power, whichever one worked better.

Lionshard saw when Erick realized what he was saying, so he moved on, “It only takes one reson to flicker through the individual infinities of a layer, or to bring something from a different part of the individual infinity to your person. Less than one, really. Resons really are the best form of mana out there.”

“Do you have a book on resons conversions?”

“I do, but you should look up more examples than my own. Yggdrasil would be a better teacher than I for that, by far.” Lionshard said, “You’ve already got the gist of it; prismatic mana with a bit more oomph would qualify as a reson.” He stood tall, and asked, “Now, would you like to discuss the problem of Nothanganathor?”

Erick steeled himself, turning more serious by fractions. “I would like to discuss him, but I get the distinct impression that you can’t interfere with that.”

“This is true; I cannot interfere with him. Nothanganathor is on the list of approved evils.”

“… Excuse me what?”

- - - -

Erick stood upon the surface of an asteroid-sized white sphere that was Yggdrasil’s designation of Erick’s Benevolence Tower space. The sphere was maybe 30 meters in diameter, and it floated somewhere high in the skies of Margleknot, maybe multiple planets away from every other thing in the sky. Probably further than that, though. Distance in Margleknot was a funky thing, because while imagery was allowed to reach across an infinite gulf of space, there was still an infinite gulf of space between this floating land and all the other lands out there.

A simple rock floating in the escher-drawing that was Margleknot might actually be the size of a sun.

Erick came here to start on his Benevolence Dungeon, with plants and slimes and water and all that shit.

But now he sat down on the white sphere, and simply looked across the lands of Margleknot.

‘List of approved evils’ was really getting to him.

Erick probably should have stayed with Lionshard for a much longer conversation, to understand everything about Nothanganathor and ‘the list’, but after hearing just a little bit about how Nothanganathor was ‘approved’, Erick had to leave. He tried to be polite. He might have actually been polite. But he had been sparking blackening Benevolence on the floor of Lionshard’s house and burning up the carpet.

Lionshard had excused Erick’s anger. He had already seen that coming, of course; Fate Magic and all that.

And so, Erick left Lionshard’s house without knowing much more about Nothanganathor at all.

Erick sighed out, “I should send him an apology gift and a thank you gift.”

Erick laid down on the surface of the white sphere, floating in the skies of Margleknot, and thought.

He had pretty much known, before meeting Lionshard, that there were acceptable evils within Margleknot. Yggdrasil had told him that much. This entire land was a land of balance. Raise up a strong Good, and here came an Evil to stop it. Raise up a strong Evil, and soon some Good would come to disrupt all of that Evil.

Erick imagined he was the solution to Nothanganathor’s Evil.

Was he the ‘hero’ in this shit?

Maybe.

“Balance fucking sucks,” Erick said to the world.

Yggdrasil sat down beside him. “Sometimes, yes.”

Erick sighed, and then he sat up. He looked at his son. “There are other problems to address, too. I want to never ascend to godhood unless I absolutely need to.”

Yggdrasil held out a hand. “All that takes is a handshake.”

Erick shook his son’s hand—

The world flickered gold and then faded inward, falling into the space between their hands, Erick feeling weaker in some unknown way. He let go, and Yggdrasil held a glowing dot of gold power. Like playing a coin trick, Yggdrasil twisted his hand and the gold dot vanished.

Yggdrasil twisted his hand again and handed over a small book, saying, “This is the theory behind some Power-to-Reson spellwork that you will find useful.”

Erick took the book and held it to his chest. He didn’t read it right now.

He laid down on the surface of his asteroid. He stared at the sky, which was currently the crisscrossing Fae Enclave ice crystal and the cylindrical silver Quantum Nexus Hub. He breathed.

He asked, “Why are there so many places named ‘nexus’?”

Yggdrasil chuckled. He laid down beside his father to stare at the sky, too. “Because everyone thinks they’re the center of the universe, or whatever thing they wish to be at the center of. The Quantum Nexus Hub is the only one that actually counts as ‘actually central’, though, and only marginally, because they managed to pierce the Fae Enclave a very, very long time ago, and the Fae Enclave liked it, because the crossing makes an actual center at that hub. Before that piercing everyone used to argue if the top of the crystal was the center, or if the other top of the crystal was the center, or if the center was the center. A lot of wars were fought over that.”

“… You have wars here?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Erick thought for a second. He asked, “Could I get some people from House Benevolence up here? I think I want to make this Benevolence Tower an actual place; not just a dungeon.”

“Sure. Five people. It’s a bad idea, though.”

Erick looked over at Yggdrasil. “… Really? You can do that?”

“I can. But people will try to kill them and they’re not powerful enough to live here… Maybe Destiny could. But not even her. Who were you thinking of?”

“Ah. Forget it, then.” Erick said, “Everyone is beholden to someone in power here, and they’re locked to those people, which threatens them and otherwise… and all that.”

Yggdrasil laughed. “That’s one of the least coherent things I’ve heard you say.”

“I made myself unable to get really tired, but the scale of it all is getting to me.” Erick thought for a moment, then said, “Aisha, because wrought would be strong, I think. Destiny could come, unless she’s busy. I’d love to get Zolan up here for a hundred different reasons. Mox, of course. Poi because yes. Teressa would be lovely, but she’s a new mom, or at least she should be. The girls and Evan are probably busy… Everyone is probably busy a lot, actually… Ophiel is too young. Gods. I miss them all.”

Yggdrasil asked, “Want me to tell you all about all of them?”

“Can you?”

Yggdrasil said, “We made a pact for your continued divinity gains. I can do a lot more now than I could earlier.”

Erick huffed a laugh.

Yggdrasil smiled, and then he lost his smile, saying, “One month after the Sealing of Veird, which is just one name for it, that’s when the Nothor Beasts started to fall to the First Surface and crawl out of the lands below. It was a very small infection at first. Barely noticeable. They’re that red beast you discovered in your soul. When uncontained, Nothor Beasts are like Moon Reachers but worse. People were disappearing and no one knew why, and no one recognized most of those disappearances, but meanwhile your Benevolence dragons were going on rampages that no one quite understood, because they could see them. The Nothor Beasts stayed away from me and Ophiel, so we couldn’t see them either. The world at large didn’t even understand they were there till several months ago…”

Erick listened to problems 789 layers away and wished to be able to help more than he already was.

Home was doing well, though, and Erick was doing good here.

Or at least he would be, soon enough.

- - - -

Yggdrasil departed with a hug.

And then Erick stood upon the surface of the base of his Benevolence tower, hanging in the sky of Margleknot.

With a tap of his shoe, Erick brought forth a bit of dirt under his feet that hadn’t been under his feet at all. With a breath, Erick made air, filling the atmosphere of this empty space with some wind. It had been a complete vacuum while Yggdrasil had spoken with Erick, but they were both Ascended, so ‘lack of atmosphere’ didn’t really matter at all, for any reason. With a flick of a finger, some red blood appeared on the ground, spilled from a wound that did not exist. The blood rapidly turned black in the lack of air. Some froze into ice for the lack of warmth, hitting the ground and then casting off into the air above, for lack of gravity. Erick caught what he felt like catching.

Breath, road dust, and some sort of liquid that contained water. Those were the ingredients for Erick’s next creation.

With a twist of Benevolence and aura, Erick flowed [Duplicate] over the components of life. Black blood boiled out of itself, frozen blood shattering out across the spherical surface of the solid Benevolence that was the start of this land. Erick turned up the heat with some Particle Magic, turning black ice and dirt to black liquid that washed across the white surface of the sphere. Dust and dirt became mud and mess. The air whipped out and away, like a grasshopper’s fart in a hurricane of void.

The sky of Margleknot was far, far overhead, but the sky of this particular land was about 2,500 kilometers up there. That was the space that Erick had to fill… Or at least half of it. Maybe a 2,000-kilometer radius of it? A 500-kilometer-tall sky on both sides of the future ‘Moon Benevolence’ was enough sky.

Erick stepped onto the wash of black blood and dirt. When the white core had vanished behind ten meters of black mud, Erick threw his improved [Cleanse] down at the mess.

White fog blasted out of the black, all the black mud shooting away as though Erick had detonated dynamite. But the core was fine. Black blood stayed in the air, for gravity was still pretty weak.

Erick layered some [Gravity Ward]s that would eventually dissipate with time; they wouldn’t be necessary when Erick filled the space enough.

Blood and mud rained back down as water and mud, and a whole lot less of it. There was more air in the atmosphere, but the level of air inside this space was at ‘grasshopper farting in space’-levels. Erick repeated this copying and [Cleanse]ing process several times, rapidly creating a 50 meter ball of dirt with another 15 meters of water on top of that dirt.

Erick stepped into the air and opened his [Duplication Aura] wide. There wasn’t much air around him, since he was in the middle of a very open space and air filled its container. But as moments stretched and small bits of air became two bits of air, and then four, a small nothing became a breeze which became a flow. Wind whipped at the waters below, making a very weak sky.

Erick lowered down toward the waters, and to the dirt.

Water rushed up to meet him, flowing away, piling atop itself and then out into the rest of the space, fountaining high and fast and dropping down when it hit [Gravity Ward]s. Dirt below became a volcano of wet mud. Slowly, and surely, Erick flew away from the surface, dragging out a very small world behind him. Mud spilled around and to the sides. Wind crashed. Waves pounded.

[Cleanse] erased half of his work here and there, but soon that white wind stopped flowing, and all Erick was left with was deep, clean water and a thin atmosphere.

Erick stepped below the waters’ surface and focused on pulling the mud upward, making it deeper. The mud was a collection of fine sand and not much else, so that would not do. You couldn’t build a world on dust, after all. So Erick grabbed some mud and twisted it with Wizardry, creating a pile of various stones, most of them simple quartz sand, but also a few bits of aluminum, iron, nickel, copper, gold, silver; the list went on and on, and it would form the good basis for a stable particle-based foundation, with all the essential minerals for life and a whole lot extra, just because. Erick concentrated on that pile of proper soil, with a bit of clay and loam, and began copying that.

Floating above the waters of his mini-world, Erick became a very tiny beacon of creation, spilling out dirt and wind and some water, when needed. He had literally never done anything like this ever before, except as a mental exercise, but he made it work. Eventually, he didn’t need to make any more [Gravity Ward]s, because gravity was starting to work on its own.

That’s when Erick smiled, knowing this was going to work, eventually.

- - - -

It was maybe a day or five later when Erick floated above a 6,000-kilometer diameter moon made of dirt, water, and air. Yggdrasil had increased the size of Erick’s allowed space long before Erick reached his original goals.

Clouds rolled across the sky, held within the edge of this miniworld by a hexagonal grid of a node network. That grid touched down upon several different ‘continents’, where the land was layered and ready for things to grow and thrive. There was no tectonic activity in this land, so Erick had needed to create some upways for water to flow and make rivers to keep those continents watered. Lakes abounded, and a winding ocean tied everything together.

Right now, Erick’s mana was supporting the whole place, and he still had a lot of mana to spare, but the node networks extended their tendrils into all of the land and water awaiting other donors to the cause. The drain on the life to come wouldn’t be too much, and it was capped at enough to keep the whole place stable, so as long as life thrived, making mana, then this would work fine.

Erick wasn’t quite sure if his [Terraforming] would make slimes that made mana, though, since it was an imbuement of Darkness that made mana, but since he had made slimes on FENRIR, where Darkness did not exist, this would probably work.

Erick cast a [Terraforming] into the skies of his mini-world.

Storms gathered. White lightning crashed to water and to stone. Water plants sprouted while grasses and flowers spread. A massive slam of lightning struck the coast of a continent, flash-[Grow]ing a tree into something large, white, and of a slightly glowing-green of canopy. Erick chuckled at that, as he watched with his Authority as that entire tree worked a root all the way to the center of the planet, where it touched the core and the core touched back—

Yggdrasil stepped out from the side of the tree, waving, and then he vanished again.

Erick smiled at that.

And then he went to other parts of his mini planet and cast more [Terraforming]s.

Platinum rains fell upon a brand new world. Plants tried to grow, and while most survived the churn, some could not. They died, and formed the basis for other life to grow. Gradually, rapidly, plant matter joined the barren stone and water, while the wind turned to something more conducive to life.

Erick contented himself to sit upon a spit of land that was a beach, near the white tree of Yggdrasil at the edge of a new forest, and watch. Erick wasn’t sure when the fish appeared in the waters, but he was pretty sure Yggdrasil had done that.

A day later the first slimes crawled out of shallow pools that were filled with muck and dead initial plant life. They gorged on the dead things. They grew. They multiplied.

And soon, glowing balls of Benevolence slimes tumbled across the mini-world.

This was good. This was great, actually.

- - - -

Shadow sipped her beer, watching the sky for the tenth day in a row. When she stopped sipping her beer, it automatically refilled. The Black Crystal Tavern was good like that. When day 10 turned to day 11 of watching the sky, Shadow mumbled to herself.

“That fucker decided to build a planet before coming to talk to me.”

- - - -

Erick happily watched as slimes generated from low pools of soupy, plant-choked waters and started eating the dead stuff. Trees grew tall in new forests, making dark spaces for glowing mushrooms to consume and grow on fallen trees that had grown too fast, and then faltered hard. Platinum rainstorms followed glowing lines in the sky on clockwork schedules, breaking the weak old life and leaving behind new, hopefully stronger growth. [Terraforming]-and-more storms would eventually trace across the entire planet over the course of a year, and then start again, bringing their transformative, creative bounty to every part of the world.

It was a larger world than it had been a few days ago. Erick had pumped it up from 6,000 kilometers in diameter to roughly 7,000 kilometers in diameter. It was more like a small planet, now, than a large moon. It was a bit larger than Mars, actually, but a whole lot smaller than Earth; it had about a third of the gravity of Earth now. It had needed that extra gravity.

Erick had canceled the gravity magics and the water cycling magics once the planet got big enough to sustain itself and have its own water cycles, which was pretty great.

It had six towers on its surface, now, each of them simple eternal stonewood things that were wide at the bottom and tapered at the top, each reaching 150 kilometers into the sky. Each was a copy of the other. A tower stuck up from each of the northern and southern poles. Four stuck up from the equator, equidistant from each other and the poles. Three were located in the ocean, while three were on land.

And slimes were everywhere.

The whole planet was making Benevolence mana, all of it siphoning off into the [Terraforming] storms, which had [Undertow Star]s and [Benevolence Cleanse]s attached to them, now. It was a self-sustaining cycle that filled the air with mana of all types, making the manasphere of the little world rather thick.

It was still mostly Benevolence mana, though, because [Benevolence Cleanse] balanced all types of mana and left Benevolence alone.

The whole planet was still way too fragile and it needed proper upkeep from people who could truly maintain the systems, but Erick had done enough to get it settled. He needed to actually turn it into a powerhouse for reson collection, now.

And for that, he needed to do some Wizardry.

Atop the northern tower, in a room open to all directions and with a [Benevolent Storm] lashing the coasts a hundred kilometers to the south, Erick stood upon white eternal stonewood. He prepared his mind, collecting and organizing the lessons of the mana-to-resons book that Yggdrasil had given him, while adding in his own thoughts on the subject that he had collected over the last few days. Finally, he took the form of the old poem that he had used to make [Renew] in the core of Veird, and made it into something different.

Erick focused inward, looking at his crystallized soul, preparing to form Benevolence into a shape of power like all the other tools that the Script had given him long before today. Erick was doing Wizardry, yes, but he was also making that Wizardry into a button he could push in his soul to do more Wizardry later.

Erick opened his eyes.

He spoke with Authority to his little planet, and to his Self,

“A dot of power, sky-gathered true

“flows with purpose; a saving breakthrough.

“A longed-for gift of healing heavens.

“A transposed version of my Renew.

“Benevolent, prismatic resons.”

The air flickered.

Something gathered in the air of the tower, at the very top, the entire eternal stonewood tower turning brighter white for a moment before that whiteness faded—

Erick captured the flow of everything that was happening with his absolute Authority over the space, and then copied it into his soul, like taking notes from a professor that was writing as fast as lightning and then erasing the notes right after. It worked. He would look at that later.

—The air flexed in the uppermost room in the northern tower of Benevolence and power twisted into a glowing white ring with a broken top. It was the glowing white symbol for [Renew]; an arrow with a pointed front and a sweeping back, curled in on itself. That symbol slowly rotated, and the air around it turned darker, as though it was sucking up the very light around itself in order to reach a saturation point.

Erick cast an extension of the node network hanging out above the tower, dropping down a connection of the planetary node network to the symbol, drawing a line of light that faded into the spreading darkness of the—

Erick’s status flickered at him.

Congrats! I managed to make a new spell! How long did it take us? Weeks? Days? Whatever the case, amazing accomplishment, Erick! Hope you’re still yourself. I sure hope this message doesn’t repeat every single time we make a new spell, but it might be nice?

Reson Gathering, instant, close range, ?????

Make a reson gatherer. 9 mana to 1 reson.

Erick smiled at that.

He hadn’t managed to fix that part of himself that gave him that ‘congrats’, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He had actually made a [Force Sword] the other day along with a bunch of other, much simpler spells than the [Reson Gathering] he had just made, just to see if he could do the soul-spell-imbuing on his own. One doesn’t go into the big magics without testing things first, after all. Erick had succeeded in creating a [Reson Gathering] through normal mana shaping and altering, too, but this one was the one that truly worked, the one that he was proud to have accomplished, and the one that he put into his soul—

Erick stepped back, because this version seemed to be… Maybe doing more than expected.

The brilliant Renew symbol was an indelible white most-of-a-circle upon the darkness of the rest of the world. It spun lazily, implacably, under a line of light that went right to the empty space at the top of the circle. That line became less of a line, and more of a bolt of lightning, jagged and splitting, as it reached down into the golden space between the ends of the Renew—

Something connected to something else within the existence of the entire planet.

The darkness faded, the symbol remained, and a root of Yggdrasil now hung down from the roof, twisting geometrically around a node network straight-line connection, both of them attached to the [Reson Gathering]. The [Reson Gathering] would be powered by the node network of the planet, and Yggdrasil would be taking that gathering.

“Good. It worked.”

Yggdrasil stepped out from the walls of the tower, saying, “Wow, father. That's some really good conversion rates.” He chuckled. “You did better than me.”

Erick laughed. “It makes me glad that I still have some tricks I can show you.”

Yggdrasil smiled as he stared at the [Reson Gathering], his eyes peering deep. He blinked, then said, “You made Benevolence split itself into Light, Shadow, Fire, Water, Stone, Air, Illusion, Sand, and Steam, and then you combined them all using a central tenet of Benevolence Itself; to help people.” He looked to Erick, impressed. “An evergreen desire. You’ll never run out of resons doing that. Benevolence itself would stop existing long before it stopped trying to give assistance.”

Erick grinned. “I’m glad it worked. I considered going smaller with the elemental-pseudo-shifts, leaving out the confluences of the Big 6, but those confluences would get everything closer to the idea of prismatic mana, and so I went for it.” He breathed in, then out, and said, “And now I’m pooped! Just gotta cast the spell 5 more times, and hope that I made the spell correctly in my soul so it won’t blow up like that [Force Feather Bed] spell I tried. That one was just sloppy.”

Yggdrasil looked to Erick, and said, “I think you understand some of what you’re doing here in Margleknot but not completely. You really should start trying to recruit some people. Get out there. See the city, Father.”

“Ehhhh! I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it.” Erick stepped to the southern tower and Yggdrasil joined him. Erick cast [Reson Gathering] into the tower and connected it to the node network. The spell didn’t explode! Success! The world turned dark, and then another connection passed, revealing Yggdrasil to have dropped another geometric root into the top of the [Renew] symbol. Erick smiled. “Ah! It works. Amazing!” He asked, “How long do you think it will take for this to help with that Abarial situation? That dying nexus world?”

“Now that someone is caring enough to actually pay for it, then not too long at all. Two or three years to reconnect to the hub world that broke. Shorter after that to connect to Abarial. It’ll be a slow connection, though. That’s what you get when you go through Lionshard's and my slow, background-ways. It’ll be stronger for that slowness, though. Once we connect to Abarial, the people there will likely do some magics of their own to widen the connection and we’ll likely get refugees, but ideally, they could stay there and grow there. They probably will. People tend to like where they grew up. Benevolence will take to that land very well, I think, because Benevolence is the one making the connection, and I bet it will be making itself known in the solving of many small systemic problems. People will see that. They will start to accrete it, and produce it themselves… probably.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “Is that what will happen? I thought they’d just get a connection. Not that they’d get Benevolence… I find myself happy knowing that they’ll get Benevolence.”

Yggdrasil said, “The injection of new mana types into other world systems is a very large topic. I expect whatever mana systems they have will be rejuvenated by Benevolence and a small subset of people will switch to Benevolence entirely, since it can replace practically everything else. Our last records of Abarial have them as a reson-using society, with very little mana. Now, they’ll get Benevolence, which is way easier to use than resons.” He said to Erick, “If you want to make their connection happen faster, then you have to make a House Benevolence here, or recruit help that can connect to these worlds faster than I can. That’s just one solution, though.”

Erick thought…

And then he stepped over to another tower and cast [Reson Gathering]. Yggdrasil dropped a root down into this one, too. Erick repeated the process with the three remaining towers.

And then he sat down before he crashed down.

“Holy crap,” Erick said, feeling lightheaded. “I didn’t think I could feel lightheaded again.”

Yggdrasil smiled softly and sat down with him. “You need to make a reson pool in your status or simply hook up that reson creator spell you made to your status so you don’t have to make a reson pool; you can make resons on demand. They’ll come out slower if you make them on demand, but not much slower.”

Erick grinned, then said, “I think I’ll meld the reson pool with my existing pools, like how it’s supposed to be. That’s how you do it, right? You just have resons as the blood among all the rest of yourself? Like how people have it in the Space Between.”

“It’s my preferred way of using resons, yes. It’s the natural way, too, so it’s easier to enhance that system that is already there.”

Erick relaxed for a moment.

And then he half-glanced inward, at the spot of Darkness at the center of his soul. “Is Melemizargo’s Darkness a reson generator? Or a mana generator, based on resons transforming influence into mana?”

Yggdrasil smiled, saying, “I have theories, and you hit the big one right fast, but that theory is provably false if you want to get into it. The truth is that every universe has their own powers, and they’re all rather unknowable. You could ask Shadow if you wanted to know about Darkness, but even so, she didn’t make that ‘Old Cosmology’; she found pieces of Other and made something New out of them.”

Erick thought for a moment, watching the stormy sky, asking, “Should I find some gods and invite them here? Would that be a good idea? … Rozeta?”

“They’re still part of the Enclave lock on the Painted Cosmology.” Yggdrasil said, “Every single person you desire to bring from there, to here, I can make that happen, but they can never go back until you solve the Nothanganathor problem. Gods are not part of the offer; not happening. There are, however, some gods in this land who you might get along with. I think I put a few in the guidebook.”

“… Huh. Yeah. Cascadio, the Radiant Sun. Veird needs a new Sun God anyway. I suppose I can see why you included him in the guidebook.” Erick smirked at his very largest son, asking, “You’re pretty crafty and sneaky with your influences, aren’t you.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father,” Yggdrasil said, though his facial expression told a different tale.

Erick smiled and looked away, across his mini-world. “Can you look over this place for a little while? Or at least until I can talk to some people to take over maintenance… Maybe the Celestial Observatory for some good hires? How rich does this land make me, exactly?”

“It’s still growing right now and your half of the benefits of this land are being funneled into the Abarial situation, while half are going to me, to Margleknot, as per normal agreements. My half is already being used to noticeably clean up smaller issues here and there, and so I have a vested interest in keeping this land solid and usable, so I’ll be looking after it for the foreseeable future. You can still certainly hire people to live here and work the land and make it more productive, but you don’t have to do that.” Yggdrasil said, “So you’re not actually richer at all; it’s all going off into the void of infinity.”

Erick laughed.

Yggdrasil nodded, and then dropped a bomb, “In fact, I would suggest you simply leave this land alone, and let me put it behind a time displacement and speed up the whole place by a good century or seven. Right now, since there’s no intelligent life here, I can do that. You’ll have enough resons and Benevolence to solve the Abarial situation in a few days.” He added, “As soon as intelligent life is here then I cannot do that sort of thing.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. And then he huffed a laugh. “Every time I think you’ve told me the extent of your powers you pull out another one and solve an issue I was working to solve myself, and a lot faster.”

“I could tell you everything right away, but it’s better if you discover it on your own.” Yggdrasil smiled. “You got most of the way here on your own, which is great, but I’ve been at this for a very long time.”

“I suppose you have.” Erick sighed, and looked out across the world. Clouds rolled across blue waters and green continents. The edge of the sky held hexagons and curved lines of node network light. Mountains collapsed under shifting weights. Magma boiled in small spots around the core as things heated up from pressure. Water eroded river banks that Erick thought were fine. Storms killed forests that looked sturdy, but were all hollow strength, breaking at the first heavy winds. Slimes spawned in stagnant pools and died on dry sands that should not have been dry. One of the ocean towers looked like it was tilting a little. Erick frowned at that last one. Erick said, “I haven’t been at this for very long at all.”

“You’ll get better. Don’t worry about that ocean tower. I’ll keep it from falling. I might make the planet a bit bigger, too, to help with gravity, and alter some of the timings of things.” Yggdrasil said, “When I gather enough resons and Benevolence to solve some long standing issues you’ll have a much better world to come back to, and then you can populate it with people you wish to hire to make it better. By that time, though, you’ll likely have a whole slew of other issues you wish to solve with this mana battery, and I can keep the Time going for those issues as they pile up.”

“… Ah. I see the shape of this whole thing here now. I won’t get to have a little planet at all, will I? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but infinity has a lot of problems to fix.”

Yggdrasil nodded. “Yup. This has happened in some form or another tens of times before. When you get back to your house in the Old Dragon District, you’ll understand a lot more.”

“… Huh. Well then.” Erick looked around again. “Shouldn’t we import some, like, lizards and bees and cats and dogs and other basic animals? Or will slimes really be enough?”

“Slimes and elementals and plants are more than enough.”

“Sounds like you have experience with that.”

Yggdrasil laughed. “With how varied and powerful Benevolence is, I doubt I’ll get more than a few million subjective years of use out of this place before actual intelligent life develops and I have to release it into Margleknot.”

Erick was stuck looking around at his little planet. He had only been here for a week and he hadn’t done anything except build, but it already seemed like some sort of home.

Yggdrasil hurried him along, “When you get home check the rest of your messages and line up whatever problems you want me to solve behind the scenes. Lionshard will probably have some requests for you as well, once everyone sees what you’re going to see. He already knows what is about to happen, though.”

“Right right right right.” Erick went over and hugged Yggdrasil, asking, “And no gate networks of my own?”

“Nope. I’m the only one allowed to have one of those here. Sorry, father.”

“It’s fine. I understand. Love you.”

Yggdrasil hugged him back and a portal opened to the side, leading to Erick’s house.

Erick hugged his son tighter for a moment, then he let go, took one more look around, and nodded.

He walked through the portal—

- - - -

— And stepped onto the balcony of his house in the Old Dragon District.

As the portal closed, Erick waved to Yggdrasil and Yggdrasil waved back.

And Erick looked up.

The cityscape sky of Margleknot was the same as before, with the great icicle of the Fae Enclave piercing through the center, the silver cylinder of the Quantum Nexus Hub piercing the Fae Enclave, and all the layered lands of other places stretched out in every direction, like this entire land was inside of a heavily-layered dyson sphere / escher painting.

A few lands floated around the space in the center, looking like planets, or free-floating spires, or diamonds, or water worlds.

‘Benevolence Tower’ was one of those floating lands. It was spherical and blue and green all underneath a hexagonal net of node network, a few hundred kilometers into its sky. [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] and other light sources held on every joint of that node network, making the planet rather brilliant. Spires poked out from the north and south poles and equidistant on the equator, their tops barely reaching the glowing network, but they did reach. A trail of a curving node network spiraled from the southern pole, around and up the southern hemisphere, to the tops of the equatorial towers, up and up the sides of the planet to the northern tower, forming a year-long track that the [Terraforming]-[Benevolence Cleanse]-[Undertow Star] storms followed.

Even from here, the brightest lights of the new planet were those storms, and the tiny dots at the top of every tower, where [Reson Gathering] pulled excess mana from the life of the planet, transforming it into resons.

It was beautiful.

And then time sped up.

Erick saw the change of time in the turn of the hexagonal grid, and in the rotation of the planet. He had set the world to rotate slowly, to give it natural weather, and now it spun. The node network and the movement of the planet underneath showed the whole thing spinning. And then Erick saw the storms moving. Instead of moving slow and plodding and predictable, the storms moved as though they were hunters who had spotted prey. They began jogging, almost. And then they started running up that spiraling track—

Erick could make out every facet of the speed of the planet, as one month passed over the course of an hour, and as a year passed in the course of the next hour. But when a year passed in ten minutes, there was a shift. The sky darkened around the planet, the node network growing stronger, more brilliant, and less visible beyond the stretch of time. The lights of the equatorial towers began to meld into each other, looking like a line of solid white lightning, while the lights of the poles were stock still.

The twisting node network that spiraled up from the south to the north was still there, still visible, as one year passed in one minute, making the whole planet look like a spiraling top about to spiral too fast to see.

And then there was light.

The planet sparked and washed out the entire rest of Margleknot’s city sky in a brilliant white flash that spread like the shockwave of an explosion. That light crashed against previously-invisible spheres in the sky that Erick had turned off in order to see the city. As that light passed those spheres, those spheres revealed themselves.

They glowed.

And then they shone.

“Ah,” Erick said, as he saw.

The multi-sun sky of Margleknot had gained a new sun, joining with all the other colors above, with the great big black hole sun in the center, upon which all the other suns orbited. Erick’s Benevolent sun was brilliant, iridescent white, and it sparked at the top and the bottom. The other suns each had little nuances to them that Erick only now recognized as shapes spinning below the surface too fast to truly see, and poles that held relatively still among all the other light. Each one was a mana battery of a different, probably balanced source.

Erick wondered about the big black sun with its white corona.

… And then Erick looked down to the little messages gathered near his gate like tiny stars, waiting.

“Yup. Knew that was coming.”

The number of messages suddenly grew, like fireworks exploding.

Erick said to himself, “I really ought to get a better idea of how this economy actually works before I do more of anything like this.”